Interview with Adam Schesch, July 24, 1974, Madison, Wisconsin

Partial Transcript: Time has blurred details. Will try to recall context of period, though analysis has been colored by events since.

Partial Transcript: Grew up in New York City suburbs, attended college in New York City. Involved in Madison support for Free Speech movement

Partial Transcript: Many like Schesch were students without real social commitments, but wanted relevance in their academic fields. Schesch, a student of Southeast Asian history, was one of few Madison protesters against U.S. policy with any knowledge of area because most “experts” in the field either not involved or supported government’s policy. Schesch volunteered to help write pamphlet at first protest meeting following February bombings.

Partial Transcript: Many who joined movement in 1965 lacked political experience and basic information. Young people with Old Left contacts, interested in anti-war movement as such, instrumental in launching Madison committee. American Communist Party members and sympathizers influential, but huge numbers of participants new to politics and new styles of holding meetings also affected direction of organization. New Left activists not yet involved in anti-war movement.

Partial Transcript: Young Socialist Alliance, Socialist Workers Party the Communist Party’s only organized competition at first. As national movement changed, early Madison organizers drifted away, and Democratic Party became interested in referendum against the war.

Partial Transcript: Madison became site of National Coordinating Committee (NCC) office because enough people here to staff office. Schesch produced pamphlets, leaflets, bibliographies for National Coordinating Committee; helped support campus educational workshop program.

Partial Transcript: William Appleman Williams one of very few politically involved faculty members. Many were liberal Democrats who moved from teach-ins to community work, and later joined Eugene McCarthy campaign; not associated with National Coordinating Committee. Old Left elements saw need for faculty-student alliance; Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) hostile to faculty.

Partial Transcript: Most faculty participants “academic entrepreneur types,” drifted back to academic stance despite efforts of Inter-University Committee for Debate on Foreign Policy.

Partial Transcript: Power struggle between New York atheist (radical) pacifists, frequent allies of Trotskyists, and American Communist Party, which worked with religious pacifist groups such as Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) and American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) through the Committee for a SANE Nuclear Policy (SANE). New York pacifists favored moral stance, opposed work with Democratic Party and legislative pressure which Communist Party wanted. Communists favored broad coalition included AFL-CIO leaders and SANE. Their strategy required watered-down demands “put[ting] up with SANE Nuclear Policy’s kind of gobbledegook,” and omitting analysis of situation as one of revolutionary struggle against dictatorship. Student activities from Berkeley Free Speech Movement, the predecessors of “hippy-yippies,” advocated militance and local demonstrations; attuned to Students for a Democratic Society, although SDS didn’t participate in conference. “You didn’t end up with two sides, you ended up with five…”

Partial Transcript: Trotskyists tried to break away and work only with atheist pacifists. Coalition which formed encompassed Communist Party, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, Quakers, and academic liberals, although not Committee for a SANE Nuclear Policy. Coalition’s position personalized war as fault of particular leaders, rather than analyzing its occurrence in terms of capitalism and imperialism. Lack of political analysis created opening for part of coalition to move into McCarthy campaign.

Partial Transcript: Both Trotskyists and Communists wanted least common denominator movement from which to recruit. Newly politicized New Left types wanted anti-war movement to become anti-imperialist movement, and so drifted away from national coalition.

Partial Transcript: Leftist parties wanted movement to remain neutral. Communists felt McCarthy movement could revitalize liberal wing of Democratic Party.

Partial Transcript: National staff members Schesch and Frank Emspak worked with local committee, especially on referendum effort.

Partial Transcript: Students for a Democratic Society marginal to anti-war effort until Dow demonstrations of 1967-1968.

Partial Transcript: By time of Commerce Building sit-in against Dow Chemical Company recruiters, campus anti-war movement was ideologically divided between student power activists, and those more oriented toward national policy change. Schesch, then chairman of Committee to End the War, viewed student power as amateur approach until specific university ties to war machine (e.g. Army Math Research Center) were defined.

Partial Transcript: Confrontation-and-trashing-expedition politics followed Tet Offensive and Cambodian invasion in 1969 and 1970.

Partial Transcript: Lengthy Great Hall debates and sit-ins were educational for newly-radicalized participants, although much of activity seems naïve in retrospect. Political and psychological alienation expressed through demonstrations “really began to alarm the more intelligent members of the elite.”

Partial Transcript: Schesch as head of research was one of few national staff members to maintain working relationship with campus groups. Trotskyist and Students for a Democratic Society influences increased.

Partial Transcript: Differing political goals of Trotskyists and radical pacifists, Democratic Party, and Students for a Democratic Society pulled anti-war movement apart. “I remember that as the National Coordinating Committee went on, there was more and more personalities into it, that is, the organization became vaguer in terms of the life of the discussion in the NCC office.” NCC’s list of contacts included Communist Party members and sympathizers, social democrats and liberals as delegates of big-city coalitions; and some ex-SDSers and “genuine rural progressives” in the smaller towns.

Partial Transcript: Trade unionists from the Committee for a SANE Nuclear Policy and Old Left union elements involved early in the movement. Concern about the war’s economic consequences later brought in Democratic “bread and butter types” like United Auto Workers (UAW) leaders.

Partial Transcript: Other strong elements went their own directions in individual cities. National Coordinating Committee staff empowered only to produce literature and coordinate national actions; it favored Communist Party strategy of strengthening liberal wing of Democratic Party, yet saw any suggestions on strategy as alienating one segment coalition or another.

Partial Transcript: Democratic Party, through peace candidates in 1966, Vietnam Summer of 1967, and Eugene McCarthy campaign in 1968, would get U.S. out of Vietnam. Communists not as able to influence liberal Democrats as they had hoped.

Partial Transcript: Weaker groups and rump of early, independent anti-war movement continued to work through National Coordinating Committee.

Partial Transcript: Trotskyists, radical pacifists, and some “leftover Berkeley-days-types” created a new organization to do what the National Coordinating Committee was “absolutely suited” to do.

Partial Transcript: Split between those sympathetic to Communist Party analysis and politics, and those seeking more overtly anti-imperialist, yet community-based socialist party. Significant financial support through mailing lists of Communist Party popular front efforts then dried up.

Partial Transcript: Distrusted student movement, saw national anti-war politics as “a can of worms,” and Democratic Party as unreformable—an organization controlled by an elite. Continued to support national anti-war actions as an individual, and drifted through Students for a Democratic Society around time of its break-up. Schesch and other new radicals with “primitive anti-capitalist vision of the world” had no organized expression of their new anti-imperialist, local orientation, and interest in organizing a new, pro-working class party. Madison group decided to experiment with local organizing.

Partial Transcript: Active in student government rather than any of the radical movements. Soglin’s name a “big enigma” to Schesch until 1968 eighth ward aldermanic race.

Partial Transcript: Schesch then active in Wisconsin Alliance.

Partial Transcript: Literature from international religious organizations and Communist affiliates “just showed up” without solicitation. Vietnamese also maintained contact with National Coordinating Committee.

Partial Transcript: Local police busy with Students for a Democratic Society and draft resistance.

Partial Transcript: As a political movement, anti-war movement must be analyzed in terms of each major political element’s mistakes. As an effort to end the war in Vietnam, early movement limited its appeal in that it explained anti-imperialism in terms that attracted petty bourgeois, not in terms of economic impact on general public.

Partial Transcript: Draft resistance among blacks and Trotskyist GI resistance movement indicative of change. Madison draft resistance movement began at university and moved into community to help white non-college people.

Partial Transcript: Interview ends here before Schesch finishes comments