Ba De Dum!

My dad got waylaid by a canvasser on the street yesterday morning, drumming up support for Cheney’s impeachment. Dad said he was down with the cause, and asked what he could do to help. “Give money,” she said.

He gave her three bucks.

Behind this anecdote is a question.  Now, the dad is cynical enough to have given to the vendor despite his opinion that he’s a “bit of a wacko” because of both the humor and the “truth told in jest” behind the comment “he’s eighty-four years old” and the fact that he agrees with the sentiment of impeaching Cheney.  But what do we make of the vendor?  Where does her cynicism pop into the picture?  There are two immediate options: either she believes in Larouche and has come up with the line “he’s eighty-four years old” as a manner of parting reluctant people out of their money, or she has glommed onto what was the most immediate manner of addressing the political situation she disapproves of, and cynically is passing through Larouche as an intermediary on the way to that cause.

A third option is the Ruth Williams slow-burn realization that this is crap, and thus she slowly peters out to the end.

………………………..

Rummaging through this book (and I link to the wikipedia article instead of my usual Amazon.com link to books because the links to reviews and criticisms of the book — ie: its possible faults — are instructive), I’m bemusing myself with the question of “How do you dissolve a cult?”  There are no particularly easy answers, the members of a cult have been particularly groomed and tested and retested for loyalty’s sake.  I gravitate toward the end of the chapter concerning Marlene Dixon, which parallels the similar path to a cult’s destruction as Greg Healy.  Reagan / Thatcher made the farthest reaches of left-wing thought propagated by the Masters look irrelevant to the situation at hand.  Political cults, unlike religious ones, are vulnerable to broader movements in politics that can make it harder for leaders to justify to the membership their sacrifices.  Our friend in Virginia has that covered: he moved from the far left to the far right, and has feigned across the more mainstream political spectrum ever since, without really changing any positions.

The third element, critical to the process, is a breakup of the leadership group.  Dixon survived as long as she did because her worst features and corruption were hidden from the membership by a tight circle of leaders.  Most important was her second in command, Sandra.  In 1982 Dixon turned viciously against Sandra.  Sandra at the same time expressed her disdain for the group and began to toy with the idea of leavaing with a small coterie to set up a think tank in Washington.

It was the opening provided by divisions in the leadership that permitted an outpouring of the rage of the members against the guru.  The members of the DWP were worn out from working “seven day weeks and until 1 am most nights for years.”  Many had lived in poverty in collective houses and yearned for a more balanced life with some time for family and career.  It became harder for the members to believe that the very real sacrifices they were making were actually producing results.  Once the full extent of Dixon’s alcoholism, irrationality and privileged life-style was exposed to the members, there was no putting the pieces back together again.

And on and on.  Back to Larouche, I mention that Dennis Kucinich, on the edge of the Democratic Party, has issued letters of impeachment for Dick Cheney.  It is not too hard to imagine that the channels of distribution of the idea came from out of Larouche, by way of cultural osmosis, really.  (Kucinich heard it sometime, maybe received letters from constituents recommending he needs to impeach Cheney First, etc.) Larouche claims to be in working relations with Bill Clinton, so even the sort-of-accidental influence of a less than central figure pushing an DOA bill must be a little off.  Nonetheless, it is enough to write up for the purpose of convincing his followers that he yields influence.  (Hey!  He takes credit for the ideas behind a Chuck Hagel op-ed piece on Iraq, even as I murmur that I remember distinctly the “Larouche Doctrine” included the absolutely insane necessity that it be referred to “the Larouche Doctrine” — by way of his only real political belief of “See that Crisis?  Me For Dictator!”–, meaning whatever else the sensical ideas of convening the neighboring nations in a conference and whatever political divisions Hagel has in mind for Iraq may or may not have in common with Larouche’s ramblings on the topic, it ends up having no relation whatsoever.)
I wish that every person in Larouche’s orbit over the age of 30 would just walk out and quit right now.  This would leave Larouche with what he seems to desire at the moment, what his organization has built its temples of fantasy (paging Robert Beltan) and geared it toward — the “Larouche Youth Movement”.  In a sense taking him back to his beginning of a small group of grad students, albeit a number more, devoid of long-timers who have a moment’s pause if they can recollect a bit of a sense of history.  (Do not personally recall Reagan.)   (That covers the baby-boomers, the tweeners, and Generation X.  I detect that the Tweeners are lumped in with the baby-boomers in the Larouche screeds against baby-boomers, and the odd recommendation of suicide.)

……………

From the factnet board, a bit of comedy by the perhaps over-committed, perhaps not, ex-Larouchite:

Big things are taking place in Windy Hill , the secret location of the man who has successfully predicted the end of the world, economy and Hegla’s shopping trips for over 3 decades.

“Those fiends” snarled Lyn, as barked on the LarouchePhone to make sure that the LPAC quota of 10,000 hits a day is met, or humanity is doomed as we know it.

You know, had a Democrat been in the White House, and certainly a Clinton, there would be a bigger proponent of 9/11 conspiracy theorists off of the edge of the right-wing, and by that dent off of the edge of the Republican constituency, as opposed to where we are now with a Bush in the White House (The CIA’s bastard son), and the necessity of The Nation to publish Altermann editorials wagging the smattering of some of the “9/11 Truth”ers in the midst of some meetings with largely liberal groupings.  None of which is to even toss an arrow at the 9/11 conspiracy theorists, but is by way of observation.

I am surprised that I can not find the story of Virgin Atlantic Airlines’ giving Loose Change 2 as an option on Alex Jones’s “prisonplanet.com”.  I have to surf through the web to find an editorial against this decision, and by way of explanation:

On Tuesday Virgin Atlantic revealed it would present among its onboard viewing options Loose Change 2, a revolting conspiracy fantasy – its makers prefer the description “documentary” – which claims to present evidence that September 11 was an inside job pulled off by the wicked government of George W. Bush.

In other words, 9/11 is the greatest con since France tricked everyone into believing it was a nation of intellectuals. Loose Change 2 – the second version contains extra portions of stupidity – makes similar claims, all of them ridiculous, and easily demolished by the non-idiotic.

Your little update:

Virgin Airlines has pulled a controversial internet documentary on 9/11 from its in-flight entertainment system after complaints from bloggers and radio shows.

Fair enough, and I’m not surprised, and have no real opinion on the matter.  Except to say this: why would anyone want to watch a presentation, conspiracy-oriented or not, pretend for a moment that it is issued straight from the government, of airplanes crashing into the World Trade Center (and crashed into a Pennsylvania wheat field) while riding on an airplane?

Barack Obama has become the earliest presidential candidate to receive secret service protection.  This is just as well, considering how front-loaded the process is.  Mind you, Hillary Clinton has secret service protection, but that is by dent of her status as former First Lady, which solves one of the odd riddles:  The reason Barack Obama is so kill-worthy is that he is black.  In the battle to see whether the undercurrent of fear and hatred of the prospects of a black president or a female president, the test of threat assessment to arrive at Secret Service Protection has been mooted.

Pondering the imponderables, our friend Rush Limbaugh, in his usual coy way to “expose liberal hypocrisy” (if you say so) has adopted a theme song for Barack Obama.  “Barack the Magic Negro”.  It is by way of an LA Times editorial, with his assertion that “the drive by media” and “liberal bloggers” will claim Rush created it.
Sure, why not?  If it’ll get me mentioned on the show, than by all means: Rush Limbaugh created the term “Magic Negro”.  Weeeee!  Fun.
I suppose this is a teaching moment.  It is important that the word “negro” be used in the term as a reference to our uncomfortable compact to our racial attitudes of the past, and continuation into the present.  Frankly, I have come to understand all or most presidential candidates as people who are waffly enough that we project stuff onto.  We could not really get a handle on George W Bush in 2000.  Or Bill Clinton in 1992.  It is sort of why John Kerry wasn’t successful against a weakening incumbent.  Obama just adds a racial dimension to the mix.

For Rush, it really is just an excuse to throw around the term “negro”.  He will be picking up any leftover editorial comment and flogging it in a “What me worry?” manner.  I do not know if he termed “Halfrican”, but I do know he can claim to have picked up the idea of “not too black… not too white” from the political ether, and… well, if he wants to, subtley toss the Jeffersons theme song when discussing any number of black politicians.

I will say this in passing.  I have noticed an uncomfortable ease with which the word “negro” is being used, generally with an understated quotation marks around the word.  Michael Richards notwithstanding, nobody white says “nigger” — at least not in my presence.  (The “behind closed doors in the privacy of their own country club” scenario will have to play out somewhere else.)  It is almost as though we’ve quietly shuffled from that to the other “n” word.  But what’s in a word? — I don’t know… Truman would have used that term and not had the faintest idea what an “African American” is.

Granted, we have a sort of permanent silly season in politics, and the presidential race is… absurd in its longevity of focus.  (I suppose that wouldn’t be too ridiculous if it weren’t personality – driven, and narrowed to 2 or 3 candidates to each party, but it is.)  Somewhere past asking Giuliani for the cost of milk or asking Romney for his favorite book, something… popped out at me.  A certain cynicism from members of the chattering class in a transcript of the MSNBC program Tucker, exclamation point.

Tucker asks his interchangable pundit… who would kill more people at whim, Giuliani or Clinton.

………..

CARLSON: I wonder why it is then that Hillary Clinton, once you take a look at the records and what they say, clearly the most conservative, why is it that she is the most disliked, more dislike, I would say, by Republicans than anybody, including Dennis Kucinich or Mike Gravel?

BARTLETT: I think she is the most disliked by Democrats.

CARLSON: That`s true actually. Why is that?

BARTLETT: Something about her personality. It grates on people. I don`t think — She doesn`t have her husband`s winning personality. Let`s face it, she has to work at it a lot harder, but, you know, we have elected presidents who have had a lot of worse personalities than her; Richard Nixon, for example. I think if she can position herself as the  candidate of competence, she will have a very good chance. I think Republicans and conversation are wrong to underestimate her.

CARLSON: Would you personally vote for her?

BARTLETT: I would vote for her against some people. I don`t know.

CARLSON: Like who?

BARTLETT: Well, I`m just not very happy about any of the Republicans running. I think Giuliani seems like — has an authoritarian personality.

CARLSON: Wait, wait, and Hillary Clinton doesn`t? You`re saying that he has a more authoritarian personality than Hillary Clinton. If both of them had absolute power, let`s just say, a mind experiment, if they had absolute power, who would kill more?

BARTLETT: That`s a tough question. I think Giuliani would kill more.

I think he`s a tougher guy. And I don`t mean that in a positive way, really. I mean probably the guy who looks the best to me right now is the guy who`s, you know, in the wings, Fred Thompson, but that`s only because I don`t really know exactly where he stands on the issues. He`s just a potentially better candidate than the guys they have running.
……………..

Pausing for a minute, all I can do is pause.

Fantastic election coming up!  Hillary Clinton versus Rudy Giuliani — Skull and Bones Decision 2008: Elect your mass-killer.

I’m only passing on words from mainstream conservative media honchos.

I’m guessing that the prima facie evidence that I know nothing about Lyndon Larouche is that I have not donated $2000 to any of his campaigns and am not standing with box-cards hawking his literature on street corners or on college campuses.

This is in in reference to Brian.  I believe in free will, and I believe we can hand that free will to anyone or anything we want to to whatever degree we want to do so.  (Is Mike Gravel a better successor to FDR?  I don’t know.  He couldn’t be worse.)
My response to “dcreporter”, and I am tempted to give out the name of the publication — actually in a sly manner where I invert the words of the publication and toss in a few participles, was essentially a deferal.  In terms of rummaging through old EIR publications, there is something I would do if I could stomache these things: collegate and trace the history of Larouche’s use of the word “baby-boomer”.  Googling “larouchepub” and “baby boomer”, and what seems to predominate are a bulk of interviews held between two people discussing the greatness of Lyndon Larouche.  (Larouche’s publications are odd in that way.)  For some reason the word “baby boomer” is not highlighted, as per the regular google functions, and I am not willing to wade through this crap to be able to sort through the use of the word “baby boomer” as a pejorative.  (The earliest appearance using this minimal technique is 1995.)
A few years ago, after Larouchites succeeded in aggrivating the campus of Portland State Unviersity (a tactical guerilla operation beyond the typical setting up of a card table), and made enough of a nuisance of themselves, the school newspaper ran the article “Who Is Lyndon Larouche?”  In retrospect, I do not believe the article was particularly insightful, even with a bit more meat on it than I’ve come to find out is usual for these things.  It seemed to be dragged down by explanation of the nature of Larouche’s opposition to the wars in Iraq.  (1991 and 2003).   What is weird is that I think there should be just be one form item written, easy to be used by any college whenever it seems necessary with a handful of bullet point items on the history of Larouche.  Out of the student forment of SDS at Columbia University, lead a group of self-described Trotskyites, lead a campaign of violence against Communists with billy-clubs and machettes in “Operation Mop Up”, any number of items can be plugged in from there to te 1986 and 1988 California ballot measures that would have quarantained AIDs patients, prisioned for fraud and served 5 years of a — 15 year?– sentence, and now we can touch upon Jermiah Duggan, if we want to.  Badda bing badda boom, write it someone, let it out to fair use, and don’t think too hard when the topic of Larouche comes up on campus.  (The vast majority of students and everyone sees a charlatan operation intuitively anyways.  point oh oh oh oh one percent notwithtanding.)

I must say that I find Mitt Romney’s answer to the question of what his favorite book is, the answer being Battlefield Earth by L Ron Hubbard — with the caveat that he doesn’t think much of the religion or Hubbard, kind of refreshing.  It is impossible to peg this answer in any way as being in any way pandering, which means that … Mitt Romney evidently answered the question honestly, smirking from science fiction fans and anyone else be damned.  It’s not a George W Bush Summer reading list created for public consumption, believable to nobody.

To mock this answer is to run into the age old riddle of politics: we either want completely polished and smooth politicians and attack mericilessly anything that smacks of a gaffe, or we want to pry the consultants away.

From wikipedia:

On May 1, 2003 George W. Bush landed on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, in Navy One, a Lockheed S-3 Viking, wearing a flight suit. A few minutes later he gave a speech announcing the end of major combat operations in the Iraq War. Clearly visible in the background was a banner stating “Mission Accomplished.”

Bush’s historic jet landing on the carrier, the first by a sitting president, was criticized by opponents as an overly theatrical and expensive stunt. For instance, they pointed to the fact that the carrier was well within range of Bush’s helicopter, and that a jet landing was not needed.[1] Originally the White House had stated that the carrier was too far off the California coast for a helicopter landing and a jet would be needed to reach it. On the day of the speech, the Lincoln was only 30 miles from shore but the administration still decided to go ahead with the jet landing. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer admitted that the president “could have helicoptered, but the plan was already in place. Plus, he wanted to see a landing the way aviators see a landing.”[2] The Lincoln made a scheduled stop in Pearl Harbor shortly before the speech, docked in San Diego after the speech, and returned to its home base in Everett, Washington on May 6, 2003.

I am tempted to consider this the most obnoxious piece of agit-prop of the wars that George W Bush has shuffled under “War On Terror”.  Perhaps the mythologized stories of Pat Tillman and Jessica Lynch better qualify, but they at least had the possibility of never being tested and prodded away to full exposure of their very artifice.  In the case of the Tillmans, it was the wrong family to concoct a story out of — what with Pat Tillman being the stereotype-breaking Noam Chomsky accolade NFL star, a dichotomy I saw some indymedia posters as well as Ann Coulter unable to grapple with.  Theoretically, the Pentagon thought they saw unsophisticated West Virginia hicks in the Lynches — easy to be persuaded that hyping up a story of Jessica Lynch’s heroism is good for the morale of the nation, so let it be — it will work out for us all.  But sometimes you just have to trust American’s (and anyone in the world’s, for that matter) ability to push out the BS when necessary.

The “MIssion Accomplished” banner was flawed from the beginning.  Bush’s accompanying speech was full of mixed messages, and again the wikipedia article explains the problem:

Whether meant for the crew or not, the general impression created by the image of the President under the banner has been criticized as premature — especially later as the guerrilla war began. Subsequently, the White House released a statement saying that the sign and Bush’s visit referred to the initial invasion of Iraq. Bush’s speech noted:

“In the Battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.”

Bush appeared to have been hedging his bets.  Even then, guerilla fighting was moving forward, deaths were coming, and surely someone somewhere in Bush Administration knew this was going to continue.  Perhaps they had the apologia in mind — they did not say “Mission Accomplished” because they said “we still have difficult work”.  Weak in a visual world, and for that matter in an audio world where you can splice the contradiction together in five seconds.

I always thought that if Bush had lost the presidential election, this would have been when he lost it.  There was a measure of managing expectations that he screwed up, within the time-frame that he could float the electoral math of the Iraq War in his favor.  (That pretty well expired just after election day, actually, with help from John Kerry’s contradictions.)  But this presidency is impulsive in this regard: anything for a cheap and temporary thrill.

Four years hence, the Democratic Congress sends a bill of non-binding timetables to meet with Bush’s second veto.  The debate over the nature of the Democratic Congress — they sent us a bunch of conservative Democrats, right? — is somewhat beside the point.  The Democratic class of 2006 was a smidgen to the left on economic matters than their predecessors– if you want to say protectionist I don’t particularly care right now to quibble –, a bit over the map in social issues, and… the only real common denominator no matter how they stack up on the other matters — the voters gave them a Prime Directive to deal with Bush’s obstinance with the Iraq War.  And that battle commences, awkwardly.  To Accomplish a Mission, or not to accomplish a mission.

The “Mission Accomplished” banner has finally come back to Bush.  As we had to have known it would.

Mull this for a moment, and…

The following comes from Tim Wohlforth’s 1994 book The Prophet’s Children: Travels on the AMerican Left, and is somewhat redundant to this here. As a matter of course, I think this book excerpt is a little more lucid, maybe simply because it is situated in a longer narrative, and ultimately one of more significant reach.

I pass this along with an admission that I am pouring through a different book co-written by Wohlforth, On the Edge: Poltiical Cults Right and Left, for a somewhat more pertinent and diabolical post, which may just end up being a few excerpts from this book which serve as very specified case studies and may have me actually having something to say, which would be entitled “How to Dissolve a Cult“. Useful to whom, I can’t quite say.

Shouldn’t I be mocking the latest political Prostitution Scandal or something?

……………………………………………………..

That year we got our next wave of recruits from the SWP, and we could not have done worse. We began discussions with LL. I had known Lyn just a little when I was an SWP member. He lived in a nice apartment on Central Park West with his wife, Janice, and small child. Lyn earned his living at the time as an economic consultant, playing no role at all in the party discussions in the 1961 to 1964 period. After we had all left, L suddenly stirred from his slumbers and started submitting lengthy documents to the SWP discussion bulletin. He developed positions that at least appeared to be close to ours, and we began a collaboration.

He had by then left his Central Park West wife and was living in the Village with Carol Larrabee (Schnitzer, White), a woman who had joined the SWP during the regroupment period. L had a gargantun ego. A very talented, brilliant fellow, he was convinced he was a genius. He combined a strong conviction in his own abilities with an upperclass arrogance that, happily, I rarely encountered in radical circles. He assumed that the famous comment in the Communist Manifesto, that a “small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift, and joins the revolutionary class” was written specifically for him.

The characteristics of L’s thinking process, which he would later develop to reactionary extremes, were already present when I knew him in 1965. He possessed a marvelous ability to place any event in the world within a larger perspective, a talent that seemed to give the event meaning. The problem was that his thinking was schematic and lacking in factual detail, and ignored contradictory considerations. His explanations were just a bit too perfect and his mind worked too quickly that I always suspected that his bravado covered superficiality. L had the “solution” to anything and everything. It was almost like a parlor game. Just present a problem to L, no matter how petty, and without so much as blinking his eyes, he would come up with the solution, usually prefacing his remarks with “of course.”

I remember private discussions I had with L in 1965 when he went on at length about Kennedy, Rockefeller, and the Trilateral Commission. L held to a view that there existed a network of foundations and agents of the more moderate, internationalist-oriented, Eastern-based capitalists who sought to avoid unrest at home through reform projects and to avoid revolution abroad through development programs like the Alliance for Progress. He was very much a believer in conspiracy theories. I, even in my most ultraleft days, was a bit of a sceptic. For L, even as a radical, the liberals were the main enemy.

I was distrubed by L’s thinking process in those days. I do not claim to have realized then where he would end up, but he definitely made me uncomfortable. He seemed to be an elitist with little interest in the plight of ordinary people. His ideas were too schematic and mechanical for my taste. I could not agree with the position he expounded in that period that the Vietnam War was a battle over Vietnam’s capabilities of becoming the breadbasket for the industrialization of Asia. I also was suspicious of conspiracy theories.

L stayed with us only six months — I think our little group was not big enough to contain him — and he moved on to Robertson’s Spartacist League. Unable to win this group over to “Lism”, Lyn and Carol left after a few months. Sometime later we got a letter from him in which he announced that all factions and sections of the Trotskyist Fourth International were dead and that he and Carol were going to build the Fifth International. I suppose, in a way, this is what he thinks he has done.

I continued to follow L’s political evolution after he left our group. Dennis King, who has made a study of L, has noted that I was “one of the first observers to spot something amiss.” In the beginning of 1967 L and his wife joined a relatively broad coalition of New Left intellectuals called the Committee for Independent Political Action. He gained control of the West Village CIPA branch and started gathering a coterie of young intellectuals. He had finally discovered his milieu, and success swiftly came his way. Through a combination of rather high-level classes and spirited polemics, L won over a group of graduate students, most of whom were members or sympathizers of Progressive Labor. Progressive Labor was in that period at the height of its strength within SDS. L’s gifted young intellectuals included […]

It was the Columbia University occupation and student strike in 1968 that established Larouche on the left. The student movement there was being led by SDS. There were two main factions in SDS, reflecting a split developing in the national organization: Mark Rudd’s Action Faction, and a somewhat more moderate group known as Praxis Axis. The rather appropriate names were coined by L. The Rudd group was interested only in provocative demonstrations and punch-ups with the cops. It would soon emerge as the Weatherman group of underground terrorists. The Praxis group was influenced by the French intellectual Andre Gorz, who held that a new working class was being created by modern technoloy. The students were the vanguard of the new working class. Gorz’s ideas gave the group a kind of mainstream “student power” perspective. L captured most of the PL-SDS group at Columbia and was able to come forward as a relatively strong third alternative. He presented a plausible program for linking the struggles of the students with the struggles of the surrounding poor black community. This was a period when many students radicalized by the Vietnam War and the black struggle were beginning to look for a way to carry the leftist struggle beyond the campus gates. L appeared to some to have a program that could fulfill this wish.

After quickly regrouping his followers into the SDS Labor Committee (later to become the NCLC), L began to hold meetings in the Columbia area. From time to time I attended these meetings. Some twenty to thirty students would gather in a large apartment not far from Columbia. They would sit on the floor surrounding L, by now sporting a very shaggy beard. The meeting would go on at great length, sometimes for as long as seven hours. It was difficult to tell where discussions of tactics left off and an educational presentation began. The students were given quite esoteric assignments, such as searching through the writings of Sorel to discover the anarchistic origins of Rudd, or studying Rosa Luxemburg’s The Accumulation of Capital. For some reason, perhaps because the SDS movement was strong on spirit and action but rather bereft of theory, L’s ruminations found a home.

L in this period developed a series of ideas by extracting and distorting some theories from the Marxist tradition. Even today, from his right-wing position, he retains this element in his thinking. He held these ideas, in an elementary way, even in the period of his membership in our organization. Most important was his Theory of Hegemony. He wrote in 1970: [consult the book yourself.]

L drew this notion from his interpretation of Lenin’s What Is To Be Done?, where Lenin speaks of intellectuals bringing socialist conciousness to the workers. He then expanded it by drawing from Gramsci’s notion of hegemony. L’s goal was to forge an intellectual elite corps that would gain hegemony on the left and then capture from on high the allegiance of the masses. I am not arguring that L’s interpretation of Lenin and of Gramsci was in any way an accurate one — Gramsci, for example, was a strong believer in an automonous working-class movement — but only showing which strands of the Marxist tradition appealed to L and motivated him and his followers in his radical period.

A necessary corollary of L’s concept of a superior intellectual revolutionary elite is the concept of an inferior class. Here L distorted Marx’s distinction between the class itself (ordinary conciousness) and the class for itself (socialist conciousness). he also made heavy use of Lenin’s polemic against the “economists” in Russia who, in Lenin’s opinion, were adapting to the backwardness of ordinary conciousness of the workers. It appeared that L and his followers, even in their radical stage, had a low opinion of ordinary human beings. In 1969, for example, L followers Steve Fraser and Tony Papert wrote about forcing “working people and other groups to begin to part with their habitual swinish outlooks.”

The second strand of L’s thought was his Theory of Reindustrialization. This concept remains the heart of his current economic theory and rightist agitation. L began with a rather orthodox theory of capitalist crisis derived from Marx’s Capital and Luxemberg’s The Accumulation of Capital. He was convinced that capitalism had ceased to grow, or at least ceased to grow sufficiently to meet the needs of the country’s poor. This created an economic crisis that would only worsen. he believed international capitalism was on the brink of entering what he called the “third stage of imperialism” (see his pamphlet of the same name published in 1967). The “third stage of imperialism” was an attempt by the developed nations to overcome the stagnation at home and revolution abroad by formenting a new industrial revolution in the third world. L expected this to take place in India. His idea was the advanced nations would use their unused capacity to make capital goods and export them to India, setting up factories that would employ the country’s surplus work force.

At this point in the argument L borrowed from his Trotskyist background to develop a transitional program that would, he hoped, motivate the masses to support him so that he could resolve this worldwide crisis of capitalism. Trotsky proposed a program that addressed the immediate needs of masses of people in the hope that the struggle around these demands would lead the people to realize the need for socialism. L hoped to win the support of American workers by promising that his program would supply jobs. For example, during the Vietnam War his idea was to reconvert the war industries to this peaceful reindustrialization.

This entire economic schema, which made up the bulk of Lites writings and agitation in the late 1960s and early 1970s, was presented in an increasingly frenetic manner, bolstered by predictions of economic doom. L was a crisis-monger of the first order — though our group gave him a run for his money. L and his followers became increasingly convinced that the fate of the world rested with their group and with their leader — LL, Jr. The resources, both technological and human, were present for this glorious economic transformation. The problem lay with the cussed stupidness of the nation’s leaders and swinishness of the masses. If only L were in power all the world’s problems would be dwelt with swiftly.

In the early 1970s, as the Left in the United States shrank under the impact of conservative times, L lashed out with a series of attacks on the SWP and the CP. Soon his group was denouncing all leftists and seeking support from extreme right-wingers. The Lites began mouthing anti-Semitic phraseology, promoting the nuclear power and arms industry, advocating a Star Wars defense, and baiting gay people. The old Trotskyite, a member of my own small organization, had emerged as a Fascist! I am most struck by the elements of continuity in L’s thinking. This where I believe there are lessons for the Left.

Most important is L’s elitism. Ordinary human beings were viewed by L the leftist and by L the Fascist as a swinish element to be manipulated. L never absorbed the humanist and compassionate side of the Marxian socialist tradition. He is not alone in expressing this defect. We need only think of Stalin, who could ruthlessly permit the death of millions of peasants and consciously purge and murder hundreds and thousands of his own Communist cadres, all in the ostensible interests of “history”. A more recent example is Pol Pot’s conduct in Cambodia. Only socialism rooted in humanism can any longer be considered socialism. Once an individual, party, or state is no longer anchored in this view, then terms like “left” and “right” lose any significance.

In fact it is quite remarkable how the “new” L organizes his followers in a Leninist cadre fashion, drives them with a vision of their historic tasks and necessity of their actions, and successfully reaches layers of society with “transitional” slogans that appeal to economic needs or old prejudices.