Versions of this essay appeared as "Albert Szymanski: A Personal and Political Memoir," Critical Sociology, 15: 139-144 (Fall, 1988) and in my 1992 book Turncoats and True Believers.
The 1969
meetings
of the American Sociological Association were held in the
sterile
towers
of the San Francisco Hilton. The meetings were
particularly
incongruous
at the climax of the social upheavals of the sixties.
While
blacks
rioted in the streets and students bombed draft boards, the
sociologists
hid in their dummy variables and multiple dimensions,
speculating about
the functions of conflict and the need for values to maintain
the
social
equilibrium. Colorless men in business suits read bland
papers
full
of theoretical frippery and statistical fastidiousness. Al
Szymanski
was an oasis of genuineness in this desert of
scholasticism. He
dressed
casually in faded jeans and a work shirt, with a disheveled mop
of
dishwater
blond hair topping his large round head. He was only a few
months
older than me, having been born in 1941. At 6'2" and 190
pounds
he
was the largest of a small group of radicals who stood quietly
in the
back
of a meeting room holding up a sign saying "bull shit" whenever
the
speaker
made a particularly galling remark. The shy grin on his
cherubic
face revealed his embarrassment with this tactic, which he had
agreed
to
as an experiment in ethnomethodology.
Albert Szymanski, Sue Jacobs
(Al's wife) and Ted Goertzel selling copies of The Insurgent
Sociologist at an American Sociological Association meeting. |
Al
quickly
recruited me into the sociology radical caucus, which gave me a
support
group of other young professors to replace the political groups
I had
belonged
to as a student. We were committed to direct action and
had
little
patience with the stuffy professionalism of academic
sociology.
We
had missed the deadline to place a resolution condemning
American
involvement
in Vietnam on the agenda for the business meeting.
Courtesy
resolutions,
on occasions such as the death of a colleague, could be
introduced at
any
time, however. Ho Chi Minh, the North Vietnamese leader,
had died
during the meetings. We felt that he was our colleague and
sought
to extend the courtesy to him. When our parliamentary
maneuver
failed
we simply marched to the front of the room and held our ceremony
anyway.
The officials wisely retreated to resume their deliberations in
another
room, allowing our action to fizzle out gracefully.
Al was
the
son of a Polish-American Rhode Island lobster fisherman who
loved to
work
with his hands and never really understood his son's
intellectual and
political
inclinations. It was his strong-minded, deeply religious,
Italian-American
mother who nurtured his precociousness, taking him to get his
first
library
card as soon as he became eligible on his sixth birthday.
When he
first entered school, she told him that "other children could be
cruel
to another child who was different because of color or how he
dressed
and
if he saw anyone alone or rejected to become a friend to them."
Al read
Freud
and Marx at the University of Rhode Island and tried to shock
his
mother
first with the revelation that he had loved her unconsciously as
a
child,
then with his discovery of Marxism. She professed to be
flattered
by the first revelation, and did her best to understand the
second.
She believed he was true to the fundamental values she had
taught him,
and defended his right to political views she did not share.
Al became
involved in a group called Students for Democratic Affairs in
1963,
writing
a letter to the Providence Journal advocating that students be
allowed
to visit Cuba. He argued that students might return
finding that
Castro was not as bad as they had been told, or they might
return as
staunch
anti-communists. In any event, they would be better off
with
first
hand knowledge instead of repeating sterile clichés composed by
people who had never left the state of Rhode Island.
On April
14,
1963 he organized an appearance by Hyman Lumer of the Communist
Party
on
the Rhode Island campus. He thought that the communist
system was
a "tremendously important ideology in the world today."
The
Worker
quoted him as stating that "if, after eighteen years of being
schooled
in the American way, two hours of listening to Dr. Lumer could
change a
student's political views, something would indeed be wrong with
our
system."
Al
abandoned
physics for sociology as an undergraduate major, and went on to
do a
doctorate
at Columbia University, where he organized a radical sociology
journal.
He was a compulsive worker who produced a massive, two volume
dissertation
on Chile. He also found time to travel to Orangeburg,
South
Carolina,
where he was arrested in a demonstration protesting a "slow
down" by
voting
registrars. He was also arrested in a demonstration at
Fairweather
Hall, Columbia University, in 1968, but the case was apparently
dropped
and the FBI never got his fingerprints. They suspect he
was at
times
affiliated with Youth Against War and Fascism, the Workers World
Party,
the Weathermen, the Worker Student Alliance, the Progressive
Labor
Party,
the Revolutionary Youth Movement, the Peoples Coalition for
Peace and
Justice,
the Venceremos Brigade and the Revolutionary Union, but his file
includes
few details. Both of our FBI files are heavy on hearsay
and
newspaper
clippings. They did, however, uncover both of our
"aliases."
Mine was Ted Goerge Geortzel (instead of George Goertzel).
His
was
John Albert Szymanski (instead of Albert John) or sometimes
simply "Al".
By the
time
I met Al in San Francisco he was finishing up at Columbia and
looking
for
a job. Oregon was hiring, and we brought Al out for an
interview.
Al's charisma and intellectual brilliance were apparent to even
the
most
stodgy of Oregon's senior professors, who accepted Al's
reassurance
that
he would not advocate armed revolution until social conditions
had
reached
the point that it was unavoidable.
Al had
been
involved in the Sociology Liberation Movement for several years
before
I met him in San Francisco, and had helped to edit The Human
Factor, a
radical journal produced by students at Columbia. In an
article
titled
"Toward a Radical Sociology," Al stated that the goal was to
"explain
how
badly the present society functions, how people's frustrations
stem
from
the social structure, how unnecessary and oppressive the present
institutional
arrangements are and how much better an alternative social order
world
work."
When
Al came to Oregon, he brought the Sociology Liberation
Movement's
newsletter,
The Insurgent Sociologist, with him, with the intention of
turning it
into
a journal of socialist scholarship. We formed a collective
with
interested
graduate students, solicited articles, collated and addressed
the
copies,
and mailed them out free to anyone who'd signed a list at an
annual
meeting.
The costs were covered by a film series which we ran on the
Oregon
campus.
The mailing parties were fun, probably the only cooperative work
most
of
us had ever done, and spouses and children joined in. When
somebody
asked my son if he knew what his daddy did for a living, he
said,
"yeah,
he puts things in piles to go to different cities."
We agreed
that The Insurgent Sociologist should be open to a wide range of
radical
and socialist perspectives, instead of trying to define a narrow
political
line. A similar agreement enabled Al and me to work
together for
many years, despite the fact that I was a "wishy washy social
democrat"
while he was an staunch Leninist. What made him so
intriguing was
his insistence on combining theoretical orthodoxy with
exhaustive
empirical
work. While many radicals retreated into theoretical
speculation
or utopian visions, Al focused on the difficult issues others
ignored
such
as human rights in the Soviet Union. He relied largely on
mainstream
specialists for factual information, always carefully footnoted,
and
made
the best case possible for an orthodox Marxist
interpretation.
His
books are most fascinating when they defend positions I find
outrageous,
such as supporting the Polish government against the Solidarity
movement.
The conflicts
within
University of Oregon sociology department became more complex
when
issues
of preferential hiring for women and minorities were added to
the
splits
between Marxists and mainstream sociologists and between
Leninists and
cultural Marxists. As an untenured white male Marxist with
an
"abrasive
personality," my future in the department didn't look good and
the
gloomy
winters became wearing on my psyche. I left for safer and
sunnier
climes at Rutgers University in Camden, New Jersey, where
everything
was
peaceful and my personality was unproblematic. Al
remained, got
tenure
at Oregon, and took over my role as the department's
scapegoat.
He
gradually became more and more isolated from his colleagues,
especially
from the feminists and the cultural Marxists.
My
marriage
finally broke up as Carol deepened her commitment to feminism
and I
envied
the swinging singles. I dealt with the divorce by getting
involved
in humanistic psychology and personal growth, sampling the
singles
scene,
and eventually remarrying. For Al, personal life was
always
secondary
to political and intellectual projects. I can remember his
telling
me that he feared his wife's getting pregnant as he would have
only
nine
months to complete the book he was working on. I already
had two
small children at the time, and no book. He, also, was
divorced,
but he responded by becoming more and more involved in his work.
The
annual
ASA meetings were a pleasure largely because I would get to
spend time
with Al. He would stay the full five days at the meetings,
but
would
only attend one or two sessions, spending the rest of the time
sitting
at a table selling copies of The Insurgent Sociologist. It
was a
great way to meet interesting people and find out what was going
on
around
the country. We also helped to organize the radical caucus
at
each
year's ASA meetings, and prepared resolutions on all the burning
issues
for the business meetings
As the
radical
movements around us waned, we became more professionalized, and
I felt
that our sessions often weren't any more exciting than the
traditional
ones. Academic Marxists were retreating into
scholasticism,
debating
obtuse points in Marxist theory or developing complex conceptual
schemes
to disguise the fact that the world really wasn't evolving as we
had
expected.
Much of the Marxist work was, in my view, just as obtuse as the
worst
of
the establishment sociology we had protested as students.
As a tenured
professor,
I could have gone on giving the same lectures year after year,
but I
began
to feel that I was more of a relic than a revolutionary. I
moved
on to other interests, but Al remained loyal to
Marxism-Leninism.
He knew that few students were persuaded by his arguments, but
he took
comfort in what he called the "lazy dog effect," which meant
that years
later, when social contradictions had reached a peak, they would
think
back to what their radical sociology instructor had said and the
truth
would "click" in their heads. He also continued to search
for a
Marxist-Leninist
movement which would follow the correct line and bring
revolutionary
consciousness
to the masses. For years, he was involved with a group
which was
centered in Philadelphia and kept asking me if I had heard about
its
activities.
I had to tell him it was a minor sect with no real political
influence,
and teased him about his eternal quest for a nonsectarian
sect.
When
the Philadelphia group fell apart, he grudgingly acknowledged
that
there
was truth to my remarks.
I
knew Al was disappointed in political trends, but he seemed
personally
contented when I saw him at the 1984 International Institute of
Sociology
meetings in Seattle. He conceded at a panel that he had no
idea
how
to bring about a revolution in America, but he was good natured
about
it
and insisted that we go out drinking afterwards. He was
even
quite
charming on a brief visit to my parents' home, taking an
interest in my
mother's work on health food faddism.
It
was a complete shock when I got a call from my ex-wife the next
March
with the news, "Al Szymanski has committed suicide." She'd
heard
from his ex-wife, who gave her no clue as to why he did
it. As
the
reality of his death sank in, I felt worse and worse.
Losing a
friend
my own age, 43, was bad enough. But Al was someone I
genuinely
admired,
not just as a scholar but, more importantly, as a man who lived
for and
by his convictions. What principle could have led him to
this?
I realized that the writing I was doing at the time was
meaningful to
me
largely as part of a dialogue with Al. Why should I go on
if he
had
decided it wasn't worth living for?
After
the burial, Al's girl friend told me that he had been taking
antidepressants
for a long time but had avoided psychotherapy or even medical
attention
for what he thought was liver cancer but was only gall
stones. I
remembered conversations years ago when he urged me to keep a
gun in
the
house in preparation for the revolution. Carol and I
wouldn't
consider
such a thing with small children in the house, even if we had
believed
that a violent revolution might someday be necessary. We
certainly
never anticipated that Al would keep his gun by his bedside to
comfort
himself during bouts of depression, then, finally, one lonely
agonizing
weekend, use it on himself.
Many
people asked if I knew why he had done it. I wasn't
sure.
If he had intended it as a political statement, he would have
written
a
political testament. All he left was a 3 by 5 card asking
that
his
retirement money be divided among a number of radical journals,
and a
small
fund for his dogs. Looking back, my biggest regret is that
I
didn't
urge him to encourage his wife to have children even if it meant
delaying
his book a year or two. At least I could have responded
more
seriously,
in later years, to his questions about my successful second
marriage,
and
encouraged him to talk more freely about his difficulties in
establishing
a committed relationship. I don't know that talking with
me would
have helped. But at least I would have the comfort of
knowing
that
I had done everything I could to help. There is a sense in
which
the personal is political, but Al went too far in subordinating
his
personal
life to his politics.
Although
Al was my own age, he was also something of a mentor for me
because
of his brilliance, personal charisma and strong sense of
commitment.
He shared my disillusionment with the scholasticism in Marxist
sociology
and insisted on dealing with difficult political and empirical
issues.
In a sense, his death was the end of my youth. I realized
that we
weren't young people having a good time tweaking the
establishment's
nose.
This was real life.
----
Al's niece, Judith Cosentino,
send me the following letter in December, 2015, and some
pictures
Dear Ted,
I've been meaning to write you for a long
time. One night several
years ago, I did a Google search of my
uncle, Al Szymanski (my
mother's brother) and came across your
well-written article, "Al
Szymanski: A Personal and Political
Memoir." From the very first
paragraph, I was completely drawn in to
your article - it had so much
vivid description and insight. (By the way,
I found your email address
on your Rutgers home page that said you had
retired.)
Uncle Al died when I was only five. My
memories of him are few, but
they're happy: he would tickle me nearly to
death if I called him
"late for dinner." His smile would light up
a room. As a joke, he tied
my hands behind my back with my own hair
ribbon during the last
Christmas he was with us, and while I
thought it was all in good fun,
my mom was rather annoyed.
Ted, it was so wonderful to read your
article by a person who knew
Uncle Al well. I still have his scrapbook
of many of his achievements,
and it's a fascinating read, but all the
same - and especially now
that I'm older - I wish I knew him more as
a person. I am proud to
have an uncle that was as involved with
noble causes as he was.
I wish with all my heart it hadn't ended so
tragically. From what my
mother has told me, he did indeed believe
he had liver cancer, but his
lack of a relationship with my grandfather
was also a big part of the
equation. Grandpa never even tried to
understand what Uncle Al was
trying to do - he all but disowned him
because of it. That's terrible.
Thank you for the insight and information
in your article. I'd love to
send you a picture of Uncle Al and I during
a trip my mom and I made
to Oregon when I was about two or three - I
have no memory of the
trip, I'm extremely sorry to say.
Take care and thank you again. I hope we
may correspond soon.
Judi Cosentino
This is Al and his sister, Judith's mother.
I don't have a date for this
picture.
Judith says this is Al in 1961. I never saw him with short
hair.
---------------------
The following is a letter from a former student of Al's, Rodney Loh, received in November
2003.
At the time Rodney was living in Taipei.
Dr. Goertzel
A few days ago I came across your Al Szymanski memoir essay while searching
for information on Dr. Szymanski. I'd like to share my rememberences of
that sad event of 20 years ago. I guess it's because of the phone call.
Both you and I received one. And maybe because it's coming up on 20 years
of Al's passing. Time goes fast.
It's funny, I can still remember sitting in my dorm room and my roommate
telling me, "Szymanski's a revolutionary!," and me looking back in total
disbelief. I was a sociology major and still had not taken a class from Al.
I would soon take one of his undergraduate classes on theory and was
introduced to the ideas of Mills, Weber, Durkheim, Fromm, Habermas, and
others. In class he constantly reminded us to never stop thinking and to
always ask why. Whenever he balled up his fist to make a point it was
apparent that he was a man of passion and convictions. Funny though, he
would ball up his fist, yet still be looking down at his notes. At times he
had the look of someone standing on a soapbox somewhere, not of someone
lecturing a bunch of bored looking undergraduates. I remember that more
than once during that term he told us that C. Wright Mills was driven to an
early death. The way Al talked about it, killed would be the word that
seemed to most aptly describe Mills' death. He never really elaborated, but
it was clear that the perpetrators were those associated with Columbia
university. You could see the pain and anger that he felt every time he
mentioned the death of Mills.
In the spring of 1984 I had the opportunity to sign up for another class
with Al. The term wasn't even a few weeks old when one evening I got a
phone call from a close friend who had taken the theory class with me.
Tracy was an admitting clerk at Sacred Heart Hospital and was on duty when
they brought him in. She called to tell me about a suicide victim that had
been brought in whose name was Albert Szymanski and she asked me if I
thought it was Al. She told me he had shot himself and I could hear the
disbelief in her voice and words. I knew it had to be him. With a name like
Albert Szymanski in a town the size of Eugene, Oregon, it had to be.
Anyhow, I told her I was in one of his classes and I would find out for
sure the next lesson.
I went to school and the news had still not made it into the student paper.
It was such an odd feeling going to class and knowing the prof wasn't going
to be there because he had killed himself. I remember sitting in class and
thinking to myself that "he's not coming because he's dead," and hearing
all the ordinary post-weekend chit chat in the background. It was a normal
day, and I knew that someone was going to come in and tell us that Al was
gone, and the normality would end. I'm pretty sure I was the only one in
the class who knew beforehand. I remember looking around at all the others
in the class for signs that someone else knew the bad news, but there was
no subdued whispering of rumors, no knowing looks, no-one but me looking at
everyone else's faces. Doubt crept into my mind, and then I felt a certain
smugness and superiority that I alone knew the truth and knew what was
going to happen in just a few short minutes. Now I reflect on that moment
and feel a great shame at how I felt. Shame and a great sadness. A few
minutes later Val Burris looking very somber and visibly upset walked into
the classroom with another instructor. I then said to myself it really is
true. Everybody looked up in anticipation, and then Val told us. A girl
started sniffling behind me. I don't even remember who taught us for the
rest of the term. It was the instructor who'd come in with Burris, but I
can't remember his name.
I went to the memorial service. Val Burris said a few words, so did Benton
Johnson, the head of the department. Someone sang Guantanamara accompanied
by a guitar.
In closing, I just want you to know you were very fortunate to know Al
Szymanski. I took only one of his classes and never got a chance to see him
in action in a full blown political debate. I just have memories of
anecdotes people told of him. Stories of how he'd go to Max's Tavern and
engage in lively debates at the bar. And I can still remember my roommate
telling me, "Al's a revolutionary!," and me saying, "No way!"
Regards
Rodney Loh
----------------------------------
Here is a letter received in April, 2009:
Dr. Goertzel:
Last week Al Szymanski's name came up. So, like any modern American, I
went to Google and your loving and insightful remembrance was the first
listing... with that picture.
I first knew Al in 1962-4 at the University of Rhode Island, where he was a
junior when I was a freshman, A bit later I saw him once-or-twice when he
was at Columbia in 1966-7. Your portrait of him as a smart, convivial and
magnetic young man rings true. I always wondered what happened. It seemed
so out of character. But then he was a believer and after a long, grey
winter in Eugene anything is possible...
The last time I saw him was in the late 1960s or early 1970s. He was
standing on the rocks at Point Judith, RI, poking around and looking out to
sea. He was a quite a way off and I didn't stop to speak to him, but I
remember thinking he looked a bit lonely and, after he died, that this was
the only time I ever saw him alone... he was always with a crowd of people.
At U.R.I. I remember him being charismatic and well liked but I don't
remember him dating.
After reading your piece and thinking about the times, I also wondered if Al
wasn't undergoing a period of disillusionment with Soviet-style Marxism and
simply could find no replacement.
And I wonder about Nguyen Chu (I think that's the proper spelling). At
U.R.I Al lived in a small, rundown house- a nest of activism- out in the
turf fields at 80 Plains Rd with Chu and a few others; the place was my
introduction to that seductive combination of idealism, radicalism and
partying. But Chu was an Electrical Engineering student from Vietnam,
politically radical, analytical, quiet and reputed to be the smartest
student in the EE department (4.0 average, etc). Al respected him
intellectually... a lot. Chu went back to Saigon after graduation, helped
run the local power system, earned the level of responsibility he deserved,
and stayed on out of idealism and the urge to serve his country after the
1975 takeover. He was never trusted... too independent and too tainted by
his American education I guess. Eventually he left, I think in the early
1980s, which would make it before Al's death. The U.R.I. Alumni magazine or
the Providence Journal ran an article shortly after Chu came back to the
U.S. I believe he eventually worked for one of the big power
Architect/Engineers in N.J (Burns &Roe?). In any case I'm sure he would
have contacted Al if Al were still alive, and Chu's story of idealism
betrayed would not have sat well with Al's continued, but possibly eroding
belief that Marxism was no more repressive than U.S. capitalism.
In any case, I'm sorry that Al didn't live to be one of those slightly
eccentric, lovable, out-of-date Marxist professors I occasionally meet here
at the University of Texas. And I think you're right; a child and a family
might have made all the difference. Disillusionment without a family life
to fall back on can be very hard. Books are not like children.
So I look back and think of Al as one of the victims of a time of belief
and enthusiasm, like the ROTC Lieutenants I knew dead at 21, the
motorcycle-existentialist who didn't quite make the curve, the bright,
first-generation-to-college Catholic girls- frozen- afraid to lose both
their virginity and their independence, and the cheery,
just-one-more-drug-deal boys who were never the same after they got out a
decade later.
Many thank for your graceful memorial.
Dave Miller
Austin, TX