(1) Authenticity in life and politics

Robert Jensen: I want to start with a term that is often used without much thought about what it might really mean -- authenticity. What does that word mean to you?

Abe Osheroff: Authenticity is incredibly important. To me, authenticity comes when your thoughts, your words, and your deeds have some relation to each other. It comes when there's a real organic relationship between the way you think, the way you talk, and the way you act. You have to fight for authenticity all the time in this world, and if you don't fight for it you will get derailed. But when you have it, when you feel that surge of recognition -- that I'm saying exactly what I'm thinking, and I'm ready to do something about it -- well, that's an intellectual and emotional orgasm that makes sex look like nothing.

I talk about it that way to audiences, especially to kids, because it draws them in. They giggle because I mentioned sex. But they think about it. Some of those kids in that audience know what I'm trying to tell them. They're smart, and they come up afterwards and ask me about it. They ask me, "How do I follow that path?" And they realize that if they follow that path they will have to make choices. So they ask me, "What do I do when I come to a crossroads in life and I have to make a choice that means sacrifice and pain?"

I tell them that, first, it's good that they are thinking about these things. Some people are afraid to think, because thinking can present problems. When you have thoughts, you have to decide what to do with them. We can save them and take them to a therapist, or we can go to a bar and drink them away, or we can talk about them. But immediately we have to deal with self-censorship. Talking honestly can have consequences. Take an easy example. If you're involved in a relationship and there's something bothering you about the relationship, and you tell the other person your thoughts, that may be the end of the relationship. You're in a funny bind because if you talk about it you may risk the relationship, but if you don't talk about it you know that down the road the same problem will be there. What do you do? Authenticity is about making that decision.

Then once you've said something, the question is, "What are you going to do about it?" A lot of people don't do anything. Trying to be authentic is another way of saying you are struggling to let out the best part of who you are, the part that will act and take risks. We all have a choice: We can choose to be made by history, or we can choose to participate in making history.

RJ: Do you remember the first time you felt that authenticity as a young person?

AO: No, I didn't realize what this meant until my later years. As a kid I don't even remember understanding that kind of concept. And when I was in the Communist Party, I was too absolutely devoted to the party to be really authentic.

RJ: When you talk about yourself and the party, it sounds like there was always a struggle inside you, between your rebellious nature and your loyalty to the party. I wonder if you were always a communist with the soul of an anarchist. You were in this rigid institutional structure, but a rebel at heart.

AO: I suppose I am more of an anarchist than a communist, and always have been. You're right -- as young man I was rebellious. I hated authority and didn't like to be told what to do by my mother, my teachers, or anybody else. And, living in a poor part of New York, immigrant community, I also had a built-in social conscience. We saw people suffering every day. My family was relatively well off, compared to others in the neighborhood, and we ate fairly regularly. My father was a very skilled worker. But a lot of people around us were not living very well. I remember once when I saw a man eating out of a garbage can, when I was 13 or so. I ran upstairs and said to my parents, "Mama, papa, there's a man eating out of a garbage can." My mother disappeared into the kitchen and started filling a paper bag with food. My father sat down and said, "Well, what can I tell you, son. When you get a little older, you'll understand. It's too much for a young boy." And I said, "No, I want to know now." I wanted an honest answer.

RJ: When did feel like you started to find an answer?

AO: A year or two later I learned why people were eating out of garbage cans, why people were being put out on the street with their furniture when the Depression hit. I got an education quickly. Part of it came through my first activism. In 1930 I had organized a club, the Brownsville Athletic and Cultural Club, which had two activities: We pumped iron and we listened to classical music, kind of a weird combination. One day a member of the Young Communist League came to me and said, "I have a way you guys can help the community. When people are evicted and put onto the street, you get your guys and take the furniture right back in." So we did that. It was a great form of activism, a way to help people immediately. The landlords would eventually give in. But of course sooner or later, we were bound to get busted. I was young and tempestuous, and me and two other guys beat the shit out of a cop who tried to stop us. That was serious business, and the cops weren't happy.

RJ: You got arrested? Beaten up?

AO: Not beaten, really more tortured by the cops, for about 72 hours. That's one kind of lesson in this world, about power. But the important thing I want to get to is that I was sort of preconditioned for becoming a communist because -- whatever everyone thinks about the communists, and looking back I can be pretty critical -- the one thing they did was furnish a reasonable explanation for why that man was eating out of the garbage can, and why the landlords were putting people in the street, and they're the only ones who did it. The Democrats didn't do it. The Republicans didn't do it. The Communist Party appealed to anyone who was a thinking or relatively sensitive young man. So I got involved in the Young Communist League, and that led to me to going to Spain and fighting fascism there. It was all part of the same thing.

But before I ever knew what to label myself, I was already a radical humanist, and the communists were the closest thing to that. That was also the reason I left the party in 1956. You could no longer believe the party was radical or humanist. The Soviet Union, which had really been like a shining beacon to me until then, became really an evil society in many, many ways. So, for a lot of us, it was like the CP left us, not us leaving the party.

RJ: What was it like, making that break with the Communist Party?

AO: That was a tough period after leaving. I felt hopeless, didn't know which way to turn. For two years, I agonized. I didn't know what to do. I didn't just leave the party, I had to break with some of my closest, dearest colleagues and friends, some of whom even denounced me. That was devastating. People with whom I'd shared all kinds of experiences -- the brigades in Spain, jail, all kinds of shit -- now pointed a finger and said, "You've become an enemy of the working class." But eventually I came out of that, and I became aware of the beginnings of the civil-rights movement, which appealed to me a great deal, and I began to raise money for them. But just raising money didn't feel right, it wasn't enough. So I looked around to find a way to do more.

RJ: Before we talk about your time in Mississippi, I want to ask you more about this notion of authenticity and empathy, their role in politics.

AO: You can't keep yourself walled off from the pain of the world and expect to be a whole person, let alone a useful person politically. If you look out the window and see a hungry, emaciated child and do not feel -- not just pain, but a desire to do something to make the world a little better -- then you're not a complete human being, in my book anyway. There's something missing in you that makes a person complete -- empathy, compassion, the ability to feel the pain of another, whatever you want to call it. That's the starting point. From there you have to do something about what you feel. And there's a difference between real activism that flows from that, and all kinds of pseudo-activism.

RJ: What is pseudo-activism?

AO: Pseudo-activism is for people who occasionally do something useful only because it makes them feel good, but it has to be public so that others know they are good people. True activism involves public or private activity and expression under any and all conditions, including when you won't get recognition. You're driven to do it because you have no choice; you have to do it because there's something in you that needs nourishing.

RJ: Is the professor you mentioned a pseudo-activist?

AO: You can take this as a criticism, an indictment, of your profession, but most academics aren't worth shit as activists. You're overpaid, and you still all complain about the workload. I was lucky. I got out of the academic game early. What saved my ass was becoming a carpenter. Not only that, but I was a top-notch carpenter. I could work anywhere and make good money. I didn't have to worry about the boss not liking my politics, because most of them cared about your work, not your politics.

The fact is that I have contempt for most of academia. Not just criticism, but contempt for it as an institution. I know there are some wonderful teachers here and there, but to me the universities are mostly dead rocks. There are some diamonds and some gold that you can discover, but basically it's a fucking dead rock. I have a professor friend who tells me about his investment in his career. Yea, well while academics are doing their thing, some guys were down in a hole in the ground digging coal and making concrete and building your houses. Let's think about those people. Don't talk to me about your fucking investment. Academia was not too difficult a road. There are things worse than having to sit up at night and read books. Try 'em. Go out and dig a hole in the ground every fucking day, eight hours a day, and then you come back and we'll talk about it. I'm a little extreme, I must admit, but just the word academia makes me growl.

Part 2 - Love and anger in politics and life

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