Weatherman goes to war

Over 400 leftists and revolutionaries attended Weatherman's National War Council in Flint, MI during Christmas of 1969. Weatherman's poster for the event read: "Over the holidays we plotted war on Amerika... Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh."(1) The purpose was to consolidate the student left, with Weatherman leading Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).

Brief history

"SDS was founded in 1960 by young radical intellectuals most of whom subscribed to some variant of socialism."(2) It established itself as the leading left-of-liberal student group. Membership was high and factionalism was rampant. SDS pioneered many successful demonstrations on the war and the draft. Members ranged from organized Maoists to radicalized liberal students.

One faction, Progressive Labor (P.L.), ostensibly a Maoist organization that broke with Maoism in 1971, infiltrated SDS in the mid 1960s.(3,4) Weatherman arose in opposition to P.L., criticizing it as opportunist and isolated from the masses. In June 1969, the anti-P.L. alliance (including Weatherman) ousted P.L. at the SDS National Convention in Chicago.

Three main points show Weatherman's strengths and the errors that engendered its demise. Maoists today can learn from its successes and its failures.

Imperialism and racism

"First: the primacy of confronting national chauvinism and racism ... the assertion that organizing whites primarily around their own perceived oppression... is bound to lead in a racist and chauvinist direction."(5) Weatherman realized the First-World chauvinism of the white working class and instead concentrated on national liberation struggles against U.S. imperialism.

Weatherman's line on the Black nation in the United States mirrors that of the Black Panther Party, and is compatible with MIM's line: "A new black nation... has been forged by the common historical experience of importation and slavery and caste oppression.... The struggle of black people--as a colony--is for self-determination, freedom, and liberation from U.S. imperialism."(6)

This was a demarcating issue at the National War Council. Bob Avakian of the Revolutionary Union criticized Weatherman: "If you can't understand that white workers are being screwed too, that they are oppressed by capitalism before they are racists, then that just shows your class origins." Weatherman replied to Bob: "When you try to defend honky workers who just want more privileges from imperialism, that shows your race origins."(7)

Weatherman focoism

"Second: the urgency of preparing for militant, armed struggle now ... with whatever forces you've got."(5) Focoism holds that small cells of armed revolutionaries can create the conditions of revolution through their actions. Weatherman's sensational tactics--bombing police stations and banks, starting riots--ignored the principles of attacking with strategic confidence and building mass support for violent action. The gamble that the masses would be sparked to revolt by focoists' heroic endeavors never paid off. If the focoists survive the battles, they burn out and sell out. The focoist "revolution" is never more than a flash of fury.(8) Weatherman was no exception.

Commitment

"Third: ... [demanding] total, wholehearted commitment of the individual to struggle to transform oneself into a revolutionary and a communist... [to realize] such well-known Maoist principles as ÔPolitics in command,' ÔEverything for the revolution,' ÔCriticism--self-criticism-- transformation.'"(5) Without taking time to build mass support for Maoism, the commitment of the individual cannot overcome the commitment of the bourgeoisie. A Maoist vanguard party exists to serve the oppressed; it must put in the hard work of constructing a party on a base of mass support. Carrying the revolution forward on the shoulders of individuals is impossible; by the early 70s, the weight of the responsibility on the tiny core of Weatherman proved too great.

Sources:
1. Harold Jacobs (ed.), Weatherman, Ramparts Press, 1970, p. 338.
2. Jacobs, p. 2.
3. Jim O'Brien, American Leninism in the 1970s, p. 7
4. MC5 and MC17, Lessons in Single Issue Organizing: Mass Organizations and the Vanguard Party, MIM Distributors, 1991, p. 1.
5. Jacobs, p. 228.
6. Jacobs, pp. 54-55.
7. Jacobs, p. 344.
8. MC5 and MC¯, "The Focoist Revolution," MIM Notes 48, Dec. 1990, p. 1.