Of Trotskyists & stockbrokers: “Lefty” Hooligan, “What’s Left?” May 2021

Is this just ultra-revolutionary high-voltage subjectivism of a petty-bourgeois gone wild—or what?
—Otto Wille Kuusinen, on Trotsky at Comintern’s Sixth Congress

Anyone who has been through the Trotskyist movement, for example, as I have, knows that in respect to decent personal behavior, truthfulness, and respect for dissident opinion, the ‘comrades’ are generally much inferior to the average stockbroker.
—Dwight MacDonald, The Root is Man

“Lenin and Trotsky were sympathetic to the Bolshevik left before 1921,” the man insisted. “Really they were.”

Switchovers and crossovers: “What’s Left?” July 2018, MRR #422

Every elementary schoolchild knows that, after 1492, two food staples common to the “New World” were introduced into the “Old World” via the trans-Atlantic exchange inaugurated by Columbus. I’m talking about potatoes and corn, or maize. What’s not so well known is that maize was substantially undigestible, that potatoes contained low level toxins, and that native Americans processed both heavily in order to make them palatable. Plant breeding and hybridization techniques since 1492 have resulted in far more edible varieties of both maize and potatoes, at the cost of the diversity of the original plant populations.

Both maize and potatoes are considered species complex (superspecies, species aggregate) which, biologically, means a group of closely related species that are so similar in appearance to the point that the boundaries between them are frequently unclear. In fact, the original maize and potato superspecies each contained hundreds, if not thousands of related individual species that could potentially hybridize. One species of maize or potato might not be able to easily cross breed with another species of maize or potato at the far range of their respective genetic spectrums, but that spectrum did allow for gradual, continuous hybridization along the way.

Hooligan 300 Rule: “What’s Left?” April 2018, MRR #419

Ten like-minded, highly disciplined individuals can outwit and outmaneuver a thousand loosely affiliated individuals every time.

Hooligan 300 Rule

Jimmy Carter reinstated draft registration on January 2, 1980, in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. My @ affinity group, Night and Fog Action, called an emergency anti-draft/anti-war meeting at UCSD on January 31. Over 200 people attended, three Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) members among them.

There was a lot of excitement and outrage in the room as people discussed what to do next. After instructive legal and informational presentations, someone suggested we form a new group, Students for Peace (SfP). We proposed future activities and events, but the conversations that followed were quickly derailed. The RCP effectively commandeered the debate with talk of digging capitalism’s grave and opposing both American imperialism and Soviet social imperialism. They all had the same political line and similar presentations, supported each other’s comments and called on each other in the discussion, and relentlessly pushed their position while attacking those who opposed them. Some of the unaffiliated participants began sympathizing with the RCP’s point-of-view while others quickly and vehemently opposed their brand of ultra-Maoism while still others became increasingly bewildered. Confusion and acrimony reigned. A friend, Eric, confronted a younger RCPer face-to-face in a yelling match that almost descended into a fist fight. We collected addresses and phone numbers for a contact list, then disbanded the meeting with little else accomplished.