Obama campaign casts light on SDS history sociologically

October 1 2008

Recently disclosed and propagated information concerning the Obama campaign castes further light on Students for Democratic Society (SDS) history. It turns out all the leaders of a certain SDS niche are now fund-raising for and endorsing Obama.

As MIM noted long before the Obama campaign, there was a contest between PLP and the Black Panthers for influence in SDS. In between were student groups that vacillated, consciously or unconsciously on the white working class question and the role of the national question in the revolutionary analysis.

Instead of adopting a materialist attitude of standing with the most advanced, either BPP or PLP, white petty-bourgeois youth tended to form "third poles" with new organizations. These organizations mushed line differences instead of sustaining either the BPP or PLP line and then developing that line. They never understood that "third poles" are petty-bourgeois abstractions by people who think there is a class between the capitalists and proletariat.

MIM believes that it sustained and developed the Black Panthers' low regard for the white working class and we lived to validate the Black Panthers' thesis on the lumpen. The state smashed the Black Panthers, and the PLP continues to exist as an independent institution, if much less relevant and influential than it used to be.

Now we can say with confidence that every single organization and trend between the Panthers and PLP either dissolved or joined the Democrats. In the RYM I or Weather tradition, we have Bill Ayers(1) and Tom Hayden(2) now as prominent Democrats. In RYM II, we have Klonsky(3) working directly with Obama in Chicago.(4) Avakian and his off-shoot Kasama along with Kennedy and Daley are Obama's political godfathers.

We say it's PLP's fault, because though it was above-board in what it did, PLP did not account for the petty-bourgeois class origin of the people it was recruiting. There was a reason that the non-PLP SDS factions would vacillate between PLP and the BPP and there was a reason they ended up sustaining a role on neither side. These factions were the late-comers, the picked on kids not quite as articulate as the more experienced leaders. They never really had reasons for what they did even as they used the rhetoric of revolution to denounce others more revolutionary.

What PLP and BPP should have done is try to seduce away SDS instead of getting in their faces. BPP took a more correct approach and was less involved in SDS. Had PLP stayed outside SDS or made sure not to go over organizational recruiting questions, there still would have been petty-bourgeois vacillation, but it might not have felt an urgent need to form organizations justifying petty-bourgeois lines. Some people should not be encouraged to think they are Marxist leadership material unless they independently cross certain thresholds.

Getting in the face of the more junior politicos guaranteed passive-aggressive behaviors, vacillation and splitting. With RYM II vacillator Avakian siding with Cheney on Iran and importing rallies against Islam and the condition of wimmin in Iran, there is nothing better we could have expected in the Democratic Party-- just white nationalism and pseudo-feminism. To Avakian's right, of course, others are also in the Obama campaign, with less direct roles. Both versions of the FRSO have endorsed Obama and of course, Avakian only picked up where the "CP" left off in calling itself "communist" while campaigning for Democrats. Hopefully the rumors are true that Avakian will never call himself "Marxist- Leninist-Maoist" again. His denunciations of others on this question led only to his working with Democrats. The least he can do is disown his previous work instead of doing two things at once.

PLP should also take a serious look at what so many organizations concluded about the white working class after listening to PLP--that it was important. Instead of letting go of that as advised by MIM, they stuck to the dogma, looked at what was happening and joined the Democrats. None of these RYM I or RYM II people pursued the MIM line on super-profits with coherence. They are liable to think that class questions are merely tactical.

Notes:
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_ayers
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Hayden

"Hayden serves as a member of the advisory board for the Progressive Democrats of America, an influential "grass roots" organization created to expand progressive political cooperation within the Democratic Party.[2]

"In January 2008, Hayden wrote an oped piece for The Huffington Post supporting Barack Obama's presidential bid in the Democratic primaries."

3. Michael Klonsky, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Klonsky
4. http://article.nationalreview.com/print/?q=MmUwOTllNmMzZDNlMTljMGFmY2JkZTllYmQyOTY0ODY=