First Published: Progressive Labor Vol. 7, No. 6, September 1970
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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Bill Epton and Geri Steiner have been expelled from the Progressive Labor Party on charges of organizing for the purpose of destroying the PLP. They have been aided in their efforts by a few other people who were never in the Party and whose political outlook is dubious, at best.
Bill Epton was removed from the National Committee of the Progressive Labor Party many months ago. At that time he told the membership: “The antagonisms between me and those I was working with developed from my view of myself and my work in the Party. I see the Party in terms of my personal wants; I see things by how they make me look.”
At previous meetings of the national leadership he had said of his role in the Party: “...as Jared Israel said, I substituted my bourgeois corrupt outlook for that of the rank and file and the leadership, and essentially called on the membership to ’bombard the headquarters’ in support of that bourgeois position. What was that bourgeois position? It was putting myself above the Party, which reflected itself in one-sideness, among other things.”
Needless to say, Bill Epton proceeded from bad to worse. He did not take his own self-criticism, nor comrades’ criticisms seriously; his removal from the leadership proved too much for his own sense of self-importance. Hence, this was his main motivation for attacks on the Progressive Labor Party, despite a couple of political sallies which opposed the plan of augmenting our base-building with a serious effort to reach workers with our Party paper, Challenge-Desafio and PL.
Geri Steiner is a research scientist in the Boston area. Her expulsion from the Progressive Labor Party was prompted by her refusal to deal with her various “perversions.” She, together with Epton, have raised their warped sense of individualism above the class struggle. Together they have managed to wipe out some of the useful contributions which they had made in the past. “Corruption” and perversion have joined hands in this duo, in a fruitless attempt to smashes the Party. To those few people who might have illusions about this pair, we caution: “Swim at your own risk!”
National Committee of the Progressive Labor Party