Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 79: New Year, New Left (w/ special guest Max Elbaum)

Episode Date: January 11, 2019

We start season 3 off with author Max Elbaum, whose book "Revolution in the Air" is all the rage on the left right now. We talk about the New Communist Movement, coalition building, electoralism, smashing your idols, and other topics of import. Please support us on Patreon, where you can find all kinds of additional Trillbillies content that you can't find anywhere else: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

I need a second. I got you. I got you. I don't want this to go down the same road it went yesterday, but I'd like to talk about Danny Glover a little bit. Just retreading all of our previous ones. Making sure they're well-worn and well-trodden. I understand.

Tell me a little bit about Danny Glover. Well, a friend of mine manages his Verizon account. That's one of those me and my cousin setups. Totally. This is a Trump story almost. By all indications, Danny Glover is a gentleman and pays his phone bill on time. Sometimes going so far as to go into the store himself and take care of him. Wow. Well, that is a gentlemanly behavior.

Yeah. I agree. And like we were talking about yesterday, I still think it's kind of cool that, you know, if this story is true and not apocryphal, that if you give Danny Glover, it's 72 hours notice, he'll show up for any left-wing cause. I have a left-wing cause for Danny Glover.

He can show up for it. Okay. All right, so let's say it's midnight not Gotham City, but it's Pikeville or something. The exact opposite.

Me and you, we're meeting, we're kind of like Commissioner Gordon. You know what I mean? We've been splitting in two though. Okay. Me and you, we're kind of like Commissioner Gordon. You know what I mean? We've been splitting in two, though. Okay. Me and you, we're at the top of a building, that big black hospital building in Pikeville Medical Center. Yeah.

And it's fucking pouring rain and lightning, and we're like, we've just heard the news that Lou Dobbs wants to sweep us aside the recalcitrant lips. How do we respond? Cut down the tall trees. So we have to put up the Danny Glover signal. And he comes and protects us. Hell yeah. He comes and fights Lou Dobbs for us.

Danny, we need you. You're our only hope. Oh, man. Did you see that video of Lou Dobbs saying that? I saw the tweet. I was laying in bed, and I didn't want to wake my girlfriend up by playing Lou Dobbs at 6.30 in the morning. Now, that's a good way to find yourself in the doghouse.

What did he say? We all heard that country song about getting put in the doghouse for listening to Lou Dobbs at 6.30 in the morning. Oh listening to lou dobbs at 6 30 in the morning oh man i sound so congested it's embarrassing um well they were talking about the border stuff they've been talking about they were talking about the shutdown imagine that yeah i can't remember who he was talking about it with some fucking worm looking motherfucker um and uh well that and that was lou dobbs's conclusion like we've put on with this long enough trump needs to declare a national emergency and just sweep aside the recalcitrant left that's what he said who's the main aoc i guess i mean

honestly no what he's he's actually talking about Pelosi and Schumer and everybody. The thing is, in their minds, the left is this massive, teeming mass movement that needs to be trimmed down, when in reality it's just a few 10,000, almost 100,000 just loosely assembled, disorganized motherfuckers who are just barely scraping for survival at the fringes. For crumbs. Yeah. Which is actually a good segue into what we're going to talk about today.

No, I mean, it is good. So this episode is important, and I was thinking a lot about it last night after the interview, and especially after I heard that Lou Dobbs thing, because it's just like... Took Lou Dobbs to bring it full circle for you. Yeah, man. Well, it's like you've got that.

You've got several different fronts on which urgency is necessary. You know, yesterday there was also this story about the oceans are warming 40 times faster or 40% faster. I don't know. In 30 years, there won't be any saltwater fish. Yeah, something like that. And, you know, you've got that kind of urgency, and then you've got this urgency. One of the crazy things this week was just the sort of way that they bend reality. Like, they're calling what's going on at the border now a humanitarian crisis.

Have you noticed that? Trump and Pence, they're calling it a humanitarian crisis. And I was reading this interview with this guy. I think his name was Will Hurd or something. I can't remember his exact name. He's a Republican congressman at the border in Texas. Um, and this reporter at the Washington post was like, is there a crisis on the border? And he just could not answer it, because there is no crisis.

Because he knew the truth, but he also didn't want to buck his matters in the party. That's exactly what it is. No, listen to this. Do you believe there's truly a crisis at the border? Let me see if I can... No, I don't have his name and I already closed the article. I'm not going to go back to find it. He said, this has been a problem under multiple administrations.

This is a serious challenge and it takes serious people to solve it. And it's complicated. So we need a thoughtful approach rather than empty rhetoric from both sides, to be frank. And the way that we solve this is by addressing the root causes the violence and lack of economic opportunity in the northern triangle of el of el salvador honduras and guatemala it's like okay we clearly see the bullshit man there's no crisis there ah that's a world-class dancing job though yeah well and so like it's it's um you've got the sort of like foundations of reality crumbling all around us and like the only way to stop it is by an

intervention from the left by a recalcitrant the rec Well, yes, led by Danny Glover, but mostly by a mass movement, because that's the only thing that's going to stop this. And the politics of how that shakes out are going to be complicated, but you can still be a revolutionary and work towards building a mass movement. In fact, it's the only way, it's the only path to revolution. Again, the politics of how that works is very complicated. But hopefully with...

Are you trying to say we might have been wrong about some things? Or is that just a hand of apology in your tone? In the interview, you can hear us sort of struggling with this idea of we don't want to fall

into ultra-leftism. We want to be able to make sure that as revolutionaries, we're staying, we're tracking with the overall motion of the working class

in society right now. All right. It's incredibly difficult to know what that motion is at any given time because things change. But, you know, hopefully by hearing us sort of struggle with it and listening to Max's,

the guest's Max album, listening to his sort of advice to us and, you know, what he has to say about it, then, you know, maybe you'll get something from it. It'll be useful to you in some way. Yeah. then maybe you'll get something from it. It'll be useful to you in some way. At the end of that interview, I asked the question, the subtitle of his book is 60s Radicals Turn Toward Lin and Mao and Che. And I asked him, who are the sort of charismatic figures leading the day?

And what he said is, in essence, is we don't really need those figures necessarily. charismatic figures, you know, leading the day. And what he said is, in essence, is, you know, we don't really need those figures necessarily. And, you know, it's good, but they're not essential. And what I was really wanting to say was, well, you got Danny Glover. Third world Maoist Danny Glover. Third world mouse, Danny Glover. Well, and the other thing, and we didn't get to get into it because we were trying to wrap a neat bow on it, but part of American society is this fascination with great heroes and great leaders. And you do need leaders, but you have to dispense with that idea. It's deeply woven into the idea of America, the idea that heroes and great men of history or whatever drive history forward.

And that's not at all the case. It's mass movements. It's people working in sort of collective unity. And that's what we're going for. That's the target we're shooting for and so um anyways without further ado this is also the um opening episode of the season yeah uh episode one season three although we don't even really keep track of it that way but i just want to remind everybody but please um before you do anything else, smash that fucking pause button. Go to our Patreon.

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Contains many things But go to that And please sign up for our Patreon So that I can get some decongestion medicine And also just have healthcare in general Because I don't have healthcare anymore But support us Because you don't even have to do it for that reason. There's a lot of good content there, and I know you're always looking for good content.

We're going to put out an episode there on Sunday, in fact, and hopefully we'll be doing a free episode a week and a free Patreon, or not a free Patreon a week, but you know what I mean. Yeah. An episode at our Patreon. So please go to patreon.com slash TroublyWorkers40. $5 a month gets you access to all that. Or more.

Or more. If you feel led to. If you feel led to. We'll create tiers one of these days. Yeah. So anyways, without further ado, this is Max Elbaum talking about his book, Revolution in the Air, 60s Radicals Turn to Linen, Mao, and Che. Hey, Terrence. How are you doing?

I'm doing pretty good. How are you doing? The year's getting off to a pretty good start for me. Good. Good to hear it. That makes one of us. Yeah. I'm joined today by my co-host, Mr. Tom Sexton. Hey, Max. Howdy.

Thank you so much for joining us, Max. And thanks for taking time out of your week or out of your newly minted year, to talk with us. Oh, sure. You know, that's what us old guys are supposed to do. Well, it's funny that you say that, because that is one of the themes of your book, this sort of disconnect between the old left and the new left in the 60s, and how, as a result, I think you even have a quote in there at one point about how a lot of the problems that arose in the 70s

could have just been solved with a little bit of intergenerational and communication and sharing. Well, I don't know if they would have been solved, but they certainly would have been handled better, let's put it that way. The disconnect, which wasn't complete, but was way too large, hurt both sides. Yeah. And both sides bear some responsibility for that problem. Well, we're doing our duty. We're doing our due diligence as good, young, budding activists and trying to reconnect with, you know, the elders, as you say.

Oh, he's a buddy. Yeah, well, your generation is a lot more thoughtful on that score and on a lot of scores. I mean, you know, it's hard to generalize about people in generational or any other category, but there's a lot of people from the millennials and then people who are now in their 40s. When I was running around with my book, I learned a new term, Yelders. Yeah. Have you ever heard that one?

I've never heard that. Okay, the Yelders are the people who are in their 40s, maybe, or close to 50, because they're young compared to the boomers, but they're already elders compared to the millennials. So, one of the people, when we were doing one of the book events, said he was a Yelder. Young fogies. Yeah. Well, so thanks for joining us today, Max. There's a lot to talk about your book, and the book is called Revolution in the Air. 60s radicals turn to Lenin, Mao, and Che. I needed to make sure I got those three right.

So, you know, you actually wrote the book in the early 2000s, and I guess it was repressed? I'm not sure how the publishing world works. Well, yeah, I wrote it starting in the late 90s. It came out in 2002. A paperback was issued in 2006 with a new preface that somewhat updated it. And then the publisher Verso, which is a new left review, it's actually the largest English language radical publisher in the world. And they contacted me last summer, maybe before last summer, and said because of the, you know, explosion

of radicalism, Black Lives Matter, Occupy, and then Trump's election and Bernie's campaign, that they thought there was a new audience for it, and they wanted to re-release it. And the only change, they didn't really want me to update the text or anything, but they didn't want someone who was from the younger generation to write a new forward. And so I asked Alicia Garza, one of the co-founders of Black Lives Matter, who I've known for about 20 years now since she was coming up in the radical movements here, and she was generous enough to write something. And then they put it out. Well, we're very grateful that they did. A lot of people that I know are reading it right now. I read it over Christmas, and it did a lot for me.

I don't know. It opened up my eyes to a lot of things I hadn't really thought about before. And so we're going to talk about that here in a minute. But I guess before we go any further, let's maybe, like, set up the cast of characters here. You know, this was, I think one of the reasons this opened up my eyes when I was reading it is because this is a chapter in leftist history that I didn't really know anything about. chapter in leftist history that I didn't really know anything about. And so, you know, it's important because, as you say, there's a lot of lessons you can get from it, positive and negative.

And as I told you in my email, you know, I'm very invested in making sure we don't make the same mistakes, but at the same time that we can pull some of the positive aspects from what you're writing about. So the cast of characters here is the New Communist Movement. So if you could just tell us a little bit about who they were and what movement they were born out of. Well, there was a widespread radicalization in the 1960s movements. widespread radicalization in the 1960s movements. In the 1960s, the two axes of protest were the war and racism, the U.S. war in Vietnam, and then the repression of the civil rights movement, the struggle against Jim Crow. And then as the civil rights movement evolved into black power

and the way that that inspired and interlinked with movements in other communities of color. At the time, we called third world communities the birth of an Asian American movement, a New Chicano movement, a Puerto Rican movement, and so on. And in the late 60s, especially after Martin Luther King's assassination, a lot of people from those movements, both from the student movement and people, especially the white side of the student movement that was mainly organizationally reflected in Students for a Democratic Society, SDS, in communities of color, groups like the Black Panther Party, League of Revolutionary Black Workers, La Raza Unida Party, Young Lords Party. A lot of people, you know, were radicalized, decided the system couldn't be reformed, and looked around for a theory, strategy to make revolutionary change. And there was a large number of people who were

oriented toward Marxism, toward the idea that the working class was the agent of change. Those ideas became more and more popular as people made connections between imperial war and racism and underlying economic structure of the country. So there was a convergence of people from those different movements in the late 1960s, early 70s. And at that time, the motive force globally, the most prestigious and the revolutionary movements that seemed to be having the most success were movements in Asia, Africa, and Latin America led by different Marxist or Marxist-Leninist parties, the Cuban Revolution, the Vietnamese Revolution, movements in Latin America, and the Chinese Revolution. And that seemed to offer a different direction than what had inspired the old left, which was mainly in relation to the Soviet Union.

Of course, there were differences of opinion about those countries and parties. So there was a sort of third world Marxist orientation. People looked to those parties and began to converge around those ideologies. And within this, there were a lot of people who felt that the 60s movements had been very explosive, they had shown the revolutionary potential of large numbers of people, but they lacked a certain kind of leadership and consistent and advanced guard or vanguard of some kind. And the new communist movement was the people who converged from those different movements who felt that there needed to be a new, revolutionary communist party that would take the place of other groups, the existing communist party and other groups on the left,

and it was felt were not fulfilling the role that needed to be fulfilled. were not fulfilling the role that needed to be fulfilled. So in the early 70s, that particular part of the left probably had the most initiative. It attracted a plurality of those who turned toward working-class politics in that period. Not necessarily a majority. Every part of the left grew, but that particular part of the left grew the fastest and particularly attracted the largest number of people coming out of the movements in communities of color. And at its height, probably had about 10,000 people who considered themselves cadre in that movement and a broader array of people who were its supporters and sympathizers.

Yeah. Well, and so that kind of gets at the title of the book itself. You know, the title is Revolution in the Air. Could you talk a little bit about what that revolution was, and, you know, I guess what historical basis for that was, and why it, in your view, necessitated the creation of the vanguard movement. Well, to try to recreate the worldview that we had at the time, the feeling was that sections of the globe had broken off from the imperialist system and had embarked on a different path.

Again, there were differences of opinion, of course, of the relative evaluation of the Soviet Union and China and so on, but there was a feeling that they had taken another path. There were vibrant national liberation movements around the world that were winning. It wasn't just U.S. counterterrorism or counterrevolution in Vietnam, even though the United States was expending so much effort. The Vietnamese were winning. And we saw the birth of movements in the advanced capitalist countries, and we were particularly inspired by what happened in France in 1968, when the students on the barricades, and there was a general strike, 10 million workers, and almost overthrew a government in the heart of industrialized Western Europe. So the notion was that what would happen is that as these national liberation movements gained strength, it would squeeze the empire, and it would create a lot of problems for the capitalist class, because their source of super profits from around the world was going to diminish.

diminish. This would lead to another round of attacks on working class people within the advanced capitalist countries, in particular the United States. And that would lead to an even greater radicalization and a more class-based radicalization that happened in the 1960s. So our feeling was that there was going to be, we recognized that the movements were just going to continue in a linear fashion and get bigger, bigger, bigger. There would be some kind of ebb after the late 1960s. But that what would come around again was that kind of attack, and that if that, what we envisioned as a large-scale working-class upsurge had the leadership that was capable of taking advantage of that

and leading it in an appropriate direction in alignment with those revolutionary movements around the world, we would be successful. If not, in the next stage, we would, you know, it wasn't a prediction that the revolution would necessarily occur in that immediate stage, but that we would make tremendous gains and revolutionary politics would have a firm foothold among millions of people in the United States. Now, what turned out to be correct about that was that there was a big restructuring of capitalism in the early 70s after the recession in 72, 74, and the retrenchment that the U.S. had to make from losing in Vietnam and from having to make a lot of concessions to the vibrant 60s movements at home, gains in the fight against racism, against gender oppression, and so on. But what turned out to be wrong about it was that the way that capitalism was able to restructure itself, and the ruling class used a very sophisticated campaign of racism, anti-feminism, and homophobia to split and divide workers and demoralize the working class movements, that

the country turned to the right instead of to the left. And instead of, in 1980, getting a new upsurge, we got Ronald Reagan and Reaganism in the beginning of what now is called neoliberalism, but a restructuring of capitalism in that direction. So we weren't completely off base, but we did misassess the way the world was going to go. And we weren't able to adjust fast enough in order to maintain the initiative that we had held in the very early 70s. that we had held in the very early 70s. So by the 1980s, this particular movement was having a very difficult time. I guess we'll get into that later. But that was our worldview in the late 60s, 70s,

and it was plausible, but it didn't turn out to be correct. Yeah, you know, this is kind of one of the things that, like, as I was reading it, I sort of had to sit back and be sort of embarrassed and blush a little bit, because, you know, you talk about this concept, this idea that I think a lot of people in my generation probably need to know a little bit more about, but this idea of volunteerism. And, you know, and I think like our generation's probably pretty ironic about it, but we say things like, you know, communism will win, you know, socialism will win. And, you know, I think that that's kind of, it's sort of a new way of, it's not the, it's

not an exact duplicate of Mao's political line determines everything. But could you, I don't know, you've already talked a little bit about the sort of context that led to anti-imperialism. Could you, I don't know, talk a little bit about maybe the politics that sort of gave rise to

Marxism-Leninism, and how voluntarism sort of was born out of that? Yeah, very complicated set of issues. I mean, as far as the volunteerism side, you know, we were in our late teens, our 20s. We had some disconnect with the broader, with the old left, like you described, and we lived through a period of very rapid change. And we, it's very difficult for people, you know, we were young, we had, you know, we were naive. It's very difficult to sort of step way back and locate yourself in history.

And you misassess the degree to which what was happening in the 60s was the result of a certain readjustment in underlying economic and social and demographic trends versus what's created by the will of the people who are active. And there was certainly no shortage of heroism and courage and people putting their bodies on the line in the 60s and that kind of thing. So we tended to have this view that, well, you know, if we just work hard enough and if we have correct ideas and we're on the right side, we can make anything happen. And that's what was sort of meant by volunteerism, that the material conditions are important,

but what's most important is will and determination. And then that got reinforced by certain parts of the global communist movement, particularly the Cultural Revolution in China and some of Mao's writings, which also tended in that direction to talk about, you know, if you have the correct line and if you try hard enough, everything will come your way. Now, most of the Marxist tradition does not agree with that. I mean, the whole Marxism has got to do with, you know, economics, social laws. It's certainly revolution. There is a conscious element, and these decisions and the work of the revolutionaries are needed to push history forward. But there's just a ton of stuff from

Marx, Lenin, Ho Chi Minh, Cabral about rooting what you can accomplish at any given point in the conditions. People make their own history, but they don't make it as they choose. They make it under the circumstances that are directly encountered. And it took us a long time to sort of get a better balance between what can be done by the will of radicals and revolutionaries and what's rooted in the system and what is possible at any given historical moment. What's the balance of forces? What's the strength of capitalism?

What are the underlying trends? Where's the economy going? Things like that. So that was the voluntarist side. That was an attraction of Leninism, because Leninism did, more than various currents that sort of said, well, you just have to fight for reforms, and sooner or later something will happen. Leninism did emphasize the fact that under the right conditions, the unity and strength and will of the revolutionaries can make a big difference. And the fact that the parties around the world that were moving history were identified with Marxism-Leninism was a big factor. The fact that we were fighting against an imperialist war, the war in Vietnam, you know, pervaded every household in the United States. It was just in people's consciousness all the time that people weren't in Vietnam themselves. They all knew people who had gone or were there or who had not come back. So, and it was, in our reading of history, it was the Leninist wing of world communism that had taken the firmer stance against imperialist wars, in solidarity with oppressed peoples and the anti-war stance that they took in World War I.

They were the most consistent. consistent, and the traditional other trends in socialism, particularly what at the time was called social democracy or the version of democratic socialism that existed in the United States then, it's very different now, let me say, but at the time was very lukewarm in its opposition to the Vietnam War. So all those factors led us to adopt various forms of Marxism-Leninism and look to that ideology and that historical tradition. You know, my book tries to sort out what was correct or useful about that and ways in which that went wrong, but that was our mindset at the time. Well, I think that one thing that went right, and that we can learn a lot from, and that

I think that your book does a good job of explaining, is how one thing that you derived from the Leninist tradition was anti-racism. Well, I mean, I'm simplifying that a lot, but the New Communist Movement made anti-racism a central component of its sort of program. And, you know, it's interesting, just comparing this with today, a huge debate, like I'd say a huge, a massive debate on the left currently, is between this question of class versus race, right? You hear about it all the time. And so the center of gravity in that debate is about class and race.

But it seemed like in the 70s, it was kind of just assumed that class, that was just the structure of society. And so the center of gravity in that debate was, you know, something that's really kind of hard maybe for our generation to understand. It was more around this question of whether there's a separate black nation within the United States and whether there's a corresponding Latino nation in the southwest United States. And I'm just

wondering if you could talk about why anti-racism was so central to the new communist movement. Yeah. why anti-racism was so central to the New Communist Movement? Yeah. Well, you know, I've mentioned a couple things where we went wrong, but, you know, the things that gave the New Communist Movement the initiative that it did have in the 70s were positive. I mean, the New Communist Movement moved forward because it, at the time, it was the contingent of the left that had the best interweaving of struggles, international struggles, the struggle against racism.

It pointed us toward the working class and particularly toward the most vulnerable and lower layers of the working class. and lower layers of the working class. And it pointed us in the direction of long-term patient organizing and building important structures where people could operate collectively. So those were all positives. And some of the particular ways we interpreted those might not have been exactly on the target. But those things were very positive. I think the thing about the strength of the movement's commitment against racism and what flowed from that in terms of building multiracial organizations and playing a leading role in

many of the key anti-racist struggles of the period and building a base in communities of color was that we had come out of a period where the independent dynamic, especially in the black freedom movement, was hitting you right in the face. And the black movement itself and the way, because of the location of the black community in U.S. political economy, and this goes back to the formation of the country, racial slavery, black labor building, not just U.S. capitalism, but global capitalism, the role that the black freedom movement has played in opening up struggles, opening up space for all progressive struggles. I mean, in the 60s, it was the Black Freedom Movement that broke the back of McCarthyism.

It didn't only lead to the end of Jim Crow and voting rights, but it spawned a new women's movement, the gay and lesbian movement. It broke racist immigration quotas. lesbian movement. It broke racist immigration quotas. I mean, there were so many things that came out of that, that the majority of radicals of all racial backgrounds at the time recognized the independent revolutionary dynamic of the struggle against racism in the United States. And it was also linked to the global struggle, which was a struggle at the time of left-led national liberation movements against Western domination, against capitalist domination, and white supremacy. So we didn't see ourselves as part of a minority. We were

part of the global majority. And although people had different debates about exactly how to theorize that, the vast bulk of people, and certainly in the new communist movement, saw the dynamic role of the anti-racist movements as opening up space and having its own independent dynamic that could not be reduced to a class situation, and that the interweaving of the class struggle and the struggle of communities of color for equality and liberation were the most powerful motive forces for revolutionary politics. People growing up today, it's just not the same experience. You have a glimpse of the struggle through the role of Black Lives Matter. And for people who are into on the electoral side, the black community is overwhelmingly the most progressive voting bloc in the country. And the kind of candidates that win in black communities and coming out of the black community are overall the most progressive. So there are glimmers of that, but it's not on the same scale and power that we experienced in the 60s. So I think what happens now when people are coming to level radical politics out of a more, the experience of the economic crisis that we're facing, the hardships that, you know, if you look at the

largely white, the student side, you know, student debt and so on, and reading Marx, there's, of course, everyone is against racism, but there's not the same kind of experience that gives one an appreciation of what that really means and how deep it is in U.S. history and the potential of those movements. So I think that that's what over time. As the clout, the Black Freedom Movement took the worst hits from repression in terms of assassination, repression, infiltration. The efforts to destroy independent organization in the black community exceed or match the efforts to destroy the labor movement. If you look at the takedown of ACORN, which was the main black-led, black-based organization in the country, and mobilizing on both electoral and non-electoral terrain, I mean, that was

destroyed by a right-wing operation. So as the black movement regroups and exercises its power, I think there will be a change in people's thinking. There's debate and so on, but intellectual debate only gets so far. It's really experience and what's happening out there in the country. Yeah. And it's really experience and what's happening out there in the country. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's funny you say that. Like, again, when I mentioned, you know, and thank you so much for emailing me back,

because, like, when I mentioned in my email, like, as over the course of 2017 and 18, on our show, we found ourselves sort of drifting more and more to what you would consider the communist left. But I've become very concerned that we're becoming ultra-left. And the main reason for this is because of experience, and it's because of where we live. We live in a very rural area in which the sort of electoral arena isn't necessarily open to us in a way that it is for a lot of people in urban areas and everything. And so as a result, that has kind of produced, not just in our rural area, but in a lot of rural DSA chapters, a form of more radical politics. And so, it's hard. We're trying to thread the needle here between not becoming ultra-left, but also maintaining

this sort of commitment to revolutionary politics within DSA and within other groups. And so, you know, I don't really have much to ask you about that, other than to say it is about experience and it's about struggle, and it's really hard to see something intellectually and make it square with your own personal experience. Does that make any sense at all? Yeah, I think you have – I mean, you're facing some much more difficult objective conditions around you than people in New York or Philadelphia or Oakland or a bunch of – or some of the college towns and so on. You know, if you engage in electoral politics without some kind of organized, without an organized form that has condition where you have not yet got that kind of strength, to try to build up your forces through different kinds of campaigns, working on different struggles, and holding up a consistent social justice politic. justice politic. It's only ultra-left if, in doing that, you burn every bridge with people who might potentially be allies down the road, or you take a stance where, you know, you can fall into a

certain kind of comfort of marginalization, you know, being self-righteous and correct. Oh, we've made all those mistakes. If you avoid those kinds of pitfalls, it makes complete sense to not work in electoral politics at a given time until your conditions are correct to do that and where you have some prospects of making a bit of a difference. of making a bit of a difference. Now, that doesn't mean you should, you know, diss the people who are in different conditions and work in electoral politics, because their conditions are somewhat different. This is a huge country,

and people in rural areas face very different issues than those in urban areas. People who are living in different states, depending on the demographics, depending on what the issues. I mean, I read your piece. I thought it was great about some of the experiences there because of the strength of your opposition and the way that sucks people in to, you know, desperate for some gain, you know, abandoning things that shouldn't be abandoned. So everybody's situation is different.

There's a big difference between saying, look, in a practical matter, we should be doing this and that and not this, and as an ideological statement saying, well, if you do that, you're hopeless, you're terrible, you're a reformist. You know, those are two completely different things. Yeah. Well, that's such a part, I'm really grateful that we're opening up the season with this one.

This is kind of a mea culpa. Yeah, this is the first episode of our season. So, welcome. Last season opener was the actor Nick Offerman. So, you're now up in the pantheon with Nick Offerman. But, you know, so getting back to sort of what you were saying earlier and how we were talking about anti-racism and how, you know, now that we're talking about electoral politics, this is probably a great way to pivot to new—by the late 70s, the new communist movement had sort of fizzled out, split into all kinds of various factions. But some of the remnants, if I could actually speak, yourself included, became involved in the Rainbow Coalition.

So if you could just talk a little bit about y'all your decision to do that and how it wound up playing out. Yeah. Well, you know, Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980, and there was, you know, the right-wing had initiative, and there was resistance. The labor movement launched a major effort. There was a solidarity demonstration after the Patco strike, which was busted by Reagan, which was the key signal that it was open season on the working class. But the problem with the trade union movement at the time was that with some very honorable exceptions, they wanted to take on Reagan's economic policy, but were not willing to take on the military buildup, the Contra Wars in Central America, the nuclear buildup, and they were very lukewarm about taking up the ways in which Reagan and

Reaganism concentrated the attack against the black community in particular. So it was no surprise that out of the black freedom movement, which still had a lot of vibrancy coming out of the 60s, you had a social motion to challenge Reaganism, not solely on economic grounds, but also on the matters of race and on U.S. foreign policy. And that movement in the very early 80s took different forms. And in 1983, it started to, in Chicago, Harold Washington won the mayorship, built a coalition, and finally ended the daily machine and changed Chicago. And Jesse Jackson emerged as the presidential candidate that reflected that motion,

with a base in the black community. And it had politics that were consistent with sort of what we consider to be a united front approach. It didn't have revolutionary politics, but it was against war, it was against racism, it was for economic equality. He spoke out about lesbian and gay rights. He was the first person to utter the word gay or lesbian at a national political convention, and took up the women's movement and fought against the anti-immigrant attacks. So it was a broad social justice program under black leadership.

And in 84 and 88, Jesse ran in the Democratic primary and put those politics out before the country. And the new communist movement, as well as other parts of the left, engaged as a component, and we saw ourselves as the left wing of the rainbow. Jesse built a campaign operation, and there was also an independent organization called the Rainbow Coalition, which endorsed its own candidates and also took up non-electoral struggles, supporting strikes, supporting

there were a lot of rural struggles going on at the time, especially in Kansas. Jesse went to Kansas and other places and backed the farmers' fights there against bank loans and all kinds of stuff going on and restructuring of agriculture. So we viewed that as a broad front, a progressive front, and a vehicle through which revolutionaries were accepted to work in the campaign. We didn't have any problems. There wasn't any red-baiting. to work in the campaign. We didn't have any problems. There wasn't any red-baiting. And we shouldered our share of the work, and the organizations that grew themselves into it tended to grow in influence. But the balance of forces wasn't that favorable, and especially after 1988. You know, in 1989, Jesse got 7 million votes in 1988.

The most anyone, any losing candidate for presidential nomination had ever gotten up until that point. But in 1989, you had the collapse of the Soviet bloc. You had the Tiananmen Square massacre in China. A year later, the Sandinistas lost the election. Pretty much the whole of world communism and socialism was in a big crisis and reevaluation period. And the organizations on the ground of the new communist movement and others were having all those problems of dealing with reexamining some of our ideological things. And then, so the left wing of the rainbow was weaker than the more other progressive forces. And basically what ended up happening is the Democratic Party leadership offered Jesse a deal.

They said, look, if you cut those leftists loose, we'll make sure you're funded and you can be a voice and you can continue to support your progressive things. But why are you hanging out with all these people who don't have much influence and like that? And of course, we hope Jesse would not take that deal. But under the balance of forces at the time, we didn't have the muscle, and we didn't have the base, and we weren't able to keep that flat together. So Jesse did what he did, and the Rainbow Coalition declined. He still played a progressive role in U.S. politics and spoke out on a lot of key issues, but the kind of independent sort of party within a party, a independent structure that would fight both on electoral terrain and non-electoral terrain, that would run, you know, sort of like what Bernie is trying to do now, which is, you know, contend and try to fight against the corporate Democrats as well as fighting against the right wing, that dribbled

away. And the combination of the rainbow dribbling away and the crisis in world communism, that pretty much put the kibosh on the last large remnants from the new communist movement. And those, over the next couple of years, dissolved or transformed into other things. There are still a few groups around that trace their legacy to the new communist movement, but they're relatively small compared to the left overall. small compared to the left overall. And none of them have much initiative in the new upsurge of the last couple years. So, you know, it's a difficult story.

And there's a, I mean, I can recommend some materials on it. There's a, one of the projects I work on called Organizing Upgrade did a big seminar on the rainbow, and there's a bunch of videos and debates of people who participated in it of what they make of it now. It's a rich history. It didn't work out, but it has a lot of lessons for various efforts today. Yeah. Well, I think that as a narrative, that pretty much sort of encapsulates the book.

But before we let you go, I kind of just wanted to do like maybe a eulogy of sorts. You know, I just kind of want, you have this great chapter at the end of the book. It's just called Lessons. And, you know, I'll just read from part of it. And I just kind of want to go through and maybe talk about three points that you make. You said, even beyond the particular requirements of periods when mass movements are an ebb and no mass base for socialism is on the horizon, many aspects of what the new communist movement considered So, first is the proposition that one party alone can embody revolutionary working class politics in a given country does not hold up.

So, could you talk a little bit about what you mean by that? Could you talk a little bit about what you mean by that, and if you say that—I guess we haven't really defined the term of vanguard in this whole interview, but I'm kind of wondering if you're saying to discard it completely, or if the material conditions of vanguard, the traditional Marxist-Leninist view, which is arguable whether it was actually Lenin's view or not. But basically, there was a view that if you had the correct Marxist-Leninist ideology, that gave you the franchise on being the vanguard in that country. And since there was only one correct ideology, there could only be one vanguard. Now, I think that approach to it is wrong. What I think is true is that you need leadership, and there's forces will emerge that will play that kind of leading role. But it's not determined in advance by the fact that they hold a certain ideology. A vanguard title is earned by the fact that a particular political force provides the kind of leadership and back and forth with mass movements that it earns in be one or one monolithic force that plays that is not correct. It can be a coalitional of parties.

I do think that when you reach the actual moment of revolution, everybody on the revolutionary side's got to coordinate together. So in that sense, you know, there's one force. But along the way, there may be two or three parties that are playing that kind of role, or different parties in some kind of left block. For example, in El Salvador, there was the FMLN, which functioned as a unified body, but was made up of five different revolutionary organizations. So I think the idea that a leadership role is earned and not awarded by having the correct, allegedly correct ideology, and that there has to be a little more flexibility of different attempts along the way, I think those things are what modify the classical Leninist notion. You know, there's one communist party in each country.

That party is determined by the fact of who's loyal to a particular ideological force, whether or not they have any influence or not. I mean, you know, the reason that the FMLN and the Communist Party in El Salvador, which simply it was one force, it had its strength, but there were four other organizations and two of them were larger. And at a certain point, the people in the Communist Party said,

well, hey, they're genuine revolutionaries. We've got to be alive with them instead of acting as if, because we have the franchise, we're the only ones. Yeah. And I think that, so maybe connected to that is also you need leadership, but you also need cadre. And the way that you use it in the book, you know, this is another thing that we haven't discussed so far. But could you talk about why that's so important, what it is, first of all, and why it's so important? Any political project needs people who understand it, become skilled at it, who understand it, become skilled at it, learn what it takes to advance it, and different skills, and who dedicate a big part of their life to doing it.

And that's what I mean by a cadre. So trade unions have cadre, revolutions have cadre, right-wing groups have cadre. Cadre on the left, the term has sometimes been discredited because the images of people in these small sects selling their newspaper, mouthing the party line, sort of cog a big substantial amount of their time and energy and thought to that project, depending on the level of class struggle at a given moment. If you're in a military situation, the cadre are functioning in a military way. If you're not, which we are not today, people put in a lot of time, but, you know, they have lives, and they do other things, too. So you need to have cadre. You need to have people who are going to move the project forward. And the new communist movement had some advanced experience.

We worked to train people, give people skills. We were sensitive to inequalities within the movement along lines of class and race and gender. We crafted people's assignments so that they could maximize their strengths. People who had more difficult time with academic reading were given extra time to do that kind of thing. There was a lot of work with people, and people learned some tremendously valuable skills. People, all the movements today, from the labor movement to the gay and lesbian movement, a lot of the people who've been stalwarts of those movements came out of the new communist movement or other left tendencies because of the skills

they learned. We also, though, we did build groups that tended toward conformity of ideology, and that part inhibited people's development and ultimately, you know, led to those groups being too rigid. But the systematic training and development of people, which includes helping people participate in debates and form their own opinions, I mean, we're not talking about creating a bunch of automatons here. There's going to be differences of opinion, and we need to develop people as critical thinkers, as well as having skills in whether it's organizing propaganda, finance, demonstrations, how to run a political campaign, a mass campaign, civil disobedience, electoral, you name it. We need to have people who have those skills in every single—we don't cede anything to the enemy class.

Any terrain that's available to be fought, any skill, social media, you name it, we need it. That's a good way to put it. And I really like the part about fostering free thinking and sort of democratic atmospheres because the last thing we want is to become sort of siloed off and isolated. And as you sort of outlined, constantly trying to cram current history into these sort of frameworks of past ideological systems and frameworks. And that to me is a big lesson here. So the second thing, and we'll just kind of go over, we'll just sort of slide by it because you already kind of addressed it, but you said an organization's unity on an ideological system say marxism leninism rather than a political program say socialism is fraught

with danger and we already kind of talked about that um and i think the dsa is you know pretty good on that count like there there is no ideological system at the heart of it that you have to swear allegiance by and so that that's a good model, I suppose. And then third, the thing that you wrote is, and I just kind of wanted to get you to talk a little bit about this. To make any practical headway, it is absolutely necessary to develop a concrete conception of how to intervene in U.S. politics and a set of intermediate or transitional goals. So I assume there you're talking about seizing power, because that's what we're talking about,

right? Right. So, I'm sorry, go ahead. Well, you know, we're not going to go from Trump to socialism. Right. That's just not going to happen. It's a nice idea, and we certainly should be talking about socialism as an alternative system. People are already talking about it.

They don't need us to be talking about socialism right now. But what we need is some kind of notion of what is realistically possible. You know, if you raise people's expectation too high, and this happened out of the 60s, if you told people the revolution was happening 10 years and it didn't happen and people took all kinds of risks and all that, then you disappoint people and you burn people out. You need hope and vision, but it has to be realistic. So my preference on that, and there are many others out there. I think others are, you know, I don't have this as opinion as opposed to something I, you know, am at all invested in. But I think the notion of a third reconstruction provides some guidance about what an intermediate stage or phase would be. guidance about what an intermediate stage or phase would be. You know, it harks back to Reconstruction, which were the most progressive governments

on U.S. soil since the American Revolution. It links together, you know, Reconstruction, black-led, but a broad coalition, electoral and non-electoral, public schools, the public good. And then second Reconstruction, the 1960s, the overthrowing of Jim Crow, the opening up of the women's movement, and so on. I don't think it's an accident that the Poor People's Campaign, led by Reverend Barber, which harks back to Reverend King, has four spearheads, the three great evils from Martin Luther King, talking about the end of racism, militarism, and extreme materialism or capitalism, poverty,

and has added environmental protection. And that Reverend Barber's written quite extensively about that that kind of program is a third reconstruction program. And you could build a broad front about it. It targets the key constituencies that could develop that front. It builds on the notion of the Poor People's Campaign, which King was involved in when he was assassinated. It's not socialism, but it's the kind of thing that you could envision if the Trumpists are thrown out and the progressives nationally, and again, I recognize it's very uneven state to state, and you're in a tough spot there. But if you look at national politics, the ability of the progressive wing to have a voice and move something forward

toward a third reconstruction program. I think that's realistic. It's a stretch, but it's something that could actually be achieved, certainly in your lifetime, maybe not in mine. But so that kind of a thing, what's the next phase? So that kind of a thing. What's the next phase? What's something that we can get that's not just, you know, let's beat the right wing, but that's something that people can grab onto a little more than, well, we're going to take power what it is. But I don't think there's that many people out there who think socialism is on the agenda in the United States in the next five or ten years. I think it's, you know, you've got 40% of the country that's heavily armed and ready to go and absolutely rabid behind. I mean, they think Obama's a communist.

I mean, for heaven's sake. So, I don't know, that's the direction of what I was trying to point out in that passage that you read. Yeah, it's all about, as you said multiple times, it's all about the motion of the sort of, I don't know what you would call it, political economy is not the word, but just of politics. It's the motion of politics at that time. And I agree, if you want to talk about Reconstruction, you came to the right place. Definitely don't get me started on the topic, because I'll take another hour or two of your time. But we are definitely big fans of Reconstruction. So, no, that's great. And, you know, I've learned a lot from

your book. You've done a great service to all of us by writing it and especially by putting it back out at this time. Tom, do you have any questions that you want to ask? Yeah, Max, just to close out, you know, the subtitle of your book here, 60s Radicals Turned to Lin and Mao and Che, who are those figures in what you all would have called the third world, what we might call the global south, that the 2019 radicals might turn to? Who are the Chase, Sankaras, Ho Chi Minhs, those type figures out there right now

that if we're living in our sort of parochial American bubble, we might be missing? Well, who's out there today? You know, there's a lot of reconstruction that's got to go on in the other movements, too. They took hard hits, you know, and some of the people we respected the most in the last 20 years, it hasn't worked out so well. So I think that's one of the difficulties the Advantager generation has. And I want to make sure this gets registered. You know, it works both ways. You know, my own thinking, there were people who were 25 years younger than me

who helped me write that book and gave me the feedback about what was important and what wasn't. And it's also energizing for the people my age to know that there's folks like you who are picking up the baton so seriously. I mean, you don't have the benefit of coming up at a high point time quite the way that we did in the 60s, not just a high point time, but such an optimistic time. So I think a lot of the credit goes in your direction. And, you know, great figures, I mean, there is leadership. I believe in that. I believe individuals play a role.

But there's something positive about having a clean slate. You know, one of the lines in The International is we need no condescending saviors. And the left, like all movements, has sometimes look too much to, you know, this hero or that hero is going to save us. And it's people laboring in the grassroots movements that really move things. And you guys are out there in tough circumstances. I read that article, Terrence, that you wrote. Really solid piece. Thank you.

You know, you guys are the future. And the role of us who've been around is to get behind you. So I hope this can be more than a one-shot deal. I'd love to stay in touch and get in behind you and get to your place sometime and kick it over beer and coffee. Oh, that'd be great. We would love that. You know, we try to get as many people to come to Weisberg as possible. We might do that at some point, fly you out of here.

Yeah, well, I have some friends in Louisville. We had a chapter of the New Communist group I was in in Louisville, and I learned that Louisville was a two-syllable word. You know, I'd love to get back out there again. Great. Well, Max, thank you again. The book, as you've probably heard us say multiple times, Revolution in the air, 60s radicals turn to linen. Mal and Che, thank you so much, Max, and we'll talk to you soon. Great. Thanks, you too. Really appreciate it. See you. Take care.

It's been a pleasure. Thank you, Max. See you. See you. See you. We don't need one another. If we can't trust each other. We don't need one another. If I, I can't leave home. Without you thinking I'm doing wrong.

If you can't go out on the town without me thinking, you're messing around. If we can't trust each other ever, that's the use of watch being together. If we can't trust each other, we don't need one another. If we can't trust each other, we don't need one another. I'm a nut. If I get all the time, every time you're out of my mind.