Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist

Thanks first of all to Dayne Goodwin who sent me a copy of Peter Camejo’s “Against Sectarianism” that he stumbled across in his archives. To my knowledge, this key document has never been put up on the Internet, so this morning I scanned it in to make it available at: http://www.marxmail.org/camejo.html. I invite comrades from the MIA to include it there as well because of its importance.

Additionally, I want to explain why this article was important to me.

I resigned from the SWP in December 1978 after an abortive attempt to get an industrial job in Kansas City. I was exhausted by what amounted to a wild goose chase and felt that it was up to younger and more energetic comrades to “make the turn” to industry. My intention was to return to NYC, get back into computer programming and try to become a novelist.

Like most SWP’ers who dropped out around this period (our numbers were legion), I had no big political differences. I was skeptical about the turn toward industry, which seemed to be based on an overprojection of the mood of the American working class, but never thought it was worth questioning inside the party for fear of being labeled a petty-bourgeois. Indeed, I made a point of getting up at a big city-wide meeting just before leaving for Kansas City to announce that I was going to go into industry because the opportunities were so great, or some such bullshit to curry favor with party leaders who needed continuous reaffirmation from the ranks.

Back in New York City, I tried to put politics behind me but could not get my mind off Central America. By 1981, things were heating up in El Salvador to such an extent that any sentient radical, including me, could hardly ignore it. The Militant newspaper had ample coverage on the region, but I never got the sense that the SWP was actively involved with the burgeoning movement to oppose American intervention. I had nagging doubts about what seemed like workerist sectarianism, but was willing to give the party the benefit of the doubt.

However, a July 24, 1983 NY Times article by Leslie Gelb titled “The Boiling Point: White House Puts Central America on a Front Burner” was the straw that broke the camel’s back. The article compared the situation in Central America to Vietnam and concluded that Reagan was about to escalate American involvement. Since Gelb was one of those NY Timesmen who shuttled back and forth from the paper to top government posts, he spoke with some authority. I compared the sense of urgency conveyed by Gelb’s article to the routinism of the Militant, which seemed far more excited by trade union struggles for wage increases, and concluded that something was deeply wrong. I telephoned an old friend from the SWP and asked what was wrong with the party. Why was it ignoring such an important struggle? He replied that the party was emphasizing trade union struggles since workers had the power to end war and the capitalist system, which bred war. Upon hearing this sectarian idiocy from somebody who I deeply respected, I felt like the main character in “The Invasion of the Body Snatchers” as he heard one or another old friend channeling the thoughts of the space invaders that had taken control of their body. Except in this case the space invaders were from the Spartacist League, not the planet Mars.

I walked around in a daze for a week or so trying to figure out what was wrong. Just by coincidence, I ran into Ray Markey at a pizza parlor across the street from my building. Ray was an SWP member, a leader of the librarian’s union in New York and a straight shooter. Without having any idea of what he thought about any of these questions, I asked him to explain why the SWP was abstaining from the Central America fight. He said that he wanted me to read something that might help. That was Peter’s “Against Sectarianism”.

I should add that I was open to other interpretations of what was going on. I asked Ray for the phone number of Les Evans, an SWP leader who was part of a faction that wanted to reorient the SWP back to the kind of orthodox Trotskyism that appeared to work so well in the past. This meant defending the theory of the Permanent Revolution and other ideas that the party was founded on. SWP leader Jack Barnes had spent the better part of the early 1980s trying to reconfigure the SWP as some kind of Castroite formation. As I would eventually figure out (with Camejo’s help), the SWP and the Cuban Communist Party had virtually nothing in common.

I made up my mind that Camejo was correct and began working with him to build a new Marxist organization in the U.S. that could incorporate the insights of the Cuban CP, the FSLN in Nicaragua and other such organizations that had developed mass working-class followings. This meant launching something called the North Star Network, which eventually got folded into a larger initiative that included ex-members of Line of March, a Maoist group that had reached conclusions similar to our own.

Eventually Peter discovered that the Green Party was the best outlet for his thinking on building a new left. I largely agree with him on this but I have never joined the Green Party myself, preferring to concentrate my energy on writing and moderating the Marxism mailing list, which obviously incorporates my ideas about left unity.

I had a falling out with Peter in 1987 over some money questions. I would only say as a word of advice that you should never allow a comrade to become your stockbroker!

In 2004, I reconciled with Peter because I felt that the work he was doing with the Greens superseded any personal issues I had with him in the past. We are not really in contact at this point, although I am sure that he is aware of the positive things I have said on the Internet about his work with the Greens. As most of you are probably aware, Peter developed Lymphoma recently. Considering his service to the left over a nearly half-century period and his decency as a human being, he deserves a full recovery and many healthy years in the future.