February 23, 1976

By Tom Smucker

Two weekends ago I traveled to Chicago to participate in a large gathering of movement groups from around the country dubbed “The Hard Times Conference.” The last time I’d expended such an effort was seven years ago when I went to Chicago to watch the Movement fall apart—at the notorious final SDS convention where SDS expelled the Progressive Labor party ony to have what was left fall into splinters. One of which was soon calling itself the Weather Underground. Under which moniker it released a 150-page pamphlet in the middle of 1974 called “Prairie Fire.” Its first theoretical statement, by the way, that was not named after a Bob Dylan song.

Subtitled “the politics of revolutionary anti-imperialism,” this was basically a rehash of the Weatherman anti-imperialist, anti-racist line with two important shifts. First, it officially buried the politics of Youth Culture. And second, while reaffirming the going-underground-to-be-a-bomber approach it put a new stamp of approval on mass organizing. Something called the Prairie Fire Organizing Committee emerged, at first to print, distribute, and study “Prairie Fire” and finally, I guess, to practice the “mass organizing” part of its program. Composed of ex-Weathermen, old friends of Weathermen, relatives of Weathermen, and just plain Weathersymps, it was this aboveground Prairie Fire group that put out the call for the Hard Times conference last fall.

Somewhere along the line the Workers World party and their “youth” group, Youth Against War and Fascism (the people with the big banners at demonstrations), started actively promoting the conference also. And it was these two groups, using their contacts with other groups, that organized the coalition that would sponsor the conference and the even larger coalition that would attend.

In the late ‘60s there was a vague radical consensus that made coalitions possible intellectually, if not always physically. Dring the early 1970s, however, some of the key issues of agreement in this consensus became areas of controversy. Was China selling out or revolutionary? If it was Stalinist was that good or bad? If Hubert Humphrey was bad, was George McGovern? What was happening with busing in Boston? Was being Gay revolutionary or degenerate? What about the SLA? The women’s movement?

These questions are crucial within left-wing theology, and had to be resolved or circumvented before a coalition like Hard Times could exist. This was achieved roughly as follows: questions about the virtue or vices of Communist paradises were left suspended and not discussed, electoral politics were out (no Tom Haydenites here), Boston considered an anti-racist struggle, and a certain newspaper heiress whose jury was being selected that weekend not even mentioned. The women’s movement was accepted beyond question by white, Black, and Third World groups alike, although it was considered okay to knock “bourgeois” feminism (i.e. NOW). And when the Gay caucus proposed resolutions making opposition to Gay discrimination explicit, the enthusiasm was not overwhelming. But . . . no one dared venture even a peep of disagreement. A dramatic change from five years ago, and a direct repudiation of those left-wing groups (like the Communist Party and many Maoists) that have considered homosexuality a petit-bourgeois weakness.

This is how the new “Hard Times” intellectual consensus was formed. And explains how a large conference based on a coalition could be called after such a quiet period for radicals. But the size of the turnout—1000 were expected, 1700 showed up—is explained by something else. A change in the mood of many radicals.

Let me identify myself here. Although at times I have been accused of being too religious, too disillusioned, too patriotic, or too in love with the Beach Boys to be a radical, that’s my identity. I’ve passed through the classic white radical 1960s experiences, and inhabit a milieu of radicals, former radicals, burned-out radicals, and would-be radicals.

In the 1970s, I saw some radicals, burned out by Nixon and at a loss when the war in Vietnam ended, turn to various trendy quasireligions coming into fashion (like Rennie Davis). Some turned to therapy and the psychological life (like Jerry Robin). And some turned to careers. And these turns panned out for people here and there. But if radicalism in the ‘60s had serious spiritual, psychological, and financial flaws, nothing turned out to work any better for most old radicals in the first half of the ‘70s.

Besides, too many of the bad things happening to people now are political things. Particularly in Default City. You might even be on your way to that shrink or guru but there’s more garbage on the streets and fewer trains on the subways. So there you are again. Forced back into that political mode.

The recession-depression at the heart of our current politcal problems would seem ready-made for that old radical left anti-capitalist critique. And at the Hard Times conference the ‘30s were invoked as moments of glory as often as the ‘60s. But if old-timers recalling the ‘30s were treated with a new respect by an audience of aging New Lefties, it was still an audience that had sharpened its teeth during the war in Vietnam. An anti-imperialist struggle during a period of relative affluence.

Jennifer (sister of underground Bernadine) Dohrn’s opening address acknowledged the ‘30s depression and the current recession, but its emotional heat and perceptions and experiences came out of the struggles of colonies breaking free and fights for Black liberation. An attitude shared by most of the white radicals in an audience that was roughly two-thirds white.

Of course, Weatherman’s saints were always more John Brown and Ho Chi Minh than Eugene Debs or Joe Hill. As Jennifer reiterated in her speech, “Racism is the main obstacle to unity.” In fact, one of the justifications for Weatherman’s underground dive way back when was that all white people in the U.S.A., including most white radicals, were hopelessly bought off. So that ony they, a small band of whites, were really supporting the large rebellion overseas and in the ghettos.

That position, as I’ve pointed out, has mellowed considerably. Unite with whoever can be united with was the tone of the conference. So no one was bad-mouthing fellow radicals. Instead, the bad-mouthing was reserved for the white working class, which was alternately invoked and criticized.

It is a departure from the recent past that the conference was only two-thirds white—that it also included roughly 600 Black, Puerto Rican, Mexican, and Native American radicals who were willing to relate to white radicals. And numerous Black and Third World sponsors.

In unity there is strength, of course, a truth only recently creeping back into many radical’s ideology. But arriving at unity is even harder than admitting that it’s a good idea.

One way this unity was made possible at the conference was the acceptance, apparently, of a more or less Marxist (Leninist) vocabulary and point of view among white, Black, and Third World. After all, when Weatherman first emerged, it invoked LSD and communal living more than Lin Piao and Chairman Mao.

I’m not too fond of Lenin myself, and wonder sometimes about Marx. But I buy the line in a lot of ways and realize that conferences aren’t planned by journalists with an on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand point of view. They’re planned by people with a shared vision and a shared vocabulary. No matter how vague (maybe the vaguer the better) that vision and vocabulary may be.

As you may know, within the thoughts, dreams, desires, and predictions of M. and L., the Working Class stands center stage. So, although the central dynamic of the conference was often a white audience applauding a Third World speech, the common invocation was the working class. As a speaker from CASA, a largely West Coast group of Mexican socialists stated, “We aren’t going anywhere without the white working class.” But where was the white working class?

For me, class in the U.S.A. is an extremely potent and painful dynamic that is nevertheless left largely in our subconscious. By individuals, left-wing radicals, and television commentators alike. Everyone, from no matter what perspective, is more comfortable with concepts of ethnicity, religion, race, or psychology. The far left, like the far right, has to its advantage an ideology that at least recognizes class. But at times it seems like American left-wingers long for a class structure with greater rigidity, and therefore greater clarity and simplicity. They try to impose a European model on a country where upward (and downward) mobility is central to class. A country where class feelings often focus on this mobility, the illusion of this mobility, or the failure to achieve it. Leftists dismiss democratic ideals as hypocritical and thereby miss what people mean when they respond to these ideals. Or what people mean when they feel that these ideals are not being lived up to. If only the working class would think and act the way a working class should. Then it could be led into Revolution.

Don’t ask me who’s in the working class, because I’m not sure. I know a lot of people at my job in the phone company, which many would consider a working class job, who call themselves middle class, and I’m not saying they’re wrong. But I’m positive that class differences exist. All I have do to is alternately describe myself as a switchman at New York Telephone or a writer for The Village Voice to experience a difference in the way I’m perceived. Those differences are there.

Likewise, my parents are college-educated professionals and I went to a “good” college. Although I’m not claiming to know exactly what the ladder is, and I’m neither ashamed nor proud of who I am, I know that all that is higher up the ladder than no college. And that those steps on the ladder aren’t just revealed by a recitation of facts, but in speech, references, preferences, personality, and so on and so forth.

So that when I’m around other white radicals, the way I was at the Hard Times conference, I think I can recognize who’s there. For all the talk of ‘working class,” the people I knew there were largely college educated, children of professionals, or would be or actual professionals themselves, and the main vibes I picked up from other white participants were the same. Whent they talked about “the working class” that would cause a revolution it meant an historical idea they were going to vanguard into history. When they talked about “the working class” that was racist, they meant other white people they subconsciously perceived as their social inferiors.

There was one speaker at the conference who qualifies as white working class if anybody does, a man named Peter Kelley, a fortyish auto worker from Detroit with a trace of an Irish accent. I found the way he was treated instructive and depressing.

Sunday morning there were three additional speeches. By a Black, a Latin-American, and a white–Peter Kelley. Although framed in the correct anti-imperialist perspective, and making all the right references, Mr. Kelley scored two unforgivable points. First he mentioned the obvious fact that most white working people aren’t feeling revolutionary right at this moment. And then he referred to the differences he felt with his audience. “You know, about five years ago, a lot of radicals came to Detroit, they thought it was some kind of proletarian paradise,” he said, or words to that effect. “And some of them are even still there,” he added, not without sarcasm. “Don’t come to preach, don’t come to teach. We need you, but you need us.”

Rather obvious and simple, you might think. And as I’ve said, the importance of “the working class” was one of the big themes of the weekend. But the basic elitism of the movement remains. To suggest that radicals are often patronizing and snobby towards working people, or have something to learn (!) or that there might even be a you/us distinction between the two groups, was to tell an assembly hell-bent on calling itself the working class what it didn’t want to hear.

Maybe 10 per cent of the audience gave Peter Kelley’s speech a standing ovation, including yours truly. While about half the audience gave off very frosty vibes. Almost everybody stood applauding for the other speakers. Which were just as good (or bad). It was the shift in the audience’s reactions that seemed peculiar.

At one point during the weekend, after a dramatic speech on Puerto Rican independence, the Black moderator and the previous speaker, from the American Indian Movement, held the guy’s hands in the air in a gesture of victory. And the audience started chanting “unity, unity, unity.” There they were, a Black, a Puerto Rican, and a Native American. Unified for sure, and very impressive. But the chanting audience was largely white. So what kind of unity was that?

At times it seemed like a unity against the ruling class of non-whites one step below the “racist white working class” with whites one step above the “racist white working class.” Which legitimizes the resentments all nonwhites feel towards all the whites above them. While ignoring the resentments working-class whites might feel towards the middle class. By implying that their only hang-ups are the ruling class and racism.

In no way am I suggesting that white people aren’t racist, or that racism doesn’t require a political response by whites. And I’m not idealizing anyone. It’s just that in a curious way it might be easier for middle-class white people to “deal with their racism” since that means thinking about nonwhite people who are usually two steps removed from them socially. While dealing with their middle-class feelings about class means confronting those people immediately below them on the ladder.

I wasn’t unique in seeing this as a problem, particularly on a scene that likes to rap about the Working Class, and is trying to deal with an economic crises. But it wasn’t the main criticism I heard.

Lots of people felt the various meetings and workshops were too big and badly organized or accomplish anything. And those who came believing it to be an open conference felt that the official Prairie Fire line got pushed and approved in spite of disagreement. However, as a sign of heightened energy, no one  seemed profoundly disillusioned or unwilling to try the same sort of thing again. And that includes myself.

Whether we will try it again through the same coalition remains to be seen. A number of national demonstrations were hurriedly approved at the end of the conference. And I have no idea how strong the support for them really was.

Most of them centered around anti-imperialist events or demands. The one that focused on economic demands associated with the recession was called for April 15. The day income taxes are due.

April 15 is Thursday, a working day. A day in which people with jobs will have to lose a day’s pay if they want to go to a demonstration.

Village Voice, February 23, 1976

Reproduced here as published back then.