From: dmr@andromeda.rutgers.edu (Daniel Rosenblum)
Newsgroups: rec.music.folk
Subject: Re: Trotskyite Mammy
Date: 18 Nov 92 17:08:28 GMT
Organization: Rutgers University, Graduate School of Management, Newark, N.J.

At the risk of continuing the conversion of rec.music.folk into
soc.politics.left.sectarian.history, let me add my own two bits of
historical enlightenment (:-)) into this discussion.  Just to bring
it up to date:

In <1992Nov18.061049.27277@u.washington.edu>
 joe@evolution.u.washington.edu (Joe Felsenstein) writes, answering
 someone who in turn who followed up on an earlier post of his:

>In article <26660@optima.cs.arizona.edu> tzf@csl.biosci.arizona.edu writes:
>>For those interested in following such trivia & nuances, the YPSL was the
>>youth group of one of the other Socialist splinters, NOT the Trotskyists,
>>so the parody is probably intended to ridicule. If so, it misses its mark
>>by a bit: the YSA (youth group of the SWP, the Trotskyist splinter) kids I
>>knew back then would have taken it to heart and sung it with relish.

>This is getting abstruse, but I believe that some of the factions in YPSL did
>consider themselves Trotskyists or neo-Trotskyists, and they did sing it
>with relish as self-ridicule.  The folks I knew later in the 60's (not YSA)
>certainly thought of themselves as political descendants of Trotsky and
>muster[d]ed themselves to sing it with relish.  Note the phrase "Trotskyite" as
>opposed to "Trotskyist".  Trotskyists get offended when called "-ite"
>but folks with Trotsky posters on their apartment walls loved the song anyway.

The Young People's Socialist League (YPSL) was the youth group of
the old Socialist Party, i.e. the party of Norman Thomas, Michael
Harrington, Irving Howe, etc.  Although it might have contained
devotees of Trotsky, that would be surprising, since the Socialist
Party was anti-Leninist to begin with, and Trotsky's followers have
always considered themselves to be a species of Leninists (in fact,
to be the only true species of Leninists, but that's another story).
The Socialist Party ultimately split three ways, with the most
conservative people forming the Social Democrats, USA.  They
supported the VietNam War and became the ideologues of the right
wing of the AFL-CIO, including its International Affairs Dept. (or
whatever it's called), working closely with the CIA.  The people in
the middle, which included most of the intellectual big names,
ultimately evolved into the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee
(DSOC), which merged about fifteen years ago with the the new leftish
New American Movement to form the Democratic Socialists of America
(DSA), which is more or less the U.S. affiliate of the Socialist
International.  The left, the best known member of which is probably
pacifist activist David McReynolds, took the name Socialist Party
U.S.A.  Just to bring things back to folk music for a moment, I
presume that Joe Glazer is close to either SD-USA or DSA, although
I don't know which.

The Young Socialist Alliance (YSA) was and is the youth group of the
Socialist Workers Party, which is the largest and oldest Trotskyist
party in the U.S.  It goes back to the split in the Communist Party,
both in the U.S. and abroad, between followers of Trotsky and followers
of Stalin in the late 1920's.  There are numerous other Trotskyist
organizations in the U.S. (and elsewhere, I suppose), including such
sectlets (as a friend of mine calls them) as the Workers World Party,
the International Socialists, the Spartacist League, the Workers League,
etc.  The Workers World Party (youth group: Youth Against War and
Fascism, or YAWF) was supposed to be Maoist Trotskyist, which is a good
trick, given Mao's devotion to Stalin.  The International Socialists,
which had its own subsplit a number of years ago, is, I am told, allied
with the British Socialist Workers Party (which is not allied with the
U.S. Socialist Workers Party).  I seem to recall that Vanessa Redgrave
is affiliated with the British allies of the Workers League.  And the
Spartacist League, which has some following around Cleveland, Ohio, is
notorious for making provocative splinter demonstrations at national
rallies in Washington, D.C.
-- 
Daniel M. Rosenblum, Assistant Professor, Quantitative Studies Area,
   Graduate School of Management, Rutgers University (Newark Campus)
ROSENBLUM@DRACO.RUTGERS.EDU                      ROSENBLUM@ZODIAC.BITnet
dmr@andromeda.rutgers.edu          ...!rutgers!andromeda.rutgers.edu!dmr