I CAN'T RESIST the temptation to recommend a book that is invaluable to anyone who hopes to have an effective, really egalitarian and democratic American left, The Socialist Party of America: A History by David A. Shannon.
Especially instructive is chapter six, Socialist Verses Communist, 1919 in which the fatal attack on the Socialist Party was made by the self-designated "Left Wing."
After discussing the fact that after the Russian Revolution that many Slavic language speaking immigrants joined Eugene Debs' Socialist Party swelling its "Left Wing" and the consequences of that, Shannon said this:
The leadership of the Left Wing, however, was not very different from the Old Guard as to national origin and social position. Indeed, the charges of the Left Wing, that the Old Guard was bourgeois, were ridiculous when it is recalled that it had leaders such as the well-to-do John Reed, a former Harvard cheerleader, and the millionaire William Bross Lloyd. . .
Although the Old Guard had a full quota of colorful personalities, there was not as much romanticism in it as there was in the Left Wing. In the list of twentieth century American romantics, John Reed could not be denied a place near the top. His impulsive, wild, undisciplined spirit at times made him an absurd figure. Once in a committee meeting of the Left Wingers he presented a wild plan for storming the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary to free Debs, and he put his case with such vigor and sincerity that for an hour the committee listened to every detail. The story reveals as much about the committee as it does about Reed. . .
Soaring spirits such as these could never be happy in an organization dominated by such steady, stodgy, stuffy leaders as Victor Berger and Morris Hillquit.
"The story reveals as much about the committee as it does about Reed." Indeed it does and it is characteristic of all such self-proclaimed "most leftist in the room" entities in the history of every left from the French Revolution to today. And those have uniformly been destructive of the efforts to get equality, democracy, economic and other justice.
I will point out again that Berger was one of only two Socialist Party members to have ever been elected to Congress, largely on the power of his having been a very successful elected mayor of Milwaukee where he was derided by the "real left" as a "sewer socialist" because he pushed through providing sanitary sewage and clean drinking water. The "Left Wing" never produced anything except babble and providing a weapon to the American fascists to defeat those on the real left.
It's also important to note a few other points that Shannon made in regard to the differences between the "Left Wing" and the "Old Guard" which had actually had some success in electoral politics.
There is a very long, very detailed description of tactics and actions of the various factions in the Socialist party which carries this description of actions the socialists as opposed to the communists took to prevent the party's takover by them which notes:
Paradoxically, throughout 1919 the Old Guard, which extolled political democracy, resorted to monolithic tactics, and the Left Wing, which scorned political democracy as "bourgeois," condemned the Old Guard for being undemocratic.
The fact is that any "leftist" entity that would hold that democracy is "bourgeois" can be counted on to damage and destroy democracy, no doubt that was part of why the "Old Guard" which had produced some actual electoral success fought so hard and, arguably, dirty to prevent the takeover of the one and only successful socialist party in the history of the United States.
That a rich Harvard cheerleader would be the head of a faction that scorned democracy with an idiotic fever dream of, instead of winning power through a fair vote opt for a "revolution" that would sweep him and his colleagues into power is not anything to wonder at. I have no doubt that it accounts for why, as I noted this morning, Harvard's law school has been a central locus in the development of the fascist unitary executive theory of the presidency as well as much of the stupidest and most democracy destroying "leftism" in our history. And don't get me started on the Kennedy School of [oligarchic] Government there.
That hostility to democracy on the part of that Harvard cheerleader is seen later in the description of what led Louis Boudin to leaving the "Left Wing" faction that created the Communist Labor Party:
The chief controversy in this convention was a plank in the platform committee report that urged the workers to join with the Communist Labor Party "in the political field." John Reed argued against this recognition of political action, as did most of the leaders who had been in the Left Wing since its organization. Joseph Coldwell, however, said that if he were against political action "he would do the sensible thing - resign from a political organization and join the I.W.W."*
Some of the delegates had never been in the Left Wing and had left the Socialist convention only because they thought the Socialist Party's conduct had been too arbitrary and drastic. These delegates agreed with Coldwell, and when the revolutionists defeated the political action plank 41 to 28, [such was the size of the mighty "Left Wing"] many of them bolted for the second time within a week.
When Louis B. Boudin bolted the convention he fired a parting shot with which many a bewildered Socialist might have agreed, "I did not leave a party of crooks to join a party of lunatics."
The whole chapter and, in fact, the whole book carries so many a cautionary tale for any egalitarian democratic left and flashing warning signs of how dangerous it is for any left to allow romanticism and razzle-dazzle (especially from the affluent collegate types) to gain a foothold.
In James Weinstein's book The Long Detour, he notes that in a massive irony the role of Louis Boudin's grand niece, the infamous criminal Kathy Boudin in the Weather Underground which played a similar role in the implosion of the Students for a Democratic Society. Apparently she had not heard what her far more admirable and rational great uncle had said on that occasion. I will point out that as she was born a year after Louis Boudin died, they never met.
* Despite the romantic lore of the Wobblies, the I.W.W. produced little to nothing of value in its entire history. And much of its claimed accomplishment is highly open to challenge on the basis of fact instead of folklore.
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