DSOC and the SYL

To the Editors of The Crimson:

The Harvard honchos of the oh-so-"Democratic" Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC) have once again resorted to calling on their campus police buddies to throw members of the Spartacus Youth League out of a "public" dinner meeting.

"Please join us," the DSOC leaflet said. And so we went. But apparently, beef stroganoff and class struggle politics don't mix, so Guy Molineux called in the heat. This is nothing new for DSOC. DSOC leader Michael Harrington spent the first half of the sixties making red-baiting attacks on the Students for a Democratic Society, cheering on the Bay of Pigs invasion and going all the way with LBJ in Vietnam. It is such anti-communism that has made DSOC widely known as "State Department-socialists."

Perhaps DSOC wanted to insure an exclusive gathering in order to prevent any opposition to its plan for a debate between David Stockman and liberal Congressman Barney Frank. Some debate. Stockman is Reagan's notorious budget slasher and Frank is infamous for blaming Boston's transit workers for the ills of the MBTA. This is the alternative of the DSOC "socialists" to the massive cutbacks, layoffs and anti-Soviet warmongering of the Reagan Administration: a return to the Democratic Party. "If they don't like jellybeans, let them eat peanuts!"

It was the Democratic Party of Jimmy Carter that paved the way for Reagan's victory. It was Carter and the Democrats who whipped up an anti-Soviet fever with the hypocritical "human rights" campaign. It was under the Peanut Boss that the resurgent Klan and Nazis executed the Greensboro massacre. And it was this "friend of labor" who slapped striking miners with the Taft-Hartley injunction in 1978. That's why we call on workers to break with the Democrats and build a workers party to fight for a workers government.

But DSOC of course, openly opposes workers revolution, and calls instead for pushing the Democratic Party to the left. What this means in reality is that like all Social Democrats, DSOC only wants to prettify capitalist oppression (and maybe get some good jobs for themselves)....

Unlike DSOC bigshot and machinists' union president "Wimpy" Winpisinger who opposes the acts of labor solidarity which could quickly win the air traffic controllers' strike, we call on labor to use its power to shut down the airports to defend the PATCO strikers. While DSOC stands with Polish Solidarity in calling for capitalist restoration in league with the Catholic Church, we unconditionally defend from imperialism those states which have already overthrown capitalism. For those who want to see a fundamental change in society, join the SYL in our fight for international workers revolution to put an end to capitalist oppression. Alden Cavanagh '82,   Member of the Spartacus Youth League