HONOR CHE GUEVARA-REVOLUTIONARY FIGHTER

DVD REVIEW

SACRIFICIO-WHO BETRAYED CHE GUEVARA, A DOCUMENTARY, 2001

This year marks the 54th anniversary of the Cuban July 26th movement, the 48th anniversary of the Cuban Revolution and the 40th anniversary of the execution of Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara by the Bolivian Army after the defeat of his guerilla forces and his capture in godforsaken rural Bolivia. Thus, it would seem fitting to review a documentary concerning the life of a man who stood for my generation, the Generation of 68, and for later generations as an icon of revolutionary intransigence.

That is what I would like to do but this hour long documentary left me with more questions than it answered. Mainly I asked myself why, at this far remove from the events, it is necessary to find scapegoats or heroes around Che’s capture. Sure, we always search for historical accuracy where we can. And we know that history can be a terrible taskmaster. However, I am not convinced that the supposed victim here Ciro Busto, one of Che’s subordinates, who has been named in some historical accounts as the man who tipped the Bolivian authorities to Che’s presence in Bolivia, has made his case. Nor, for that matter, has the other subject of this research Regis Debray, although he seems to have won the historical argument. Moreover, it is entirely possible that others could have betrayed Che's presence, including local peasants, or that rather than betrayal it was a question or erroneous judgments. That is my position. In any case, both Busto and Debray were tried and received 30 year sentences and after an international campaign served three years. Furthermore, all I know is that with the death of Che a real revolutionary fighter went down. The only winner here was the American government and its various agents.

A word on a couple of the people interviewed here. One Felix Rodriquez of Bay of Pigs and Iran Contra infamy, a notorious soldier of fortune gets to put his two cents worth in since he was in on the capture of Che. Mark this- this is the rank and file face of the enemy of the peoples of the world and believe what he has to say at your peril. The second is Debray himself. Whatever his mistakes that led to Che’s capture may have been and I believe that they were, if anything, errors of judgment in Bolivia he is now a case study in the demise of revolutionary integrity that swamped the Generation of ’68 once the revolutionary wave ebbed. Debray was no mere maverick leftist journalist but essentially Fidel’s man in Europe in the 1960's. For those with short memories, or who were not alive then, Debray authored a book called Revolution Within the Revolution, a book that debunked the traditional Marxist notions of the centrality of the urban working class as the focal point of revolution and touted the ‘purity’ of the guerilla strategy as the way forward toward socialism. Of course this petty bourgeois professorial ‘philosopher’ now has political amnesia on that subject. Unfortunately, many a Latin American youth wound up dead or in prison trying to fight for that perspective. Honor their sacrifice. No honor to Debray from these quarters.

*From The Archives Of "Women And Revolution"-In Defense of Homosexual Rights: The Marxist Tradition

Click on the headline to link to a "Wikipedia" entry for "Communism and homosexuality".

Markin comment:

The following is an article from the Summer 1988 issue of "Women and Revolution" that may have some historical interest for old "new leftists", perhaps, and well as for younger militants interested in various cultural and social questions that intersect the class struggle. Or for those just interested in a Marxist position on a series of social questions that are thrust upon us by the vagaries of bourgeois society. I will be posting more such articles from the back issues of "Women and Revolution" during Women's History Month and periodically throughout the year.


In Defense of Homosexual Rights: The Marxist Tradition

Defense of democratic rights for homosexuals is part of the historic tradition of Marxism. In the 1860s, the prominent lawyer J.B. von Schweitzer was tried, found guilty and disbarred for homosexual activities in Mannheim, Germany. The socialist pioneer Ferdinand Lassalle aided von Schweitzer, encouraging him to join Lassalle's Universal German Workingmen's Association in 1863. After Lassalle's death, von Schweitzer was elected the head of the group, one of the organizations that merged to form the German Social Democratic Party (SPD). The SPD itself waged a long struggle in the late 19th century against Paragraph 175 of the German penal code, which made homosexual acts (for males) a crime. August Bebel and other SPD members in the Reichstag attacked the law, while the SPD's party paper Vorwarts reported on the struggle against state persecution of homosexuals.

In 1895 one of the most infamous anti-homosexual outbursts of the period targeted Oscar Wilde, one of the leading literary lights of England (where homosexuality had been punishable by death until 1861). Wilde had some socialist views of his own: his essay, "The Soul of Man Under Socialism," was smuggled into Russia by young radicals. When the Marquess of Queensberry called him a sodomist, Wilde sued for libel. Queensberry had Wilde successfully prosecuted and sent to prison for being involved with Queensberry's son. The Second International took up Wilde's defense. In the most prestigious publication of the German Social Democracy, "Die Neue Zeit", Eduard Bernstein, later known as a revisionist but then speaking as a very decent Marxist, argued that there was nothing sick about homosexuality, that Wilde had committed no crime, that every socialist should defend him and that the people who put him on trial were the criminals.

Upon coming to power in 1917 in Russia, the Bolshevik Party began immediately to undercut the old bourgeois prejudices and social institutions responsible for the oppression of both women and homosexuals— centrally the institution of the family. They sought to create social alternatives to relieve the crushing burden of women's drudgery in the family, and abolished all legal impediments to women's equality, while also abolishing all laws against homosexual acts. Stalin's successful political counterrevolution rehabilitated the reactionary ideology of bourgeois society, glorifying the family unit. In 1934 a law making homosexual acts punishable by imprisonment was introduced, and mass arrests of homosexuals took place. While defending the socialized property forms of the USSR against capitalist attack, we Trotskyists fight for political revolution in the USSR to restore the liberating program and goals of the early Bolsheviks, including getting the state out of private sexual life. As Grigorii Batkis, director of the Moscow Institute of Social Hygiene, pointed out in "The Sexual Revolution in Russia," published in the USSR in 1923:
"Soviet legislation bases itself on the following principle:

'It declares the absolute non-interference of the state and society into sexual matters so long as nobody isinjured and no one's interests are encroached upon

"Concerning homosexuality, sodomy, and various other forms of sexual gratification, which are set down in European legislation as offenses against public morality—Soviet legislation treats these exactly the same as so-called 'natural' intercourse. All forms of sexual intercourse are private matters." [emphasis in original]

—quoted in John Lauritsen and David Thorstad, The Early Homosexual Rights Movement 1864-1935

IN THE TIME OF THE GREAT FRENCH REVOLUTION

BOOK REVIEW

THE TERROR-THE MERCILESS WAR FOR FREEDOM IN REVOLUTIONARY FRANCE, DAVID ANDRESS, FARRAR, STRAUS AND GIROUX, NEW YORK, 2005

This year marks the 218th anniversary of the beginning of the Great French Revolution with storming of the Bastille on July 14th 1789. An old Chinese Communist leader, the late Zhou Enlai, was once asked by a reporter to sum up the important lessons of the French Revolution. In reply he answered that it was too early to tell what those lessons might be. Whether that particular story is true or not it does contain one important truth. Militants today at the beginning of the 21st century can still profit from an understanding of the history of the French Revolution.

There are many books that outline the history of that revolution. I have reviewed some of them in this space. Probably the most succinct overview, although it was written over one half century ago, is Professor Georges Lefebvre’s study. For those who want a more up-to-date overview of the main events and political disputes reflecting the tremendous increase in scholarship on the subject the book under review has a lot to recommend it. The author, a professor at the University of Portsmouth, England, covers all the main points from the pre-revolutionary problems confronting France at the time, including its terrible debt problems caused in the main by its support of the American Revolution to the political, social and, yes, sexual inadequacies of Louis XVI. As has been noted by many commentators on revolution, including the author and myself, one of the prerequisites for revolution is that the old regime can no longer govern in the same way. The personage of Louis XVI seemingly fits that proposition to a tee.

Professor Andress goes on to highlight the key events. Obviously, and most visibly, the storming of the Bastille that opened up the cracks in the old monarchial regime. He details the struggle to create a constitutional monarchy through the various legislative assemblies that sought to carry out the reforms necessary to bring France into the modern age short of declaring a republic. And also the attempts, including by Louis himself, by forces of the old regime to return the old monarchy or stop the revolution in its tracks. When those efforts failed and the revolution began in earnest Professor Andress goes into great detail analyzing the internal struggle by the revolutionaries, most notably the great fight between the Girondins and Jacobins for power, and the formation of the republic. After the defeat of the Girondins this led to the further fights to ‘purify’ the revolution among the Jacobin forces and the reign of the Robespierre-led Committee of Public Safety that consolidated the gains of the revolution through the ‘Reign of Terror’. Finally, the professor highlights the downfall and execution of Robespierre in 1794 that represented the reaction that most revolutions exhibit when the political possibilities for further revolutionary moves are no longer tenable.

The author has done more than provide an outline though for those who are trying to understand the sometimes confusing political alignments in Paris and in the country. He discusses the voting patterns of the delegates in the various legislative assemblies; the role of the sans-culottes in pushing the revolution leftward; the falling out among the Jacobins; the international situation (meaning the immediate European one); and, most importantly, the reaction in non-Paris, the countryside that rebelled for various reasons against the central authority in the capital. Other subjects include the murder of Marat by Corday that set the revolution bloodily leftward, the Festival of the Supreme Being as an attempt to finally destroy the power of the Catholic Church and other reforms by the left-Jacobins to consolidate the revolution.

The major negative of this book is political. As is almost always the case in any discussion of the first five years of the French Revolution there is an almost fatalistic portrayal of the emergence of Robespierre intertwined throughout all of the earlier events giving the impression that he was inevitably bound to take power. And, also inevitably, due to the excesses of the ‘Reign of Terror’, to lose it. This may be a good way to save one’s political soul but it is bad history. Revolutions, particularly great revolutions, are few and far between. They are messy affairs at the time and remain the samre seen through the historical lens. Nevertheless if the social tensions in society could always, or should always, be resolved in a nice non- violent parliamentary way there would be no revolutions. Damn, where would that leave us as the inheritors of the sans-culottes tradition?

*ROBESPIERRE AND THE GREAT FRENCH REVOLUTION

Click on the title to link to a "Wikipedia" article on French revolutionary Maximilien Robespierre.

IN THE TIME OF THE GREAT FRENCH REVOLUTION

DVD REVIEW

REMEMEBER THE BASTILLE, BUT HONOR ROBESPIERRE AND SAINT JUST.

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION, HISTORY CHANNEL PRODUCTION, 2004

This year marks the 218th anniversary of the beginning of the Great French Revolution with storming of the Bastille on July 14th 1789. An old Chinese Communist leader, the late Zhou Enlai, was once asked by a reporter to sum up the important lessons of the French Revolution. In reply he answered that it was too early to tell what those lessons might be. Whether that particular story is true or not it does contain one important truth. Militants today at the beginning of the 21st century can still profit from an understanding of the history of the French Revolution.

There are many books that outline the history of that revolution. I have reviewed some of them in this space. Probably the most succinct overview, although it was written over one half century ago, is Professor Georges Lefebvre’s study. For those who want a quick visual overview of the main events and political disputes the History Channel production under review has a lot to recommend it. The production covers all the main pre-revolutionary problems confronting France at the time, including its terrible debt problems caused in the main by its support of the American Revolution to the political, social and, yes, sexual inadequacies of Louis XVI. As has been noted by many commentators on revolution, including myself, one of the prerequisites for revolution is that the old regime can no longer govern in the same way. The personage of Louis XVI seemingly fits that proposition to a tee.

The production goes on to highlight the key events. Obviously, and most visibly, the storming of the Bastille that opened up the cracks in the old monarchial regime. It details the struggle to create a constitutional monarchy through the various legislative assemblies that sought to carry out the reforms necessary to bring France into the modern age short of declaring a republic. And also the attempts, including by Louis himself, by forces of the old regime to return the old monarchy or stop the revolution in its tracks. When those efforts failed and the revolution began in earnest the production details the internal struggle by the revolutionaries, most notably the great fight between the Girondins and Jacobins for power, and the formation of the republic. After the defeat of the Girondins this led to the further fights to ‘purify’ the revolution among the Jacobin forces and the reign of the Robespierre-led Committee of Public Safety that consolidated the gains of the revolution through the ‘Reign of Terror’. Finally, the downfall and execution of Robespierre in 1794 represented the reaction that most revolutions exhibit when the political possibilities for further leftward revolutionary moves are no longer tenable.

There are many great scenes portrayed here as well. The murder of Marat by Corday. The Festival of the Supreme Being. The oratory of Danton and many more scenes that give one a pretty good general feel for the dynamics of the revolution. Included are ‘talking head’ comments by noted historians of the revolution giving their take on the meaning of various events. This is a plus. The major negative is in the axis of presentation. Almost fatalistically the emergence of Robespierre is intertwined throughout all of the earlier events giving the impression that he was inevitably bound to take power. And, also inevitably, due to the excesses of the ‘Reign of Terror’, to lose it. This may be good documentary presentation form but it is bad history. Revolutions, particularly great revolutions, are few and far between. They are messy affairs at the time and reamin the same seen through the historical lens. Nevertheless if the social tensions in society could always, or should always, be resolved in a nice non- violent parliamentary way there would be no revolutions. Damn, where would that leave us as the inheritors of the sans-culottes tradition?

*When “Doctor Gonzo” Was 'King Of The Hill'-The Master Journalism Of Hunter S. Thompson

Click on title to link to YouTube's film clip of Doctor Hunter S. Thompson in action. Watch out!

Book Review

The Great Shark Hunt; Gonzo Papers Volume One, Hunter S. Thompson, 1978

Most of this review of “The Great Shark Hunt” the master journalistic work of the late Hunter S. Thompson, a man much missed in these quarters by this reviewer originally appeared in a review of one of his latter, lesser books, “Songs Of The Doomed”. Most of the points made there apply here as well but I want to add some additional comments concerning specific articles which you NEED to read to know what mad man journalism in search of the truth, some truth anyway, was all about.

“Generally the most the trenchant social criticism, commentary and analysis complete with a prescriptive social program ripe for implementation has been done by thinkers and writers who work outside the realm of bourgeois society, notably socialists, like Karl Marx. Vladimir Lenin, and Leon Trotsky and other less radical progressive thinkers. Bourgeois society rarely allows itself, in self-defense if nothing else, to be skewered by trenchant criticism from within. This is particularly true when it comes from a man of big, high life appetites, a known dope fiend, a ferious wild man gun freak, and all-around edge city lifestyle addict like the late, massively lamented, massively lamented in this quarter in any case, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. Nevertheless, although he was far, very far, from any thought of a socialist solution to society's current problems and would reject such a designation, I think out of hand, we could travel part of the way with him. We saw him as a kindred spirit. He was not one of us-but he was one of us. All honor to him for pushing the envelope of mad truth-seeking journalism in new directions and for his pinpricks at the hypocrisy of bourgeois society. Such men are dangerous.

I am not sure whether at the end of the day Hunter Thompson saw himself, or wanted to been seen, as a voice, or the voice, of his generation but he would not be an unworthy candidate. In any case, his was not the voice of the generation of 1968, my generation, being just enough older to have been formed by an earlier, less forgiving milieu, coming of adult age in the drab Cold War, red scare, conformist 1950s that not even the wildly popular Mad Men can resurrect as a time which honored fruitful and edgy work, except on the coastal margins of society. His earlier writings show that effect. Nevertheless, only a few, and with time it seems fewer in each generation, allow themselves to search for some kind of truth even if they cannot go the whole distance. This compilation under review is a hodgepodge of articles over the best part of Thompson’s career, the part culminating with the demise of the arch-fiend, arch-poltical fiend, Richard Nixon. As with all journalists, as indeed with all writers especially those who are writing under the pressure of time-lines and for mass circulation media, these pieces show an uneven quality. Hunter's manic work habits, driven by high dope infusions and high-wire physicial stress, only added to the frenzied corners of his work which inevitably was produced under some duress, a duress that drove his hard-boiled inner demons onward. However the total effect is to blast old bourgeois society almost to its foundations. Others, hopefully, will push on further.

One should note that "gonzo" journalism is quite compatible with socialist materialism. That is, the writer is not precluded from interpreting the events described within a story by interposing himself/herself as an actor in that story. The worst swindle in journalism, fostered by the formal journalism schools, as well as in the formal schools of other disciplines like history and political science, is that somehow one must be ‘objective’. Reality is better served if the writer puts his/her analysis correctly and then gets out of the way. In his best work that was Hunter’s way.

As a member of the generation of 1968 I would note that the period covered by this compilation was a period of particular importance in American history, the covering of which won Hunter his spurs as a journalist. Hunter, like many of us, cut his political teeth on wrestling with the phenomena of one Richard Milhous Nixon, at one time President of the United States, all-around political chameleon and off-hand common criminal. His articles beginning in 1968 when Nixon was on the rising curve of his never ending “comeback” trail to his fated (yes, fated) demise in the aftermath of the Watergate are required reading (and funny to boot). Thompson went out of his way, way out of his way, and with pleasure, skewering that man when he was riding high. He was moreover just as happy to kick Nixon when he was down, just for good measure. Nixon, as Robert Kennedy in one of his more lucid comments noted, represented the "dark side" of the American spirit- the side that appears today as the bully boy of the world and as craven brute. If for nothing else Brother Thompson deserves a place in the pantheon of journalistic heroes for this exercise in elementary political hygiene. Anyone who wants to rehabilitate THAT man before history please consult Thompson’s work."

********
Beyond the Nixon-related articles that form the core of the book there are some early pieces that are definitely not Gonzo-like. They are more straightforward journalism to earn a buck, although they show the trademark insightfulness that served Thompson well over the early part of his career. Read his pieces on Ernest Hemingway-searching in Idaho, the non-student left in the 1960’s, especially the earnest early 1960s before the other shoe dropped and we were all confronted with the madness of the beast, unchained , the impact of the ‘beats’ on the later counter cultural movements and about the ‘hippie’ invasion of San Francisco. The seminal piece on the Kentucky Derby in 1970 which is his ‘failed’ (according to him, not others) initial stab at “gonzo” journalism is a must read. And finally, if nothing else read the zany adventures of the articles that give us the title of the book, “The Great Shark Hunt”, and his ‘tribute’ to his friend the “Brown Buffalo” of future legend, Oscar Acosta. Those are high water marks in the great swirl of Hunter S. Thompson’s career. Hunter, I hope you find the Brown Buffalo wherever you are. Read this book. Read all his books.”

THE U.S.S. BUSH IS SINKING

COMMENTARY

THE RATS ARE BEGINNING TO ABANDON SHIP


About five years ago, in the summer of 2002, I went to my first anti-Iraq war demonstration in downtown Boston. At that time, if you remember, we were fighting for no attack on Iraq. It is hard to believe, but not really surprising, that five years later we are still in the quagmire and prospects of getting out any time soon look pretty dim. As witnessed by the numerous commentaries that I have made at this site concerning the dead-end strategy used by the mainstream anti-war movement of reliance on parliamentary maneuvering, mainly by the opposition Democrats, I have, in any case, held out little faith in that way of ending the war. I stand by that position. However, today’s bit of political wisdom revolves around a very, very belated if tepid Republican parliamentary opposition to continuing the war.

Over the past couple of days two key Republican United States Senators, Richard Lugar and George Voinivich, have made it very clear they are not going down with the Bush ship. These guys are not marginal renegades but the heart of the Republican parliamentary establishment. Moreover, at the most practical political level- survival- their decisions make perfect sense. As anyone east of the Oval Office knows by now this whole military ‘surge’ strategy cooked up by the Bushies as a last gasp effort to gain ‘victory’ is in shambles. Christ, the latest American governmental reports on the readiness of Iraqi troops and police to take charge are like some chamber of horrors. According to the accounts nobody here has any clue about how many Iraqis are ready and where all the money went. Assuming they ever wanted to know.

But let us be blunt-on hard military grounds what is required in Iraq is probably another couple of hundred thousand more American troops for five to ten years. I won’t quibble over the numbers or the time frame but is any rational politician ready to go down the line with Bush on that ship. Hell, no. He is gone in January 2009 and will leave the Iraq mess to his successor so few aspiring American politicians want to go down in history as Bush’s poodle at this stage. This is where the senators’ ‘every person for him or herself’ throwing in of the towel comes from.

I have long argued that the parliamentary Democrats have been at least a year, if not more, behind the curve on Iraq. The Republicans, as witnessed by this spring’s fiasco over the war appropriation budget, are at least two years behind. However in neither case are the participants any more committed to immediate withdrawal, meaning literally starting to pull out today, than previously. Thus, the new Republican opposition, like the tamed Democrats, is in no hurry to just stop the damn war in its tracks. But we are. Organize those anti-war soldier and sailor solidarity committees in order to call for the troops to lead the way out of Iraq. Pronto.

YOU DO NEED A WEATHERMAN (PERSON) TO KNOW WHICH WAY THE WIND BLOWS

DVD REVIEW

THE WEATHER UNDERGROUND, 2003

In a time when I, among others, are questioning where the extra-parliamentary opposition to the Iraq War is going and why it has not made more of an impact on American society it was rather refreshing to view this documentary about the seemingly forgotten Weather Underground that as things got grimmer dramatically epitomized one aspect of opposition to the Vietnam War. If opposition to the Iraq war is the political fight of my old age Vietnam was the fight of my youth and in this film brought back very strong memories of why I fought tooth and nail against it. And the people portrayed in this film, the core of the Weather Underground, while not politically kindred spirits then or now, were certainly on the same page as I was- a no holds- barred fight against the American Empire. We lost that round, and there were reasons for that, but that kind of attitude is what it takes to bring down the monster. But a revolutionary strategy is needed. That is where we parted company.

One of the political highlights of the film is centered on the 1969 Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) Convention that was a watershed in the student anti-war protest movement. That was the genesis of the Weathermen but it was also the genesis of the Progressive Labor Party-led faction that wanted to bring the anti-war message to the working class by linking up the student movement with the fight against capitalism. In short, to get to those who were, or were to be, the rank and file soldiers in Vietnam or who worked in the factories. In either case the point that was missed , as the Old Left had argued all along and which we had previously dismissed out of hand, was that it was the masses of working people who were central to ‘bringing the war home’ and the fight against capitalism. That task still confronts us today.

One of the paradoxical things about this film is that the Weather Underground survivors interviewed had only a vague notion about what went wrong. This was clearly detailed in the remarks of Mark Rudd, a central leader, when he stated that the Weathermen were trying to create a communist cadre. He also stated, however, that after going underground he realized that he was out of the loop as far as being politically effective. And that is the point. There is no virtue in underground activity if it is not necessary, romantic as that may be. To the extent that any of us read history in those days it was certainly not about the origins of the Russian revolutionary movement in the 19th century. If we had we would have found that the above-mentioned fight in 1969 was also fought out by that movement. Mass action vs. individual acts, heroic or otherwise, of terror. The Weather strategy of acting as the American component of the world-wide revolutionary movement in order to bring the Empire to its knees certainly had (and still does) have a very appealing quality. However, a moral gesture did not (and will not) bring this beast down. While the Weather Underground was made up a small group of very appealing subjective revolutionaries its political/moral strategy led to a dead end. The lesson to be learned; you most definitely do need weather people to know which way the winds blow. Start with Karl Marx.

*POLITICAL POTPOURRI- In The Dog Days Of The Class Struggle

Click on title to link to the Partisan Defense Committee Web site.


OF THIS AND THAT IN THE ‘HEART OF THE BEAST’

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

Well the summer political doldrums are upon us. Sure there has been political news. You know in Palestine, in Lebanon and for that matter even in Washington, D.C. The problem is rather that over the past couple of weeks there has not been any news that I can get a handle on for a full treatment. In lieu of that there are snippets of issues that we should be paying attention to. Here goes.

ONCE AGAIN ON IRAQ

One would hardly know that Iraq war, the central issue of the day, was around anymore. Oh sure, the daily casualty rates of the American troops, the number of Iraqi bodies found as a result of sectarian violence dumped somewhere, the latest car bombing and the ‘success’ or ‘failure of the latest surge get attention. What I am talking about, however, is the fight for immediate unconditional withdrawal from Iraq. Every since the anti-war Democratic parliamentary opposition folded its tent over the war appropriations bill a few weeks ago the steam has gone out of the issue. Just at a time when it is desperately necessary to fight the political air is gone.

Readers of this space know that I have never placed much faith in that parliamentary strategy- depending on the half-hearted Democrats. But others in the anti-war movement have and this is what they have to show for it. Even the courageous anti-warrior Cindy Sheehan has called it a day in disgust. More on this issue latter as this ungodly military ‘surge’ strategy plays itself out. My preliminary assessment (not in accord with General Petreaus’s, I am sure) is that strategy is a failure. Unless one favors keeping American troops in Iraq for the next generation, that is. And at higher levels, to boot. In the meantime those anti-war soldier and sailor solidarity committees to co-ordinate the withdrawal with the rank and file troops that I have been propagandizing for over the past year look more and more like the solution. Right?

A RESPITE ON IRAN?

Rummy’s gone as Secretary of War. Wolfowitz is off with his girlfriend somewhere. “Scooter” is in the caboose. Other neo-cons have decamped from Washington like the plague had descended. Thus, at least temporarily, one of the unintended consequences of the Iraq debacle is that the pressure to militarily strike Iran and stymie its nuclear development capacity is off. A recent interesting article points out that Secretary of State Rice, previously frozen out, is now in the cat bird’s seat on Iran policy. Yes, there are ominous rumblings from the last bastion of hawkishness in Vice President Cheney’s office but is anyone going to put their head in a noose this late in the Bush Administration. Hell no, not when there are cushy private sector or think tank jobs to fight for. We will take the respite, but as always, keep vigilant. In any case if Seymour Hersh’s analysis from a New Yorker article of last year is any clue we still have not heard the last of this whatever party wins the next election. One of the central arguments that Democrats have put forth in opposition to the Iraq War is that Iran was the real enemy. Remember this. Stay tuned.

IN DEFENSE OF JOHN McCAIN

What? A long time leftist coming to the defense of one of the most right-wing politicians in American life? Well, yes. Why? Recently Senator McCain, a leading Republican presidential contender, was in New York for one of those endless fund-raisers that are central to any bourgeois candidacy these days. Hell, one cannot even run for town selectman these days without breaking the bank. As the Senator entered the event he was confronted with signs calling him a traitor- by fellow Republicans no less. What gives? What gives is that some on the rabid right are ready to lynch him over his co-sponsorship of the latest immigration legislation. Make no mistake, this legislation is not supportable by leftists either. Moreover, I am diametrically opposed to Senator McCain’s support for the ‘surge’ strategy in Iraq. I stood with the victims of his bombing missions in Vietnam. I fight for a workers party. In short, we are on different political planets. No, political universes. Call me old-fashioned, if you like, but following George Orwell’s dicta it is very useful to call things by their right political name and act accordingly. John McCain a traitor? Hell, no. John McCain is probably one of the most devoted defenders of the American Empire. That is where we fight him politically.

ON MITT ROMNEY’S POLYGAMOUS FORBEARS

Former Massachusetts Governor and current Republican hopeful Mitt Romney has recently been the subject of scurrilous and serrepitious attacks by his Republican brethren concerning his Mormon religious affiliations. Part of this is due to the old time Mormon tradition of the now officially outlawed polygamous marriages. As probably the leading candidate on the ‘family values’ issue Romney has been at great pains to disassociate himself from that little ‘skeleton’ in the family closet. Hell, as I have written elsewhere that is the only thing that makes him interesting. I would have liked to meet his great-grandfather and his great-grandmothers. A biography of Joseph Smith, the Mormon founder, is on my summer reading list. As for those attacks on his Mormonism apparently the day is not past when religion and religious affiliation does not play a part in politics. Anyone who thought otherwise has had his or her head in the sand. Let us face it we are holding on to a barely secular republic these days.


ON MAYOR BLOOMBERG AND AN INDEPENDENT CANDIDACY

Recently Republican New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced that he was leaving that party and becoming an independent. Immediately, speculation ran rampart that he was about to embark on an independent presidential campaign. For now the billionaire Bloomberg has denied any such intentions. However, anyone other than a political novice knows that making such a political move does not come out of the blue and we will probably hear more about this in the future as 2008 approaches. But Bloomberg’s non-candidacy is not what interests me. What does is the seemingly unanimous commentary that an independent bourgeois candidacy is doomed to failure. In short, that the two current parties have a lock on mass politics. As a partisan of the fight for a workers party -a real independent party- I, of course, take exception to that premise. According to the talking heads there have been no lack of ‘third’ party options, both conservative and liberal, that in the end at most turned the presidential results to one party or the other but failed to take power themselves. Well, brothers and sisters, we have a different idea don’t we. Nevertheless it is interesting that, given full fields in both the Democratic and Republican parties, there is even any talk that a ‘third’ party run would be in play. Pending further events those who would be attracted to such a political solution are some of the people that we want to talk to about a workers party. Enough for now.


VICTORY FOR GAY MARRIAGE IN MASACHUSETTS

As is well known heterosexual marriage is on its last legs in Massachusetts. Or so opponents of gay marriage would have us believe. Why? In 2003 the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court declared, that as a matter of state contitutional law, the prohibition of marriage between people of the same sex could no longer be state law. Since then various right wing political and religious forces, particularly the Roman Catholic Church in heavily Catholic Massachusetts, have attempted every political ploy in the book to get this question on the ballot and let the ‘people’ decide. Part of that process is that the legislature, or in effect a part of it, has to sign off on this. Under the law if 50 legislators agree that ANY proposition should be on the ballot the deal is done and it is placed on the ballot. Thus the recent victory for gay marriage was predicated on an old-fashioned political arm-twisting by pro-gay marriage forces to keep the number under 50. Kudos. Workers party legislators would also be in the thick of such arm-twisting on this issue. Hell that is half the fun of politics. A word of caution though. The anti-gay marriage forces are defeated for now in Massachusetts but this issue will come up in next year’s presidential campaign. Moreover, do not believe for a minute that the yahoos in Massachusetts have given up the struggle to overturn this basic democratic right.

SOME SURPRISING STATISTICS

America is the most advanced capitalist economy on the planet, right? America is the cutting edge technological leader in making things easier and less time-consuming, right? Witness to that premise is the work of this computer I am using. Okay, but how about these facts gleaned from a recent article on the decline in workers benefits. The average American employee gets 9 days vacation a year. The majority of American workers gets no sick pay and in a substantial number of cases are subject to firing for taking sick time. We know the health insurance numbers, as well. The article also went on to compare the United States numbers with other advanced capitalist societies. The comparison was not good. What is the basis for these differences? Under no circumstances were the other work forces given their superior benefits out of the goodness of their bosses’ hearts. Important class struggles in the past, or the threat of class struggles, are the key factor in the difference. So when European workers come here for a month’s vacation in August remember that fact. These numbers are prima facie evidence for a workers party here. Right?


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!

*The Lessons Of The American Revolution- In Honor Of The Winter Soldiers, Then And Now

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the left American revolutionary Samuel Adams

COMMENTARY

ON THE 4TH OF JULY -HONOR SAMUEL ADAMS, JAMES OTIS, THOMAS PAINE, THE SONS OF LIBERTY AND THE WINTER SOLDIERS OF VALLEY FORGE.

REMEMBER THE LESSONS OF THIS EARLY STRUGGLE FOR NATIONAL SELF-DETERMINATION- YOU CANNOT WIN IF YOU DO NOT FIGHT.

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

SOME OF THE COMMENTARY USED HERE WAS USED PREVIOUSLY FOR JULY 4TH 2006. THE MAIN POINTS OBVIOUSLY STILL APPLY.

As we approach the 231st Anniversary of the American Revolution militants should honor the valiant fighters for freedom, many not prominently remembered today, like Samuel Adams, James Otis and Tom Paine who kept the pressure on those other more moderate revolutionary politicians such as John Adams who at times were willing to compromise with the British Empire short of victory. Every year their deeds and politcal acumen seem that much more striking, especially in comparison with today's politicans who so offhandedly invoke their names. Those revolutionaries were sparked by the principles of the Enlightenment. I will be damned if I know what principles motivate today's capitalist politicans. It sure in hell is not the Enlightenment. Something has gone terribly wrong when in the year 2007 serious politicans invoke God as their guiding hand.

We should also remember the valiant but mainly nameless Sons of Liberty who lit the spark of rebellion. And the later Winter Soldiers of Valley Forge who held out under extreme duress in order to insure eventual victory. Anyone can be a sunshine patriot; we desperately need militants in the tradition of the winter soldiers. No revolution can succeed without such fighters.

The 4th of July today is covered with so much banal ceremony, flag- waving, unthinking sunshine patriotism and hubris it is hard to see the forest for the trees to the days when, as Lincoln stated, during that other great progressive action of this country’s history- the Great Civil War of 1861-65- that this country was the last, best hope for civilization. Note this well- those men and women who rebelled against the king from Washington on down were big men and women out to do a big job. And they did it. A quick look at the political landscape today makes one thing clear. This country has no such men or women among its leaders today-not even close.

Rereading the Declaration of Independence today, a classic statement of Enlightenment values, and such documents as the Bill of Rights to the United States Constitution demonstrates that these men and women were, hesitantly and in a fumbling manner to be sure, taking on some big issues in the scheme of human development. Today what do we see- half-hearted withdrawal programs to end the quagmire borne of hubris in Iraq, amendments against same sex marriage, the legal emasculation of the principle of equal education for all, the race to the bottom of the international wage scale bringing misery to working people, serious attempts to create a theocracy based on Christian fundamentalism, creation of a fortress against immigration in a nation of immigrants, among other things. In short, the negation of that spirit that Lincoln talked about. Today, the militants who fought the American Revolution would probably be in some Guantanamo-like cage. DEFEND THE ENLIGHTENMENT!

In earlier times this writer had been rather blasé about the American Revolution tending to either ignore its lessons or putting it well below another revolution- The Great French Revolution, also celebrated in July- in the pantheon of revolutionary history. However, this is flat-out wrong. We cannot let those more interested in holiday oratory than drawing the real lessons of the American Revolution appropriate what is the property of every militant today. Make no mistake, however, the energy of that long ago revolution has burned itself out and other forces-militants and their allies- and other political creeds-the fight for a workers party and a workers government leading to socialism- have to take its place as the standard-bearer for human progress. That task has been on the historical agenda for a long time and continues to be our task today. Yes, we love this country. No, we do not love this form of government. Forward.

Note- To learn more about the history of the American Revolution and the foundation of the Republic any books by Gordon S. Wood on the subject are a good place to start. Garry Wills in his book Inventing America also has some insights worth reading. Check Amazon.com

*From The Pen Of Ernest Hemingway On Love And War- "A Farewell To Arms"

Click on the headline to link to a "Wikipedia" entry for the great American writer, Ernest Hemingway.

BOOK REVIEW

A FAREWELL TO ARMS, ERNEST HEMINGWAY, GROVE PRESS, 1997

I have spent a political lifetime arguing that the nature of modern society turned on the dramatic and deadly events that became what we know in history as World War I. A Farewell to Arms is Ernest Hemingway’s attempt to come to grips with that notion in novelistic form. He combines the two themes that he is noted for and accomplished at - love and war- and demonstrates how hard that combination is on the love side of the equation. Here we find the first flourishes of that angst, desperation and sense of futility in the persons of the main characters, a young fancy-free American officer and a British nurse who had recently lost her fiancé in battle, that would characterize the survivors of the war- the "lost generation".

When I reviewed Hemingway’s "The Sun Also Rises" I argued that Scott Fitzgerald had the truer ear for the pathos of the "lost generation" after the war. I also noted that Hemingway had a much better ear and style for the love and war combination. Here Hemingway clearly wins. Maybe it is the trauma of war that makes his sparseness of language and stripped emotion work. Maybe it is his eternal quest for honor and the other attributes of machismo closely associated with the war experience. Maybe it is because he could just flat-out write a hell of a war story. But, damn, you had better read this novel if you want to know what writing is all about.

*WAR AND REVOLUTION-THE PARIS COMMUNE

Click on the headline to link to a “Wikipedia” entry for the Paris Commune.

BOOK REVIEW

THE FALL OF PARIS, THE SEIGE AND THE COMMUNE, ALISTAIR HORNE, PENGUIN BOOK, 1997

When one studies the history of the Paris Commune of 1871 one learns something new from it even though from the perspective of revolutionary strategy the Communards made virtually every mistake in the book. However, one can learn its lessons and measure it against the experience acquired by later revolutionary struggles and above all by later revolutions, not only the successful Russian Revolution of October 1917 but the failed German, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Chinese and Spanish revolutions in the immediate aftermath of World War I. More contemporaneously we have the experiences of the partial victories of the later Chinese, Cuban and Vietnamese revolutions.

Notwithstanding the contradictory nature of these later experiences, and as if to show that history is not always totally a history of horrors against the fate of the masses we honor the Paris Commune as a beacon of the coming world proletarian revolution. It is just for that reason that Karl Marx fought tooth and nail in the First International to defend it against the rage of capitalist Europe. It is one of our peaks.

Over the past year or so I have reviewed several books on the Paris Commune with an eye to the political lessons that can be drawn from that experience. The book under review takes a slightly different look by emphasizing the relationship between war and revolution, although this is not necessarily the author’s intent. Obviously every war does not necessarily generate a revolution, witness today’s American adventure in Iraq, but it is more than a truism that war is the mother of revolution.

The author here has made a very comprehensive study not only of the Commune but the key events that led up to it starting with the ill-fated (immediately for France and eventually for Europe) Franco-Prussian War and subsequent siege of Paris by the victorious German armies. He has done this by highlighting the various decisive military turning points. Those military events led to the downfall of Louis Bonaparte and his benighted Second Empire, the creation of another republic and eventually the Commune. The author moreover details the dramatic turns of military events that caused the fleeing Thiers government to abandon Paris to the Communards. The tensions in society, particularly between the capitalist class and the working class, that had been exacerbated by the siege reared up into a mini-civil war over the question of the disposition of the National Guard troops (and their cannon). From that point civil war turns to class war and we are all too familiar with the bloody results for the Communards.

If in one sense one cannot understand the Paris Commune without understanding the effects of the German siege on the class struggle in Paris that is not true of the military policy, or rather lack of it, that caused the Commune’s bloody defeat at the hands of the Thiers government. In short, the Communards made, as it did in the realm of revolutionary politics, virtually every military mistake in the book. I have reviewed elsewhere in this space some of those political problems so I will not repeat them here. On the military level the main strategic blunder was not to rapidly pursue the Thiers government when it fled to Versailles. More than one commentator, including Lenin and Trotsky, has noted that the defensive is the death of revolutionary struggle.

This is particularly true in conditions of civil war. This passivity reflected a certain Parisian provincialism but also a problem with the semi-autonomous structure of the National Guard units on which the Commune relied for defense. Those units did not want to leave Paris. Christ, they did not even want to leave their districts. The long and short of it is that they were satisfied with some concept of ‘socialism/republicanism’ in one city. This passivity in the face of the myriad politico-military problems with the command structure as well as the diffusion of authority and no real central command, either military or civilian for that matter, spelled doom. In the Commune’s short life the problems never were resolved and in the end contributed as much to defeat as Versailles’ siege/subjugation policy. For those not familiar with the details of the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune this is a well-thought out and interesting study, including use of on the spot commentary by such witnesses as the American Ambassador Washburne, the Parisian journalist Goncourt and the ex-National Guardsman Childs. Read on.

THE END OF THE AMERICAN FRONTIER

DVD REVIEW

THE MISFITS, CLARK GABLE, MARILYN MONROE, MONTGOMERGY CLIFT, 1961

What is not to like about a movie set in the modern American West where civilization is fast taking the starch out of the independent-minded cowboys and their hangers-on who are trying to hold on for dear life. They had obviously not read Harvard Professor Turner's thesis about the end of the American frontier. The code of the old West and its values is losing its effect by the day to the ethos of the modern capitalist farmer and rancher. Larry McMurtry in his book and subsequent film The Last Picture Show as well as others have also taken up this theme but none have done it better on film than The Misfits.

Add a screenplay by the legendary playwright Arthur Miller. Further add the strong performances, aided by the black and white format, of a grizzled Clark Gable, the ill-fated Marilyn Monroe and the troubled Montgomery Clift supported by Thelma Ritter and Eli Wallach and you have a very good film indeed. I have read that Miller’s screenplay was written especially for Monroe, his then wife. If so that explains why this story about castoffs, drifters and non-conformists looking for some emotional relief in the new West that has passed them by had such a powerful effect on me. Monroe as the beautiful but hard luck and misunderstood object of affection seemingly was playing herself here. And to great effect. Watch it.

THE REVOLUTION AT THE BASE

THE REVOLUTION AT THE BASE

PLAY/BOOK REVIEW

THE MOTHER, BERTOLT BRECHT, GROVE PRESS, 1989


More than one socialist commentator, including Lenin and Trotsky, has noted that a revolution is made at the base of society by a combination of experiences that cause the masses to throw of their former servitude, indifference or fear and just go for it. In the Marxist movement this has been called the molucular process. The action 'below the radar'. For a rather beautiful literary description of this rising tide read the first few chapters of Volume I of Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution. Needless to say those times are few and far between so that it is important to study the mechanics of those changes even if, as here, they are changes in overwhelmingly agrarian Russia just coming into the capitalist production process in the early 20th century. I believe, as Brecht obviously did when he brought it to the theater in highly industrialized Germany, that those same sentiments would also be expressed in more developed capitalist societies when tensions reached the breaking point.

Brecht has adapted for the stage this story written by the great Russian writer, and sometime revolutionary, Maxim Gorky. The story line in both cases is fairly straight forward. A working class mother not far removed from her rural roots is fearful that her son’s Bolshevik revolutionary activities will bring disaster on him and the family. As the story unfolds and the son’s commitment grows in line with the government’s repressive policies the mother starts, slowly, very slowly, to get the point of his work. Along the way her own ‘politics’ change and by the end she is as committed to the cause as her son. Her banner is now red.

On the Brechtian stage this story is told amid banners and music that add to the dramatic effect. In either format this is a powerful story and good piece of socialist propaganda. I remember an old German Communist Party member once telling me that in his youth he was actually recruited to the Communist Youth League by this play. Apparently the German CP set up literature tables in the lobby of the theater and at intermission and the end would sign up theater patrons after they had experienced the play. WOW! Would that our tasks were so easily accomplished these days.

WAR- UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL

PLAY/BOOK REVIEW

MOTHER COURAGE AND HER CHILDREN, BERTOLT BRECHT, GROVE PRESS, 1991

In what appears to be a permanent war in Iraq it is not untimely to address the question of how individuals caught up on the margins of warfare cope, for good or evil, with the trauma of it. Bertolt Brecht, the master Communist playwright, has taken a story of a working mother’s struggle to survive as a camp following petty merchant in the Thirty Years War of the 17th century in Germany as his backdrop to investigate one aspect of that phenomena- the elemental struggle for individual survival. And it is not pretty.

If the simple moral of the story is that war does nothing to elevate the human spirit or bring out the better instincts of our nature Brecht has made his point in rather stark terms. The struggle of Mother Courage to keep her ‘mom and pop’ business going at the cost of the lives of her children may not go down well with today’s more squeamish audiences but the unfortunate fact is that all over the world, and most notably in today’s Iraq, those very same kind of cold, calculating decisions are being made by families in order to survive. The fact that it is a mother, the source of life and supposed nurturer-in-chief, who is sacrificing her children only makes that observation more compelling.

Brecht, moreover, wants us to see that while greed and acquisitiveness may not be eternal human characteristics under conditions of scarcity that have dominated most of human history that struggle has led to some very strange behavior. In the end his play is not only against war but the economic conditions that engender war as well. That would require some mighty big changes. But we had better think about it. Pronto.

IN DEFENCE OF SCIENCE

PLAY/BOOK REVIEW

GALILEO, BERTOLT BRECHT, GROVE PRESS, 1996

The pressures that the established order can bring to bear on those who want to move outside the status quo are enormous. In the end those in charge can grind down the best of men and women with the most worthy knowledge to disseminate. That is the story that the master communist playwright Bertolt Brecht brings us here concerning the pressures to recant brought on Galileo by the Catholic Church in the 1500’s. And for what crime? For merely bringing out facts about the nature of the earth and its place in the universe that are taken as commonplaces, even by small children, today.

Brecht himself certainly knew about such pressures. Although in public, at least, Brecht was a fairly orthodox Stalinist he had his private moments of doubt. Certainly some of the themes in his plays stretch the limits of the orthodox Stalinist ‘socialist realist’ cultural program. Thus the strongest part of the play is the struggle between an individual who is onto something new about the world and an institution that saw that such a discovery would wreak havoc on its claims to centrality. Every once in a while a section of humankind turns inward on itself like that and here the Church was no exception. Damn, that is the overhead cost we pay for some sense of human progress. Except, as in the case of the Catholic Church, it should not have taken 300 years to admit the error. Know this. We have to defend the Galileos of the world against the seemingly never-ending rise of obscurantism. And in this play Brecht has done his part to honor that commitment.

A PARABLE CONCERNING PROPERTY

A PARABLE CONCERNING PROPERTY

PLAY/BOOK REVIEW

THE CAUCASIAN CHALK CIRCLE, BERTAOLT BRECHT, UNIVERSTIY OF MINNESOTA PRESS, 1999

One of the master communist playwright Bertolt Brecht’s strengths as an artist was the ability to set up a moral dilemma and work it out to a conclusion, not always a satisfactory one, by play’s end. This is unusual in a seemingly orthodox follower of the old Stalinist 'socialist realist’ cultural program. This work nevertheless permitted Brecht to address an age-old question about the nature of property ownership, extending it from its natural and historic setting in land and chattels to the question of personal human ownership.

The question posed here is whether a child abandoned by its natural mother then found and raised by another women should go to the former or that latter. Nice dilemma, right? But Brecht, as seem in Mother Courage and other parables, is not above cutting right to the bone on moral questions. What makes this work a cut above some of Brecht’s more didactic plays is the way that he weaves the parable about the odd resolution of an ancient Chinese property dispute and places that ‘wisdom’ in context of a then current dispute between two Soviet-era communes.

In the ancient dispute the judge who is called upon to render judgment, using the circle as a medium to resolve the dispute, seems to be Solomonic but is really a buffoon. This is pure Brechtian irony. This says as much about Brecht's attitude toward property as it does about the old time Chinese justice system. The question of property rights as presented by Brecht and their value as a societal glue is also something the reader or viewer of this play should think about, as well.

After The Fall-John Steinbecks' "Eden Of Eden"- "There Are No Sins Outside The Gates Of Eden"

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for John Steinbecks' novel, East Of Eden.

BOOK REVIEW

EAST OF EDEN, JOHN STEINBECK

I usually do not read the comments of book reviewers on Amazon.com (or, in a few cases, at least not until after I have written my own). I was, however, interested in finding out whether Steinbeck and his tale still held interest for today’s readers. The answer seems to be yes. Moreover, I was interested in what other people had to say about the symbolic nature of the clash between and among generations of brothers and its relationship to the old biblical struggles going back to the ‘first family’.

Damn, life has definitely been tougher since the ‘fall’. The morale to be derived from Steinbeck’s novel is, apparently, that while the ‘fall of man’ under the spell of earthly temptations had its down side humankind is better for the struggle. A strong argument can moreover be made that without that struggle by fallen humankind no serious progress would have been made. That struggle is epitomized by the characters, tensions and actions of the two brothers (in both generations ,Adam’s the father’s and Aaron’s and the son’s) which makes me think that Steinbeck may see this an eternal struggle and that we are endlessly doomed to roll that rock up the hill just to have it come crashing back down on us.

Those who have only seen the 1950’s movie version of this novel starring, among others, the ill-fated James Dean and a young Julie Harris, have missed some great writing about the effects of the destruction, struggle to rebuilt and attempts at redemption in the wake of the fall of Adam Trask and his struggle to change his ways. And through him, his sons. The movie (that I saw long before reading the book) skips over the compelling first section which deals with the seemingly pre-ordained destruction of Adam, by his ‘wife’ among others. Moreover, in the movie the demonic role of the ‘wife’ Kathy is glossed over (probably due to the less tolerate and more squeamish mores about ‘fallen women’ in the 1950’s). She is not a ‘nice’ person. Read the book and see why we, even the best of us, are now all living just East of Eden.

THE DEATH OF EVERYMAN

PLAY/BOOK REVIEW

THE DEATH OF A SALESMAN, ARTHUR MILLER

Arthur Miller had a good ear for the foibles and traumas of the ordinary people of the old middle class put up against the wall in a world that was dramatically changing after World War II. The time of the man in the gray flannel suit and the victory of corporate culture that destroyed the old independent professions was not the main character of the piece Willie Loman’s time. In this play, seemingly only about the trials and tribulations of Everyman Willie Loman a used up salesman at the end of his career, the underlying tension is that he cannot keep up with those changes required by modern capitalist technique and therefore has to be discarded. In a recent review of the book The Disposable American, that is essentially a study of today’s used up Willie Lomans, I noted that the author had caught the desperation of that layer of working people that had gotten waylaid by globalization. Seemingly Willie is their voice-the voice of shame, individual impotency and sense of lost and betrayal but also a certain pridefulness. Unfortunately, Willie Loman and today's Willies are disturbingly clueless about the forces that have done them in.

This occupational demise naturally has a fallout effect on Willie’s personal life as well. He does not understand what has happened to destroy the integrity of his dysfunctional nuclear family. The old standards that had guided him do not stand up in the new suburban-dominated world where he must try to survive. Obviously there is some dramatic tension between him and his sons who have in their own way nothing but contempt for the old man, his old ways, his illusions and his duplicity. But also, as is always the case with rebellious children, love, at least their conception of it, as well. That this love is not good enough to save Willie in the end is one of the lessons to be learned from the play. That is where the need for political solutions begin. But enough. Read the play and see the Lee J. Cobb version of the movie. Cobb IS Willie Loman.

IN THE SEASON OF THE WITCH

PLAY/BOOK REVIEW

THE CRUCIBLE, ARTHUR MILLER

This play, based on the infamous Salem witch trials of the 1690’s that New England still has not lived down, was written by Arthur Miller in an earlier period in American history, the 1950’s, when hysteria over the alleged internal “Communist menace” dovetailed with the opening of the coldest part of the Cold War against the Soviet Union. The dramatic tension of the play cannot be understood except as a parable on that then current atmosphere. Miller draws parallels with the earlier period of hysteria, in this case the irrational hysteria over witches in the isolated, inward-looking Puritan community of Salem, Massachusetts. The comparisons in reaction to the witches and ‘reds under the bed’ are startling as far as the response of the societies and individuals in those communities were concerned.

Obviously in the play one needs a hero, even if it is the flawed and ‘fallen’ John Proctor who will stand up, in the final analysis, even unto death for his principles. We will always find a few, even if reluctant, fighters to stand against the herd. In fact we depend on that occurrence. What is more compelling, and frightening, is the reaction of the ‘honest’ town folk. Then, as in the case of the Cold War hysteria, those ‘good’ folk turned the other way, joined actively in on the action or in some way justified the trials. As we are again in a period when the new hysteria is over Islamic fundamentalists and their motives this play remains an extremely powerful cautionary tale. Read the play and/or watch a movie version of it.

*THE DREAMS COMETH-Eugene O'Neill's "The Iceman Cometh"

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for American playwrght Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh.

BOOK REVIEW

THE ICEMAN COMETH, EUGENE O'NEILL, YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS, NEW HAVEN, 2006

The dreams (and illusions) of the very wretched of the earth are different from those of you and I. Or are they? This is the true subject matter of Eugene O’Neill fine play. Very little action, lots of drinking, lots of dreaming, lots philosophizing by the bedraggled cast of characters in a low down gin mill do not sound like the makings of a great American play. But they are. The narrowly focused story line turns into a microcosm of the underside of American society in the early part of the 20th century. These are not the ‘robber barons’ of historic fame but the jetsam of the early stages of industrial society. These are the ones that cannot cope, for one reason or another, with the new ways and seek solace and comfort in the back streets of urban society. For lack of a better word these are what Karl Marx called the lumpen proletariat. Not Jean Genet’s hardened rough and ready sailors, pimps and male prostitutes but on the margins nevertheless. In neither case will they make the revolution. But they have their dreams too and O’Neill is there to chronicle them.

Between shots of whiskey the denizens of this small world exhibit all the emotions, contradictions, fear of failure, fear of success, fear of life that the rest of us ‘normals’ have to face. Except, for dramatic effect, these flophouse devotees get their noses rubbed in it by one Harry Hickey- traveling salesman and sport- formerly chief denizen of the ‘resort’ who now has gotten ‘religion’ and wants to spread his newfound ‘glad tidings’. Spare us from the Hickeys of the world-a little dreaminess and a couple of illusions never hurt anyone. Did they? Although in O’Neill’s hands the dialogue is a little stilted and the characters are a little stereotyped and wooden(the seemingly obligatory house philosopher, renegade anarchist, token immigrant, day workers, runaway with a hidden past, Irish cop and floosies) the point he is trying to make gets across just fine. This is a must read on your American drama list.

ON BEING GOD'S ENGLISHMEN

BOOK REVIEW

THE BIBLE AND THE 17TH CENTURY ENGLISH REVOLUTION, CHRISTOPHER HILL, PENQUIN,NEW YORK, 1993


Although both the parliamentary and royalist sides in the English Revolution, the major revolutionary event of the 17th century, quoted the Bible, particularly the newer English versions, for every purpose from an account of the fall to the virtues of primitive communism that revolution cannot be properly understood except as a secular revolution. The first truly secular revolution of modern times. So why would the pre-eminent historian of the English Revolution, the late Christopher Hill, write a whole book about the influence of the Bible in that revolutionary period?

As been noted by more than one commentator there is sometimes a disconnect between the ideas in the air at any particular time and the way those ideas get fought out in political struggle. In this case secular ideas, or what would have passed as such to us, such as the questions of the divinity of the monarch, of social, political and economic redistribution and the nature of the new society (the second coming) were expressed in familiar religious terms. That being the case there is no better guide to understanding the significance of the mass of biblical literary articles produced in the period than Professor Hill. The only objection one can have is that he overloads his argument for the importance of the Bible in the social discourse of the times with more examples than necessary and with a certain redundancy and overlap in the subjects he looks at such as the importance of the garden (of Eden), the wilderness and the hedge in Biblical narrative, the concept of England as a chosen nation and the English as a chosen people and of the decisive weight of the Old Testament as a source of inspiration (and vengeance). However, this is only a minor objection.

In this expansive book Mr. Hill connects the wide spread use of the Bible with the revolution in printing bringing its message to the masses; the effects of the Protestant Reformation on individual responsibility for bible study and leading a moral life; various interpretations of Adam’s fall, the consequences of that fall and the possibilities for redemption; the theology of the divine right of kings and the concept of the man of blood exemplified by Charles I; the role of the priesthood of all believers that foreshadow a very modern concept of the validity of individual religious expression; radical interpretations of equality and primitive communism, particularly the work of Gerrard Winstanley ; the Puritan ethic and many more subjects of interests. Here Hill also uses his usual cast of characters that one has met in his other works including, Oliver Cromwell, Edmund Sexby, Hugh Peters, John Bunyan, the above-mentioned Gerrard Winstanley, Abiezer Coppe, the Levelers, the Ranters, the Quakers and the Fifth Monarchists. And seemingly threading through the whole narrative, John Milton. Take note and read on.

*LABOR AND THE STRUGGLE AGAINST THE IRAQ WAR

Click on the title to link to an "Under The Hood" (Fort Hood G.I. Coffeehouse)Web site online article about the "Oleo Strut" Coffeehouse, an important development in the anti-Vietnam War struggle. Hats off to those bygone anti-war fighters.

COMMENTARY

‘HOT CARGO’ MILITARY SUPPLIES TO IRAQ

Over the past year or so I have been propagandizing for the creation of anti-war soldiers and sailors solidarity committees as a practical organizational vehicle for implementing the Immediate Unconditional Withdrawal of U.S. Troops from Iraq slogan. I have dealt in an earlier post with the fact that I have taken flak in some quarters for a ‘military deviation’ on anti-war strategy. This charge comes mainly from people who have advocated, and continue to advocate for, the manifestly dead-end strategies of reliance on parliamentary procedures or organizing ever more mass peaceful protest in the streets. I will not re-fight that issue here.

However there is, on reflection, a kernel of truth to the ‘military deviation’ argument of my opponents. I have always conceptualized the committees as a stopgap measure to reach our political goal of immediate withdrawal in the face of the obvious lack of class struggle by working people in America in the present period. In better political times we would be calling not for action by the troops to end the war but for labor strikes and other militant actions by the working class to slow the war machine down. We will know that we are in a very different political time when the labor movement strikes not only for its necessary wage and benefits packages but also against the Iraq war. Today, however, that is the music of the future.

Or is it? I bring to your attention the following. In mid-May a group of anti-Iraq war protesters organized as an ad hoc Port Action Committee demonstrated in front of the ship terminals in Oakland, California and asked the longshoremen there not cross their lines. In response the longshoremen honored the line and no ships were unloaded that day. Bravo. The ships in port at the time were not, however, loading or unloading military cargo. Moreover, the longshoremen did not themselves initiate the action. Nevertheless this exemplary labor action is just a taste of what working people could do to bring this damn war to an end. I note that the West Coast-based International Longshoreman’s Union has a long history of respecting picket lines for political purposes and has been a haven for left-wing political activities since the days of the San Francisco General Strike in 1934. This event points to the way we have to be thinking strategically these days. Linking up labor’s untapped power to slow down the war machine with the political fight in the barracks to end the war. That is the ticket.

An appropriate call today by militant unionists in the affected unions is the call to ‘hot cargo’ military shipments to Iraq and Afghanistan. That call is particularly important in the East Coast and Gulf Coast ports that do the bulk of the maritime transport to the Middle East. And as this call is raised other militant unionists and their unions must be ready stand in solidarity. Raising this tactic should, moreover, finally get me out from under the ‘military deviation’ charge. Right? LABOR ‘HOT CARGO’ MILITARY SHIPMENTS TO IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN.

VICTORY TO THE QUINCY, MASSACHUSETTS TEACHERS

COMMENTARY


I must apologize at the outset for not having posted a solidarity statement with the Quincy, Massachusetts Education Association (QEA) before today, June 11, 2007, the second day of their walkout. This is doubly egregious as I was born in Quincy-the City of Presidents (John Adams and his son John Quincy Adams). The Quincy teachers walked out on Friday June 8, 2007 after taking a vote. From the news that I had heard I believed that their action was a one day affair, a fairly familiar way to deal with stalled contract negotiations. However these brothers and sisters are for real and seem determined to make their point and get a just contract. This in the face of a state Labor Relations Board decision that their walkout is illegal and the determination of the Quincy School Committee to seek a court injunction to force the teachers back to work.

The major issue, and a recurring stumbling block to many of today’s labor contracts, is health benefits. That is the surface issue at least but the reality is wages. The favorite ploy for the government (and private employers, as well) is to grant some seemingly reasonable wage increase and then off-set it with an increase in employee contributions to their health insurance plans. The net effect is that over the life of a contract the teachers will either stand still or go backwards in their real standards of living. Make no mistake this is an important fight and is being watched by teachers unions (and school committees) throughout the state of Massachusetts where this same issue is in dispute in many contract negotiations. Let us be clear-teachers do not make nearly enough in comparison with other highly skill professions. In a just world teachers, the transmitters of learning and culture to the young generations, would be held in higher esteem and compensated accordingly. And would have much more say in educational decisions, along with parents, students and other school employees. However until that day-Victory to the Quincy, Massachusetts School Teachers

"I'D RATHER BE THE DEVIL THAN BE THAT WOMAN'S MAN"

COMMENTARY

BREAK WITH THE DEMOCRATS-BUILD A WORKERS PARTY

Leave it to legendary blues man Skip James to come up with just the right phrase to capture my feelings after having just read part of an ‘unauthorized’ biography of Senator Hillary Clinton. Believe me even that much was tough going and I refuse to go further. No, not because of the nasty details of the Clintons’ lives ‘exposed’ but because I knew all of this before as did almost any political neophyte. These people, the Clintons, have been part of the political landscape so long it seems really improbably that there is much we haven't had our noses rub in already. Between, snoops, special prosecutors and impeachment interrogators what is left?

The ‘highlight’ of the current expose is thus suppose to be the ‘pact with the devil’ that Bill and Hillary made that they would support eight year presidencies for each other. First for Bill, and then (now) for Hillary. I do not know what they call it in bourgeois circles but in the workers movement we call it a united front- that is a temporary agreement over a certain issue or goal. What is the big deal? That such a non-starter is seen as some kind of conspiracy to take over the republic tells more about the authors than about the Clintons. I repost a comment that I made in an earlier post dealing with the presidential campaign. I think it rather sums up the real point that eludes of all these biographies and exercises in conspiracy theory.

"Not to be outdone the Democrats have had some tempests in teapots themselves. A couple of “unauthorized” campaign biographies have come out on one ex-First Lady and current New York Senator Hillary Clinton. I have only read reviews on the books but seemingly they are as the Clinton campaign has argued they are- old news, or no news. The only important point to note is that it is obvious that Ms. Clinton has that same “fire in the belly” to be president that commentators, including myself, have noticed about the more successful candidates in presidential contests. Hillary is still 5/2 against the field in my book and now we are getting a better understanding of why. It is not a pretty sight. And once again, as with the Republicans, we are in trouble."

* From The Partisan Defense Committee-DEFEND ROISIN McALISKEY!

Click on the title to link to the Partisan Defense Committee Web site.

THE FOLLOWING IS PASSED ON FROM THE PARTISAN DEFENCE COMMITTEE. I WOULD ONLY ADD THAT THE STRUGGLE IN THE NORTH OF IRELAND STILL CONTINUES. THIS RECENT PATCH-QUILT GOVERNMENTAL ARRANGEMENT FEATURING PAISLEY AND MCGUINESS IS HARDLY THE HISTORIC LAST ANSWER TO THIS SEEMINGLY INTRACTABLE PROBLEM. ONE THING THAT WILL HELP IS TO GET THE BRITISH TROOPS OUT. THAT IS A LONG-STANDING CALL AND APPLIES TODAY JUST AS MUCH AS IT HAS OVER THE PAST THIRTY-PLUS YEARS. CHOCKY AR LA

Defend Roisin McAliskey!

(CIass-Struggle Defense Notes)

The following protest letter, addressed to British Labour government Home Secretary John Reid, was issued by the Partisan Defence Committee in Britain on May 26,

We are writing to protest the outrageous arrest on 21 May of Roisin McAliskey, on the basis of a European arrest warrant, which has all the signs of a frame-up, for alleged involvement in the 1996 IRA mortar attack on a British Army base at Osnabruck in Germany. The German prosecutors have revived their demand, first raised in 1996, for her extradition "for attempted murder in conjunction with the initiation of explosives," according to their lawyer Stephen Ritchie (Irish Times, 22 May) although no-one was even injured at Osnabruck.

Pregnant and ill, McAliskey was dragged through the British prison system and brutally treated in both Holloway and Betmarsh prisons during 1996-98, even though there never was a shred of evidence linking her to the Osnabruck events. In January 1998 then Home Secretary Jack Straw ruled that she was too ill to be extradited and in July 2000 the Crown Prosecution Service admitted there was not enough evidence to justify trying her.

The McAliskey family have not only been targeted over the years by the British state as part of its continuing repression of the Catholic community in Northern Ireland but former MP {Member of Parliament} Bernadette McAliskey (Roisin's mother) has also been the target of a murderous attack by Loyalist paramilitaries. As the Irish Post reported in 1996: "Many believe that the charges against Roisin McAliskey are a politically motivated bid to silence her mother's criticism of the peace process" (14 December 1996).

The renewed persecution of Roisin McAliskey, a mother of two children, based on an eight-month-old arrest warrant, illustrates the brutal oppression of Catholics that is inherent in the Orange statelet, including under Tony Blair's imperialist "peace process" that is premised on the British Army's presence. It is indicative of the British system of capitalist injustice that it systematically colludes with Loyalist paramilitaries and frames up Irish people, as it does Muslims under the racist "war on terror."

We demand: No extradition of Roisin McAliskey! Drop the Charges!

V.I. LENIN ON THE STATE

COMMENTARY

Probably the most decisive political problem that revolutionaries (and out and out reformists, for that matter) have broken their teeth on over the past 150 years is the question of the class nature of the state. The number of good revolutionary opportunities that have been squandered because of illusions in the 'neutrality' of the capitalist state should make you cry. The following, taken from Workers Vanguard No. 893 25 May 2007, are excerpts from various works by V.I. Lenin who most definitely did not have any illusions in the capitalist state. The works cited below, obviously, should be read in their entirety. These are just samplers. Markin


From the Archives of Marxism

V.I. Lenin on the State

The question of the class nature of the state is a decisive dividing line between revolutionary Marxists and reformists. The understanding that the capitalist state—which at its core consists of the cops, military, prison system and courts—is the instrument for organized violence to ensure bourgeois rule over the proletariat, and that it must be smashed through socialist revolution, is elementary to Marxism. We reprint below key passages on the state from Bolshevik leader V.I. Lenin's The State and Revolution (1917)—written shortly before the October Revolution—and The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky (1918) as well as the "Theses on Bourgeois Democracy and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat," drafted by Lenin and adopted by the founding congress of the Communist International in March 1919.

In these works, Lenin defends the Marxist understanding of the state against Social Democratic leaders, particularly Karl Kautsky, who obfuscated and falsified Marxism in the service of parliamentary reformism. Stripping bourgeois democracy of its class character—i.e., portraying the capitalist state as representing the interests of the classless "people"—inevitably leads to political support to the capitalist class and bourgeois nationalism. The German Social Democracy graphically demonstrated this when, except for a revolutionary minority, the party supported its "own" bourgeoisie during the interimperialist First World War of 1914-18.

In his writings on the state, Lenin draws upon key works, such as Friedrich Engels' The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State (1884) and Marx's writings on the 1871 Paris Commune. After France under the regime of Napoleon III was defeated by Prussia in 1870, a right-wing government was formed, acquiring a "democratic" sanction through the electoral support of the mass of peasant petty proprietors then the majority of the populace. When that government sent the army into Paris to disarm the predominantly working-class National Guard, the proletarian forces drove out the army. This led to the formation of the Commune, which governed the city for nearly three months before the army crushed it, slaughtering over 20,000 people. Marx and Engels described the Commune as the first historical expression of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
* * *

Engels elucidates the concept of the "power" which is called the state, a power which arose from society but places itself above it and alienates itself more and more from it. What does this power mainly consist of? It consists of special bodies of armed men having prisons, etc., at their command....

A standing army and police are the chief instruments of state power. But how can it be otherwise?...

Civilised society is split into antagonistic, and, moreover, irreconcilably antagonistic, classes, whose "self-acting" arming would lead to an armed struggle between them. A state arises, a special power is created, special bodies of armed men, and every revolution, by destroying the state apparatus, clearly shows us hew the ruling class strives to restore the special bodies of armed men which serve it, and how the oppressed class strives to create a new organisation of this kind* capable of serving the exploited instead of the exploiters,...

The state is a special organisation: it is an organisation of violence for the suppression of some class. What class must the proletariat suppress? Naturally, only the exploiting class, i.e., the bourgeoisie. The working people need the state only to suppress the resistance of the exploiters, and only the proletariat can direct this suppression, can carry it out. For the proletariat is the only class that is consistently revolutionary, the only class that can unite all the working and exploited people in the struggle against the bourgeoisie, in completely removing it....

The petty-bourgeois democrats, those sham socialists who replaced the class struggle by dreams of class harmony, even pictured the socialist transformation in a dreamy fashion—not as the overthrew of the rule of the exploiting class, but as the peaceful submission of the minority to the majority which has become aware of its aims. This petty-bourgeois Utopia, which is inseparable from the idea of the state being above classes, led in practice to the betrayal of the interests of the working classes, as was shown, for example, by the history of the French revolutions of 1848 and 1871, and by the experience of "socialist" participation in bourgeois Cabinets in Britain, France, Italy and other countries at the turn of the century....

The essence of Marx's theory of the state has been mastered only by those who realise that the dictatorship of a single class is necessary not only for every class society in general, not only for the proletariat which has overthrown the bourgeoisie, but also for the entire historical period which separates capitalism from "classless society," from communism, Bourgeois states are most varied in form, but their essence is the same; all these states, whatever their form, in the final analysis are inevitably the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. The transition from capitalism to communism is certainly bound to yield a tremendous abundance and variety of political forms, but the essence will inevitably be the same: the dictatorship of the proletariat....

To decide once every few years which member of the ruling class is to repress and crush the people through parliament—this is the real essence of bourgeois parliamentarism, not only in parliamentary-constitutional monarchies, but also in the most democratic republics....

From this capitalist democracy—that is inevitably narrow and stealthily pushes aside the poor, and is therefore hypocritical and false through and through—forward development does not proceed simply, directly and smoothly, towards "greater and greater democracy," as the liberal professors and petty-bourgeois opportunists would have us believe. No, forward development, i.e., development towards communism, proceeds through the dictatorship of the proletariat, and cannot do otherwise, for the resistance of the capitalist exploiters cannot be broken by anyone else or in any other way.

And the dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., the organisation of the vanguard of the oppressed as the ruling class for the purpose of suppressing the oppressors, cannot result merely in an expansion of democracy. Simultaneously with an immense expansion of democracy, which for the first time becomes democracy for the poor, democracy for the people, and not democracy for the money-bags, the dictatorship of the proletariat imposes a series of restrictions on the freedom of the oppressors, the exploiters, the capitalists.

—The State and Revolution

Marxists have always maintained that the more developed, the "purer" democracy is, the more naked, acute, and merciless the class struggle becomes, and the "purer" the capitalist oppression and bourgeois dictatorship. The Dreyfus case in republican France, the massacre of strikers by hired bands armed by the capitalists in the free and democratic American republic—these and thousands of similar facts illustrate the truth which the bourgeoisie is vainly seeking to conceal, namely, that actually terror and bourgeois dictatorship prevail in the most democratic of republics and are openly displayed every time the exploiters think the power of capital is being shaken.

The imperialist war of 1914-18 conclusively revealed even to backward workers the true nature of bourgeois democracy, even in the freest republics, as being a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Tens of millions were killed for the sake of enriching the German or the British group of millionaires and multimillionaires, and bourgeois military dictatorships were established in the freest republics.

—"Theses on Bourgeois Democracy and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat"

* * *

The only "correction" Marx thought it necessary to make to the Communist Manifesto he made on the basis of the revolutionary experience of the Paris Communards.

The last preface to the new German edition of the Communist Manifesto, signed by both its authors, is dated June 24, 1872. In this preface the authors, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, say that the programme of the Communist Manifesto "has in some details become out-of-date," and they go on to say:

"...One thing especially was proved by the Commune, viz., that 'the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield it for its own purposes'..."

...Marx's idea is that the working class must break up, smash the "ready-made state machinery," and not confine itself merely to laying hold of it.

—The State and Revolution

"We," the revolutionary Marxists, never made speeches to the people that the Kautskyites of all nations love to make, cringing before the bourgeoisie, adapting themselves to the bourgeois parliamentary system, keeping silent about the bourgeois character of modern democracy and demanding only its extension, only that it be carried to its logical conclusion.

"We" said to the bourgeoisie: You, exploiters and hypocrites, talk about democracy, while at every step you erect thousands of barriers to prevent the oppressed people from taking part in politics. We take you at your word and, in the interests of these people, demand the extension of your bourgeois democracy in order to prepare the people for revolution for the purpose of overthrowing you, the exploiters. And if you exploiters attempt to offer resistance to our proletarian revolution we shall ruthlessly suppress you; we shall deprive you of all rights; more than that, we shall not give you any bread, for in our proletarian republic the exploiters will have no rights, they will be deprived of fire and water, for we are socialists in real earnest, and not in the Scheidemann or Kautsky fashion.

—The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky

* * *

Only the soviet organization of the state can really effect the immediate breakup and total destruction of the old, i.e., bourgeois, bureaucratic and judicial machinery, which has been, and has inevitably had to be, retained under capitalism even in the most democratic republics, and which is, in actual fact, the greatest obstacle to the practical implementation of democracy for the workers and the working people generally. The Paris Commune took the first epoch-making step along this path. The soviet system has taken the second.

—"Theses on Bourgeois Democracy and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat"

IN THE TIME OF THE BEAST?

COMMENTARY

JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT IT WAS SAFE TO GO INTO THE WATER-

NOW, MORE THAN EVER, BUILD A WORKERS PARTY

Seemingly every year about this time just as I am about to go into hibernation from political strife for the summer some crazy thing happens to disrupt my cozy get away. This year I have been waylaid by of all things political debates. What? Political debates in June 2007? Apparently the presidential campaign process has truly gone into warp speed with all the manipulations around the primary and caucus schedules by the various states. Not only that but both Democrats and Republicans felt that it was necessary to unburden their souls before July 4th so here I am stuck in commentary land. And for what? The Democratic debate on Sunday June 3rd, running out of New Hampshire, ran head to head with a New York Yankees/Boston Red Sox game so I was probably one of about seven people watching it here. The Republican debate, also running out of New Hampshire, on Tuesday June 5th proved to me that I am not the only political junkie that needs to get to a rehab clinic very quickly. But here is my first piece of wisdom for the summer doldrums. Any party that schedules or allows itself to be scheduled for a debate in June a year and a half before the elections deserves all the problems it gets.

Oh yes, and the debates? From an advocate of a workers party one would expect an obligatory ‘there is not a dime’s worth of different between the Democrats and Republicans’. I will not disappoint you in that regard except to say with inflation there is not a quarter’s worth of difference. There is however, noticeably, a very sharp difference in styles and the audiences that the various candidates are pitching their arguments to. The Democrats, after six years of the Bush follies, are clearly in the cat bird’s seat and pitch to the centrist majority so that they need not go to extremes on immigration, Iraq, jobs, education, abortion and other social issues and, most decidedly, on religion. The Republicans on the other hand not only have to distance themselves from the Bush fiascos but must pay lip service to the prejudices of the right-wing religious fundamentalist base that provides the voting cattle in key primary and caucus states. Thus we are treated to the spectacle of presidential candidates in a secular republic in 2007, not 1927 or 1877, raising their hands in the negative when asked whether they believed in evolution. Damn, I am embarrassed to even watch such a spectacle. Save that action for the revival tents, please.

But back to that quarter’s worth of difference question. What working people and their allies desperately need now and need politicians to focus in on are the following:On Iraq and Afghanistan-Immediate Unconditional Withdrawal. On religion-Complete separation of church and state. On immigration-Full citizenship rights for all who make it here. On abortion- Free abortion on demand. On health care- Free quality healthcare for all. On education- Free quality education for all who want it. On marriage and other individual personal issues- Government out of the bedrooms. On working conditions- Organize Wal-Mart and the South. On wages- A living wage for all. This list is hardly exhaustive, merely an outline of a fighting program of pressing needs, but you get the drift. Did any candidate of either party come close to even understanding such needs? To pose the question is to give the answer. The long and short of it is this-build a workers party.

*From The Pages Of "Workers Vanguard"- On German "Collective Guilt" For World War II- A Guest Commentary

Click on the title to link to Part Two of this "Workers Vanguard" article, dated June 8, 2007.


Workers Vanguard No. 893
25 May 2007


German Trotskyists on World War II

German Imperialism and the Lie of “Collective Guilt”

The Red Army Smashed the Nazi Regime!

Workers Revolution Will Avenge the Victims of the Holocaust!

Part One

This article is an edited translation from Spartakist No. 163 (Summer 2006), publication of the Spartakist Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands, German section of the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist). The article was based on a 2005 SpAD educational presentation.

On the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the liberation [of Germany from Nazism], there was widespread debate in society about the Third Reich and World War II. The German bourgeoisie and their SPD [Social Democratic Party]/Green government took the opportunity of the various commemorative ceremonies to advance the interests of German imperialism. In contrast to the Japanese ruling class, which honors its butchers every year—as Kohl and Reagan also did in 1985 with the SS murderers in Bitburg—the German bourgeoisie prefers, in view of their indescribably terrible crimes, to shed a few crocodile tears at commemorative events.

Other examples include building the Holocaust memorial in the center of Berlin or displaying a bit of anti-fascism every couple of years by organizing an “uprising of decent people,” whenever the daily racist terror, which is promoted by the state, threatens to damage Germany’s image once again. The central ideological means they resort to is preaching that all Germans are guilty of the Nazis’ crimes—collective guilt—in order to let those who are really guilty off the hook: the German bourgeoisie, the ruling class at that time and today. The issue was and is that the German bourgeoisie wants to play a role on the world stage; to promote this goal it cynically manipulates the memories of its crimes.

With capitalist reunification and the counterrevolutionary destruction of the [East German] DDR deformed workers state in 1990 and the destruction of the Soviet degenerated workers state in 1991-92, German imperialism has become stronger. It is now undertaking the first steps to compete against the global hegemony of U.S. imperialism. “German interests” are again represented in the Balkans, in Afghanistan, on the Horn of Africa, and soon they will also be represented in Congo. In 1999, [SPD Chancellor Gerhard] Schröder and [Green Party Foreign Minister Joschka] Fischer proclaimed, “Never again Auschwitz,” which served to justify participating in the U.S.-led NATO war against Serbia. The sole purpose of this was to carry through the first military intervention by German imperialism since the end of World War II, give the Bundeswehr practical experience and station troops in the Balkans. The hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie of Auschwitz then and now only serves to pave the way for the next round of dangerous resurgence of German nationalism. “Collective guilt” chains the working class to its own bourgeoisie and prevents it from calling the bourgeoisie to account for its crimes.

On 8 May 2005, at the Berlin demonstration by the so-called Spasibo [Russian for “thank you”] alliance against the Nazis, Peter Gingold, a Jewish Stalinist and fighter in the bourgeois French resistance, made a speech (which got more than a little applause). What he said corresponded to a contribution he made in the South Baden Stattzeitung (March 2005) under the title: “For the Majority of the German Population, the Defeat of the Nazis Was Their Own Defeat.” Gingold “confirmed” this infamous assertion when he said that the Germans “didn’t prevent 1933,” that is, the seizure of power by the Nazis. But the overwhelming majority of the German proletariat was in the KPD [Communist Party of Germany] and SPD and in the unions, which at the end of the 1920s were led mostly by Social Democrats. The bourgeoisie brought the fascists to power because it feared workers revolution. The fascists were based on the petty bourgeoisie (peasants, students, the intelligentsia, civil servants, etc.) that had been ruined by the world economic crisis at the end of the 1920s, on the cops and on the lumpenproletariat, that is, the long-term unemployed and totally impoverished who had lost any connection to the working class. Fascism was the last means of rescuing bourgeois class rule.

In the 1938 Transitional Program, the founding document of the Fourth International, Leon Trotsky, co-leader of the October Revolution alongside Lenin, exposed the lies of the Stalinists and, comparing the defeat in Germany in 1933 with the experience of Russia in 1905, showed who bore the responsibility for the Nazi victory:

“The Bolshevik faction had at that time [1905] not celebrated even its third birthday. It is completely otherwise in Germany, where the leadership came from powerful parties, one of which had existed for seventy years, the other almost fifteen. Both these parties, with millions of voters behind them, were morally paralyzed before the battle and capitulated without a fight. History has recorded no parallel catastrophe. The German proletariat was not smashed by the enemy in battle. It was crushed by the cowardice, baseness, and perfidy of its own parties. Small wonder then that it has lost faith in everything in which it had been accustomed to believe for almost three generations....

“The protracted failure of revolutionary work in Spain or Germany is but the reward for the criminal politics of the Social Democracy and the Comintern.”

The Revolutionary Tradition of the German Workers Movement

With the outbreak of World War I, the SPD went over openly to the side of its own bourgeoisie by voting for war credits to the Kaiser on 4 August 1914 and then herding the working class into the slaughter of World War I. Lenin called the SPD a bourgeois workers party, that is, a party with a bourgeois program entirely in the framework of capitalism, but with a proletarian base. It was strategically necessary to split the working-class base of the SPD from its bourgeois leadership. The SPD bears the responsibility for the defeat of the postwar revolutionary wave; their betrayal was the key to rescuing bourgeois rule. The SPD drowned the [1918-19] revolution in blood and had the leadership of the KPD—Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg, Leo Jogiches and Eugen Leviné—murdered.

As for the young, recently founded Communist Party, it was too inexperienced. In 1923, the KPD leadership, discouraged by Stalin from fighting for power, recognized the revolutionary crisis too late. They made the call for an uprising dependent on the agreement of the left wing of the SPD, which was equivalent to giving the revolution a third-class burial (see Spartacist [English-language edition] No. 56, Spring 2001). Since the attempts of the German working class to find a way out of the capitalist crisis through proletarian revolution—inspired by the 1917 October Revolution—were unsuccessful, the situation resulted in a right-wing radicalization of the petty bourgeoisie.

The defeat of the 1923 revolution in Germany sealed the isolation of the young Soviet workers state at the time. The developing Soviet bureaucracy took advantage of the disappointment and apathy that spread among the exhausted masses, and, under Stalin’s leadership, seized control and power over the Bolshevik Party at the end of 1923 to early 1924. Stalin replaced Bolshevik internationalism and the struggle for world revolution with the dogma of “building socialism in one country.” The Communist International, founded as the party of world revolution, was transformed into an instrument to foster illusions in peaceful coexistence between the Soviet Union and imperialism, which was decisive in chaining workers to the bourgeoisie.

This counterrevolution was political, not social; the Stalinist bureaucracy was based on the collectivized property forms that had been created by the October Revolution. Thus the state remained a workers state, although bureaucratically degenerated, and it was the duty of the international proletariat to defend it against the class enemy. For many years, the Trotskyist International Left Opposition carried out a struggle against Stalin & Co. and against the destruction of the party in order to return the Comintern to its revolutionary program.

The Betrayal by the SPD and KPD in 1933

The defeats of workers revolutions and the world economic crisis at the end of the 1920s enabled the Nazis to grow. But the workers wanted to fight and the bourgeoisie was no longer in a position to stem the danger of revolution through bourgeois democracy. There was a mass radicalization, and three consecutive bonapartist regimes—Brüning in 1930, Papen in 1932, Schleicher in 1932-33—could not get the crisis under control for the bourgeoisie, which increasingly counted on Nazi terror against the workers movement and saw the smashing of the workers movement as the only possibility to save its rule. The SPD leadership feared mobilizing the workers against the Nazis because workers would become more radicalized and slip out of the control of the SPD and its class-collaborationist program. The KPD leadership under [Ernst] Thälmann, as well as Stalin, refused, however, to force the SPD into a united front, even declaring the SPD “social fascist.” The KPD instead came up with the slogan “After Hitler, us.” In the face of the threatened destruction of the workers movement and the fascist seizure of power, this was nothing other than a declaration of capitulation.

In contrast, the Trotskyist Left Opposition warned of the danger of the Nazis taking power and fought to organize the workers in proletarian united fronts in order to smash the Nazis. The betrayal by the Stalinists and Social Democrats was enormous: while workers, organized by the hundreds of thousands into party militias, had waged street battles against the Nazis, sometimes overcoming their political divisions, the Nazis were able to come to power without a shot being fired. The betrayal of the KPD weighs twice as heavily because it was seen as the party of the Russian Revolution in which the vanguard of the proletariat was organized.

Nothing is more demoralizing than a defeat without a fight. When, following this historic betrayal, no criticism was raised in the ranks of the Third [Communist] International, the Trotskyists began to fight to build a new revolutionary International. Meanwhile, in 1935 the Stalinists came out for building popular fronts
—alliances of workers parties with sections of the bourgeoisie—against fascism. Based on class collaboration, the popular front—an obstacle to class struggle against the capitalist system that produces the Nazis—in reality paves the way for the Nazis. This was expressed most clearly in the mid 1930s when the Stalinists treacherously strangled the Spanish Revolution, which resulted in Franco’s fascists taking power.

It was the Red Army that smashed the Nazi regime and brought to an end the Holocaust—the industrial murder of millions of Jews, Roma and Sinti [Gypsies]
—and the persecution and murder of Communists and countless others. After the victory of the Red Army, the lie of the “collective guilt of all Germans” for the Holocaust and the other Nazi atrocities was a central means of defending the rule of the German bourgeoisie in West Germany. Thus the responsibility of the bourgeoisie, which had brought Hitler to power in order to smash the working class, was shifted to “the people.” And if everyone was guilty, then no one, in particular the bourgeoisie, really was. In his memoirs, And Red Is the Colour of Our Flag, the German Trotskyist Oskar Hippe powerfully described the purpose of the lie of collective guilt after World War II:

“The declaration that there is a ‘collective guilt’ in the German people also belongs to this struggle against the proletariat, since from the outset they want to discriminate against the proletariat, the overwhelming majority of the people. They want to drive home the idea that their failure was due to their inferiority, and to explain once and for all that the proletariat is incapable of taking a grip on its own fate and revolutionising society.”

After the war, the KPD and SPD leaderships had their own reasons for adopting the lie of collective guilt. It enabled them to shift the responsibility for their own betrayal—their cowardly capitulation to the Nazis in 1933 without a fight—onto the shoulders of the German working class which they had betrayed. Today DKPers [members of the present-day German Communist Party] seek to blame the Nazi seizure of power on the unwillingness of the “German people” (i.e., the workers) to fight. This is an outrageous whitewash of the betrayal of the KPD leadership. What is behind this is the program expressed in an 11 June 1945 call issued by the KPD:

“In our opinion it would be wrong to impose the Soviet system on Germany, because this road does not correspond to the current conditions of development in Germany.

“Our opinion is rather that the decisive interests of the German people in the current situation dictate another path—that of an anti-fascist, democratic regime, a parliamentary-democratic republic with all democratic rights and freedoms for the people.”

So they stood for the rule of the bourgeoisie—democratic, of course. An article in the DKP paper unsere zeit (10 June 2005) explained: “The call of the Central Committee of the KPD of 11 June 1945 is one of the most brilliant and creative texts published by the German communists in their history.”

In fact, however, Nazi leaders and the bourgeoisie fled from East Germany, where the Red Army was in power, to the imperialist West. The increasing confrontation between the Soviet Union and its imperialist “democratic” wartime allies culminated in the first Cold War. Consequently, in the late 1940s in East Germany, as in the rest of East Europe, the bourgeoisie was expropriated and a deformed workers state, the DDR, was erected on the model of the bureaucratically degenerated workers state of the Soviet Union.

World War II—An Imperialist War

One central point in the Stalinist and social-democratic propaganda on World War II, as well as in the collective-guilt propaganda, is to present World War II as a war between democracy and fascism. But World War II, like World War I, was an imperialist war; in fact it was simply the continuation of the earlier war. With regard to the Soviet Union, the Trotskyists had a side—with the Soviet Union. They also supported uprisings of oppressed colonial peoples if these were directed against imperialist domination, whether in India against Britain, in China against Japan and the U.S., in Indochina against France, etc.

After World War I, the victory of the proletarian revolution in Russia left its mark on the consciousness of all classes in Europe. And both the bourgeoisie and the Trotskyists expected revolutions as the outcome of a new world war. The capitalist rulers had drawn their own lessons from the Revolution. For example, the fraternization of German and Russian soldiers on the Eastern Front in December 1917 was initially seen by the Reichswehr merely as a sign that the Russian army was disintegrating. In the Museum of the Red Army exhibition in the Berlin district of Karlshorst, next to a photo titled “Fraternization of German and Russian Soldiers,” there is the following comment:

“In hindsight, after the November Revolution [1918] in Germany, this rapprochement of the soldiers was regarded as the beginning of subversion by Bolshevism. Later, this understanding influenced the orders of the National Socialists in the war strategy against the Soviet Union.”

The Trotskyists had prepared very thoroughly for the occurrence of a new world war. Their model was the struggle of Karl Liebknecht and of the Bolsheviks in World War I. Their principled position was presented in the decisive programmatic document, Trotsky’s 1934 “War and the Fourth International.” The “general strategic task to which the whole work of a proletarian party during war should be subordinated” is to turn the imperialist war into a civil war. It explains:

“18. The sham of national defense is covered up wherever possible by the additional sham of the defense of democracy. If even now, in the imperialist epoch, Marxists do not identify democracy with fascism and are ready at any moment to repel fascism’s encroachment upon democracy, must not the proletariat in case of war support the democratic governments against the fascist governments?

“Flagrant sophism! We defend democracy against fascism by means of the organizations and methods of the proletariat.... And if we remain in irreconcilable opposition to the most ‘democratic’ government in time of peace, how can we take upon ourselves even a shadow of responsibility for it in time of war when all the infamies and crimes of capitalism take on a most brutal and bloody form?

“19. A modern war between the great powers does not signify a conflict between democracy and fascism but a struggle of two imperialisms for the redivision of the world.”

Only one point was added to the revolutionary program for World War I: the duty of the world proletariat to fight for the unconditional military defense of the gains of the October Revolution, despite the usurpation of political power by the bureaucratic caste headed by Stalin:

“Defense of the Soviet Union from the blows of the capitalist enemies, irrespective of the circumstances and immediate causes of the conflict, is the elementary and imperative duty of every honest labor organization.”

When Germany invaded the Soviet Union, the Soviet Trotskyists who were imprisoned in Stalin’s camps volunteered to defend the Soviet Union with arms in hand. And when the Stalinist bureaucracy refused out of fear, the Trotskyists relinquished some of their rights and extended their working day to 12 hours to help the Soviet Union win the war.

On the question of the defense of the Soviet Union there were fights within the Fourth International; the clearest and best-documented fight was in the American section, the Socialist Workers Party. Under pressure of petty-bourgeois public outrage over the Hitler-Stalin pact and the Soviet-Finnish war, the petty-bourgeois opposition of Shachtman, Burnham and Abern wanted to give up defense of the Soviet Union. In 1940 they split the party, taking 40 percent of the membership with them.

In 1938, in “A Fresh Lesson—After the Imperialist ‘Peace’ at Munich,” Trotsky answered the central question of what bourgeois democracy actually is:

“Democracy can be maintained only so long as class contradictions do not reach an explosive state. In order to mitigate social frictions the bourgeoisie has been compelled to provide feed for a broad layer of petty-bourgeois intellectuals, and the bureaucracy and aristocracy of labor. The bigger the feeding-trough the more ardent is social patriotism. The reformist feeding-trough has nowadays been preserved only in those countries which were able in the past to accumulate vast wealth, thanks to the exploitation of the world market, and their pillage of the colonies. In other words, in the condition of capitalist decay a democratic regime is accessible (up to a certain time) only to the most aristocratic bourgeoisie. The basis of social patriotism remains colonial slavery.”

The Stalinists, entirely in line with their popular-frontist politics and their support for the bourgeoisies of the “democratic” imperialist allies of the Soviet Union in World War II, laid the blame for the war on Germany. But there was never “German guilt” for the war, because it was an imperialist war. As Lenin already explained in World War I, for Marxists the question of who shoots first is irrelevant for evaluating a war. Germany and Japan made it into the ranks of major imperialist powers only at the end of the 19th century. When it came to dividing up the world, they were too late. Since they had less reserves, they had designs on the colonies being plundered by Britain and France. The U.S. was waiting to skim the cream at the end. It went to war against Japan above all to resolve who would get to exploit and enslave China and Asia.

The Defense of the Soviet Union

The Stalinist, popular-frontist fairy tale of an anti-fascist war of the democracies served only to chain the American and West European working class to their own bourgeoisies. In 1917, the Bolsheviks had seen the extension of the Russian Revolution to the advanced imperialist countries as its only road to survival. In particular, they counted on the German working class, the strongest and best-organized in Europe. But the German proletariat had been defeated by its bourgeoisie, and young German workers, now stuck in Wehrmacht uniforms, were deployed against the Soviet Union. At the time, only the Trotskyists fought for independent class politics in the tradition of Lenin and Liebknecht. James P. Cannon, leader of the American Trotskyists, spoke to this point in 1942:

“We make a fundamental distinction between the Soviet Union and its ‘democratic’ allies. We defend the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union is a workers’ state, although degenerated under the totalitarian-political rule of the Kremlin bureaucracy. Only traitors can deny support to the Soviet workers’ state in its war against fascist Germany. To defend the Soviet Union, in spite of Stalin and against Stalin, is to defend the nationalized property established by the October revolution. That is a progressive war.”

—“A Statement on the War,” Fourth International,
Vol. III, No. 1, January 1942
(emphasis in original)

It was the Soviet Union that had to bear the brunt of this war. Even when it was in an alliance with the U.S. and Britain, the Soviet Union almost always faced 90 percent of the German troops (and at no point in the war was it less than two-thirds). As for the economic support the Soviet Union received, especially from the U.S., it amounted to at most 10 percent of its own industrial output. And it was the Red Army that smashed the Nazi regime. It brought the Holocaust to an end. It liberated Europe from enslavement and bloody oppression by the Nazis.

The policies of the Stalinist bureaucracy ruling over the Soviet state, and preventing any initiative by the masses, led to the devastating loss of 27 million Soviet citizens. Three million died in the first three months alone. Stalin trusted his 1939 pact with Hitler, even though he had been warned, for instance by the heroic Soviet spies Richard Sorge and Ozaki Hotsumi. You can also find out a lot about this in Khrushchev’s secret speech at the 1956 Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union under the strange title, “On the Cult of Personality.” (Except that he does not answer the question: “Where were you, Khrushchev?”) In this speech, he showed that Stalin was demoralized and hid like a coward for the first ten days following the German attack.

One of the main ways that Stalin had weakened the Soviet Union was by exterminating almost the entire officer corps three or four years earlier, including Tukhachevsky, for example. Rokossovsky, one of the most important generals in the Soviet struggle for the liberation of Europe, had fortunately not been murdered but only transferred, and was therefore able to become active again. Even Zhukov had been purged, but he was reinstated because there were not enough officers. A gigantic myth was created that Stalin led the “Great Patriotic War.” In actual fact, however, it was his generals and the soldiers of the Red Army who won the war, in spite of Stalin. Stalin’s favorite general was Vlasov, who later betrayed and went over to Hitler.

When the Stalinist bureaucracy propagated the notion that the war against Germany was a “Great Patriotic War” to defend Mother Russia, it represented a politically decisive turn. The invasion of the Soviet Union took place on 22 June 1941. Stalin made his first speech on July 3, declaring:

“The war against fascist Germany cannot be regarded as an ordinary war.… At the same time it is the great war of the whole Soviet people against the fascist German troops. This patriotic people’s war against the fascist oppressor has as its goal not only to rid us of the danger approaching us, but also to help all the peoples of Europe.”

—Exhibition catalogue, Der Krieg gegen die Sowjetunion 1941–1945 [The War Against the Soviet Union 1941-1945]

So, right from the beginning the war was waged under the motto of Russian nationalism. And that hindered the mass desertion of German units going over to fight alongside their Soviet class brothers against the common class enemy, the German bourgeoisie. With this, the Stalinists also managed to displace the October Revolution as the goal the Soviet working class identified with and to replace it with the Great Patriotic War. This went along with the elimination by the Stalinist bureaucracy of the entire layer of Bolsheviks who had led the October Revolution.

According to the propaganda spread in the Red Army and the working class, the Germans were all fascists, the Wehrmacht was a fascist army, etc. That is why at Stalingrad there were posters and inscriptions in Russian (also documented in the museum in Berlin-Karlshorst) such as: “How Many Germans Did You Kill Today?” and “No German Should Leave Stalingrad Alive.” Later the Red Army distributed leaflets to the German soldiers to get them to capitulate, but the example of capitulation they gave was that of Hitler-loyal, arch-reactionary General Field Marshal Paulus, who had commanded the German troops in Stalingrad. They also founded the National Committee for a Free Germany, with Graf [Count] von Einsiedel at its head, in order to demonstrate, in line with the popular- front policy, that they did not want revolution but a settlement with the bourgeoisie. Other leaflets said that soldiers who did not surrender would be killed.

This had nothing to do with revolutionary internationalist propaganda, which would have exploited the fact that the soldiers they faced were German workers who may have been the children of Communists, or perhaps even Communists themselves. There was a big anti-German hate campaign by Ilya Ehrenburg, a Jewish Soviet author, who became the mouthpiece for Stalin’s own nationalist campaign. Although it was dropped after the Red Army reached Germany, the content of the Stalinist policy did not significantly change.

Although it was very difficult to defect, some did. Gerhard Bögelein, for example, was a German worker who changed sides and became a soldier in the Red Army. Right after the reunification in 1990, he was thrown into jail by the vindictive West German courts in Hamburg. Karl Kielhorn organized an anti-fascist committee in a Soviet prisoner-of-war camp, where they read Marx and he was recruited to the CP. We Spartakists defended Bögelein and Kielhorn against the vengeance of the Fourth Reich. Heinz Kessler, who was later a founder of the National People’s Army in the DDR, and who became an army general and then Minister of Defense, had gone over to the Soviet Union when he was a Wehrmacht soldier. We are proud to have defended him against the anti-Communist witchhunt after the capitalist counterrevolution.

The invasion of the Soviet Union spurred massive resistance, which is the main reason why the Soviet Union was able to prevail in the end. The Nazis and the Wehrmacht command believed they would win within four months. The Wehrmacht command thought that by winter the Soviet Union would already have collapsed like a house of cards; that’s why the German soldiers supposedly didn’t need any winter clothing.

There was a difference between the defense of Leningrad and the rest of the Soviet Union. In Leningrad there existed a high degree of consciousness that they were defending the birthplace of the October Revolution. And it is precisely because of the October Revolution that Hitler and his Wehrmacht leadership wanted to completely wipe out Leningrad and let the population starve to death, even if they attempted to surrender. The order was to accept no surrender. The siege lasted 900 days, and the number of people who died in the defense of Leningrad and in the city itself—about one million—was higher than the number of soldiers of American and British imperialism killed in World War II, which was a total of 800,000. But the Nazis did not succeed in taking Leningrad.

The victory at Stalingrad was a psychological turn in the war, and the military turn was the battle of Kursk in 1943. The Soviet Union bore the brunt of the war against the Nazis and was able in the end to beat back the German armies. The Western Allies were counting on their imperialist rival Germany and the Soviet degenerated workers state to destroy each other on the battlefield. This is why the Allies opened the “second front” only in June 1944, with the invasion of Normandy. The only reason the Western Allies opened a second front was to push back Soviet influence in Europe, fearing that the Red Army would liberate the whole of Germany.

The reports by the SD (Security Service of the Reichsführer SS) in the catalogue for the exhibition, The War Against the Soviet Union 1941-1945, give a good example of the attitude of the German population toward the Soviet Union. There is a document there on the population’s reaction to the campaign against “Soviet Untermenschen [subhumans].” There had been a Nazi exhibition on this theme in Berlin, at which the resistance group led by Jewish Communist Herbert Baum planted a bomb.

The Nazi propaganda tried to paint a picture of Jews, Slavs and Communists as “subhuman,” and with that aim they exhibited pictures taken in concentration camps of people they themselves had almost starved to death, as typical examples of the peoples they wanted to wipe out. An April 1943 SD report noted that the way the Germans viewed these people had changed, because now hundreds of thousands of workers from the East as well as prisoners of war were working in Germany. The report gives examples of how the population supported the forced laborers, who included many highly skilled workers, so that later the death penalty had to be imposed for helping forced laborers or workers from the East. Nevertheless, support for them continued. There are examples of Polish and other forced laborers in the countryside basically being taken in by families.

Another example is when the Nazis tried to capitalize on the shooting of 4,000 Polish officers at Katyn. They dug up the graves of the Polish officers, who had been captured by the Red Army in Eastern Poland during the German-Polish war in 1939. The Polish officers were certainly hardened counterrevolutionaries, but it does not mean that we support their execution by the NKVD [Soviet secret police]. In any case, the Goebbels propaganda machine tried to capitalize on this. The SD reported that in Germany people would say: “We have no right to complain about this Soviet action, because on the German side Poles and Jews were wiped out on a much larger scale.” Of course that doesn’t fit into the distorted picture presented by collective-guilt propaganda, that all Germans were somehow Nazis and supported them.

[TO BE CONTINUED]