[lbo-talk] 60's over 30's

[c b]

Carrol Cox
I'll mention just one or two points now.
The great internal barrier to the development of The Left in the
United States has been race. The slogan of Black and White, Unite and
Fight, with the more or less controlling parties or other
organizations, however anti-racist they were or tried to be, were
_grounded_ in the "white community." That meant that, despite the real
very real achievements of the CPUSA in this area (leading J. Edgar
Hoover to say you could recognize a Communist because he would be
comfortable with "colored people), the movement of the'30s was not a
racially united movement -- especially in the CIO, which deliberately
did not attempt to extend its organizing into the south. The '60s
produced a totally new phenomenon: The Black Panter Party, a Party
with its base in the black community but totally commited to
cooperation and joint struggles with white radical groups. (To a
lesser extent Latino organizations were developing with similar
principles: e.g. the ATM in Los Angeles.)

^^^^^
CB: I agree with this.  _A fortiori_ your argument, the Civil Rights
movement of the fifties and sixties was part of the new phenomenon. It
sought Negro and White unity and integration, in many ways. White
Civil Rights activists followed Negro leadership, very new at the
time. The Civil Rights movement adopted some of the tactics of the
labor movement from the 30's in sit-ins and picketting

 As you say, " King had been working towards the same general
perspectvie from the beginning. "

^^^^^
U.S. life changed after the '60s in a way it had not changed after the '30s.

One more thing. Not a lot of people may have recognized this
explicitly, but the '60s smashed forever the central assumption of the
First, Second, Third. and Fourth Intgernatioanls that a left movement
to be effective had to revolve around a single hegemonic Party.

^^^^
CB; I'm not sure this is all good.  It represents an individualist,
anarchist, liberal and Americanist distorting influence of petit
bourgeois revolutionism.