Re: [Marxism] Grappling With the Racism of the DSA’s Founders
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Howe's legacy is not insubstantial - just from the founding of Dissent back in the 1950s. That journal has long been a leading voice of voices associated with DSA. Whether or not it is now eclipsed by Jacobin is a legitimate question. More important was Howe's role on shaping DSA's perspective on international matters. Yes, he was a zionist but he was also a cold warrior. Toward the end of his life, he supported the Gulf War of 1991. Not all DSA leaders shared his precise views on that point, but he certainly influenced them. Harold Myerson comes to mind. In 1991 he was a columnist for the Los Angeles Weekly and a DSA member. Myerson devoted a better part of a column of his to red baiting the main local and regional anti-war coalition, attacking it as being led by a bunch of Trots. Those attacks led to the creation of a rival coalition. The war ended before the new coalition did much of anything. Whether or not the current DSA inherits the foreign policy views of Howe is - hopefully - doubtful because of the huge influx of new, younger members and the change of the group's character from a small largely paper organization to a much larger activist grouping. Given all that, the current DSA is more likely to be influenced by the politics of Bernie Sanders and less by Harrington and Howe. While that is problematic on its own terms, it is not addressed by dredging up the history of Shachtman, Harrington and the Coalition Caucus. SR > On September 9, 2018 at 10:15 AM Joaquin Bustelo via Marxism > wrote: > > Yet, when I saw the name of Irving Howe my reaction was: "Irving who? > The guy who wrote World of our Fathers?" So I'm not the one to judge him. > > So that was the first reason I didn't include him. The second reason is > that the charges he lays against Howe are that he was a Zionist > (perfectly true, I gather), that he was part of the cold-war > anticommunist social democratic current years before DSA was founded, > and that he never completely abandoned some of those views. > > _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Grappling With the Racism of the DSA’s Founders
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * On 9/7/2018 7:51 PM, Steven L. Robinson via Marxism wrote: On the other hand, the legacy of Irving Howe - who is mentioned in the post that started this thread - is a real one, at least before the influx of new members. Even so, whatever influence Howe's ideas - or those of Harrington, for that matter - might have on the 50,000 DSA members, would seem to be negligible. I'm not sure "the legacy of Irving Howe" --the real one, whatever it may have been -- needs to be dealt with at all because, as you point out, 90% of DSA's members have joined in the last two years and I doubt they have been influenced by the legacy of Irving Howe. And although I, too, am a new member, I cannot claim political inexperience and especially not of currents and groups tangentially related to or descended from the Trotskyism in the United States. Yet, when I saw the name of Irving Howe my reaction was: "Irving who? The guy who wrote World of our Fathers?" So I'm not the one to judge him. I had forgotten about him completely, and mind you, I remember covering some aspect of the change of the SP into SDUSA for the Militant because I was very proud of the headline, "Not socialist, not a party" and then talking to Peter Camejo about it and his idea to change our name to "Socialist Party" since it was now available (not sure he was totally serious about that, BTW, but he might have been --Camejo was like that). So that was the first reason I didn't include him. The second reason is that the charges he lays against Howe are that he was a Zionist (perfectly true, I gather), that he was part of the cold-war anticommunist social democratic current years before DSA was founded, and that he never completely abandoned some of those views. So? When the proof of the pudding is mainly Shanker's 1968 strike and something about Jack Newfield purging Cockburn from the Village Voice, it left me little to comment on, the Shanker thing having already been dealt with. Also it is really hard to take up statements that seem so random. Consider this passage. After describing the 1968 conflict in New York and Shanker's reactionary role, he goes on: * * * “And so Shankerism, hammered out against a background of both middle class yearnings and ghetto rage,” writes Paul Buhle, “became the oddest possible American-style parody of ‘democratic socialism.’ The debates raged from New Politics and Dissent to the New York Times, with curious undertones which formal politics alone cannot fully encompass.” In a 1984 essay by Howe titled “Reaganism: This Too Shall Pass” (could he have been more tone deaf?), we read “During the early 1960s, the country experienced a moment of good feeling. Sentiments of racial fraternity were in the air. By the late 1960s, blacks felt outraged. Searing conflicts broke out between black groups (a few committed to an extremism of imagery) and some of their allies of yesterday. The idea of ‘going it alone’ took hold among black youth and intellectuals. Meanwhile, an ugly sentiment spread through white America.” Obviously playing in the background when those lines were composed were his memories of 1968. Indeed, this is illustrative of the truly scandalous nature of DSA at its start. Rather than being beneficial as a counterforce to Reaganism and the Democratic embrace of neoliberal political economy, its founding leaders instead broke apart old community alliances that favored the Keynesian paradigm, such as between Blacks and Jews, which in turn created the opening for neoliberalism to go full-throttle with its pillage of the American welfare state. * * * Let's unravel that if we can. The DSA's "truly scandalous nature ... at its start" in 1982 is proven by the 1968 teacher's strike 14 years earlier led by someone who had nothing to do with the DSA, neither before it existed nor afterwards, and to boot was closely associated with a hostile political current. Howe's guilt, who in fact was in DSA, is shown by some very generic thing he wrote 16 years after the strike because "Obviously playing in the background when those lines were composed were his memories of 1968," which, given the context of this article, must have been about Oceanhill-Brownsville. But I too, have memories of 1968. That was the year of the Vietnamese Tet Offensive, the "clean for Gene" campaign and Johnson's surprising withdrawal from the presidential race as a result, Martin Luther King's assassination, the massive wave of Black urban rebellions that followed, the grape Boycott and César Chávez's fast, the SDS/SMC student strike against the war, the Columbia
Re: [Marxism] Grappling With the Racism of the DSA’s Founders
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * It is indeed a slander to link the current DSA with Max Shachtman. The main predecessor organization to DSA, the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC) arose from a personal and organizational split of Michael Harrington with Shachtman, who died in late 1972 or early 1973. Harrington announced his split with Shachtman in an article in the Nation in which he criticized, among other things, Shachtman's support of Richard Nixon in the 1972 Presidential election. Shachtman died in late 1972 or early 1973 but his co-thinkers went on to found the Social Democrats USA. At no time was he linked to the DSOC, let alone DSA. On the other hand, the legacy of Irving Howe - who is mentioned in the post that started this thread - is a real one, at least before the influx of new members. Even so, whatever influence Howe's ideas - or those of Harrington, for that matter - might have on the 50,000 DSA members, would seem to be negligible. SR > On September 7, 2018 at 4:04 PM Joaquin Bustelo via Marxism > wrote: > > This is a lying slime job against the DSA, based on the idea that the > DSA came into the world cursed by the mark of Cain due to Original Sin: > it was founded by the likes of Max Shachtman and Albert Shanker. > > > Joaquín > > > > > > > _ > Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm > Set your options at: > http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/srobin21%40comcast.net _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Grappling With the Racism of the DSA’s Founders
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * This is a lying slime job against the DSA, based on the idea that the DSA came into the world cursed by the mark of Cain due to Original Sin: it was founded by the likes of Max Shachtman and Albert Shanker. Shactman's accomplishment is especially impressive since he died in 1972 and the DSA wasn't founded until a decade later, in 1982. I've written a response to this and a hatchet job he did on Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. I sent it to Counterpunch but I've got to check whether they've posted it, if not I'll just send it here. Joaquín On 8/31/2018 1:15 PM, Louis Proyect via Marxism wrote: https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/08/31/grappling-with-the-racism-of-the-dsas-founders/ _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Grappling With the Racism of the DSA’s Founders
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Andrew Stewart wrote in his Counter Punch article: "By contrast, the Debs-era Socialist Party never ascended higher than state legislatures ..." Meyer London, SPA candidate sat in Congress from 1915 to 1923. Victor Berger was elected a Socialist candidate from 1911-1929. And then there were numerous Minnesota Farmer-Labor candidates and American Labor Party candidates. David Walters _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
