<div>How do we write history or even understand it when when can't get our own experiences straight. The minutiae matters!!!Hitchens was a member of the British International Socialists, which was considered a "soft" Trot group. Soft because a) there was no democratic centralist discipline as practiced by the other sects. b)It didn't see itself as a Leninist party, or even a pre-party formation. c) It nattered less about Trotsky than did anybody else. This was the IS of Peter Sedgewick and Nigel Harris and David Widgery and (ever so fleetingly) Sheila Rowbotham. Even Cliff was tolerant of a lot of unorthodox stuff. You could breath around that bunch. So Hitchens being in the IS-UK was no big deal. It actually speaks well of him. It also doesn't imply he was buds with Wolfowitz back in the day. The IS in Britain, like its much smaller analog in the US, was virulently anti-war, quite left, and critical of the right-wing trade union leaders. The SP in the US supported the war and got a cold when George Meany sneezed. The IS-US folk hoped for pneumonia. Wolfowitz was not one of these. The Hitchens-Wolfowitz dating ritual is of much more recent vintage. </div> <div> </div> <div>And shame on Mike Pugliese, too. It wasn't the Democratic Socialist Fed. It was the Social Dem Fed. that bellied up to the bar with Shachtman. If you're going to get these things wrong, Michael, what hope is there for the future of humanity?  </div> <div> </div> <div>Mike Hirsch<br> </div> <div><span class="gmail_quote">On 10/5/05, <b class="gmail_sendername">Michael Pugliese</b> <<a href="mailto:michael.098762001@gmail.com">michael.098762001@gmail.com</a>> wrote:</span> <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">  Oops. Sorry for overposting. But, how could Wolfowitz have spoken<br>at SDUSA events from '70-'72, when the org. wasn't founded till early <br>'73 in any real solidified sense?<br>The split of the SP occurred finally in a formal way at the  SP<br>convention in Dec. '72. The right Shactmanites won the convention<br>resolution votes vs. Harrington and whoever remained from the left of <br>Harrington in the McReynolds (who had quit in '71) Debs Caucus. The<br>coalition of the Old (Right) Guard in the SP w/ the Democratic<br>Socialist Federation (which had left the SPA in '36) when they won the<br>vote, in Dec. re-named themselves SDUSA. <br>See the Gary Dorrien vols. on neo-conservatism.<br><br>___________________________________<br><a href="http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk">http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk</a><br> </blockquote></div><br>