Boston Communist Youth Club on the Draft

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

In recent months there has been considerable discussion of the draft, on the left in particular and throughout the nation generally. We would like to publish the results of our collective discussion on the subject at this time.

The principal reason that there is serious debate about the draft at this time (as opposed to 1963, for example, when a vote on this issue last came up in Congress, and a group of pacifists led a little known campaign to abolish conscription) is that our government is fighting an undeclared, unpopular, and unjust war in Vietnam. Without the draft this war could not be fought; without an increased manpower pool, it could not be escalated. Our opposition to the draft is part and parcel of our opposion to the war in Vietnam and American aggression all over the world.

We oppose the draft unequivocally. It is an instrument of oppression both here and abroad. The so-called "commitments" for which the power structure claims we need an army are those of an imperialist foreign policy. Few Americans have vested interests in United Fruit or Standard Oil. Yet it is to protect the interests of precisely such corporations that American soldiers are forced to kill and die. No American would willingly give up his life--or even two years of it--just to protect the business interests of the few. Thus the Establishment must persuade the soldier that revolutions are Communist (i.e., evil) and constitute a direct threat to his "way of life" and the safety of our shores.

Now these same protectors of capitalism, represented by administration spokesmen from Hanson Baldwin to Robert McNamara, have come out for "draft reform." Their reason seems to us obvious, and directly opposite from the reasons the Left opposes the draft: They want draft reform because they need a army adequate for a widened conflict.

Why should they wish to draft students in large numbers now? One and a half millions 1-Y's are being drafted, yet no move is made for training them. They will be cannon fodder necessary for a land war in Asia. A large number of students will then be drafted to create the technical support base such an army will need. These people will not need very much training at all-not a fraction of what the I-Y's would need to become technicians themselves. Thus, absolution of 2-S is probably a precondition for a massive land war in Asia -- and should be examined in that light.

Historically, the student deferment was instituted to insure the availability of educated technical and management personnel capable of filling skilled positions in industry. Provision for the 2-S in the Selective Service Act of 1955 was not only a concession to sentiment against universal military training (unprecedented in "peacetime" before World War II), but an allowance for the needs of the industrial side of the military-industrial complex. Today, when the need for such trained personnel in industry has diminished relative to the need for them in the military, there is a move to abolish the deferment, to throw the less fortunate students into the army's lap.

Will abolition of 2-S increase the militancy of students against the draft, or build solidarity between students and the working-class fellows now discriminated against by the 2-S? We think that the proposed "solution" will not rectify the isolation of the student anti-war movement from students as a whole, nor will it increase communication and understanding between the student activist and his non-student contemporaries.

To say that a student (whom you have never spoken to about the time of day, never mind the war or his privileged draft deferment) will jump for joy at the fact that he has lost the "security blanket" effect of his 2-S status, is naive and unrealistic. How can you expect a person with whom you already have difficulty talking about the war to applaud the abolition of 2-S as a victory of the student left over the Selective Service Board? It's unthinkable that someone who has been spoon-fed with the delusions and placebos of this system all his life is going to undergo some miraculous transformation and start believing in the revolution just because some nice students take away his deferment. Can we in all honesty expect him to act in any other than a hostile manner toward the Left? We must take into consideration that in a recent poll, the students of Harvard indicated that they wished to be exempted--meaning simply that they did not want to go and fight (or go to jail). And we do not believe they should--nor that anyone should be faced with these alternatives.

How about improving relations between students and non-students by putting them all in the same pickle vis-a-vis the draft? First, what is the real relationship of the two groups in the situation described above? Making selection procedures for service more "equitable," doesn't allow for equity in service, Drafting students will increase the manpower pool (advantageously in an increasingly technical army), driving more ghetto people to the front. And most of the students' parents will be confident that their children will get the "safe" jobs.

Secondly, to think that any "community person" is going to look upon the willful discarding of one's sole protection against the draft as anything but stupid and suspicious is absurd. Even if they don't realize the manifold implications for themselves and their sons, how can they be expected to unite with a rash, unthinking student who says he hates war but throws away his chance to get out of it! How can they think anything about such a student but, "He's crazy!"

Thus we discard the proposal for abolition of 2-S for two reasons: (1) It plays right into the Establishment's hands; and (2) It does not provide a means of uniting students with each other or with the larger community of draft-age men. It is just the tired old "the-worse-the-better" concept in new clothes. We do not demand that 4 per cent of the white job-holders give up their jobs so Negroes won't have twice the unemployment rate (the Negro unemployed, let alone the white worker, would scarcely thank us for winning such "reforms" of the system!). We demand more jobs for everyone NOW! Being free not to fight in an unjust war is a right that belongs to everyone, just as having a job is. So we demand an end to the draft and short of that, exemptions from combat for those who object to a particular war such as this one.

In 1967, the year of the draft review, a real fight against the draft is necessary and possible: Not by mouthing McNamara's "Abolish 2-S," but by fighting for an end to the draft itself and reforms consistent with that end. While these reforms are (like all reforms) obfuscations of the ultimate goal, mobilizing support for them can broaden the base of our movement, and bring nearer the time when it will be politically impossible for a Johnson to wage a Vietnam war.

We should seek to expand the categories of exemption until they include everyone. We adovcate a broadening of the grounds for conscientious objection, the extension of alternate service, and the exemption of young workers in apprenticeship programs, as means of diminishing available draft material and expanding the base of the anti-draft movement. We must recognize elitist procedures, however, in the selection of Peace Corps and Vista trainees, and exclusionary practices in apprenticeship recruitment as we recognize class discrimination involved in the 2-S deferment. Real alternative service should include "community people," working in their own neighborhoods, without being able to read French or kiss asses.

The Gruening Amendment to the Selective Service Act would allow one war objectors exemption from military duty. If adopted this measure would make it possible for anyone who does not want to fight in Vietnam to get an exemption. We should begin to organize all people potentially affected by the draft, as well as those unaffected but who oppose the draft, around the slogan NO DRAFTEES TO VIETNAM. A campaign such as this could have a real mass appeal, bringing about the kind of unity between students and non-students which could never result from a drive to abolish the 2-S deferment. We should support those 3 non-students, Samas, Mora, and Johnson, white, Puerto-Rican, and Negro working class youth in their refusal to go to Vietnam.

Finally, on the campus, a movement against ranking is in the air. In the Harvard poll, the students who wished exemptions also seemed generally to oppose ranking. Ranking, draft tests, secret research, ROTC, and military and CIA recruitment are all cold war invasions of the campus. These sort of government invasions of the university and its programs are dangerous to the attempt at creative objective training the university is supposed to provide. Truth becomes secondary, and apologies for the Establishment become primary. Freedom of inquiry is jeopardized by special interests.

We oppose ranking, and we also oppose draft tests both of which cause competition among students in a race to see who dies first. We should demand that universities withdraw from fighting the "cold" war by refusing to rank anyone (as some schools have done) or better yet by ranking all male students in the upper 25 per cent (as some others have). Universities should also not be involved in administering draft tests on university grounds, or providing university facilities for military activities. It is by raising these demands, demands cutting into the military-industrial complex, by supporting student and non-student in the attempt to disengage from that power that we can create a progressive political force to turn the U.S. from a reactionary course in foreign and domestic policy.

We thank you for permitting presentation of this part of our views. We do not regard this as a full or final statement, and hope that it will provide and provoke discussion.  Boston Area Youth Club  Communist Party, USA