His belief that people make history demolished cynicism
By Brian Becker
My last conversation with Sam took place just a few days before he died. I told him we were gearing up to take a major initiative on the deepening crisis with Iraq. He got truly excited. "Taking a big initiative on Iraq would be great, really great," were his words.
Sam Marcy would have been really thrilled if he had seen that magnificent demonstration of 5,000 people on Feb. 28. It was multinational, it was anti-imperialist, it was working-class and it was young people.
There is a reason that our movement and our Party were able to spring into action and give immediate leadership to this exciting new anti-war movement. The first reason is that our Party is entirely united on its program. We didn’t need a big long debate on the Iraq question.
The second reason is Sam Marcy’s orientation toward struggle. And his training of a new generation of cadre that is unique in the U.S. left.
Sam’s orientation was crystallized in a single event that has had a profound effect on the development of our Party. More than any other event, it gave the Party the experience and especially the confidence to rise to a new level and seek to take responsibility for leadership in the mass movement.
This was the March on the Pentagon of more than 100,000 people on May 3, 1981. It was the first major protest against the reactionary program of President Ronald Reagan.
The election of Reagan had a profound effect on the progressive movement. Only five years after the end of the Vietnam War, only a short time after the streets were filled with masses of young people fighting imperialism, demanding liberation against national oppression—suddenly this sharp turn to the right. Reagan was the voice of the racists and warmongers.
The progressive movement was demoralized. Some predicted a new kind of creeping fascism that could lead to a return of the anti-communist witch hunt of the 1950s or worse. The dominant trend in the movement was passivity and fear.
Comrade Sam came to a Party organizers’ meeting in early December 1980. He summarized the situation and proposed that we organize a massive demon stration against the government.
We asked him, what is the issue. He said, don’t worry about it, Reagan will provide the issue.
We asked him, what kind of demonstration are you talking about? What would be effective? Five thousand? Ten thousand?
He looked at us incredulously and said, oh no. I’m talking about a true mobilization—100,000 people. That’s what is needed to overcome the pessimism and paralysis that has overcome the movement.
He was brimming with determination. His authority was so great that we all began to work on this project, although many of the comrades were scratching their heads. We wanted him to be right, but frankly, at the beginning, he may have been the only one who was totally confident.
Why was Sam so determined to carry out this massive mobilization? It wasn’t that he could see the possibility for a huge turnout months before the event. But he had a remarkable capacity to look beyond the apparent difficulties of any immediate situation and project a plan to change the outcome in a progressive manner.
He was the ultimate interventionist. He really believed that people make history. That was an absolute conviction that he used like a sword to destroy all who preached cynicism or who derided the masses for their backwardness.
Sam demanded that the Party wage this struggle against Reagan because he believed that the greatest danger for a revolutionary, vanguard party during a period of reaction was to adapt itself to the dominant mood. He learned this from his study of Lenin, who built his party mainly during periods of severe reaction. We think of Lenin and the Bolsheviks during the heady period of revolution, storming the Winter Palace. But the Bolsheviks retained their revolutionary vitality as a leadership because they struggled during the difficult years.
A revolutionary party can only be ready to make the revolution by surviving reaction with its combat readiness intact. Sam Marcy did not live to see the revolution in his lifetime. But his life and legacy will be an indispensable link in the revolutionary process.