Is 94 years too long to wait for a book length work relating to the World Socialist Party of the United States? The SPGB only had to wait for 70 years for The Monument. The poor old Proletarian Party are still waiting . . .
Anyway, I've said too much - which is unusual for me on this blog these days. Here's a link to an old article which gives some background information on Rab and the WSPUS.
Nice wee anecdote from FN Brill over at the WSPUS discussion list:
"I've spent a fair bit of time in Europe hanging with various radicals of various stripes. I was at a party in the squatted anarchist bookshop in Brixton, London. IT was a three story affair with huge kitchen on the top floor. I went up to get something to eat. Now, I can pass as English, so I walked up to the guy selling the food and he says in a parody American accent (not knowing I'm not British) "Do you want a hot dog or Burger?" Emphasis on the vowels, very long and nasally. My reply "Well since I'm American I should celebrate my countries' culture with a Burger". To which I got the most outrageous "American culture is nothing more than Imperialism and the Pershing Missle!" I quietly replied, "Yes, just like British culture is nothing more than the Irish Famine and the Raj." He was stunned and sheepish, I took my burger and had a splendid time."
I can't remember if I have previously included the WSPUS in the 'Do They Mean Us?' series but, what with my geographical arrangements, it would be daft for me not to take the opportunity to feature them if and when the occasion arises.
They get a special mention today because I had a bit of a result this week when I was able to obtain a secondhand copy of the 1990 edition of The Encyclopedia of the American Left for only $2.85 (plus $3.99 postage) from a bookshop in Auburn, Wa. (Trust me, that is a result. The later 1998 edition is going for anything in between $32 to $100 on Amazon.)
Edited by Mari Jo Buhle, Paul Buhle & Dan Georgakas, this 900 page tome covers everything and everyone on the American Left from the Abraham Lincoln Brigade to Di Zukunft (a Yiddish language socialist journal given over to literary and wider cultural matters). Granted, what with the book being published back in 1990, that of course means that there's nearly twenty years of the American Left that could be covered in later editions but as my ignorance of the history of the American Labor Movement is vast enough as it is, I can work my way up to 1990 for now.
Whether I'm living in the States or in Britain, old habits die hard and on receiving the book I immediately turn to the back of the book to see whether or not the SPGB or the WSPUS are featured in the index. I'm pleasantly surprised to see that the WSPUS has a modest entry in the book. I wouldn't expect much more than that. As the entry states, the WSPUS historically has been most visible and vocal in the Boston area, and it would be a self-delusion to claim otherwise. However, I think the entry gives the mistaken impression that though the organisation started in Detroit, it left Motor City soon after but the truth is that for a time in the 40s & 50s, the WSPUS had a strong local there and even had its national headquarters based there for a time in the 50s.
Nice to see the mention of Isaac Rabinowich ('I. Rab') in the piece. I had the good fortune to met his grand-daughter, Karla Rab, a few months back when she helped out with the Party stall at the Brooklyn Peace Fair. She has been working on a biography of her grandfather for a couple of years now and, now that it has been completed, she is in the process of looking for a publisher. It should be a fascinating read.
Final mention should be made for the author of the piece on the WSPUS in the book. Franklin Rosemont is a longstanding IWW member and well known surrealist. Why it seems particularly apt that one of America's leading surrealist should pen the entry on the WSPUS I can't quite articulate, but it just seems par for the course.
WORLD SOCIALIST PARTYThe WSP is the US companion party of the Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB), which was formed in 1904 by a group of anti-reformist Marxists who had broken with H.M. Hyndman's Social Democratic Federation. During World War 1, SPGB members Moses Baritz and Adolph Kohn came to the United States to avoid conscription, and they established a following in Detroit. In 1916 some of their supporters founded the SP of the United States, but changed its name to Workers' Socialist Party a few months later when they found that the name Socialist Party had been copyrighted by the SP of America. The new party at first existed only in Detroit, and from 1919 to 1922 took the name Detroit Socialist Educational Society.
WSP locals have existed off and on in several US cities, including New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles. But its real stronghold, and the only city where it can be said to have had an enduring influence, was Boston, where the tireless I. Rab conducted Marxist study classes and lively forums almost nightly from the early 1930s through the late 1940s, and more or less weekly for many years thereafter. In the 1970s the Boston WSP local had a regular program on the radio.
In 1939 the WSP started publication of The Western Socialist ("Journal of Scientific Socialism in the Western Hemisphere"). The name World Socialist Party was adopted in 1947 to avoid confusion with the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party.
Tractarians and debaters rather than activists, the WSP persists today as a very small educational group, pamphleteering and leafletting for what it regards as the only truly and purely Marxian socialism. See also Proletarian Party
- Franklin RosemontREFERENCESJerome, W. "A Brief History of the World Socialist Party." The Western Socialist 33, no. 252 (1966).
If I ever get the cut and paste chance, I'd like to post the aforementioned 1966 issue of the Western Socialist on the blog. Fascinating snippets about the WSPUS and the Socialist Party of Canada, and does go some way in chipping away of the partial caricature of the WSPUS as nothing more than " . . . tractarians and debaters".
World Socialist Party of the United States member, FN Brill, will be speaking at the Portland pre-Mayday event at the IWW’s Liberty Hall (311 N. Ivy) this Sunday April 27th at 7:30pm.
Just a quick word to say that the World Socialist Party (US) will be doing a stall a tomorrow's Brooklyn Peace Fair.
The Fair is in its fifth year and it will be the third time that we have tabled at the event. There'll be lots of stalls, lots of meetings and lots of performers.
If you're in the neighbourhood, you should pop along, check it out and say hello.
The bastard gods are conspiring against me.
Last night Celtic get a result against the forces of footballing darkness and now I'm succumbing to Reidski's patter about Celtic having a chance of snatching sweet victory from the jaws of rancid defeat. So what's my problem?
Only that Celtic are playing R*ngers again on the 26th when a victory for the Bhoys would really contribute to squeaky bum time for Wally and Ally's smarmy army.
And rather than me nursing a lukewarm coffee at nine in the morning in a 'oirish' bar in Manhattan - whilst watching the game through my fingers - on that day, I'll be getting my arse in gear for doing a stall for the WSPUS at this year's Brooklyn's Peace Fair. Surely there's something in the small print of the Faustian pact I signed with the SPGB/WSM all those years ago about a conflicting situation such as this?
What would Julius Martov* have done in the same circumstances?
* I'm pegging Martov as a Fenerbahçe fan. Makes sense, as they were formed the same year - 1907 - as yet another falling out between the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks. I bet Lenin was one of those politico wankers who would have argued that footie was a diversionary tactic from revolution. Yes, you know who you are.
A special issue of the World Socialist Review (issue 21) which focuses on politics in Latin America is now available. Articles in this issue include:
A Pre-Socialist Left? Viva la revolucion! Looking for Socialism (in all the wrong places) Brazil repeats history Is Cuba socialist? The changing geopolitical context A review of Michael Lebowitz’s ’Build It Now: Socialism For The 21st Century’
Print Copies are available for $3:50 Send Cash ($US), Check, Money Order (made out to WSPUS) from:The World Socialist Party of the United States
P.O. Box 440247
Boston, MA 02144
Email: wspus@covad.net
Website: WSPUS
"The intoxicating US housing boom has come to an end. Now the economic hangover has arrived. What is likely, at the very least, is a prolonged crisis of the credit system. And as credit greases the wheels of capitalism this is no laughing matter for the capitalist class." ['Bubble Troubles' by Michael Schauerte]
Hot on the heels of sitting through the 'Decline of the Dollar: Decline or Flexibility of the Empire?' meeting at last weekend's Left Forum with a mixture of bewilderment and the cold sweats comes 'Bubble Troubles', the latest article from the World Socialist Party of the United States website.
I'm now taking odds on who'll be the first amongst McCain, Clinton and Obama to quote Norman Lamont's old words of: "If it's not hurting, it's not working." (I'm not taking bets on Ron Paul. He's been mouthing those words with a smile on his face for the last thirty years.)
Where did I put my copy of 'Sullivan's Travels'? I think I'll be needing it for the long haul.
A comrade writes . . .
"In the July 1932 issue of the Socialist Standard it has the contact address for the Workers Socialist Party listed as 132, East 23rd Street, New York, New York.
I of course Google the address and find out that the former headquarters for our Party is now the 'Beach Bum Tanning' salon.
Capitalism, aint it fucking grand?"
Catching my blogging eye on Crimbo Eve:
Bookmarks at the ready.
Kudos to Morgan M. (and his mate FN Brill) for the spade work in putting together the new website for the World Socialist Party of the United States. Now you have all those impossibilist hyperlinks at your fingertips.
It looks like a nice blend of contemporary articles alongside reprints of material from the long history of the *cough* World Socialists* in North America.
Articles that caught my eye on the 'is it a website or is it a blog?' include:
How Money Downed the Minneapolis Bridge The Ballot Over The Bullet The Wildcat Strike (from The Western Socialist, July-August, 1953) Paul Mattick's review of Hayek's 'Road To Serfdom' (from The Western Socialist, September 1946) Interview With a WSPUS Union Organizer Who will do the dirty work? We all will!
I have to make a special mention of the innovation - for the WSM, that is - of including mp3s on the website. Of course, front and centre is the 'heavy stuff'; SPGB talks on 'War' and 'Israel, Intifada and Peace' (plus an interesting recording from 68/69, where the late Socialist Party of Canada member, Bill Pritchard, recounts the foundation of the One Big Union in 1919), but I also like the decision to include 'light stuff' such as the following mp3s:
The Fugs', 'Kill For Peace' Chumbawamba's, 'That’s How Grateful We Are' Groucho Marx's, 'I'm Against It'Fatima Mansions, 'Shiny Happy People'
No doubt this FN Brill bloke was influenced by the classic 2003 SPGB Mix compilation CD, 'The Secret Melody of the Class Struggle',** that was specially produced for the SPGB stall at Glastonbury that year.
**Original working title for the political pop music compilation CD was 'The Best Impossibilist Album in the World...Ever!'
