Word: schoenman
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Schoenman is no romantic. He dismisses those who have "romanticized" Che Guevara by emphasizing personal bravado, "at the expense of his vision." Che's vision--which Schoenman shares--is that of the continuing revolution. He quotes Che: "The struggle for the Cuban Revolution is the struggle for the extension of the Revolution in Latin American." Schoenman pauses, and then continues, "Elan is only a thing which can mobilize the people...
Bravado dismissed, Schoenman explicates revolution. Phrases like "analysis" and "objective conditions" flow easily from his lips. "It's all quite simple," he explains patiently. United States "corporate capitalism" needs to exploit the raw materials of the underdeveloped world. "Soldiers only enforce the oppression--its basic agency is the world market," he says...
...Left receives passing tribute for its radicalism, but criticism for lack of a strategy. "They say, 'We've got 200 people--let's make a revolution.' Well, you don't make a revolution that way." Schoenman's own revolutionary recipe centers on the "white working class" whom, he says, "bear the brunt or corporate capitalism." In a cold tone, he advises the radicals to continue demonstrations to gain mass support, foresake the "moral witnessing" of draft resistance, and begin longterm organization...
...Schoenman's voice softens--perhaps accidentally, perhaps intentionally--when he discusses his undergraduate days at Princeton. A scholarship student from Brooklyn, he was then "already involved in the Black Struggle.... I was a socialist, but with a syndicalist or anarchist orientation." He "polemicized a bit" against the club system. "It was a training ground for the Southern aristocracy...stabbing one's friends in the back. I thought they were all so lifeless, so...bland, and so one dimensional...
After receiving an honors BA from Princeton in 1958, he went to the London School of Economics to study political philosophy. While participating in anti-nuclear campaigns, he met Lord Russell. Schoenman feels it is "very flattering, but a bit fatuous," to be considered the eminence grise behind the 95-year-old philosopher. "What's it done with--telepathy?" he asks sarcastically...