The following report on the NAM Thanksgiving conference is limited to the events at plenary sessions and at the workshop on the economy, which both of us attended. There were many other workshops, whose discussions must go unreported in this issue. The report represents our view of these events and of their significance. The paper welcomes responses and criticisms of this report.

In 1920 the people of Davenport, Iowa, elected nine Socialists to office; including the mayor. On Thanksgiving weekend 1971 the socialist movement returned to Davenport for the first conference of the New America Movement on program and interim structure. Though the NAM’s founding convention will be held in June, the Thanksgiving conference confirmed the existence of NAM as an organization dedicated to building a popular movement for a humane and radical socialist democracy in the United States.

Almost 400 people from some 60 cities attended. They represented about 30 chapters already formed and a number of chapters-in-formation, and reflected a considerably more varied constituency than left conferences in the recent past. Students were in the minority; most participants were in organizing projects, community, work place, health care, etc., and held professional “white collar,” or “blue collar” jobs. The median age appeared to be 25-28. This was a meeting of new left “graduates” in the main—people who now live and work in a wide variety of places and jobs.

Mayor

The opening session of the conference on Friday morning was addressed by Kathryn Kirschbaum, mayor-elect of Davenport. She welcomed the New American Movement and what it represented and said that she, and the majority of the new city council elected with her, also stood for fundamental change and social justice in the United States. She had thought, she said, that we had come to Davenport in the knowledge that it would be hospitable to our purpose, but was disappointed to find out that we had chosen it because it was “ordinary America.” Next time we come to Davenport, she hoped, it will be because it is “extraordinary America.”

Following these encouraging words, the conference settled down to the work at hand: the discussion of program and choosing priority areas for the activity of NAM for the next six months. Three priority areas were chosen: the economy; the war and imperialism; anti-corporate organizing and occupational health and safety. In addition, the conference elected a 13 member (7 women and 6 men) National Interim Committee, (NIC) to serve until the June convention. The NIC is mandated to develop political education work around general questions and specific programs; to integrate a women’s political perspective into all phases of program and political work and to aid in organizing regions and chapters. In addition, the NIC is responsible for press relations, fund-raising, and arrangements for the founding convention in June.

The main work of the conference was in the various program workshops. These met in the morning, afternoon and evening on Friday and Saturday, and. were interspersed with plenary sessions and with panels of speakers in the evenings. The Sunday meeting adopted the interim

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youth liberation, direct action, and the new working class. The scheduled workshop on the Bicentennial of the American Revolution was cancelled, apparently because of lack of interest. The conference was unusually good humored and serious. It had a tight agenda, but it stuck to it closely. Meetings started and ended almost exactly on time; most workshops discussed and adopted programs; panels of speakers were heard although without time for adequate discussion by the delegates. And yet, things were open and flexible enough so that changes were easily made.

At the first plenary, for example, the rule that only delegates could speak at plenaries was reopened, and a resolution allowing observers to speak at all sessions was adopted 146 to 97. Another resolution was made and passed to change the agenda so that discussion of structure take place on Sunday, after the discussion of priority programs, rather than on the first day of the conference. It was thought that structure could only be discussed intelligently after the political tasks of the organization were clearer. And later, when some workshops had difficulty in formulating a

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munity organizing, elections, farmers, health, program because there was insufficient agreement on the underlying politics, a special plenary was held at 9:00 on Saturday morning to consider devoting the morning to a general political discuss1on. After a 20 minute session in which everyone agreed on the need for more political clarity within NAM, and for discussion of how the specific work of chapters or program areas relate to the overall perspective, the delegates voted not to engage in that discussion at the conference. The general feeling seemed to be that there was insufficient time and insufficient preparation on the part of delegates to make possible a clear definition of the differences among us, or a democratic discussion.

Many delegates were from newly-formed chapters and many others were from chapters-in-formation, or only intended to form chapters after the conference. Thus, most chapters and most individual delegates did not yet have clear enough views of NAM and what it should be to make possible a useful discussion of political differences and perspectives. The general feeling was that an interim program and set of priorities, however imperfect, could be worked out at the conference and that within the framework of these programs local chapters could develop more coherent political perspectives in the six months leading to the convention in June.

Themes

At least three of the themes that ran through the conference were raised in this brief discussion. Paul Garver from Pittsburgh complained that while he agreed with the NAM “guidelines,” he thought Mike Lerner had “imposed” his specific political perspectives on others when he spoke as one of a panel the night before. In particular. Garver was concerned about how “new working class” people and groups fit in. Those primarily interested in working with such groups felt “shut out,” he said.

Harold Henderson from Peoria also complained about the “lack of a chance to reply to the political trip of last night,” and felt a need for more political discussion. But he thought that given the tasks facing the conference and the newness of most chapters, such discussion should be subordinated to the work of the workshops and should occur within them. Staughton Lynd supported this latter view. He argued that the “brutal” emphasis on program was based on the need of NAM to transcend, as quickly as possible, the limits of its present social composition, and that this required programs as a basis for organizing.

Lynd also said that a two or three hour discussion would undermine democracy because the issues were not yet clearly defined and the time would be too short to resolve things. This position appeared to be the general consensus, and the delegates voted 200 to 125 to return immediately to the workshops.

The workshop on the economy met six times and considered a number of programmatic proposals. Running through the discussions were some generally shared views. One was the need for NAM to broaden its base and move beyond the sectors of the working class represented at the conference. Another was the need to raise the question of socialism as part of the organizing work, to build a movement that would be engaged with the most pressing immediate issues and also to make clear the need for a socialist transformation of the United States. But there were differences about how this was to be done, whether all chapters should engage in the same activities, whether workplace organizing should be the sole focus of chapter activity, and what it meant to talk about socialism “being on the agenda.”

The workshop began with several reports. Ken Paff, an International Socialists (IS) member from Berkeley led off saying that Nixon’s New Economic Policy (NEP) creates the potential for a class-wide opposition to the government as well as to particular corporations, but that this would not be led by the trade union leadership. Thus an opportunity for NAM exists to focus on rank and file rebellion within the trade union movement.

He proposed contact on a national scale with as many rank and file groups as possible, the setting up of a rank and file news service, and, in general, an apparently exclusive concentration of activity around wildcat strikes in opposition to the Wage Board. Ed Greer then presented the proposal of the Boston chapter that called both for strike support, mostly in the form of providing services to striking workers, and for price struggles, particularly around utility rates, state and local taxes, rents, and transit fares.

Staughton Lynd suggested that the problem facing NAM was finding its way between utopian and sectarian demands. All of our struggles must be infused with the idea of socialism, if not a flaunting of the word, he said. He suggested two slogans: people’s control of the economy; and the right to have what we need to live.

People’s Control

People’s control is not in itself a socialist slogan, Lynd said, because it is vague on what people and the meaning of “control,” but he favors it as a transitional concept that raises the right questions and is appropriate in the light of the NEP. Government’s obvious subservience to the business class, as a class, has raised publicly the question of “who is running it all.”

Lynd also emphasized working with rank and file workplace groups, and argued that it was essential for NAM, given its present social base to win support among industrial workers within the next year. Within this context, workplace groups should be our primary organizing focus, but not our exclusive focus.

Lerner then spoke. Saying he agreed with much of the Lynd and Greer proposals, he insisted that the problem is to put socialism on the agenda—to make it the major political issue in the 1970’s. This requires conscious and public agitation for socialism, he said, and Nixon has opened the way to such agitation by introducing the notion of control of the economy from the top down. Our response must be control by the people, from the bottom up.

He then argued that this should center on agitation against the banks because these are least productive and most parasitic. The main concrete step for which Lerner argued was coordinated tax initiatives. He sees these as capable of achieving a class-wide unity and as directly counter to the effects of wage controls. And he said (although it is questionable) that the California NAM, especially Berkeley and Santa Barbara, were “firmly committed” to a state-wide tax initiative. Judith Shapiro of IS then spoke about women’s liberation, which she said should be tackled by a campaign to open all job categories to women with AT&T as a focus. At this point the workshop adjourned for lunch.

In the following general discussion of the position papers most of the participants were concerned to find ways to give a socialist content to the proposed activity and to broaden the activity so that it would not concentrate on one sector of the work force or become subordinated to the unions or a trade union consciousness. Patty Lee Parmalee began by proposing study groups in each chapter within the overall economic program. After a brief discussion this was adopted.

Martin J. Sklar then raised the question of how we could avoid falling into economism and the continued uncritical acceptance of capitalist categories imposed on the working class. He suggested that instead of defining our politics in terms of “economic needs,” as defined by capital, we should put forward a program of social goals. A social goals policy should allow us to bridge the gap between immediate economic demands and politics.

A bit later, Gar Alperovitz also supported the subordination of narrowly economic to social goals. He argued that we must link issues in such a way as to unite otherwise “antagonistic” groups. For example, he said we could link issues like cutting taxes, increasing teachers’ pay, and improving the schools—which would raise the question of how this could be done, and which can be answered only by socialism. Alperovitz also supported Greer’s strike support proposal, but stressed the importance of continuous involvement with workers around related issues, and the linking of various strata of the working class around broader goals.

Mel Bienenfield of Ithaca spoke along similar lines. He described the way economic changes in Ithaca were planned by outside corporations and were not in the interest of local residents, and argued for a program of popular control of economic decision-making.

Patty Lee Parmalee then commented that everyone is for strike support, but that in practice there are often unforeseen problems, especially when established unions are involved. Outside groups sometimes are unwittingly used by rival union factions for their own purpose, for example. A brief discussion on her point led to an amendment to the strike proposal to give priority to support of illegal, wildcat, and anti-Wage Board strikes. This carried unanimously.

The next session of the workshop began with a report from the women’s caucus, which, as in all the workshops, met briefly before each session. The caucus was implicitly critical of Shapiro’s proposal to concentrate on the demand of equal work and equal pay for women. It reported that it had talked about the marginal position of women in the work force, and the problem of demanding simply that women be given equality as workers. By itself such a demand, even though a step forward, would simply put women in the same position as men. This again raised the question of social goals, rather than narrow economic demands. The caucus also asserted that women as a special sector of the working class should be the concern of the workshop as a whole and not the special concern of the women’s caucus. Women’s issues should be an integral part of the general program.

The remaining time of the workshop was devoted to formulating the Economic Policy proposal as printed elsewhere in this paper. The first seven proposals were agreed upon with little controversy and followed the various suggestions for changes made from the floor. But underlying disagreements came to a head with the introduction of the eighth point, that on “people’s councils.” This point was introduced to give the economic program a long range perspective that pointed toward socialism. Those who put the proposal forward argued that the rest of the program would take on an economist or reformist hue without inclusion of such a perspective. It was their contention that such a proposal, even if only tentatively defined, would begin to give credence to the notion that a socialist movement can not be built purely around defense of the working class, but also should contend for real power and control over the economy. One advocate of the proposal said that it clearly showed that NAM’s intent was to fight Capitalism and to build socialism and this went way beyond simply fighting Nixon’s NEP.

This argument was attacked by the IS delegates in the workshop, and later in the plenary, because it began to prefigure a transitional form of dual power—and was thus seen as utopian by the IS—and also because it described the working class as diverse enough to include housewives, older people, and “street people.” In place of this proposal, IS argued for a national concentration on rank and file revolts within the existing trade union movement and for no attempt to pre-figure forms of achieving working class power. This approach was consistent with a general tone of antagonism to the “new left,” on the part of IS, most sharply expressed by Judith Shapiro in a put down of the new left in her speech Friday evening. One IS delegate characterized the economic programs as a “shopping list,” by which he apparently. meant that it was too diffuse and embodied too broad a conception of working class politics. But this was precisely what most of the delegates desired for NAM, as became apparent in the plenary discussions around the enunciation of a set of priority programs.

The presentation of workshop proposals and the adoption of priorities took place late Saturday afternoon and Saturday evening. After every workshop had given its report, there was a general discussion over the meaning of priority programs. The question was whether each chapter must engage in at least one part of a priority program, or whether it should. The discussion made it clear that everyone thought it was the responsibility of all chapters to study the priority programs and to do work around them if possible. But partly because there is no way of enforcing a “must,” and partly because people thought that the moral obligation was sufficient, “should” won out over “must” by 208 to 164. This, too, strengthened the tendency that a diverse working class needs a flexible and diverse revolutionary organization.

Economics

In matters of more immediate political substance, there were two major development§at these plenaries on priority programs: the adoption of the eight point economic program over the IS alternative of a “focal point on rank and file rebellion” and the inclusion of a program on war and imperialism as NAM’s second priority area. Surprisingly, given the central importance of the anti-war movement in the development of revolutionary consciousness in the new left, the October meeting of NAM in Chicago had omitted any mention of the war or of American imperialism in general. At Davenport a few people voiced sharp criticism of this omission, and the war and imperialism priority was easily adopted. The only opposition came from IS, which objected to support of the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam, and a few other minor points.

The third priority area combined anti-corporate organizing, as, for example, in the Honeywell Project in Minneapolis (which joined NAM as a body), and industrial health and safety. The child care program narrowly missed being adopted, and much of that program was incorporated into the economic program. The New Working Class workshop said that the problem of NAM was that of the relationship of the new strata of the working class to the traditional “blue collar” workers. Its reports criticized the earlier editions of the NAM newspaper for not reflecting a broad and variegated concept of the working class. The workshop on justice and law reported that it did not think its program should be a priority one. Its program advocates abolition of capital punishment, prisons, all categories of victimless crimes, and amnesty for all those imprisoned for such “offenses.” It suggested activities to aid prisoners, to secure release without bail for offenders, and opposition to discrimination on the basis of previous penal servitude. The elections workshop gave a minority and majority report. These both generally supported local electoral activity of a socialist nature that developed organically from a ward or district level upward. ~~~ BREAK ~~~

ressive Labor Party and the Young Socialist Alliance were given, and it was reported that three PLers and one YSAer had been asked to leave the conference. The floor was then opened to consideration of structural proposals. Two were presented; one from the Pittsburgh chapter, and the outgoing NIC’s proposal. The Pittsburgh proposal stressed decentralization. It proposed a fifty percent ratio of women on all committees and staff groupings, as well as in leadership bodies (as was already proposed by the NIC). And it proposed that the national office and newspaper be located in different cities. It also suggested a complex regional structure of fourteen regions, from which a national council would assemble. The NIC proposal, which was considerably less complex was adopted substantially as presented (it is printed in this issue). The main changes made were to delete provision that the NIC convene regional conferences—thereby leaving that up to the various regions themselves—and to add the provision that two of the women NIC members be responsible for developing a women’s program within NAM.

Following this the fate of the newspaper was discussed. One proposal was to have the paper rotate from chapter to chapter. This reflected a rather widespread dissatisfaction with the previous issue and a fear on many people’s part that the paper would be used by particular individuals to advance themselves within NAM. But this proposal was clearly unworkable. In its place, the delegates decided to give the NIC responsibility for locating the paper and for seeing to it that it was in fact open to participation by interested members. After the new NIC was elected it decided that the first post-conference issue should be published in Berkeley, and that the December 18-19 NIC meeting would then decide on a location for the pre-convention period.

New NIC

Finally, the new NIC was nominated and elected. The ground rules were a thirteen person committee with at least a majority of women. Some 33 people were nominated for the NIC, 12 women and 21 men. Michael Lerner, Eric Hutchins, and Cicely Nichols declined their nominations. Two members of IS, both women, were nominated as part of a slate presented by the women’s caucus, but were not elected. Most of the thirteen elected were from the Mid-west (three from Minneapolis, two from Pittsburgh, one each from Chicago, Madison and Davenport). Of the remaining five, two were from California, and one each from Atlanta, Durham, and Philadelphia. By the time the votes were counted, most people had left Davenport so that they could get home in time to go to work the next day. The exhausted members of the new NIC met briefly and made arrangements for the following two weeks before their first post-conference meeting (see letter from the National Office elsewhere in this issue).

All in all, the conference seemed to most people present to be a great success and a giant step forward for NAM. A firm basis now exists for chapters to develop themselves and to work out the beginnings of programs and a more coherent political perspective in advance of the founding convention next June. The major work of NAM between now and then should be the development of local chapters and regional organizations around the various programmatic proposals put forward at Davenport.

Delegates left the Davenport conference excited about the obvious potential of NAM and also, hopefully, with a deep understanding of the problems it faces. For the June convention, if all delegates are to participate more fully, it is essential that the members share an awareness of the political and practical problems facing the organization. Such an understanding can develop only through full discussion within each chapter of the programmatic proposals along with some practical experience putting these into practice. In addition, it is crucial that the chapters energetically develop a richer integration of feminist perspectives and issues into the programs. Much thought and practice must be devoted to the question of how we can expand the social base of NAM while raising the demand for socialism through transitional programs. These are knotty problems, but there is no reason to think that they cannot begin to be solved if the energy and dedication evident at Davenport continues to grow.