Saturday, June 03, 2006

ON THE SLOGANS- BRING OUR/THE TROOPS HOME!

THEY MAY BE OUR SONS AND DAUGHTERS BUT THESE ARE NOT OUR TROOPS! END THE OCCUPATION OF IRAQ NOW!! IMMEDIATE WITHDRAWAL OF UNITED STATES/ALLIED TROOPS FROM THE MIDDLE EAST!!!

FORGET DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS AND GREENS- BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!


In light of the recent seemingly never-ending revelations concerning American military atrocities toward Iraqi civilians it is high time to set the record straight about the appropriate slogans that anti-war militants use to affect the political outcome of the situation in Iraq. For those militants, including this writer, who have opposed the American war aims since before the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 our main slogan expressing our opposition to imperialism has been for the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all American and Allied forces from the Middle East. That continues to be the thrust of our political struggle today.

The recent revelations also underscore the aimless nature of the occupation. The role of American troops has been reduced to search and destroy missions against the so-called insurgents with the Iraqi population cast merely as subjects for ‘collateral damage’ in pursuit of that strategy. Enough!! Those militants old enough to remember the Vietnam War or who have studied about it must be painfully aware of the similarities to the current situation. Most infamously- Remember My Lai.

Nevertheless the bulk of anti-war militants, abetted by the organizations which have led the anti-war demonstrations such as the United for Justice and Peace Coalition have centered their calls for action on the social patriotic slogans Bring the Troops Home or Bring Our Troops Home. Even though some elements of that movement have begun calling for Immediate Withdrawal recently the demand is still tied to getting our ‘boys and girls’ out of harms way.

Why are such slogans social patriotic? The essence of such calls is that the American troops used to destroy Iraq and murder and maim Iraqi civilians are our troops rather than agents of the American government- the main enemy of the peoples of the world. Those slogans imply there is just a misunderstanding over policy which reasonable people can disagree over. That is transparently just not the case. The hard fact is that we citizens have no control over the military deployment of any troops. To say so creates illusions that we do. While we have no interest in seeing individual soldiers harmed we also cannot take political and military responsibility for their use. If we are going to get anywhere with opposition to the war we better give up that last illusions on that score. We cannot have it both ways. Not on this issue. Get the hell out of Iraq Now!

Revised July 12, 2006



THIS IS PART OF A SERIES OF ARTICLES ON THE 2006-2008 ELECTION CYCLE UNDER THE HEADLINE- FORGET THE DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS, GREENS-BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!


Tuesday, May 30, 2006

A NON-COMMUNIST VIEW OF THE FORMATION OF THE AMERICAN COMMUNIST PARTY

BOOK REVIEW

THE ROOTS OF AMERICAN COMMUNISM, THEODORE DRAPER, The Viking Press, New York, 1957

THE COMPANION VOLUME- AMERICAN COMMUNISM AND SOVIET RUSSIA WAS REVIEWED ON JUNE 21, 2006


As an addition to the historical record of the period from the Russian Revolution of 1917 to the formation and consolidation of the legal, open party in 1923 The Roots of American Communism and its companion volume detailing the period from 1923 to 1929-American Communism and Soviet Russia (which will be reviewed separately) – is the definitive scholarly study on the early history of the American Communist Party. The author, an ex-communist, but at the time of writing an anti-communist unlike other former communists nevertheless does a thorough job or presenting the personalities and issues in a reasonably straightforward manner. Given that these volumes were researched and published during the heart of the Cold War hysteria against the Soviet Union in the 1950’s this is not faint praise.

Also useful for this period in conjunction with these two volumes and to round them out, from the pro-Communist partisan perspective of one of the main leaders, is James P. Cannon’s The First Ten Years of American Communism and the Prometheus Research Library’s James P. Cannon and the Early Communist Movement. Absent from Mr. Draper’s analysis is any real feel for why the early leaders and rank and file of the party put themselves on the line, faced harassment, imprisonment or worst to create an American Bolshevik party. While there is no dearth of memoirs of other participants in the early movement, Cannon’s analysis most honestly fills that gap.

That said, why must militants read these works today? After the demise of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe anything positively related to Communist studies is deeply discounted. Nevertheless, for better or worse, the American Communist Party (and its offshoots) needs to be studied as an ultimately flawed example of a party that failed in its mission to create a radical version of society in America when it became merely a tool of Soviet diplomacy. Now is the time for militants to study the mistakes and draw the lessons of that history.

For those not familiar with this period a few helpful introductory chapters by Mr. Draper give an analysis of the forces that made up the radical scene prior to World War I. Those forces included the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), independent syndicalists influenced by the French anarchist movement and the anti-war left-wing of the Socialist party, including various foreign language federations. Thus, in its formative period the American party (or parties, to be more correct) gathered all those fresh elements which responded to the Bolshevik victory in Russia, saw it as the wave of the future and wanted to establish that kind of socialism here. As this writer has noted elsewhere, while those diffuse forces proved to be difficult to organize, this mix provided for a better internal party life than, say, in England where the militant Celtic and anarcho-syndicalist elements were not recruited resulting in a ‘stillborn’ party.

Mr. Draper also addresses the various important faction fights which occurred inside the party. To make sense of this is sometimes no simple task. That overview also highlights some of the now more obscure personalities, where they stood on the issues and insights into the significance of the crucial early fights in the party. These include questions which are still relevant today; a legal vs. an underground party; the revolutionary attitude toward parliamentary politics; support to third party bourgeois candidates; trade union policy; class war defense as well as how to rein in the intense internal struggle of the various factions for organizational control of the party.

This presentation makes it somewhat easier for those not well-versed in the intricacies of the political disputes which wracked the early American party to understand how these questions tended to pull the party in on itself. In many ways, given the undisputed rise of American imperialism in the immediate aftermath of World War I, this is a story of the ‘dog days’ of the party. Unfortunately, that American rise combined with the international ramifications of the internal disputes in the Russian Communist Party and in the Communist International shipwrecked the party as a revolutionary party toward the end of this period. That subject is more fully addressed in the second volume. Read this book.

SOME OF THE BOOKS REVIEWED HERE MAY NOT BE READILY AVAILABLE AT LOCAL LIBRARIES OR BOOKSTORES. CHECK AMAZON.COM FOR AVAILABILITY THERE, BOTH NEW AND USED.

Monday, May 29, 2006

***A Small Slice Of The Spanish Civil War- From The Pen Of Ernest Heminway

Click on title to link to Wikipedia's entry for "For Whom The Bells Toll".

BOOK REVIEW

FOR WHOM THE BELLS TOLL, ERNEST HEMINGWAY

AS THE 70TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BEGINNING OF THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR APPROACHES THE WRITER IS REVIEWING BOOKS ON AND ABOUT THIS SUBJECT WHICH SHOULD BE OF INTEREST TO TODAY’S MILITANTS


I have been interested, as a pro-Republican partisan, in the Spanish Civil War since I was a teenager. What initially perked my interest, and remains of interest, is the passionate struggle of the Spanish working class to create its own political organization of society, its leadership of the struggle against Spanish Fascism and the romance surrounding the entry of the International Brigades, particularly the American Abraham Lincoln Battalion of the 15th Brigade, into the struggle.

Underlying my interests has always been a nagging question of how that struggle could have been won by the working class. The Spanish proletariat certainly was capable of both heroic action and the ability to create organizations that reflected its own class interests i.e. the worker militias and factory committees. Of all modern working class uprisings after the Russian revolution Spain showed the most promise of success. Russian Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky noted in one of his writings on Spain that the Spanish proletariat at the start of its revolutionary period had a higher political consciousness than the Russian proletariat in 1917.

That understanding of the political consciousness of the Spanish proletariat calls into question the strategies put forth by the parties of the Popular Front, including the Spanish Communist Party- defeat Franco first, and then make the social transformation of society. Ernest Hemingway in his novel For Whom the Bells Toll weighs in on that question here. Whatever value the novel had or has as a narrative of a small slice of the Spanish events one must look elsewhere to discovery the causes of the Republican defeat.

Ernest Hemingway most definitively was in love with Spain and always, lurking just below, the surface was his love affair with death. That combination placed in the context of the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39 makes for an explosive, dramatic tale. The hero is an American, Robert Jordan, aka Ernest Hemingway, of fizzy politics but a desire to help the Spanish people. Additionally Jordan, if expediency demands it, is willing to face danger and death at the command of the Communist-dominated International Brigades (although it is not always clear whether he is an American Lincoln Brigade volunteer or a freelancer). Hemingway's critique of the Stalinist domination of the military command and therefore authors of the military strategy that led to defeat at times overwhelms the story. His skewering of Andre Marty, leader of the International Brigades, also has that same effect. In short, Hemingway believed that 'outside forces’ meddling in Spanish affairs led to death for Jordan and disaster for the Spanish people. Well, nobody expects nor is it mandatory for a novelist to be politically astute or correct. Here Hemingway joins that crowd.

The one subject that Ernest Hemingway seemed consistently to excel at was the telling of war stories. And whatever else might be true of For Whom the Bell Tolls it is preeminently a war story. A classic war romance if you have also seen the movie treatment of the book starring Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman. It might be a male thing, it might be a Hemingway thing, or it might be that the nature of war lends itself to dramatic tension that holds a story together. Today, in some literary circles, it is not considered politically correct to laud works by such dead, white males as Hemingway but the flat out truth is that the man could write. If his work stands outside the current canon of American literary efforts then something is wrong with the new canon.

To make matters worst the current leftist-oriented literary establishment, grizzled, hard-bitten academic warriors that they are, has not been the only force that has taken aim at Hemingway's head. At the time of publication in 1940 the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion, those who actually fought in Spain, and the various Communist Parties throughout the world were unhappy with the novel. Why? Hemingway was too harsh on the deficiencies of the Communists, the International Brigades and the Republican forces in general. Above I mentioned that writers were not expected to be politically astute. That is one thing. But to say that Hemingway was essentially sabotaging the exiled Republican efforts to aid the refugees by the thrust of his novel is also politically wrong. The man did materially and militarily aid the Republican side (financially aiding volunteers and supplying ambulances). That accrues to his honor. In short, Hemingway's writings-yes. Hemingway's politics-no.