Socialist Action's Political Report

Vanguard Man (source)

Socialist Action (SA) split from the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) back in 1983. It has been helmed by Jeff Mackler since its founding. He was SA's presidential candidate for both the 2016 and 2020 elections, running failed and unprofessional campaigns on both occasions. The man is 82 or 83 years old. It remains to be seen if he'll be the SA's candidate in 2024.

In 2019 SA underwent a split, with a large number (perhaps even a majority) of its members leaving. Notably, the very talented editor of their newspaper, Michael Schreiber, was among the leavers, as was Mr. Mackler's vice presidential running mate, Heather Bradford. How humiliating!

Some of the splitters went on to form the new and short-lived Socialist Resurgence movement. Other leaders of SA, e.g., Erwin Freed and Ernie Gotta (frequent coauthors), formed the core nucleus.

In 2022, Socialist Resurgence merged with a group called Workers' Voice with the new group assuming the latter name. This was hailed as an historic event, which I described as

The "two historic divisions" represent two versions of the Fourth International (FI): that of the United Secretariat, which purports to be the original FI, and the International Workers' League-Fourth International  (IWL-FI), which claims a mission to "reconstruct" the original FI. (A more useless mission is hard to imagine.)

So Mr. Mackler remains leader of SA's remnant husk, which I suggest is now down to about two dozen members. Since the first of the year their webpage has posted four (4!) articles--three of which are by Jeff Mackler, and one by that old Pol Pot supporter, Barry Sheppard. Apparently, apart from Mr. Mackler, nobody with any literary skills remains in the sect. Going back further in time, besides Mr. Mackler the website contains articles by others cribbed off the web. Only Marty Goodman, an SA comrade, occasionally contributes content.

Nevertheless, the "Party" held a convention last November. Insofar as it wasn't a Zoom meeting, it likely took place in Mr. Mackler's living room. The conclave issued a document: Fighting for the Socialist Future Today: Socialist Action Political Resolution. We're told that "[t]he following resolution was approved by Socialist Action’s 20th National Convention in November 2022." Approved it may have been, but the author is undoubtedly Mr. Mackler himself--so I'll give him credit here and not let him hide behind a Zoom meeting fig leaf.

I've taken to calling Mr. Mackler the "Vanguard Man." Normally, in Trotsky-talk, one speaks of the "Vanguard Party," which organization is the custodian of revolutionary tradition and which aspires to lead us toward a socialist utopia. But SA is so small and so depleted of talent that this awesome responsibility now rests on the shoulders of one octogenarian man: Jeff Mackler. Pity the poor proletariat, whose future hangs on such a thin reed.

Anyway, Mr. Mackler is a good writer, and that's the only reason I keep reading this stuff. But in this case he falls down on the job. There are too many typos, e.g., he writes "...right of return of all disposed Palestinians... ." Disposed is obviously the wrong word; perhaps he means dispossessed or dispersed? Not sure. Compare, e.g., with the SWP Political Report that I recently reviewed, in which I didn't find a single typo. It's not a big deal, but it indicates that the talent stack at SA is too small to support a proofreader.

The report is 15,000 words long, or the same length as the SWP's. I'll confess I skimmed through parts of it--much of it doesn't interest me, though perhaps that says more about me than Mr. Mackler.

The document discusses two big issues and several less important ones. The big issues concern "imperialism," especially the American variety, and then "[t]he global warming climate catastrophe."

Mr. Mackler subscribes to a theory known as campism, which I have dubbed American Brezhnevism. That post explains what that means in more detail, but briefly, campism maintains that the chief villain in the world is something called "American imperialism." We're never told what that is or how that operates, but it is apparently responsible for every war casualty anywhere in the world today. Mr. Mackler, for example, blames "American imperialism" for all the war deaths in Syria, and then also in Ukraine. Nobody else is responsible for anything. 

Because of "American imperialism," it is necessary for Vanguard Man to support any and all opponents of said imperialism, no matter how vile. Thus Mr. Mackler lends support to Assad in Syria,  Putin in Russia, and the Taliban in Afghanistan. This is, of course, exactly the same argument that Barry Sheppard made in supporting Pol Pot and his murderous Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia--no wonder Mr. Sheppard is an avid contributor to SA's webpage. However evil those regimes are, they're a lesser evil compared to "American imperialism."

To my mind, it's all a giant conspiracy theory. "American imperialism" does not exist in reality and is present only as a figment of Vanguard Man's overheated imagination.

Mr. Mackler is also a leader of the United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC). Actually, it's not antiwar, but instead pro-war on the other side. They're rooting for Assad, Putin, the Taliban, Kim Jong-un, and China's Xi. Obviously this is not a popular position in the United States, especially since most sane people realize that "American imperialism" doesn't even exist.

Here is something funny. Vanguard Man admits that

With the exception of revolutionary Cuba, a healthy workers state with some inevitable bureaucratic distortions, there are no deformed or degenerated workers’ states in the world today.*

So, but for Cuba, we're all capitalist, imperialist running-dogs these days, the most evil of whom deserve support from those opposed to "American imperialism." But the humor comes from the asterisk, which footnote states,

*Tentative statement pending NC/PC discussion in the class nature of North Korea

As Shakespeare says, "uneasy is the head that wears a crown." Vanguard Man has a weighty decision to make: Is N. Korea a deformed workers' state, or instead only another imperialist, capitalist running-dog? The fate of the global proletariat depends on his answer.

Or not. Vanguard Man will support the Norks over the United States regardless of what their "class character" supposedly is.

I can't let Mr. Mackler's obvious antisemitism pass unremarked. He does say that "Anti-Zionism Is NOT Anti-Semitism." This is true--but the near-converse statement is also true: anti-Semites are always anti-Zionist. Thus anti-Zionism is an unprincipled coalition between those who support a constructive Palestinian nationalism, and those who simply hate the Jews. Vanguard Man is in that latter category because of his "...recognition of the illegitimacy of the racist, Zionist, colonial settler, apartheid state of Israel is today widespread, ..." Nobody but an antisemite could talk about Israel in such angry, vituperative terms. If he really were merely anti-Zionist, he'd use more conciliatory language.

The second big issue is climate change, where he opines:

Here, despite the uncontested facts, the world’s major powers press on to increase fossil fuel production in the face of ever-intensifying killer heat waves, deadly floods and hurricanes, inundation of low lying land masses, drying up and poisoning of major water supplies – all accompanied by unprecedented environmental destruction across the board. Forests are decimated, oceans and rivers are irreversibly polluted, air is poisoned, nature is torn asunder, with no end in sight. 2,000 people died in a single week from the recent heat wave in Spain and Portugal alone! All of the above are the undeniable reality everywhere.

This is just nonsense on stilts. He's cherry-picked random factoids that add up to nothing. He obviously knows nothing about science or scientists. Any legit climate scientist of whatever persuasion will be ashamed to be associated with our Vanguard Man.

I'm not a climate scientist, but I've spent my career as a professor of chemistry with a special interest in thermodynamics. So while I claim no expertise in climate science, I know a hell of a lot more than Vanguard Man. Which isn't hard, because he knows zilch.

The rest of the Report is about topics that are either irrelevant or unimportant: abortion, LGBTQIA+ rights, "Latinx" issues, etc. I don't have time or space, so see the links below if you're interested.

Further Reading:

• American Rights and Trans Rights
• It's Not Just About Abortion
• Cuba Needs More Communism!

The New "Socialist Resurgence" Grouplet

Last week I discussed the split in Socialist Action (SA) from the point of view of the Majority Faction (MF). This week I'll consider the corresponding documents from the minority Permanent Revolution Faction, now reconstituted as an independent group named Socialist Resurgence (SR).

I promise to read these documents so that you don't have to. But in this case I failed. SR's Founding Document (pdf) is so dense that I couldn't get through all of it. Not that it's poorly written--I see Michael Schreiber's fingerprints all over it, and he is a good writer. It's just that you had to have been there--if you weren't privy to all the preceding arguments then it makes no sense. It's like reading through transcripts of a marriage counseling session for a couple about to get divorced.

It's really boring! Though I've read enough to have some things to say.

The name of the new grouplet, Socialist Resurgence, is a bit of a misnomer. Socialist Recrudescence would be more apt. If Socialist Action, a grouplet of about 100 worker-Bolsheviks, has failed to lead us to the post-revolutionary promised land, then it's hard to be optimistic about SR, which numbers about 40 comrades (if commenter John B is to be believed).

The split is about US military engagements abroad, notably in Syria.

Both SA and SR believe that the essential problem in Syria is something called "US Imperialism," though neither knows with any precision what that is. Where they disagree is with the characterization of Bashar al-Assad.

• SA thinks he is an agent of resistance--a third world leader heroically defending his country from "US Imperialism." As such, he deserves to be defended and supported.
• SR thinks he is a cat's paw for "US Imperialism." That is, instead of being part of the solution, he is part of the problem. Al-Assad should be opposed by all good revolutionaries.

This is how SR describes SA's position:

The world is polarized between two great forces or camps. One is U.S. imperialism, which is trying to actively foment regime change almost everywhere in the world. The other great force is an “Axis of Resistance,” anchored by Russia, and maybe China, and this alliance includes the governments of Venezuela, Nicaragua, Iran, and Syria, as well as organizations like ALBA. They implicitly and explicitly give political support to capitalist regimes.

They refer to this as campism.

I've addressed the issue myself, albeit in different terms, accusing SA of supporting any dictator--Putin, Assad, Maduro, Kim Jong Un--who for any reason opposes the United States. This puts them in bed with some really bad hombres, and renders them very unpopular among much of the American Left. For example, SA apparently believes that chemical weapons attacks blamed on al-Assad were really false flags. I'm not an expert on Syria, but I find false flag scenarios to be completely unconvincing. Too many people would have to be in on the conspiracy.

SR, by rejecting campism, gets away from the conspiracy theories, and is now able to pick and choose which dictators they want to support. That should make them more palatable to people they want to win over.

Of course they're both wrong. The Syrian conflict is only tangentially about "US Imperialism" (however poorly defined), as the US has no important strategic interest in the country. Obama's reluctance to enforce his humanitarian "red line" is proof enough, as is Trump's precipitous withdrawal of support for the Kurds.

The real problem in Syria is not "US Imperialism," but rather a sectarian/ethnic/religious conflict. The word "Alawite" is not mentioned in either SA's account of the split (discussed last week), nor in SR's Founding Document. This is truly bizarre. The Assad family are Alawites, a (heretical) Shi'ite sect comprising about 10% of the population, but which holds all important government and military posts.

Similar words--Christian, Druze, Kurd, and even Sunni--are not mentioned at all in SA's document. SR deigns to note the Syrian Sunni population only once.

And yet it is these ethnic distinctions that drive the whole conflict!

The reason SR gives for the massive destruction is ludicrous:

Following the Russian bombing of neighborhoods and hospitals in support of the murderous Assad regime, Russian companies were granted billions of dollars in contracts to rebuild Damascus, Aleppo, and other devastated cities. The reconstruction efforts were part of Assad’s larger gentrification plan to clear the cities of the working poor and open up areas to international financial institutions.

Ah yes! Russian bombing as an effort in urban renewal, as if Wall Street were eager to invest in Aleppo. Why not call it for what it is: ethnic cleansing. Neither of my Trotskyist friends have stumbled upon that term.

Recriminations within splitting groups are obviously personal and vicious (see aside below). This is no exception--they accuse each other of lying, acting in bad faith, being undemocratic, and not following the rules. In what might be called an Organizational Report (pdf), SR details their complaints against Comrade "Jeff M." (Jeff Mackler). I have no idea if what they say is true, but I will argue that it could be true, and for reasons that go beyond Mr. Mackler's turpitude.

Consider anti-Zionism. Narrowly interpreted this is a political opinion that can be held by honest people, e.g., the Szatmari Jews in Brooklyn. As I've said before, the Socialist Workers Party of my day was anti-Zionist is this sense.

But anti-Semites will also be anti-Zionist, albeit for disreputable reasons. So an anti-Zionist organization will attract not just honest, political anti-Zionists, but also true anti-Semites. Accordingly, SR accuses Mr. Mackler of collaborating with actual anti-Semites--which could be true. My opinion is, that by supporting Hamas, SA and SR have both crossed the Rubicon into true antisemitism. Mr. Mackler is just putting the icing on the cake.

The same problem holds for antiwar coalitions. The Trotskyist movement has long championed the united front, i.e, people who come together in support of a common cause, without necessarily agreeing on anything else. The classic, Trotskyist united front was the anti-Vietnam movement in the early 1970s, based on the simple slogan US Troops Out Now.

Similarly, the principal demand for today's United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC) is Opposition to All US Wars and Interventions.

The problem with united fronts is they attract people with very different goals. Trotskyists, for example, opposed the US in Vietnam because we wanted the other side to win. Other people within the coalition were committed pacifists: they opposed any war and didn't want anybody to win. And yet others were classic liberals--the kind of folks who voted for Eugene McCarthy or George McGovern. They just opposed the war in Indochina. Yet the united front demonstrations brought all of them together into one big march.

The problem with today's UNAC is that the tent has gotten too big. SA still wants al-Assad to win, and the pacifists are still pacific. But also, there is now a crew dedicated isolationists--people like Alex Jones of  InfoWars, or even pundits like Pat Buchanan, who have opposed US involvement in every war since Korea. Then there are people who don't care about al-Assad, but really want Putin to win! SR, like Trump, just wants the US to withdraw--they don't seem to know who they want to actually win.

The dispute between SA and SR is about just how big the united front tent should be. SR accuses SA (and Jeff Mackler in particular) of collaborating with some truly unsavory people. Mr. Mackler's defense is that his people weren't initially aware of the unsavory types at the conference (in Russia), and never had anything to do with them.

A united front isn't stable. And Trotskyist organizations aren't stable, either. They tend to split apart.

An aside about splits:

The Dunbar Number is the maximum size of a human group based only on shared kinship or friendship--e.g., a group of hunter gatherers. Any group larger than that requires some institutional structure and bureaucracy in order to function. The size of the Dunbar number varies from 50 to 150, with the higher numbers only possible when there is an external threat--e.g., war with a neighboring group--that makes the big group advantageous. But the bigger the group, the more time they have to spend on "social grooming" in order to stay together.

It appears that Trotskyist grouplets rarely exceed the Dunbar number. Which means that, despite their elaborate constitutions and procedures, they only cohere because of personal friendships and reciprocity agreements. Once the group gets too big, or personal relations are in any way strained, the group splits into competing bands.

Dunbar groups are usually led by a chief who holds office by lifetime appointment, or until a younger man (they are always men) takes his place. Jack Barnes is boss of the Socialist Workers Party since 1972, while Jeff Mackler rules Socialist Action since 1983. This month we inaugurate the new leader of Socialist Resurgence, Michael Schreiber, who I predict will lead them for decades to come.

Anthropologists take note: Trotskyist grouplets are a good proxy for hunter-gather tribes, and probably a lot cheaper to study.

Further Reading:

• Our President is a Pacifist
• Jeff Mackler Interviewed by Paul Duddridge
• Heather Bradford on Abortion

Socialist Action's Convention 2016

I'm late to the party--Socialist Action's (SA) convention occurred in mid-August, with results reported in an article dated on August 29th. Better late than never.

Unlike the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), SA provides us with no statistics whatsoever. They don't say how many people were present, nor how many visitors they had from other countries. (They do mention visitors from Canada.) Indeed, the paper doesn't list the locations of their branches--it's impossible to get in touch with them without going through the National Office.

One supposes this secretiveness is for "security," i.e., they're afraid of retaliation by the State or its irregular henchmen. But I don't think they should worry--they are not terrorists, nor do they represent any threat to our political system. Nobody cares what they do.

I think "security" is just a ruse. In fact, they are a small and shrinking organization, ashamed of their inability to attract new members.

The August 29th article broadly summarizes the Political Resolution (a summary of the current, global political situation) and the Organizational Report (the proposed activity of the Party in the immediate future). These two are supposed to mesh--that is, the Party's activities should flow from the global conjuncture. This year, at least, they barely intersect at all.

For example:

Eight years into the world capitalist crisis—the Great Depression of the modern era—no nation on earth can boast anything resembling a recovery. Stagnation and continued decline are the norm the world over, with the broad imposition of austerity measures taking an ever-increasing toll on the working masses and oppressed, while imperialist wars for domination and plunder in all their manifestations proceed seemingly without end on every continent.

This does not seem generally true. While growth has been much slower than desired, there is no question that there has been growth. People with employable skills are doing very well, are getting pay raises, and have a rising standard of living. The current US unemployment rate of 4.9% is not just a propaganda number--it reflects a real labor shortage in significant parts of the economy. Trends are similar in Europe and Japan, especially if you account for stagnant or declining populations. Then the statistics systematically overstate inflation, which means real incomes have been growing faster than is believed. SA's assessment of "ever-increasing toll on the working masses" simply does not reflect reality. Their own newspaper proves as much.

Nevertheless, for unskilled workers the picture is much less bright. Many of them are dropping out of the labor force. So there is a problem, but it's not the problem SA thinks it is.

The report presents five areas where workers are (supposedly) "fighting back."

The fight against increasingly harsh austerity and union-busting attacks on U.S. workers, reflected in the strike of Verizon workers, the on-going fight around a new Chicago Teachers Union contract, and other struggles. [See my post on the Verizon strike.]

The battles of low-wage workers for a $15 minimum wage and a union. [Comments here.]

The fight against racist cop murders and the growing strength of the Movement for Black Lives and other anti-racist groups and coalitions emerging in Black and other communities of oppressed peoples. [BLM helps Trump make a winning Law & Order case.]

The growing struggle against climate change and for a quick and just transition to 100% renewable sources of energy—a struggle that includes the demand for an immediate ban on fracking. [Banning fracking immediately puts hundreds of thousands out of work!]

The movement against deportations and extending the rights of immigrant workers. [Surely they're joking. Illegal immigration is very unpopular these days.]

These are, at least, big issues. Every Trotskyist movement is engaged in them one way or another (possibly excepting the SWP and climate change). So big issues should come with a big, audacious program. If you think that, then you'll be disappointed with the Organizational Report.

The lead activity is to sell more print copies of their newspaper, the eponymous Socialist Action. I was under the illusion that the print version had mostly gone away, for which I previously complimented them. Its resurrection is a sure sign that SA is losing members--they are now following in the footsteps of the moribund SWP.

To support their media they're starting a $25,000 fund drive. If the average comrade contributes $250, then they have about 100 members, or not much bigger than the SWP (albeit without the long list of sympathizers).

However, "[t]he most pressing task in the coming months is to expand the 2016 Socialist Action campaign of Jeff Mackler for U.S. president and Karen Schraufnagel for vice president." This includes "organized national tours" (as opposed to disorganized ones) in September and October. Checking their Events Calendar (per their suggestion), as of this writing they have (had) six events scheduled for September and one for October.

This hardly rises to the occasion: an unprecedented capitalist crisis yielding unrelenting economic misery. Beyond which Mr. Mackler is a terrible candidate (even worse than Hillary), and Ms. Shraufnagel is an avowed anti-Semite.

The last part of the article is about their "antiwar" efforts. They talk around it a bit, but ultimately they support Bashar al-Assad in Syria. They're against any and all of his opponents because 1) they might receive some paltry aid from the United States, and 2) SA still can't bring themselves to support ISIS (though I bet that's coming).

I have long since given up on following the situation in Syria--it's much too complicated. I refer my SA friends to fellow blogger, Louis Proyect, who definitely knows something about Syria. Further, whatever else Mr. Proyect has to say, he is absolutely correct about Assad--he should not be supported under any circumstances whatsoever. I definitely agree with that conclusion.

Of course backing Assad is completely consistent with SA's support for Kim Jong-un and Hamas. Their mantra is to find the very worst characters on any block, notice that those assholes are not backed by the USA, and accordingly offer SA's backing. It's that simple. And that disgusting.

Further Reading:

• Where Have All The Workers Gone?
• Trotskyists on Economics
• Getting Richer While Feeling Poorer

Book Review: North Star

Peter Camejo's (1939 - 2008) memoir, North Star, was published after his death. I knew Peter (I will dispense with the formal Mr. Camejo) when we were both comrades in the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). He was the SWP's candidate for president in 1976. I was his chauffeur during his campaign trips to Chicago and Milwaukee. I certainly recall that, but I was on my way out of the Party by that time. I must have driven Peter around on several earlier occasions in the early 70s.

I remember him well. I wrote to him near the end of his life confessing my Republican sympathies. He returned with a very nice letter, admitting that he didn't remember me, stating that he was dying from cancer, and jokingly hoping that none of the candidates I supported would win any election. It is that fundamental civility and good-nature that I admired in him then and now.

Those traits permeate his memoir. He never misses a chance to say nice things about people, whatever their politics. He speaks kindly of Teddy Kennedy, despite the fact that he was a Democrat. He's very appreciative of help he got from the Bill Simon, a Republican. He has nice words for Jerry Rubin, yet another political opponent. This innate charity served him well, and made him much more influential than other Trotskyists, who insisted on using insulting terms such as class enemies or opponents.

As a comrade I was completely unaware of the jealousy and fear that he inspired in the SWP leadership. Jack Barnes, Barry Sheppard, Gus Horowitz, and others did what they could to sabotage his presidential campaign. They arranged to kick him out of the Party shortly afterwards. And no wonder--Peter was an enormously talented politico. He vastly outshone the mediocrities who fancied themselves as leaders. Left unhindered, Peter would have become the leader of the organization. So they had to get rid of him.

Peter fancied himself as a principled political leader--unbought and unbowed. I think that's probably a fair statement, but it's surprising that he never explicitly states what those principles were. So putting it in my own words, they reduce to

1. Fighting for socialism, which he defined as democratic control of the economy;
2. Uncompromising hatred of the Democratic Party, which he thought of as an unprincipled coalition supporting corporate power and imperialist war.

Peter came by his socialism early. While born in New York City, he was the child of an elite, Venezuelan family, growing up in that country. His father founded the Venezuelan tourist industry, building several beach resorts. On vacations Peter would take his current girlfriend and they'd go yachting off the coast of Venezuela. He had enormous respect and affection for his dad, but at the same time wondered about all the construction workers and hotel maids who went home to shantytowns at the end of the day. It was that experience that converted him to socialism.

Peter's adult life may be divided into three parts. In his early years, while still a student at MIT, he joined the SWP. His attraction to Trotskyism is no surprise, given that his principles overlapped theirs. He quickly became a leader of the affiliated Young Socialist Alliance (YSA), and became a leader of the antiwar movement in Berkeley, California. This was before I joined the movement, but it is clear that he was only loosely under the supervision of the New York office. He did things that my comrades and I would have regarded as ultraleft.

He was very successful at building the antiwar movement, and I'll let him tell that tale. I relate here some of my responses to his account.

First, he has fond memories about how he out-smarted then-Governor Ronald Reagan. And no doubt in some narrow tactical sense he occasionally did. But in the larger sense he didn't. Quite the contrary--Reagan leveraged his way to the presidency using the threat of unrest promised by the antiwar movement. It was Reagan who rolled Camejo, not the other way round. I don't think Peter ever realized that.

Second, even as he wrote his memoir he regarded the Vietnam war as a conflict between white hats and black hats. The white hats were the Vietnamese people heroically resisting the black hats in the form of U.S. imperialism. He never acknowledges any ambiguity. Peter doesn't mention the aftermath of the war--the killing fields or the boat people. The SWP supported not only the Vietcong, but also the Khmer Rouge during the entire war. Those groups were not democrats. If democratic control of the economy was Peter's goal, he was backing the wrong hats.

Finally, Peter's account of the FBI's efforts to infiltrate, disrupt and discredit the antiwar movement is painful to read. It is so easy for law enforcement to think they're above the law, and the temptation to use extra-constitutional means seems compelling. J. Edgar Hoover was not a friend of American democracy.

The second third of Peter's life began after he was expelled from the Party. He needed a job, and after a false start or two, a friend suggested that he become a salesman for Merrill Lynch. He suffered some pangs of conscience, but it turned out to be a perfect fit for him. He became very good at the job, and soon founded his own investment firm, Progressive Assets Management (PAM). The goal was to seek investments in companies that furthered progressive causes. The larger label was socially responsible investing (SRI).

Peter championed SRI, even writing a book on the topic. He claims it's a better investment than the stock market at large--a statement I find impossible to believe. Nevertheless, he had some successes. He was astonished to find that large environmental organizations had endowments invested in ExxonMobil and the like. Peter was able to convert them to SRI.

While he offers no details, there is no doubt that his investment efforts earned him a good living. During this time he married Morella, a distant relative from Venezuela. They remained married to the end of his life. He adopted her children and grandchildren as his own. None of them wanted for money.

The final episode in Peter's life was his affiliation with the Green Party. He fought two battles within that Party. First and most important, to prevent the organization from throwing support to Democratic candidates. And second, to expand the mission of the Party to include socialism generally, rather than just narrow environmental issues. He worked closely with two Trotskyist offshoots of the SWP, the International Socialist Organization and Solidarity.

He ran for governor of California three times: in 2002 against Gray Davis and Bill Simon. He got 5.3% of the vote. Peter was very proud of that campaign. When Davis was recalled in 2003 he ran again, coming in fourth in a field of 135. He felt partially betrayed by Arianna Huffington, whom he initially regarded as an ally. His last try was in 2006 against Arnold Schwarzenegger and Phil Angelides, the least successful attempt.

I would have thought that his 2004 Green Party run for vice-president (with Ralph Nader) was the highlight of his political life. But he didn't see it that way. He was bitterly disappointed by the "capitulators," i.e., people who refused to support him because they felt compelled to vote for the "lesser-evil" Democratic Party. He is especially upset with Michael Moore and Howard Zinn, but his book contains a long list of famous progressive names. He wonders how you can oppose the war (now in Iraq, and again completely clueless), and then support warmongers among the Democrats. He even calls John Kerry a "murderer" because of what he did in Vietnam.

Peter considered the 2004 race to be a failure.

Peter had intelligence, charm, charisma, and courage. He really was unbought and unbowed. I agree with him on many things. The Democratic Party really is an unprincipled coalition of special interests. We do need to legalize the status of immigrants already in the US. Some reform of our law enforcement agencies looks overdue.

But on the bigger issues he's just plain wrong. Socialism--especially the utopian variant he championed--is both impossible and undesirable. Look at Peter's native Venezuela for the most recent example of socialism's abysmal failure. 

No doubt there is ambiguity aplenty in our wars in Vietnam and Iraq. In both cases one can legitimately ask if we should've gotten involved in the first place. But given our involvement, it would have been much better for all concerned if we had won those wars. Vietnam would today be a wealthy country if we had. Iraq would surely be better off than it is now. Peter refused to see any ambiguity. Despite his personal charity, he was incapable of seeing any good or humanitarian potential in our war efforts.

Peter's book is charming and sentimental. I appeals to people like me, who have a personal connection with him. I doubt somebody without that connection will find it as interesting. Even I found it a tad too long--I skipped over parts.

It's a good book, but not an important one.

Further Reading:

• Book Review: Changing Face Of American Politics
• Immigration? Si!
• Liberals!

Red-Baiting the Climate

When I was a Trotskyist, the words "red-baiting" ended any argument. The term stems from the 1950s when Communists (the Stalinist ones in the CPUSA) were surreptitiously infiltrating themselves into government agencies where they then aided and abetted the Soviets.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union we now know for a fact that that happened, though probably neither to the extent nor with the consequences they desired.

But that term never applied very well to Trotskyists. We viewed the bourgeois state as the mortal enemy, and far from trying to infiltrate it we avoided it like the plague. Our criticism of the CPUSA was that they were class-collaborationists, i.e., they participated with bourgeois governments in oppressing the working class. We condemned them for their very infiltration.

But we did infiltrate, if not the bourgeois state, then various "working class" social movements and institutions. In the 1930s Trotskyists played a key role in the development of the Teamsters Union. From the 1950s through the 1980s we made continuous efforts to form "fractions" in the unions, i.e., groups of "worker-Bolsheviks" who could advance a revolutionary socialist agenda.

So when addressed to Trotskyists the term takes on a slightly different meaning. It implies that a given organization is a front-group, nominally independent but in reality controlled by the Party. Today new names have evolved to describe such organizations: "astroturf", or "sockpuppets." The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) certainly had its share of front groups. Almost all defense committees were such, most famously the one that pursued the COINTELPRO lawsuit. The Mark Curtis Defense Committee is another example. While these went around seeking endorsements, they never had much of a footprint outside of the Party.

The National Student Coalition Against Racism was another such front group. In this case the Party wanted it to become a mass organization, but failed.

On the other hand, there were a few organizations led by Trotskyists that really did have a mass following. The Student Mobilization Committee is the most important one--it organized the 800,000 strong antiwar marches on April 24th, 1971. Comrades were clearly in the leadership of this group, but with 800,000 adherents it's really hard to think of it as a front group. Instead, it's probably the closest the American communist movement has ever come to having an actual success.

So now we come to the Sept. 21st Climate March. The big demonstration--300,000 people--happened in New York. Reason TV has a perfectly good report here, and while the communists get a mention, most of the audience is goodhearted if fuzzy-thinking people. They're not Trotskyist wannabes. Indeed, I think this march was organized by legitimate climate activists--Bill McKibben gave a talk on my campus to build attendance. The Trotskyists are a sideshow.

So now comes the blogger Zombie, reporting on the climate march in Oakland, CA. This was much smaller (he doesn't give a number), perhaps only a thousand people or so. He red-baits the march as a commie event. And he certainly has some good evidence. All of this blog's friends make an appearance: Socialist Action gets top billing. Solidarity is present. Even Socialist Viewpoint makes a cameo appearance (holding a sign promoting "system change not climate change"). The SWP had a very large booth.

The CPUSA was there, as were the International Socialists, the Freedom Socialist Party, and Socialist Alternative. Bob Avakian's fan club made an appearance, with t-shirts advertising "BA Speaks." And Mr. Zombie makes a point to include the card table lit display from the (I kid you not) Committees of Correspondence for Democracy & Socialism.

Further, the keynote speaker was an avowed revolutionary socialist. I don't know who she was or what organization she represented. She advised the assembled to get involved by talking to any of the people in the booths, i.e., all the Trotskyists and commies.

But it can't be entirely true. For all their similarities, these grouplets are all at each other's throats. My former comrades in the SWP wouldn't give the Bob Avakian fan club the time of day (nor do I blame them). There is no love lost between Socialist Action and Socialist Viewpoint, however much you'd think they have in common.

Further, the SWP regards environmentalism as a petty-bourgeois phenomenon, and is not fully on board with the enterprise. The fact that they had a lit booth up says nothing about their support for the march, which at best would be tepid.

So the march was organized by the People's Climate Committee (PCC). Are they a front group for one of these Trotskyist sects? I doubt it, though perhaps Socialist Action played a disproportionate role. But like the SMC of yore, this effort really does tap into the fervent feeling of many people. The New York march was big enough to drown out the Trotskyists, but that wasn't true in Oakland. Rather than being a front group, instead the PCC's march was hijacked by assorted communists.

So what do all of these commie groups have in common?

• They are old. There are remarkably few people under 40 behind the lit tables. Most of them look to be nearing 60.
• They are ugly. We all get less attractive as we age. Most of us make some efforts to hide that fact, but apparently not the communists.
• They're angry. They all look like they've got a big chip on their shoulder. The picture of the two Socialist Viewpoint ladies makes the case.
• They're miserable. None of them are having any fun. Far from being a party atmosphere, this is a chore. These folks put the Puritans to shame--it's against the rules to smile.

At least that's how they come across in the photos. Maybe Mr. Zombie has selectively published unflattering photos. That's probably part of it. I doubt the event was quite as miserable as he's made it look. Still, his imagery conforms to my recollection of antiwar demonstrations. We were all young back then, but apart from the age difference I don't think much has changed. I never enjoyed attending those. I was tasked with selling The Militant, and the experience was both boring and stressful.

If this represents the flower of the revolutionary movement, then I am pleased to say that the bourgeoisie have nothing to fear.

PS: Mr. Zombie previously posted a very amusing account of a Slutwalks march, here.

Further Reading:

• Book Review: Changing Face of US Politics
• Liberals!
• The Decline of American Trotskyism

Socialist Action Jumps The Shark

Admittedly, there is a difference between political opinions with intellectual rigor and those that appeal to sentiment. A political party ideally hits both those buttons, at least partially. For example, when I was a Trotskyist, the intellectual argument against the Vietnam war was opposition to imperialism, while sentiment was rooted in the horror of the war. The two matched up more or less, and the result was a growing Party.

Today, both Socialist Action and The Militant have lost their way. The former strives for intellectual rigor (such as it is), while the latter appeals to sentiment. Neither is successful.

A recent article by Jeff Mackler in Socialist Action touts the thesis of the aging muckraker, Seymour Hersh. He's the fellow who exposed the My Lai massacre some forty six years ago, and now he claims that the Syrian rebels are responsible for the sarin gas attack on the Damascus suburb of Ghouta. That is the red line supposedly crossed by the Assad government that nearly led to US retaliation.

The consensus view is that crime was committed by the government, not by the rebels. I acknowledge there is some disagreement, and I certainly don't know enough about the mechanics of gas attacks to resolve the issue. But I find Mr. Hersh's claim, and by extension Socialist Action's position, untenable.

The Leftist expert on Syria is Louis Proyect, who has devoted a lengthy article on Seymour Hersh here. Mr. Proyect pretty convincingly debunks the Hersh thesis. Unfortunately, his argument is too ad hominem for my taste: Mr. Hersh is wrong because he agrees with right-wing news sites, such as World Net Daily. But of course there's no reason why Right and Left couldn't agree on a factual matter (were it factual). I'm a Right-winger and on this I agree with Mr. Proyect. Does that make Mr. Proyect wrong?

I think believing in a rebel sarin attack on their own position is a conspiracy theory. It requires that the rebels would use one of their few artillery shells to attack their own, very strategic position, and this apparently just to prod the US into retaliating against the government. Surely, if the rebels really did have access to artillery-deliverable sarin gas, they would have employed it against the enemy, rather than betting on the fanciest billiard ball bounce ever.

Socialist Action advances this theory in part to demonstrate that the rebels are really evil people. Therefore, just as a matter of basic human morality, you should support the government. This is an appeal to sentiment. The effort is belied somewhat by the caption to the photo: "Assad is guilty of many atrocities, as this photograph taken after a government airstrike on the town of Maarat al-Noaman shows. But did his regime use sarin gas?"

More, Socialist Action tries to show that the US is really siding with the rebels. In particular, they assert that we are trying to provide the rebels with shoulder-fired, anti-aircraft missiles (MANPADS), capable of shooting down civilian aircraft. For whatever reason we're trying to keep this effort a secret--to this day the mainstream media is completely bamboozled. It's not clear why we'd be trying to keep it a secret, nor could we were it true. The Israelis would have a conniption fit if they really believed we were trying to so arm the rebels, and would shout to the heavens.

The whole theory is just malarkey. As Mr. Proyect demonstrates, the US policy is to let the two sides fight it out and exhaust each other.

In a similarly perverse position, Socialist Action has come down on the side of the Russians in Ukraine.

The conflict in Ukraine has greatly escalated in recent days, as open revolt against the right-wing government in Kiev sweeps through the eastern and southern sections of the country. Protesters state that they are trying to protect the Russian-speaking population from discrimination and fascist attacks. Many call for autonomy for their region, while others say they are seeking to secede from Ukraine and to join Russia—as Crimea did following its March 16 referendum.

This thesis loosely agrees with Pat Buchanan's, who argues that Putin is defending Christendom. Buchanan's piece is better argued, and indeed, who one sides with here is a matter of taste. But Socialist Action is going against sentiment, which belongs to the freedom-fighting rebels in Kiev. Both The Militant and Mr. Proyect are on the side of the Maidan Square demonstrators.

So for both Syria and Ukraine Socialist Action goes against sentiment and instead argues for "principle." The principle is to oppose anything the American government supports. If the US supports the Maidan square crowd, then of course it's only because they're a bunch of fascists. If America opposes Assad, it can only be because the Baathist regime represents some residue of Marxism, and is in any event less vile than the evil Jihadis.

But since sentiment and principle have to sort-of align, it is necessary to come up with completely bogus crimes, such as the rebel's sarin gas attack. In the cause of sentiment, Socialist Action finds a fascist under every bed. It won't work--it's really hard to distinguish the Black Hats from the White Hats in either Syria or Ukraine. None of the hats are Red, either.

The Militant, in siding with sentiment on both Syria and Ukraine, has lost sight of principle. It's program has become increasingly incoherent, as I've documented elsewhere (most recently here). They're flailing around trying to find a thread on which to hang a position. To use the old Trotskyist lingo, The Militant is opportunist, while Socialist Action is sectarian. My 18-year-old self would still have joined with The Militant. I'd have nothing to do with Socialist Action.

Zoltan Grossman, writing in Socialist Viewpoint in one of the best articles about Ukraine I've read anywhere, puts it best: "The enemy of your enemy is not always your friend." Words to live by.

Further Reading:

• The Ukraine & The Other Ukraine
• Turkish Politics From Socialist Action
• Imperialism

The 7th Century Solution

The old saw is that a conservative is somebody whose been mugged, while a liberal is somebody whose been arrested.

A recent Daily Caller article is a troubling. A source close to but not part of the Iranian government says that if the US bombs Syria, Iran will respond by kidnapping, torturing and killing family members and children of officers, ambassadors, and cabinet members. The source singles out Sasha Obama for special treatment. The article cites a prior example--that of William Buckley, a CIA station chief. They could have mentioned journalist Daniel Pearl, or author Salman Rushdie. The latter, while not killed, has been forced to spend decades in hiding, a fate that could ruin Sasha's life even if she escapes the terrorists.

So this is turning Mr. Obama into a conservative--he's being mugged. He came in to office with the wrong-headed but sincerely-held assumption that if you sit down and talk to world leaders like civilized people, then problems can be solved. That's the way they do it in Chicago. Yes, even the Chicago Outfit had an ironclad rule against harming family members--and a similar prohibition against shooting cops.

But Iran does not play by the Marquis of Queensberry rules. Perhaps their leaders are a bunch of psychopaths. Or perhaps they perceive the stakes as existential and thus worth any cost. Either way, they are resorting to 7th Century tactics in response to America's 21st Century armaments. And, in the short term at least, I predict they will be successful.

I think Mr. Obama will back off the Syria attack anyway, especially if he loses the vote in Congress. He's a wimp. He has no support for his plan from any other corner. It was a crappy idea to begin with. The US has no dog in the fight--we don't care who wins, and indeed, we're best served if both sides lose.

But if he has more backbone than I give him credit for, then the threat against his daughter should talk him out of it. Is there any strategic goal in Syria that is worth sacrificing his daughter's life? I don't think so, and she's not even my daughter. A president has to know when to hold them and fold them. Now's a good time to fold. We can find a more propitious battlefield to confront Iran if we need to.

But let's imagine that Obama attacks Syria and Iran carries out it's threat. While I think the threat serves Iran's interests, carrying it out makes for a whole new ball game. Then it becomes personal--not just between Obama and the mullahs, but between Americans and Iranians. After that, we won't be discussing Arab Springs or human rights. It will come down to revenge, pure and simple. Our bombs are bigger than their bombs.

Both Presidents Bush and Obama have worked very hard to avoid casting us into a war against Islam, and for good reason. Sometimes this has been comical, such as in the media's initial refusal to identify Hasan Nidal (the Fort Hood killer) as a Jihadi. (He was originally portrayed as just another nut case.) Similarly, we are in a "war on terrorism" rather than against any ideology or religion. Never mind that doesn't make any sense--one can't fight a war against a tactic. Bloggers such as David Horowitz and Michelle Malkin have long documented the politically-correct effort to avoid blaming Islam.

As far as I know, the only mention of this Iranian threat in the mainstream media was in the Daily Caller, albeit picked up by the Drudge Report. This is par for the course--why inflame passions? I'm a little nervous writing about it myself.

The shyness is all for the good. Only a minority of Muslims support the Jihadis--perhaps a large minority, but nobody thinks it's a majority. By declaring war on Islam we help turn that minority into a majority--it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Then, instead of being in battle against some crackpot sect, we are picking a fight with one billion people. This we will never win--it will go on forever. Bush and Obama both recognized that it is important to keep our enemy as small as possible.

But if the Iranians carry out their threat, then all bets are off. Revenge is a deep-seated emotion that precludes rational thought. The hitherto mostly mythical Islamophobia will become a reality--and not just on the Right but across the entire society. The American Muslim population will be forced into hiding, and thereby also recruited to terrorism. This will not end well. Our civilized solicitude for civilian life in enemy countries will diminish if not disappear. Bombs away. This is not good for Iran.

So I urge Mr. Obama to back off the Syria attack. He should never have drawn the red line. His daughter's life is far more important than bouncing the rubble in Damascus. If there really were some stakes involved, then I'd argue differently. But there is nothing at stake here for the US.

Just walk away.

Update: Thomas Friedman has two articles that I agree with: from last Wednesday, here, and from today, here.

Further Reading:

• Book Review: Filthy Rich In Rising Asia
• Syria's Problem
• In Principled Opposition to Gangnam Style

Syria's Problem

"More than ever, the U.S. and worldwide antiwar and social justice movement must demand: U.S. Hands Off Syria! Bring All U.S. Troops Home Now! Self-determination for the Syrian people! No to U.S. Sanctions! No U.S. Aid to Israel! U.S. Out of the Middle East Now!"

That is the closing paragraph of Jeff Mackler's recent piece in Socialist Action (SA) entitled Israel Bombs Syria; US Signals Support. It is an excellent summary of everything that is wrong with SA's position. Other recent articles are here and here. All three indicate that SA lives in the Land Of Wishful Thinking.

The biggest howler is their call for "Self-determination for the Syrian people!" World to Socialist Action: there is no Syrian people. There are Sunnis and Alawites and Kurds and Christians and Palestinians and Druze and Ismailis and Assyrians, and probably still even a few old Jews. But none of these groups are especially loyal to Syria--a state in arbitrary boundaries drawn by the British after WWI. The Sunnis are the numerical majority, but they now nurse a murderous hatred for the Alawites. A Sunni rebel victory will lead to vicious ethnic cleansing.

The Sunnis are tribal, and the various tribes are already fighting each other during pauses in the main battle. The Kurds hate Assad, but since he has tactically chosen to leave them alone they are now fighting the Sunnis (who are allied with the Kurd's other enemy, Turkey). The Christians don't like Assad either, but view him as the lesser of evils. They stand to lose if the country erupts into an all-against-all civil war. Most other minorities share the Christian's dilemma--Assad always billed himself as the protector of minorities. The Palestinians--Sunnis--have divided allegiances.

SA will have you believe that the war is a working class rebellion against the Syrian "bourgeoisie." Again, world to Socialist Action: there is no Syrian "bourgeoisie." People like me are inclined to call Assad's regime socialist, and indeed, the Baath party has strongly secular, vaguely Marxist roots. They were closely allied with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. But in deference to SA, who will reject that characterization, I'll just call it a kleptocracy. There are no capitalists in Syria, i.e., people who put up capital to run businesses. Instead you have a Mob-like, rent-seeking class that, with government connivance, extorts a kickback from any business transaction.

So SA barely mentions the ethnic diversity of Syria, but instead touts irrelevant organizations such as the "local coordinating committees" (LCCs). Now I'd never heard of these folks before, and probably you haven't either. In SAs imaginary universe, they represent the class-conscious, secular workers striving to impose a secular, socialist state in Syria. Put another way, they are advocating for the traditional Baath Party program, claiming only that they could execute it better than the existing Baathists. We could call them the Re-Baath party. This will not go over well. World to Socialist Action: secular Marxism (or more accurately, Leninism) is an absolute dead letter in Syria. It has no future. Get over it.

In SA's imagination, the most evil country in the world is the United States, who at this very moment is conniving to commit the most horrible atrocities against the Syrian people. To prevent this, even the most innocuous involvement by the US must be prevented at all costs. Thus SA opposes humanitarian assistance. Their article puts "non-lethal aid" in scare quotes, because it's supposed to be scary. Hence the absurd demand: US Hands Off Syria.

Syria's problem is not too much US involvement, despite what the irrelevant LCCs say. It is precisely the opposite--too little American involvement. The truth is that Syria is just not that important a country. At this point the primary US concern is that the war doesn't spread. It has sadly already reached into Iraq. If we can keep it out of Lebanon and Jordan, so much the better. The last thing anybody needs is for Turkey to get directly involved. Syria would be much better off if the US would just invade, prevent a round of ethnic cleansing, and install a civilized government. But we're not going to do that because that simply invites a larger war. We're not even providing arms to the rebels for just that reason.

If the US is the most evil country in the world, it isn't by very much. I've quoted the last paragraph in the article, but here's the lede sentence:

No serious of Middle Eastern politics believes that the Zionist, colonial, settler, and racist state of Israel makes a single move before consulting with its U.S. benefactors.

Wow--that's some invective! Apparently the Global Jewish Conspiracy still lives. World to Socialist Action: Israel is a bit player in the Syria conflict. It has no dog in the fight and it doesn't like either side. SA, by grotesquely exaggerating both the influence and evil of the Jewish state displays it's not very secret anti-Semitism.

Further Reading:

• The Decline of American Trotskyism
• Barry Sheppard: A Wasted Life
• The International Report

The Decline of American Trotskyism

Where were you on April 30th, 1975?

That was the day Saigon fell. For reasons I no longer recall, I was by myself in some fleabag motel in rural Utah. As I watched the TV news, including the now iconic footage of the last American helicopter leaving the embassy, I stood up and cheered. Hooray for the end of the war. Hooray for the Vietcong and the heroic Vietnamese people. Hooray for the victory of world socialism.

That was the day I started my trajectory towards the Republican Party. And, I believe that day represented the high water mark for global Trotskyism.

Another red letter day in my life was April 24th, 1971. Along with 300,000 other people, I demonstrated against the war in San Francisco. Add the 500,000 who marched in Washington, it was the largest antiwar demonstration ever in US history. The effort was organized in large part by the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and the Young Socialist Alliance (YSA), albeit with many allies. April 24th represents the short-lived apogee of Trotskyist influence in the US, a fact noted by none other than J. Edgar Hoover.

After the April 24th demonstration, the YSA may have had 2,000 members or more. Most of them, like me, were to leave the Movement in a few years. Why?

Now Trotskyist dogma has it that success breeds more success. The Party took significant credit for forcing the US out of Vietnam, and further, if the American defeat was an anti-imperialist victory, then this should lead to a bigger Movement and a greater radicalization. On this theory, the Party initiated "The Turn," that is an all-out effort to engage the American working class. Beginning in 1975, we were all pressed to get jobs organized by industrial trade unions. Also at this time the Party physically relocated to "working class" areas--thus was founded the Hyde Park branch on Chicago's South Side, where I was assigned.

The Turn was an abysmal failure, and the SWP gradually became the politically irrelevant organization it is today. Conventional wisdom has it that The Turn was based on a prediction--the "inevitable" radicalization of the working class--rather than any reality. On the basis of this prediction the Party suddenly abandoned the campus movement. By the time reality intervened, the Party had lost whatever momentum it had obtained.

After the fall of Saigon, the campus movement just died. Before that date I was part of world history--a movement much bigger than just my comrades and me. After that date, I felt like I was a member of a tiny sect, rather like the Hare Krishnas. Far from being inspired by the victory of the Vietcong, instead it was very demoralizing. We learned that, while we may have tapped into antiwar sentiment, our sympathies for the Khmer Rouge were well out of the mainstream. The news from Indochina didn't help--reports of mass murder in Cambodia and the boat people exodus from Vietnam rather dampened enthusiasm. Even The Militant issued a halfhearted retraction of its long-time support for the Khmer Rouge, blaming US bombing for the setback.

So the Party was faced with 2,000 YSA members with nothing to do. Further, we were no longer recruiting from campuses, which means comrades were getting older. I turned 24 in 1975; my days as a campus radical were surely numbered. One can fake it at 25, but by age 30 it becomes harder to imitate a student. All those people would fade away. Something had to be done, and quickly. And hence the fast and very deliberate turn to the "working class." It didn't work, but then doing nothing wouldn't have worked, either.

The Turn was very controversial within the Party. Many thought that simply abandoning the campus movement (after all that hard work) was a big mistake. At this point I am no longer an eyewitness, but I gather that Socialist Action (SA) split from the SWP around this issue in 1983. (They say that it's because the SWP "abandoned" Trotskyism, but I think that's a rationalization.) The nice thing is we have something that historians have always dreamed of--a controlled experiment. One Party (SWP) turned toward the unions, and the other Party (SA) kept a foot on campus. How have their fates differed?

The SWP has certainly gotten the worst of it. Despite enormous efforts the Turn simply didn't work. There was no radicalization among the working class, at least as represented by industrial unions. Ronald Reagan defeated the Air Traffic Controllers, and the Eastern Airlines Machinist's strike ended in a major defeat. Local P-9 of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union went on strike against Hormel in Austin, MN. That led to some exciting times, but ultimately the strike was defeated.

I can't think of a single successful strike in which the SWP participated. Needless to say, they got demoralized, which led to their de facto withdrawal from active union work. No wonder the Party started just "talking socialism." They have not recruited new members. Today comrades have aged out of union activism, with most of them being in their 60s. Unsurprisingly union work has largely disappeared from The Militant. 

Socialist Action appears to have done better. With the end of the war, they had to find a new connection to campus radicals--and hence their turn to radical environmentalism. Indeed, there isn’t an environmentalist wheeze that they haven't bought in to, from genetically modified foods, to global warming, to anti-fracking. This is the primary political difference between SA and the SWP. The SA embraces environmentalism, while the SWP views it as a petty bourgeois movement. The former is appealing to students (who didn't used to care about jobs); the latter tries to win workers, who very much care about the jobs that radical environmentalism kills.

It is very difficult to estimate the demographics of Socialist Action. They no longer publish a list of chapters or branches, and they are very coy about their membership. But searching their web page for "ysa" (here standing for "Youth for Socialist Action") yields only a few hits from the recent past. It appears that SA's YSA is nearly as moribund as that from the SWP. So long term, they suffer from the same demographic problems as the SWP.

Nevertheless, it is clear that SA is younger than the SWP. They have an impressive list of 30-somethings in their movement, which the SWP lacks. So it will be awhile before they age out of activity in the way the SWP has. That said, I think their long term future is bleak. It certainly is not obvious that socialism is a cure for environmental problems, and postponing such a cure until after the World Revolution won't appeal to student radicals who want a more immediate solution. And further, environmentalism does compete with economic growth, and students today are much more interested in jobs than they used to be. I don't think it's a winning cause.

There are other things that work against world Trotskyism, like the collapse of Soviet and Chinese communism. In the early 70s, in an effort to talk me out of my folly, my dad said that Trotsky was an historical figure, rather like Robbespierre, and not a relevant model for a modern political movement. That may not have been true in 1970, but it is certainly true today. So if I had to bet on one of these Parties being successful, I'd put my money on the SWP, if only because they've "abandoned Trotskyism,"

But I don't think any of these organizations will have any impact on America's future.

Further Reading:

• Barry Sheppard: A Wasted Life
• New Media: Socialist Action's Second Best Friend
• Trotskyism and New Media
• Is the SWP a Cult?

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).