Thank you, Steven, for that synopsis of the authoritarian Left in the US.

Your inclusion of Rosa Luxemburg and her politics is appreciated. Of the Marxist theorists that I respect, she is certainly near the top of my list.

But I do see some serious inconsistency in your open recognition that RLux opposed Lenin and Trotsky, yet supporting groups which practically deify Lenin and/or Trotsky.

To generalize, I find that the authoritarian Left typically has a serious inability to critically self-analyze. They are rigid in their beliefs and tactics. Ossified, perhaps. And they seem to lack for a sense of humor; particularly any humor wherein they might be the butt of the joke.

If you cannot laugh at yourself, you are psychically dead.

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At the dances I was one of the most untiring and gayest. One evening a cousin of Sasha [Alexander Berkman], a young boy, took me aside. With a grave face, as if he were about to announce the death of a dear comrade, he whispered to me that it did not behoove an agitator to dance. Certainly not with such reckless abandon, anyway. It was undignified for one who was on the way to become a force in the anarchist movement. My frivolity would only hurt the Cause.

I grew furious at the impudent interference of the boy. I told him to mind his own business, I was tired of having the Cause constantly thrown into my face. I did not believe that a Cause which stood for a beautiful ideal, for anarchism, for release and freedom from conventions and prejudice, should demand the denial of life and joy. I insisted that our Cause could not expect me to become a nun and that the movement should not be turned into a cloister. If it meant that, I did not want it. "I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everyboy's right to beautiful, radiant things." Anarchism meant that to me, and I would live it in spite of the whole world--prisons, persecution, everything. Yes, even in spite of the condemnation of my own comrades I would live my beautiful ideal. [Emma Goldman, Living My Life (New York: Knopf, 1934), p. 56]