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3. Letters on Organization
- University Press of Mississippi
- Chapter
- Additional Information
Letters on Organization Decembers, 1962 My dear Marty,1 I have to write you a series of letters. They will be one a week unless you ask me to make them two. In them I shall be taking up fundamental problems of our movement,both in a general and a specific manner applied to the specific American situation. I shall send you two copies of all these letters. Whether you will hand one out to others will depend entirely on your judgment . Personally I am inclined to, that is all I say, inclined to that they should be for general circulation not only to party members but to friends. That, however, is a matter which you and those whom you wish to consult will decide upon. In the course of taking them up, I shall refer to Marxism in general and our particular situation. Today I will deal with two subjects only, first, the breakup of our organization, and secondly, Trotskyism, or the movement from which we came. If at any time I write in too concentrated a manner or there is a particular point which you wish me to develop further, I shall do so if I can. 1) Our organization has practically gone to pieces.2 By saying this, I mean no offense to those who remain behind. But the movement with which we started has been broken up almost to bits. I don't know if you have paid the necessary attention to this. I have been doing so. Without that I would have continued to be in a complete mess. But that is now clear. I would like you to note that I am not concerned with the qualities, in particular the weaknesses, of any individual. We had, or we started with, the best possible people whom one could expect. If we had to choose a set of people now, I am pretty sure we could not choose a better bunch. Let me go through the list with you. There was Rae [Raya Dunayevskaya], an old Bolshevik, very highly trained and very devoted. The thing to note about her is, apart from political weaknesses which will emerge, that in her book3 she does extremely well up to where she broke from us. After that the book simply becomes nonsense. Next on the list is Grace [Boggs], a very highly educated and capable person. All that Rae gave to us in political experience and knowledge of Bolshevism, Grace gave in philosophy and a general high level of education. I cannot forget , not only what the movement, but I personally, owed to both these girls. We as an organization could not forget it either. If we forget it or ignore it or pass superficial remarks about it, it means that we don't know what we had and therefore we don't know now what we are without. Ike [Saul Blackman] was a pretty poor citizen but he did a great deal of useful work. Tobin, who started with us in 1941 was a very tower of strength both in devotion and political understanding. Bessie [Gogol], with all her faults, was a very devoted revolutionary. Louis [Gogol] is one of the most remarkable men of high character whom I knew. Freddy [Paine] was absolutely priceless. Everett [Washburn] was also a very fine type. Filomena [D'Addario] was a junior who we had from the very beginning, had a fine background for Marxism and for years did very well. William G[orman/Morris Goelman] is one of the ablest men and the most brilliant that I have ever met in the movement . That is enough to go on with. I must not forget Jessie [Glaberman], not T[om Quock]. I may leave out one or two people. Above all I must not leave out someone whose name I shall not mention but I leave it to you to fill in, one of the very finest and most valuable types that we had; not only valuable but most precious, all things taken into consideration. The fact remains that we had these people, we had ample opportunity to train them; to give them all we had, and one by one, or sometimes more than one, they have all left us, and left us not for anything but just to fade away, either into some sort of political nonsense or just idleness. We have failed to hold them. It was not due, we have to make clear, to the fact that they...