Barry Sheppard & Free Trade

Barry Sheppard--former honcho in the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and long-time supporter of the Khmer Rouge--peeks out from under his rock with an article opposing free trade, specifically NAFTA and the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP).

In this he has good company, including pretty much the entire Democratic Party, which he purports to despise. Other allies include such worthies as Donald Trump, Pat Buchanan, and (sadly) many of my Tea Party friends.

I, on the other hand, support free trade because trade creates wealth, and restrictions on trade create poverty. It doesn't surprise me at all that Mr. Sheppard supports increased poverty, what with him being a socialist and all. There are, by my count, only two reason to oppose trade: rent-seeking and xenophobia. The Teamsters union is a good example of the former, while Misters Trump and Sheppard represent the xenophobic opposition, as I'll describe below.

Unlike Mr. Trump, who is at least an honest xenophobe, Mr. Sheppard hides behind myriad other rationalizations. He'll claim he is in favor of trade, but only under narrow circumstances--conditions so onerous and utopian as to be completely impossible. In this he is worse than Pat Buchanan, who at least supports trade between similar countries (i.e., the US can buy Canadian wheat as long as the Canadians buy American wheat).

Mr. Sheppard is most exercised because of what we American "imperialists" have allegedly done to Mexico. He accuses us of selling cheap corn to Mexico, putting semi-subsistence farmers out of business. Of course every other Mexican can buy corn for cheap--how is this a bad thing? (Mr. Sheppard claims that despite cheap corn, tortilla prices have risen. Somehow I doubt that's true, but even if it is I don't see how it's because of NAFTA.)

So we Americans have been selling corn for cheap--what have we gotten in return? Mr. Sheppard oddly doesn't mention it, but surely cheap auto parts is part of the answer. Tens of thousands of Mexicans got jobs in factories making it possible for Americans to buy better cars at cheaper prices. So that's a real trade: cars for corn. Much better than wheat for wheat, which doesn't accomplish much.

Still, Mr. Sheppard claims that Mexico has somehow gotten the short end of the stick. But the facts don't bear that out. The Council on Foreign Relations (a good, short summary of NAFTA's effects) points out that in 1993 the US ran a trade surplus with Mexico totaling $1.7 billion, morphing into a trade deficit of $61.4 billion in 2012. Further, in direct contradiction of what Mr. Sheppard claims, Mexican farm exports to the US have tripled since NAFTA's implementation.

But, wails Mr. Sheppard, "[b]etween 1995 and 2005, 1.1 million peasants lost their land, and another 1.4 million others dependent of the farm sector were driven out of work." Peasant is just a euphemism for a semi-subsistence farmer, scratching out a $1/day living on a piece of land too small to support mechanization. This is the lifestyle that Mr. Sheppard recommends to Mexicans? Rather odd coming from a man who shops in air-conditioned comfort at someplace like Whole Foods.

Of course we shouldn't be all that surprised. Mr. Sheppard did, after all, support the Khmer Rouge, who took the peasant fetish to completely irrational extremes, forcing all city dwellers into the countryside where they could enjoy the benefits of subsistence farming.

Mr. Sheppard blames us Americans for many imaginary evils, but he fails to ding us for our deserved faults. Among NAFTA's terms is the agreement that truck drivers can deliver goods in all three countries without hindrance. For example, Canadian truckers can carry goods from Canada to their destination in the US, and also from the US back to Canada. (They are not allowed, so I understand, to carry goods strictly within the US.) Judging from the number of Canadian trucks on the interstate near my house, this clause is widely exercised.

However because of the staunch opposition of the Teamster's Union and American trucking companies, such privileges have not yet been extended to Mexican truckers. They are only permitted to carry product a few miles into the US, after which it has to be reloaded onto an American truck. These continued regulations are a direct violation of NAFTA, and have resulted in compensatory tariffs being leveled against us by Mexico. They increase prices for American consumers and needlessly impoverish Mexican truckers.

The Teamsters and their corporate allies, refusing to admit to narrow selfishness, instead claim that Mexican truckers are unsafe. And presumably Mr. Sheppard agrees with them, given that he both opposes NAFTA and is pro-union. Apparently Mexicans are congenitally unsafe, because there is no other reason to make this claim.

So, like Donald Trump, the Teamsters' union, and some trucking companies, Mr. Sheppard thinks it is impossible for Mexicans to drive safe trucks safely in the USA. This is nothing but xenophobia, which brings me back to where we started.

About the TPP, Mr. Sheppard writes

The TPP will further the interests of the rich at the expense of workers and peasants. It will codify new regulations to facilitate more neoliberal changes to the economies of these countries. At the same time, it will further the interests of the imperialist countries involved--which include the U.S., Australia, Canada, Japan, and New Zealand--at the expense of the oppressed nations of Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam. Capitalists in these latter countries will benefit as junior partners with the imperialists at the expense of their workers and peasants.

Leave aside the odd categorization--where New Zealand is "imperialist" while Singapore is not. The upshot of this is we don't want no Gooks selling crap in the USA. It's a sentiment that Donald Trump certainly agrees with--Mr. Sheppard should give him a call. Beyond this, the principal beneficiaries of free trade are not capitalists, but first consumers (who get cheaper prices), and then workers (who get jobs).

As for me, I'm not a xenophobe. I support free trade.

Down with Poverty!

Further Reading:

• Labor Strategy for the Coming Period
• Trotskyists Down on the Farm
• Barry Sheppard: A Wasted Life

Trotskyist Party Gossip

If you Google jack barnes swp, I come up third on the list, just after the Wikipedia article and Gus Horowitz's piece. Likewise, a search for spartacist league cult puts me at the top of the list. These and similar searches are among the most common sources of new readers to my blog.

I'm not proud. I've written three posts that are labelled Cults, which are the ones that these search terms select among. I've said in all three posts and I'll say it again--I don't think the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) is a cult. If I thought so, I wouldn't write about them at all. I think the best way to characterize them is as a social club with a mission, rather like the Elks or the Knights Of Columbus. Weird? Perhaps. Cult-like? No way.

For all I know, the Spartacist League is a cult. The fact that my passing reference to them in a single post shows up at the top of the search does seem to indicate the irrelevance of that rather pathetic organization.

Anyway, these searchers are not really interested in politics, but instead gossip. I call it Party Porn, analogous to the ruin porn so popular in Detroit these days. Were I a real reporter, I could probably earn a living digging up dirt on Barnes, Mary-Alice Waters, Steve Clark, Barry Sheppard, etc. Fortunately for them I'm not. I just repackage what I read elsewhere on the web, but apparently that's sufficient to earn me a high ranking on some popular Google searches.

So what is it about Jack Barnes that generates so much prurient interest? That's easy--everybody hates him.

Not everybody, of course, but a lot of people. Perhaps there are 20,000 people alive today who were at some point in their lives members of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). Most of them left because they simply fell away. My good friend from that era now has no interest in politics whatsoever. So he doesn't really hate Jack Barnes. He's just not interested.

Others were members of groups that split from the Party. There are probably still a few Schachtmanites around, along with Cochranites, Wohlforthites, International Tendency folks, and then not to mention the whole Socialist Action (SA) crew. Even old-timers, such as Barry Sheppard, have left, as, apparently, has my old comrade, Mike Taber. These people are often vitriolic in their hatred for Mr. Barnes, a trait I attribute to envy.

Many, such as Louis Proyect, left the Party but retain their belief in Marxism, and continue to be politically active. Mr. Proyect famously published the speech Jack Barnes should have given in 1974--a speech that to me looks very much like the program for Solidarity. A consistent Marxist, he has refused to personalize the decline of the SWP, even to this very day, which instead he attributes to "objective forces." As such, he doesn't "hate" Jack Barnes as much as disagree with him. But he is not above calling the SWP a cult.

Many others left because they could no longer stand the rigors of being "worker-bolsheviks", whatever that means. For many years in the late 90s, the Party had a dual-track membership. Full members could vote, but so-called sympathizers had the right to contribute money and do work. Does anybody recall the name Ruth Cheney? I never met her, though I gather she was a comrade of mine in the 70s. In the event, she co-organized the Pathfinder Project in the 1990s as a sympathizer. These sympathizers have all fallen away, and I'm sure there are lots and lots of hard feelings. I suggest most of them "hate" Jack Barnes.

So Mr. Barnes elicits a lot of schadenfreude, which drives traffic to my blog. Could a college be successful if they inspired so much animosity among their alumni? Certainly not--the president would be fired long before it ever got that bad. And likewise, the SWP leaves a lot of money and talent on the table by alienating so many of their former comrades.

Unfortunately, few of Mr. Barnes' competitors would have done any differently. Certainly neither the Workers League nor the Spartacist League are any better when it comes to openness. And neither are many ex-comrades, such as Barry Sheppard. Mr. Proyect is correct--it isn't a failing on the part of a single individual. It is, instead, baked into the democratic centralist cake, at least as implemented by the SWP.

But there is one person who probably could have saved the SWP: Peter Camejo. He had the commitment, intellect, and personality to pull it off. He remained a Marxist up to the very end. He was a very smart man (MIT grad). And his personality was both charismatic and intellectually open.

I had an e-mail exchange with Mr. Camejo before he died. I wrote him with a reminiscence, saying that I was his chauffeur around Chicago and Milwaukee during his 1976 presidential campaign, and that was a job I very much enjoyed. I also said that, while my personal politics had changed, I still very much admired him as an individual.

Mr. Camejo wrote back--a very nice e-mail apologizing for not remembering me, and (jokingly) hoping that nobody I vote for will win the election. He also mentioned that he had cancer.

Compare this big-hearted response to that from Socialist Action. I wrote them (twice) asking for copies of the convention documents that they announced on their webpage would be distributed for free to all who asked. I asked, politely. And politely also a second time. They answered neither e-mail. This is sad.

Mr. Camejo would have been able to keep Party alumni involved with the organization, and on good terms. In a Camejo world, my blog might still be successful, but Party porn wouldn't be a traffic driver.

Further Reading:

• In Response To Blogger's Policy
• Marxism Without The Leninism
• The Decline Of American Trotskyism

Motown Blues

Sometimes Trotskyists commit acts of outstanding journalism.

An article entitled Shock and Awe in Detroit is an excellent example, written by Dianne Feeley, appearing in Against the Current, and published by Solidarity. Ms. Feeley and I were comrades in the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in the 1970s, though I don't recall meeting her personally. She now identifies herself as a "retired autoworker," which is certainly the best kind of autoworker to be.

So what makes it such good journalism? Two things: 1) she really knows something, and 2) she cares.

I have read much about Detroit's meltdown in a lot of places, written by people who don't live there. Detroit reporter Charlie LeDuff has crossed my radar screen as well, but somehow I can't take him seriously. Ms. Feeley has them all beat--she actually lives in Detroit and knows a lot about her city. I respect people like that.

I don't know how long Ms. Feeley has lived in Detroit, but it is obvious that she cares about her city. Her article contains actual suggestions for how to improve things. More traditional Trotskyist parties (SWP and  Socialist Action (SA)) will accuse her of reformism, i.e., some plan to improve people's lives short of world revolution. But the truth is neither the SWP nor SA give a rat's patoot about people who actually live in Detroit. The SWP closed their Detroit branch ten or fifteen years ago--when the going got tough the vanguard Party left town. SA no longer publishes the locations of their branches(!?), but I doubt they get any closer than the leafy confines of Ann Arbor. By contrast, Ms. Feeley is looking for ideas to make things better right now, not just in the sweet bye-and-bye.

Knowledge and sympathy lead to honesty. Not only does Ms. Feeley's account confirm facts that I have read elsewhere, but she also states facts that don't support her larger, ideological thesis. Like a true journalist, she can put her ideology aside in the cause of truth--very unTrotskyist behavior. It's not often I get to say this in this blog, but read the whole thing.

Ms. Feeley offers four specific suggestions. Despite the fact that I disagree with all of them, they are serious ideas--not just cheap efforts to score rhetorical points. Let's consider them in turn.

Since only 27 working-age Detroiters (16-64) out of every 100 have jobs, developing a jobs program is key.

There are two problems with this, though I confess I have no better ideas. First, many Detroiters are, frankly, unemployable. Working at a fast food place, for example, requires that you be well-spoken, appropriately dressed and groomed, that you know how to run a cash register, and that you show up on time. This is a tough hurdle for a lot of ghetto kids who've never succeeded in school at any level and never really held a job.

Second, make-work, charity jobs are never a good idea. Not only will they cost a whole lot more than just straight welfare benefits, but they'll attract a whole lot of hangers-on needed to manage the welfare employees. You'll never get rid of them, and in the meantime it's a big hole in the wallet.
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Stop foreclosures and evictions that are devastating the city. The city currently has more than 45,000 abandoned homes. Most homes are “under water,” with $140,000 mortgages on homes that are valued by assessors at $20,000. We need a program of principle reductions.

Somebody is going to take a loss on Detroit real estate--that's a given. Ms. Feeley thinks it should be the banks and the landlords, rather than "homeowners" or tenants. Unlike most Trotskyists (and to her great credit) she only calls for principal reductions--in other words she understands that not even the banks should take a complete loss. Hers is as good a suggestion as any, and I think it's already happening (however imperfectly).

Landlords who can't collect rent will simply walk away from the property. The last thing Detroit needs is more abandoned property. So letting landlords evict tenants is absolutely essential--Ms. Feeley is wrong on this one.
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Stop closing public schools, which anchor neighborhoods. Approximately 100,000 children who live in Detroit attend charters, suburban public schools, or schools that the governor has taken over and operates outside of any legal framework. Without decent public schools, many young families feel forced to leave the city.

This is her most ideological point, and accordingly the least defensible. 100,000 students must be the majority of Detroit's pupils, who are voting with their feet. The public schools are a disgrace--not just in Detroit but across the country. They need to be shut down. The teachers' unions surely deserve a lot of the blame, but corrupt politicians and parasitic hangers-on are right up there.
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Yet he [Kevyn Orr] does not call on the state to return to the annual revenue sharing it provided just 15 years ago ($330 million in 1999 versus $173 million in 2012) or ask the governor to pass a law instructing businesses in the city to deduct taxes for those workers who live in the suburbs. This act alone would bring in an annual $155 million more to the city.

The decrease in the state allocation isn't quite as bad as she makes it sound--Detroit has lost about 30% of it's population since 1999. But worse, the Michigan economy has gone through the wringer, and the idea that taxpayers in Flint or Grand Rapids should be sending more money to Detroit is unrealistic. I can't fault Mr. Orr.

Taxing workers who work in Detroit but live in the suburbs is a very unTrotskyist suggestion, and I give Ms. Feeley high props for putting it forward. It's not clear if she just means city employees, in which case it's the same thing as giving them a pay cut. That might be necessary, but then it's probably easier just to cut their pay than raise their taxes. If, alternatively, she means all people who work in Detroit, then this is just a tax on employment. It's hard to see how that will make people richer. I don't support this idea.

One reason Ms. Feeley lives in Detroit is that Solidarity has its national headquarters there. Now this is odd--why choose a declining, impoverished, rust-belt town as your icon? I can think of three possibilities:

1. To paraphrase Ken Gibson: I don't know where American cities are going, but where ever it is, Detroit will get there first. Rather than being an irrelevant backwater, Detroit, on the verge of bankruptcy, is a national trendsetter. Look here and weep.
2. Detroiters' circumstances are so desperate that they're ripe for a revolutionary party like Solidarity.
3. Solidarity's national headquarters is wherever Dianne Feeley happens to live.

These are not mutually exclusive, and I think they're all good reasons. But I vote for #3--I have considerable respect for Dianne Feeley.

Further Reading:

• Liberals!
• Barry Sheppard: A Wasted Life
• You Can't Eat A Hipster

Democratic Centralism

Summer is the season for Trotskyist conventions. More accurately, I should say "national gatherings" since conventions are usually only held every other year. In the off years something like a Socialist Education Conference is held. Today it's called an Active Workers Conference.

The granddaddy of these events are the Oberlin Conferences that takes place annually at the eponymous campus. I attended my first Oberlin Conference in 1970, and they'd been going on for awhile before that. Over the years I probably spent more than a month on that campus, attending talks, classes, and fund raising events. I was living in Portland in the early 70s, and we all drove out to Oberlin--it took four or five days. One comrade didn't ride with us--he drove his own VW Microbus (remember those?), which was always breaking down. Fortunately he was an ace mechanic and could fix it roadside himself.

Those were the days--I have fond memories of my time at Oberlin. Today's Active Workers Conference is scheduled for only two days, July 19-20--hardly worth the drive from the West Coast. Of course it's now cheaper to fly, and even my friend wouldn't be able to fix a modern car roadside even if he wanted to. But you're invited, or at least you are if you're thinking about joining the Socialist Workers Party (SWP).

The SWP always took democratic centralism seriously, and in this they differ from their Stalinist counterparts. The centralism part said that after the convention the Party should speak with one voice. Comrades were under discipline to reflect the Party line in public, even if they personally disagreed. There was also a rule against taking disagreements home with you. Outside of the convention discussion, factions were not permitted.

The democratic part insisted on a free flow of ideas during the convention and for several months prior. During this time ideological factions were allowed and given a forum to present their ideas. And thus arose the uniquely Trotskyist institution--the pre-convention discussion bulletins. The discussion was kicked off by a series of resolutions from the Political Committee, the central leadership of the Party. Any comrade could reply to these documents by submitting a contribution to the discussion bulletin. Indeed, comrades could write counter documents proposing a completely different policy. These documents were printed up and distributed to the membership as a whole. After continued discussion on the convention floor, the various resolutions would be voted on. Once the majority had decided on the Party program, centralism took hold, the factions were supposed to dissolve, and everybody was expected to fall into line. The winning resolutions would then be published in The Militant, or as a book or pamphlet.

I once owned a whole library of discussion bulletins. In some move or another I decided to toss them--a decision I deeply regret today. It's not that they were great literature or anything, but this is one aspect of my youth that I wouldn't mind reliving.

There were some very undemocratic aspects to this procedure. First, the convention was delegated. Branches elected delegates who got to vote for the resolutions. The vote was never open to the membership as a whole. The branch leadership usually decided who the delegates were, which inhibited a full airing of minority view points.

The Party's leadership was chosen in a similar way. The convention delegates chose the National Committee (the governing body between conventions), who in turn elected the Political Committee (the governing body between meetings of the National Committee), who in turn elected the Executive Committee (the governing body all the rest of the time). While formally democratic, at every step there was an informal thumb on the scale that pretty much allowed the leadership to select itself. That's how Jack Barnes gets to be National Secretary for forty years.

So good intentions notwithstanding, democracy in the Trotskyist movement is flawed. And centralism makes no sense at all. The idea is that by speaking with one voice the Party can multiply its influence. In today's media environment it has the opposite effect--it just makes them look silly. I've posted about that here and here.

So it is refreshing that a grouplet called Solidarity is revisiting the concept. They are holding their convention July 26-28 in Chicago. Unlike the SWP or Socialist Action, they have clearly given up on centralism--there appears to be a wide variety of viewpoints within their movement. And accordingly, democracy is alive and well. Unlike the SWP, the discussion bulletins are (partially) public and are posted online.

Openness has advantages. I recall SWP discussions as being turgid--often unreadable. The Solidarity documents are well-written and cogently argued, though you need to suspend disbelief in Marxism to make any sense of them. The political document cites a litany of unhappiness: workers are getting poorer, education and social security are being cut back, fewer people have jobs, and things are just terrible, awful, no-good all around. (My response to this kind of argument is posted here.)

It sounds like in the revolutionary future they want people to be better off than they are today. But wait--in Programmatic Challenges to Ecosocialism, the authors are very clear about their true ambition:

The fact is that ecosocialism simply does not need everyone to have her/his own private automobile (we do not, in fact, need for anyone to have a private automobile) nor a big screen TV in every room of the house, private swimming pools, meat three times a day, and much else. All or most socialists who begin to take an interest in questions of ecology today no doubt understand this truth, especially when it is stated in such an exaggerated way. But there is a need to do more than understand. We must actively inscribe this approach at the top of our banner as we attempt to revolutionize society. We should place it in the forefront of our consciousness, and of everyone’s consciousness if we can. Consumerism does not actually satisfy the emotional needs of those who possess so much stuff, and a genuinely fulfilling human life style will be more easily achieved without it. What we need instead is an expansion of collective educational, artistic, and recreational possibilities which can be fully developed even while we drastically reduce the production of material goods.

So the truth is out of the bag--these people really are pro-poverty. I think all socialists (and most Democrats) meet that description, but Solidarity is at least up front and honest about it.

Elsewhere, they are explicitly Luddite, saying

The current forces of production (with the partial exception of energy sources which will have to be significantly developed during a transitional period) are more than sufficient to create a human society which takes from each according to her abilities and provides for each according to her needs. We no longer view a further expansion of the productive forces (taken as whole) as a necessary task, an essential part of the socialist transition.

So Solidarity is less Marxist and more Malthusian. Their reason for limiting human ingenuity is a supposed "ecological crisis"--the sky is falling and the world is about to end.  But there is no ecological crisis. There are ecological problems, to be sure, but nothing of the civilization-destroying magnitude that our friends at Solidarity suggest.

Here's their real proposal: instead of waiting for global warming or some other catastrophe to end civilization as we know it, Solidarity thinks we should preemptively end civilization as we know it right now.

What do we want? Poverty. When do we want it? Now.

Further Reading:

• Book Review: Human Capitalism
• The Decline Of American Trotskyism
• Barry Sheppard: A Wasted Life
• Viva Poverty

Barry Sheppard: A Wasted Life

Like many elderly people, Barry Sheppard has written his memoirs (here and here).

My grandfather did the same, though unless you share his passion for lumber mill technology from 1910 through 1940, it will not long detain you. My mother also wrote a memoir--she is a much better writer than either my grandfather or Mr. Sheppard, and while her life was unusual, it isn't significant. I once read the reminiscences of a very modestly successful businessman--also insignificant, but spellbindingly written. Only a few in this genre have more than sentimental value--Sam Walton's ghostwritten effort comes to mind. With all of these books--whether significant or not--my closing thoughts are usually this was a life well lived.

But not so with Mr. Sheppard's opus, to which my reaction is pathetic. Instead of admiration, I feel sorry for him.

Why?

It's not for technical reasons. Mr. Sheppard is a capable, if pedestrian, writer. The book is not uneventful--Mr. Sheppard did interesting things, including two round-the-world trips back when such were relatively rare. And it certainly isn't for lack of detail--quite the opposite. Indeed, it comes in two volumes, and I must now admit that I haven't read the second one. I have read the comprehensive review here.

Instead, unlike most memoirists, Mr. Sheppard suffers from a very weird form of megalomania. It's not that he exaggerates his own abilities, but he hugely overstates the importance of his work. His goal, after all, is to overthrow the existing world order and replace it with something different. He is simply delusional. His delusions result in a boring book, and a life's work utterly devoid of wisdom, moral purpose, or meaning.

Mr. Sheppard, born in New Jersey in 1937, graduated with a degree in mathematics from MIT. There he met Peter Camejo, a fellow student, and together they gravitated toward Trotskyism. Mr. Sheppard played a lead role in the founding of the Young Socialist Alliance (YSA) in 1960, and then advanced to a leadership role in the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). He became National Organization Secretary (sort of like senior vice president) of the SWP in 1970. The SWP was loosely aligned with the world Trotskyist movement, called the Fourth International, and Mr. Sheppard represented the Party at the International headquarters in Brussels for several years.

A key indicator of the book's weakness is that nearly all the references in the bibliography are from The Militant, or from other publications of the SWP, or related organizations. In other words, Mr. Sheppard reads only what he or his colleagues have themselves written. There is no critical distance, no contrary opinion, indeed, no knowledge whatsoever. He's spent his entire life inside an echo chamber. This leads to some wacko statements that are just assumed to be self-evident. For example, on a visit to Calcutta in 1969, he writes

In Calcutta in Bengal on the east coast of India, there was even more poverty and worse living conditions than in Bombay. I met Silan Banerjee, the leader of the group there, and we traveled around the city by taxi. I was astounded when we went around a huge traffic circle around a park, the centerpiece of which was a statue of Queen Victoria seated on her throne. There she was in all her regal splendor in the midst of so much squalor for which the British were responsible.

Now how are the British responsible for the squalor in Calcutta? Was Calcutta a fabulously wealthy city prior to the British arrival? Hardly--it was the British that founded the city in the 18th Century. People moved there for the same reasons people move to cities today--for jobs and opportunities. Kolkata, as it's now known, has 14 million inhabitants. Further, 1969 was more than 20 years after independence. If the Indians wanted to tear down Queen Victoria's statue, they had plenty of opportunities to do so. The fact that she still sits there, in front of Victoria Memorial Hall, says something about the Indian view of the British. It is obvious that Mr. Sheppard never read anything, nor did he even talk to anybody before forming his silly opinion.

The whole book is like that--a mile wide and an inch deep--full of ill-considered opinions about which Mr. Sheppard knows nothing.


Mr. Sheppard clearly believes his own propaganda. Indeed, he must be guided by the Holy Spirit or something, because in the entire first volume it is impossible for him to make an important mistake. We read about the Schactmanites, and the Burnhamites, and the Cochranites, the Swabeck group, the Robertsonites and the Wohlforthites, not to mention the Weiss clique. Those are just factions within the SWP. In the larger Left were various splinters of SDS, the Progressive Labor Party, and the Communist Party (known collectively as "opponents.") Through all this hubbub and turmoil, Mr. Sheppard keeps a firm hold on the Truth. To him and his close friends, and to them alone, is True Revolutionary Doctrine revealed.

And indeed, that is the whole purpose of the memoir. Younger comrades are supposed to read these words and learn how Truth was maintained for twenty five years in the SWP.

Unlike with my ancestors, there is no sentimental purpose. And unlike Mr. Walton, Sheppard accomplished precisely nothing. And that's what makes it so pathetic. Here's a guy who actually believes he's got a stranglehold on Truth, but over his entire career has absolutely nothing to show for it. There is no mass political movement. The organization to which he has dedicated his life is today irrelevant (he bitterly refers to it as a cult). The Fourth International is in disarray. At no time and in no place has Trotskyism ever been an important actor on the world stage. It's a total waste.

Few of us lead important lives. Mr. Sheppard has led an unimportant life, though he thinks he's made some huge contribution. He hasn't. The guy's a loser. But that's not the worst of it. He writes

The paper [Boston Globe] wrote, the SWP “flies Vietcong flags and roots for a Cong victory in Vietnam.” The first of these assertions was generally not true, but the second one certainly was — and we were now far from alone in this opinion among opponents of the war.

And that's just it. The SWP and the YSA were never anti-war. They were very much pro-war, but just for the other side. For twenty years, Mr. Sheppard and the Party supported the Vietcong and the Khmer Rouge. I don't blame Mr. Sheppard for the killing fields--he's not important enough to bear any responsibility. I don't even blame Jane Fonda. But how can one go through a long life and say I supported the organization responsible for the mass slaughter of two million innocent people. In my own little way, I helped that organization win their war. Is this something to be proud of?

I pity Mr. Sheppard. What a wasted life.

Update: You can download the first volume of Mr. Sheppard's book in pdf format here for free. Don't worry--it's legal. The second volume is not for free and is overpriced, which is why I haven't read it yet. I do wish both books were available on Kindle (I would pay for that).