Brown’s Young Communists: In Bed With The Reds

The Communists are back, and this time, they mean business – or rather, socially responsible, ecologically balanced, justly managed cooperatives. Yes, Brown’s Young Communist League has nothing but disdain for the current individualist order. However, the YCL’s collectivist instincts stop at the “mission” level: there is wide disagreement in the group as to the means and path to creating a socialist paradise. The present ideological paralysis of the Brown YCL is reminiscent of the USSR near the end of the 1980’s: the organization, unable to find its soul, has degenerated into a carbon copy progressive campaign for “just” causes and “social democracy.” Because the group has become directionally and ideologically shattered, the only way to salvage the organization and establish its own unique identity is to revert back to the radicalism of years past.

I recently sat down with William Emmons, co-signatory of the YCL, to discuss the history of the organization, its goals, and how it intends to achieve them. The YCL officially began in 1971, and has successfully championed a number of progressive causes up to the present day. In the 1980s, they were an integral part of the South Africa anti-apartheid campaign, inviting members of the African National Congress to speak on campus. They worked for the establishment of the Third World Center during that decade as well. In the 1990s, they were involved in the unsuccessful effort to organize the Student Dining Services workers into a union. And if you were admitted under need-blind admissions, you can partially thank the YCL for its advocacy of this policy over the years. The organization’s most recent achievement was the successful negotiation (in conjunction with the SLA) of the Brown University Dining Services worker’s contract, which extended equal wages and health care packages to all Brown temp-workers.

All of this success suggests a high level of organization and clearly defined objectives. However, no such unity exists at any level. The YCL is currently undergoing what Emmons terms a “bureaucratic upheaval”: a number of the organization’s key members graduated last year, leaving Emmons as a “general secretary” of sorts. Five members remain; what is Emmons’ Five-Year Plan (. . . one for each?) He wants the YCL to aid in the creation of a “progressive majority” – a task already completed for him. And, yes, in case you were wondering, he believes that “Maybe eventually there’s a need for a working class revolution.”

Attending one of the YCL’s group meetings cemented my suspicions of ideological chaos within the group. They offered free alcohol to attendees of this meeting, perhaps in an effort to stymie revolutionary tendencies within the fractured organization. As I do not drink, I feel that my assessment should be fairly objective.

At the meeting, everyone readily agreed that capitalism is bad, and that all previous attempts at a true socialist state had lost the essence of the cause when implemented. But is the YCL Marxist, Marxist-Leninist, or Trotskyist? Emmons says that the organization is more “open” than the Communist Party of the USA, being “Marxist-Leninist on paper and a non-dogmatic progressive activist group in practice” – whatever that means. The foundational weaknesses of the group have made it no more than a glorified wing of the Democratic Party; indeed, the official line of the organization is that it supports all Democrats, all the time, politically.

The YCL is not the only Democratic Party front organization on campus. There exist two other groups – the Student Labor Alliance (SLA) and the recently revived Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) – that, together with the YCL, make up what I affectionately call the Axis of Economic Ignorance. There is an alarming degree of overlap in members between the organizations, which calls into question what the actual differences between them are. Perhaps the differences lie in the mode of protest: SDS has tried bombings and other such pleasantries in the past (under the name “Weathermen”), the SLA appears to favor nude walks through University Hall, and the YCL perhaps chooses between these two, depending on how much beer has been involved.

There is hearty agreement across the progressive spectrum at Brown, and in YCL specifically, that the optimal, indeed the only, way to advance as an institution is through repeated acts of fiscal self-flagellation. The YCL’s recent involvement with the BUDS worker’s strike is a case in point. The group wanted to raise the wages of temp-workers at Brown to $12.30 an hour – the same level as full-time University employees – and provide a health care plan for them as well. The economic logic behind this, according to the YCL, is that raising the wages of workers and providing health care for them would increase productivity by creating a “connection” with the workplace that did not exist before. Considering that there is little threat of being fired under the current regime, this contention is utterly absurd. BUDS workers, like all people, are biologically inclined to pursue their own self interest: if they can provide no extra effort while being doubly rewarded, with no chance of being fired, they will do precisely that. If the YCL really wishes to increase BUDS worker’s “connection” with their workplace, they might do well to take a page out of the old Soviet gulag playbook and duct-tape the omelet cooks to the omelet bar.

The YCL desires a “just” wage for BUDS workers; but who is determine what wage is “just?” If the “justness” of a wage is directly related to how high it is, then why not pay BUDS workers $30, $40, $100 per hour? At the point when Ratty workers are rolling up in Corvettes and decked out in Armani, we will know that we have truly done well for the working man. The great advantage of the free market is that wage judgments are truly collective; they are the result of thousands of people each trying to find the best deal for themselves. When groups such as the YCL attempt to impose on others what they believe is a “just” wage, they are committing the base infraction that is the root of all evil in this world: the implementation of ideas through coercion rather than persuasion.

I questioned Emmons about what changes would immediately occur if Ruth Simmons was overthrown and he was made the new socialist President of Brown University. He responded with generalities, such as a “democratic rewriting of the educational process,” and again finding “just” means to supply the dining hall and manage the post office. He supplied the ubiquitous solution of putting “the workers in control of the means of production”; I took this to mean that the students would violently overthrow their professors and teach their own Gender Studies courses (although, it might be difficult to tell the difference).

Emmons’ goals became slightly less nebulous when questioned what he would do as the resulting Premier of a socialist revolution in the U.S. In his first hundred days, he stated again that he would transfer the means of production into the hands of the “economic producers,” try to figure out a “good” national healthcare system, abolish the National Labor Relations Board, cut military spending, and dismantle our nuclear stockpile.

The local and national goals of the YCL are self-defeating through their own lack of clarity. Extensive redistribution of wealth, socialized medicine, the establishment of worker’s committees, etc. all represent natural encroachments on individual freedom that are incompatible with a true representative democracy. The YCL has reconciled these conflicting goals through a willful suspension of rationality; a refusal to connect ends and the means necessary to achieve them; culminating in the ultimate triumph of Orwellian doublethink.

However illogical its arguments are, this is not what is weakening the group. As mentioned above, the group has lost its unique character, making it indistinguishable from other progressive groups on campus. Brown’s Young Communists should be unafraid to rally in favor of distinctly Communist causes, support socialist and communist political candidates, and draw clear lines between themselves and other groups such as the SLA and SDS. A new radicalism will gain the group much needed attention, the result being the attraction of new and curious souls to their meetings.

Socialist argumentative incoherence was once acceptable before the fall of the Berlin Wall; not so any longer. The current state of world affairs suggests socialism is on its deathbed, with only a few minor holdouts in the Scandinavian countries and France and Germany. Socialist advocates such as the YCL must respond by being equally as ideologically clear and confident as the new capitalists are. The unabashed radicalism of the past is their best asset, and the only way to save themselves from inevitable incoherence, as well as irrelevance.