This snarky little bit of political humor was found in Radical America, a magazine published by Students for a Democratic Society. It’s a little inside baseball, but anyone familiar with the New Left movement of U.S. politics will recognize the references to notorious infighting and pedantry.

“Me Start a Vanguard Party to Lead the Working Class to Revolution? You Must Be Kidding!!”

Over the past few years, Party Builders Associates has aided countless individuals and groups to form vanguard parties intelligently tailored to their own needs. These people are now leading creative, happy lives fighting one another. What we’ve done for others, we can do for you.

A few minutes filling out the following questionnaire may be the best investment you’ll ever make. Your answers will enable Party Builders Associates, preserving strict confidentiality, to work out a party program that is JUST RIGHT for you and your friends.

And now, here’s the questionnaire. We advise using a pencil, since these are by no means easy questions, and your party will not be able to alter the positions taken here without seriously damaging your credibility among the workers.

1) The Russian Revolution turned away from socialism in:
(a) 1917
(b) 1927
(c) 1953
(d) 1957
(e) It hasn’t yet, but my group will be the first to denounce it when it does

2) Black people are:
(a) A nation
(b) A nation of a new type
(c) A super-exploited sector of the working class
(d) Petit-bourgeois
(e) A colony
(f) Please send me more information about this controversial group

3) The main danger facing the workers’ vanguard in the present epoch is:
(a) Right opportunism
(b) “Left” sectarianism
(c) Right opportunism masking as “left” sectarianism
(d) My parents
(e) Other (please specify)

4) Rather than focus on narrow economic issues, my party will offer a cultural critique of life in advanced capitalist countries. The following are signs of capitalist decadence:
(a) Feminism
(b) Trotskyism
(c) Pornographic movies
(d) Recent price increases in pornographic movies
(e) Other (please give exact details)

5) I would like to include the following in the title of my party:
(a) Labor
(b) Workers
(c) Revolutionary
(d) Socialist
(e) Communist
(f) Vanguard
(g) Progressive
(h) October(November)
(i) United
(j) International
(k) World
(l) Movement
(m) M
(n) L
(o) All of the above

Let’s see, who splintered from Students from a Democratic Society?  The Weather Underground, Progressive Labor (Maoists), The Revolutionary Youth Movement. The other Maoists/ Communist Party Marxist-Leninists…