Abstract
The following—"a composition dealing with a subject from a limited or personal point of view"—developed from thoughts prompted partly by two MRarticles. One was Alan Wolfe's "Political Repression" (December 1971) and the other, "Socialist Academics and Labor" by Wells H. Keddie (February 1972). Its origins lie also in several sets of experience. In 1970 and 1971, as a writer, I spent a great deal of time with members and leaders of the Black Panther Party. Since early 1972 I have been doing the same with members and leaders of the independent United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers Union. I am sure, too, that my concern with the questions of unity and solidarity has grown in proportion with time recently spent in Cuba, which I have visited annually since 1967. More remote origins are no doubt also involved: three years as a sheet-metal worker in a shipyard in Maine in the Second World War, and several years' service after that, as a national staff member of what was then the Industrial Union of Marine and Shipbuilding Workers, CIO. At present I am an independent writer and a lecturer in "journalism" at the Boston University School of Public Communication.This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website, where most recent articles are published in full.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.
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