[lbo-talk] SDS and wikis

[Max B. Sawicky]

with no disparagement of your article, which I have
yet to read, what is it that precludes someone who
has no idea what they are talking about from
contributing to a wiki.  I say this because I
noticed an article on a left wiki about taxes
that was just full of crap.

mbs


-----Original Message-----
From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org
[mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org]On Behalf Of Lance Murdoch
Sent: Wednesday, December 01, 2004 3:25 AM
To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
Subject: [lbo-talk] SDS and wikis


I was mentioning my writing GFD (public domain'ish) licensed articles
for wiki encyclopedias a few weeks/months ago, and particularly
resarch regarding SDS, and some people here suggested I read SDS by
Kirkpatrick Sale.  I got my hands on it and rewrote my SDS article.

Actually I should probably re-read it since I'm curious about RYM II. 
I thought my notes on names like Noel Ignatiev and Les Coleman would
lead to more information about them and RYM II on the web, but it
didn't so I may have to go back to the book.  I've perused Max
Elbaum's "Revolution in the Air", especially the section on
BARU/RU/RCP, I'll look at other sources as well.

Noam Chomsky once derided describing the 1960s as what one SDS leader
said to another one, and I agree, so I try to write more about
parties, factions, tendencies, movements and their "lines" than
individuals.

Sale's book had interesting points.  Like the history of SDS, going
back to SLID, and going back to SLID's roots in LID and the 1905
formed Intercollegiate Soicalist Society.  Carl Davidson had what I
thought was a good definition of what organizers were, which was the
5% in SDS that did all the crap work that kept the organization
together, who also worked to bring people into SDS.  Also interesting
was Sale's assertion that SDS's existence was one of the reasons China
agreed to open relations with the US.

I like the whole GFDL wiki encyclopedia thing.  I think Wikipedia is
hopelessly center-right, with its means of production controlled by
"libertarian" millionaire Jimbo Wales, and a left encyclopedia
counterpart on history, politics, philosophy like Infoshop's OpenWiki
ot Anarchopedia is necessary.  It would be an invaluable resource on
learning about obscure things like Rwanda, Sudan and so forth from a
non-corporate perspective.

One part of the project I've been getting into recently is looking at
the Great Soviet Encyclopedia.  It would be great to get that online,
in English, with part of it being in wiki form hopefully, imported
like Wikipedia does to the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.  I'm not sure
of the GSE copyright, thought I believe editions 1 and 2 are public
domain outside of Russia.  Edition 3 is more sketchy, I think versions
prior to 1973 might be public domain, but IANAL.  The Macmillan
English translation is probably copyright.  Then there's that its in
Russian.  But its online, and automatic Russian/English translators
make it mostly understandable.  It would be nice to have an online,
public domain, English version of it, especially in editable wiki
format.

Anyhow, here is my new article on SDS which I put at Infoshop OpenWiki
and Anarchopedia:  The previous one had some factual errors which I've
cleared up hopefully.  If anyone sees any errors or something, tell
me.

http://eng.anarchopedia.org/SDS
http://www.infoshop.org/wiki/index.php/SDS

Students for a Democratic Society was the most influential socialist
youth group in American history. It began life as the Student League
for Industrial Democracy (SLID), a student group affiliated with the
League for Industrial Democracy (LID). In January of 1960, SLID
changed its name to Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), so as to
have a broader appeal among students. The group started small, in 1960
it only had nine chapters on various campuses.

At a 1962 convention in Port Huron, Michigan, SDS delegates worked on
a draft originally written by Tom Hayden which would become the Port
Huron Statement. Michael Harrington from LID, SDS's parent
organization, attended the convention and fought with the SDS members
over the statement, especially what he considered its softness on
being anti-communist, as well as SDS allowing an observer associated
with the Communist Party youth organization to be present at the
convention. When the convention was over, the fight between SDS and
LID continued, with LID even locking the doors of SDS's New York
office, but SDS and LID managed to patch things up. Some consider this
convention as the break between the Old Left and the New Left. The
Port Huron Statement found an audience on much of the student left
such as with the National Student Association.

In September 1963, SDS began the Economic Research and Action Program
(ERAP), where college students would go into poor areas and organize.
One of the program's first successes was organizing in Chester,
Pennsylvania near Swarthmore College. Eventually hundreds of college
students would move into the ghettoes and organize.

LID and SDS had an uneasy relationship for a while. On October 4,
1965, SDS broke off from LID, the cited reason being problems
regarding tax-exempt statuses for the organizations. SDS was growing,
becoming more radical, and more involved in anti-war work as the
Vietnam War escalated.

In February of 1966 members of the May 2nd Movement (M2M), which the
Progressive Labor Party (PLP) exercised great control over, disbanded
M2M, and many of the M2M members joined SDS, in an attempt to recruit
SDS members into the PLP. SDS began feeling the influence of the M2M
members (PLP) almost immediately.

SDS had began shunning formal structure in 1965, which carried into
the 1966 SDS convention in Clear Lake, Iowa. Steering committees and
formal hierarchy was shunned, and consensus and "prairie power" was
emphasized. Boston SDS'er John Maher made a proposal at the convention
which indirectly targeted the Progressive Labor (PL) SDS'ers - it was
rejected by a large majority of the convention.

In the spring of 1967, most of the working class members of the PLP,
many of whom were on the West Coast, left PLP. PLP decided to
concentrate on recruiting students more than workers. A February/March
1967 article in Progressive Labor by Jeff Gordon suggested a
worker-student alliance.

On April 23, 1968, 19 days after the assassination Martin Luther King,
Jr., a student strike began at Columbia University, many of the
leaders of which were "action faction" SDSers. This would be followed
by student strikes on other universities in the coming days, months
and years throughout the country (and throughout the world - students
went on strike in France a month later, almost bringing the French
government down when the strike spread to become a general strike
among workers).

At the SDS convention in June 1968 at Michigan State in East Lansing,
Michigan, the PL-affiliated SDS'ers began to try to openly dominate
SDS. Following democratic centralism, in a manner some said was even
stricter than CPUSA democratic centralism, they were a united front in
SDS. They were also well-organized, and their Marxist theory was
well-worked out as opposed to "vaguer" ideas and theories presented by
non-PLers. The anti-PL "new working class" SDSers caucused at the
convention.

After the convention, the SDS PL'ers began pushing the Worker-Student
Alliance (WSA) idea more. The PL'ers were not much involved in what
became militant protests of the 1968 Democratic National Convention in
Chicago, Illinois which many SDS'ers participated in. In a December
1968 SDS National Council meeting in Ann Arbor, Michigan, PL-WSA
succeeds in passing its Marxian resolution on racism (which said that
racism is a byproduct of the class war). Toward a Revolutionary Youth
Movement by an anti-PL faction which would become called Revolutionary
Youth Movement (RYM) passed as well.

A group containing Murray Bookchin was working on a Radical
Decentralization Project within SDS at the time, but Bookchin said it
didn't have much success.

>From June 18-22 of 1969, SDS held its ninth annual convention at the
Chicago Coliseum, mostly because it was unable to find a meeting place
on any Mid-western college campus. At this convention, fighting
between the PL-WSA faction and the anti-PL faction (collected together
as the Revolutionary Youth Movement) came to a head. On June 21,
Saturday night, hundreds of RYMers marched out of the coliseum,
permanently splitting with PL-WSA. This more or less was the end of
SDS - the two largest, but still relatively small factions, PL-WSA and
RYM continued to exist as the rest of SDS, much of whom were
marginally attached students, disintegrated.

The Revolutionary Youth Movement, which had always been a loose group
united in their oppositon to PL-WSA, split up into the two groups it
had been more or less composed of - RYM I, which would become the
Weathermen, and RYM II, which included members of the Bay Area
Revolutionary Union and other groups. In a month or two, the rift
between RYM I and RYM II became permanent, after which RYM II itself
began breaking up into different groups.

The newsletter of SDS was called New Left Notes.
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