Symposium

Iraq Symposium

We are pleased to publish the following exchange on the politics of the U.S. occupation, the Iraqi resistance, and the antiwar movement. The symposium builds on a trio of articles -- by Barry Finger, Wadood Hamad, and Glenn Perusek -- that appeared in New Politics 38 (Winter 2005). Further responses from our readers are welcome.

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Roundtable on Immigration and African Americans

Stephen Steinberg's "Immigration, African Americans and Race Discourse" in our last issue of New Politics (#39) elicited several responses. Here they are with Steinberg's rejoinder. Steinberg's article, together with a different set of responses and a reply from Steinberg, also appears in the Winter issue of New Labor Forum. We urge readers to follow this debate in both venues. - EDS.

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Special Section on Civil Liberties

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Special Section on Latin America

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Special Section on Women and Work

Edited by Gertrude Ezorsky

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Special Section: Women's Issues

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Symposium on 'No Child Left Behind' and Public Education

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Symposium on Caregiving

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Symposium on Gays and the Left (Part I)

Thomas Harrison and Joanne Landy

THE HISTORIC RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN homosexuals and the left is complicated, because, as Jeffrey Escoffier reminds us in his overview of various currents -- socialist, left-Freudian, post-1969 gay liberationist -- "there are many different lefts." As we see it, the most important difference within the left has been the one separating an authoritarian, top-down tradition that focuses on social engineering, on the one hand, from a democratic, from below tradition that emphasizes freedom and popular control, on the other. Looking at the socialist tradition, specifically -- and all our contributors are or have been associated in some way with it -- one can discern traces of a different attitude toward sexual difference depending on which of the "two souls of socialism" -- to use the term coined by Hal Draper, a frequent contributor to New Politics in its early years -- one is examining. We say "traces" because explicit discussion of sexual matters of any kind, in writing, has been rare among socialists until fairly recent times.

Christopher Phelps has discovered an internal document of the Socialist Party youth, dated 1952, during the darkest days of McCarthyism, which urges the Party to support the decriminalization of same-sex activity. Tentative though it was, this initiative represents an intriguing echo, from within the left, of the politically neutral (though led largely by former Communists) "homophile" movement cautiously emerging in the 50s. In his important article, Phelps places the episode in the context of a long tradition of sexual libertarianism that has flickered unsteadily in and around the socialist movement since the late nineteenth century -- or at least that part of the movement with more democratic proclivities. The U.S. Socialist Party, as Phelps describes it, was probably pretty typical in its treatment of homosexuals and homosexuality: a "peculiar admixture of freedom and caution, acceptance and denial, silence and honesty" prevailed. There was plenty of homophobia, but "no official prohibition against same-sex desire and . . . no official ideology against it." David McReynolds, a veteran of the socialist and pacifist movements, recalls this twilight world of gay radicals in the 50s. In McReynolds' milieu -- the Los Angeles Socialist Party and the War Resisters League in New York -- homosexuals were tolerated, at best, but a same-sex orientation seldom interfered with common work for the cause.

Hardly a heroic record, but what a contrast with the policy of Stalinism, the system that came to power in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and enveloped the Communist parties of the world -- the most extreme development of what Draper called "socialism from above." The Bolsheviks abolished all legal restrictions on same-sex activity after they came to power in 1917, but in 1934 the new Stalinist ruling elite made homosexuality illegal, punishable by three to five years in prison (a penalty far more severe than that imposed under the tsars). Bettina Aptheker, in a candid and hard-hitting recollection, portrays the stiflingly puritanical and homophobic atmosphere in the American Communist Party, which persisted well beyond the explosion of sexual freedom that accompanied the arrival of the New Left in the 1960s and the birth of the gay liberation movement at the end of the decade. Amazingly, the Party's official attitude toward homosexuality, and even toward "recreational sex," differed hardly at all from the most conservative elements in American society. To a young woman trying to come to terms with her lesbianism, it was a powerful obstacle to overcome.

While acknowledging that leftists have played a decisive role in the formation of the modern gay and lesbian movement, John D'Emilio asks why the left as a whole has been so negligent in championing the cause of gay liberation. In our view, the success with which the right has demagogically exploited the same-sex marriage issue has unnerved many on the left as, increasingly, elements of a left program are subordinated to the perceived urgency of electing Democrats, and one senses a tendency to hold gays and lesbians at arm's length. In his critique, D'Emilio asserts the centrality that gay rights ought to have for a left that claims to fight oppression.

THE GAY AND LESBIAN MOVEMENT, AND ITS demands, have been denounced or dismissed with some regularity by the critics of "identity politics" -- moderates such as Todd Gitlin and Michael Tomasky, and even radicals like Ralph Nader. Martin Duberman, in a nuanced and critical defense of the politics of identity, refutes the charge that these politics have destroyed the U.S. left; instead, he insists that it is the homophobia still rampant in the unions, the black churches, and elsewhere, as well as the disdain shown by Gitlin, Tomasky, and co. -- not the alleged obsession with identity and difference -- that prevents the formation of a powerful alliance of all oppressed forces against the right. "You cannot link arms under a universalist banner," he says, "when you can't find your own name on it."

Below is Part One of the New Politics discussion on Gays and the Left. In our next issue we will continue the symposium with contributions from Blanche Wiesen Cook, Thomas Harrison, Amber Hollibaugh, Doug Ireland, and perhaps others.

Thanks to Doug Ireland, Jesse Lemisch, and Christopher Phelps for their help in designing this symposium.

THOMAS HARRISON and JOANNE LANDY, members of the New Politics editorial board, organized this symposium.

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Symposium on Gays and the Left (Part II)

INTRODUCTION

IN THE LAST ISSUE OF NEW POLITICS, we published Part I of a symposium on gays and the left, with contributions by Bettina Aptheker, John D’Emilio, Martin Duberman, Jeffrey Escoffier, and David McReynolds, and a piece by Christopher Phelps on a 1952 document of the Socialist Party youth that urged the SP to support the decriminalization of same-sex activity. Below is Part II of the symposium, with articles by Peter Drucker, Marcia Gallo, Thomas Harrison, Doug Ireland, and Sherry Wolf. We invite responses from our readers.

—JOANNE LANDY and THOMAS HARRISON

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Symposium on Iraq and the Antiwar Movement

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The Elections

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The World Economic Crisis: Labor's Response

IN HIS INTRODUCTION to the Winter 1998 New Politics symposium (Vol. VI, No. 4) marking the 150th anniversary of The Communist Manifesto, Julius Jacobson, co-editor and co-founder of this journal, noted that “symptomatic of the crisis in Marxism” is not only the “failure of the working class to act as the agency for social transformation but the changing nature of the working class itself which is a legitimate area of concern and debate” (p. 47). This special section renews the challenge that New Politics symposium set out, of understanding what has happened to the working class and labor unions internationally, and how they have — and have not — responded to the greatest financial crisis in capitalism we have witnessed in generations. All of the authors are activists in the labor movements in their respective countries. We asked them to describe and analyze how workers in their countries are responding to the world economic crisis, noting what they see as the role of the revolutionary socialist left in all of this, if it has a role, and describing the prospects. Their essays reflect the great differences in political life, social class relations, and union organization in various nations. We anticipate that two additional contributions will be posted on our website (www.newpol.org) by the time the print edition is in your hands. We intend this as the beginning of an ongoing discussion in New Politics and invite readers’ submissions on the subject.

DAN LA BOTZ and LOIS WEINER

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The World in Crisis

The world is in crisis.

New Politics is pleased to publish a set of articles that offer insights into some of the world’s major conflicts.

We present three analyses of Iran’s democratic movement, with articles by Yassamine Mather, Negar Mottahedeh, and Danny Postel. There’s been sharp debate on the Left in Pakistan regarding that country’s campaign against Islamic militants; Pervez Hoodbhoy and Adaner Usmani offer contending views. Stephen R. Shalom discusses Obama and Israel-Palestine. Adrienne Pine writes on the twin crises in Haiti and Honduras. Steven Fake and Kevin Funk address the situation in Darfur, and Sudan more generally. And Derrick O’Keefe puts forward a critique of the foreign policies of the Obama administration from a Canadian perspective.

We hope that these articles will help make sense of these different conflicts, and encourage appropriate political action.

— STEPHEN R. SHALOM AND JOANNE LANDY

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