My good friend John W, who knows me very well because he asks me questions and doesn’t just assume things about me, unlike the other Indianapolis “progressives” and “socialists,” has avidly followed my travails with the local “socialists” that I limned in my previous blog entry, “Dregs” (which is just below this one). He has also followed the course of this matter ever since then, and has read all the e-mail exchanges that have ensued. Because of this knowledge, he found himself considerably un-edified and quite distrustful of the Indianapolis “socialists” and all their pretensions. This motivated him to draft the letter below to these locals, primarily members of SPUSA and DSA who gather collectively under the umbrella of the Indiana Socialist Fellowship, but whom he addressed as the “Indianapolis Socialist Fellowship group.” I then typed up this letter from his handwritten copy and e-mailed to these local denizens of significant social change (John is not either a typing or an Internet man). I give the text of this letter below not simply as an affirmation of my original position, but also as an important view for us political activists of the left of just how our movement looks to an intelligent outsider.
Indeed, John could be “one of us” were we of the left able to effectively converse with our fellow humans—converse, that is, with real give-and-take, not simply hector, cajole, lecture, or try to convert. The hallmark of John’s style is that he asks questions; he is of an inquisitive, rather than a declamatory, bent, and it shows well in the letter below. He has inquired well into what happened, and drawn his conclusions, which he expresses pithily and pungently. If the result is an image of the “socialists” as a clique of pretentious do-nothings, it’s not due to any fault, may I say, in the eye of the painter, John; rather, it’s the result of what’s already present in the material he’s examined. And he has seen more than just my side: he has seen the nasty e-mails Marvey the W wrote to me, and he’s seen those of Frank Llewellyn, National Director of DSA, who has judged me from afar on the basis only of what he’s heard from Marvey. (These will be fully related and dissected in a forthcoming blog.) Living proof that parochialism can indeed exist in supposedly cosmopolitan New York City just as much as it can in the hinterland of Indiana.
But enough for now. I’ll have more to say later, but right now I’m going to yield to my friend John and his letter:
To: Indianapolis Socialist Fellowship Group
From: John W
Date: February 15, 2011
As a matter of introduction, I’m a retired Public Accountant who has lived in Indianapolis for the majority of my sixty-five years. A 1972 graduate of the University f Indianapolis, I worked with my dad in downtown Indianapolis for 37½ years.
In truth, I’m non-political and more concerned with humanitarian issues than Congressional bills or making good contacts.
George Fish is a good friend of mine. Recently, he shared with me his experiences with your organization; I immediately went into a state of shock. I said, “What? You’re kidding!”
I’ll briefly share some thoughts with you about your organization.
At the outset, I’m amazed that, considering my 65 years of Indiana residency, I’ve never even heard of your organization! You’re who, and you do what?
If your group were a major force in the political arena, perhaps making major contributions to American society, I’d like your club a lot more.
As I understand, your group meets one Sunday afternoon per month. Wow! This has to be somewhat of a comedy. How on earth can your members take this much time out of their busy schedules? And, by the way, what exactly has your club done lately?
Were your members aware of such events as the war in Afghanistan, the Egyptian revolution, the U.S. Recession/Depression, the plight of those in poverty or lack of adequate health care in this country? Has your club tackled the unemployment issue of concerned itself with the image of the U.S. overseas?
To continue the comedy from this non-political Public Accountant, what about your membership? I hear that on a good Sunday you’ll have all of ten members attending your meetings. Ten? Has your advertising committee disbanded? Are folks all over Indy beating a path to your door?
Speaking of doors, George told me that recently you slammed the door on his attendance at your meetings. Are you kidding me?” Of course, you realize that your membership just dropped, on a good Sunday, from ten to nine. Not to mention the loss of revenue to your club!
I could go on and on. Yet, I’m thinking this letter is sufficient to show you want an outsider sees as a most absurd group.
Thus the “socialists, as seen through the eyes of one of “the masses.” If it’s reproached that John is not “massy” enough, being a university graduate who worked as a white-collar professional, such characteristics fit the “socialists” also, and just not locally, but nationally. It can easily be said that those who call themselves socialists and are “active” enough to participate in socialist organizations—at least to the extent of attending meetings once a month—are more white-collar or professional than blue-collar (I’d say the most common occupation among professed socialists, at least in my experience, is college professor), and almost without exception, college students, former college students, or college graduates. And we are very small in numbers, as John pointedly observes, not only in Indianapolis, but nationally. I’d estimate that there are only about two million persons in the U.S. today who could be counted as left or socialist activists, at least in the sense of occasionally attending a rally or demonstration, or attend meetings of left political groups. Two million out of a current U.S. population of over 300 million—or less than 1% of the population! So, even on the national level that would constitute the left as, in John’s word, merely a “club.” And a club divided into many factions that bicker among themselves, and frequently go heresy-hunting, as did the local “socialists” toward me.
“Alas, we/Who wished to lay the foundations of kindness/Could not ourselves be kind,” Brecht wrote disingenuously in the late 1930s, in his poem “To Posterity.” I say “disingenuously” because, if we of the left who “[c]ould not ourselves be kind” think that we’re still able to “lay the foundations of kindness,” then we are deluding ourselves. It takes much more than simply articulating good programmatic proposals to “lay the foundations of kindness;” for these good programmatic proposals of the left (and we of the left have far better ones than either the center or the right) are but the bricks, the congealed theoretical elements of those “foundations of kindness.” But for “foundations” to be laid out of bricks, it takes, in addition, bricklayers who know their craft, as well as mortar. “Kindness” from ourselves is the necessary mortar we of the left must provide, in addition to being a necessary requirement for our being bricklayers capable of “lay[ing] the foundations of kindness.” Without such, we of the left simply spout pretty words!
Without “kindness,” which is but human decency, we of the left simply become another one of those societal exponents of “Do as I say, not as I do” ethics, of which we already have a plethora. But we of the left too often cannot “ourselves be kind.” And for a putative agent of positive social change that is already bedraggled in society, whose cries and proposals for “socialism” are already imbued with a pervasive society-wide negativity that’s actively conveyed by the societal leaders and media to the masses we wish to reach, that lack of “kindness,” i.e., that inability in ourselves to be examples of that very element which we insouciantly proclaim ourselves to be the foundation-layers, can becomes deadly. In fact, it already has. “The fault lies not in the stars, but in ourselves.” Or, put another way, “We have found the enemy, and it is us.” If we of the left wonder why we are so much ignored by “the masses,” it would be wiser for us first of all to look to ourselves and how we act, how we are perceived by “the masses”—who are but the John W’s of the world.
But as I’ve shown earlier in “Dregs,” we don’t come across that well, and we ourselves are quite capable of the cruelties and injustices we fault the greater capitalist society for producing. Historically and in the present, the left has not only been a repository of virtue, human decency and striving for equity and justice, but also a repository of injustice and frame-up, of sectarianism, dogmatism, vigorous heresy-hunting within our ranks, of active expulsion and execration, of self-righteousness, betrayal of others and of our ideals, double standards, and political correctness. What happened to me as outlined in “Dregs” is but one case, and a relatively minor one at that, but a good case of what’s all too pervasive on the left, and has been recounted time and again by talented writers who’ve been in the maw of the left. We might look at the poignant story of Richard Wright, for example, as he relates it in The God that Failed (New York: Bantam Books, 1964, pp. 103-146). We can see it and feel it in the excellent recounting of life on the left that Vivian Gornick relates in The Romance of American Communism (New York: Basic Books, 1977). Being part of a beleaguered political sect such as the left is in the U.S., painfully aware of its isolation and marginalization, but with a vision of inclusiveness in equality and justice that supposedly makes us universally attractive to society’s have-nots, especially to those with both “consciousness and conscience,” it’s understandable that the left would embrace those defensive traits that hold sects together—cliquishness; distrust of the different; super-sensitivity to criticism, especially from within; quick retaliation toward the offender, especially the offender within the ranks. Understandable, but not forgivable. That’s why persons like my friend John W are so valuable for the left; precisely because they are not “members of the choir,” they can give us insights on how we really are, how we really look to those outside the choral gallery. And whether we of the left like it or not, the John W’s of the world are precisely those whom the left is going to have to convince, to gain support from, and to involve. But when we behave as the “socialists” did as recounted in “Dregs,” we should be very grateful indeed that there are John W’s in the world to write us letters of reproach, who make fun of our pomposities, and who hold up mirrors in which to view ourselves—warts and all.
Update--my co-worker Dave commented on the Indiana "socialists" to me as follows after reading my blogs. I quote him with his permission. He said, "My co-worker Dave read my blog entries & commented to me via e-mail on the local "socialists." I print his remarks with his permission. He said: "After browsing through the documents you attached and also your blog, I would concur with the assessment that you were set up by those three members of the Indiana Socialist Fellowship. It seems to me that they are more interested in maintaining a stranglehold on the control of that little group, even if it means the group will remain perpetually marginalized and insignificant. Yes, it may be small and insignificant, but it's their pond, and they're still the big fish in that tiny pond -- and I'll bet that's just the way they like it. And it will probably always be that way as long as they're still around, calling the shots."
This is the first of several commentaries by me that will draw up the lessons to be learned from both the successes and the failures of the left, in order that a better left can come into being, and become educated in the better ways. That’s really what this blog is all about—pedagogy. And like all good pedagogies, it draws upon both the carrot and the stick.—GF
