From: odin@world.std.com (Hank Roth)
Subject: Hal Draper - A Tribute
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Originator: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1992 07:47:00 GMT

<<< via P_news >>>                                                                               
>From    : MICHAEL BAGGE  
To      : ALL            
Subject : hal draper     
{cross-posted from Fidonet/P_news}                                                                               
  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)  


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