B.A.M.N.

[Carrol Cox]

P.L. is a joke now, and for a time it was destructive. But in the mid
'60s (though I did not think so at the time) PL was a positive force on
the left. It was PL members who first brought a class perspective to
SDS, and there are probably still a scattering of leftists around who
(though never associated with PL) were positively influenced by it. Much
of the early anti-PL hysteria in SDS was not based on what even then
were its real deficiencies but was simple reflex anti-communism. That is
how I came to regard my own acceptance at the time of the attacks on PL.
And the walk-out led by Bernadine Dohrn at the '69 SDS convention was
(in retrospect) sheer sectarianism and utterly unprincipled. It was that
walk-out more than the PL victory that destroyed SDS.

Carrol