shag carpet bomb wrote:
At 04:45 PM 5/9/2009, Carrol Cox wrote:
shag carpet bomb wrote: My only point in that initial quote was that I'd found it interesting, in light of the recent claims about you and Mao: the PL faction apparently had a reputation for being dogmatic quoters of all things Mao, since the RYM factions used that stereotype to mock them. The quote about the mocking came from the article in Guardian by Jack Smith. ==========
Cox: [I haven't seen the claims about me and Mao, since I'm reading rather selectively; I doubt that they are very interesting. By mid -week I'll try to get back to your posts and respond to them as wholes. I'm meely picking out points of interest here and there today when I get a chance to take a look at what's in my inbox.]
No one in the '60s was free from sectarianism, one of the more sectarian strains being that of anti-sectariamos,, which allowed people to feel indepedndent-minded by saying whatever rolled off their tongues. (This is not a wholly negative observation: my own developing view of th4 '60s was that there was a coherence there but it is not to be found in any one perspective or even collection of related perspectives. MLK depended on the riots; the riots depended on MLK and the impact on the public consciousness as well as on Congress depended on both. And so forth. The anti-sectarian sectarians fit in there someplace.) But because of this sectarianism you can't wholly trust either one particular account or one particular attempt to synthesize the various contemporary accounts.
But I still can't make sense of "the RYM factions used that stereotype to mock them. The quote about the mocking came from the article in Guardian by Jack Smith." (Like everyone else, Smith's own views were of course constantly developing/changing.) Remember, one of the central leaders of RYM 2 was Mike Klonsky, who later had his photograph in the Peking Review sitting next to Mao, and he came back to Chicago gleefully proclaiming, "We [CPML, formerly October League] have the franchise." PLP had it at one time, then I think RCP, then CPML. LRS didn't make much "Maoist" noise, but they were able to distriburte confidential communications from China to their membership. I think I have them around in the basement someplace. These were all groups with their roots at least partly in RYM. When the SDS chapter here splintered, both faction quoted Mao at eash other. (Things got pretty crazy; I heard by rumor that one of the local Weathermen delayed getting his crabs cured because he had gotten them from a woman who had gottyen them from Mark Rudd. Whether that's true or not I do not know.) The last meeting of the whole local SDS before the Weather and RYM2 factions ceased to speak to each other occurred after an appearance here, sponsored by SDS, of Jeff Jones. We had scheduled Mark Rudd, but the story was that he got his jaw broken in an incident in an Milwaukee Drive-In.) The meeting turned into a three hour debate between me and Jeff (11pm to 2am), as gradually everyone else fell into silence. Throughout the 'conversation' a little squirt of a sidekick with Jeff kept fingering a bicycle chain - it wasn't quite clear whether it was for defense against police or for uppity RYM2 supporters. ------------
shag continues: After reading this and what Max said, I looked in the index to see where else he mentions Mao/Maoism. He notes from time to time that, to paraphrase (left the book on porch), the entire student left was under the grip of Maoist politics. It does seem kind of weird that more attention was paid to that, since both you and Max are noting the bit about Maoist influences. (BTW, yes, he does reference "the Albania Question" as one of the more absurd examples of sectarianism.)
On place he says this is his discussion of the implosion of WUO, 1976 0 1979. There, he maintains, quoting Bernadine Dohrn, that everyone was focused on "the primary contradiction." "The problem" Dohrn said in her interview, "was that everyone was focused on the primary contradiction and never got to the secondary contradiction." (paraphrase) ----------
One way my comments run askewe of his - When I speak of Weatherman I'm thinking of 1969-70. After that I stopped paying attention to them. Groups I was variously linked to all went back either to RYM2 or WSA (as distinguished from its creator, PLP.) ======
shag] Because I'm busy getting all my crap ready to sell in a yard sale or give away, I didn't have time to surf around and learn more. I vaguely recall this phrase from feminist reading but don't recall context or meaning. Google yields stuff about Russia as the primary contradiction, as well as some ref about Japan being the primary contradiction for China.
What does the phrase mean? Or, probably more importantly, what did iit mean then.
Oh wow! You are deep into the Theory of the Three Worlds and this is where the China-line groups (more accurate than "Maoist Groups) did go off the deep end. I'm not sure either you or I really want to go there but I'll maunder on a bit. (I have not the slightest idea what Dohrn and *Co. were thinking on this by 1976, but what follows gives the "Chinese Line," followed faithfully for awhile at least by New-Communist groups who allied with China. The theory was a projection on to the world stage of the strategy of the Chinese Revolution - surrounding the Cities from the Countryside, and forming a United Front with all who could be united against the Japanaese invasion (i.e., with the Nationalists). During that earlier period the primary contradiction was with Imperaialism as represented by Japan. Projected on the world stage w e get the following lunacy (which I sort of accepted at the time, with some qualms). For the countryside, substitute the countries of the "Third World." For Japan/Germany substitute "Social Fascism" - that is, the Soviet Union. For Chiang's nationali8sts with whom it is necessary to unite against the Social fascists, substitute the United States. If your web sources are confusing, probably you should blame the Mao's Theory of the Three Worlds which was pretty confusing to begin with. Anyhow, until the USSR is defeated by a world United *Front, that is the primary contradiction, and the contradiction between the third world and imperailism (the u.s.) is seconday. (I forget where the contradiction between the working class and capitalism came in.) But we are post-60s now, and all this throws some retrospective light on the '60s but is not directly relevant.
shag: One thing too: maybe he's just trying to write from the WUO perspective, so they've maybe got some stake in not associating themselves with Maoism so much? don't know.
Cox: I don't know. I do know that the only account of Weather from a former Weatherman that did not seem entirely self-serving to me was tha by Mark Rudd, as published in Radical History Review a few years ago. I was pissed off at Dohrn 40 years ago and I'm a bit pissed off at her still. She did a lot of damage to people then, and she seems entirely unapologetic for it now. Having said that, I still reject the idea that we can "learn from mistakes of the past." Those mistakes, when they face us again, will be in entirely different circumstances and in quite different 'dress,' and most self-labelled "criticism" of them is merely self-important puffery. We can, if we study closely, and abstract carefully, learn from what the past did RIGHT. Perhaps there is a parallel here to Tolstoi on good and bad marriages.
Carrol