SYL Responds

To the Editors of The Crimson:

Attention: The following material is not fictional, though some of the things referred to are almost too gross to be true.

Anyone who knows anything about the Spartacus Youth League must have done a double-take when they read Joseph Menn's "Platonic Dialogue?" (November 19). The piece was a "fictional" epistolary exchange between two Harvard students, one who heads the "Sisyphus Youth League," Thomas Careen, and the other who heads the Conservative Club, Sy Kahane. Menn was really referring to the SYL's Thomas N. Crean, and right-wing Iranian prince Saied Kashani. He attempted to hide his politics behind crude fiction. The central point was that communist defense of the Soviet Union against U.S. imperialism can be equated with fascism (represented by Israeli fascist Meir Kahane).

It is no coincidence that Joseph's article came out during the week of Crimson elections to its executive board. Menn is a junior and this was his big chance to make The Crimson's inner sanctum his own. "Platonic Dialogue?" is his official cover letter for his Crimson application, an attempt to clear his record once and for all of any taint of Communist politics. Any anti-Soviet junior Cold Warrior at The Crimson could have written Joe's "opinion piece" (though to be fair most would not be so crude).

But believe it or not, Menn is a member of a supposedly Marxist, supposedly anti-racist outfit called the International Socialist Organization (ISO), which at Harvard masquerades as "Socialist" Forum. The ISO claims a program that's "neither Washington nor Moscow." In the face of Reagan and Co.'s anti-Soviet was drive they refuse to defend the social gains of October 1917 and equate U.S. imperialism with the Soviet workers state, spitting on the greatest victory of the international working class. The ISO supports Reagan and the Vatican's company union in Poland, Solidarnosc, whose counterrevolutionary attempt was thankfully spiked.

What makes Joe and the ISO so upset about the Trotskyist SYL? Is it that we Marxists who defend for the Soviet Union stand for the defense of the unions, for the defense of Blacks against race terror and for workers revolution to smash capitalism? Menn is very explicit: "Sisyphist slogans like: 'Defense of the Soviet Union Begins in Central America!' 'Vietnam Was a Victory!!' 'Defend the Deformed Workers State Against Jewish Dissidents!!!''' It should be made clear that we adamantly oppose state persecution of citizens for purely ideological "crimes." But Soviet traitors like the Sakharovs, who give concrete aid to U.S. imperialism should be tried for their crimes. It is the height of hypocrisy for the ISO to accuse the SYL of anti-Semitism when their heroes in Solidarnosc look to Joseph Pilsudski, fascistic interwar dictator of Poland, as their model. Pilsudski set up concentration camps for Jews before World War II but didn't get a chance to use them because Hitler invaded first.

We stand by the other slogans. The heroic victory of Vietnamese workers and peasants was an important defeat for U.S. imperialism. And today, the U.S. bourgeoisie sees Central America as its starting point for a war ultimately aimed at destroying the Soviet Union. We in the SYL believe that he Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 is the single greatest victory of the international working class to date, and the greatest defeat for world imperialism. In spite of the parasitic Stalinist bureaucracy which has usurped political power from the proletariat, the central gains of a planned collectivized economy still remain.

But the ISO hates Russia more than it wants to fight fascism, so they line up behind Reagan on the left flank of the anti-Soviet war drive. Because the ISO does not defend the Soviet Union against imperialist attack, they are impotent in the face of its domestic reflection: union-busting and race terrorism. The most hideous recent example of race-terror was the cold-blooded, state-organized murder of 11 members of the MOVE commune in Philadelphia by Reagan and his Black democratic front-man mayor Wilson Goode. However, despicable Joe Menn can joke in his piece about Klan-style "sordid and unhealthy aspects of cross-burning and rock throwing."

We in the SYL happen to be quite familiar with the sordid, little history of Joseph Menn and the somewhat bigger more sordid story of the ISO. So at the risk of making you nauseous, gentle reader, we wish to relate to some of the choicest parts of this tale in the interests of public sanitation.

When Caspar Weinberger came to Harvard in November 1983, he received the welcome he so richly deserved: hundreds of student protesters, including members of the SYL, shouted him down. Joe didn't show, although at the time he claimed to be a militant socialist and had even told some of his friends that he had joined the SYL! In the spring of 1984, trade union militants in Boston formed mass picket lines to defend Greyhound workers. It was one of the most critical labor battles following Reagan's crushing of PATCO, and the SYL brought students down to stand in those picket lines. When we called Joseph to come down at 6 a.m. his response was shock and dismay: "You mean that people get up for work that early?" Again, he didn't show. For his obvious disinterest in working class struggle, Joseph was appointed labor reporter at The Crimson. To secure his post, Joe was told he would have to abide by Crimson discipline--he couldn't wear any "Better Red than Crimson" SYL T-shirts around the big boys at "The Crime." Of course, he eagerly complied. But it took the ISO to show him how he too could be a vile anti-Soviet, anti-Communist liberal like a lot of other Crimson editors, yet still keep a veneer of "radicalism."

Students who want to fight racism and U.S. imperialism must look to the SYL. It is we Marxists who defend the Soviet Union who organized a 5000-strong labor/Black mobilization that stopped the Ku Klux Klan from marching in Washington, D.C., November, 1982. We will continue to struggle to build a revolutionary party to lead such actions and fight to win students to the side of the working class.

So kudos for Joseph, but for those of you who really want to get rid of this racist, capitalist system--Join the SYL! Thomas N. Crean '86   Spartacus Youth League