(A Stan Iverson bit.... I found this mail in some internet forum a few years back, with reference to Stan & the Blue Moon Tavern back in 1960 when he was a Trotskyite.)



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I remember when I considered myself as being "on the Left", way back in Seattle of about 1960.

In the Young People's Socialist League a number of earnest-faced college-aged kids met regularly to bullshit politics the way we do now in the LP, and to organize speaking engagements for Bogdan Denitch or Arlon Tussing, that sort of thing: Envelope licking and mimeographed poster hanging. The main thing we wanted we didn't usually talk about: Most of us hoped we were going to meet somebody cute who would long to make love with us.

What we actually pictured, however, were romantically dangerous adventures involving barricades, etc.

 And, of course, we'd vote for Norman Thomas when the time came.

But the little Hitlers who ran our meetings and herded us into a perpetuating group had other concerns: Hovering on our socialist periphery were dangerous adversaries. Those principal adversaries did not arise, as one might think, from the ranks of the Capitalist Pigs or the Oppressors of the Working Class. They, in Seattle, were a much smaller and scruffier looking bunch of beatnik kids who called themselves Trotskyites or Socialist Workers (as opposed to Democratic Socialists, which was what my prospective bedmates called themselves.)

And when I say "Opposed", I mean: with a vengeance! I remember having sat with the entire Trotskyite contingent one smoky noisy night in the Blue Moon Tavern. There were three of them. One was a skinny bookish loudmouthed individual, Stan Iverson, widely reputed to be an honest man and a scholar.

"Bookish Stan Iverson"

His sound and fury was underscored by the sullen silence of those two other Trotskyites suffering from social isolation and acne, weighing maybe 280 pounds in toto between the two of them.

The subject of the conversation seemed to be whether "we" (I was mistaken for a Trotskyite on that particular occasion) "ought" to overthrow the government of the United States by "force" (ours maybe?), or whether we instead ought to let the bag of puss collapse and rupture under its own weight.

So, of what relevance were those Socialist Workers vis-a-vis us Democratic Socialists circa 1960? Well, our Democratic Socialist leaders' main concern was that our pristine ranks would be entered by the Trotskyite scum -- that we'd be "infiltrated" and "co-opted".

In other words, the whole game was one of vigorous turf protection, with one ant tribe pitted against another. That's a bit the way it is now, except it does strike me that most Libertarians, person to person, know what they want more clearly than any Socialists knew back then. But, on the other hand, we LPers have this modern mania for fundraising. It smells like capitalism in action. I love it, of course. But, as meat? I think I'll await some fresh butchering.

THE LIBERTARIAN ENTERPRISE

 Number 26, April 15, 1997

 Donald Silberger


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