The [Progressive Labor] leaders became so paranoid over the issue of their public ‘image’ that they told members to shave their moustaches, wear coat… - Phillip Abbott Luce

If the communist theories and philosophies are so rational and humanitarian, and if, as they contend, man is basically both rational and humanitarian, why have bloody violence and force been necessary to gain their ends?

Evan after I had replaced my civil-libertarian posture with the rigors of Marxism-Leninism, Chinese style, Clark’s [Foreman] advice about the necessity of maintaining individual freedoms stuck in my mind and often forced me into open conflict with Progressive Labor. In many ways it was the need for independence, which Clark helped to instill in me, that led to my eventual break with Communism.

The founders of this New Left reasoned that neither the current political status-quo nor the socialist states, as exemplified by the Soviet Union and its slave states, were the solution to the problems they reasoned were facing the American people. But as history teaches, the New Left fell victim to the power politics of the Old Left. As the result, what is still rhetorically referred to as the New Left is, in reality, only a Dorian Grey picture of the original vision of its founders.