Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia had been necessary. Yet according to the union activists I was getting to know, the party had a long tradition of manipulation and anti-democratic manoeuvres inside those unions where it could muster a large enough presence.
“Your Birch Society member may think he’s anti-Communist,” I was informed by an angry construction tradesman, who had relayed a tale of a motion being railroaded through his local, and who had somehow misheard the details when I was introduced and thought I was American. “Your Bircher probably doesn’t even know any fucking Commies. If he did, your Birch Society guy would really be anti-Communist.”
One of the residents at the house, the one employed in the paint shop at Hayes Trucks, had applied to join Progressive Workers, a Vancouver Maoist labour organization. The founder of this outfit, a veteran CP member, had been expelled from the party for his persistent support of Red China after the Soviet Union’s leaders had parted company with their former ally. Despite the similarity in name to Progressive Labor, which had been one side of the SDS split in June, Progressive Workers had no connection with the American organization. The new Vancouver group, besides regularly undertaking solidarity picketing alongside strikers enmeshed in difficult disputes, promoted the formation of independent Canadian unions. Over a few rounds in the ’Dorf with some PW members who sat at our table one night when their weekly meeting let out, I was reminded that the majority of Canadian unions traditionally have been locals of American ones. “No country in the world besides Canada, not even in the Soviet system, has its unions controlled from another country.” Through my truck plant housemate I met his friends in PW, an electrician and railway brakeman, who had recently returned from an invited excursion to China. The news was conveyed to me with pride that during their visit they had met and shaken hands with the chairman himself. “Yeah, and the first thing Gordie here said to Mao was: ‘You know anyplace around here I can get a beer?’”
I was sure Dr. Bulgy would be fascinated by my widening firsthand knowledge of the Canadian labour movement. I was impressed myself to be on easy terms with men — and a few women — who appeared to have leaped off the pages of the books, pamphlets, and articles on revolutionary theory I was reading as an SDS member. And I could certainly assure Dr. B. that I now understood better how my thesis related to the present. Around the somewhat sodden tables of the Waldorf beer parlour I first heard the term business unionism. Much of what was spoken between sips of brew echoed Big Bill Haywood’s condemnation of the aims and practices of the American Federation of Labor at the IWW’s founding convention in June 1905 — Haywood being secretary-treasurer of the Western Federation of Miners at the time, as well as one of their delegates to — and chairman of — the Chicago gathering.
I remained aware that, while Dr. B. might be thrilled by my summer’s discoveries, such field research was tangential to the content of the thesis. My hope was that his pleasure at what I had absorbed might distract him from the shortfall in my page count.
I was resolved, however, not to mention my growing conviction that alcohol consumption might represent a factor in the failure of many of the unionists I met to achieve their aims. I had been excited to meet genuine Red workers, and found in turn that most had been following the student unrest in the U.S. closely and were interested to hear about my experiences, to listen to my opinion on what might develop next. But even the labour militants expressed a black humour with regard to their drinking. “Call me as soon as the revolution starts,” one plumber joked at our table on a Friday night at the ’Dorf. “You’ll find me right here.”
Dr. Bulgy also didn’t need to be informed, I had decided, that among the younger left-wing workers I met, the “revolutionary discipline” touted by both the CP and Progressive Workers fatally clashed with the attractions of the counterculture. Endless meetings dedicated to adopting a “position” on a plethora of social issues at home and abroad — an analysis that henceforth all group members were bound to support, even if they disagreed with it — held no attraction. Progressive Workers’ part in successfully organizing a city cable manufacturing plant earned praise, as did their efforts among smelter employees farther inland who were disillusioned with the United Steelworkers union currently representing them. But PW meetings endlessly dissecting the finer points of Quebec separatism or sectarian violence in Northern Ireland were far less appealing to many of the labour activists I encountered over the collection of full and empty glasses crowding our table. The SDS slogan of “Less talk, more action” was enthusiastically endorsed. My recounting of my unease at the surreal chanting at the recent SDS convention also struck a chord with the unaffiliated Red workers, since PW’s use of Maoist phraseology seemed alien to my usual table companions.
In addition, I didn’t plan to mention to my thesis supervisor that among Vancouver’s young Maoist freaks, PW was regarded as hopelessly old-fashioned in its approach to bringing about social change. Progressive Workers’ strategy was to engage in the lengthy, arduous task of building an independent Canadian union movement as the first step toward winning adherents to revolutionary socialism. Whereas the loose alliance of pro-Maoist young people who called themselves the Vancouver Liberation Front had no desire to undertake the dreary business of leafleting parking lot gates at the city’s factories and mills in the name of nascent unions or of union reform. Negotiating union contracts or processing a grievance on the shop floor were rated as distractions from the sweeping social changes both envisioned and urgently desired by VLF adherents. Instead, they believed socialism would be won by direct action. The latter was defined as every sort of anti-establishment activity from be-ins to rock concerts, and from street protests to — eventually — armed guerrilla columns on the Cuban model.
Most VLF members lived in five or six “revolutionary communes.” Really, these were just communal houses, very much like the one I inhabited. Theirs, however, were more rigorously structured and functioned with Maoist-type “criticism, self-criticism” sessions — mandatory meetings of house denizens attempting to solve the inevitable problems of co-op living, such as who should clean the mess in the kitchen, an unexplained spike in the electrical bill, or how to make up the shortage in rent this month. VLF commune members were expected, in the name of the revolution, to fully confess their personal deficiencies and cheerfully accept the complaints of others about their transgressions. “The people” expected no less. I had concluded I didn’t know enough yet about the theory and practice of social change to adopt some variant of Marxism-Leninism, whether Chinese, Cuban, or North American in origin. On the one hand, I approved of the ability of disciplined organizations — or, at least, disciplined members of such organizations — to initiate actions, to produce publications, to show up when and where they said. On the other hand, the largely humourless earnestness of many of the people advocating adherence to an inflexible belief system was a turnoff. The music, light, and colour of the freak world pulsed with energy, the kind I wanted whatever new world we were fashioning to be flooded with.
As far as I could see, the sometimes scattered, always exciting, enthusiasm of young people was responsible for sparking the revolutionary environment we were in. “The more I make love, the more I want to make the revolution” was one of the previous year’s Paris May Day slogans that summarized the feeling. So far I hadn’t seen evidence of such energetic, transformative goals on the part of Leninists of any stripe. Whatever the possibilities of a future hippie-political alliance, currently SDS for me represented the amalgam of radical vision, high spirits, and effective social action.
Despite my careful preparation for my meeting with Dr. Bulgy, I received a shock when I stepped over the threshold of his office. Both the man and the room had undergone alterations since I had last stood here in early June. The professor’s customary shirt and tie had been replaced by a short-sleeved turtleneck garment. A large gold-coloured medallion was suspended from his neck by a chain, the ornament resting atop the upper slope of his protruding stomach. His hair, once crew-cut to near-military precision, was shaggy.
The brown wingtip shoes he previously wore were gone; his feet were sandalled. I could take in such detail about his appearance because his massive desk had been shifted.
