Maoism in the Developed World

However, by 1971, the PLP was opposed to electoral participation, particularly in the forthcoming 1972 general election. They raised the slogan “Evil, Yes! Lesser, No! Don’t Vote. … Organize!”[25]

The PLP And Students For A Democratic Society

Particularly in its early years, the PLP was most heavily involved in the student movement, most particularly with the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). The SDS was the successor of the Student League for Industrial Democracy, an organization generally associated with the Socialist Party, and particularly with Norman Thomas. However, in the 1960s, it had largely severed these connections and by the middle of the decade had become by far the largest student radical organization, expressing a somewhat vague belief in “participatory democracy.”

In its PLM phase, the PLP had organized its own student movement, the May Second Movement. This originated as a committee to plan an anti-Vietnam War meeting in New York on May 2, 1964. Although the committee at first had some representatives of the Trotskyites and independent radicals, it was soon taken over by the PLM people and after the May 2, 1964 meeting was converted into a permanent organization. Of the 13 members of its National Coordinating Committee, 11 belonged to Progressive Labor.[26] The group came to be known as M2M, an obvious copying of Castro’s July 26 Movement, frequently referred to as 2J6. According to Harvey Klehr, M2M was the first student group to oppose the military draft.[27]

However, it was the SDS, not M2M, which was growing most rapidly in the raid- 1960s. As a consequence, as the PLPers wrote in a sketch of their party’s history, “In the winter of 1965-1966, we won the majority of the M2M members to dissolving that organization and joining SDS. We realized that most of the students who were joining SDS to actively oppose the war did not have an anti-imperialist outlook, and to learn from them at the same time, we had to be where they were—in SDS.”[28]

Within the SDS, the PLPers were distinctive for at least two reasons. One of these was their opposition to the so-called “youth culture” advocated by many of the leaders and rank and filers of SDS—that is, drug use, sexual promiscuity, and other forms of “personal liberation.” The other was their advocacy of a “worker-student alliance.”

In personal behavior, the PLPers became virtually puritanical. Phillip Luce wrote about this. “The leaders became so paranoid over the issue of their ‘public image’ that they told members to shave their mustaches, wear coats and ties, forget the cowboy boots, be careful whom they were seen with, stay away from people who take dope, date only certain girls, attend classes regularly, and watch their language in public.”[29]

The PLP effort to orient SDS toward the working class centered at first on a Student Labor Action Project (SLAP). According to the PLP newspaper Challenge, at the time, “SLAP argued that SDS must organize masses of students who can be reached because Imperialism screws them. They must be won to clear, anti-imperialist politics and a pro-working class outlook. We must try to ally students with working people in the struggle. Fights around ‘purely’ student demands must be made pro—not anti-working class. Student and worker demands should be linked (e.g., oppose flunkout; demand more working class—especially Black—admissions; oppose expansion by eviction in working class communities, all in the same fight.)”[30]

The denouement of PLP penetration of SDS was sketched by Harvey Klehr. He wrote that “Its ‘old-left’ style contrasted sharply with the cultural radicalism of many in SDS, but its Leninist discipline and coherent doctrine enabled it to recruit numerous students. … At SDS’s tumultuous 1969 convention, when it appeared that PLP might win control of the organization, a split took place, leading to its splintering into the Weathermen, the Revolutionary Youth Movement and the PLP-controlled SDS.”[31]

For several years after the 1969 SDS convention, the PLP kept alive what it called the SDS. Typical of the line of reasoning of the PLP-controlled SDS was an article entitled “Crush the Bosses’ Colleges,” which appeared in Challenge in September 1970. It said, “More and more students are beginning to realize that the colleges and their administrators aren’t any good to anyone but the big bosses and politicians who run this country and are responsible for the war and racism which most students hate. And many students have learned that the problem isn’t faulty individuals, but the system of capitalism.”