Worker Hostility

To link the anti-war fight with support for 2-S would be deadly. For the key division the student movement must overcome is that between itself and the bulk of the population, the working people, without whom no war can be fought, without whom nothing moves. Many workers are hostile to the anti-war movement. They often see us as a buch of cowards pretending moral opposition to disguise plain fear. Defense of 2-S will not only fail to prevent student conscription, and will therefore demoral-be the movement; it will, in addition, convince workers they were right all along about students. Instead, while fighting against campus divisions in the form of class rank and draft tests, students must ally themselves with truck drivers, factory workers, long-shoremen, department store clerks. On the one hand we should support their strikes with manpower and by raising funds on campus, support their fights to defeat anti-strike legislation, aid their attempts to organize unions, help them combat war-inflated food prices with boycotts, etc., and, on the other hand, leaflet their work places, especially when a relationship already exists, putting forward our views on Vietnam, explaining frankly that we are doing this because we think we've both got an interest in defeating the government's war policies.

This dual approach of supporting workers' struggles and trying to win them to actively opposing the war we call worker-student alliance; whatever it's called, we think it's the only way the anti-war movement can grow, in the long run, into a movement with the ability, that is, the power, to defeat the government's attempt to defeat revolutions all over the world. To make this alliance students must oppose 2-S. This doesn't mean demanding that the government abolish deferments. The government is likely to do that itself this Spring.

Each method of drafting students and workers has advantages and disadvantages from the government's point of view. In either case, it will draft as many students and workers as it needs to fight the war. For us to urge the abolition of 2-S would be to imply that the draft for Vietnam could somehow be made just. Opposing 2-S means that radicals should give up their deferments and agitate, during various anti-war struggles, to convince their fellow-students that the deferment is dead against their long term interest. Of course people won't be convinced of this idea right away. But the effort will help build the anti-war movement (the long-term need of most students and all workers) in two ways. First, workers will not take seriously anti-war students who favor 2-S, radicals who are trying to get off. At best they will see us as missionaries. Probably, they will view us in fact as fat-cat hypocrites out to manipulate them. Why should they support hypocritical radicals when it's less risky to stick with the established, familiar hypocrites, the Johnsons, Kennedys, et al. Second, unless they are convinced that 2-S provides no sure personal escape, students' campus struggles (e.g., vs. ranking) will turn into fights to proteet themselves at the expense of the rest of the population--and the rest of the population will react accordingly. Indeed, students with a distorted view of 2-S will care little about allying with workers against the war. And how, when push meets shove, can anyone with a bit of social consciousnses justify the obvious class privilege (illusory though it may be) of student deferment?

The CP letter is a program which would weaken the anti-war movement. Aside from this, the letter's approach to people is plain rotten. Students won't like you if you argue against their (illusion of) security. Students are "spoon fed with the delusions and placebos of this system" all their lives. In other words, if a man has a class privilege (in this case one that is quite shaky) don't struggle with him to give it up. Play up to it. Uphold the narrowest, in fact short-sighted, selfishness against the collective good. It sounds like Ayan Rand.

Moreover, argues the CP, how can workers "be expected to unite with a rash unthinking student who says he hates war but throws away his chance to get out of it!" Surely people will be shocked if we do something decent, if we think past our own all-important selves. People would certainly be amazed if a group called the Commu- nist Party, claiming to be the vanguard of the workers, rejected the clear class privilege (though illusory, though temporary) of 2-S. They would be amazed if such a group did not urge other radcials also to defend 2-S. After all, as Brecht says: When the leaders speak of peace The common folk know That war is coming. And shouldn't revolutionaries act just like the exploiting class they would, allegedly, overthrow? Let us not act in the interest of the collective! Selfish opportunism is what capitalism trains people to expect. Don't scare the j"spoon fed" masses with some newfangled morality.

Speaking of its program, the CP states that "... these reforms are (like all reforms) obfuscations of the ultimate goal..." This is very revealing. In fact, revolutionaries must demand reforms which do exactly the opposite--they must organize struggles which clarify the situation by defeating deadly illusions, which unite people around their own self-interest and increase their ability to fight back.

The CP thinks the anti-war movement will follow its program. Frankly, we doubt it.  Progressive Labor  Jared Israel, Harvard  Ellen Klein, Radcliffe  Emily Perkins, Boston U.  Bob Schwartz, Boston U.  Debby Levensohn, Boston U.