little red schoolmates

I've written before about my 8th-grade teacher, the FDR New Deal lefty who may have been an old-money Marxist. My friend Scott proved during that ILGWU tour that he didn't buy the arguments for leftwing protectionism, but he's the only one in that class who wasn't a kneejerk.

My friend Eben said to me at one point, "Are you a Marxist?"

Considering myself to be a civil libertarian socialist* at the time,** I answered:

"No, not really."

"I think that means you and I are the only ones who aren't. I think it's really scary."

"Well," I asked, "what are your politics?"

"Liberal Democrat," he said.

And that made Eben the most rightwing*** student in that class.

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* Civil libertarian by ardent conviction, socialist by default.
** New York City ~ 1980.
*** But only in the anti-Left definition of the Right.