COMMENTARY
AMERICA, WHERE ARE YOU NOW? DON’T YOU CARE ABOUT YOUR SONS AND DAUGHTERS? DON’T YOU KNOW WE NEED YOU NOW? WE CAN’T FIGHT ALONE AGAINST THE MONSTER. Lyrics from ‘Monster’, a 1960’s rock song by Steppenwolf.
FORGET DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS AND GREENS- BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!
Well the votes are in from various proposals for withdrawing from Iraq put forth by some Democrats. The results speak for themselves. On the parliamentary level anti-war militants are alone. Forget the ‘softball’ non-binding Levin-Reed proposal. Jesus, they all vote for those things as a cheap way to bolster their tarnished images. They can vote for that kind of proposition all day. No, I am talking about the Kerry proposal. That went down 86-13.
In this series the writer has been trying to hammer home the one real question that counts on the parliamentary level. Yes or No on the war budget. We had our answer on that one last week- 98-1 for the war budget. Enough said.
If we had a workers party representative, which we obviously desperately need now, he or she would use Congress as a tribune to denounce all of this nonsense.
Here is a proper workers party proposal. We would have our representative(s) introduce a bill to fully fund the purchase of 138,000 pairs of the best all purpose, all weather, all terrain sneakers money could buy to cut and run today. We may only get our own vote(s) now-tomorrow, as the situation in Iraq continues to get more desperate-who knows?
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!
Friday, June 23, 2006
Thursday, June 22, 2006
HONOR PAL MALATER, MILITANT-HUNGARY WORKERS REVOLUTION, 1956
As we approach the 50th anniversary of the heroic Hungarian uprising of 1956 let us remember the fallen militants who were fighting to bring a socialist solution to the problems of Stalinist-dominated Hungary. Honor the memory of Pal Malater, Defense Minister , anti-fascist fighter in World War II and fighter for socialism, executed by the Russian Stalinists in the aftermath of the Hungarian uprising.
SEE OCTOBER 2006 ARCHIVES, DATED OCTOBER 21 FOR ANOTHER BLOG ON THIS SUBJECT AT THE TIME OF THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY
In one of the cruel ironies of history anti-communists, including the current President Bush, and Hungarian nationalist have appropriated the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Hungarian uprising of 1956. Militants must learn about that struggle and take back a heritage that is rightly ours and not the imperialists and their hangers-on.
Hungary, 1956 is a classic example of what the initial stages of a working class political revolution against Stalinist bureaucratic represssion looks like. In the main, the workers were fighting for some kind of indigenous workers government free from Stalinist repression. Let history and Mr. Bush note that the militant pro-socilaist workers were definitely not fighting for a restoration of capitalist rule in Hungary.
Did the militants have illusions in Western-style democracy? Surely, some did. Just as some Eastern Europeon and Chinese workers and students had in 1989. Did the Catholic church play a counterrevolutionary role in league with the agencies of U.S.imperialism and try to turn religious working class elements against socialism? You bet. Just as Pope John Paul and the Catholic church did in Poland in the 1970’s and 1980's. Did the Soviet Union motivate its invading troops by falsely claiming a fascist uprising was occurring? By all means yes, but the first wave of Soviet troops correctly fraternized with the Hungarian workers once they knew the score.
Notwithstanding the above stumbling blocks on the road to revolution , the central fight, the fight in the streets was for a new form of workers government. The prove is in the pudding-the uprising split the Hungarian Communist party to its core with the bulk of the party going over to the insurgents. The pre-conditions for success were there but the militants needed a party that knew what it was doing in the chaotic situation to have any chance of success. Unfortunately, for many reasons which can be read about in various postings on this site no such party emerged. Read about this important event in Cold War history.
REVISED OCTOBER 21, 2006
SEE OCTOBER 2006 ARCHIVES, DATED OCTOBER 21 FOR ANOTHER BLOG ON THIS SUBJECT AT THE TIME OF THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY
In one of the cruel ironies of history anti-communists, including the current President Bush, and Hungarian nationalist have appropriated the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Hungarian uprising of 1956. Militants must learn about that struggle and take back a heritage that is rightly ours and not the imperialists and their hangers-on.
Hungary, 1956 is a classic example of what the initial stages of a working class political revolution against Stalinist bureaucratic represssion looks like. In the main, the workers were fighting for some kind of indigenous workers government free from Stalinist repression. Let history and Mr. Bush note that the militant pro-socilaist workers were definitely not fighting for a restoration of capitalist rule in Hungary.
Did the militants have illusions in Western-style democracy? Surely, some did. Just as some Eastern Europeon and Chinese workers and students had in 1989. Did the Catholic church play a counterrevolutionary role in league with the agencies of U.S.imperialism and try to turn religious working class elements against socialism? You bet. Just as Pope John Paul and the Catholic church did in Poland in the 1970’s and 1980's. Did the Soviet Union motivate its invading troops by falsely claiming a fascist uprising was occurring? By all means yes, but the first wave of Soviet troops correctly fraternized with the Hungarian workers once they knew the score.
Notwithstanding the above stumbling blocks on the road to revolution , the central fight, the fight in the streets was for a new form of workers government. The prove is in the pudding-the uprising split the Hungarian Communist party to its core with the bulk of the party going over to the insurgents. The pre-conditions for success were there but the militants needed a party that knew what it was doing in the chaotic situation to have any chance of success. Unfortunately, for many reasons which can be read about in various postings on this site no such party emerged. Read about this important event in Cold War history.
REVISED OCTOBER 21, 2006
Wednesday, June 21, 2006
A NON-COMMUNIST VIEWS THE STALINIZATION OF THE AMERICAN COMMUNIST PARTY
BOOK REVIEW
AMERICAN COMMUNISM AND THE SOVIET UNION, THEODORE DRAPER, The Viking Press, New York, 1960
THE COMPANION VOLUME-THE ROOTS OF AMERICAN COMMUNISM WAS REVIEWED ON MAY 30, 2006
As an addition to the historical record of the period from the illness and death of Lenin in the Soviet Union and the ensuing struggle for power in the Russian Communist party to the consolidation of Stalinist rule and its extension to the American party in 1929 American Communism and the Soviet Union and its companion volume detailing the period from 1917 to 1923-The Roots of American Communism (which has been 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 who however unlike other former communists nevertheless does a thorough job or presenting the personalities and issues in a reasonably straightforward and unbiased 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 against American imperialism, faced harassment, imprisonment or worst to create an American Bolshevik party. While there is no dearth of memoirs of other participants in the early American communist 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 after it became essentially 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 Mr. Draper’s first volume a helpful introductory chapter gives a summary of the events from 1917-1923. After the successful fight to bring the party above ground, 1923 opened with the struggle within the party, reflected by a sentiment in the American labor movement, in favor of an independent labor party, or rather a farmer-labor party. That effort proved stillborn. This is also the period when the party toyed with the idea of supporting the Lafollette movement, a bourgeois third party operation. Party support for that effort was abandoned at the last minute. Draper seems to think that the failure of the party to correctly intersect those two movements was a central reason that the party’s influence was limited in the 1920’s.
Fair enough. However, from a communist perspective what was the reality? The Farmer-Labor party was, as the name clearly denotes, a two class party which was based on contradictory programs. Ultimately, one or the other program would create fundamental antagonisms. This contradiction has been played out numerous times in the international revolutionary movement and, except in Russia where the Bolsheviks adopted the Social Revolutionary land program, has proven disastrous to the working class. As for the LaFollette movement it has long been established in the Marxist movement that bourgeois parties are not to be supported politically. No less an authority than James P. Cannon, a central leader of the party in the 1920’s has some very relevant comments on the opportunist and half-baked nature of this proposal. All in all, I think that Draper’s position is influenced by looking at these maneuvers through the prism of the Popular Front policies of the 1930’s when the party allegedly increased its influence by pandering to the New Deal Democrats and other bourgeois formations.
The party’s rocky road continues with the process of the ‘Bolshevization’ policy of the party ordered by the head of the Communist International Zinoviev to bring all parties in line with the Russian party organizational forms. I have heard of and seen much about this policy and about Zinoviev’s role in it but mainly at the level of high policy in the Comintern. Mr. Draper, for the first time in my experience, presents an analysis of the effects of the process at the base of the American party. Jesus, it was even more bureaucratically organized at the base than at the top. This was not accidental, as the cell structure mandated by the Comintern lent itself to easier bureaucratic control at the top. Zinoviev may have, historically, been underappreciated as a revolutionary politician and agitator but certainly this scheme does nothing to enhance his reputation.
Very important sections of Mr. Draper’s book deal with the intersection of communism and the black question and the struggle for American Trotskyism. I will not address the issue of American Trotskyism here as I have dealt with that topic elsewhere in this space and the reader really should read Cannon’s History of American Communism and History of American Trotskyism to fill in the details. However, Draper’s chapter on the black question is one of the best overviews of this question available.
The section on the development of communist work among blacks, the creation of a black cadre and the formulating of the question of a black nation with the right to national self-determination is an essential chapter (including footnotes at the back) for any militant trying to find the roots of communist work among blacks. Although the 1920’s was not the heyday of black recruitment to the party, the pioneer work in the 1920’s gave the party a huge leg up when the radicalization of the 1930’s among all workers occurred.
Nevertheless, the left-wing movement in America, including the Communist Party and its offshoots has always had problems with what has been called the Black Question. Marxists have always considers support to the right of national self-determination to be a wedge against the nationalists and as a way to put the class axis to the fore. In any case, Marxist have always predicated that support on there being a possibility for the group to form a nation. Absent that, other methods of struggle are necessary to deal with special oppression. Part of the problem with the American Communist position on self-determination was that the conditions which would have created the possibility of a black state were being destroyed with the mechanization of agriculture, the migration of blacks to the Northern industrial centers and the overwhelming need to fight for black people’s rights to survive under the conditions of the Great Depression. Carefully read this section.
After reviewing the history of the American Communist party from 1919- 29 I have come away with one nagging question. How did militants from different pre-World War I radicals organizations like the left wing of the Socialist Party and the Industrial Workers of the World that were clearly attracted to the Russian revolution and wanted to bring such a revolution here wind up as Stalinist publicity agents for Soviet foreign policy? I think James P. Cannon, one of the militants attracted to the Russian revolution, had his finger on an answer. Most of his fellow militants started out sincerely wanting to make a revolution (I reserve my judgment on that comment in the case of William Z. Foster) but made their accommodations with bourgeois society at some point in the 1920’s when the immediate possibilities of an American revolution looked very bleak.
In short, it is easier being a cheerleader for someone else’s revolution than to make your own. As is well known revolutionary movements are great devourers of human material. That this process occurred in America in the 1920’s set the radical movement a long way back. Read more and make up your own mind.
AMERICAN COMMUNISM AND THE SOVIET UNION, THEODORE DRAPER, The Viking Press, New York, 1960
THE COMPANION VOLUME-THE ROOTS OF AMERICAN COMMUNISM WAS REVIEWED ON MAY 30, 2006
As an addition to the historical record of the period from the illness and death of Lenin in the Soviet Union and the ensuing struggle for power in the Russian Communist party to the consolidation of Stalinist rule and its extension to the American party in 1929 American Communism and the Soviet Union and its companion volume detailing the period from 1917 to 1923-The Roots of American Communism (which has been 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 who however unlike other former communists nevertheless does a thorough job or presenting the personalities and issues in a reasonably straightforward and unbiased 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 against American imperialism, faced harassment, imprisonment or worst to create an American Bolshevik party. While there is no dearth of memoirs of other participants in the early American communist 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 after it became essentially 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 Mr. Draper’s first volume a helpful introductory chapter gives a summary of the events from 1917-1923. After the successful fight to bring the party above ground, 1923 opened with the struggle within the party, reflected by a sentiment in the American labor movement, in favor of an independent labor party, or rather a farmer-labor party. That effort proved stillborn. This is also the period when the party toyed with the idea of supporting the Lafollette movement, a bourgeois third party operation. Party support for that effort was abandoned at the last minute. Draper seems to think that the failure of the party to correctly intersect those two movements was a central reason that the party’s influence was limited in the 1920’s.
Fair enough. However, from a communist perspective what was the reality? The Farmer-Labor party was, as the name clearly denotes, a two class party which was based on contradictory programs. Ultimately, one or the other program would create fundamental antagonisms. This contradiction has been played out numerous times in the international revolutionary movement and, except in Russia where the Bolsheviks adopted the Social Revolutionary land program, has proven disastrous to the working class. As for the LaFollette movement it has long been established in the Marxist movement that bourgeois parties are not to be supported politically. No less an authority than James P. Cannon, a central leader of the party in the 1920’s has some very relevant comments on the opportunist and half-baked nature of this proposal. All in all, I think that Draper’s position is influenced by looking at these maneuvers through the prism of the Popular Front policies of the 1930’s when the party allegedly increased its influence by pandering to the New Deal Democrats and other bourgeois formations.
The party’s rocky road continues with the process of the ‘Bolshevization’ policy of the party ordered by the head of the Communist International Zinoviev to bring all parties in line with the Russian party organizational forms. I have heard of and seen much about this policy and about Zinoviev’s role in it but mainly at the level of high policy in the Comintern. Mr. Draper, for the first time in my experience, presents an analysis of the effects of the process at the base of the American party. Jesus, it was even more bureaucratically organized at the base than at the top. This was not accidental, as the cell structure mandated by the Comintern lent itself to easier bureaucratic control at the top. Zinoviev may have, historically, been underappreciated as a revolutionary politician and agitator but certainly this scheme does nothing to enhance his reputation.
Very important sections of Mr. Draper’s book deal with the intersection of communism and the black question and the struggle for American Trotskyism. I will not address the issue of American Trotskyism here as I have dealt with that topic elsewhere in this space and the reader really should read Cannon’s History of American Communism and History of American Trotskyism to fill in the details. However, Draper’s chapter on the black question is one of the best overviews of this question available.
The section on the development of communist work among blacks, the creation of a black cadre and the formulating of the question of a black nation with the right to national self-determination is an essential chapter (including footnotes at the back) for any militant trying to find the roots of communist work among blacks. Although the 1920’s was not the heyday of black recruitment to the party, the pioneer work in the 1920’s gave the party a huge leg up when the radicalization of the 1930’s among all workers occurred.
Nevertheless, the left-wing movement in America, including the Communist Party and its offshoots has always had problems with what has been called the Black Question. Marxists have always considers support to the right of national self-determination to be a wedge against the nationalists and as a way to put the class axis to the fore. In any case, Marxist have always predicated that support on there being a possibility for the group to form a nation. Absent that, other methods of struggle are necessary to deal with special oppression. Part of the problem with the American Communist position on self-determination was that the conditions which would have created the possibility of a black state were being destroyed with the mechanization of agriculture, the migration of blacks to the Northern industrial centers and the overwhelming need to fight for black people’s rights to survive under the conditions of the Great Depression. Carefully read this section.
After reviewing the history of the American Communist party from 1919- 29 I have come away with one nagging question. How did militants from different pre-World War I radicals organizations like the left wing of the Socialist Party and the Industrial Workers of the World that were clearly attracted to the Russian revolution and wanted to bring such a revolution here wind up as Stalinist publicity agents for Soviet foreign policy? I think James P. Cannon, one of the militants attracted to the Russian revolution, had his finger on an answer. Most of his fellow militants started out sincerely wanting to make a revolution (I reserve my judgment on that comment in the case of William Z. Foster) but made their accommodations with bourgeois society at some point in the 1920’s when the immediate possibilities of an American revolution looked very bleak.
In short, it is easier being a cheerleader for someone else’s revolution than to make your own. As is well known revolutionary movements are great devourers of human material. That this process occurred in America in the 1920’s set the radical movement a long way back. Read more and make up your own mind.
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
*"Blood Of Spain-"Memories Of The Spanish Civil War- An Oral History From Post-Franco Spain
Click on title to link to a guest commentary on Ronald Fraser's "Blood Of Spain". e
BOOK REVIEW
BLOOD OF SPAIN; AN ORAL HISTORY OF THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR, RONALD FRASER, PANTHEON, 1979
As the 70th Anniversary of the beginning of the Spanish Civil War is approaching this writer is reviewing some important works that militants should read in order to draw the lessons of the defeat of the Spanish revolution. The writer has been interested, as a pro-Republican partisan, in the Spanish Civil War since he 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 revolutions after the Russian revolution Spain showed the most promise of success. Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky noted that the political class-consciousness of the Spanish proletariat at that time was higher than that of the Russian proletariat in 1917. Yet it failed in Spain. Mr. Fraser’s oral history of the period, if only indirectly, gives some answers to the reasons for that failure.
The format Mr. Fraser has chosen, an oral history by participants from all sections of Spanish society and virtually all political parties, is an interesting way to provide those answers. His decision to emphasize the rank and file and middle-level participants as they remembered those experiences in the mid-1970’s rather than the big name leaders was also a wise decision. Lapses of memory and errors by the participants over time, however, are obvious drawbacks to this format. As are the reinforced hardening of political lines due to the suppression of political life under Franco. Additionally, from this partisan writer’s political perspective too much space was given to secondary events at the expense of actions like the May Days in Barcelona, 1937. As was Mr. Fraser's attempt to be politically all-inclusive and even-handed which sometimes confused the issues presented. Nevertheless, this is a book that militants should read in order to get the favor of the conflict.
The Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939 has been the subject of innumerable works from every possible political and military perspective possible. A fair number of such treatises, especially from those responsible for the military and political policies on the Republican side, are merely alibis for the disastrous policies that led to defeat. Mr. Fraser’s work reaches down beyond those perspectives to look at the base of society that actually fought the war. What he finds is the furious nature of the struggle in Spanish society between the old agrarian- based economy and the newer capitalist- based economy; the religious tensions caused by the breakup of the old agrarian society and the tensions between believers and church-burners; the struggle between centralizers and federalists which formed the core of the unresolved national questions, especially in Catalonia; the intense political struggles within the broad sections that supported both left and right, especially the role of the Stalinist police apparatus; the international ideological political factors that played a role, if not, as erroneously assumed, the decisive factor; and, finally, the burning personal antagonisms that in a civil war pit brother against brother, family against family, town against town, etc.. Read on.
BOOK REVIEW
BLOOD OF SPAIN; AN ORAL HISTORY OF THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR, RONALD FRASER, PANTHEON, 1979
As the 70th Anniversary of the beginning of the Spanish Civil War is approaching this writer is reviewing some important works that militants should read in order to draw the lessons of the defeat of the Spanish revolution. The writer has been interested, as a pro-Republican partisan, in the Spanish Civil War since he 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 revolutions after the Russian revolution Spain showed the most promise of success. Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky noted that the political class-consciousness of the Spanish proletariat at that time was higher than that of the Russian proletariat in 1917. Yet it failed in Spain. Mr. Fraser’s oral history of the period, if only indirectly, gives some answers to the reasons for that failure.
The format Mr. Fraser has chosen, an oral history by participants from all sections of Spanish society and virtually all political parties, is an interesting way to provide those answers. His decision to emphasize the rank and file and middle-level participants as they remembered those experiences in the mid-1970’s rather than the big name leaders was also a wise decision. Lapses of memory and errors by the participants over time, however, are obvious drawbacks to this format. As are the reinforced hardening of political lines due to the suppression of political life under Franco. Additionally, from this partisan writer’s political perspective too much space was given to secondary events at the expense of actions like the May Days in Barcelona, 1937. As was Mr. Fraser's attempt to be politically all-inclusive and even-handed which sometimes confused the issues presented. Nevertheless, this is a book that militants should read in order to get the favor of the conflict.
The Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939 has been the subject of innumerable works from every possible political and military perspective possible. A fair number of such treatises, especially from those responsible for the military and political policies on the Republican side, are merely alibis for the disastrous policies that led to defeat. Mr. Fraser’s work reaches down beyond those perspectives to look at the base of society that actually fought the war. What he finds is the furious nature of the struggle in Spanish society between the old agrarian- based economy and the newer capitalist- based economy; the religious tensions caused by the breakup of the old agrarian society and the tensions between believers and church-burners; the struggle between centralizers and federalists which formed the core of the unresolved national questions, especially in Catalonia; the intense political struggles within the broad sections that supported both left and right, especially the role of the Stalinist police apparatus; the international ideological political factors that played a role, if not, as erroneously assumed, the decisive factor; and, finally, the burning personal antagonisms that in a civil war pit brother against brother, family against family, town against town, etc.. Read on.
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