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Peter Camejo, “North Star: A Memoir,”
(Haymarket Books, 2010), 340pp., $18
Leslie Evans, “Outsider’s Reveries,”
(Boryana Books, 2010), 488pp., $18.95
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These two memoirs span the authors’
entire lives, but most readers will find the meatiest sections of the
books take up Camejo‘s and Evans’ years as political activists. They
were contemporaries and central figures for approximately two decades
in the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), so their lives frequently
intersect, more often than is apparent in the their texts. Evans, in
fact, assisted in the completion of Camejo’s memoir, since the author
did not live to finish or fully edit his manuscript.
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This is not all they had in common.
Eventually, though not agreeing completely with each other, they both
recognized fundamental flaws with the change in program that SWP
leaders initiated in the early 1980s. Both made their criticisms
known and wrote substantive analyses to explain what went awry in the
SWP .
As might have been anticipated, as a
result of speaking up, they became personas non grata and were cruelly,
foolishly, pushed out of the organization they had done so much to
build and to which they were loyal.
In the years after they were flung out
of the SWP, Camejo and Evans further changed their own disparate
positions. Each one was centrally involved in the creation of either
left-reformist or socialist organizations, with Evans serving for a
short time in the leadership of Socialist Action. Eventually, their
political trajectory increasingly evolved away from Marxism.
The result is that these books deserve
to be read more for their authors’ experiences and less for the
political conclusions they draw from these experiences.
With some exceptions, Camejo and Evans
interacted with and affected the SWP in different ways. Camejo is best
remembered as an extraordinarily gifted public speaker, honing his
natural skills by studying and perfecting the art of communicating with
groups of people, large and small. Fred Halstead’s book, “Out Now!”
includes a fine account of Camejo in full flight at a mass antiwar
demonstration in Boston.
Evans, on the other hand, was less well
known but just as essential, functioning more behind the scenes as a
staff writer for Intercontinental Press, editor and writer for International
Socialist Review, and editor of books by and about significant leaders
in the world Trotskyist movement. His writings on China in the 1970s
served as the basis for a book, “China After Mao,” brought out by the
SWP’s Pathfinder Press, a publisher known more for its reprints than
original material.
Camejo was also capable of scholarly
work and produced a small volume on American history: “Racism,
Revolution, Reaction, 1861-1877: The Rise and Fall of Radical
Reconstruction.” He also wrote several widely distributed pamphlets on
numerous topics. Still, it’s a fair guess that more people heard Camejo
than read him, especially as an SWP candidate for U.S. Senate and the
presidency, which gave him the chance to shine as a speaker.
In terms of public speaking, the SWP
provided no ready-made models that Camejo could adopt. The party’s
central leader, James P. Cannon, delivered powerful and inspirational
speeches in a declamatory style of thundering oratory. That more formal
approach was out of date by the time Camejo reached his political
maturity, and it did not suit him. If a speech by Cannon called to mind
the strength and gravity of a Beethoven symphony, a speech by Camejo
recalled the lightening quick, staccato sound of a Charlie Parker solo.
In an informative section of “North
Star,” Camejo discusses the art of public speaking, explaining how he
“read” an audience and found the words, phrases, and examples that would
best connect with them. Like another gifted contemporary, Malcolm X,
listeners felt that Camejo could understand and express their innermost
thoughts and feelings. As a speaker, Camejo led his audience by
following them, using their responses to help determine his delivery.
Sometimes Camejo would make an
effective point by seemingly outlandish suggestions that, on
reflection, made sense. In 1976, while Camejo was running for president
on the SWP ticket, he referred to the federal protection provided for
Gerald Ford to shield him from threats of violence. Why not, Camejo
asked, provide the same level of protection and send federal troops to
cities where Black youth were threatened by white racists for the crime
of attending school?
Les Evans was also an effective speaker
but in more of the professorial style characteristic of Noam Chomsky.
During a socialist educational conference in Boston (1973 or 1974),
Evans was verbally attacked from the floor by a member of another
socialist organization. The young critic denounced the SWP’s role in
the antiwar movement, claiming it followed policies of the popular
front and sought alliance with the class enemy. This approach
contrasted with the united front as Trotsky had taught.
“Well, I’m glad you raised that point,”
Evans replied quietly, almost conversationally, “because I just
finished editing Trotsky’s writings on Spain, where he has a great deal
to say about the popular front as opposed to the united front.” And, in
the tone of a disappointed but not despairing professor, hoping somehow
to enlighten a dull student, Evans piled fact upon fact and dismantled
the argument of his overly excited, callow, and ultimately humbled
questioner. At the same time, Evans educated his listeners.
These differing aspects of personality
are quite apparent in each memoir. Camejo is the more engaging and
exciting storyteller, partly because his life put him at the center of
some vivid experiences. For instance, his account of a political
skirmish on Berkeley’s Telegraph Avenue in the 1960s—a tale too good to
spoil by summary—is alone worth the price of the book.
Evans’ work, by comparison, is less
flashy—he has, after all, spent much of his life at a desk—but anyone
looking for the nitty-gritty of SWP history will find his book is chock
full of revealing detail. He seems to be blessed by an encyclopedia for
a memory. For thumb-nail sketches of SWP leaders (and rank-and-file
members), for a sense of what an SWP branch meeting was like, for an
understanding of how the national office was run (regrettably, like
most offices), and for a fair-minded account that explains the cause of
the 1980s factional purge of SWP minorities, turn to Evans.
Errors do appear, especially in “North
Star.” Most readers will not notice or much mind that the Fred who
works with Camejo in Nicaragua during the early years of its revolution
is Murphy, not Feldman. A more serious failing is Camejo’s account of
the Simon Bolivar Brigade, an outfit that used the authority of the
Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) to carry out its own
political mischief in Nicaragua.
Camejo’s memory misled him when he said
this group had the blessing of the Fourth International. In fact, the
Fourth International, in its Nicaraguan delegation, which included
Camejo, and in its authoritative meetings, unambiguously condemned the
Brigade. Most of Camejo’s editors, unfamiliar with the details of this
period of his life, missed the mistake, though it’s surprising that Les
Evans didn’t note it. His own book is seems largely free of such
errors, though George Shriver remembers a rather harrowing experience
in New York City differently from Evans’ account—but such is the nature
of memory.
Even if, by the time these books came
to be written, Camejo and Evans were at a remove from their younger and
more revolutionary-minded selves, it may be useful to raise a question
about what their experiences have to offer for revolutionary socialists
today.
From this perspective, “North Star” is
the more disappointing of the two memoirs. Having been thrown out of
the SWP, Camejo increasingly left behind the world of revolutionary
socialism. He saw it as a political project doomed to doctrinaire
sectarianism that, because of its own inherent limitations, could never
amount to much.
Given this stance, Camejo has
relatively little interest in those years of his life. He does, though,
dwell on the more positive and invigorating experiences, like his
campaign for president in 1976. He has little to say about his
complicated and controversial expulsion from the SWP. It seems likely
that he simply did not want to revisit those dismal times.
Also, Camejo devotes a mere 10 pages to
his extensive work relating to the Fourth International, the world
organization that included the sister groups of the SWP. In his duties,
Camejo visited Europe, South and Central America, and met with fellow
revolutionists (including notable figures like Hugo Blanco), wrote
documents, and represented the SWP at world congresses of the Fourth
International. The result of his late-life disillusion is that Camejo
does not give himself the full credit he has justly earned.
Still, for all the criticisms that
could be made of these two memoirs, when taken together, some key
points do emerge. Even if these lessons are not new, they are no less significant.
What stands out first is an organization’s need for effective
communicators: speakers, writers, editors, people who know how to
connect with a variety of audience.
Evans recalls an atmosphere in the SWP
that held that writing for a socialist newspaper was quite easy, almost
an incidental activity—whereas selling the newspaper was the more
difficult and worthy effort. Readers of “Outsider’s Reveries”
would do well to contrast this shallow point of view with the advice
SWP veteran Joseph Hansen gave to a young Les Evans about the care and
skill involved in writing.
Effective communicators are also
constantly looking for new, different, or unanticipated opportunities
to be heard. Peter Camejo, running in 1970 for Senate in Massachusetts,
must have made life miserable for Ted Kennedy. Whenever Kennedy was
late for a campaign rally, as he often was, Camejo would appear out of
the crowd, bullhorn in hand, launching into a speech and challenging
the senator to debate him. By the time Kennedy arrived, he often faced
a crowd that was more skeptical and hostile than he had anticipated.
Some painful and costly lessons to be
drawn from these books, often by negative example, involve the
functioning of a revolutionary organization. In the past 30 years, the
SWP has shriveled into a tiny sect around the cult figure of its
national secretary, Jack Barnes. Most of the “leadership team” that had
supported him, with a few exceptions, eventually reached a point past
endurance and consequently left or were kicked out. None of this had to
happen.
Even with a relative downturn in the
class struggle during the 1980s, years of ascendancy for Reagan and
Thatcher, no outcome was fated or preordained. Decisions were crucial.
The right policies would have held the organization together and even
have allowed for some growth, given the political tasks and
opportunities of those years.
Instead, SWP leaders around Barnes
followed an increasingly bizarre sectarian course, alleging that they
were acting in accordance with Lenin’s policies, and declaring the
false and unattainable perspective of some political unification with
the Communist Party of Cuba. Wrong decisions were costly in terms of
time, effort, and membership, especially in the disappearance of
disillusioned members who resigned in droves.
Both Camejo and Evans show that most of
the SWP leaders, directed by Barnes, insulated themselves from fact and
opinion that they did not wish to hear, and even canceled a scheduled
SWP convention in 1983. Without a means of changing direction and
absent a leadership with the courage to recognize a mistake and the
integrity to initiate a correction, errors inevitably deepened and
worsened. It was a downward spiral.
A clear tolerance for differences of
opinion—which does not preclude a majority from affirming its position
and having that perspective carried out in practice—can ultimately
strengthen an organization by clarifying potential errors that may have
been made by any party grouping, majority or minority.
As a result of the Barnes leadership’s
discarding of the SWP’s historic program and its failure to meet new
issues in a thoughtful and collective way, the Socialist Workers Party
has declined to a shadow of its former self. How did Camejo and Evans
react to this debacle, and what, now, do they offer in its place? The
answer to these questions leads, unfortunately, to the weakest portions
of the books.
Les Evans seems simply to have been
ground down by political losses, organizational battles, disappointment
with the meager combativity of the working class, and the difficult
effort to sustain small socialist groups. In the course of decades,
these take a toll.
One clear sign of Evans’ rejection of
his political past was an article he wrote on the difficulty of
reconciling socialism and the market. He presented this economic
question as a kind of irresolvable problem that essentially suggested
the overall futility of the socialist project. The article had
unavoidable personal implications. If, indeed, such a forecast were
true, then to withdraw from revolutionary politics would bring no
blame; resignation would be merely the sensible course.
An objection could be made that this
comment is overly psychological. Perhaps so. But a younger Les Evans
may well have responded differently than his older self did. Years ago,
Evans would most likely have considered a question of socialist theory
as a challenge to resolve, and he would have applied himself to the
task with the same determination that led him to learn Chinese. The
older Evans found a respectable way to quit a political life that he no
longer wanted to live.
Peter Camejo remained a political
activist and a public figure throughout his life, but his political
trajectory was a gradual shift from a revolutionary perspective to a
reformist one. Yet, at the same time, it is likely that Camejo believed
he was being consistent and true to his convictions, that he was even
more revolutionary than those on the left who criticized him.
When the SWP forced out Camejo, and
later, other minority groups and individuals, he was compelled to
search for a contrast to the sterile, self-defeating sectarianism to
which the SWP had sunk. Camejo saw no way out but a break with the
past. He did not believe that the SWP leaders had departed from the
party’s revolutionary heritage, which was the position of the expelled
members (including Les Evans) who formed Socialist Action.
Instead, Camejo was convinced that the
Leninist and Trotskyist tradition itself was flawed and provided no
basis for political re-birth and growth. Starting over along the same
road would only lead, eventually, to another dead end. A new SWP-type
of organization, Camejo felt, would merely duplicate the failings of
the old one. This conviction—ultimately shown to be false—guided his
political activities until the end of his life.
Camejo’s study of the Cuban revolution
and his first-hand observation of the Nicaraguan Revolution in 1979
convinced him that the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) provided
irrefutable evidence of a model vanguard organization that could
succeed in its revolutionary tasks.
Rather than building some tightly knit
group like the SWP, forever quarreling over fine points of doctrine,
Camejo believed that the Sandinista experience demonstrated in practice
the superiority of a loosely-based coalition with a broadly defined
program. He expected that this kind of formation would be more
successful than the Leninist and/or Trotskyist organizations.
The problem was to transplant the FSLN
experience onto the less fertile soil of the United States. Camejo
directed his considerable talent and ingenuity to this task, yet
despite his efforts, he never did succeed. The essential reason is
clear: The theory itself was flawed.
The failure could have been, and was,
predicted. Past experience pointed to no other conclusion. In a 1967
pamphlet, SWP founder James P. Cannon wrote, “The history of American
communism since its inception in 1919 has been a record of struggle for
the right kind of party. All the other problems have been related to
this central issue.” That “record of struggle” suggested that Camejo’s
organizational innovations were not at all new but closely resembled
past initiatives that never came to fruition. Same efforts yielded same
results.
In 1983 Camejo co-founded the
short-lived North Star Network, a group made up of ex-SWPers,
ex-Maoists, and others. The magazine they published lasted a few years.
Soon after, Camejo was involved with Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition.
It was around this time that Camejo would say, “If we are going to make
a mistake, then let’s make it with the masses, not separate and apart
from them.”
Camejo’s guiding idea, one that he
often expressed as a leader of the SWP, was to engage the masses in
political struggle at their own level of consciousness. There was no
need to use off-putting names, slogans, or demands out of some
misguided allegiance to a revolutionary tradition. Political practice
counted more than political labels. Through their own political
activity, the masses would learn, and their understanding would deepen
and become more revolutionary.
But Camejo did not merely drop
controversial words like “socialism;” he went further and dropped the
idea, or the program, of socialism. This shift brought him increasingly
and permanently into the camp of reformism, and he staked out a
position on the left-wing side of reform politics.
Camejo’s alignment with the Green Party
eventually led to his role as their gubernatorial candidate in
California. His speeches ridiculed any faith or hope in the Democratic
Party, and he spoke brilliantly in favor of popular measures that would
better the lives of the average person. But while Camejo would, for
example, dissect and condemn corporate greed, neither he nor the Green
Party platform called for the overthrow of the corporate system and the
state that existed to support and nurture it.
As a candidate, Camejo became the kind
of figure that, decades before, he had so powerfully and convincingly
criticized, that is, someone who opposes capitalism’s excesses but who
doesn’t oppose capitalism itself.
Of course, Camejo let it be known that
he was a “watermelon: green on the outside and red on the inside.”
Perhaps such a declaration quieted his conscience. But, in public, it
was the green side that he expressed.Camejo’s performance in the
governor”s race led him to become the vice-presidential candidate on
Ralph Nader’s independent campaign for president.
Yet, none of this activity, which
brought Camejo into contact with thousands, amounted to any lasting
growth in political organizations. Nader himself did not want to build
any structure beyond his campaigns.
The Greens, instead of enlarging their
ranks, underwent factional battles as vicious and divisive as any found
on the U.S. left. They ultimately split, primarily on the programmatic
decision of what stance to take and apply to the Democratic Party. The
result was a decimation of the Green movement.
Thus, after two decades of political
organizing and campaigning, Camejo was left with little to show for his
years of effort. No one could fault his enthusiasm and determination;
the fault lay in the theory. Camejo never succeeded in creating a
better alternative to the tradition represented today by Socialist
Action.
Yet, without disregarding such
criticisms, readers would benefit by coming to grips with “North Star:
A Memoir” and “Outsider’s Reverie.” These are serious works by
thoughtful people, and they deserve critical study. There are important
lessons to be learned from their experiences, even when those lessons
conflict with the authors’ intent. These memoirs suggest what course to
avoid and what course should be followed and developed in today’s
political realities.
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