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Playing At Revolution

I was a member of a socialist group for around 16 months in the mid-1970's.

Due to the Vietnam War, radicalism was in the air on most college campuses from the mid-60's to the mid-70's. But I felt its breath only slightly at the colleges I taught at in the late 60's. I recall no protests at Muskingum (1967-68.) As for the Mont Alto branch of Penn State (1968-70), the following exchange should provide a clue as to how radical things were at that bucolic enclave:

Student: Why is your hair getting so long, Professor May?
Me: I'm not going to get it cut until the war ends.
Student: What war?

I did get myself involved, only half-wittingly, in a protest against the Kent State shootings on 4 May 1970. Some of the girls at Wilson College near my apartment in Chambersburg had constructed some faux black coffins and were marching them into town. I joined the parade and somehow, like Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times, wound up 'leading' it (as the local paper showed on its front page the next day.)

But 'half-wittingly' (in both meanings of the term) is a fitting description of my participation in radical groups in general.

The University of Illinois was well radicalized by the time I got there (1970-73.) I joined several protests, some of my own devising (see 'Assignment'.) My wife Dorothy and I were in an anti-war march of hundreds which was captured by a Daily Illini photographer: we are in the dead-center of that photo (a huge enlargement graces our stairwell to this day.) I had friends in the march who belonged to the Communist Party, amongst other groups. They told me later that FBI agents had walked beside them, taunting them (the FBI was very immature.)

I attended a meeting wherein a radical professor asked, 'Okay, how many of you are into Heavy Affinity Action?' I was in the ensuing riot, wherein the crowd destroyed a block of stores near campus. (I found out that, when one is in such a situation, all personal scruples disappear: one does what the crowd does.)

Those were extra-ordinary times. A composer friend of mine, otherwise very intelligent, said to me dead-seriously, 'When you see a good rock, May, pick it up. Because otherwise you'll find yourself in a protest somewhere, and you'll be in need of a rock to throw, and you won't be able to find one!' That same fellow told me how the Bolshevists would set up a demonstration on one side of town to lure the police there, then knock off a bank on the other side of town.

I studied music composition at Illinois with Herbert Brun, who took as his political metier the critical dissection of all languages in and of society, including music. There formed around Herbert a coterie which began to meet weekly in peoples' homes to read and discuss writings by Marx, Marcuse, Fromm, and other radical theorists. (I was regularly admonished by that same friend of the rock-throwing fame for attempting to inject humor into the proceedings.) Once in 1972 we watched on TV, both fascinated and horrified, as Nixon landed in China.

A couple of friends of mine found some writings of a socialist group called The National Caucus of Labor Committees in a radical bookstore. They persuaded me to accompany them to the national conference of that group in New York. (Was it my political acumen they valued, or the fact that I had a car?) The trip began inauspiciously: I broke off the key in the ignition when I first started the car. But we made it and found that organization to be an interesting one.

The name of the leader of the group was Lyn Markus. This was not his real name, but rather a nom de guerre of the sort that all socialist leaders traditionally assumed (his names were thought to be take-off's on 'Lenin' and 'Marx'.) He was an Economics professor at Columbia.

What attracted me to him was, firstly, his dress. Although he wore a sports jacket, it was always unbuttoned. And he always wore bow ties (funky accoutrements of those who are confident about who they are and who don't take themselves all that seriously) - that is, until he began running for president and felt he needed a more formal look.

But I was attracted to his casual platform manner as well. He did not stand behind the podium, both hands grasping it for dear life, as most speakers tend to do. Rather, he stood at a bit of an angle, his near hand on the podium, while his far fist rested on his hip, thereby pulling the jacket open.

He spoke like a professor – not like one giving a lecture to a seminar, but rather as an informal extemporaneous discourse (which it was.) He did not rant and rave (as his predecessor Lenin supposedly did); rather, he used humor and irony to not-so-gently savage his opponents.

All in all, the trip was worthwhile. But, attractive as that organization and its leader seemed, there was no branch at Urbana. And so I mostly forgot about the Labor Committees.

When we moved to Boston in 1973, I began shopping around for a political cause to join. I briefly supported the Farmworkers of Cesar Chavez, going so far as to affix BOYCOTT GRAPES! bumper stickers on our car and that of a friend. But this union struggle was too remote for me (way out there in sunny California); I needed something local.

I looked in the Yellow Pages under 'Socialist' and compiled a short list. Then I traveled in to Boston to check them out. I found them all wanting, not 'serious', as I called it. (I recall the World Socialist Party, in the office of which one old man [no doubt a veteran of the struggles in the 1930's] sat behind a typewriter. I decided that didn't look – vibrant enough for me.)

Then one evening in January 1974, we were over at a friend's house, and the Sunday Times was sitting there on the hearth. Below the fold on the front page was this:

BROWNSHIRTS OF THE 70'S
How a New Left group turned to violence and savagery.
by Seymour Hersh

I read the article: it was about the Labor Committees. It told how members of the NCLC would crash the meetings of other leftist groups and then beat them up. It also described how they had kidnapped someone and then brainwashed them into accepting their ideology. (That was a strange precursor of Patty Hearst and the Symbionese Liberation Army.) It all sounded pretty horrific.

I was puzzled (and, yes, dismayed and even horrified) by this. Somehow it did not square with the mild-mannered Lyn Markus and his followers I had seen in New York. So I reasoned as follows:

Either: that organization was as bad as it sounded and the best thing I could do was run the other way as fast as my legs would take me;

Or: something very strange and sinister was going on. Perhaps the government saw this group as such a threat that they needed to contain, even crush, it and they were using all their propaganda weapons to effect this.

So I did what any non-normal-thinking person would: the next day I went to the office of the Labor Committees in Boston to see what they had to say for themselves.

They were very casual and affable - and young. I asked them directly about the 'violence and savagery' allegations. (How does one ask such a - delicate - question? 'Pardon me, but are you really a bunch of savages?') They readily admitted all that, which they humorously called 'Operation Mop-Up'. They told me that the Communist Party and other radical groups had been infiltrated by government agents ('co-opted', as they put it) and this had to be exposed and rooted out. They had used nunchakus (they pronounced it 'numchucks') to 'defend' themselves. (Fortunately, 'Mop-Up' was over by the time I joined!)

I asked another direct question about the brainwashing ('Excuse me, but I've heard you brainwash your members. Would you care to comment on that?') They replied that the press had it backwards – that a member of the NCLC had been brainwashed by the CIA to make a hit on Markus. (Fortunately, Lyn had made an extensive study of psychoanalysis, and was thus able to 'deprogram' the errant member.)

So we talked. And I found myself both attracted to and repelled by their program.

I was attracted to the breadth of their interests and their attempts to apply these to solve very real and pressing problems in the world. Markus had written extensively about philosophy (he seemed [important word here!] to have read – and absorbed – every major writer), political economy (they posited a new European monetary system), science (it was the time of oil shortages, and they supported a crash development of fusion energy), psychology – and music (Marcus used Beethoven's music as a conscious example of creative development.)

But I was repelled by their attributing all the ills and the devious plots in the world to what they quaintly referred to as 'the Rockefeller Cabal.' I never quite got over that discomfort, though I was to help parrot forth that notion to the wider world (along with that strange word which smacked of Eastern mysticism and intrigue.)

This group seemed to have the requisite amount of 'seriousness'. And so, attracted and repelled as I was, I decided to join. The dues (if I recall correctly) were $5 per week. We were sent out to 'organize.' In practice this meant going to busy thoroughfares and unemployment centers, there to engage members of the Working Class in conversation –to culminate in the purchase of our paper New Solidarity. Afterwards, we would return to the office, where we would be 'debriefed' on what had happened.

I had come into this organization with lots of ideas about music and politics. But I gradually found that most of them weren't welcome. Here is a typical example of the sort of exchanges I would have:

Early in my time there, a few of us went out for a beer. As my field was music, that subject came up. One of the members brought up Wagner's Tristan: specifically, they stated that 'parts of Act II are worth listening to.' Now I knew Tristan quite well, having studied it closely just a few short years before. So I said that all of that opera was worth listening to. But they would not hear of this: only 'parts' of Act II, I was told, were 'worth' it. Of course I found this puzzling: what did they know that I didn't know? What criteria of 'worth' were they using? Later, I found out that Marcus had written about music and had made a casual assertion about Act II. The member who made the statement to me hadn't even listened to the opera – they were taking Markus's word for it.

I found this to be true across the board: what Marcus had written was sacrosanct, and if I had a different idea, I had best get rid of it.

But I rather quickly allowed myself to get sucked in. Why? Perhaps because Markus seemed to know so much more than I did: in any sentence from his writings, it was common to find four or five names such as Kant, Marx, Freud, and a legion of others. Had I read any of those? Not really. This man's mind seemed to encompass a huge amount of knowledge, and he was able to synthesize it and apply it to boot. So I gave him a free pass, the benefit of many doubts.

I suppose I wanted and needed to be a part of something larger than myself which was at once intellectually interesting and which appeared to be doing Useful Work. So I waived and suppressed my own ideas about things, until after awhile it could be said that I didn't have any ideas apart from the Labor Committees at all.

So was I kidnapped and brainwashed against my will, as Sy Hersh's article suggested, and turned into a Marcus-spouting automaton? Of course not. I and no one else brought me into the office each day, seven days per week. I and no one else suppressed my own ideas about music and other things. I and no one else decided to have my own mouth spew forth their propaganda. I had done it all to myself and had no one else to blame. It was not 1984 at all, being if anything closer to Brave New World.

I took principled stands in public forums on things I didn't really understand. A comrade and I were sent to make an 'intervention' at the L.E.A.A. (Law Enforcement Assistance Administration) conference – an organization Marcus et. al. had determined was 'proto-fascist' (I had only a vague idea why they thought this.) The occasion was a formal sit-down luncheon at the elegant Copley Plaza Hotel. So we put on our good suits and walked into the dining room unchallenged (this didn't strike me as very 'fascistic'!) and sat down. The meal, I recall, was roast chicken. We had decided that my colleague would make the first 'intervention', followed by mine. As a result, he was so nervous with stage fright (being first and all) he couldn't eat; whereas I (whose speech was 'deferred') ate voraciously. In due time he stood up during a speech and gave a rousing (though probably incoherent) denunciation of the L.E.A.A. That group seemed taken by complete surprise at this; but in due time two men hustled my friend out the door. As soon as that door closed, I stood up and continued the denunciation (yes: a virtual automaton accusing someone of fascism!) Soon I too was hustled out. Were we taken somewhere by those fascist goons and beaten with rubber truncheons? No. We were simply left in the ornate lobby to fend for ourselves. This, as it turned out, was the cruelest punishment; for what is more irksome for a fanatic than to be deprived of his audience?

I even protested against things that, in my former life, I thought were perfectly fine. I was once sent to the Science Building at Harvard, where I located the office of the eminent psychologist B.F. Skinner (he wasn't there), in order to tack a paper to his door which indicted him for 'Crimes Against Humanity.' This despite the fact that I had read Walden Two the year before and found it interesting and intriguing but not particularly damaging to the human race. In this as in everything else, I assumed and trusted that my superiors knew something I didn't know. (What would have happened, I wonder now, if he had been in his office when I knocked? Could I have indicted him to his face? I very much doubt it: whether due to cowardice or curiosity, I think I would have engaged him in a conversation about his ideas – the worse for me when I returned to be 'debriefed!')

Once in a while, funny things happened. We were out 'organizing' one day in Boston, where one of our more vociferous members was haranguing passersby through a bullhorn to let us use their house as a 'cell' for meetings of 'cadres'. One bedraggled old man said we could use his apartment. When we questioned him further, he said, 'I'll shuck your dicky, shonny!' That made for some comic relief in the 'debriefing!'

Things became at times surreal. At one point it was decided that we should have para-military training. So on a couple of sunny Sunday afternoons, a group of around twenty of us met in a secluded park in Dorchester. One of the members had brought a bunch of pugil sticks: these were thick rounded hardwood rods with no padding. We ourselves wore no protective gear. And so these training sessions were simulated jousts against some imaginary opponents, and probably bore more relation to Chinese ballet than to class warfare. (And were the members of the Steering Committee – that is, the leaders of our local – out there in front with us, as Trotsky led the Red Army? Hardly! The only one present, Graham Lowry, was hunkered down in his car nearby, an inhaler up to his nose. The Vanguard of the Working Class had an attack of asthma.)

Who would be those opponents we were training to fight? We weren't told, but I conjured up in my mind a vague picture of Enemies of the Working Class: street hoodlums (or lumpenproletariat), the police (of course), soldiers – in short, paid mercenaries of the Ruling Class. Assumedly, we would be fighting those sorts in the streets in hand-to-hand combat (hence the bayonet-like thrusts and rifle butt-like jabs) while we were taking (or 'seizing,' as the Marxists would put it) power. And what did 'Seizing Power' mean? As far as I could tell, it meant fighting to put oneself in a position to tell other people what to do. I knew I wouldn't be much at street fighting; but most emphatically I knew how to tell other people what to do!

I became hard and inflexible, like my comrades – except worse, because, unlike them, I was deliberately going against my natural humorful affinity. I crafted for myself a terrifying new personality, grafting the ranting germanic Herbert onto the Labor Party tendency to harangue (preferably with thumb against upturned fingers.) And so I would get into shouting, even screaming matches with friends and relatives with whom I'd had a perfectly congenial relationship in my former life a few months before. In short, I became obnoxious.

My attitude at the height of my involvement was one of arrogant certainty: I was convinced that I had what was called a coherent worldview – something I assumed most people didn't have. I recall riding up on an escalator in a crowded department store, and looking down on the milling shoppers and feeling pity for them – pity for their aimless lives.

I did not know that it was I who needed to be pitied. For it is precisely the perfect edifice that is most vulnerable: remove one crucial brick and the whole thing collapses.

The Labor Party's confidence in me was certainly collapsing. I never developed the knack of persuading someone (especially an unemployed person) to part with a quarter to purchase our paper. Oh yes – I did sell some papers, usually by walking beside some poor fellow and harassing him until he bought something just to shut me up. But I wasn't selling nearly enough, apparently; for soon they were assigning me to baby-sit for a couple who had high positions in the local.

Yes, this is what my political 'career' had come down to: babysitting – the sort of thing a teenager with no political acumen whatsoever could do. The child was a little girl named Emaya less than a year old. For the first time in my life, I was responsible for the care of a baby – changing, feeding, and in general keeping her happy. (I took delight in her babbling her own name – 'Emay-may-may-may' – which also repeated my surname.) I took to this readily, and it prepared me for having our own children two years later.

Of course, it wasn't Revolutionary Praxis (or was it?), but at least it was Useful Work. Indeed, ironically, I think that this was the only useful and important thing I ever did in the Labor Committees.

At some crucial point I ventured out to Illinois to see my teacher Herbert Brun – ostensibly as a composer-in-residence, but subconsciously to consult with Herbert about the Labor Party. I recall that we were eating dinner at his house – his wife Manni had grilled steaks. I began to describe our para-military training with the pugil sticks. Herbert (who had grown up in Berlin during the rise of Hitler) literally dropped his knife and fork and froze in mid-bite. Seeking to lighten up the situation, I quipped, 'If you've lost your appetite, can I have your steak?'

But the joke was on me: soon enough he had me pretending to sell him a copy of New Solidarity: I could not do it without breaking into laughter. At that point I knew the whole business had become absurd.

My attachment to the Labor Party ended soon thereafter - not with a bang but with a whimper. I simply left. And no one even called to find out why I wasn't coming in any more. That is the problem when you subordinate your ideas to others': you become of increasingly less importance and interest to them, until (not only in their eyes but in general) you are, for all intents and purposes, no one at all. You become expendable.

It was like a bad marriage, where I was playing the role of the abandoned wife.

The organization changed fundamentally shortly after I left. From a rag-tag socialist group dressed in scruffy jeans who tried to sell copies of New Solidarity for a quarter at unemployment centers, they became a group of slick hyper-capitalists dressed in three-piece suits selling something called Executive Intelligence Review (for a relatively huge amount of money) at airports. Marcus said that 'the ugly duckling has become a lovely swan.' But to me it had become something unrecognizable and rather repugnant. It was as if it had veered so far to the left that it had gone around back and come out on the far right.

For a couple of years after I left, I received fundraising calls from the Labor Party (no, I didn't donate.) Once, I asked about Larry Sherman and Linda Bankes and Graham Lowry - the Steering Committee of the Boston local. The callers had never heard of them. It was as if Markus, Stalin-like, had purged the group and then rewrote the history of his organization so that its socialist past had never existed.

Marcus decided to run for president on the U. S. Labor Party ticket in 1976. So he changed his name back to his original given name – a name that was to become synonymous in the public's mind with the huckster and the crackpot: Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.

Soon enough the 'Chief Swan' would be in prison for fraud and conspiracy (vehemently maintaining his innocence, of course.) And when, a few years later, I reread some of his writings, I saw them for what they mostly were: rambling exercises in name-dropping.

That would do it for me and radical causes. I grew up, became a father, and got a real job.

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