"fifty people from the Michigan and Ohio collectives stood up, waving copies of the "little red book," ... and began chanting, "Mao Mao, Mao Tse-Tung, Dare to STruggle, Dare to Win!" ... and "Ho Ho HO Chi Minh, the NLF is Gonna Win!".... The chanting continued until the SDSers collapsed "in riotous self-applause." (p 83)
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Much of shag's post seems accurate, but this approaches total nonsense. What she describes may have happened someplace off the main floor, but the actual split was undner quite different conditions. Let's see if we can clear some of it up.
(I was at the convention myself.)
First of all, it is seriously misrepresenting the factional struggles to link _only_ PLP to "mao." RYM was if anything _more_ "maoist" than PLP, or at laeast claimed to be. (Incidentally, the term "maoist" is incoherent, since the whole point of the Chinese phrase, "Marxism-Leninism-Mao tse tung thought" was to _reject_ any claim by the CPC to have elanborated another "ism." Maoism is a western invention, just as "Leninism" was a *Trotsky/Stalin invention as part of their squabble with each other.)) Secondly, it was not PLP nominally (and to some extent in reality) that had a majority at the Convention. (RYM was in a minority, as explained later.) PLP had organized a faction called Worker-Student Alliance, in which PLP members were only a small minority. It was the Worker-Student Alliance that had a majority of the votes at the convention.
When the split actually occurred was during a plenary, Bernadine Dohrn chairing. There was a vote (on something, but I don't recall the particular motion but it gave a count of relative strength.) The Worker-Student faction won the vote. At which point Dohrn stalked out of the convention, followed by all who were not Worker-Student or sympathizer with Worker-Studenty. A fellow who wen by the name of Johnny Appleseed (I forget his real name now) owned a theatrer in Chicago, and he gave that as a meeting place for the rump SDS (RYM). I onlyh recall a few details fromt that meeting. I do recall that Michael Lerner gave a fairly long rambling adddress, but I don't remember what he said. A couple other speakers compared the split to the split of the RSDLP at its second congress (of course placin PLP in the "Menshevik" role). Then everyone went home.
During the next two months the Weatherman-RYM2 split 'ripened' into a complete break. We had a regional SDS conference here in August, consisting mostly of Chicago RYM2 and Chicago Weatehrmen screaming at each other at the tops of their voicesd. We had a RYM2 caucus at my house that evening.
shag also writes:
Apparently, the PL had a reputation for being dogmatic quoters of all things Mao, which led to a point at which RYM decided to score some points by mocking them. When the PL opposed the REd Guard talk
"fifty people from the Michigan and Ohio collectives stood up, waving copies of the "little red book," ... and began chanting, "Mao Mao, Mao Tse-Tung, Dare to STruggle, Dare to Win!" ... and "Ho Ho HO Chi Minh, the NLF is Gonna Win!".... The chanting continued until the SDSers collapsed "in riotous self-applause." (p 83)
This is misleading at best. All the main factions were competing with each other as to which "really" was a "true" follower of Mao. (Also - re shag's references to PLP rejecting anti-racist struggle: that was later; at the time of the SDS split anti-racism was fairly central to PLP's line. There was an awful lot wrong with PLP, but caricaturing it is no way to get at that. References to PLP "coming to rumble" don't make much sense either. They came to take control of SDS by perfectly staid parliamentary means: they had the votes.)
And finally, almost all the criticisms I have seen on this list for years of Weatherman, of PLP, of S*DS, of Stalin, of Trotsky, of Mao, of Lenin, of Luxemburg, of almost anything else in the revolutionary past are so many farts by Platonists who operate in a world of pure Platonic forms of what should be, isolated from the merest sense of history.
Carrol