Communism: The Old Guard and the New Guard
In the world of Communism, there was the Old Guard and the New Guard. The Old Guard were people all in their sixties and seventies and who were people like Robert Brenner, Immanuel Wallerstein, Peter Gran and Eugene Genovese. The New Guard were people in their thirties and forties and were people like Matt Torcino and Heather Macbeth. The Old Guard and the New Guard did not get along, but still they were the two fronts of Communism in the world today, more or less an old front and a new front. Despite what people may think in a capitalist world order, Communism is the strongest force in contemporary politics. It just is a silent force, especially the New Guard which is its most silent force.
The New Guard and the Old Guard have never, ever gotten along, but still they knew of each other at least. Heather had studied with Peter Gran, a leader in the Old Guard, since she was 16 at
Temple
University
in
Philadelphia
,
PA.
Peter was one of the world's foremost historians and was an advocate for social and world history. Out of all the Communists in the world, Peter had chosen Heather to be his protégé. Each member of the Old Guard chose a member of the New Guard to be his protégé. That was how the Communist movement worked, and the elders in the Communist movement taught the youths in the Communist movement. Thus, Peter chose Heather out of all the youths in the Communist movement to be his protégé when she was just 16 years old. She took classes with him at his university,
Temple
, and he taught her Communist paradigms, models, paths and roads in history. Heather soaked it all up, even if she was just 16 years old. She was a natural. Peter told all the Communists in the world how talented Heather was in Communist theory and practices when she was just 16. Still there was a problem. Heather, unlike what Peter expected, did not listen to all of what Peter said and advised for his young protégé, and Peter could not figure out why. Not only was he one of the foremost historians in the world, he was one of the foremost Communists in the world, Heather should soak up his every word and follow it. But she did not. This was the first sign in the breakage between the Old Guard and the New Guard.
The Old Guard thought they could control the New Guard, like Peter thought he could control Heather when she was just 16, but they could not. The New Guard refused to be controlled. Even from when they were just 16 years old like Heather they had their own ideas about Communism as well as the future of it. This shocked the Old Guard. The Old Guard thought of themselves as the heirs to Marx and Lenin. They were shocked, like typical old people, that the New Guard would defy them. But they did. They defied them time and time again.
The Old Guard and the New Guard argued a lot. And the Old Guard always wondered why. They expected lackeys, but the New Guard were anything but lackeys. Even if it was wrong for Communists, even the Old Guard, to expect lackeys, but they did. They did not want Communists, they wanted followers, and the New Guard butted heads with the Old Guard again and again. The last thing they wanted to be was lackeys. The New Guard had its own mind, and Heather showed that when she was just 16 when she refused to listen to Peter Gran, her Communist advisor, about her choice of colleges.
Peter Gran, Robert Brenner and David Harvey all taught at state universities and refused to be associated with the elite colleges. Peter Gran taught at
Temple
University
in
Philadelphia
, a city college. Robert Brenner taught at UCLA in
Los Angeles
, a state university. David Harvey taught at City University of New York, a city university. All of the Communist academics like Gran, Brenner and Harvey refused to teach at elite colleges. As the world's foremost Communists, they did not want to teach the wealthy- they wanted to teach the poor. Gran argued that there was more knowledge among the poor, because of their greater exposure to social ills, than the rich, and thus, the poor were the real intellectuals in the world, rather than the rich. This was the thinking of the current Old Guard who refused to teach to the elite and the wealthy and would who only teach to the poor in city or state colleges. Thus, they urged the New Guard when they were only 16 and 17, and who were all good students, to eschew the elite colleges in their choice of college and follow their paths in attending city or state colleges. This was the advice Peter Gran gave to Heather when she was just 16. He told her to go to
Temple
, not Wesleyan where she eventually went.
Heather thought about Peter's advice for about a year and then rejected his proposal, more or less rejecting his life mission as a Communist. Peter was shocked, even somewhat outraged. How could Heather who was only 16 reject his proposal that he has spent decades perfecting and which were based on decades of thought and research! But Heather did not care. She threw out his proposal like a baby with the bathwater. She did not like his idea. It did not work for her. She chose to go to an elite college and not a city or state college. Still she chose to go to a Communist college. She chose to go to Wesleyan, which was one of the three elite Communist colleges in the
U.S.
along with
Brown
University
and
Oberlin
College
. Most of the professors at Wesleyan were Communists. Heather could count on her two hands the number of professors she had at Wesleyan who were not Communists. That's how Communist Wesleyan was. Thus, she would get a better Communist education at her elite college than she would ever get at her city or state college. Heather knew this. Thus, why she rejected Peter Gran's advice when she was just 16 and decided to go to an elite college, albeit a Communist college, rather than a city or state college.
And Heather was right. At Wesleyan, she got to take classes like “Toward a Socialist America,” “Existentialism and Marxism,” “Comparative French Revolutions,” and “Capitalism and Globalization.” These were the type of Communist classes that she could never take at a city or state college. They simply did not offer them. Wesleyan was a better Communist college than
Temple
University
, UCLA, or City University of New York just because Peter Gran, Robert Brenner and David Harvey taught there.
The next breakage between the Old and the New Guard came after the New Guard had graduated from their elite universities. The Old Guard, already disappointed by the New Guard in their choice of colleges, did not want to be disappointed this time. They asked all the members of the New Guard, including Heather, to enroll as their PHD students in history. Both Peter Gran and Robert Brenner wanted Heather to enroll at their university as one of their PHD students so that they could teach and mentor and monitor Heather's progress as a Communist. It was a great honor to be personally invited by the foremost historians in the world to be their history grad student, but again Heather rejected the idea. She would get her PHD in Marxist history some day but it would not be anytime in the near future. She would wait until she was older and her Communist social experiments were over. She would get her PHD in Marxist history when she was retired, and it was something she would pursue in her retirement, not when she was young and healthy. When she was young and healthy, what she most wanted to be was a Communist, and not only a Communist but a laborer. She would be a worker. She would work as a waitress and study labor truly and deeply. It was certainly the best way to learn about Communism which was all about the study of labor.
Again, Heather's decision outraged the Old Guard. They yelled and screamed and shouted at Heather that she was wasting her life. How could she make such a bad decision, and Heather's and other young Communist's decisions sent shockwaves throughout the world of Communism. When the New Guard decided to be waiters and waitresses and busboys instead of grad students in Marxist history or Marxist economics, the Old Guard was shocked. Except this time, it was the New Guard who called the Old Guard elitist. They accused the Old Guard of being elitist for sitting in their ivory towers and working on their books. The New Guard were different. They were the real Communists as choosing a life of labor over a life of Marxist academics they argued with the Old Guard. And even if they had degrees from the best colleges in the
U.S.
— Harvard, M.I.T, Wesleyan, Brown and U.C. Berkeley, it did not matter. They worked as waiters and waitresses as busboys and dishwashers. No job was too menial for them. Their parents were shocked who had paid for their expensive college tuitions. Their professors were shocked who expected them to enter elite professions in government or law. Everybody was shocked, including the Old Guard. The only people who were not shocked were the New Guard. They embraced their new life as Communists with gusto. They got up early in the morning to open their stores. They left work late at night and closed their stores. Unlike the Old Guard who were all Marxist professors, albeit at city and state colleges, they were the real Communists. They had chosen a life of labor, eschewing the life of Marxist academics that the Old Guard have chosen for them. And even if many students did not go to Harvard, Yale, M.I.T,
Berkeley
, Brown or Wesleyan to become a waiter or waitress or busboy or dishwasher, the New Guard did. Matt, who had a PHD in Physics from M.I.T, spent his whole life as a dishwasher. Heather worked as a barista. Even if she had a B.A. in history from one of the finest schools in the country that was all she did from
5 a.m.
every day was make people's coffee for them. She had given up a profession as a surgeon (Heather had wanted to be a hand transplant surgeon) to work every day as a barista. Their professors and their parents were non-plussed. They told the New Guard that they were wasting their lives. But again, the New Guard did not listen. That was what the Old Guard was learning about the New Guard — that they never, ever listened. The New Guard were not wasting their lives, they were making their lives. They were happy, they were fulfilled, and mostly they were what the Old Guard never was — workers. That was the difference between the Old Guard and the New Guard. The New Guard worked. The Old Guard never did. They just studied work. And even if the Old Guard always said that the New Guard had destroyed the future of Communism with their ill-fated decisions, the New Guard never believed them. They knew that the future of Communism was theirs not the Old Guard's. They were the people that were defining the path and the future and the new identity of the Communist movement, not the Old Guard. And as time progressed, the Old Guard began to think that more and more that this was the case as well.
The New Guard had proven themselves to be different from the Old Guard. And as time progressed, the New Guard heard what they thought they would never hear from the Old Guard. The Old Guard told the New Guard that they were proud of them and that they were good Communists. This was high praise indeed from the foremost Communists in the world who had never approved of a single decision made by the New Guard.