I was in High School in a small town in South Florida in 1973 (age 14) and considered myself a socialist of some sort. It was mainly a mattered of personal experience and a lot of reading because I had only met a few socialists --members of the Catholic left sent into a kind of exile to Immokalee.
I read an advertisement for the Guardian and Dissent Mag in the back of the New Republic so I took my busboy money and bought a sub for both. It was both enlightening and strange to me. I recognized it as kind of Maoist without having any sense of where that was "located." I recognized the orientation of Dissent and learned a lot about NYC intellectuals brain-tossing from it but it wasn't my preferred politics. Strangely enough I think I was an unconscious Shachtmanite because circa 1943 because I believed the Soviet Block, Cuba, China, etc. were a bureaucratic ruling-class. But I also wanted an old fashion romantic revolution. I liked Che and the Black Panthers and thrilled to every revolutionary event. The Guardian with its kind of Maoist line gave me the notion that there were revolutionaries some place. And it also gave me news from the world I wouldn't have had otherwise. And yet I also thought that the Guardian circa 1973 was a bit crazy in the exact same way Dissent was stodgy and abstract. I have to laugh. My favorite teacher (a Franciscan nun) warned me not to join the Weather Underground when she saw me reading the Guardian. On the other hand she approved of Dissent and borrowed it from me. She thought it would turn me into a college professor. > -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#2299): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/2299 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/77342591/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
