[BearwWthoutBorders] An extraordinary, fine statement by David McReynolds

Hunter Gray hunterbadbear at hunterbear.org
Wed Mar 18 15:55:26 EDT 2015





This isan extraordinary statement. Traveling several turbulent generations ofAmerican history, it gracefully blends David's personal and radicaldevelopment of very decent human values -- deeply inspirational beacons oflight to which he is consistently and powerfully committed over thelong distance trek of his Life. (Hunter Bear)


-----Original Message-----
From: David McReynolds[mailto:davidmcreynolds7 at gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, March 18, 201511:30 AM
To: 'MrDavidmcreynolds'
Cc: patlabb at yahoo.com
Subject: On Why I Resigned fromthe Socialist Party


At its recent meeting, the NationalCommittee of the Socialist Party censured me for two statements I had made onFace book (on my own page). This is not the first time I've been censured. Manyyears ago Robin Myers, then the National Secretary, got the National Committeeto censure me for having had lunch with Max Shachtman. And some years laterwhen I gave public support to John Lindsay, a Republican, in his race forCongress - over a liberal Democratic Party candidate, Max Shachtman tried tohave the National Action Committee censure me (that motion failed and if anyonewants to know why I was supporting a Republican I'll be happy to explain. Theirony was that the Democratic candidate, horrified by my Village Voice article,called Norman Thomas in hopes he would repudiate me - Norman said he couldn'tvery well, as he had sent a campaign contribution to Lindsay).


This goes to a range of folks, bothin and outside of the Socialist Party. I want first to deal with theissue of the censure. And then I will go on to deal with more general issuesinvolved the Socialist Party and the socialist movement as a whole.

At its January 25th meeting the National Committee of the Socialist Party votedto censure me . . . 

"in response to a comment made by you on January 7th, 2015, in which you statedthat the Charlie Hebdo attacks require an examination of why Islam is violentas compared to Christianity and Judaism, a comment that many of our membersperceived to be Islamophobic. This censure is also in response to a comment onNovember 29th, 2014, in which you identified Michael Brown as being"thuggish". In this case many of our members felt the comment to beinsensitive and potentially racist. . . People throughout the United Stateswill continue to look to you as a representative of the Socialist Party USA . .. regardless of whether you hold any official position within the Party"

I'm not leaving because I think my old age should exempt me from censure - infact I'm grateful the comments of an old man, made on his own page in facebook,even caused the SP NC to take notice. But the censure was just one thingtoo many that has happened to the SP in recent years. (And it will certainlysave the Socialist Party from any embarrassment if any member of the publicmight think I'm a representative of the Socialist Party).


On the "Islamophobic"matter, it was a brief comment which should have been made in a broadercontext. I am absolutely opposed to efforts to demonize Muslims. The issue ofviolence must be examined in the broader context of the creation of Israelwithin the Arab world, the brutality with which the Palestinians have beentreated, and US military actions in the Arab world, most particularly theinvasion and destruction of Iraq, and the actions in Afghanistan. But I am notalone in my concern about the emergence of ISIS - it is a concern shared bymost of the world's Muslims.


On the matter of Michael Brown I amstunned at the politically naive approach of the National Committee (somethingit shares with liberals). I did not say Michael Brown was a thug. I didsay that while people might be offended by what seemed to be his thuggishbehavior in dealing with a small shop keeper, that did not give the police theright to shoot him.





Why is it that the liberal view seemsto be that the poverty, unemployment, oppression by the police,homelessness, lack of decent education, all of which afflict thecommunities of the poor in this country, whether they are white, NativeAmerican, African American, or Latino, have nothing whatever to do with therise of petty crime or the trafficking in drugs? But of course those conditionsgive rise to petty crime!! If you live, as I do, in a poor community, you wouldknow that it is precisely such communities which suffer from muggings, rape,and robbery. 


The radical approach is to lift thepoor out of poverty, to make sure everyone has a job. That seems to besomething the National Committee of the Socialist Party doesn't grasp.


Let me be very clear. I am deeplyopposed to the current militarization of the police, I believe we must havecivilian review boards, and that in no case should the police act as both judgeand jury. I think the police force in Ferguson


(and, sadly, many other areas) wasriddled with racism. 





However what is profoundly offensiveis that the National Committee acted on the basis of statements I had madeprivately, available only to those who visited my page in facebook. I've rarelyused the word "Stalinist", but the NC action fits that descriptionperfectly - the effort to monitor and police private comments. This isabsolutely and unconditionally intolerable in a democratic organization. I amcomforted by the fact the vote was 4 to 3, meaning there was real opposition tothe censure. I am sorry to note that the National Secretary of the SocialistParty voted in the affirmative.


I would also note that while I knew,from discussions on the Socialist Party's own face book page (open only tomembers) that there had been a ruckus about my comment on Michael Brown, I hadno idea I was also being held responsible for the statement on problems ofviolence in some of the Islamic community. Worse yet, for an organization whichclaimed in its censure letter to me that "as democratic socialists, we arestrongly supportive of free speech and open discussion", the NC actionsshowed otherwise. I was not informed of the censure motion before it was actedupon, and had no chance to offer a defense, and Pat Noble, who made the censuremotion, had not accepted my suggestion (before the NC acted) that it might beworth sitting down and talking things out.


(This paragraph will be of interestonly to SP members. It is my hunch that the move tocensure me originated with Marc Luzietti. Marc led a caucus (RevolutionaryUnity) in the Socialist Party, and sought to take control at the 2012convention, in which effort he failed. Marc had been a member of the SP NC andhe continues to have contacts in the SP. His political views seem to be a mixof Trotskyist thought and Maoism. After he resigned from the SP, he set up hisown Face book page. It is titled: "Socialist Party USA" and then,after very strong objections from the Socialist Party, he added in bolder type"We are not affiliated with Socialist Party USA or any other politicalparty or organization". He had seen my comments on Michael Brownand, on his Facebook page, had demanded the SP censure me. Not surprising - SPmembers visit his page and often post to it, and so his demand that I becensured certainly was heard within the SP and I believe was where the censuremotion began).





Before proceeding to a deeper look atwhy I'm leaving the SP, I want to make it clear that I know of many goodsocialists in the SP, some of them personal friends of mine over the years. Iwill take no part in any caucus against the current leadership in the Party. At85 that would only be proof of advanced senility. I've been in many factionfights - this will not be one. Where there are good and active locals - as isthe case, from what I can gather, in Southern California (and elsewhere) - Ithink comrades should remain in those groups. Our work must be done at thelocal level. I want nothing I say or do to hinder that work. I hope to remainin friendly contact with SP members - as with members of the Democratic Socialistsof America, the Committees of Correspondence for Socialism and Democracy,Solidarity, and others.


Let me turn now to the broaderissues of the Socialist Party and why I chose this time to leave.


I joined the Socialist Party in 1951,while a student a UCLA. I had come from a Christian (Baptist Church) backgroundand a Republican family - hardly a red diaper baby. But in 1949 I had beendeeply influenced by Bayard Rustin and A.J. Muste, won to a radical pacifistposition, and then, by friends at UCLA, to a socialist position. All that hashappened - particularly the Vietnam War - deepened my radical views.


When we are young, we cannot easilygrasp the meaning of the past, nor sense what is to come. In 1951 the greatdays of American radicalism were behind us. I do urge folks to read RayGinger's excellent biography of Debs ("The Bending Cross") forcapturing the radical mood of America in the first years of the last century.


What made the Socialist Party uniquewas that it was truly American - it had been formed before the RussianRevolution, it had met the test of fire by refusing support of the First WorldWar. I do not, here, want to discuss the influences on the young SP (many ofwhich were certainly imported from Europe - there was a time when Marx made theUS the home of the International, to keep it out of the hands of anarchists),nor do I want to examine the problems that came with the Russian Revolution,which led to the tragic split in the international movement. The pointis, this was an Americanmovement, root and branch.


Our high point came before the1920's, though we kept thinking that the past was prelude to the future. Debsgot 5% of the vote while in Federal prison for opposing the First World War. Wewere never again to get anywhere close to that.


Under the leadership of NormanThomas, six times our candidate for President, we achieved a kind of"radical respectability" and, as Norman used to say, if everyone whoclaimed they had voted for him had actually done so, he would have easily wonelection. There was a moral clarity to Thomas - almost alone, he opposed theinternment of the Japanese in World War II.


This is not to say that Norman waswithout fault. When I joined the Party, the Los Angeles Local was a left winglocal, which opposed the Korean War (which resulted in the arrest and two yearprison term of the late Vern Davidson, my mentor at UCLA, and my own arrest fordraft refusal - though with luck, the case was dismissed on technical grounds).We saw Norman as right wing and in some cases he was - the fights with theCommunist Party warped both sides. It was a family fight - the worse kind. 


But if one was, as I was, young in1951, we saw hope - the Labour Party in Britain had won power in 1945, with thenewly elected MP's rising in the House of Commons to sing "The WorkersFlag is Deepest Red" on the opening of parliament. There were strongsocialist parties in Europe and in Asia. Surely there was hope for theSocialist Party in America to rise again. And, of course, the remnants of theold party were all around us. If the SP membership was below 1,000 (true),there were tens of thousands of former members, sympathetic trade unionists,folks who would take out ads in our convention journals, there was a regularmagazine - The Call.


I should add that all of this wasalso true of the Communist Party. It is not impossible that as many as amillion people had passed through its ranks in the 30's and 40's. And while theSP suffered from World War II, the Communists were almost respectable, sinceMoscow was our war time ally. If you were a young Communist, even as therepression of McCarthyism made your life hard, you could see a world whereCommunist Revolution was spreading - in 1949 China had just joined with theSoviet Union as a bastion of revolution.


I should add the Trotskyists, neatlydivided into the "orthodox Trots" (James Cannon) and the"modified Trots" (Max Shachtman) but their total numbers were surelyunder 500.


Unlike today, where one almost needsthe fingers on two hands to count the number of radical groups (theRevolutionary Communist Party, the Party of Socialism and Liberation, theWorkers World Party, the Socialist Party, Democratic Socialists of America, theCommunist Party, the Progressive Labor Party, the Committees of Correspondencefor Socialism and Democracy, the Sparts, the International SocialistOrganization, Socialist Alternative, Peace and Freedom Party, The Freedom SocialistParty, to name those I can think of), life really was simpler in 1951.


There was one group, the SocialDemocratic Federation, which had split from the Socialist Party in 1936 (theSDF backed Roosevelt in the election, the SP was running Norman Thomas), whichsought to rejoin the SP and did so in 1956. There was a sadness to this unity.When the SDF had split, the Socialist Party was fairly large and the hope ofthe SDF members was, in a way, "to die in the family", by ending thesplit, but also the vain thought that by merging two groups in 1956 there wouldbe, once again, the vital group which had existed in 1936.


The name of the Socialist Party wasimportant even in the 1960's - it represented a clear heritage, it wasAmerican, it was not a Communist front, and it was for his reason that MaxShachtman courted it. My great political error was in thinking Shachtman meantwhat he said, which was that as the 1960's opened up with a vital civil rightsmovement, with growing youth discontent, and with the collapse of the CommunistParty after the Hungarian Revolution, there was a chance of using the name ofNorman Thomas and the Socialist Party to bring together something vital. My oldcomrades, Maggie Phair, and the late Bill Briggs, did not share my hopes.Sadly, they were right and I was deeply wrong. Shachtman wanted to get hisgroup - the Independent Socialist League - off the subversive list and into the"safe area" of the Socialist Party.


I worked with Irwin Suall, then theSP National Secretary, Gus Gerber, the key man in the Social DemocraticFederation, and Maurice Spector, a Trotskyist who had come down from Canada tohelp with this vision he, Irwin, and Gus had, and which we thought Shachtmanshared. We had hopes of bringing together the members of the CP who had beenmore or less cut adrift by the Hungarian Revolution, along with independentsocialists, such as Bert Cochran, who put out the magazine, The AmericanSocialist.


I was naive, but I was in goodcompany - most of Shachtman's own members shared the hopes that Gus, Irwin,Maurice and I had. And, in fairness, if we had not taken Shachtman in, the SPwas so fragile it might well have simply vanished. We believed that Shachtmanwas a co-worker, not a man intent on infiltration.


I remember a night in 1958 when theSP's Old Guard had called for a referendum to block the admission of the ISLmembers (our left wing had won the convention, taken control of the NationalCommittee, and approved the entry of ISL members). The SP members weregetting letters almost daily from our side or the Old Guard's side. With Irwinin the post of national secretary we moved the mimeograph down to the WallStreet area to work out of Gus Gerber's office at night. We had taken theprecaution of copying the membership list and getting it out of the office, incase the Old Guard tried a coup. Anyway, in the midst of this struggle for thesoul of the SP, and with the danger of the Old Guard splitting, Shachtmancalled a special meeting at Maurice Spector's apt. Present were Max, IrwinSuall, Maurice, myself, Sam Bottone and, I think, Joan Suall. Max said he hadnot wanted to split the SP and perhaps he should withdraw the ISL move to enterthe SP, and let it wait a year or two. What Max didn't understand was that theSP was in the middle of a referendum by mail ballot, and whatever Shachtmanwanted to do (or whatever those of us in the room that night decided to do) thevote on the referendum would continue. I should note that Shachtman was so usedto running an organization where he could determine the result, he simplydidn't understand how a democratic organization worked. I said that I wouldnever work for the admission of the ISL if he backed off. The meeting endedwith no conclusion. Then Maurice asked me to wait a moment, after the othersleft. He said he felt he owed it to me to say that Shachtman was going so farto the right I wouldn't believe it.When I demurred, Maurice said "I'm anold Trotskyist, I know the signs" and then said he was, as of that night,withdrawing from the SP and from the little group which had been fighting tobring the ISL in. Sadly, Maurice proved correct.


By that time the Vietnam War hadescalated and I dropped my work in the SP to focus on Vietnam. I was, in fact,hoping the Shachtman majority, which had taken control of the SP (and of theWorkers Defense League and of the League for Industrial Democracy) would expelme for my strong, public dissenting views on Vietnam. I had told friends Icouldn't justify resigning as long as I was free to express my views, but by1970 it was morally impossible to remain in the SP and I resigned.


In 1972 Shachtman's people took totalcontrol of the Socialist Party, changed the name to Social Democrats USA,reduced Michael Harrington's role from being the Chair to being one of threeco-chairs (the others being Bayard Rustin, a sad move on his part, and a fellowwhose name I can't recall). Shortly after, Harrington finally broke withShachtman, resigned, and formed the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee(which in time became Democratic Socialists of America). At almost the sametime the entire left wing and many of the party stalwarts, including FrankZeidler, resigned and, in 1973, revived the Socialist Party USA.


In the issue of Hammer and Tongs (theinternal discussion bulletin) I wrote, of the move to revive the SP, "TheParty is Over", by which I meant that whatever we decided to do, the greathistory of the American Socialist Party was over. 


But, weak as it may have been, therevived SP survived. In 1976 Frank Zeidler ran for President, as did I in 1980,and 


others up to the present (not at allcertain if anyone can be found to run in 2016). Perhaps the last seriouscandidate was Frank Zeidler himself, who had been elected the Mayor of Milaukeethree times, and who remained enormously popular and respected until his death.


The membership of the Socialist Partytoday may well be less than 500. It has a number of younger members but the SPis isolated, with almost no influence on the labor movement, the peacemovement, or the civil rights movement. The national office has no contact withother left groups. At a time when there is at least discussion of unity thatincludes the Communist Party, Democratic Socialists of America, the Greens,etc. the SP is entirely absent (except where its local groups take a differentview from the national office). The most recent and controversial case was theGreen Party's Governor's race in New York State where SP member, Howie Hawkins,with public support from all the key New York State SP members, did not get thesupport of the National Committee.


I have serious questions about"socialist unity" (having lived through some real tragedies in thismatter) but when I was active I was on good terms with at least some members ofDSA, the Communist Party, and even the Trotskyists. If I were writing adifferent article I would expand my views here to suggest the value ofcoordination rather than unity. 


The Socialist Party has no real wayto talk politics. The internal organ, Hammer and Tongs, rarely appears, hasonly very short articles, and is entirely on line. The membership email listserve carries almost no discussion. Most of the discussion occurs on Facebookand is largely short notes of one kind of another. When I was still able toread the SP's own Facebook page, before my resignation, I was stunned at thevitriolic attacks on "old men". Had these simply been aimed at me, Iwould have understood, but it was a kind of blanket and rather nasty set ofattacks on the elderly. (Where does the SP think its bequests come from?).


There are some solid, reasonedcomments (or were when I had access) but also far too many ultra left polemics.In contrast the membership email site of the Committees of Correspondence isinvariably polite, fraternal, often lengthy and always serious. 


This burden of "ultras"will bite the SP again, as it did with Marc Luzietti and as it did some yearago when a tiny group (which later went into the Spartacist League) tried totake over the SP back in 1978. But I think the SP today probably won't be thetarget of a major take-over, nothing to compare to that of Max Shachtman,because the SP - the name - today is no longer a prize.


The failure of the Socialist Party,its tendency to substitute a kind of left rhetoric for serious analysis, is tobe regretted because if ever we needed a democratic socialist movement it istoday. 


I say this even though today, morethan at any time in my life, I have no idea how we can make a transition fromcapitalism to socialism. The trade union movement has been shattered, the oldindustrial base is gone, both major parties have accepted themilitary/industrial complex as a permanent fixture of our culture and oureconomy. 


The left, as I knew it when I firstcame into it, has vanished into a maze of cults and sects. We live in a worldwhere the danger of nuclear war is very real and where the old order in whichthe US was the dominant military power - the number one imperial power - isbeing replaced by a multi-polar world, where the US remains tied to militaryanswers. 


There is hope - the Occupy movementgave us the wonderful slogan of 99% but without leaving us with a structure togive it expression. The youth of Ferguson and around the country have alertedus to the militarism of our police - but not yet with an analysis to tackle theproblem.


And so, far too old to play any keyrole, but desperately aware we need a "left" today, I join themultitudes who were in the SP and are now loosely affiliated with other groups,paying the dues of those on social security.


I did not resign from the SocialistParty with any joy -but rather with the awareness that, for me, the SocialistParty simply doesn't seem relevant. It has drifted away from me. I haveoutgrown the anti-Communism of my early days (as many have left the CommunistParty, having realized that a vanguard and democratic centralist party does nothold the answer). I will write, and if asked, I will speak. I will hope, I willthink, and if my legs carry me, I'll turn up for demonstrations. But you - ifyou are still reading - need to pick up where so many of us have had to leaveoff.

- 30 -





(duringmy time in the Socialist Party I served many terms on the National Committee,the National Action Committee, and was twice the co-chair of the Party)












HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq / St. Francis Abenaki / St. Regis Mohawk 
Protected by Na´shdo´i´ba´i´ 
and Ohkwari' . Check out our massive social justice website: 
www.hunterbear.org 

Member, National Writers Union AFL-CIO 

Core dimensions of my Community Organizing course: 
http://www.labornet.org/news/0000/hbear.htm 

Some early personal activist history / good people and issues: 

http://civilrightsnewsreleases.blogspot.com/2015/01/hinter-bear-maintaining-normally-high.html

My expanded/updated "Organizer's Book," 
JACKSON MISSISSIPPI -- with a new 10,000 
word introduction by me. Covers much of my 
confrontational social justice organizing life to 
date. Contains much how-to grassroots organizing 
methodology: http://hunterbear.org/jackson.htm 

See this for mini-bio, efforts to prevent JM’s appearance in 
Mississippi, a wide range of its many reviews, and some 
photos: http://www.amazon.com/John-R.-Salter/e/B001KMEHWY/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0 

The Stormy Adoption of an Indian Child [My Father]: 
http://hunterbear.org/James%20and%20Salter%20and%20Dad.htm 
(Photos)

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.mayfirst.org/pipermail/bearwithoutborders/attachments/20150318/ac03f051/attachment-0001.html>


More information about the BearWithoutBorders mailing list