This is an archive of the former website of the Maoist Internationalist Movement, which was run by the now defunct Maoist Internationalist Party - Amerika. The MIM now consists of many independent cells, many of which have their own indendendent organs both online and off. MIM(Prisons) serves these documents as a service to and reference for the anti-imperialist movement worldwide.

SDS

The Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was the pre-eminent student movement organization of U.$. history. Active from 1960 to the early 1970s, the problem with the SDS is that its history is increasingly dominated by social-democrats who did not like its increasing radicalization throughout the 1960s. Joining the social-democrats who never agreed with SDS are certain less important members of SDS who have since sold out and also many SDS leaders themselves who got jobs and families and now sing a different tune.

We at MIM believe it is possible to have a job and still maintain a revolutionary scientific outlook. We don't recommend that imperialist country movement leaders also have children, because that proves to be just about the kiss of death for time and energy for the movement. After the career and family take hold, many grope to ideologies justifying their current lack of energy and conquering attitude for the revolutionary movement. The main point is that the positions put forward by SDS in its day were either right or wrong. Those positions deserve discussion beyond how they offended people or came associated with interesting biographies or simply involved too much commitment to be sustained anymore. (Progressive Labor Party (PLP), Weatherman and Revolutionary Youth Movement II were factions in SDS in the late 1960s, which is why we refer to those factions by name below.)

  • MIM's overview introduction of SDS

    Historical Documents

  • Progressive Labor Party mentioned by Mao's official press in 1967 when PLP still fraternal to Mao and infiltrating SDS (1967)
  • "Revisionism: Learning the Hard Way" a PLP document in May, 1968 on how the Vietnamese revolution was going astray (1968)
  • PLP: Only two classes exist in imperialist countries(1968)
  • PLP: Message to Mao against "nationalist-revisionism" (1969)
  • PLP changes line to attack all nationalism (1969)
  • SDS's letter to the Black Panthers after the split with the PLP (1969)
  • PLP openly abandons Mao after split with SDS (1971)
  • SDS and RYM II: a persynal testimonial from the 1969 generation (2003)

    Analysis

  • Review of Steven Kelman's Push Comes to Shove: The Escalation of Student Protest (1970)
  • Weatherman goes to war
  • Review of Harold Jacobs ed. Weatherman (1971)
  • Review of Alan Adelson's SDS (1972)
  • Review of Susan Stern's With the Weathermen: The Personal Journal of a Revolutionary Woman (1975)
  • Pitfalls of Single-Issue Organizing (1995)
  • MIM's analysis of Ho Chi Minh's role in splitting the SDS (2000)
  • Movie about the Weather Underground that broke away from the SDS in 1969 (2003)
  • Review of SDS leader turned Weatherman Bill Ayers's memoirs (2003)