You Say You Want a Revolution
You Say You Want a Revolution: SDS, PL, and Adventures in Building a Worker-Student Alliance, edited by John F. Levin and Earl Silbar (San Francisco: 1741 Press, 2018)
Book review by Kelsey Harrison, a long-time political activist and author.
It’s always a pleasure to read about the 1960s and 1970s, when revolution was in the air, everyone was young, beautiful and demonstrating, and there were no such things as AIDS or Donald Trump. You Say You Want a Revolution is a collection of 23 oral histories of Progressive Labor Party (PL) members, many of whom worked in their affiliated groups as well (the Worker-Student Alliance of Students for a Democratic Society and the May 2nd Movement). The PL was founded in 1962 as the Progressive Labor Movement, a Marxist-Leninist organization split off from the Communist Party. It challenged the U.S. Government by organizing trips to Cuba in 1963 that were declared illegal and organized early protests against the Vietnam War. It continued its political work after the 1969 collapse of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), working both within the remnants of SDS as well as in other movements.
You might think a collection of oral histories lacks a strong narrative flow, but though the book starts a little slowly, it does get more and more interesting as people give their personal accounts of organizing around the country. Ellen S. Israel tells the story of their illegal trip to Cuba in 1963 and the planting of a story that they were flying to Cuba through Mexico to fool the government spies who were harassing them. They ultimately arrived in Cuba via France and Czechoslovakia, but eight people were arrested and others were forced to testify before the infamous House Un-American Activities Committee. They took their case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, ultimately winning the right of American citizens to travel anywhere they wanted to and organized more trips. President Kennedy had also forbidden all allied countries to let their plane land on the return trip, so they were stranded in Cuba for an extra month. Ironically, they flew home through the only country that would grant them landing rights: fascist Spain. However, they did get to meet with Fidel Castro (and play ping-pong with him – he always won), Che Guevara and delegates from the National Liberation Front of Vietnam.
One of the most interesting narratives is the 1968-1969 San Francisco State University four-month student strike, the longest in U.S. history. Back in 1967, African-American students were suspended for getting into a fight with the editor of the university paper over a racist cartoon about boxer Muhammad Ali. Their suspension without a hearing by the president of the university, John Summerskill, resulted in a sit-in at his office. This launched a campaign against the university that eventually led to a student strike, demanding the creation of a College of Black Studies. PL was very active as picket lines were manned for up to ten hours a day and most teachers supported the strike. The police made over 400 arrests but this only strengthened the movement, as students dug in even harder, gaining organizing skills that would last a lifetime. Eventually the university president resigned and a Black Studies Program was established as well as a broader School of Ethnic Studies.
The PL took a very strong position against nationalism and unfortunately, against the Black Panther Party, which cost them members and organizing opportunities. In fact, after all the work they did in the student strike at San Francisco State University, the party opposed the establishment of black studies programs and ceased working with the black groups on campus.
PL supported China, Cuba, Albania and the National Liberation Front of Vietnam, but later turned against them for not following the correct revolutionary line. They believed in Democratic Centralism and once the party made a decision (usually sent down from the national office and founder Milt Rosen), you had to promote that line; and the line would change drastically at times for no good reason. There were many disagreements within the organization that would result in insults and bullying comments being exchanged over what was exactly the right political position to take. Political positions were handed down from the leadership, with little intellectual study expected from the members at a time when the country was flooded with radical theories, books and pamphlets.
As opposed to the free-wheeling counter-culture of the 1960s, PL banned drugs (while promoting beer), trimmed haircuts, supported members getting married (and not living together) and encouraged bowling (a working-class sport). However, the membership of PL was overwhelmingly not working-class and the attempt to work in factories and talk about Marxism with their fellow workers largely failed. They also spent countless hours selling the newspaper (Challenge), but its dry rhetoric only alienated people further from the party.
PL members worked hard in other movements in order to recruit new members and spread their own political views, but they always remained relatively small in number. PL was also male-dominated, sexist and opposed gay rights. Some of the women wanted to advocate for abortion rights, but the leadership of the party quashed this because it was “too controversial” to support and would “divide the working class.”
Many members did great political work in PL and within other coalitions and then continued their work in other organizations when the PL proved too orthodox politically. Ernie Brill left the organization after a bizarre fight with the editor of the Challenge. The editor insisted that Mel Brooks’ movie, The Producers, was a pro-Nazi musical that must be condemned (after all it contained a song called Springtime for Hitler). Mr. Brill refused to follow this idiotic interpretation of the movie in his review for the newspaper and resigned instead of changing his opinion. He went on to be a union organizer, guerrilla theater activist as well as an editor, writer and poet. Others left the PL or were expelled and later worked as union organizers, progressive professors, political activists and joined other left-wing political parties {Communist Party; Workers World Party).
Overall, the book is a well-documented study of the negative side of a tightly-run Maoist and Marxist-Leninist political party, but it also showed that they did a lot of work on important issues and learned organizing skills that they would use for the rest of their lives. Many became lifelong friends and added commentary in their oral histories on the movements of today. The editors did a great job of finding their subjects after so many years and putting together a fascinating study of PL that will leave you wishing for more.