You Say You Want a Revolution: SDS, PL, and Adventures in Building a Worker-Student Alliance

by John F Levin (Editor), Earl Silbar (Editor)

Today, Students for a Democratic Society is often portrayed as the drama of the good early 1960s SDS turning into Weatherman, the small faction whose story ended in bombed-out New York townhouse. The reality was quite different. SDS at its apex in 1968/69 numbered 100,000 students whose political views reflected a rainbow of ideologies exploring what a new American left could be with a willingness to risk everything to stop the war in Vietnam and achieve social justice. When SDS splintered in June 1969, a majority of the delegates supported the program of its Worker-Student Alliance building a strategic alliance between students and the working class to achieve the movement's goals. The contributors in this book were mostly members of WSA, whose formation was initiated by the Maoist Progressive Labor Party. Here they recount and evaluate their participation in the struggles of the 1960s and early 1970s, from trips to revolutionary Cuba defying the US travel ban to student strikes, labor and community alliances, and campaigns against the war and racism across the country, from Columbia and Harvard, Texas and Iowa, to San Francisco State and UC Berkeley. These accounts are both optimistic, from those still inspired, and bitter, from those now critical of their involvement. The stories they tell speak across the years, as a new generation--from Black Lives Matter to Fight for $15 to the Parkland students--faces decisions about how to organize and build alliances to stop wars abroad, confront racial oppression at home, fight for immigrant rights, and end violence and neoliberal exploitation.

Genres: History

404 pages, Paperback

Published November 21, 2018

Reviews

[Jim]

I was prepared not to like this book. The very first paragraph in John F. Levin's introduction is an inaccurate representation of the Weather Underground. Further, my personal experience with SDS/WSA in 1971-72 at University of Illinois Chicago led me to view the group as having nothing to say.

The memoir essays in this book tell of the years before that in a number of universities around the country. These essays humanize the the organization and the struggles it was involved in. Many authors criticize both the Progressive Labor Party and themselves for the sectarian, authoritarian organization it evolved into.

Many commentators ask difficult questions that the revolutionary Left (and I am not claiming much of one exists in the U.S.) has yet to grapple with, especially the vanguard party, democratic centralism, and nationalism.

This book provides more nuance to the story of SDS and the revolutionary upsurge in the Long Sixties.

[Ben]

It's great to get a view of the tumultuous events of the 1960s and its left from rank-and-file participants. I only heard of PL (Progressive Labor) vaguely with reference to their later, ultra-sectarian phase when most of the authors here had left. It seems they started with a much more audacious and interesting approach in the early to mid 1960s, before sectarianism took over completely. As many of the writers here note, it is unfair that the Weathermen took all the fame at the end of SDS; there were many more interesting players over the history of the movement. PL are often referred to in other histories I've read, often dismissed as a hopeless sect, but they were a significant player all the same and this helps fill in some of the blanks.

The participants in PL and their front groups that have written these essays give a lot of angles on the organisation and the times. While it isn't a comprehensive history of what happened, it does give a lot of perspectives on what is and isn't helpful in activism, and adds a human dimension to many of the more famous events and movements of that important period in history. And most of the writers here make a point of expressing their pride in many of the things they did, even if they are also ashamed of some of the excesses and stupidities that went with being in a cult-like sect at the end. So there are interesting lessons drawn, both positive and negative, for contemporary leftists, in addition to the history presented.

It's probably worth reading this along with Revolution in the Air by Max Elbaum, which is a history of the further development of Maoist-oriented left groups after PL declined.

[Michael Boyte]

It's an interesting addition to the slow trickle of revival of literature about revolutionary organizing in the 60's and 70's, along with Max Elbaum awful 'Revolution in the Air', 'Love and Struggle', and the Aaron Leonard books about the RCP. This is first hand narratives from the folks who were in and around the Progressive Labor Party- it starts strong with the story of the illegal trip to revolutionary Cuba in the early 60's, and quickly settles into a routine: students arrive at a university, get swept up in the movement, join PL, get burned out, are now social democrats.

The Cuba brigade, the student strike at San Francisco State University and the thoughtful discussion of the relationships between Marxist politics and Asperger by Fran Kashner are all worth reading. The pandering introduction defending PL sectarian and narrow approach towards SDS, the silly and frankly misogynistic essay 'on the spread of Maoism' and the constant repetition of anti-communist tropes in the name of critical thinking are tiresome, and drag the book down.

[John]

On re-reading not as an editor but as a reader, I was pretty pleased with how the book turned out. In retrospect I think we should have included some-one still in Progressive Labor Party and more contributers from the mid-west but on the whole I am pleased that the book gives voice to revolutionary students of the 60s who worked to form an alliance between workers and the student left.