AC nails Cooper perfectly

Carrol Cox cbcox at ilstu.edu
Wed Nov 27 12:14:01 PST 2002


Alex LoCascio wrote:
>
> Which just proves that you haven't read anything about the history of SDS or the anti-war movement. SDS called one national anti-war movement in the mid-60s, then let the whole thing dropped. The SWP (and as Max correctly mentions, various CP-related forces) picked up the slack from there.

Local branches of SDS never ceased to do anti-war work. That is what most of their growth came from. Don't confuse SDS as a whole _either_ the National Office _or_ with any given history of it. It was an extremely complex web of social relations and not easily summed up in a formula.


>
> I think at this point SDS has evolved into its "all white babies are pigs" stage of political development.

This is willed ignorance. Max has already pointed out:


> That was just the Weatherpeople, always a minority faction in SDS.
> Even their allies during the split (the Maoist groups) were better
> than that.
>
> mbs

I still bear a grudge against Weatherman, but even most the weatherpeople themselves (one of whom called something I said the stupidest thing he'd ever heard in his life) weren't this reductive. And you are right that the non-weather people, both RYM2 _and_ WSA/PL, rejected the Weatherman position that white workers were incurably racist.

I made a horrible mistake when in attacking the Weather position at a local SDS chapter meeting I first gave a fair summary of it. The summary was so fair that it convinced three of the group to go over to Weatherman. That's one of the reasons I'm always a bit leery of those who demand respect for "unances." At least once I was too damned nuanced. :-(

But we were wrong, as I've said before, to have split in the first place. Those who fromed RYM 2 should have stayed in SDS, since (a) many of the WSA people were _not_ dupes of PL and could eventually have been won over and (b) possession of the National Office was not all that big a deal in SDS anyhow. And as I've said two or three times on this list already, this experience (and my reconsideration of it) is one of my reasons for seeing external critics of ANSWER as far more sectarian than WWP is.

Carrol



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