Views in brief

E.P. Thompson and pessimism

I SECOND Grant M.'s motion in defense of E.P. Thompson's stature as a champion workers' struggle in his reply ("The relevance of E.P. Thompson") to my appreciation of Tom Hayden's life and politics .

Further, if I had written that Thompson was guilty of a "repudiation" (Grant's word) of working-class politics, then I would happily retract the statement and sue for peace. As it happens, I didn't say any such thing. What I did write was that Thompson et al. shared an "associated pessimism about the role Marx assigned to the working class as the central agent of social change." That's a different kettle of fish.

I will grant (no pun intended) that readers unfamiliar with Thompson might get the impression that he shared C. Wright Mills' genuine "repudiation" (with Mills, I think the word fits) of working-class politics because of an ambiguity in my syntax where I wrote that Mills shared "many" "conclusions" with Thompson. With respect to this, Grant is absolutely right to point readers to Thompson's critique of Mills.

However, I would maintain that my original formulation about Thompson's "pessimism" holds up and that Michael Kidron was right to note Thompson's retreat from Marx's conceptions of working-class revolution. Grant argues that Thompson (in the "Revolution" chapter in Out of Apathy as well as in the article Grant cites) effectively attacked many of the "hackneyed conceptions employed by Marxists old and new," and I will concede the point as long as Grant concedes that Thompson, as a recovering Stalinist, was wrong to counterpose Marx's conception of revolution to that of Lenin and Trotsky (who he conflates casually with Stalin and Mao).

Further, Thompson muddles the distinctions between bourgeois and proletarian revolution, forthrightly making the case that a new English Revolution must break with Leninist "dogma" (his word) on the need for "cataclysmic" transformation and the breaking of the state apparatus.

Thompson left the Stalinist political camp after Krushchev's secret speech in 1956, but settled in the social-democratic camp, albeit on its extreme left flank. From there, Thompson fought the good fight and deserves the many plaudits he earned as a groundbreaking social historian (The Making of the English Working Class) who engaged deeply and fruitfully with social movement for many decades. For those not familiar with his life and work think Howard Zinn.

I will, however, end with this. We can understand why Thompson wrote as he did as he broke with Stalinism. And we can understand why C. Wright Mills might misunderstand him--and therefore agree with him. After all, Thompson assumed a level of working-class consciousness and political organization that was entirely foreign to the American context--although Mills was better informed than most on these distinctions. And we can understand why--back to my original point about what was in the air in 1962--Hayden interpreted both in a certain way in writing the Port Huron Statement.

At the same time, the formulations Thompson employed, I would argue, for all their insight, also painted with too broad a "hackneyed" brush the genuine core of Marxism, thereby making it possible for many to believe that Hayden he had more in common with Thompson (as a real figure of the socialist left) than he ever really did. Having said all that, if this exchange interests just one person in reading Thompson's work, then I'm sure Grant will agree it has been worthwhile.
Todd Chretien, Portland, Maine

Labor at Standing Rock

YOUR ARTICLE "Rubber bullets against the protectors" was mostly excellent, but you left out an important detail: A group of rank-and-file union members established a camp near Standing Rock called Union Camp to demonstrate that there are a number of union members who do not support the Dakota Access Pipeline.

I am one of the three co-founders of this effort. Our Facebook page is "Labor for Standing Rock." I am surprised that you didn't report on this.
Steve Ongerth, from the internet

We need a new party

IN RESPONSE to "What will happen to the 'political revolution?'": Great piece. We cannot let Bernie Sanders' work go undone. I actually had faith in this man. We need a new, strong political party to take rise.
Austin, Grand Rapids, Michigan

The "lesser evil" in 1964

IN RESPONSE to "Does the lesser evil lead to less evil?": One of the best recent examples of this is 1964. The "Trump" of 1964 was Goldwater. No one liked Johnson, but everyone was afraid of Goldwater. Then Johnson escalated Vietnam, and 3 million Southeast Asians died, 150,000 of our own were killed or disabled, and 300,000 ex-soldiers had ongoing mental health issues

Lesser evilism legitimizes evil. It enables and approves the evils of the lesser evil, which, if we see clearly, are essentially the same evils as the greater evil.
Benedict Kavanagh, Vancouver, Washington