shag carpet bomb wrote:
>
> At 02:21 PM 5/8/2009, Carrol Cox wrote:
>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.
This is interesting. From the Weatherman's perspectives -- the folks he interviewed for this book, as well as his reading of original sources, biographies, memoirs, etc., this doesn't get brought up as an issue of competing Maoists, at least not in this section. He writes later that the Weatherman were "ok" with the NLF negotiating with the US, whereas the PL thought they were sell outs. Hence, the Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh, the NLF is gonna win chant. If I've got that right.
==========
A quick partial response to just this paragraph.
One of the disconcerting features of PLP was the quickness with which its line changed. If your source doesn't _date_ its various references to PLP, then this would create considerable confusion. For example, one person I knew in the '70s/'80s had been in WSA at a California college. They had been focusing their local efforts on the anti-racist struggle, which had been central to PLP's politics. Then they held a rally at which the national leader of PLP (I forget his name) would speak, and they advertised the rally in terms of anti-racist struggle. THEN when he spoke, he announced the NEW line of PLP in dismissing the anti-racist struggle.
So you see, if the book does not talk about _two_ different (and opposing) lines of PLP on racism at different times, then there is bound to be some serious error in it. And a thousand footnotes couldn't correct that error, for no matter which position he ascribed to PLP there would be plentiful documentation for it. And that is what rather bothered me in your initial report: he didn't seem to be distinguishing between different periods of PLP's history.
And incidentally, does he distinguish between PLP and WSA. WSA was created by PLP, but it was NOT entirely controlled. Tyhere was no way anyone could control SDS locals.
Carrol