NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #27/NN_1992_27.iso/spool/misc/activism/progress/8413

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From: [e-mail] (Hank Roth)
Subject: Hal Draper - A Tribute
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>From    : MICHAEL BAGGE
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Subject : hal draper
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  HAL DRAPER ---- A TRIBUTE

(((( Introduction for this conference:

(It is not surprising that a culture which has such a troubling
time discussing CLASS should likewise talk about SOCIALISM as if
it were synonymous with Bolshevism. Since the postwar strike
wave and Palmer Raids  of 1919-1920, American discourse about
socialism has been defined by a perspective propagandized by
public relations firms whose job has been to con those without
that the filthy rich (a) don't really control anything, (b)
deserve to control everything,(c) delegate their power to middle
management consisting of the best and brightest, and (d) that
the middle management front men for the filthy rich really
seized power and have made a middle class heaven except to the
a middle class heaven except to the extent that the nasty
liberals have (extent that the nasty liberals have subverted
their mandate.

It is not surprising, but unnecessary. Perhaps with the
withering away of the USSR, socialism can be reclaimed. Of
course, one of the more curious malapropisms is right there: USSR
is a fictional name, neither united nor soviet nor socialist nor
republican. Many will agree with all except the socialist, due
all to often to their ideological need to prattle about their own
(presumed) individual achievements or the all too evident
failures of others.

 Hal Draper bucked this lemming-like culture of the filthy rich.
He spent the better part of his life scraping off the barnacles
of German social democracy and later Bolshevik communism from the
thought of Karl Marx. What follows is a tribute and an
introduction. This article is a summary of Draper's work. Also an
explanation of why I will later post the various parts of one
of the more insightful essays of the latter half of this
century. Either an overdue corrective to stalinoid gibberish or a
necessary preliminary to future organizing. Whether or not
socialism has a political future depends upon social forces
beyond the control of the individuals reading about Draper or his
view of socialism. Whether or not that future includes people of
critical insights does require a sensibility such as that shown
by Draper.
==============================||||||||||||||||

     HAL DRAPER - A TRIBUTE  by  ARTHUR LIPOW



     Hal Draper died on January 25, 1990 at the age of 75. He was
one of the last surviving leaders of the small group of
revolutionary socialists who formed the Workers Party and the
Independent Socialist League. A socialist at the age of 14, he
joined the Young Peoples Socialist League, the youth
section of the Socialist Party, and in the 1930s became its
National Organizer. When the followers of Trotsky left the
Socialist Party to form the Socialist Workers Party, Hal joined
them. He left the SWP in 1940 with the group led by Max
Shachtman, Martin Abern and James Burnham who had broken
with Trotsky over his position favoring "unconditional defense"
of the USSR during the Russian invasion of Finland. Draper helped
to found the Workers Party (which became the Independent
Socialist League in 1949) with which he was associated until its
dissolution in 1957.

     Although small, the WP/ISL played an important role in
elaborating the ideas of revolutionary democratic third camp
socialism. Opposed to abandoning  the class struggle during World
War II, Workers Party members were active in the trade unions as
opponents of the conservative/Communist coalition that not only
supported the no-strike pledge but also denounced efforts to
fight racism in employment and in the army.

     A unique theoretical contribution of the WP/ISL was the
theory of bureaucratic collectivism, developed by Max Shachtman
to explain the phenomenon of Stalinism as a new form of class
society in the Soviet Union and, in the postwar era in the
countries of Eastern Europe. Draper, in countless articles
published in "Labor Action" and "The New International,"
deepened the theory, applying it to Titoism, the developments in
East Germany and Poland in the 1950s and the rise of polycentric
Communism.

     Draper, as did the WP/ISL, rejected the notion of
totalitarian Stalinist society as atomize and frozen, a theory
which led so many socialists and liberals to support the Western
Cold War camp as providing the only realistic alternative to
Stalinism. Instead, he viewed Communism as riven by social
contradictions, arguing that its suppression of democracy was a
fundamental weakness creating social instability, that would lead
to its downfall. The force of popular democratic opposition and
the revolts overwhelming Communist regimes in the East
demonstrated the accuracy of this analysis.                -

     Draper also analyzed the tendency toward the bureaucratic
collectivization, or statification, of capitalism and vigorously
polemized against the social democrats and Fabians who saw this
statification as a movement toward socialism. In his study of
Marx, Hal demonstrated that such views were antithetical to the
revolutionary democratic conceptions of Marx, himself.

     The Cold War and McCarthyism affected all radical activity
in the US during the 1950s. Throughout the period, the WS/ISL
steadfastly held to its third camp opposition to both US and
Stalinist imperialism. Week after week, in the pages of "Labor
Action" which he edited and produced almost single-handedly at a
consistently high level, Draper analyzed the course of
American politics and the developments in the Stalinist world.
His articles on US imperialist interventions in Latin America and
the Korean War, together  with the coverage of the imperialist
wars in Algeria, Suez, and Indochina, stand out for the clarity
of their analysis and the consistency of their opposition to the
cold warriors of the West, in whose camp were to be found
virtually the entire liberal and social democratic establishment.

     Members of the ISL and its youth group were militant
supporters of and key activists in the civil rights movement at a
time when liberals were hostile to its demands because they
key activists in the civil rights movement at a time when
liberals were threatened the liberal-Dixiecrat alliance that
dominated the Democratic Party. The ISL publications, "Labor
Action" (of which Julius Jacobson, one of the present editors of
"New Politics," was editor) were influential far beyond the tiny
membership of the organization itself.

     In the last three decades of his life, Hal began to write
the series of books and pamphlets for which he is best known -
the four volumes of KARL MARX'S THEORY OF REVOLUTION ...; THE
DICTATORSHIP OF THE PROLETARIAT FROM MARX TO LENIN; the three
volumes of the MARX-ENGELS CYCLOPEDIA; and the pamphlet, THE TWO
SOULS OF SOCIALISM.

     THE TWO SOULS OF SOCIALISM became an underground classic
with its analytical and historical review of the conception of an
authoritarian socialism from above (predating Stalinism) as being
in irreconcilable conflict with the democratic Marxist conception
of socialism from below. Given the wide currency authoritarian
socialism still enjoys in the broadly defined left, THE TWO SOULS
OF SOCIALISM remains a brilliant contribution to socialist
thought and action, as timely today as the day it was written....

     Although increasingly immersed in his scholarly work, Hal
remained involved in the movement. His participation peaked
during the 1960s when his conflict with the democratic Marxist
socialism from above (predating Stalinism) as being in irreconcilable
conception of socialism from below. Given the wide currency
authoritarian socialism still enjoys in the broadly defined left,
THE TWO SOULS OF SOCIALISM remains a brilliant contribution to
socialist though and action, as timely today as the day it was
written....

     Although increasingly immersed in his scholarly work, Hal
remained involved in the movement. His participation peaked
during the 1960s when he gave invaluable advice to young comrades
active in the student movement in Berkeley. His short book, THE
BERKELEY STUDENT REVOLT, remains the best history of the Free
Speech Movement.... Hal consistently advocated free
speech, even for fascists and other opponents of democracy, an
issue that long concerned him, beginning in the mid-1940s when,
under his prodding, the WP/ISL changed its position on free
speech for fascists. Hal's essay on this question, written during
the heyday of the student New Left in the 1960s remains relevant
today, as new arguments are mounted by conservative as well as
some liberal and left-wing proponents of censorship and legal
repression.

 * Origin: Socialism OnLine! 719-392-7781 HST * 719-390-4881 V32b (1:128/105)