Socialist Scholars Archive

Introduction Notes

These notes were largely written in Spring 1993, near the end of my tenure as organizer of the SSC. Here I was trying to figure out how it was that the conference had been steadily loosing attendance, even after the CUNY chancellor had supported the conference so heavily, to the turn of perhaps $500,000 during the 1980s. I came to the conclusion that the chair of the conference, Bogdan Denitch was using the ‘Yugoslav’ model of development as the organizing principle of the conference. This ‘model’ was described by Branko Horvart in a 1980s book, The Political Economy of Socialism, ??. Robert Heilbroner later wrote a short paperback which showed the problems inherent to this model. What neither Horvat nor Heilbroner had taken into account, was the effects of the Long Waves upon stages of capitalist expansion and how the Long Waves had not occurred within any socialist economy of the 20th century. Joseph A Schumpeter’s use of the Long Wave model was shown in a late 1930s book, Business Cycles. Ironically the originator of the Long Wave model, N V Kondratieff, developed the idea within Czarist Russia just prior to the revolution and later was killed by Stalin during the early purges.

However, the gist of my crude 1993 notes was that Denitch was basically incapable of handling the myriad details of a large conference and was also unwilling that anyone else handle them competently either AND that this was not simply an extension of Denitch’s volatile and difficult personality, but was part and parcel of the way in which most or perhaps all economic matters had been handled in Tito’s Yugoslavia. This comparison of Denitch’s SSC and Tito’s Yugoslavia may be a bit strained, but I believe that the analogy has a lot truth to it. Put into the strained logic of statistical academia, Denitch’s use of the Titoist model accounts for a large amount of the ‘variance’ in the fall off of SSC attendance, after CUNY stopped providing funding. My belief is that any organization with even one ‘Denitch’ in leadership is going to have trouble functioning and that a whole country full of ‘Denitchs’ wondering around, interfering with the economy- is a nation in economic trouble.

Another key point in these notes, is that for Denitch, the SSC was a surrogate with which he continually badgered the DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) staff and leadership. The SSC was a ‘stalking horse’ with which he continually tried to interfere with the DSA and ‘redirect’ them into the ‘proper’ politics for the left in America. Given the tragic results of these same politics in Former Yugoslavia, we can all be thankful that the DSA was able to resist Denitch’s efforts.

In the future, other surviving notes, checks, financial papers, programs and other miscellaneous materials will be presented. These memos were posted largely as they were written, with occasional text added in brackets for clarification. At some not too distant point, an attempt will be made to allow other participants to post their own material. These notes often make me appear to be a fool or worse, following Denitch’s lead like Pancho and DonQuixote, but they are substantially accurate. At some future point, some misguided academic may decide to write a paper or even a thesis on the SSC, and these archives will be a good point from which to begin.

R. L . Norman Jr

JMKeynes@ClassStruggle.net

 

 

 

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