Autobiography sheds more light on SDS, Weather Underground Fugitive Days Bill Ayers Penguin Books 2003 Reviewed by a RAIL Comrade and MC206 We can recommend this book as a useful account of a group of Amerikans who committed national suicide and declared war against U.$. imperialism in the name of oppressed nations everywhere. As an autobiography of a former member and leader of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and later the Weather Underground, this book provides great insights into those movements on the personal level, while providing accurate accounts of the politics behind them. Ayers chooses to focus on the theme of "memory" throughout the book, mostly to make the point that his account is incomplete and biased. Thankfully this perspective did not prevent him from leaving this account for future generations. While the style makes it an easy read, one may find oneself struggling to learn from this history given some of the incomplete accounts. An example of Ayers thoroughness in dealing with political context is in his discussion of the national question. This question led to the split of SDS. On the one side, the proto-Weatherpeople and others supported national liberation struggles, particularly those being led by the Black Panther Party and the National Liberation Front of Vietnam; on the other, the faction led by the Progressive Labor Party(PLP) declared all nationalism reactionary. Ayers makes the analogy between the oppressor nation interests of French "socialists" and Amerikan "socialists" by quoting Ho Chi Minh regarding his efforts to get the French Socialist Party to support national liberation over French chauvinism. The post-World War II "Socialist Party" government refused to recognize Vietnam's independence and fought a bloody, futile war to retain its colony--with Amerikan help. Ayers tends to present each part of his story with the perspective he had at the time, only implying criticisms of them afterward. One of these criticisms was of the approach taken towards sex within the movement. The idea of "smashing monogamy" as a part of the patriarchy ended up serving the patriarchal interests of men in the groups to have unattached sex with most of the wimmin. Some wimmin recognized that this was the case and that power between genders still existed within the cooperatives and activist communities. This is one reason why MIM promotes asexuality followed by monogamy as the best practices under the patriarchy, monogamy being the best model for relationships under patriarchy, despite its shortcomings. Witnessing their orgies, one older womyn who the SDSers stayed with compared her days as a young activist to theirs, making the distinction that they "confuse youth and fun with politics." Later, Ayers criticizes cultural anarchists, whose idea of activism was opening fire hydrants for kids on hot days and handing out free pastries on the street, for insisting that the revolution must be fun. This is an easy demand to make by those whose lives are not directly threatened by the system. While creativity is an asset to the movement, anarchist-dominated demonstrations often leave more of an effect of a good carnival than a blow against the system. This is an example of where Weather's internationalism put them far ahead of many of their contemporaries, as well as many of today's proclaimed revolutionaries in the United $tates.(1) Weather people were not afraid to make sacrifices. However, Weather seemed to go too far in fetishizing sacrifice and commitment. Ayers biggest criticism seems to be about the early days of Weatherman. He discusses so-called criticism/self-criticism sessions where every aspect of a member's life was analyzed by the others--an example of lifestyle "politics" which MIM has repeatedly criticized.(2) For many years in SDS and in Weather, Ayers describes what he calls "gut checks" between branches where each would try to out do the previous to demonstrate their dedication. These adventurist tendencies leave one unsurprised by the path that Weather chose to take, but they were little more than demonstrations of the insecurities of privileged revolutionaries who can afford to put machismo over the real needs of the struggle. In other words, the Weather Underground took a Christian, moralistic approach to politics instead of a materialist one. They placed "purity" ahead of effectiveness. In a meeting with Vietnamese comrades in Cuba one Weatherpersyn reported that, "the Vietnamese were only mildly interested in our willingness to die for their cause and much more animated about how we planned to reach our Republican parents, something that didn't interest us at all." (p.162) While the heart and commitment of revolutionaries may be what is often romanticized in our culture, when it comes down to it, all that matters is whether or not we are successful. Success comes from doing what will push the struggle of the oppressed further the fastest, not from doing what is most fun or pleasing to us nor from doing what gets the greatest number of Amerikans to rally around us. That is why it is unfortunate that Ayers comes to take a negative attitude toward ideology and political line, ignoring the dialectical relationship between theory and practice (p. 159, see "On Practice" by Mao Tse Tung for more on this topic). While Ayers describes the period of over-bearing criticism within the group as focusing constantly on "political line," in reality the group consistently had a problem with recognizing the role of line--not surprising, as for them 'line' included choice of sexual partners. SDS started as a broad coalition and splintered as the question of line came to the forefront. We give the Revolutionary Youth Movement (RYM) tendency credit for breaking with PLP over what should be dividing line questions; the progressive role of oppressed-nation nationalism and the U.$. class structure. But as a result they went from a situation where they figured things out in practice (rather than applying line to come up with practice) to a situation where everything you said and how you spent each minute was interpreted as one's political line. Even as Weather moved to it's next stage, they were unable to make the connection between their analysis that the majority of white Amerikans were bought off and the inevitable outcome that focoist attacks would only lead to increased repression and isolation of the movement from an unsympathetic population. Ayers references the Cuban revolution to justify the Weather Underground's turn to focoism, but goes on to say, "I didn't doubt it then, but have often wondered since how many thousands of others uttered similar quotable lines only to be obliterated and erased from history the next day or the day after that." (p.150) To the credit of the Weather Underground, the situation at the time was much different, and the idea that Amerika was about to crumble didn't seem so farfetched as it might today. Regardless, we can learn from the example of the Weather Underground, a well organized, revolutionary group with an advanced political line for its time and place. MIM recognizes the need for a vanguard to put forth the most revolutionary political line. And from the legacy of the Weather Underground we have taken and solidified our understanding of the labor aristocracy within the United $tates, we have rejected focoism in favor of Third World People's War, and we have discredited lifestyle politics, giving everyone room to develop as contributors to the revolutionary struggle. Towards the end of the book, Ayers warns us not to turn our minds over to the group and to stay away from doctrinairism. MIM is not afraid to put a line forward, call it most advanced and try to convince others to accept it. Although some might call that "doctrinairism," MIM considers it ideological leadership and the only way to build an effective movement. But MIM also recognizes that it is impossible that everyone in the Party (let alone the broader revolutionary movement and its allies) will agree on everything--a reflection of the class struggle. This is why MIM encourages its members to be ideologically self-sufficient and criticize Party leaders taking up counter-revolutionary positions on questions of overwhelming importance--while following the system of majority rule on less important questions. This way the Party can steer between the Scylla of revisionism (as when the Communist Party USA rubber-stamped Earl Browder's decision to dissolve) and the Charybdis of lifestyle politics and scholasticism. Forward through Struggle! Notes: 1. Although the Weather Underground vacillated on this question: after busting LSD-guru Timothy Leary out of prison the Weather Underground released a communiqué praising the libratory aspects of "feel-good" youth culture. 2. http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/wim/cong/subreform.html. In particular, while MIM encourages revolutionaries to put politics first in their lives--we like political monomania--we also recognize that such commitment does not guarantee political line. "I wrote more articles than you / passed out more papers than you / donated more money than you / got less sleep than you" is not a political argument and cannot be used to justify an incorrect line. This is why MIM encourages Honorary Comrades--people who agree with MIM's cardinal principles but are not under the disciplinary rules which govern full comrades' everyday lives--to participate in its yearly Congress, where the Party's guiding line is hashed out.