Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Major Martin Delany
February Is Black History Month
Every January, as readers of this blog are now, hopefully, familiar with the international communist movement honors the 3 Ls-Lenin, Luxemburg and Liebknecht, fallen leaders of the early 20th century communist movement who died in this month (and whose untimely deaths left a huge, irreplaceable gap in the international leadership of that time). January is thus a time for us to reflect on the roots of our movement and those who brought us along this far. February is Black History Month and is a time for reflection on our black forebears who brought us along this far. In order to give a fuller measure of honor to our fallen forbears this February , and in future Februarys, this space will honor others who have contributed in some way to the struggle for our communist future. That future classless society, however, will be the true memorial to their sacrifices.
Note on inclusion: As in other series on this site (Labor’s Untold Story, Leaders Of The Bolshevik Revolution, etc.) this year’s honorees do not exhaust the list of every possible communist worthy of the name. Nor, in fact, is the list limited to Bolshevik-style communists. There will be names included from other traditions (like anarchism, social democracy, the Diggers, Levellers, Jacobins, the black liberation struggle here and elsewhere, etc.) whose efforts contributed to the international struggle. Also, as was true of previous series this year’s efforts are no more than an introduction to these heroes of the class struggle. Future years will see more detailed information on each entry, particularly about many of the lesser known figures. Better yet, the reader can pick up the ball and run with it if he or she has more knowledge about the particular exploits of some communist militant, or to include a missing one.
*****
Saturday, February 12, 2011
Friday, February 11, 2011
*On The 8th Anniversary of The Iraq War (Really 20th) A March 19th Veterans-Led March In Washington To Stop The Wars In Afghanistan And Iraq-All Out In Support Of The Vets
Click on the headline to link to the Stop These Wars Website.
Markin comment:
In the lead up to the December 16, 2010 Veterans For Peace led-civil disobedience action in Washington, D. C. where 131 people were arrested (many of whom later had the charges against them dropped) I motivated my support for that action as described below in a blog entry that I am re-posting today. That same general motivation applies (with a caveat noted just below) as another Veterans For Peace-led planned civil disobedience action is scheduled for March 19th 2011, the 8th anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq War II. (Although as noted in the headline to this entry it really is the 20th year as the theme of the Catholic Worker-led demonstrations in Washington on January 15, 2011 made clear, correctly clear.)
I note here that while I support and will attend the March 19th actions (with as many of the local ad hoc anti-imperialist group that I belong to as can come that day) because they are very important symbolic actions on an important anti-war occasion I am worried, at least a little worried, that if we do not take more arrests (more than 131 that is) this action will be seen as a failure. Not by the media, of course, as they hardly paid attention on December 16th. Not the Bush I-Clinton-Bush II-Obama government, of course, they haven’t paid attention at all, ever. But militants, and potential militants, who will dismiss such actions out of hand and write off street actions as the work of cranky old men and women. In short, we do not want to get civil disobedience-itis any more than we wanted to keep doing those endless dwindling mass marches. So to do this right-All out in support of the Vets- All out to resist these wars- All out to end Obama’s Iraq and Afghan Wars.
********
December 1, 2010
A December 16th Veterans-Led March In Washington To Stop The Wars In Afghanistan And Iraq-All Out In Support Of The Vets
On November 11, 2010, Veterans Day, I marched with a contingent of Veterans For Peace in the Boston Veterans Day parade and posted an entry in this space about my take on the event. (See, A Stroll In The Park On Veterans Day- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S. Troops From Iraq and Afghanistan!, dated November 11, 2010). As part of that commentary I noted the following:
“Listen, I have been to many marches and demonstrations for democratic, progressive, socialist and communist causes in my long political life. However, of all those events none, by far, has been more satisfying that to march alongside my fellow ex-soldiers who have “switched” over to the other side and are now part of the struggle against war, the hard, hard struggle against the permanent war machine that this imperial system has embarked upon. From as far back as in the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) days I have always felt that ex-soldiers (hell, active soldiers too, if you can get them) have had just a little bit more “street cred” on the war issue than the professors, pacifists and little old ladies in tennis sneakers who have traditionally led the anti-war movements. Maybe those brothers (and in my generation it was mainly only brothers) and now sisters may not quite pose the questions of war and peace the way I do, or the way that I would like them to do, but they are kindred spirits.”
Now comes word (click on headline for similar March 19th action) that veterans are leading an action in Washington, D.C. on December 16, 2010 in front of the White House under the rubric of "Peace On Earth." There is no question that I, the anti-imperialist committee that I am a member of in Boston, any self-respecting radical or, hell, any self-respecting little old lady in tennis sneakers for that matter, could endorse this thing. If for no other reason that it begs, literally begs, Warmonger-In-Chief Obama (of the double troop escalations in Afghanistan with nobody holding a gun to his head remember) to “do the right thing.”
That said, the sentiment expressed above in that Veterans Day commentary still holds true. So I, and all I can gather to go with me, will be in Washington on December 16th. I will hold my nose in doing so, although not my tongue, trying to get my fellow vets to change course. In my hand I will hold this slogan-Obama- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S. Troops From Iraq and Afghanistan! And I won’t be begging him about it, no way.
Markin comment:
In the lead up to the December 16, 2010 Veterans For Peace led-civil disobedience action in Washington, D. C. where 131 people were arrested (many of whom later had the charges against them dropped) I motivated my support for that action as described below in a blog entry that I am re-posting today. That same general motivation applies (with a caveat noted just below) as another Veterans For Peace-led planned civil disobedience action is scheduled for March 19th 2011, the 8th anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq War II. (Although as noted in the headline to this entry it really is the 20th year as the theme of the Catholic Worker-led demonstrations in Washington on January 15, 2011 made clear, correctly clear.)
I note here that while I support and will attend the March 19th actions (with as many of the local ad hoc anti-imperialist group that I belong to as can come that day) because they are very important symbolic actions on an important anti-war occasion I am worried, at least a little worried, that if we do not take more arrests (more than 131 that is) this action will be seen as a failure. Not by the media, of course, as they hardly paid attention on December 16th. Not the Bush I-Clinton-Bush II-Obama government, of course, they haven’t paid attention at all, ever. But militants, and potential militants, who will dismiss such actions out of hand and write off street actions as the work of cranky old men and women. In short, we do not want to get civil disobedience-itis any more than we wanted to keep doing those endless dwindling mass marches. So to do this right-All out in support of the Vets- All out to resist these wars- All out to end Obama’s Iraq and Afghan Wars.
********
December 1, 2010
A December 16th Veterans-Led March In Washington To Stop The Wars In Afghanistan And Iraq-All Out In Support Of The Vets
On November 11, 2010, Veterans Day, I marched with a contingent of Veterans For Peace in the Boston Veterans Day parade and posted an entry in this space about my take on the event. (See, A Stroll In The Park On Veterans Day- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S. Troops From Iraq and Afghanistan!, dated November 11, 2010). As part of that commentary I noted the following:
“Listen, I have been to many marches and demonstrations for democratic, progressive, socialist and communist causes in my long political life. However, of all those events none, by far, has been more satisfying that to march alongside my fellow ex-soldiers who have “switched” over to the other side and are now part of the struggle against war, the hard, hard struggle against the permanent war machine that this imperial system has embarked upon. From as far back as in the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) days I have always felt that ex-soldiers (hell, active soldiers too, if you can get them) have had just a little bit more “street cred” on the war issue than the professors, pacifists and little old ladies in tennis sneakers who have traditionally led the anti-war movements. Maybe those brothers (and in my generation it was mainly only brothers) and now sisters may not quite pose the questions of war and peace the way I do, or the way that I would like them to do, but they are kindred spirits.”
Now comes word (click on headline for similar March 19th action) that veterans are leading an action in Washington, D.C. on December 16, 2010 in front of the White House under the rubric of "Peace On Earth." There is no question that I, the anti-imperialist committee that I am a member of in Boston, any self-respecting radical or, hell, any self-respecting little old lady in tennis sneakers for that matter, could endorse this thing. If for no other reason that it begs, literally begs, Warmonger-In-Chief Obama (of the double troop escalations in Afghanistan with nobody holding a gun to his head remember) to “do the right thing.”
That said, the sentiment expressed above in that Veterans Day commentary still holds true. So I, and all I can gather to go with me, will be in Washington on December 16th. I will hold my nose in doing so, although not my tongue, trying to get my fellow vets to change course. In my hand I will hold this slogan-Obama- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S. Troops From Iraq and Afghanistan! And I won’t be begging him about it, no way.
*Those Black Militants Who Fought For Our Communist Future Are Kindred Spirits-The Volunteers Of The Massachusetts 54th Regiment In The American Civil War
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the Massachusetts 54th Regiment.
February Is Black History Month
Every January, as readers of this blog are now, hopefully, familiar with the international communist movement honors the 3 Ls-Lenin, Luxemburg and Liebknecht, fallen leaders of the early 20th century communist movement who died in this month (and whose untimely deaths left a huge, irreplaceable gap in the international leadership of that time). January is thus a time for us to reflect on the roots of our movement and those who brought us along this far. February is Black History Month and is a time for reflection on our black forebears who brought us along this far. In order to give a fuller measure of honor to our fallen forbears this February , and in future Februarys, this space will honor others who have contributed in some way to the struggle for our communist future. That future classless society, however, will be the true memorial to their sacrifices.
Note on inclusion: As in other series on this site (Labor’s Untold Story, Leaders Of The Bolshevik Revolution, etc.) this year’s honorees do not exhaust the list of every possible communist worthy of the name. Nor, in fact, is the list limited to Bolshevik-style communists. There will be names included from other traditions (like anarchism, social democracy, the Diggers, Levellers, Jacobins, the black liberation struggle here and elsewhere, etc.) whose efforts contributed to the international struggle. Also, as was true of previous series this year’s efforts are no more than an introduction to these heroes of the class struggle. Future years will see more detailed information on each entry, particularly about many of the lesser known figures. Better yet, the reader can pick up the ball and run with it if he or she has more knowledge about the particular exploits of some communist militant, or to include a missing one.
*********
February Is Black History Month
Every January, as readers of this blog are now, hopefully, familiar with the international communist movement honors the 3 Ls-Lenin, Luxemburg and Liebknecht, fallen leaders of the early 20th century communist movement who died in this month (and whose untimely deaths left a huge, irreplaceable gap in the international leadership of that time). January is thus a time for us to reflect on the roots of our movement and those who brought us along this far. February is Black History Month and is a time for reflection on our black forebears who brought us along this far. In order to give a fuller measure of honor to our fallen forbears this February , and in future Februarys, this space will honor others who have contributed in some way to the struggle for our communist future. That future classless society, however, will be the true memorial to their sacrifices.
Note on inclusion: As in other series on this site (Labor’s Untold Story, Leaders Of The Bolshevik Revolution, etc.) this year’s honorees do not exhaust the list of every possible communist worthy of the name. Nor, in fact, is the list limited to Bolshevik-style communists. There will be names included from other traditions (like anarchism, social democracy, the Diggers, Levellers, Jacobins, the black liberation struggle here and elsewhere, etc.) whose efforts contributed to the international struggle. Also, as was true of previous series this year’s efforts are no more than an introduction to these heroes of the class struggle. Future years will see more detailed information on each entry, particularly about many of the lesser known figures. Better yet, the reader can pick up the ball and run with it if he or she has more knowledge about the particular exploits of some communist militant, or to include a missing one.
*********
From The Pages Of "Workers Vanguard"- More Subpoenas Against Midwest Leftists-FBI Infiltration Exposed- Hands Off The Midwest Anti-War Activists
Markin comment on this article:
Part of the business of doing revolutionary, radical, hell, on some days just plain liberal politics (think of the late, unlamented Nixon's "hit" lists with nothing but run of the mill democrats on them )is knowing, knowing without knowing, that someone is watching you, or wants to. Either succumb to paranoia, walk away from such heavy-duty business, or just go about your political business as best you can, as long as you can. Still it is nice, every once in a while, to know they really are out to get us if for no other reason that to jerk back from that notion that we are dealing with rationale opponents. And, as here, to just flat out expose a fink, a living breathing fink before she (in this case) crawls back in her hole.
*******
Workers Vanguard No. 973
4 February 2011
More Subpoenas Against Midwest Leftists
FBI Infiltration Exposed
CHICAGO—In a further escalation of its war on civil liberties, in December the Obama administration issued federal grand jury subpoenas to nine leftists and Palestine solidarity activists in Chicago. The subpoenas follow raids last September 24 in Illinois and Minnesota in which scores of FBI agents descended on the homes of 14 activists, including well-known trade unionists, antiwar organizers and several supporters of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO), which publishes Fight Back! newspaper. The Feds seized cell phones and passports and carted away vanloads of boxes filled with personal papers, address books and computer disks.
With its vendetta against these leftists, the Obama administration has one-upped the Bush regime in its war on civil liberties. Investigated for providing “material support to terrorism” on the basis of purported links to the secular-nationalist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the leftists’ “crime” in the eyes of the U.S. rulers is their siding with victims of the Zionist butchers and Colombian death squads. Those who manage to avoid bogus charges of “support to terrorism” may still face years of imprisonment on charges of “criminal contempt” for the honorable act of refusing to name names before the grand jury inquisitors.
This witchhunt is a stark confirmation of how the shredding of civil liberties in the name of the “war on terror,” while at first mainly targeting Arab and Muslim immigrants, is ultimately aimed at the left and the entire labor movement. As the Spartacist League warned in a statement issued one day after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, both the Democrats and Republicans would seize on the event to reinforce capitalist class rule. As we wrote in “The World Trade Center Attack” (WV No. 764, 14 September 2001):
“It’s an opportunity for the exploiters to peddle ‘one nation indivisible’ patriotism to try to direct the burgeoning anger at the bottom of this society away from themselves and toward an indefinable foreign ‘enemy,’ as well as immigrants in the U.S., and to reinforce their arsenal of domestic state repression against all the working people.”
It is vitally necessary for the left, the labor movement and fighters for black and immigrant rights to defend those caught up in the government witchhunt. The Spartacist League and Partisan Defense Committee have participated in protests on the Midwest leftists’ behalf, demanding that all the subpoenas be withdrawn, that no charges be filed and that materials seized by the Feds be returned. The vendetta against these leftists, a blatant attack on the rights of speech and association, is intended to intimidate into silence anyone who would protest government policies at home and wars and depredations abroad.
At a January 12 press conference in Minneapolis, FRSO supporters exposed how this whole “investigation” stems from police surveillance and disruption of protests against the 2008 Republican National Convention (RNC). The Feds have now admitted that one government agent, using the name Karen Sullivan, infiltrated the Minneapolis Anti-War Committee (AWC) and later joined FRSO. “Sullivan” pushed herself into the forefront of local activism. She joined a vanload who traveled to the annual protest at the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia, where the U.S. military trains its Latin American counterparts in murder and torture, and gave a workshop on the counterinsurgency “Plan Colombia” at last year’s U.S. Social Forum in Detroit. This agent also insinuated herself into a three-person AWC Palestinian solidarity delegation to the Occupied Territories in 2009, which was stopped by Israeli immigration agents as soon as it arrived in Tel Aviv, presumably based on information “Sullivan” supplied.
“Sullivan” was only one of a host of undercover agents and informants who swarmed over the RNC protests. Many were paid thousands of dollars to spy on, disrupt and set up organizers for arrest. “The Policing of Political Speech,” a report issued by the National Lawyers Guild last September, exposed the central role of these agents in the prosecution of the RNC 8. These protest organizers were initially charged with “terrorism” based on acts of civil disobedience and disruption by a few anarchist youth—trivial acts that used to be vindictively charged as “disorderly conduct.”
Liberals and the reformist left, including the FRSO, promoted the illusion that Obama’s election would mark a sharp turn from the regime of George W. Bush. But as we pointed out at the time, Obama’s promises to clean up the worst “excesses” of the Bush gang were driven by his commitment to wage the “war on terror” more effectively. From the indefinite detention of “enemy combatants” at Guantánamo to National Security Agency domestic wiretapping, Obama has embraced every one of the repressive tools handed him by Bush (and Bush’s predecessor, Bill Clinton).
Last June, the U.S. Supreme Court handed the Justice Department the authority, which it had long sought, to prosecute the exercise of First Amendment rights of speech and association as support to terrorism. In Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, the court ruled that to advise the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam or the Kurdistan Workers Party on how to appeal to the United Nations in regard to their struggles against the genocidal wars waged by the Sri Lankan and Turkish governments would constitute “material support” to terrorism. We wrote in response that “by the Court’s light, any activity that is considered as giving legitimacy to ‘terrorists’—from giving money to Muslim charities to interviewing a guerrilla fighter for the press—would be deemed ‘material support’” (“Supreme Court Decision Shreds First Amendment Rights,” WV No. 961, 2 July 2010). Just three months later, the FBI launched its raids.
As reported by Fight Back!, “it seems that the investigation of U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald is focused on small donations to the day-care and women’s center projects of the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees.” Promoting education, day care and other relief for Palestinian refugee women and political prisoners, this group has had ties to the PFLP, which is designated as “terrorist” by the U.S. government.
For the blood-drenched U.S. imperialists, the designation of “foreign terrorist organization” is elastic and constantly shifting. It has included such organizations as Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress during the reign of apartheid in South Africa. The Islamic reactionaries of Al Qaeda top the U.S. hit list today, but in the 1980s their forebears were hailed—and bankrolled—by the U.S. as “freedom fighters” against the Soviet Union. In “Why Reagan Needs ‘Terrorism’,” (WV No. 347, 3 February 1984) we wrote: “For the bourgeoisie, ‘terrorism’ is violence associated with causes of which they disapprove, the use of force outside their own monopoly of violence: strikers defending their picket lines, black people protecting their communities against racist nightriders, Central American peasants fighting back against the landlords’ army and hired killers.”
America’s rulers have a long history of harassing and criminalizing leftist dissent—from the legal lynching of the Haymarket Martyrs for organizing for the eight-hour day, to the Palmer Raids that led to the deportation of thousands of foreign-born radicals after World War I, and the Smith Act prosecution of leaders of the then-Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party on the eve of World War II. The postwar purges that drove the Stalinists and other leftists out of the unions, coming on the heels of the largest strike wave in U.S. history, were the domestic reflection of the Cold War against the Soviet Union. In the 1960s, those who protested against U.S. imperialism’s dirty war against the Vietnamese workers and peasants were painted as traitors, while the government unleashed its secret police against fighters for black rights at home, assassinating 38 Black Panther Party members and railroading hundreds more to prison.
Ominously, one of the Chicago activists subpoenaed in December is Maureen Murphy, managing editor of the online publication Electronic Intifada, who had helped spearhead the defense of those targeted in the September raids. As a January 24 protest letter to Attorney General Eric Holder by the PDC stated: “The clear implication is that anyone who defends the civil liberties of those smeared as ‘terrorists’ will themselves in turn be targeted as ‘terrorists’.”
Ultimately, what the racist capitalist rulers can get away with will be determined by the level of class and social struggle. As Marxists, we understand that there will be no justice served until the imperialist exploiters, war criminals and witchhunters are swept from power through a socialist revolution that overturns capitalist class rule and establishes a workers government.
* * *
Funds are urgently needed for the legal defense of the subpoenaed Midwest activists. Donations can be sent to Committee to Stop FBI Repression, PO Box 14183, Minneapolis, MN 55414. Letters of protest can be sent to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, U.S. Department of Justice, 950 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Washington, D.C. 20530-0001.
Part of the business of doing revolutionary, radical, hell, on some days just plain liberal politics (think of the late, unlamented Nixon's "hit" lists with nothing but run of the mill democrats on them )is knowing, knowing without knowing, that someone is watching you, or wants to. Either succumb to paranoia, walk away from such heavy-duty business, or just go about your political business as best you can, as long as you can. Still it is nice, every once in a while, to know they really are out to get us if for no other reason that to jerk back from that notion that we are dealing with rationale opponents. And, as here, to just flat out expose a fink, a living breathing fink before she (in this case) crawls back in her hole.
*******
Workers Vanguard No. 973
4 February 2011
More Subpoenas Against Midwest Leftists
FBI Infiltration Exposed
CHICAGO—In a further escalation of its war on civil liberties, in December the Obama administration issued federal grand jury subpoenas to nine leftists and Palestine solidarity activists in Chicago. The subpoenas follow raids last September 24 in Illinois and Minnesota in which scores of FBI agents descended on the homes of 14 activists, including well-known trade unionists, antiwar organizers and several supporters of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO), which publishes Fight Back! newspaper. The Feds seized cell phones and passports and carted away vanloads of boxes filled with personal papers, address books and computer disks.
With its vendetta against these leftists, the Obama administration has one-upped the Bush regime in its war on civil liberties. Investigated for providing “material support to terrorism” on the basis of purported links to the secular-nationalist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the leftists’ “crime” in the eyes of the U.S. rulers is their siding with victims of the Zionist butchers and Colombian death squads. Those who manage to avoid bogus charges of “support to terrorism” may still face years of imprisonment on charges of “criminal contempt” for the honorable act of refusing to name names before the grand jury inquisitors.
This witchhunt is a stark confirmation of how the shredding of civil liberties in the name of the “war on terror,” while at first mainly targeting Arab and Muslim immigrants, is ultimately aimed at the left and the entire labor movement. As the Spartacist League warned in a statement issued one day after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, both the Democrats and Republicans would seize on the event to reinforce capitalist class rule. As we wrote in “The World Trade Center Attack” (WV No. 764, 14 September 2001):
“It’s an opportunity for the exploiters to peddle ‘one nation indivisible’ patriotism to try to direct the burgeoning anger at the bottom of this society away from themselves and toward an indefinable foreign ‘enemy,’ as well as immigrants in the U.S., and to reinforce their arsenal of domestic state repression against all the working people.”
It is vitally necessary for the left, the labor movement and fighters for black and immigrant rights to defend those caught up in the government witchhunt. The Spartacist League and Partisan Defense Committee have participated in protests on the Midwest leftists’ behalf, demanding that all the subpoenas be withdrawn, that no charges be filed and that materials seized by the Feds be returned. The vendetta against these leftists, a blatant attack on the rights of speech and association, is intended to intimidate into silence anyone who would protest government policies at home and wars and depredations abroad.
At a January 12 press conference in Minneapolis, FRSO supporters exposed how this whole “investigation” stems from police surveillance and disruption of protests against the 2008 Republican National Convention (RNC). The Feds have now admitted that one government agent, using the name Karen Sullivan, infiltrated the Minneapolis Anti-War Committee (AWC) and later joined FRSO. “Sullivan” pushed herself into the forefront of local activism. She joined a vanload who traveled to the annual protest at the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia, where the U.S. military trains its Latin American counterparts in murder and torture, and gave a workshop on the counterinsurgency “Plan Colombia” at last year’s U.S. Social Forum in Detroit. This agent also insinuated herself into a three-person AWC Palestinian solidarity delegation to the Occupied Territories in 2009, which was stopped by Israeli immigration agents as soon as it arrived in Tel Aviv, presumably based on information “Sullivan” supplied.
“Sullivan” was only one of a host of undercover agents and informants who swarmed over the RNC protests. Many were paid thousands of dollars to spy on, disrupt and set up organizers for arrest. “The Policing of Political Speech,” a report issued by the National Lawyers Guild last September, exposed the central role of these agents in the prosecution of the RNC 8. These protest organizers were initially charged with “terrorism” based on acts of civil disobedience and disruption by a few anarchist youth—trivial acts that used to be vindictively charged as “disorderly conduct.”
Liberals and the reformist left, including the FRSO, promoted the illusion that Obama’s election would mark a sharp turn from the regime of George W. Bush. But as we pointed out at the time, Obama’s promises to clean up the worst “excesses” of the Bush gang were driven by his commitment to wage the “war on terror” more effectively. From the indefinite detention of “enemy combatants” at Guantánamo to National Security Agency domestic wiretapping, Obama has embraced every one of the repressive tools handed him by Bush (and Bush’s predecessor, Bill Clinton).
Last June, the U.S. Supreme Court handed the Justice Department the authority, which it had long sought, to prosecute the exercise of First Amendment rights of speech and association as support to terrorism. In Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, the court ruled that to advise the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam or the Kurdistan Workers Party on how to appeal to the United Nations in regard to their struggles against the genocidal wars waged by the Sri Lankan and Turkish governments would constitute “material support” to terrorism. We wrote in response that “by the Court’s light, any activity that is considered as giving legitimacy to ‘terrorists’—from giving money to Muslim charities to interviewing a guerrilla fighter for the press—would be deemed ‘material support’” (“Supreme Court Decision Shreds First Amendment Rights,” WV No. 961, 2 July 2010). Just three months later, the FBI launched its raids.
As reported by Fight Back!, “it seems that the investigation of U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald is focused on small donations to the day-care and women’s center projects of the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees.” Promoting education, day care and other relief for Palestinian refugee women and political prisoners, this group has had ties to the PFLP, which is designated as “terrorist” by the U.S. government.
For the blood-drenched U.S. imperialists, the designation of “foreign terrorist organization” is elastic and constantly shifting. It has included such organizations as Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress during the reign of apartheid in South Africa. The Islamic reactionaries of Al Qaeda top the U.S. hit list today, but in the 1980s their forebears were hailed—and bankrolled—by the U.S. as “freedom fighters” against the Soviet Union. In “Why Reagan Needs ‘Terrorism’,” (WV No. 347, 3 February 1984) we wrote: “For the bourgeoisie, ‘terrorism’ is violence associated with causes of which they disapprove, the use of force outside their own monopoly of violence: strikers defending their picket lines, black people protecting their communities against racist nightriders, Central American peasants fighting back against the landlords’ army and hired killers.”
America’s rulers have a long history of harassing and criminalizing leftist dissent—from the legal lynching of the Haymarket Martyrs for organizing for the eight-hour day, to the Palmer Raids that led to the deportation of thousands of foreign-born radicals after World War I, and the Smith Act prosecution of leaders of the then-Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party on the eve of World War II. The postwar purges that drove the Stalinists and other leftists out of the unions, coming on the heels of the largest strike wave in U.S. history, were the domestic reflection of the Cold War against the Soviet Union. In the 1960s, those who protested against U.S. imperialism’s dirty war against the Vietnamese workers and peasants were painted as traitors, while the government unleashed its secret police against fighters for black rights at home, assassinating 38 Black Panther Party members and railroading hundreds more to prison.
Ominously, one of the Chicago activists subpoenaed in December is Maureen Murphy, managing editor of the online publication Electronic Intifada, who had helped spearhead the defense of those targeted in the September raids. As a January 24 protest letter to Attorney General Eric Holder by the PDC stated: “The clear implication is that anyone who defends the civil liberties of those smeared as ‘terrorists’ will themselves in turn be targeted as ‘terrorists’.”
Ultimately, what the racist capitalist rulers can get away with will be determined by the level of class and social struggle. As Marxists, we understand that there will be no justice served until the imperialist exploiters, war criminals and witchhunters are swept from power through a socialist revolution that overturns capitalist class rule and establishes a workers government.
* * *
Funds are urgently needed for the legal defense of the subpoenaed Midwest activists. Donations can be sent to Committee to Stop FBI Repression, PO Box 14183, Minneapolis, MN 55414. Letters of protest can be sent to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, U.S. Department of Justice, 950 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Washington, D.C. 20530-0001.
From The Partisan Defense Committee-South Korea-Free The Socialist Workers League Members Sentenced for Political Activity-Free All Class-War Prisoners!
Workers Vanguard No. 973
4 February 2011
South Korea
Socialist Workers League Members Sentenced for Political Activity
Free All Class-War Prisoners!
JANUARY 25—Eight supporters of the Socialist Workers League of Korea (SWLK) face serious prison sentences for the “crime” of supporting workers struggles and advocating socialist revolution. Charged in early December under the notorious National Security Law, they are due to be sentenced on January 27.
The National Security Law, enacted in 1948, has long been used to repress leftist and labor struggles in South Korea. Its sweeping provisions include a ban on forming or sympathizing with “anti-state” groups as well as the death penalty for activities in support of North Korea. Since right-wing president Lee Myung-bak came to power in 2008, his government has repeatedly tried to railroad SWLK activists to prison. It has also ramped up its suppression of labor struggles, including smashing a strike by workers at Ssangyong Motor Company in 2009.
These repressive moves come in the context of stepped-up U.S./South Korean provocations against North Korea and China, including last month’s joint military exercises in the Yellow Sea near the North Korean coast. Like a number of other South Korean left groups, the SWLK falsely characterizes North Korea and China as “state capitalist,” a characterization repeated by their spokesman Oh Sei-chull in his address to the court in December. In reality, these are bureaucratically deformed workers states, products of the revolutionary upheavals in Asia that followed the Second World War. The International Communist League stands for the unconditional military defense of China and North Korea against imperialism and counterrevolution, including supporting their possession of nuclear weapons to deter imperialist attack. At the same time, we oppose the privileged Stalinist bureaucracies in Beijing and Pyongyang, whose futile quest for “peaceful coexistence” with imperialism undermines defense of the revolutionary gains.
It is necessary to forge a Leninist-Trotskyist party based on proletarian internationalism to lead a struggle for the revolutionary reunification of Korea: for socialist revolution against the brutally repressive capitalist regime in the South and for workers political revolution to oust the Stalinist bureaucrats in the North. Linked to the fight for workers political revolution in China, this struggle must ultimately extend to the victory of proletarian rule in the imperialist heartlands of Japan and the U.S.
The persecution of the SWLK militants purely for their political beliefs gives the lie to the “democratic” pretensions of South Korean capitalism. Leftist and labor militants internationally must come to the defense of these activists. We print below a January 22 protest letter to the South Korean Embassy in Washington, D.C., by the Partisan Defense Committee, a legal and social defense organization associated with the Spartacist League, U.S. section of the ICL.
* * *
The Partisan Defense Committee demands that the charges against members of the Socialist Workers League of Korea (SWLK) be dropped and that they immediately be released. For their defense of several strikes and their participation in demonstrations these members face five to seven years in prison for “anti-state” activities.
Oh Sei-chull, Yang Hyo-seok, Yang Joon-seok, Choi Young-ik, Park Joon-seon, Jeong Won-hyun, Oh Min-gyu and Nam-goon Won were convicted under the draconian National Security Law. This law was enacted in 1948 to suppress any support for North Korea and has been used to criminalize all political opposition to successive reactionary South Korean regimes. This is no less true of the Lee Myung-bak government which has imprisoned striking workers, launched a campaign against migrant workers and cracked down on demonstrations his administration deems to be illegal, the definition of which has expanded greatly under his administration. The prosecution of these activists is part of the continued crackdown on those who, in the face of the brutal South Korean government, stand up for basic democratic rights and is a continuation of the brutal repression against the working class and its allies.
We demand: Free the SWLK 8! Drop the charges!
4 February 2011
South Korea
Socialist Workers League Members Sentenced for Political Activity
Free All Class-War Prisoners!
JANUARY 25—Eight supporters of the Socialist Workers League of Korea (SWLK) face serious prison sentences for the “crime” of supporting workers struggles and advocating socialist revolution. Charged in early December under the notorious National Security Law, they are due to be sentenced on January 27.
The National Security Law, enacted in 1948, has long been used to repress leftist and labor struggles in South Korea. Its sweeping provisions include a ban on forming or sympathizing with “anti-state” groups as well as the death penalty for activities in support of North Korea. Since right-wing president Lee Myung-bak came to power in 2008, his government has repeatedly tried to railroad SWLK activists to prison. It has also ramped up its suppression of labor struggles, including smashing a strike by workers at Ssangyong Motor Company in 2009.
These repressive moves come in the context of stepped-up U.S./South Korean provocations against North Korea and China, including last month’s joint military exercises in the Yellow Sea near the North Korean coast. Like a number of other South Korean left groups, the SWLK falsely characterizes North Korea and China as “state capitalist,” a characterization repeated by their spokesman Oh Sei-chull in his address to the court in December. In reality, these are bureaucratically deformed workers states, products of the revolutionary upheavals in Asia that followed the Second World War. The International Communist League stands for the unconditional military defense of China and North Korea against imperialism and counterrevolution, including supporting their possession of nuclear weapons to deter imperialist attack. At the same time, we oppose the privileged Stalinist bureaucracies in Beijing and Pyongyang, whose futile quest for “peaceful coexistence” with imperialism undermines defense of the revolutionary gains.
It is necessary to forge a Leninist-Trotskyist party based on proletarian internationalism to lead a struggle for the revolutionary reunification of Korea: for socialist revolution against the brutally repressive capitalist regime in the South and for workers political revolution to oust the Stalinist bureaucrats in the North. Linked to the fight for workers political revolution in China, this struggle must ultimately extend to the victory of proletarian rule in the imperialist heartlands of Japan and the U.S.
The persecution of the SWLK militants purely for their political beliefs gives the lie to the “democratic” pretensions of South Korean capitalism. Leftist and labor militants internationally must come to the defense of these activists. We print below a January 22 protest letter to the South Korean Embassy in Washington, D.C., by the Partisan Defense Committee, a legal and social defense organization associated with the Spartacist League, U.S. section of the ICL.
* * *
The Partisan Defense Committee demands that the charges against members of the Socialist Workers League of Korea (SWLK) be dropped and that they immediately be released. For their defense of several strikes and their participation in demonstrations these members face five to seven years in prison for “anti-state” activities.
Oh Sei-chull, Yang Hyo-seok, Yang Joon-seok, Choi Young-ik, Park Joon-seon, Jeong Won-hyun, Oh Min-gyu and Nam-goon Won were convicted under the draconian National Security Law. This law was enacted in 1948 to suppress any support for North Korea and has been used to criminalize all political opposition to successive reactionary South Korean regimes. This is no less true of the Lee Myung-bak government which has imprisoned striking workers, launched a campaign against migrant workers and cracked down on demonstrations his administration deems to be illegal, the definition of which has expanded greatly under his administration. The prosecution of these activists is part of the continued crackdown on those who, in the face of the brutal South Korean government, stand up for basic democratic rights and is a continuation of the brutal repression against the working class and its allies.
We demand: Free the SWLK 8! Drop the charges!
Don't "No-Fly" Libya- A Guest Commentary- Hands Of Libya- Down With Qaddafi
Don't "No-Fly" Libya
Submitted by ujpadmin1 on Tue, 03/08/2011 - 5:29pm.
by Phyllis Bennis
Institute for Policy Studies - March 4, 2011
Today in Libya, civilians are being killed by a besieged and isolated dictator. Libyan warplanes have been used to attack civilians, although the vast majority of the violence has come from ground attacks. The Libyan opposition’s provisional national council, meeting in Benghazi, is debating whether they should request military support from the international community, maybe the UN or NATO, starting with a no-fly zone. The Arab League announced that it was also considering establishing a no-fly zone, perhaps with the African Union.
It is unclear what casualties the airstrikes may have caused. The anti-regime forces have some access to anti-aircraft weapons, and Qaddafi has already lost planes and pilots alike to the opposition — but it is far from clear where the military balance lies.
Powerful U.S. voices — including neo-conservative warmongers and liberal interventionists in and out of the administration, as well as important anti-war forces in and out of Congress — are calling on the Obama administration to establish a no-fly zone inLibya to protect civilians.
A Libyan activist writes in The Guardian, “we welcome a no-fly zone, but the blood of Libya's dead will be wasted if the west curses our uprising with failed intervention.” He says that his hopes for a happy ending are “marred by a fear shared by all Libyans; that of a possible western military intervention to end the crisis.” He seems to believe that a U.S. or NATO no-fly zone would mean something other than a Western military intervention.
Ironically it was Secretary of Defense Robert Gates who warned that establishing a no-fly zone “begins with an attack on Libya.” It would be an act of war. And the Middle East doesn’t need another U.S. war.
What would a no-fly zone in Libya mean? A bit of history may provide some perspective.
Bombing Tripoli
The year was 1986. People had been killed, this time in a terrorist attack in Europe. The Libyan government, led by Muammar Qaddafi, was deemed responsible. The U.S. announced air strikesdirected at “key military sites” in Tripoli and Benghazi. Exactly the kind of targeted air strikes that would precede a no-fly zone. But according to the BBC, the missiles hit a densely populated Tripoli suburb, Bin Ashur. At least 100 people were killed, including Qaddafi’s three-year-old daughter. Qaddafi himself was fine.
Libyans remember.
Fast-forward half a decade. The 1991 Gulf War in Iraq was over. A besieged and defeated Arab dictator was posturing, threatening force, and the victorious U.S. decided to intervene again, officially for humanitarian reasons. The U.S. and Britain established unilateral “no-fly zones” in northern and southern Iraq. (U.S. and British officials consistently lied, claiming they were enforcing “United Nations no-fly zones,” but in fact no UN resolution ever even mentioned one.) During the twelve years of the no-fly zone, hundreds were killed by U.S. and British bombs.
Iraqis remember. So do Libyans.
Assume the “attack on Libya” preceding a no-fly zone succeeds in its very specific purpose: to eliminate the anti-aircraft weapons that could threaten U.S. planes enforcing the zone. But does that mean it also eliminates all anti-aircraft weapons in the hands of the opposition, the defectors from Qaddafi’s air force? What would the consequences be of that?
And then there are the “what if” factors. What if they made a mistake? The 1986 U.S. airstrikes inLibya were supposed to be aimed at military targets — yet more than 100 people, many of them civilians, were killed; why do we assume it will be any different this time? What if a U.S. warplane was shot down and pilots or bombers were captured by Qaddafi’s military? Wouldn’t U.S. Special Forces immediately be deployed to rescue them? Then what?
And that’s just the military part. That’s just the beginning.
Consequences
No-fly zones, like any other act of war, have consequences. In Libya, though it is impossible to precisely gauge public opinion, a significant majority of people appears opposed to the regime and prepared to mobilize and fight to bring it down. That is not surprising. While the Libyan revolt is playing out in vastly different ways, and with far greater bloodshed, it is part and parcel of the democratic revolutionary process rising across the Arab world and beyond. And just as in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Bahrain, and elsewhere, there is no evidence that the Libyan population supports foreign military involvement.
To the contrary, although at least part of the anti-Qaddafi leadership is indeed calling for some kind of military intervention, there appears to be widespread public opposition to such a call. Certainly there is fear that such foreign involvement will give credibility to Qaddafi’s currently false claims that foreigners are responsible for the uprising. But beyond that, there is a powerful appeal in the recognition that the democracy movements sweeping the Middle East and North Africa areindigenous, authentic, independent mobilizations against decades-long U.S.- and Western-backed dictatorship and oppression.
There have been broadly popular calls for international assistance to the anti-Qaddafi forces, including support for a UN-imposed assets freeze and referral to the International Criminal Court for top regime officials. And despite the breathtaking hypocrisy of the U.S., which embraces the ICC as a tool against Washington’s current opponents but rejects it for war criminals among its Israeli and other allies and refuses its jurisdiction for itself, the use of the Court for this purpose is very appropriate.
But there is no popular call for military intervention. Human rights lawyer and opposition spokesman Abdel-Hafidh Ghoga was crystal clear: “We are against any foreign intervention... This revolution will be completed by our people.” And Libyan General Ahmad Gatroni, who defected to lead the opposition forces, urged the U.S. to “take care of its own people, we can look after ourselves.”
Indeed, if the U.S. is so worried about the bombing raids against civilians, perhaps the Obama administration should take another look at Afghanistan, where nine Afghan children, ages seven to fourteen, were killed by U.S. attack helicopters in Kunar province on March 1st. If the Congress is so eager to follow the wishes of Libya’s opposition, perhaps General Gatroni’s call for the U.S. to “take care of its own people” could mean challenging another stark reality: the people of Wisconsin, facing a $1.8 billion budget deficit, will pay $1.7 billion in taxes this year just for their share of an already-existing war, the one in Afghanistan.
Global Opposition
Internationally, there is widespread public and governmental opposition in influential countries, such as India, to establishing a no-fly zone. In the United Nations, many governments are reluctant to order an act of war that would significantly escalate the military conflict underway in Libya. The Security Council resolution that passed unanimously on February 27 condemned the violence and imposed a set of targeted sanctions on the Qaddafi regime, but did not reference Article 42 of the UN Charter, the prerequisite for endorsing the use of force.
Instead, the Council relied on Article 41, which authorizes only “measures not involving the use of armed force.” Passage, let alone unanimity, would have been impossible otherwise. Russia’s ambassador specifically opposed what he called “counterproductive interventions,” and other key Council members, including veto-wielding China as well as rising powers India, South Africa, and Brazil, have all expressed various levels of caution and outright opposition to further militarizing the situation in Libya.
So far, the Obama administration and the Pentagon appear to be vacillating on support for a no-fly zone. An anonymous administration official told the New York Times“there’s a great temptation to stand up and say, ‘We’ll help you rid the country of a dictator’… But the president has been clear that what’s sweeping across the Middle East is organic to the region, and as soon as we become a military player, we’re at risk of falling into the old trap that Americans are stage-managing events for their own benefit.”
In fact that “old trap,” seizing control of international events for Washington’s own benefit, remains central to U.S. foreign policy. It’s becoming harder these days, as U.S. influence wanes. But key U.S. political forces are upping the pressure on Obama to send the troops — at least the Air Force. Those rooting for war include right-wing Republican warmongers eager to attack Obama as war-averse (despite all evidence to the contrary), as well, unfortunately, as some of the strongest anti-war voices in Congress (including Jim McDermott, Mike Honda, Keith Ellison, and others), who presumably believe that the humanitarian necessity of a no-fly zone still outweighs the dangers.
It doesn’t. Humanitarian crises simply do not shape U.S. policy. If they did, we might have heard a bit more last week when the Baghdad government — armed, financed, trained, and supported by the United States — killed 29 Iraqi civilians demonstrating against corruption. We might have seen humanitarian involvement in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where millions of civilians have been killed in Africa’s longest and perhaps most brutal war. And we might have seen, if not direct U.S. intervention, at least an end to the U.S. enabling of the Israeli assault on Gaza that killed more than 900 civilians, 313 of them children.
Rather, “humanitarian” concerns become a tool of powerful circles to build popular support for what would otherwise bring massive public outrage — “really, while the costs of existing wars have already brought the U.S. economy to its knees, you want to launch another U.S. war in the Middle East??”
Whose Humanitarianism?
It’s not that there are no real humanitarian concerns; Libyan civilians are paying a huge price in challenging their dictator. But powerful U.S. interests are at stake, and few of them have anything to do with protecting Libyan civilians. Certainly oil is key; not so much about access to Libyan oil (the international oil market is pretty fungible), but about which oil companies will gain privileged positions? Will it be BP and Chevron who win the lucrative contracts to develop Libya’s enormous oil fields, or will Chinese and Russian oil companies take their place? What pipelines will a new government in Libya choose, and which countries and corporations will benefit?
And it’s not only about oil. The Libyan uprising is one of many potentially revolutionary transformations across the Arab world and in parts of Africa, where long-standing U.S.-backed dictatorships are collapsing — what kind of credibility can the U.S. expect in post-Qaddafi Libya? Washington may be betting that it can win credibility with the opposition by jumping out in front with an aggressive anti-Qaddafi “military assistance” campaign, perhaps starting with a no-fly zone. But in fact Washington risks antagonizing those opposition supporters, apparently the vast majority, determined to protect the independence of their democratic revolution.
The future of Libya and much of the success of the democratic revolutions now underway across the region, stand in the balance. If the Obama administration, the Pentagon, war profiteers and the rest of the U.S. policymaking establishment continue to define U.S. “national interests” as continuing U.S. domination of oil-rich and strategically-located countries and regions, Washington faces a likely future of isolation, antagonism, rising terrorism and hatred.
The democratic revolutionary processes sweeping North Africa and the Middle East have already transformed that long-stalemated region. The peoples of the region are looking for less, not greater militarization of their countries. It is time for U.S. policy to recognize that reality. Saying no to a no-fly zone in Libya will be the best thing the Obama administration can do to begin the process of crafting a new, demilitarized 21st century policy for the U.S. in the newly democratizing Middle East.
Submitted by ujpadmin1 on Tue, 03/08/2011 - 5:29pm.
by Phyllis Bennis
Institute for Policy Studies - March 4, 2011
Today in Libya, civilians are being killed by a besieged and isolated dictator. Libyan warplanes have been used to attack civilians, although the vast majority of the violence has come from ground attacks. The Libyan opposition’s provisional national council, meeting in Benghazi, is debating whether they should request military support from the international community, maybe the UN or NATO, starting with a no-fly zone. The Arab League announced that it was also considering establishing a no-fly zone, perhaps with the African Union.
It is unclear what casualties the airstrikes may have caused. The anti-regime forces have some access to anti-aircraft weapons, and Qaddafi has already lost planes and pilots alike to the opposition — but it is far from clear where the military balance lies.
Powerful U.S. voices — including neo-conservative warmongers and liberal interventionists in and out of the administration, as well as important anti-war forces in and out of Congress — are calling on the Obama administration to establish a no-fly zone inLibya to protect civilians.
A Libyan activist writes in The Guardian, “we welcome a no-fly zone, but the blood of Libya's dead will be wasted if the west curses our uprising with failed intervention.” He says that his hopes for a happy ending are “marred by a fear shared by all Libyans; that of a possible western military intervention to end the crisis.” He seems to believe that a U.S. or NATO no-fly zone would mean something other than a Western military intervention.
Ironically it was Secretary of Defense Robert Gates who warned that establishing a no-fly zone “begins with an attack on Libya.” It would be an act of war. And the Middle East doesn’t need another U.S. war.
What would a no-fly zone in Libya mean? A bit of history may provide some perspective.
Bombing Tripoli
The year was 1986. People had been killed, this time in a terrorist attack in Europe. The Libyan government, led by Muammar Qaddafi, was deemed responsible. The U.S. announced air strikesdirected at “key military sites” in Tripoli and Benghazi. Exactly the kind of targeted air strikes that would precede a no-fly zone. But according to the BBC, the missiles hit a densely populated Tripoli suburb, Bin Ashur. At least 100 people were killed, including Qaddafi’s three-year-old daughter. Qaddafi himself was fine.
Libyans remember.
Fast-forward half a decade. The 1991 Gulf War in Iraq was over. A besieged and defeated Arab dictator was posturing, threatening force, and the victorious U.S. decided to intervene again, officially for humanitarian reasons. The U.S. and Britain established unilateral “no-fly zones” in northern and southern Iraq. (U.S. and British officials consistently lied, claiming they were enforcing “United Nations no-fly zones,” but in fact no UN resolution ever even mentioned one.) During the twelve years of the no-fly zone, hundreds were killed by U.S. and British bombs.
Iraqis remember. So do Libyans.
Assume the “attack on Libya” preceding a no-fly zone succeeds in its very specific purpose: to eliminate the anti-aircraft weapons that could threaten U.S. planes enforcing the zone. But does that mean it also eliminates all anti-aircraft weapons in the hands of the opposition, the defectors from Qaddafi’s air force? What would the consequences be of that?
And then there are the “what if” factors. What if they made a mistake? The 1986 U.S. airstrikes inLibya were supposed to be aimed at military targets — yet more than 100 people, many of them civilians, were killed; why do we assume it will be any different this time? What if a U.S. warplane was shot down and pilots or bombers were captured by Qaddafi’s military? Wouldn’t U.S. Special Forces immediately be deployed to rescue them? Then what?
And that’s just the military part. That’s just the beginning.
Consequences
No-fly zones, like any other act of war, have consequences. In Libya, though it is impossible to precisely gauge public opinion, a significant majority of people appears opposed to the regime and prepared to mobilize and fight to bring it down. That is not surprising. While the Libyan revolt is playing out in vastly different ways, and with far greater bloodshed, it is part and parcel of the democratic revolutionary process rising across the Arab world and beyond. And just as in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Bahrain, and elsewhere, there is no evidence that the Libyan population supports foreign military involvement.
To the contrary, although at least part of the anti-Qaddafi leadership is indeed calling for some kind of military intervention, there appears to be widespread public opposition to such a call. Certainly there is fear that such foreign involvement will give credibility to Qaddafi’s currently false claims that foreigners are responsible for the uprising. But beyond that, there is a powerful appeal in the recognition that the democracy movements sweeping the Middle East and North Africa areindigenous, authentic, independent mobilizations against decades-long U.S.- and Western-backed dictatorship and oppression.
There have been broadly popular calls for international assistance to the anti-Qaddafi forces, including support for a UN-imposed assets freeze and referral to the International Criminal Court for top regime officials. And despite the breathtaking hypocrisy of the U.S., which embraces the ICC as a tool against Washington’s current opponents but rejects it for war criminals among its Israeli and other allies and refuses its jurisdiction for itself, the use of the Court for this purpose is very appropriate.
But there is no popular call for military intervention. Human rights lawyer and opposition spokesman Abdel-Hafidh Ghoga was crystal clear: “We are against any foreign intervention... This revolution will be completed by our people.” And Libyan General Ahmad Gatroni, who defected to lead the opposition forces, urged the U.S. to “take care of its own people, we can look after ourselves.”
Indeed, if the U.S. is so worried about the bombing raids against civilians, perhaps the Obama administration should take another look at Afghanistan, where nine Afghan children, ages seven to fourteen, were killed by U.S. attack helicopters in Kunar province on March 1st. If the Congress is so eager to follow the wishes of Libya’s opposition, perhaps General Gatroni’s call for the U.S. to “take care of its own people” could mean challenging another stark reality: the people of Wisconsin, facing a $1.8 billion budget deficit, will pay $1.7 billion in taxes this year just for their share of an already-existing war, the one in Afghanistan.
Global Opposition
Internationally, there is widespread public and governmental opposition in influential countries, such as India, to establishing a no-fly zone. In the United Nations, many governments are reluctant to order an act of war that would significantly escalate the military conflict underway in Libya. The Security Council resolution that passed unanimously on February 27 condemned the violence and imposed a set of targeted sanctions on the Qaddafi regime, but did not reference Article 42 of the UN Charter, the prerequisite for endorsing the use of force.
Instead, the Council relied on Article 41, which authorizes only “measures not involving the use of armed force.” Passage, let alone unanimity, would have been impossible otherwise. Russia’s ambassador specifically opposed what he called “counterproductive interventions,” and other key Council members, including veto-wielding China as well as rising powers India, South Africa, and Brazil, have all expressed various levels of caution and outright opposition to further militarizing the situation in Libya.
So far, the Obama administration and the Pentagon appear to be vacillating on support for a no-fly zone. An anonymous administration official told the New York Times“there’s a great temptation to stand up and say, ‘We’ll help you rid the country of a dictator’… But the president has been clear that what’s sweeping across the Middle East is organic to the region, and as soon as we become a military player, we’re at risk of falling into the old trap that Americans are stage-managing events for their own benefit.”
In fact that “old trap,” seizing control of international events for Washington’s own benefit, remains central to U.S. foreign policy. It’s becoming harder these days, as U.S. influence wanes. But key U.S. political forces are upping the pressure on Obama to send the troops — at least the Air Force. Those rooting for war include right-wing Republican warmongers eager to attack Obama as war-averse (despite all evidence to the contrary), as well, unfortunately, as some of the strongest anti-war voices in Congress (including Jim McDermott, Mike Honda, Keith Ellison, and others), who presumably believe that the humanitarian necessity of a no-fly zone still outweighs the dangers.
It doesn’t. Humanitarian crises simply do not shape U.S. policy. If they did, we might have heard a bit more last week when the Baghdad government — armed, financed, trained, and supported by the United States — killed 29 Iraqi civilians demonstrating against corruption. We might have seen humanitarian involvement in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where millions of civilians have been killed in Africa’s longest and perhaps most brutal war. And we might have seen, if not direct U.S. intervention, at least an end to the U.S. enabling of the Israeli assault on Gaza that killed more than 900 civilians, 313 of them children.
Rather, “humanitarian” concerns become a tool of powerful circles to build popular support for what would otherwise bring massive public outrage — “really, while the costs of existing wars have already brought the U.S. economy to its knees, you want to launch another U.S. war in the Middle East??”
Whose Humanitarianism?
It’s not that there are no real humanitarian concerns; Libyan civilians are paying a huge price in challenging their dictator. But powerful U.S. interests are at stake, and few of them have anything to do with protecting Libyan civilians. Certainly oil is key; not so much about access to Libyan oil (the international oil market is pretty fungible), but about which oil companies will gain privileged positions? Will it be BP and Chevron who win the lucrative contracts to develop Libya’s enormous oil fields, or will Chinese and Russian oil companies take their place? What pipelines will a new government in Libya choose, and which countries and corporations will benefit?
And it’s not only about oil. The Libyan uprising is one of many potentially revolutionary transformations across the Arab world and in parts of Africa, where long-standing U.S.-backed dictatorships are collapsing — what kind of credibility can the U.S. expect in post-Qaddafi Libya? Washington may be betting that it can win credibility with the opposition by jumping out in front with an aggressive anti-Qaddafi “military assistance” campaign, perhaps starting with a no-fly zone. But in fact Washington risks antagonizing those opposition supporters, apparently the vast majority, determined to protect the independence of their democratic revolution.
The future of Libya and much of the success of the democratic revolutions now underway across the region, stand in the balance. If the Obama administration, the Pentagon, war profiteers and the rest of the U.S. policymaking establishment continue to define U.S. “national interests” as continuing U.S. domination of oil-rich and strategically-located countries and regions, Washington faces a likely future of isolation, antagonism, rising terrorism and hatred.
The democratic revolutionary processes sweeping North Africa and the Middle East have already transformed that long-stalemated region. The peoples of the region are looking for less, not greater militarization of their countries. It is time for U.S. policy to recognize that reality. Saying no to a no-fly zone in Libya will be the best thing the Obama administration can do to begin the process of crafting a new, demilitarized 21st century policy for the U.S. in the newly democratizing Middle East.
Thursday, February 10, 2011
*Victory To The Egyptian Workers' Strikes-Fight For A Revolutionary Constituent Assembly Now-Fight For A Workers Party That Fights For Workers And Peasants Government For The Future!
Markin comment:
As noted in the comment reposted below the events in Egypt are moving very swiftly with Mubarak apparently being pushed out on the plank. Nevertheless with Egyptian workers going on massive, although apparently unco-ordinated strikes, now is the time to go full throttle and fight for a revolutionary constituent assembly on the road to a socialist future. I have posted that demand as presented in the the Leon Trotsky-led Fourth International's Transitional Program of 1938 for consideration. Clearly the masses in Egypt are in revolutionary motion. Which way they go and how far depends on better organization, and political direction. Army rule under any guise (remember that is where Mubarak came from) is not what people have fought and died for in the streets of Egypt's cities. More later.
****
Reposted From Wednesday February 9, 2011
Markin comment:
The fast moving events in Egypt (and across the Middle East) cry out, cry out desperately, for the formation of a revolutionary workers party basing itself on democratic and socialist demands (the Transitional Program demands outlined by Leon Trotsky in the late 1930s, yes 1930s, as applicable to belated developed countries-the key immediate demand being the fight for a revolutionary constituent assembly) to gather around it workers, peasants and other allies to fight to the finish for a workers and peasants government. Can anything less be on the order of the day? I think not. Such situations, as the 30 plus years survival of the Mubarak regime testify to, show how rare such opportunities are and one better take maximum advantage, if not for the immediate struggle for power, then for the ability to fight later with the masses readily behind you.
****
From The Transitional Program Of The Fourth International (1938)- For the Complete Program Google The Leon Trotsky Internet Archives click on Written Archives and then click on 1938.
Backward Countries and the
Program of Transitional Demands
Colonial and semi-colonial countries are backward countries by their very essence. But backward countries are part of a world dominated by imperialism. Their development, therefore, has a combined character: the most primitive economic forms are combined with the last word in capitalist technique and culture. In like manner are defined the political strivings of the proletariat of backward countries: the struggle for the most elementary achievements of national independence and bourgeois democracy is combined with the socialist struggle against world imperialism. Democratic slogans, transitional demands and the problems of the socialist revolution are not divided into separate historical epochs in this struggle, but stem directly from one another. The Chinese proletariat had barely begun to organize trade unions before it had to provide for soviets. In this sense, the present program is completely applicable to colonial and semi-colonial countries, at least to those where the proletariat has become capable of carrying on independent politics.
The central task of the colonial and semi-colonial countries is the agrarian revolution, i.e., liquidation of feudal heritages, and national independence, i.e., the overthrow of the imperialist yoke. Both tasks are closely linked with each other.
It is impossible merely to reject the democratic program; it is imperative that in the struggle the masses outgrow it. The slogan for a National (or Constituent) Assembly preserves its full force for such countries as China or India. This slogan must be indissolubly tied up with the problem of national liberation and agrarian reform. As a primary step, the workers must be armed with this democratic program. Only they will be able to summon and unite the farmers. On the basis of the revolutionary democratic program, it is necessary to oppose the workers to the “national” bourgeoisie. Then, at a certain stage in the mobilization of the masses under the slogans of revolutionary democracy, soviets can and should arise. Their historical role in each given period, particularly their relation to the National Assembly, will be determined by the political level of the proletariat, the bond between them and the peasantry, and the character of the proletarian party policies. Sooner or later, the soviets should overthrow bourgeois democracy. Only they are capable of bringing the democratic revolution to a conclusion and likewise opening an era of socialist revolution.
The relative weight of the individual democratic and transitional demands in the proletariat’s struggle, their mutual ties and their order of presentation, is determined by the peculiarities and specific conditions of each backward country and to a considerable extent by the degree of its backwardness. Nevertheless, the general trend of revolutionary development in all backward countries can be determined by the formula of the permanent revolution in the sense definitely imparted to it by the three revolutions in Russia (1905, February 1917, October 1917).
The Comintern has provided backward countries with a classic example of how it is possible to ruin a powerful and promising revolution. During the stormy mass upsurge in China in 1925-27, the Comintern failed to advance the slogan for a National Assembly, and at the same time forbade the creation of soviets. (The bourgeois party, the Kuomintang, was to replace, according to Stalin’s plan, both the National Assembly and soviets.) After the masses had been smashed by the Kuomintang, the Comintern organized a caricature of a soviet in Canton. Following the inevitable collapse of the Canton uprising, the Comintern took the road of guerrilla warfare a peasant soviets with complete passivity on the part of the industrial proletariat. Landing thus in a blind alley, the Comintern took advantage of the Sino-Japanese War to liquidate “Soviet China” with a stroke of the pen, subordinating not only the peasant “Red Army” but also the so-called “Communist” Party to the identical Kuomintang, i.e., the bourgeoisie.
Having betrayed the international proletarian revolution for the sake of friendship with the “democratic” slavemasters, the Comintern could not help betraying simultaneously also the struggle for liberation of the colonial masses, and, indeed, with even greater cynicism than did the Second International before it. One of the tasks of People’s Front and “national defense” politics is to turn hundreds of millions of the colonial population into cannon fodder for “democratic” imperialism. The banner on which is emblazoned the struggle for the liberation of the colonial and semi-colonial peoples, i.e., a good half of mankind, has definitely passed into the hands of the Fourth International.
As noted in the comment reposted below the events in Egypt are moving very swiftly with Mubarak apparently being pushed out on the plank. Nevertheless with Egyptian workers going on massive, although apparently unco-ordinated strikes, now is the time to go full throttle and fight for a revolutionary constituent assembly on the road to a socialist future. I have posted that demand as presented in the the Leon Trotsky-led Fourth International's Transitional Program of 1938 for consideration. Clearly the masses in Egypt are in revolutionary motion. Which way they go and how far depends on better organization, and political direction. Army rule under any guise (remember that is where Mubarak came from) is not what people have fought and died for in the streets of Egypt's cities. More later.
****
Reposted From Wednesday February 9, 2011
Markin comment:
The fast moving events in Egypt (and across the Middle East) cry out, cry out desperately, for the formation of a revolutionary workers party basing itself on democratic and socialist demands (the Transitional Program demands outlined by Leon Trotsky in the late 1930s, yes 1930s, as applicable to belated developed countries-the key immediate demand being the fight for a revolutionary constituent assembly) to gather around it workers, peasants and other allies to fight to the finish for a workers and peasants government. Can anything less be on the order of the day? I think not. Such situations, as the 30 plus years survival of the Mubarak regime testify to, show how rare such opportunities are and one better take maximum advantage, if not for the immediate struggle for power, then for the ability to fight later with the masses readily behind you.
****
From The Transitional Program Of The Fourth International (1938)- For the Complete Program Google The Leon Trotsky Internet Archives click on Written Archives and then click on 1938.
Backward Countries and the
Program of Transitional Demands
Colonial and semi-colonial countries are backward countries by their very essence. But backward countries are part of a world dominated by imperialism. Their development, therefore, has a combined character: the most primitive economic forms are combined with the last word in capitalist technique and culture. In like manner are defined the political strivings of the proletariat of backward countries: the struggle for the most elementary achievements of national independence and bourgeois democracy is combined with the socialist struggle against world imperialism. Democratic slogans, transitional demands and the problems of the socialist revolution are not divided into separate historical epochs in this struggle, but stem directly from one another. The Chinese proletariat had barely begun to organize trade unions before it had to provide for soviets. In this sense, the present program is completely applicable to colonial and semi-colonial countries, at least to those where the proletariat has become capable of carrying on independent politics.
The central task of the colonial and semi-colonial countries is the agrarian revolution, i.e., liquidation of feudal heritages, and national independence, i.e., the overthrow of the imperialist yoke. Both tasks are closely linked with each other.
It is impossible merely to reject the democratic program; it is imperative that in the struggle the masses outgrow it. The slogan for a National (or Constituent) Assembly preserves its full force for such countries as China or India. This slogan must be indissolubly tied up with the problem of national liberation and agrarian reform. As a primary step, the workers must be armed with this democratic program. Only they will be able to summon and unite the farmers. On the basis of the revolutionary democratic program, it is necessary to oppose the workers to the “national” bourgeoisie. Then, at a certain stage in the mobilization of the masses under the slogans of revolutionary democracy, soviets can and should arise. Their historical role in each given period, particularly their relation to the National Assembly, will be determined by the political level of the proletariat, the bond between them and the peasantry, and the character of the proletarian party policies. Sooner or later, the soviets should overthrow bourgeois democracy. Only they are capable of bringing the democratic revolution to a conclusion and likewise opening an era of socialist revolution.
The relative weight of the individual democratic and transitional demands in the proletariat’s struggle, their mutual ties and their order of presentation, is determined by the peculiarities and specific conditions of each backward country and to a considerable extent by the degree of its backwardness. Nevertheless, the general trend of revolutionary development in all backward countries can be determined by the formula of the permanent revolution in the sense definitely imparted to it by the three revolutions in Russia (1905, February 1917, October 1917).
The Comintern has provided backward countries with a classic example of how it is possible to ruin a powerful and promising revolution. During the stormy mass upsurge in China in 1925-27, the Comintern failed to advance the slogan for a National Assembly, and at the same time forbade the creation of soviets. (The bourgeois party, the Kuomintang, was to replace, according to Stalin’s plan, both the National Assembly and soviets.) After the masses had been smashed by the Kuomintang, the Comintern organized a caricature of a soviet in Canton. Following the inevitable collapse of the Canton uprising, the Comintern took the road of guerrilla warfare a peasant soviets with complete passivity on the part of the industrial proletariat. Landing thus in a blind alley, the Comintern took advantage of the Sino-Japanese War to liquidate “Soviet China” with a stroke of the pen, subordinating not only the peasant “Red Army” but also the so-called “Communist” Party to the identical Kuomintang, i.e., the bourgeoisie.
Having betrayed the international proletarian revolution for the sake of friendship with the “democratic” slavemasters, the Comintern could not help betraying simultaneously also the struggle for liberation of the colonial masses, and, indeed, with even greater cynicism than did the Second International before it. One of the tasks of People’s Front and “national defense” politics is to turn hundreds of millions of the colonial population into cannon fodder for “democratic” imperialism. The banner on which is emblazoned the struggle for the liberation of the colonial and semi-colonial peoples, i.e., a good half of mankind, has definitely passed into the hands of the Fourth International.
Obama, FBI- Hands Off The "Anonymous" Group
Click on the headline to link to an NPR online report, dated February 10, 2011, on the "Anonymous" Group (Hey that is what they are called and if you listen to the story you will know why.) that has been acting as a cyberspace thorn in the side of the American government and assorted businesses
Markin comment:
I have run into some supporters of this group and they are interesting, kind of soft anarchist techie-types. Not Bolsheviks by any means but, seemingly, their hearts are in the right place. Hands Off "Anonymous" Group. And while we are at- Hands Off Wikileaks!- Hands Off The Chicago and Minneapolis Anti-war and Anti-Imperialist activists!- Free Private Bradley Manning! See, they all goes together, right?
Markin comment:
I have run into some supporters of this group and they are interesting, kind of soft anarchist techie-types. Not Bolsheviks by any means but, seemingly, their hearts are in the right place. Hands Off "Anonymous" Group. And while we are at- Hands Off Wikileaks!- Hands Off The Chicago and Minneapolis Anti-war and Anti-Imperialist activists!- Free Private Bradley Manning! See, they all goes together, right?
From The Archives Of The Spartacist League (U.S.)-Revolutionary Integration:Program for Black Liberation-The Work Of Richard Fraser
February Is Black History Month
Markin comment:
In October 2010 I started what I anticipate will be an on-going series, From The Archives Of The Socialist Workers Party (America), starting date October 2, 2010, where I will place documents from, and make comments on, various aspects of the early days of the James P. Cannon-led Socialist Worker Party in America. As I noted in the introduction to that series Marxism, no less than other political traditions, and perhaps more than most, places great emphasis on roots, the building blocks of current society and its political organizations. Nowhere is the notion of roots more prevalent in the Marxist movement that in the tracing of organizational and political links back to the founders, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the Communist Manifesto, and the Communist League.
After mentioning the thread of international linkage through various organizations from the First to the Fourth International I also noted that on the national terrain in the Trotskyist movement, and here I was speaking of America where the Marxist roots are much more attenuated than elsewhere, we look to Daniel DeLeon’s Socialist Labor League, Eugene V. Debs' Socialist Party( mainly its left-wing, not its socialism for dentists wing), the Wobblies (IWW, Industrial Workers Of The World), the early Bolshevik-influenced Communist Party and the various formations that led up to the Socialist Workers Party, the section that Leon Trotsky’s relied on most while he was alive. Further, I noted that beyond the SWP that there were several directions to go in but that those earlier lines were the bedrock of revolutionary Marxist continuity, at least through the 1960s.
I am continuing today what I also anticipate will be an on-going series about one of those strands past the 1960s when the SWP lost it revolutionary appetite, what was then the Revolutionary Tendency (RT) and what is now the Spartacist League (SL/U.S.), the U.S. section of the International Communist League (ICL). I intend to post materials from other strands but there are several reasons for starting with the SL/U.S. A main one, as the document below will make clear, is that the origin core of that organization fought, unsuccessfully in the end, to struggle from the inside (an important point) to turn the SWP back on a revolutionary course, as they saw it. Moreover, a number of the other organizations that I will cover later trace their origins to the SL, including the very helpful source for posting this material, the International Bolshevik Tendency.
However as I noted in posting a document from Spartacist, the theoretical journal of ICL posted via the International Bolshevik Tendency website that is not the main reason I am starting with the SL/U.S. Although I am not a political supporter of either organization in the accepted Leninist sense of that term, more often than not, and at times and on certain questions very much more often than not, my own political views and those of the International Communist League coincide. I am also, and I make no bones about it, a fervent supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a social and legal defense organization linked to the ICL and committed, in the traditions of the IWW, the early International Labor Defense-legal defense arm of the Communist International, and the early defense work of the American Socialist Workers Party, to the struggles for freedom of all class-war prisoners and defense of other related social struggles.
***********
Markin comment on this article:
The black question as it is called in the Marxist movement, the question of class and race intertwined in the class struggle in America, is central to the strategy for revolutionary. Period. The struggle to find a way to the black masses through the black workers, who have historically been among the most militant sections of the working class, has been long, hard, vexing, and in certain periods fruitless (due to apathy or the predominance of various black nationalist or liberal assimilationist ideolgies. Fraser's work was invaluable as a first step toward sorting things out. Forward!
********
Richard S. Fraser, 1913-1988
Written: 1994 (1990)
Source: Prometheus Research Library, New York.
Transcription/Markup/Proofing: John Heckman, Prometheus Research Library.
Public Domain: Encyclopedia of Trotskyism On-Line 2006/Prometheus Research Library. You can freely copy, display and otherwise distribute this work. Please credit the Marxists Internet Archive & Prometheus Research Library as your source, include the url to this work, and note the transcribers & editors above.
Richard S. Fraser, a veteran Trotskyist and tenacious fighter for black freedom, died in his sleep on November 27 [1988] at the age of 75. For the last several years Dick fought to overcome many painful and debilitating illnesses, mustering the courage to face endless operations, so that he could continue his research and literary work on the question of the revolutionary struggle for black liberation in America. Comrade Fraser was not only a cherished friend but a theoretical mentor of the Spartacist League. SL National Chairman Jim Robertson has acknowledged his considerable personal political debt to comrade Fraser.
Dick Fraser was a co-reporter on the black question at our founding conference in 1966. His work was published as part of our Marxist Bulletin No. 5, “What Strategy for Black Liberation? Trotskyism vs. Black Nationalism,” and he was a close collaborator in our work to establish organizations of labor/black defense. As the Labor Black League for Social Defense in the Bay Area wrote in memoriam: “Richard Fraser was our teacher, the author of ‘For the Materialist Conception of the Negro Question’ that lights the road to black freedom through the program of revolutionary integration, the assimilation of black people into an egalitarian socialist society.”
Fraser joined the Trotskyist movement in 1934, recruited on a cross-country Greyhound bus trip by a member of the newly formed Workers Party—the product of a fusion between the Trotskyist Communist League of America and A.J. Muste’s American Workers Party. For close to 30 years he was an organizer of the Socialist Workers Party on the West Coast in Los Angeles and Seattle; for at least 20 years he was a member of the SWP’s National Committee. In the Pacific Northwest Fraser won several members of the Communist Party in Seattle to Trotskyism following the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and the Khrushchev revelations. That Seattle was the place where the SWP had its most significant success in cracking the Stalinists is a testament to the persistence and political capabilities of Richard Fraser.
Through his involvement in black freedom struggles and experience in the recruitment and subsequent loss of hundreds of black workers from the SWP following World War II, Dick came to believe that the American communist movement had failed to come to grips with the question of black liberation in this country. Although lacking much formal education, he dedicated himself to the study of the black question. Criticizing the SWP for underestimating the revolutionary challenge to American capitalism posed by the integrationist struggles for black equality, in 1955 he submitted his document “For the Materialist Conception of the Negro Question.” Here Fraser counterposed revolutionary integration to the SWP’s turn toward a separatist “self-determination” ideology (associated particularly with George Breitman), which would become a theoretical cover for its abstention from the mass civil rights movement in the early 1960s and subsequent full-blown capitulation to black nationalism.
Dick came into disfavor with the SWP leadership when he opposed the party’s adoption of the call for federal troops to protect Southern blacks. In his “Resolution on the Little Rock Crisis” Fraser tore apart the SWP’s support to Eisenhower’s introduction of federal troops in Little Rock in 1957, powerfully pointing out that the end result had been the crushing of local black self-defense efforts. In the 1960s Fraser along with other SWP spokesmen was propelled out of the party as it plunged from centrism to reformism. As he wrote in a letter to his son: “It was I who initiated the split from the SWP by publicly attacking its Personal Representative, my old friend Asher Harer, whom I had recruited in 1935, for the SWP stand on the Vietnam War, and proclaiming that the way to ‘BRING THE TROOPS HOME’ was for the Viet Cong to drive them into the South China Sea.”
Fraser went on to found the Seattle-based Freedom Socialist Party. Cut off by a split in the FSP, Dick went into the New American Movement hoping that he could influence and educate some of these young New Leftists in the old Leninist school. With the fusion of NAM and the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee Fraser was subsequently carried into the Democratic Socialists of America.
Over the years we had our disagreements with Dick. Neither of us tried to hide these, but we were always happy to bend the stick in favor of the areas of profound political agreement between us. In his later years Fraser was handicapped by the loss of his Marxist library, which the SL sought to replenish, and of his personal working papers. In turn Dick’s collaboration was invaluable in elaborating a perspective for rooting the SL among militant black workers and youth. Fraser’s formal membership in other organizations obviously stood in contradiction to his fervent political beliefs, a contradiction which was resolved in his last years. Sharing our outrage over the U.S. bombing of Libya, he distanced himself from the DSA.
Addressing the SL/U.S. Seventh National Conference (1983) on the question of the organization of labor/black leagues, Dick spoke movingly:
“I’ve had some discussions with many comrades, which have been very gratifying, and I am humbled by the knowledge that things that I wrote 30 years ago, which were so scorned by the old party, have had some important impact, finally.”
Dick’s last political act before his death was his endorsement of the November 5 Mobilization that stopped the Klan in Philadelphia. That satisfying mobilization of the power of integrated labor was a testament to our comrade Richard Fraser who in endorsing identified himself as a “historic American Trotskyist.” That he was, and his loss will be keenly felt.
Adapted from Workers Vanguard
No. 466, 2 December 1988
**********
Introductory Note by the Prometheus Research Library
Revolutionary Integration:Program for Black Liberation
Written: 1990
Source: Prometheus Research Library, New York.
Transcription/Markup/Proofing: John Heckman, Prometheus Research Library.
Public Domain: Encyclopedia of Trotskyism On-Line 2006/Prometheus Research Library. You can freely copy, display and otherwise distribute this work. Please credit the Marxists Internet Archive & Prometheus Research Library as your source, include the url to this work, and note the transcribers & editors above.
When, as a young Trotskyist activist, Dick Fraser became convinced that American Marxism had not come to terms with the question of black liberation, he made a life-long commitment to study of the question. Although he was hampered by little formal scholarly training, his Marxist understanding and his broad experience in militant struggles with black workers sharpened his insight into the lessons of history. His dedicated study sprang from his conviction that in order to forge a program for black liberation, it is necessary to study the social forces that created the American institution of racial oppression. Fraser turned to the writings of the militant fighters for black equality during the Civil War and Reconstruction and to the pioneering studies by black academics such as E. Franklin Frazier and Oliver Cromwell Cox. To Fraser, understanding the roots of black oppression in the United States was no armchair activity; he carried his theory of Revolutionary Integration into struggle.
With the publication of this bulletin we are honoring Fraser’s fighting scholarship. In the past few years Trotskyism has lost three scholar-militants from the generation brought to revolutionary consciousness by the combative class struggles of the 1930s. George Breitman, who died in April 1986, was as a proponent of black “self-determination” Fraser’s main political opponent within the SWP on the black question. He was also the Pathfinder Press editor responsible for the publication of the works of Leon Trotsky and James P. Cannon. And in July 1990 the Trotsky scholar Louis Sinclair died. As the author of Leon Trotsky: A Bibliography (Hoover Institution Press, 1972), Sinclair performed an invaluable service to the revolutionary movement in documenting and collecting Trotsky’s writings in many languages. Now the tradition of revolutionary scholarship so honorably exemplified by Richard Fraser, George Breitman and Louis Sinclair must be carried on by a new generation of Marxists.
The U.S. capitalist class and its minions would like to forget this country’s modern origins in the Second American Revolution that was the Civil War. To understand the Civil War is to understand the character of U.S. society and its fatal flaw of racism. As Dave Dreiser, Fraser’s long-time collaborator and friend, writes in his 16 April 1990 letter to Jim Robertson (see below), for decades the academic racists of the William Dunning school of U.S. history legitimized the racist status quo. Their “interpretation” was popularized in the movies Birth of a Nation and Gone With the Wind.
The outbreak of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s and the struggle for black equality inspired a new generation of historians, who began to reexamine central issues of American history, in particular the Civil War and Reconstruction. The distinguished James M. McPherson, author of Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era and The Struggle for Equality: Abolitionists and the Negro in the Civil War and Reconstruction, is only one of the many scholars who have documented the heroic struggles of this revolutionary period. Eminent scholars who have studied southern slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction also include Eugene Genovese, Kenneth Stampp, C. Vann Woodward and Eric Foner.
Today the empiricist/racist brand of “scholarship” represented by Harvard historian Robert Fogel, author of Time on the Cross, is the academic reflection of the American ruling class’s renewed war on the black population. In 1965 Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then an assistant secretary at the Department of Labor, wrote The Negro Family: The Case for National Action, in which he outrageously argued that the “fundamental problem...of family structure” was responsible for the intensification of poverty, joblessness, segregation in housing and lack of education suffered by the masses in the big city ghettoes. Bourgeois-empirical sociology (accompanied by pages of charts and graphs) served to provide a pseudo-scientific cover for the old “blame the victim” lies. In 1970 Moynihan coined the term “benign neglect” to describe the federal policy signalling the rollback of the token gains of the civil rights movement. Federal funding for poverty programs dried up; the government under Nixon, Carter and Reagan dismantled civil rights legislation and destroyed even the minimal plans for busing to achieve school integration.
Dick Fraser’s Marxist scholarship utterly rejected the manipulation of history to justify the racist status quo. At the time of his death in 1988 Fraser, with Dave Dreiser, was actively working on notes and abstracts for a book, The Rise of the Slave Power, the result of over 40 years of study. The book was to be a Marxist analysis of the rise of the southern slavocracy, the class antagonisms which exploded in the 1861-1865 Civil War between the capitalist North and the slave South and the leading role of the militant abolitionists in the destruction of black chattel slavery.
While his primary area of study was the black question, Dick Fraser was active in many arenas of struggle. In selecting the documents for this bulletin we have sought to show the breadth of his work. Of documents omitted from this collection there are two worthy of special note: “For the Materialist Conception of the Negro Question” is not published here only because it is readily available in the Spartacist League’s Marxist Bulletin No. 5R, “What Strategy for Black Liberation? Trotskyism vs. Black Nationalism.”
The 1958 “Resolution on the Little Rock Crisis,” in which Fraser sharply exposes the SWP policy of calling for federal troops to intervene in the Little Rock, Arkansas school integration crisis, is also omitted. Fraser’s position is well represented in two other, shorter documents which we have included, “Contribution to the Discussion on the Slogan ‘Send Federal Troops to Mississippi’ ” and a letter, “On Federal Troops in Little Rock.”
Those who would like to read further are directed to the bibliography of Fraser’s writings included here as an appendix. All of these materials are available at the Prometheus Research Library.
Editorial Note: As a member of the Socialist Workers Party and the Freedom Socialist Party Dick Fraser often used the name Richard Kirk. The bibliography distinguishes all documents written under the name Kirk with an asterisk. Our introductions give the source and some background for the documents, which have been edited to correct minor errors and inconsistencies. Some purely personal material in the letters has been cut out. The PRL has added brief explanations to clarify references when necessary; these appear in brackets. All footnotes and parenthetical material are by Dick Fraser.
Prometheus Research Library
July 1990
********
Fraser and American Scholarship
on the Black Question
by David Dreiser
Written: 1990
Source: Prometheus Research Library, New York.
Transcription/Markup/Proofing: John Heckman, Prometheus Research Library.
Public Domain: Encyclopedia of Trotskyism On-Line 2006/Prometheus Research Library. You can freely copy, display and otherwise distribute this work. Please credit the Marxists Internet Archive & Prometheus Research Library as your source, include the url to this work, and note the transcribers & editors above.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Academic scholarship regarding U.S. history has gone through several phases. After the failure of Reconstruction, scholarship went through a very reactionary period. Beginning in the 1890’s, William Dunning of Columbia and a host of his students spread the view that Reconstruction was the shame of U.S. history and represented military despotism, the evil of “Africanization,” and unrestrained corruption against which a noble but defeated South tried to defend itself. Claude Bowers’ The Tragic Era (1929) was the most influential work of this ilk.
Ulrich Phillips presented a view of slavery as relatively benign. Slaves were well treated and well fed, and the system was productive. Justin Smith presented a view of the Mexican War in which the arrogant Mexicans were totally to blame. These reactionary and pro-Southern views of U.S. history dominated the academies and formed the basis for the teaching of U.S. history in high schools and universities for decades following.
The Civil War was regarded as some terrible mistake in which the issue of slavery was minor. Abolitionists had been self-seeking rabble-rousers whose comments on slavery and the politics of their day can be ignored. The defamation of the radical Republicans, Charles Sumner, Thaddeus Stevens, etc., as power mad psychotics became a cottage industry.
Even in those days there were other voices. In 1913 John R. Lynch, former slave and later congressman from Mississippi, wrote The Facts of Reconstruction in which he tried to tell some truth, but his excellent work was lost in a sea of racist “scholarship.” A few words from the introduction to a reprint of his book are instructive:
“These scholars contended that the Reconstruction governments in the South were controlled by base, power-hungry carpetbaggers and scalawags who cynically used the newly enfranchised blacks to gain power and to sustain their debauchery in office. Without the votes of naive and illiterate Negroes, who were easily led to the polls to vote the Radical ticket, these scoundrels would never have had an opportunity in any of the states to plunder the public treasuries and incite blacks against whites, according to the Dunning-school historians.
“Therefore the fundamental mistake in the Radical or congressional plan of Reconstruction was the enfranchisement of the freedmen. Happily, however, according to the established version of the story, during the mid-1870’s decent whites in both sections of the nation rose in indignation over the spoliation of the Southern states, and through the heroic efforts of local Democrats the Radical Republican regimes were overthrown and good government restored.”
After 1960 a new wind blew in the colleges and a number of honest scholars began to chip away at the mountain of pro-Southern reactionary propaganda that still dominated. C. Vann Woodward, Eugene D. Genovese and James M. McPherson are prominent. Other outstanding names are Kenneth Stampp, George Fredrickson and Herbert Gutman, not to mention John Hope Franklin, A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr., Henrietta Buckmaster, and other black scholars.
So what is missing? Hasn’t everything been straightened out? I don’t believe so. Let’s take the issue of the nature of slavery. In 1974 a Harvard scholar, Robert Fogel, wrote Time On the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery, a study of slavery based on “cliometrics” which is a computerized technique of examining statistical data. Fogel concluded that slave labor was more efficient than free labor and hence more productive. The slaves were well off and better fed than free workers in the North. Fogel has written a new work in 1989 expanding on this theme. C. Vann Woodward has reviewed Fogel’s new book and seems at a loss to know how to criticize it even if he seems uncomfortable with Fogel’s conclusions.
In the meantime, Fogel and his new toy, cliometrics, are the rage in academic circles and a new generation of scholars using the technique are collecting their PhDs at Harvard and are fanning out around the country. I asked a Harvard history student if the slaves’ own view of slavery might not paint a different picture of how well off they were. Patiently he explained to me that the slaves’ stories were largely taken down by abolitionists, and of course nothing they wrote can be believed! How, one might ask, could the words of slaves hold up to data manipulated by a computer? One might also ask in studying the Holocaust if it would be permissible to consider the recollections of the survivors, whose views would obviously be biased, or only the views of the guards and administrators who ran the camps?
Thirty years of new scholarship haven’t had much effect on the views of history taught in our schools, although there has been some correction. For instance, students of Mexican history at Stanford U. are now taught that the Mexican War was started with an unprovoked attack by U.S. forces ordered by President Polk. Well, that’s true, but it is not enough. What were the class forces that caused the Mexican War? The new scholars not only fail to answer such questions, but consider such a question improper.
The best academic scholars are committed to a view of history that regards any kind of economic determinism as quaint. History is regarded basically as narrative. There was no bourgeois revolution in England. The French Revolution had many causes, but it was not a clash between class forces. The view that struggles between classes is a determining factor in history is Marxist fantasy. In fact in the sense that Marx meant, there are no classes.
This crass empiricism did not always dominate U.S. scholarship. There used to be at least a counter-current of materialism that had legitimacy as in Charles Beard’s day. But, if anything, methodology has deteriorated since then. For instance, Kenneth Stampp has written The Era of Reconstruction, 1865-1877 (1965) as a total revision of the Dunning school. His work is excellent in many ways, but he says, “DuBois’s attempt at a full-scale revisionist study, Black Reconstruction (New York, 1935), is disappointing. Though rich in empirical detail, the book presents a Marxian interpretation of southern reconstruction as a proletarian movement that is at best naive. The Marxist historian James S. Allen in Reconstruction: The Battle for Democracy, 1865-1876 (New York, 1937) offers an interpretation that is more credible but equally schematic.”
It is no longer necessary to refute Marxism which is simply dismissed as naive, quaint and schematic. In spite of this I believe a thorough class analysis has been written regarding Reconstruction by Eric Foner. His Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution 1863-1877 (1988) is Marxist in content if not in name and meets the most strict demands of scholarship.
Who has spoken in like voice for the antebellum period? Dick felt no one has, that is no one lately. Charles Beard was accused of being a Marxist in his economic interpretation of the Constitution, but he replied that if so, then so was James Madison from whom he drew much of his “economic” view. In like manner Dick’s and my view of the period between say 1776 and 1860 is drawn very largely from Horace Greeley, Charles Sumner, John A. Logan (The Great Conspiracy: Its Origin and History [1885]), Henry Wilson, Benjamin Lundy (The War in Texas [1836]) and other radical Republicans and abolitionists. I submit that their penetrating analyses of the events of their day have never been refuted, but have been dismissed and forgotten.
Even today the abolitionists are regarded in scholarly circles with great suspicion. People committed to a cause cannot be objective observers or commentators, it is said. Black scholars have largely tackled the issue of restoring the role of slaves and black leaders to proper perspective. A class analysis has largely been absent. In a sense Dick wanted to restore the views and scholarship of the radicals of those days. That is not an unworthy purpose.
A brief word about “revisionism” may be needed. Kenneth Stampp regards himself and other post-1960 liberal scholars as revisionists, that is compared with the Dunning school. But, Dunning a generation before had considered himself a revisionist of the views of the mid-19th century. Robert Fogel might be called a new revisionist of the revisionists of the revisionists. I think it is better not to use the term.
I know that a lot of “Marxists” in our movement have tended to take scholarship lightly. Substituting theory for research, they generalize at the drop of a hat. However, it is not always necessary for research to be original to be used in a valid general analysis. For instance Edward Diener is a U. of Illinois scholar who wrote a commentary on U.S. history (Reinterpreting U.S. History [1975]). The book is not annotated and makes no pretense of original scholarship. His book just expresses a point of view which is an altogether legitimate practice. His view happens to be fairly conservative. Dick wanted to make reasonable use of available scholarship to express a point of view about U.S. history.
Briefly, Dick’s view was that after the invention of the cotton gin the slave system took on new life and the compromise between the planters and the merchant capitalists in the North and expressed in the U.S. Constitution fell apart. The planters wanted state power for themselves, and effectively won it with the election of Andrew Jackson. In the main, they controlled the presidency and Congress from then until 1860. Their power was based on a class alliance between themselves and the free farmers of the North who had similar interests on some questions such as soft money and low tariffs.
This alliance operated to stunt the growth of capitalism. The power of the planters was expressed through their control of the Democratic Party. The Whig “opposition” was about as effective as the Democratic opposition to the Republicans today. The subservience of the Whigs gave the planters effective state power.
When the abolitionists spoke of the Slave Power they were not being inflammatory but analytical.
The Republican Party was a revolutionary party which led the nation through the Civil War to an overthrow of planter power and the ascendency of the capitalist state. The failure of that social revolution to proceed through Reconstruction to a resolution of the land question in the South by giving land and the franchise to the freedmen set the stage for the racist nation we have inherited.
Dick would have wanted to cover a broad sweep going on to the aftermath of Reconstruction, but that is all over with his passing. But, certainly it is appropriate to finish his beginning treatment covering the ascendency of the Slave Power.
I further believe that the best of current academic scholars have not told Dick’s story. They have made a major effort to reduce the blatant racism that dominated the academies for 80 years, but in method, empiricism is today more dominant in the study of history than ever before.
David Dreiser
16 April 1990
Markin comment:
In October 2010 I started what I anticipate will be an on-going series, From The Archives Of The Socialist Workers Party (America), starting date October 2, 2010, where I will place documents from, and make comments on, various aspects of the early days of the James P. Cannon-led Socialist Worker Party in America. As I noted in the introduction to that series Marxism, no less than other political traditions, and perhaps more than most, places great emphasis on roots, the building blocks of current society and its political organizations. Nowhere is the notion of roots more prevalent in the Marxist movement that in the tracing of organizational and political links back to the founders, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the Communist Manifesto, and the Communist League.
After mentioning the thread of international linkage through various organizations from the First to the Fourth International I also noted that on the national terrain in the Trotskyist movement, and here I was speaking of America where the Marxist roots are much more attenuated than elsewhere, we look to Daniel DeLeon’s Socialist Labor League, Eugene V. Debs' Socialist Party( mainly its left-wing, not its socialism for dentists wing), the Wobblies (IWW, Industrial Workers Of The World), the early Bolshevik-influenced Communist Party and the various formations that led up to the Socialist Workers Party, the section that Leon Trotsky’s relied on most while he was alive. Further, I noted that beyond the SWP that there were several directions to go in but that those earlier lines were the bedrock of revolutionary Marxist continuity, at least through the 1960s.
I am continuing today what I also anticipate will be an on-going series about one of those strands past the 1960s when the SWP lost it revolutionary appetite, what was then the Revolutionary Tendency (RT) and what is now the Spartacist League (SL/U.S.), the U.S. section of the International Communist League (ICL). I intend to post materials from other strands but there are several reasons for starting with the SL/U.S. A main one, as the document below will make clear, is that the origin core of that organization fought, unsuccessfully in the end, to struggle from the inside (an important point) to turn the SWP back on a revolutionary course, as they saw it. Moreover, a number of the other organizations that I will cover later trace their origins to the SL, including the very helpful source for posting this material, the International Bolshevik Tendency.
However as I noted in posting a document from Spartacist, the theoretical journal of ICL posted via the International Bolshevik Tendency website that is not the main reason I am starting with the SL/U.S. Although I am not a political supporter of either organization in the accepted Leninist sense of that term, more often than not, and at times and on certain questions very much more often than not, my own political views and those of the International Communist League coincide. I am also, and I make no bones about it, a fervent supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a social and legal defense organization linked to the ICL and committed, in the traditions of the IWW, the early International Labor Defense-legal defense arm of the Communist International, and the early defense work of the American Socialist Workers Party, to the struggles for freedom of all class-war prisoners and defense of other related social struggles.
***********
Markin comment on this article:
The black question as it is called in the Marxist movement, the question of class and race intertwined in the class struggle in America, is central to the strategy for revolutionary. Period. The struggle to find a way to the black masses through the black workers, who have historically been among the most militant sections of the working class, has been long, hard, vexing, and in certain periods fruitless (due to apathy or the predominance of various black nationalist or liberal assimilationist ideolgies. Fraser's work was invaluable as a first step toward sorting things out. Forward!
********
Richard S. Fraser, 1913-1988
Written: 1994 (1990)
Source: Prometheus Research Library, New York.
Transcription/Markup/Proofing: John Heckman, Prometheus Research Library.
Public Domain: Encyclopedia of Trotskyism On-Line 2006/Prometheus Research Library. You can freely copy, display and otherwise distribute this work. Please credit the Marxists Internet Archive & Prometheus Research Library as your source, include the url to this work, and note the transcribers & editors above.
Richard S. Fraser, a veteran Trotskyist and tenacious fighter for black freedom, died in his sleep on November 27 [1988] at the age of 75. For the last several years Dick fought to overcome many painful and debilitating illnesses, mustering the courage to face endless operations, so that he could continue his research and literary work on the question of the revolutionary struggle for black liberation in America. Comrade Fraser was not only a cherished friend but a theoretical mentor of the Spartacist League. SL National Chairman Jim Robertson has acknowledged his considerable personal political debt to comrade Fraser.
Dick Fraser was a co-reporter on the black question at our founding conference in 1966. His work was published as part of our Marxist Bulletin No. 5, “What Strategy for Black Liberation? Trotskyism vs. Black Nationalism,” and he was a close collaborator in our work to establish organizations of labor/black defense. As the Labor Black League for Social Defense in the Bay Area wrote in memoriam: “Richard Fraser was our teacher, the author of ‘For the Materialist Conception of the Negro Question’ that lights the road to black freedom through the program of revolutionary integration, the assimilation of black people into an egalitarian socialist society.”
Fraser joined the Trotskyist movement in 1934, recruited on a cross-country Greyhound bus trip by a member of the newly formed Workers Party—the product of a fusion between the Trotskyist Communist League of America and A.J. Muste’s American Workers Party. For close to 30 years he was an organizer of the Socialist Workers Party on the West Coast in Los Angeles and Seattle; for at least 20 years he was a member of the SWP’s National Committee. In the Pacific Northwest Fraser won several members of the Communist Party in Seattle to Trotskyism following the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and the Khrushchev revelations. That Seattle was the place where the SWP had its most significant success in cracking the Stalinists is a testament to the persistence and political capabilities of Richard Fraser.
Through his involvement in black freedom struggles and experience in the recruitment and subsequent loss of hundreds of black workers from the SWP following World War II, Dick came to believe that the American communist movement had failed to come to grips with the question of black liberation in this country. Although lacking much formal education, he dedicated himself to the study of the black question. Criticizing the SWP for underestimating the revolutionary challenge to American capitalism posed by the integrationist struggles for black equality, in 1955 he submitted his document “For the Materialist Conception of the Negro Question.” Here Fraser counterposed revolutionary integration to the SWP’s turn toward a separatist “self-determination” ideology (associated particularly with George Breitman), which would become a theoretical cover for its abstention from the mass civil rights movement in the early 1960s and subsequent full-blown capitulation to black nationalism.
Dick came into disfavor with the SWP leadership when he opposed the party’s adoption of the call for federal troops to protect Southern blacks. In his “Resolution on the Little Rock Crisis” Fraser tore apart the SWP’s support to Eisenhower’s introduction of federal troops in Little Rock in 1957, powerfully pointing out that the end result had been the crushing of local black self-defense efforts. In the 1960s Fraser along with other SWP spokesmen was propelled out of the party as it plunged from centrism to reformism. As he wrote in a letter to his son: “It was I who initiated the split from the SWP by publicly attacking its Personal Representative, my old friend Asher Harer, whom I had recruited in 1935, for the SWP stand on the Vietnam War, and proclaiming that the way to ‘BRING THE TROOPS HOME’ was for the Viet Cong to drive them into the South China Sea.”
Fraser went on to found the Seattle-based Freedom Socialist Party. Cut off by a split in the FSP, Dick went into the New American Movement hoping that he could influence and educate some of these young New Leftists in the old Leninist school. With the fusion of NAM and the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee Fraser was subsequently carried into the Democratic Socialists of America.
Over the years we had our disagreements with Dick. Neither of us tried to hide these, but we were always happy to bend the stick in favor of the areas of profound political agreement between us. In his later years Fraser was handicapped by the loss of his Marxist library, which the SL sought to replenish, and of his personal working papers. In turn Dick’s collaboration was invaluable in elaborating a perspective for rooting the SL among militant black workers and youth. Fraser’s formal membership in other organizations obviously stood in contradiction to his fervent political beliefs, a contradiction which was resolved in his last years. Sharing our outrage over the U.S. bombing of Libya, he distanced himself from the DSA.
Addressing the SL/U.S. Seventh National Conference (1983) on the question of the organization of labor/black leagues, Dick spoke movingly:
“I’ve had some discussions with many comrades, which have been very gratifying, and I am humbled by the knowledge that things that I wrote 30 years ago, which were so scorned by the old party, have had some important impact, finally.”
Dick’s last political act before his death was his endorsement of the November 5 Mobilization that stopped the Klan in Philadelphia. That satisfying mobilization of the power of integrated labor was a testament to our comrade Richard Fraser who in endorsing identified himself as a “historic American Trotskyist.” That he was, and his loss will be keenly felt.
Adapted from Workers Vanguard
No. 466, 2 December 1988
**********
Introductory Note by the Prometheus Research Library
Revolutionary Integration:Program for Black Liberation
Written: 1990
Source: Prometheus Research Library, New York.
Transcription/Markup/Proofing: John Heckman, Prometheus Research Library.
Public Domain: Encyclopedia of Trotskyism On-Line 2006/Prometheus Research Library. You can freely copy, display and otherwise distribute this work. Please credit the Marxists Internet Archive & Prometheus Research Library as your source, include the url to this work, and note the transcribers & editors above.
When, as a young Trotskyist activist, Dick Fraser became convinced that American Marxism had not come to terms with the question of black liberation, he made a life-long commitment to study of the question. Although he was hampered by little formal scholarly training, his Marxist understanding and his broad experience in militant struggles with black workers sharpened his insight into the lessons of history. His dedicated study sprang from his conviction that in order to forge a program for black liberation, it is necessary to study the social forces that created the American institution of racial oppression. Fraser turned to the writings of the militant fighters for black equality during the Civil War and Reconstruction and to the pioneering studies by black academics such as E. Franklin Frazier and Oliver Cromwell Cox. To Fraser, understanding the roots of black oppression in the United States was no armchair activity; he carried his theory of Revolutionary Integration into struggle.
With the publication of this bulletin we are honoring Fraser’s fighting scholarship. In the past few years Trotskyism has lost three scholar-militants from the generation brought to revolutionary consciousness by the combative class struggles of the 1930s. George Breitman, who died in April 1986, was as a proponent of black “self-determination” Fraser’s main political opponent within the SWP on the black question. He was also the Pathfinder Press editor responsible for the publication of the works of Leon Trotsky and James P. Cannon. And in July 1990 the Trotsky scholar Louis Sinclair died. As the author of Leon Trotsky: A Bibliography (Hoover Institution Press, 1972), Sinclair performed an invaluable service to the revolutionary movement in documenting and collecting Trotsky’s writings in many languages. Now the tradition of revolutionary scholarship so honorably exemplified by Richard Fraser, George Breitman and Louis Sinclair must be carried on by a new generation of Marxists.
The U.S. capitalist class and its minions would like to forget this country’s modern origins in the Second American Revolution that was the Civil War. To understand the Civil War is to understand the character of U.S. society and its fatal flaw of racism. As Dave Dreiser, Fraser’s long-time collaborator and friend, writes in his 16 April 1990 letter to Jim Robertson (see below), for decades the academic racists of the William Dunning school of U.S. history legitimized the racist status quo. Their “interpretation” was popularized in the movies Birth of a Nation and Gone With the Wind.
The outbreak of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s and the struggle for black equality inspired a new generation of historians, who began to reexamine central issues of American history, in particular the Civil War and Reconstruction. The distinguished James M. McPherson, author of Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era and The Struggle for Equality: Abolitionists and the Negro in the Civil War and Reconstruction, is only one of the many scholars who have documented the heroic struggles of this revolutionary period. Eminent scholars who have studied southern slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction also include Eugene Genovese, Kenneth Stampp, C. Vann Woodward and Eric Foner.
Today the empiricist/racist brand of “scholarship” represented by Harvard historian Robert Fogel, author of Time on the Cross, is the academic reflection of the American ruling class’s renewed war on the black population. In 1965 Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then an assistant secretary at the Department of Labor, wrote The Negro Family: The Case for National Action, in which he outrageously argued that the “fundamental problem...of family structure” was responsible for the intensification of poverty, joblessness, segregation in housing and lack of education suffered by the masses in the big city ghettoes. Bourgeois-empirical sociology (accompanied by pages of charts and graphs) served to provide a pseudo-scientific cover for the old “blame the victim” lies. In 1970 Moynihan coined the term “benign neglect” to describe the federal policy signalling the rollback of the token gains of the civil rights movement. Federal funding for poverty programs dried up; the government under Nixon, Carter and Reagan dismantled civil rights legislation and destroyed even the minimal plans for busing to achieve school integration.
Dick Fraser’s Marxist scholarship utterly rejected the manipulation of history to justify the racist status quo. At the time of his death in 1988 Fraser, with Dave Dreiser, was actively working on notes and abstracts for a book, The Rise of the Slave Power, the result of over 40 years of study. The book was to be a Marxist analysis of the rise of the southern slavocracy, the class antagonisms which exploded in the 1861-1865 Civil War between the capitalist North and the slave South and the leading role of the militant abolitionists in the destruction of black chattel slavery.
While his primary area of study was the black question, Dick Fraser was active in many arenas of struggle. In selecting the documents for this bulletin we have sought to show the breadth of his work. Of documents omitted from this collection there are two worthy of special note: “For the Materialist Conception of the Negro Question” is not published here only because it is readily available in the Spartacist League’s Marxist Bulletin No. 5R, “What Strategy for Black Liberation? Trotskyism vs. Black Nationalism.”
The 1958 “Resolution on the Little Rock Crisis,” in which Fraser sharply exposes the SWP policy of calling for federal troops to intervene in the Little Rock, Arkansas school integration crisis, is also omitted. Fraser’s position is well represented in two other, shorter documents which we have included, “Contribution to the Discussion on the Slogan ‘Send Federal Troops to Mississippi’ ” and a letter, “On Federal Troops in Little Rock.”
Those who would like to read further are directed to the bibliography of Fraser’s writings included here as an appendix. All of these materials are available at the Prometheus Research Library.
Editorial Note: As a member of the Socialist Workers Party and the Freedom Socialist Party Dick Fraser often used the name Richard Kirk. The bibliography distinguishes all documents written under the name Kirk with an asterisk. Our introductions give the source and some background for the documents, which have been edited to correct minor errors and inconsistencies. Some purely personal material in the letters has been cut out. The PRL has added brief explanations to clarify references when necessary; these appear in brackets. All footnotes and parenthetical material are by Dick Fraser.
Prometheus Research Library
July 1990
********
Fraser and American Scholarship
on the Black Question
by David Dreiser
Written: 1990
Source: Prometheus Research Library, New York.
Transcription/Markup/Proofing: John Heckman, Prometheus Research Library.
Public Domain: Encyclopedia of Trotskyism On-Line 2006/Prometheus Research Library. You can freely copy, display and otherwise distribute this work. Please credit the Marxists Internet Archive & Prometheus Research Library as your source, include the url to this work, and note the transcribers & editors above.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Academic scholarship regarding U.S. history has gone through several phases. After the failure of Reconstruction, scholarship went through a very reactionary period. Beginning in the 1890’s, William Dunning of Columbia and a host of his students spread the view that Reconstruction was the shame of U.S. history and represented military despotism, the evil of “Africanization,” and unrestrained corruption against which a noble but defeated South tried to defend itself. Claude Bowers’ The Tragic Era (1929) was the most influential work of this ilk.
Ulrich Phillips presented a view of slavery as relatively benign. Slaves were well treated and well fed, and the system was productive. Justin Smith presented a view of the Mexican War in which the arrogant Mexicans were totally to blame. These reactionary and pro-Southern views of U.S. history dominated the academies and formed the basis for the teaching of U.S. history in high schools and universities for decades following.
The Civil War was regarded as some terrible mistake in which the issue of slavery was minor. Abolitionists had been self-seeking rabble-rousers whose comments on slavery and the politics of their day can be ignored. The defamation of the radical Republicans, Charles Sumner, Thaddeus Stevens, etc., as power mad psychotics became a cottage industry.
Even in those days there were other voices. In 1913 John R. Lynch, former slave and later congressman from Mississippi, wrote The Facts of Reconstruction in which he tried to tell some truth, but his excellent work was lost in a sea of racist “scholarship.” A few words from the introduction to a reprint of his book are instructive:
“These scholars contended that the Reconstruction governments in the South were controlled by base, power-hungry carpetbaggers and scalawags who cynically used the newly enfranchised blacks to gain power and to sustain their debauchery in office. Without the votes of naive and illiterate Negroes, who were easily led to the polls to vote the Radical ticket, these scoundrels would never have had an opportunity in any of the states to plunder the public treasuries and incite blacks against whites, according to the Dunning-school historians.
“Therefore the fundamental mistake in the Radical or congressional plan of Reconstruction was the enfranchisement of the freedmen. Happily, however, according to the established version of the story, during the mid-1870’s decent whites in both sections of the nation rose in indignation over the spoliation of the Southern states, and through the heroic efforts of local Democrats the Radical Republican regimes were overthrown and good government restored.”
After 1960 a new wind blew in the colleges and a number of honest scholars began to chip away at the mountain of pro-Southern reactionary propaganda that still dominated. C. Vann Woodward, Eugene D. Genovese and James M. McPherson are prominent. Other outstanding names are Kenneth Stampp, George Fredrickson and Herbert Gutman, not to mention John Hope Franklin, A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr., Henrietta Buckmaster, and other black scholars.
So what is missing? Hasn’t everything been straightened out? I don’t believe so. Let’s take the issue of the nature of slavery. In 1974 a Harvard scholar, Robert Fogel, wrote Time On the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery, a study of slavery based on “cliometrics” which is a computerized technique of examining statistical data. Fogel concluded that slave labor was more efficient than free labor and hence more productive. The slaves were well off and better fed than free workers in the North. Fogel has written a new work in 1989 expanding on this theme. C. Vann Woodward has reviewed Fogel’s new book and seems at a loss to know how to criticize it even if he seems uncomfortable with Fogel’s conclusions.
In the meantime, Fogel and his new toy, cliometrics, are the rage in academic circles and a new generation of scholars using the technique are collecting their PhDs at Harvard and are fanning out around the country. I asked a Harvard history student if the slaves’ own view of slavery might not paint a different picture of how well off they were. Patiently he explained to me that the slaves’ stories were largely taken down by abolitionists, and of course nothing they wrote can be believed! How, one might ask, could the words of slaves hold up to data manipulated by a computer? One might also ask in studying the Holocaust if it would be permissible to consider the recollections of the survivors, whose views would obviously be biased, or only the views of the guards and administrators who ran the camps?
Thirty years of new scholarship haven’t had much effect on the views of history taught in our schools, although there has been some correction. For instance, students of Mexican history at Stanford U. are now taught that the Mexican War was started with an unprovoked attack by U.S. forces ordered by President Polk. Well, that’s true, but it is not enough. What were the class forces that caused the Mexican War? The new scholars not only fail to answer such questions, but consider such a question improper.
The best academic scholars are committed to a view of history that regards any kind of economic determinism as quaint. History is regarded basically as narrative. There was no bourgeois revolution in England. The French Revolution had many causes, but it was not a clash between class forces. The view that struggles between classes is a determining factor in history is Marxist fantasy. In fact in the sense that Marx meant, there are no classes.
This crass empiricism did not always dominate U.S. scholarship. There used to be at least a counter-current of materialism that had legitimacy as in Charles Beard’s day. But, if anything, methodology has deteriorated since then. For instance, Kenneth Stampp has written The Era of Reconstruction, 1865-1877 (1965) as a total revision of the Dunning school. His work is excellent in many ways, but he says, “DuBois’s attempt at a full-scale revisionist study, Black Reconstruction (New York, 1935), is disappointing. Though rich in empirical detail, the book presents a Marxian interpretation of southern reconstruction as a proletarian movement that is at best naive. The Marxist historian James S. Allen in Reconstruction: The Battle for Democracy, 1865-1876 (New York, 1937) offers an interpretation that is more credible but equally schematic.”
It is no longer necessary to refute Marxism which is simply dismissed as naive, quaint and schematic. In spite of this I believe a thorough class analysis has been written regarding Reconstruction by Eric Foner. His Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution 1863-1877 (1988) is Marxist in content if not in name and meets the most strict demands of scholarship.
Who has spoken in like voice for the antebellum period? Dick felt no one has, that is no one lately. Charles Beard was accused of being a Marxist in his economic interpretation of the Constitution, but he replied that if so, then so was James Madison from whom he drew much of his “economic” view. In like manner Dick’s and my view of the period between say 1776 and 1860 is drawn very largely from Horace Greeley, Charles Sumner, John A. Logan (The Great Conspiracy: Its Origin and History [1885]), Henry Wilson, Benjamin Lundy (The War in Texas [1836]) and other radical Republicans and abolitionists. I submit that their penetrating analyses of the events of their day have never been refuted, but have been dismissed and forgotten.
Even today the abolitionists are regarded in scholarly circles with great suspicion. People committed to a cause cannot be objective observers or commentators, it is said. Black scholars have largely tackled the issue of restoring the role of slaves and black leaders to proper perspective. A class analysis has largely been absent. In a sense Dick wanted to restore the views and scholarship of the radicals of those days. That is not an unworthy purpose.
A brief word about “revisionism” may be needed. Kenneth Stampp regards himself and other post-1960 liberal scholars as revisionists, that is compared with the Dunning school. But, Dunning a generation before had considered himself a revisionist of the views of the mid-19th century. Robert Fogel might be called a new revisionist of the revisionists of the revisionists. I think it is better not to use the term.
I know that a lot of “Marxists” in our movement have tended to take scholarship lightly. Substituting theory for research, they generalize at the drop of a hat. However, it is not always necessary for research to be original to be used in a valid general analysis. For instance Edward Diener is a U. of Illinois scholar who wrote a commentary on U.S. history (Reinterpreting U.S. History [1975]). The book is not annotated and makes no pretense of original scholarship. His book just expresses a point of view which is an altogether legitimate practice. His view happens to be fairly conservative. Dick wanted to make reasonable use of available scholarship to express a point of view about U.S. history.
Briefly, Dick’s view was that after the invention of the cotton gin the slave system took on new life and the compromise between the planters and the merchant capitalists in the North and expressed in the U.S. Constitution fell apart. The planters wanted state power for themselves, and effectively won it with the election of Andrew Jackson. In the main, they controlled the presidency and Congress from then until 1860. Their power was based on a class alliance between themselves and the free farmers of the North who had similar interests on some questions such as soft money and low tariffs.
This alliance operated to stunt the growth of capitalism. The power of the planters was expressed through their control of the Democratic Party. The Whig “opposition” was about as effective as the Democratic opposition to the Republicans today. The subservience of the Whigs gave the planters effective state power.
When the abolitionists spoke of the Slave Power they were not being inflammatory but analytical.
The Republican Party was a revolutionary party which led the nation through the Civil War to an overthrow of planter power and the ascendency of the capitalist state. The failure of that social revolution to proceed through Reconstruction to a resolution of the land question in the South by giving land and the franchise to the freedmen set the stage for the racist nation we have inherited.
Dick would have wanted to cover a broad sweep going on to the aftermath of Reconstruction, but that is all over with his passing. But, certainly it is appropriate to finish his beginning treatment covering the ascendency of the Slave Power.
I further believe that the best of current academic scholars have not told Dick’s story. They have made a major effort to reduce the blatant racism that dominated the academies for 80 years, but in method, empiricism is today more dominant in the study of history than ever before.
David Dreiser
16 April 1990
Wednesday, February 09, 2011
Obama- Hands Of The Minneapolis And Chicago Anti-war, Anti-Imperialist Protesters-A Profile Of An FBI Fink
Click on the headline to link to a Boston Indymedia Web site entry for a profile of an FBI informant who infiltrated the Minneapolis political milieu and helped the FBI with "information" which led to indictments of many Midwestern anti-war, anti-imperialist activists.
Markin comment:
Part of the business of doing revolutionary, radical, hell, on some days just plain liberal politics (think of the late, unlamented Nixon's "hit" lists with nothing but run of the mill democrats on them )is knowing, knowing without knowing, that someone is watching you, or wants to. Either succumb to paranoia, walk away from such heavy-duty business, or just go about your political business as best you can, as long as you can. Still it is nice, every once in a while, to know they really are out to get us if for no other reason that to jerk back from that notion that we are dealing with rationale opponents. And, as here, to just flat out expose a fink, a living breathing fink before she (in this case) crawls back in her hole.
Markin comment:
Part of the business of doing revolutionary, radical, hell, on some days just plain liberal politics (think of the late, unlamented Nixon's "hit" lists with nothing but run of the mill democrats on them )is knowing, knowing without knowing, that someone is watching you, or wants to. Either succumb to paranoia, walk away from such heavy-duty business, or just go about your political business as best you can, as long as you can. Still it is nice, every once in a while, to know they really are out to get us if for no other reason that to jerk back from that notion that we are dealing with rationale opponents. And, as here, to just flat out expose a fink, a living breathing fink before she (in this case) crawls back in her hole.
The Latest From The Private Bradley Manning Support Network- Free Private Manning Now!
Click on the headline to link to the Private Bradley Manning Support Network for the latest news in his case.
Markin comment:
This apparently is the day for easy political slogans. Some days are tough ones for such work. This one however is a no-brainer. Free Private Bradley Manning Now!
Markin comment:
This apparently is the day for easy political slogans. Some days are tough ones for such work. This one however is a no-brainer. Free Private Bradley Manning Now!
The Latest From The Lynne Stewart Defense Committee- Justice For Lynne Stewart- Free Lynne Stewart Now!
Click on the headline to link to the Lynne Stewart Defense Committee Web site for the latest letter from Attorney Lynne Stewart (yes, Attorney, the hell with legal disbarment rules, Ms. Stewart is still the zealous advocate for the cause and that is what an attorney is all about).
Markin comment:
Sometimes thinking through political slogans is tough. Sometimes it is a no-brainer. This is the latter. Free Attorney Lynne Stewart Now! Let Grandma Go Home!
Markin comment:
Sometimes thinking through political slogans is tough. Sometimes it is a no-brainer. This is the latter. Free Attorney Lynne Stewart Now! Let Grandma Go Home!
*Victory To The Egyptian Workers' Strikes- Fight For A Workers Party That Fights For Workers And Peasants Government!
Click on the headline to link to an Associated Press online article detailing the latest happenings in Egypt (as of February 9, 2011).
Markin comment:
The fast moving events in Egypt (and across the Middle East) cry out, cry out desperately, for the formation of a revolutionary workers party basing itself on democratic and socialist demands (the Transitional Program demands outlined by Leon Trotsky in the late 1930s, yes 1930s, as applicable to belated developed countries-the key immediate demand being the fight for a revolutionary constituent assembly) to gather around it workers, peasants and other allies to fight to the finish for a workers and peasants government. Can anything less be on the order of the day? I think not. Such situations, as the 30 plus years survival of the Mubarak regime testify to, show how rare such opportunities are and one better take maximum advantage, if not for the immediate struggle for power, then for the ability to fight later with the masses readily behind you.
Markin comment:
The fast moving events in Egypt (and across the Middle East) cry out, cry out desperately, for the formation of a revolutionary workers party basing itself on democratic and socialist demands (the Transitional Program demands outlined by Leon Trotsky in the late 1930s, yes 1930s, as applicable to belated developed countries-the key immediate demand being the fight for a revolutionary constituent assembly) to gather around it workers, peasants and other allies to fight to the finish for a workers and peasants government. Can anything less be on the order of the day? I think not. Such situations, as the 30 plus years survival of the Mubarak regime testify to, show how rare such opportunities are and one better take maximum advantage, if not for the immediate struggle for power, then for the ability to fight later with the masses readily behind you.
***Out In The Be-Bop 1950s Night- Out In The Jukebox Saturday Night - A CD Review
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of The Platters performing the juke-box Saturday night classic, Only You.
CD Review
The Rock ‘N’ Roll Era: The 50’s: Keep On Rockin’, various artists, Time-Life Music, 1988
Recently I, seemingly, have endlessly gone back to my early musical roots in reviewing various compilations of a Time-Life classic rock series that goes under the general title The Rock ‘n’ Roll Era. And while time and ear have eroded the sparkle of some of the lesser tunes it still seems obvious that those years, say 1955-58, really did form the musical jail break-out for my generation, the generation of ’68, who had just started to tune into music.
And we had our own little world, or as some hip sociologist trying to explain that Zeitgeist today might say, our own sub-group cultural expression. I have already talked about the pre 7/11 mom and pop corner variety store hangout with the tee-shirted, engineered-booted, cigarette (unfiltered) hanging from the lips, Coke, big sized glass Coke bottle at the side, pinball wizard guys thing. And about the pizza parlor jukebox coin devouring, playing some “hot” song for the nth time that night, hold the onions I might get lucky tonight, dreamy girl might come in the door thing. Of course, the soda fountain, and…ditto, dreamy girl coming through the door thing, merely to share a sundae, natch. And the same for the teen dance club, keep the kids off the streets even if we parents hate their damn rock music, the now eternal hope dreamy girl coming in the door, save the last dance for me thing.
Needless to say you know more about middle school and high school dance stuff, including hot tip “ inside” stuff about manly preparations for those civil wars out in the working class neighborhood night, than you could ever possibly want to know, and, hell, you were there anyway (or at ones like them). Moreover, I clued you in, and keep this quiet, about sex, or rather I should say doin’ the do in case the kids are around, and about the local “custom” (for any anthropologists present) of ocean-waved Atlantic “watching the submarine races.”
Whee! That’s maybe enough memory lane stuff for a lifetime, especially for those with weak hearts. But, no, your intrepid messenger feels the need to go back indoors again and take a little different look at that be-bop jukebox Saturday night scene as it unfolded in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Hey, you could have found the old jukebox in lots of places in those days. Bowling alleys, drugstores (drugstores with soda fountains- why else would healthy, young, sex-charged high school students go to such an old-timer-got-to-get medicine-for-the-arthritis place. Why indeed, although there are secrets in such places that I will tell you about some other time when I’m not jazzed up to go be-bop juke-boxing around the town.), pizza parlors, drive-in restaurants, and so on. Basically any place where kids were hot for some special song and wanted to play it until the cows came home. And had the coins to satisfy their hunger.
A lot of it was to kill time waiting for this or that, although the basic reason was these were all places where you could show off your stuff, and maybe, strike up a conversation with someone who attracted your attention as they came in the door. The cover artwork on this compilation shows dreamy girls waiting for their platters (records, okay) to work their way up the mechanism that took them from the stack and laid them out on the player. There is your chance, boy, grab it. Just hanging around the machine with some cashmere-sweater-ed, beehive-haired (or bobbed, kind of), well-shaped brunette (or blond, but I favored brunettes in those days) chatting idly was worth at least a date (or, more often, a telephone number to call). Not after nine at night though or before eight because that was when she was talking to her boy friend. Lucky guy, maybe.
But here is where the real skill came in. Just hanging casually around the old box, especially on a no, or low, dough day waiting on a twist (slang for girl in our old working class neighborhood) to come by and put her quarter in (giving three or five selections depending what kind of place the jukebox was located in) talking to her friends as she made those selections. Usually the first couple were easy, some old boy friend memory, or some wistful tryst remembrance, but then she got contemplative, or fidgety, over what to pick next. Then you made your move-“Have you heard Only You. NO! Well, you just have to hear that thing and it will cheer you right up. Or some such line. Of course, you wanted to hear the damn thing. But see, a song like that (as opposed to Chuck Berry’s Sweet Little Rock and Roller, let’s say) showed you were a sensitive guy, and maybe worth talking to … for just a minute, I got to get back to my girlfriends, etc, etc. Oh, jukebox you baby. And guess what. On that self-same jukebox you were very, very likely to hear some of the songs on the compilation on this CD: Here are the stick outs (and a few that worked some of that “magic” mentioned above on tough nights):
Oh Julie, The Crescendos (a great one if you knew, or thought you knew, or wanted to believe that girl at the jukebox’s name was Julie); Lavender Blue, Sammy Turner (good talk song especially on the word play); Sweet Little Rock and Roller, Chuck Berry (discussed above, and worthy of consideration if your tastes ran to those heart-breaking little rock and rollers. I will tell you about the ONE time it came in handy sometime); You Were Mine, The Fireflies; Susie Darlin’, Robin Luke (ditto the Julie thing above); Only You, The Platters (keep this one a secret, okay, unless you really are a sensitive guy).
CD Review
The Rock ‘N’ Roll Era: The 50’s: Keep On Rockin’, various artists, Time-Life Music, 1988
Recently I, seemingly, have endlessly gone back to my early musical roots in reviewing various compilations of a Time-Life classic rock series that goes under the general title The Rock ‘n’ Roll Era. And while time and ear have eroded the sparkle of some of the lesser tunes it still seems obvious that those years, say 1955-58, really did form the musical jail break-out for my generation, the generation of ’68, who had just started to tune into music.
And we had our own little world, or as some hip sociologist trying to explain that Zeitgeist today might say, our own sub-group cultural expression. I have already talked about the pre 7/11 mom and pop corner variety store hangout with the tee-shirted, engineered-booted, cigarette (unfiltered) hanging from the lips, Coke, big sized glass Coke bottle at the side, pinball wizard guys thing. And about the pizza parlor jukebox coin devouring, playing some “hot” song for the nth time that night, hold the onions I might get lucky tonight, dreamy girl might come in the door thing. Of course, the soda fountain, and…ditto, dreamy girl coming through the door thing, merely to share a sundae, natch. And the same for the teen dance club, keep the kids off the streets even if we parents hate their damn rock music, the now eternal hope dreamy girl coming in the door, save the last dance for me thing.
Needless to say you know more about middle school and high school dance stuff, including hot tip “ inside” stuff about manly preparations for those civil wars out in the working class neighborhood night, than you could ever possibly want to know, and, hell, you were there anyway (or at ones like them). Moreover, I clued you in, and keep this quiet, about sex, or rather I should say doin’ the do in case the kids are around, and about the local “custom” (for any anthropologists present) of ocean-waved Atlantic “watching the submarine races.”
Whee! That’s maybe enough memory lane stuff for a lifetime, especially for those with weak hearts. But, no, your intrepid messenger feels the need to go back indoors again and take a little different look at that be-bop jukebox Saturday night scene as it unfolded in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Hey, you could have found the old jukebox in lots of places in those days. Bowling alleys, drugstores (drugstores with soda fountains- why else would healthy, young, sex-charged high school students go to such an old-timer-got-to-get medicine-for-the-arthritis place. Why indeed, although there are secrets in such places that I will tell you about some other time when I’m not jazzed up to go be-bop juke-boxing around the town.), pizza parlors, drive-in restaurants, and so on. Basically any place where kids were hot for some special song and wanted to play it until the cows came home. And had the coins to satisfy their hunger.
A lot of it was to kill time waiting for this or that, although the basic reason was these were all places where you could show off your stuff, and maybe, strike up a conversation with someone who attracted your attention as they came in the door. The cover artwork on this compilation shows dreamy girls waiting for their platters (records, okay) to work their way up the mechanism that took them from the stack and laid them out on the player. There is your chance, boy, grab it. Just hanging around the machine with some cashmere-sweater-ed, beehive-haired (or bobbed, kind of), well-shaped brunette (or blond, but I favored brunettes in those days) chatting idly was worth at least a date (or, more often, a telephone number to call). Not after nine at night though or before eight because that was when she was talking to her boy friend. Lucky guy, maybe.
But here is where the real skill came in. Just hanging casually around the old box, especially on a no, or low, dough day waiting on a twist (slang for girl in our old working class neighborhood) to come by and put her quarter in (giving three or five selections depending what kind of place the jukebox was located in) talking to her friends as she made those selections. Usually the first couple were easy, some old boy friend memory, or some wistful tryst remembrance, but then she got contemplative, or fidgety, over what to pick next. Then you made your move-“Have you heard Only You. NO! Well, you just have to hear that thing and it will cheer you right up. Or some such line. Of course, you wanted to hear the damn thing. But see, a song like that (as opposed to Chuck Berry’s Sweet Little Rock and Roller, let’s say) showed you were a sensitive guy, and maybe worth talking to … for just a minute, I got to get back to my girlfriends, etc, etc. Oh, jukebox you baby. And guess what. On that self-same jukebox you were very, very likely to hear some of the songs on the compilation on this CD: Here are the stick outs (and a few that worked some of that “magic” mentioned above on tough nights):
Oh Julie, The Crescendos (a great one if you knew, or thought you knew, or wanted to believe that girl at the jukebox’s name was Julie); Lavender Blue, Sammy Turner (good talk song especially on the word play); Sweet Little Rock and Roller, Chuck Berry (discussed above, and worthy of consideration if your tastes ran to those heart-breaking little rock and rollers. I will tell you about the ONE time it came in handy sometime); You Were Mine, The Fireflies; Susie Darlin’, Robin Luke (ditto the Julie thing above); Only You, The Platters (keep this one a secret, okay, unless you really are a sensitive guy).
*Those Black Militants Who Fought For Our Communist Future Are Kindred Spirits-The Stono Rebels
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for
February Is Black History Month
Every January, as readers of this blog are now, hopefully, familiar with the international communist movement honors the 3 Ls-Lenin, Luxemburg and Liebknecht, fallen leaders of the early 20th century communist movement who died in this month (and whose untimely deaths left a huge, irreplaceable gap in the international leadership of that time). January is thus a time for us to reflect on the roots of our movement and those who brought us along this far. February is Black History Month and is a time for reflection on our black forebears who brought us along this far. In order to give a fuller measure of honor to our fallen forbears this February , and in future Februarys, this space will honor others who have contributed in some way to the struggle for our communist future. That future classless society, however, will be the true memorial to their sacrifices.
Note on inclusion: As in other series on this site (Labor’s Untold Story, Leaders Of The Bolshevik Revolution, etc.) this year’s honorees do not exhaust the list of every possible communist worthy of the name. Nor, in fact, is the list limited to Bolshevik-style communists. There will be names included from other traditions (like anarchism, social democracy, the Diggers, Levellers, Jacobins, the black liberation struggle here and elsewhere, etc.) whose efforts contributed to the international struggle. Also, as was true of previous series this year’s efforts are no more than an introduction to these heroes of the class struggle. Future years will see more detailed information on each entry, particularly about many of the lesser known figures. Better yet, the reader can pick up the ball and run with it if he or she has more knowledge about the particular exploits of some communist militant, or to include a missing one.
********
February Is Black History Month
Every January, as readers of this blog are now, hopefully, familiar with the international communist movement honors the 3 Ls-Lenin, Luxemburg and Liebknecht, fallen leaders of the early 20th century communist movement who died in this month (and whose untimely deaths left a huge, irreplaceable gap in the international leadership of that time). January is thus a time for us to reflect on the roots of our movement and those who brought us along this far. February is Black History Month and is a time for reflection on our black forebears who brought us along this far. In order to give a fuller measure of honor to our fallen forbears this February , and in future Februarys, this space will honor others who have contributed in some way to the struggle for our communist future. That future classless society, however, will be the true memorial to their sacrifices.
Note on inclusion: As in other series on this site (Labor’s Untold Story, Leaders Of The Bolshevik Revolution, etc.) this year’s honorees do not exhaust the list of every possible communist worthy of the name. Nor, in fact, is the list limited to Bolshevik-style communists. There will be names included from other traditions (like anarchism, social democracy, the Diggers, Levellers, Jacobins, the black liberation struggle here and elsewhere, etc.) whose efforts contributed to the international struggle. Also, as was true of previous series this year’s efforts are no more than an introduction to these heroes of the class struggle. Future years will see more detailed information on each entry, particularly about many of the lesser known figures. Better yet, the reader can pick up the ball and run with it if he or she has more knowledge about the particular exploits of some communist militant, or to include a missing one.
********
Monday, February 07, 2011
*Those Black Militants Who Fought For Our Communist Future Are Kindred Spirits-Gabriel
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Gabriel
February Is Black History Month
Every January, as readers of this blog are now, hopefully, familiar with the international communist movement honors the 3 Ls-Lenin, Luxemburg and Liebknecht, fallen leaders of the early 20th century communist movement who died in this month (and whose untimely deaths left a huge, irreplaceable gap in the international leadership of that time). January is thus a time for us to reflect on the roots of our movement and those who brought us along this far. February is Black History Month and is a time for reflection on our black forebears who brought us along this far. In order to give a fuller measure of honor to our fallen forbears this February , and in future Februarys, this space will honor others who have contributed in some way to the struggle for our communist future. That future classless society, however, will be the true memorial to their sacrifices.
Note on inclusion: As in other series on this site (Labor’s Untold Story, Leaders Of The Bolshevik Revolution, etc.) this year’s honorees do not exhaust the list of every possible communist worthy of the name. Nor, in fact, is the list limited to Bolshevik-style communists. There will be names included from other traditions (like anarchism, social democracy, the Diggers, Levellers, Jacobins, the black liberation struggle here and elsewhere, etc.) whose efforts contributed to the international struggle. Also, as was true of previous series this year’s efforts are no more than an introduction to these heroes of the class struggle. Future years will see more detailed information on each entry, particularly about many of the lesser known figures. Better yet, the reader can pick up the ball and run with it if he or she has more knowledge about the particular exploits of some communist militant, or to include a missing one.
********
February Is Black History Month
Every January, as readers of this blog are now, hopefully, familiar with the international communist movement honors the 3 Ls-Lenin, Luxemburg and Liebknecht, fallen leaders of the early 20th century communist movement who died in this month (and whose untimely deaths left a huge, irreplaceable gap in the international leadership of that time). January is thus a time for us to reflect on the roots of our movement and those who brought us along this far. February is Black History Month and is a time for reflection on our black forebears who brought us along this far. In order to give a fuller measure of honor to our fallen forbears this February , and in future Februarys, this space will honor others who have contributed in some way to the struggle for our communist future. That future classless society, however, will be the true memorial to their sacrifices.
Note on inclusion: As in other series on this site (Labor’s Untold Story, Leaders Of The Bolshevik Revolution, etc.) this year’s honorees do not exhaust the list of every possible communist worthy of the name. Nor, in fact, is the list limited to Bolshevik-style communists. There will be names included from other traditions (like anarchism, social democracy, the Diggers, Levellers, Jacobins, the black liberation struggle here and elsewhere, etc.) whose efforts contributed to the international struggle. Also, as was true of previous series this year’s efforts are no more than an introduction to these heroes of the class struggle. Future years will see more detailed information on each entry, particularly about many of the lesser known figures. Better yet, the reader can pick up the ball and run with it if he or she has more knowledge about the particular exploits of some communist militant, or to include a missing one.
********
Sunday, February 06, 2011
*Those Black Militants Who Fought For Our Communist Future Are Kindred Spirits-Denmark Vesey
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Denmark Vesey
February Is Black History Month
Every January, as readers of this blog are now, hopefully, familiar with the international communist movement honors the 3 Ls-Lenin, Luxemburg and Liebknecht, fallen leaders of the early 20th century communist movement who died in this month (and whose untimely deaths left a huge, irreplaceable gap in the international leadership of that time). January is thus a time for us to reflect on the roots of our movement and those who brought us along this far. February is Black History Month and is a time for reflection on our black forebears who brought us along this far. In order to give a fuller measure of honor to our fallen forbears this February , and in future Februarys, this space will honor others who have contributed in some way to the struggle for our communist future. That future classless society, however, will be the true memorial to their sacrifices.
Note on inclusion: As in other series on this site (Labor’s Untold Story, Leaders Of The Bolshevik Revolution, etc.) this year’s honorees do not exhaust the list of every possible communist worthy of the name. Nor, in fact, is the list limited to Bolshevik-style communists. There will be names included from other traditions (like anarchism, social democracy, the Diggers, Levellers, Jacobins, the black liberation struggle here and elsewhere, etc.) whose efforts contributed to the international struggle. Also, as was true of previous series this year’s efforts are no more than an introduction to these heroes of the class struggle. Future years will see more detailed information on each entry, particularly about many of the lesser known figures. Better yet, the reader can pick up the ball and run with it if he or she has more knowledge about the particular exploits of some communist militant, or to include a missing one.
********
February Is Black History Month
Every January, as readers of this blog are now, hopefully, familiar with the international communist movement honors the 3 Ls-Lenin, Luxemburg and Liebknecht, fallen leaders of the early 20th century communist movement who died in this month (and whose untimely deaths left a huge, irreplaceable gap in the international leadership of that time). January is thus a time for us to reflect on the roots of our movement and those who brought us along this far. February is Black History Month and is a time for reflection on our black forebears who brought us along this far. In order to give a fuller measure of honor to our fallen forbears this February , and in future Februarys, this space will honor others who have contributed in some way to the struggle for our communist future. That future classless society, however, will be the true memorial to their sacrifices.
Note on inclusion: As in other series on this site (Labor’s Untold Story, Leaders Of The Bolshevik Revolution, etc.) this year’s honorees do not exhaust the list of every possible communist worthy of the name. Nor, in fact, is the list limited to Bolshevik-style communists. There will be names included from other traditions (like anarchism, social democracy, the Diggers, Levellers, Jacobins, the black liberation struggle here and elsewhere, etc.) whose efforts contributed to the international struggle. Also, as was true of previous series this year’s efforts are no more than an introduction to these heroes of the class struggle. Future years will see more detailed information on each entry, particularly about many of the lesser known figures. Better yet, the reader can pick up the ball and run with it if he or she has more knowledge about the particular exploits of some communist militant, or to include a missing one.
********
The Latest From The "Renegade Eye" Blog- From The In Defense Of Marxism Website-The Egyptian Revolution: “The people want the downfall of the system”
Markin comment:
The question of propaganda for people's armed militias is on the order of the day in Egypt.
The Egyptian Revolution: “The people want the downfall of the system”
Written by Alan Woods
Friday, 04 February 2011
The masses have once again taken to the streets in the biggest demonstrations yet seen in Egypt. They call it the "Day of Departure". Already this morning Al Jazeera showed an immense crowd of people thronging Tahriri Square. The mood was neither tense nor fearful, but jubilant. The very instant Friday prayers finished the masses erupted in a deafening roar of “Mubarak out!” The few Mubarak supporters who were slinking on the streets outside the Square like impotent jackals could do nothing.
In Alexandria there was a massive anti-Mubarak demonstration of over a million. There were no pro-Mubarak people in sight and no police or security forces of any kind on the streets. There were demonstrations on Thursday in Suez and Ismailia, industrial cities where inflation and unemployment are rife, and although I have not yet seen any reports today, there can be no doubt that there will be very big demonstrations today all over Egypt. The Egyptian people have spoken and the message is unmistakable.
The class dynamics of the Revolution
January 30 - Tanks in Tahrir Square - Photo: RamiRaoofMarx pointed out that the Revolution needs the whip of the counterrevolution. This is the case here. The brutal onslaught of the counterrevolutionaries yesterday created the conditions for a new advance of the Revolution today. A revolution is characterized by violent swings of public opinion. We have seen this in the last 24 hours. Yesterday the mood of the protesters was grim. Today the revolutionary masses scent victory in the air.
This represents a complete turnabout in a few hours. But how can this transformation be explained? To understand what has happened it is necessary to understand the class dynamics of the Revolution. Different classes move at different speeds. The advanced layers – especially the youth – are the first to move into action. They draw the most advanced conclusions. But they are a minority. The mass of the people lag behind. Their consciousness has been moulded by past defeats. They are weighed down by decades of routine, habit and tradition.
The father of modern physics, Isaac Newton, explained that objects at rest tend to stay at rest. The phenomenon of inertia applies not only to the physical world but to society. To overcome the resistance of inertia a powerful external force is necessary. The present epoch is preparing shocks that will shake the masses out of their inertia. But this does not happen all at once. Mubarak has tried to play on the innate conservatism of the population, the fear of sudden change and the danger of chaos.
February 3 - Detention Place Demonstrators Use to Keep Thugs and Security they Catch - Photo: RamyRaoofMubarak mobilized the forces of the counterrevolution in an attempt to crush the Revolution by force. At the same time he made soothing speeches offering peaceful reforms. This speech had an effect on the minds of the inert mass of the population, especially the middle class who are fearful of disorder. “If you remove me there will be chaos, like Iraq,” he tells them. Such arguments can have an effect on the more backward strata of the masses. They have not yet begun to move. They are not on the streets. They are watching events on the television and they are worried. By promising reform and a return to normality, the President was telling these people what they wanted to hear.
After the speech many of people who were initially sympathetic to the protesters were saying: “That is enough! You have got what you wanted. The old man is going to stand down in September. Why can’t you wait a few months? We are tired of all this. We want a peaceful life, with the shops and banks open and business as usual.” This was a dangerous moment for the Revolution. The mood of the middle classes was swinging towards the President. The counterrevolutionaries were gaining ground on the streets. The army was passive. At this point, the whole process could have begun to go into reverse.
At this critical point, the fate of the Revolution was determined by the courage and determination of the advanced guard. It is true that the active forces of the Revolution were a minority. But it is equally true that the shock troops of the counterrevolution were a minority. In order to defeat the Revolution, Mubarak summoned every last ounce of his support. He bussed in people from the provinces and they concentrated their strength outside Tahrir Square.
This was the decisive turning point. If they had succeeded in driving the protesters from the Square the whole process could have been thrown into reverse. But they failed. Not only were they driven back by the heroic resistance of the revolutionaries. After seven hours of fighting for every inch, the revolutionaries finally got Mubarak’s thugs on the run. This was a decisive turning point. This produced a change in the psychology of the wavering elements. The ferocious violence of the counterrevolutionaries produced a new swing in public opinion that may well prove fatal to Mabarak’s cause.
February 3 - Fences to guard entrance to Tarhir Square - Photo: RamyRaoofThe battle was live on Al Jazeera, and millions of people could see what was happening. The scenes of a police van hurtling down the street at top speed, mowing down demonstrators said it all. The same people who had illusions in Mubarak’s promise of reform could now see they had been deceived. The smiling mask of the Father of the People slipped to reveal the ugly physiognomy of a cruel and despotic Pharaoh.
So it was all lies, after all! Mubarak’s warning of chaos if he stepped down was contradicted by these images. The chaos already exists, and the President is responsible. Down with the President! Al Jazeera reported one case that explains the process whereby the consciousness of the masses is transformed in a revolution. A man came to Tahrir Square and said: “I believed that the protesters were paid by foreign powers, but now I have come here and seen for myself I have understood that it is not true.” And this man, who only yesterday was supporting the counterrevolution, joined the demonstration.
Crisis of the regime
February 2 - Protesters gathering to defend demonstration - Photo: RamyRaoofThe defeat in Tahrir Square has provoked a crisis in the regime. In a clear expression of weakness the government is publicly apologising for bloodshed on Wednesday. There are signs of divisions at the top. Ahmed Shafiq, the new prime minister, said he did not know who was responsible for the bloodshed. That is exceedingly strange because everyone else in the world knows that it was the work of undercover police. He also said the Interior Minister should not obstruct Friday's peaceful marches. For his part, the Interior Minister denied that his men ordered their agents or officers to attack the demonstrators, although not even his own mother believes him.
There are indications that the 82 year old President, who remains hidden inside his heavily guarded palace, is tired and partly demoralized. Yesterday he told the American TV network ABC News.: "I am fed up. After 62 years in public service, I have had enough. I want to go." But he immediately added: "If I resign today, there will be chaos."
Speaking in the presidential palace, with his son Gamal at his side, Mubarak said: "I never intended to run [for president] again," Mr Mubarak said. "I never intended Gamal to be president after me." Since everybody in Egypt knows that these were precisely his intentions, this shows that the old man at least does not lack a sense of humour. He then repeated his long-held assertion that the Muslim Brotherhood would fill the power vacuum left by his absence.
Photo: RamyRaoofThe government gives the impression of struggling to regain control of events that are slipping out of its hands. It also does not seem to know what it is doing. While Mubarak utters dark warnings about the Muslim Brotherhood, his prime minister is inviting the Muslim Brotherhood to talks, a very kind offer which the latter have politely declined. They are not so stupid as to offer a hand to a drowning man who only wishes to pull them into the water to keep him company as he goes under.
The Americans are constantly repeating this argument that this is an Islamist movement led by the Muslim Brotherhood and that if Mubarak goes the jihadis will take over. That is a lie, although American diplomats and politicians are stupid enough to believe it. This movement has nothing to do with jihadi fundamentalism or Islamic politics. The New York Times correctly pointed out: “For many, the Brotherhood itself is a vestige of an older order that has failed to deliver.”
This great revolutionary movement was not organized by the Muslim Brotherhood or any of the bourgeois political parties. The Muslim Brotherhood is well organized and has a strong apparatus and money. Its leaders are manoeuvring behind the scenes. But the youth movement is the largest and most determined component of the revolution. It is they who have played the leading role from start to finish.
When these courageous young men and women went to the streets on 25th January, all the political parties including the Brotherhood were taken by surprise. The Muslim Brotherhood did not support them. The youth of 6 April are the ones calling for action. They are the ones who called today’s demonstration. And today, when the revolutionary people marched in their millions, every political party including the Brotherhood were negligible.
The revolutionary people are not fighting for Islam or any religion. They are fighting for their democratic rights and for national and social liberation. Under Mubarak Islamic extremists murdered Christians. But on the demonstrations Christians and Muslims march together. In Tahrir Square there are Muslims and Christians, believers and unbelievers – all united in the same struggle against the same oppressors. The Revolution has cut across all sectarian divisions. That constitutes its great strength.
A “meaningful transition” – to what?
The immediate threat of counterrevolution has been defeated by the courage and determination of the revolutionary people. But victory has not yet been won. The ruling class has many ways of defeating the people. When state violence fails, it can resort to trickery and deception. The situation is very clear. Mubarak cannot control Egypt. Either he will leave, or the Revolution will sweep all before it. This prospect is what fills the Americans with terror.
Washington has lost its grip on events. Taken by surprise at every stage, they lack even the semblance of a coherent policy. The CIA, Saudi Arabia and the Israelis want Mubarak to stand his ground, not out of any personal loyalty, but to prevent the Revolution from spreading to other Arab countries. But the Americans are playing a double game. Obama and the State Department can see that Mubarak’s days are numbered and are manoeuvring behind the scenes to maintain the old regime under another name.
It has emerged that the White House has been in talks with the Cairo government about how Egypt can begin making a "meaningful transition". US Vice-President Joe Biden spoke to his Egyptian counterpart on Thursday; one day after Suleiman had similar talks with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. According to the New York Times among the proposals was a plan for Mubarak to resign immediately and hand power to a military-backed interim government under Mr Suleiman.
Neither the White House nor the State Department have directly denied the report. But a spokesman for President Barack Obama's National Security Council said it was "time to begin a peaceful, orderly and meaningful transition, with credible, inclusive negotiations". However, the BBC's Mark Mardell in Washington says other reports suggest the US plan has already been rebuffed in Egypt, and that the administration has been “surprised” by the attitude of the military and Suleiman.
The Americans know very well that Suleiman was involved in the attacks on the opposition, and yet they consider that he is the right man to lead an interim government. Everybody knows Omar Suleiman is the man of the CIA and of Israel. This is just a means of maintaining the system while giving the impression of a change. It would be the negation of all the democratic aspirations of the people: a lie and a cynical deception.
What the people want
In Tahrir Square today there is a placard that reads: “THE PEOPLE WANT THE DOWNFALL OF THE SYSTEM” Note the exact wording: not just the downfall of Mubarak, but the downfall of the entire system upon which he rests. The people read out a list of all the present political leaders and after each name shouted out: “Illegitimate!” That is a warning to the politicians that they will not accept any deals that involve the inclusion of any figure from the old regime. This shows an absolutely correct political instinct.
The problem is one of leadership. The bourgeois liberals cannot be trusted. The men who are trying to usurp control are like merchants in a bazaar who will use the Revolution as a bargaining piece with which they can haggle with the regime to win positions and careers. They will always betray the people to further their own selfish interests. The Wafd party and other liberals immediately accepted Mubarak’s "concessions" and ended their participation in the revolution. Al-Baradei is a stooge of the Americans who Washington wishes to put in power as a replacement of Mubarak. How can we place any confidence in men like these?
The revolutionaries must be on their guard! The people of Egypt did not fight and die to allow the same old oligarchy and their imperialist backers to stay in power. The movement must not be demobilized. It must be stepped up. The Revolution must be carried on to the end! No deals with Suleiman or any other figure of the old regime! Not a single one must remain!
The revolutionary people must take a big broom in their hands and sweep out the entire political establishment. For a wholesale purge and the dismissal of all the old officials! Those guilty of corruption must be put on trial and their property confiscated and used for the benefit of the poor.
As long as the old apparatus of state repression remains in being the Revolution will never be safe. The people can accept nothing less than the complete dismantling of the old state apparatus. For the immediate disbanding of the repressive apparatus! For the establishment of popular tribunals to try and punish all those guilty of repressive acts against the people!
The Revolution must be organized. It needs structured, democratic, popular organizations and a fighting machine able to defend it against any aggression. For popular committees for the defence of the Revolution! For a people’s militia! Once the people are armed, no force on earth can oppress them.
The armed people are the only force that can guarantee the conquests of the Revolution, defend democratic rights and convene genuinely free elections to a Constituent Assembly.
A proud people awakes
The New York Times yesterday published interviews that reveal the real content of the Revolution:
“I tell the Arab world to stand with us until we win our freedom,” said Khaled Yusuf, a cleric from Al Azhar, a once esteemed institution of religious scholarship now beholden to the government. “Once we do, we’re going to free the Arab world.”
“For decades, the Arab world has waited for a saviour — be it Gamal Abdel-Nasser, the charismatic Egyptian president, or even, for a time, Saddam Hussein. No one was waiting for a saviour on Wednesday. Before nearly three decades of accumulated authority — the power of a state that can mobilize thousands to heed its whims — people had themselves.
“I’m fighting for my freedom,” Noha al-Ustaz said as she broke bricks on the curb. “For my right to express myself. For an end to oppression. For an end to injustice.”
Mubarak is justly regarded as a traitor and an American and Israeli stooge. The same sentiment is shared by many parts of the Arab world. The same conditions that provoked revolution in Tunisia and Egypt will cause a domino effect across other Arab states. That is why the demands of the Egyptian people have found an echo in the streets from Algeria to Morocco, from Palestinian camps in Jordan to the slums of Baghdad’s Sadr City.
Cynical western observers have often described the Egyptian people as apathetic and passive. Now this stereotype, the product of superficial thinking and feelings of racial superiority, has been stood on its head. Where is the apathy now? This is an ancient, proud and noble people who were exploited, oppressed, insulted and humiliated for generations by foreign masters and their corrupt local agents. They are in the process of breaking with the past and building a new and better future.
The Revolution has given a voice to those who had no voice, it has articulated the sense of hopelessness, the frustration, the humiliations at the hands of the police and the outrage of the youth who do not have enough money to get married and raise a family. The masses are not just fighting for bread and elementary human rights. They are fighting for human dignity. Thanks to the Revolution, the people of Egypt have stood up and raised themselves to their true stature.
“From minute-by-minute coverage on Arabic channels to conversations from Iraq to Morocco, the Middle East watched breathlessly at a moment as compelling as any in the Arab world in a lifetime. For the first time in a generation, Arabs seem to be looking again to Egypt for leadership, and that sense of destiny was voiced throughout the day.”
These words of the New York Times show the real situation. All this is having a tremendous impact that extends far beyond the Middle East and North Africa. Revolutionary Egypt can now begin to occupy its real place in world history.
London 4 February, 2011
The question of propaganda for people's armed militias is on the order of the day in Egypt.
The Egyptian Revolution: “The people want the downfall of the system”
Written by Alan Woods
Friday, 04 February 2011
The masses have once again taken to the streets in the biggest demonstrations yet seen in Egypt. They call it the "Day of Departure". Already this morning Al Jazeera showed an immense crowd of people thronging Tahriri Square. The mood was neither tense nor fearful, but jubilant. The very instant Friday prayers finished the masses erupted in a deafening roar of “Mubarak out!” The few Mubarak supporters who were slinking on the streets outside the Square like impotent jackals could do nothing.
In Alexandria there was a massive anti-Mubarak demonstration of over a million. There were no pro-Mubarak people in sight and no police or security forces of any kind on the streets. There were demonstrations on Thursday in Suez and Ismailia, industrial cities where inflation and unemployment are rife, and although I have not yet seen any reports today, there can be no doubt that there will be very big demonstrations today all over Egypt. The Egyptian people have spoken and the message is unmistakable.
The class dynamics of the Revolution
January 30 - Tanks in Tahrir Square - Photo: RamiRaoofMarx pointed out that the Revolution needs the whip of the counterrevolution. This is the case here. The brutal onslaught of the counterrevolutionaries yesterday created the conditions for a new advance of the Revolution today. A revolution is characterized by violent swings of public opinion. We have seen this in the last 24 hours. Yesterday the mood of the protesters was grim. Today the revolutionary masses scent victory in the air.
This represents a complete turnabout in a few hours. But how can this transformation be explained? To understand what has happened it is necessary to understand the class dynamics of the Revolution. Different classes move at different speeds. The advanced layers – especially the youth – are the first to move into action. They draw the most advanced conclusions. But they are a minority. The mass of the people lag behind. Their consciousness has been moulded by past defeats. They are weighed down by decades of routine, habit and tradition.
The father of modern physics, Isaac Newton, explained that objects at rest tend to stay at rest. The phenomenon of inertia applies not only to the physical world but to society. To overcome the resistance of inertia a powerful external force is necessary. The present epoch is preparing shocks that will shake the masses out of their inertia. But this does not happen all at once. Mubarak has tried to play on the innate conservatism of the population, the fear of sudden change and the danger of chaos.
February 3 - Detention Place Demonstrators Use to Keep Thugs and Security they Catch - Photo: RamyRaoofMubarak mobilized the forces of the counterrevolution in an attempt to crush the Revolution by force. At the same time he made soothing speeches offering peaceful reforms. This speech had an effect on the minds of the inert mass of the population, especially the middle class who are fearful of disorder. “If you remove me there will be chaos, like Iraq,” he tells them. Such arguments can have an effect on the more backward strata of the masses. They have not yet begun to move. They are not on the streets. They are watching events on the television and they are worried. By promising reform and a return to normality, the President was telling these people what they wanted to hear.
After the speech many of people who were initially sympathetic to the protesters were saying: “That is enough! You have got what you wanted. The old man is going to stand down in September. Why can’t you wait a few months? We are tired of all this. We want a peaceful life, with the shops and banks open and business as usual.” This was a dangerous moment for the Revolution. The mood of the middle classes was swinging towards the President. The counterrevolutionaries were gaining ground on the streets. The army was passive. At this point, the whole process could have begun to go into reverse.
At this critical point, the fate of the Revolution was determined by the courage and determination of the advanced guard. It is true that the active forces of the Revolution were a minority. But it is equally true that the shock troops of the counterrevolution were a minority. In order to defeat the Revolution, Mubarak summoned every last ounce of his support. He bussed in people from the provinces and they concentrated their strength outside Tahrir Square.
This was the decisive turning point. If they had succeeded in driving the protesters from the Square the whole process could have been thrown into reverse. But they failed. Not only were they driven back by the heroic resistance of the revolutionaries. After seven hours of fighting for every inch, the revolutionaries finally got Mubarak’s thugs on the run. This was a decisive turning point. This produced a change in the psychology of the wavering elements. The ferocious violence of the counterrevolutionaries produced a new swing in public opinion that may well prove fatal to Mabarak’s cause.
February 3 - Fences to guard entrance to Tarhir Square - Photo: RamyRaoofThe battle was live on Al Jazeera, and millions of people could see what was happening. The scenes of a police van hurtling down the street at top speed, mowing down demonstrators said it all. The same people who had illusions in Mubarak’s promise of reform could now see they had been deceived. The smiling mask of the Father of the People slipped to reveal the ugly physiognomy of a cruel and despotic Pharaoh.
So it was all lies, after all! Mubarak’s warning of chaos if he stepped down was contradicted by these images. The chaos already exists, and the President is responsible. Down with the President! Al Jazeera reported one case that explains the process whereby the consciousness of the masses is transformed in a revolution. A man came to Tahrir Square and said: “I believed that the protesters were paid by foreign powers, but now I have come here and seen for myself I have understood that it is not true.” And this man, who only yesterday was supporting the counterrevolution, joined the demonstration.
Crisis of the regime
February 2 - Protesters gathering to defend demonstration - Photo: RamyRaoofThe defeat in Tahrir Square has provoked a crisis in the regime. In a clear expression of weakness the government is publicly apologising for bloodshed on Wednesday. There are signs of divisions at the top. Ahmed Shafiq, the new prime minister, said he did not know who was responsible for the bloodshed. That is exceedingly strange because everyone else in the world knows that it was the work of undercover police. He also said the Interior Minister should not obstruct Friday's peaceful marches. For his part, the Interior Minister denied that his men ordered their agents or officers to attack the demonstrators, although not even his own mother believes him.
There are indications that the 82 year old President, who remains hidden inside his heavily guarded palace, is tired and partly demoralized. Yesterday he told the American TV network ABC News.: "I am fed up. After 62 years in public service, I have had enough. I want to go." But he immediately added: "If I resign today, there will be chaos."
Speaking in the presidential palace, with his son Gamal at his side, Mubarak said: "I never intended to run [for president] again," Mr Mubarak said. "I never intended Gamal to be president after me." Since everybody in Egypt knows that these were precisely his intentions, this shows that the old man at least does not lack a sense of humour. He then repeated his long-held assertion that the Muslim Brotherhood would fill the power vacuum left by his absence.
Photo: RamyRaoofThe government gives the impression of struggling to regain control of events that are slipping out of its hands. It also does not seem to know what it is doing. While Mubarak utters dark warnings about the Muslim Brotherhood, his prime minister is inviting the Muslim Brotherhood to talks, a very kind offer which the latter have politely declined. They are not so stupid as to offer a hand to a drowning man who only wishes to pull them into the water to keep him company as he goes under.
The Americans are constantly repeating this argument that this is an Islamist movement led by the Muslim Brotherhood and that if Mubarak goes the jihadis will take over. That is a lie, although American diplomats and politicians are stupid enough to believe it. This movement has nothing to do with jihadi fundamentalism or Islamic politics. The New York Times correctly pointed out: “For many, the Brotherhood itself is a vestige of an older order that has failed to deliver.”
This great revolutionary movement was not organized by the Muslim Brotherhood or any of the bourgeois political parties. The Muslim Brotherhood is well organized and has a strong apparatus and money. Its leaders are manoeuvring behind the scenes. But the youth movement is the largest and most determined component of the revolution. It is they who have played the leading role from start to finish.
When these courageous young men and women went to the streets on 25th January, all the political parties including the Brotherhood were taken by surprise. The Muslim Brotherhood did not support them. The youth of 6 April are the ones calling for action. They are the ones who called today’s demonstration. And today, when the revolutionary people marched in their millions, every political party including the Brotherhood were negligible.
The revolutionary people are not fighting for Islam or any religion. They are fighting for their democratic rights and for national and social liberation. Under Mubarak Islamic extremists murdered Christians. But on the demonstrations Christians and Muslims march together. In Tahrir Square there are Muslims and Christians, believers and unbelievers – all united in the same struggle against the same oppressors. The Revolution has cut across all sectarian divisions. That constitutes its great strength.
A “meaningful transition” – to what?
The immediate threat of counterrevolution has been defeated by the courage and determination of the revolutionary people. But victory has not yet been won. The ruling class has many ways of defeating the people. When state violence fails, it can resort to trickery and deception. The situation is very clear. Mubarak cannot control Egypt. Either he will leave, or the Revolution will sweep all before it. This prospect is what fills the Americans with terror.
Washington has lost its grip on events. Taken by surprise at every stage, they lack even the semblance of a coherent policy. The CIA, Saudi Arabia and the Israelis want Mubarak to stand his ground, not out of any personal loyalty, but to prevent the Revolution from spreading to other Arab countries. But the Americans are playing a double game. Obama and the State Department can see that Mubarak’s days are numbered and are manoeuvring behind the scenes to maintain the old regime under another name.
It has emerged that the White House has been in talks with the Cairo government about how Egypt can begin making a "meaningful transition". US Vice-President Joe Biden spoke to his Egyptian counterpart on Thursday; one day after Suleiman had similar talks with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. According to the New York Times among the proposals was a plan for Mubarak to resign immediately and hand power to a military-backed interim government under Mr Suleiman.
Neither the White House nor the State Department have directly denied the report. But a spokesman for President Barack Obama's National Security Council said it was "time to begin a peaceful, orderly and meaningful transition, with credible, inclusive negotiations". However, the BBC's Mark Mardell in Washington says other reports suggest the US plan has already been rebuffed in Egypt, and that the administration has been “surprised” by the attitude of the military and Suleiman.
The Americans know very well that Suleiman was involved in the attacks on the opposition, and yet they consider that he is the right man to lead an interim government. Everybody knows Omar Suleiman is the man of the CIA and of Israel. This is just a means of maintaining the system while giving the impression of a change. It would be the negation of all the democratic aspirations of the people: a lie and a cynical deception.
What the people want
In Tahrir Square today there is a placard that reads: “THE PEOPLE WANT THE DOWNFALL OF THE SYSTEM” Note the exact wording: not just the downfall of Mubarak, but the downfall of the entire system upon which he rests. The people read out a list of all the present political leaders and after each name shouted out: “Illegitimate!” That is a warning to the politicians that they will not accept any deals that involve the inclusion of any figure from the old regime. This shows an absolutely correct political instinct.
The problem is one of leadership. The bourgeois liberals cannot be trusted. The men who are trying to usurp control are like merchants in a bazaar who will use the Revolution as a bargaining piece with which they can haggle with the regime to win positions and careers. They will always betray the people to further their own selfish interests. The Wafd party and other liberals immediately accepted Mubarak’s "concessions" and ended their participation in the revolution. Al-Baradei is a stooge of the Americans who Washington wishes to put in power as a replacement of Mubarak. How can we place any confidence in men like these?
The revolutionaries must be on their guard! The people of Egypt did not fight and die to allow the same old oligarchy and their imperialist backers to stay in power. The movement must not be demobilized. It must be stepped up. The Revolution must be carried on to the end! No deals with Suleiman or any other figure of the old regime! Not a single one must remain!
The revolutionary people must take a big broom in their hands and sweep out the entire political establishment. For a wholesale purge and the dismissal of all the old officials! Those guilty of corruption must be put on trial and their property confiscated and used for the benefit of the poor.
As long as the old apparatus of state repression remains in being the Revolution will never be safe. The people can accept nothing less than the complete dismantling of the old state apparatus. For the immediate disbanding of the repressive apparatus! For the establishment of popular tribunals to try and punish all those guilty of repressive acts against the people!
The Revolution must be organized. It needs structured, democratic, popular organizations and a fighting machine able to defend it against any aggression. For popular committees for the defence of the Revolution! For a people’s militia! Once the people are armed, no force on earth can oppress them.
The armed people are the only force that can guarantee the conquests of the Revolution, defend democratic rights and convene genuinely free elections to a Constituent Assembly.
A proud people awakes
The New York Times yesterday published interviews that reveal the real content of the Revolution:
“I tell the Arab world to stand with us until we win our freedom,” said Khaled Yusuf, a cleric from Al Azhar, a once esteemed institution of religious scholarship now beholden to the government. “Once we do, we’re going to free the Arab world.”
“For decades, the Arab world has waited for a saviour — be it Gamal Abdel-Nasser, the charismatic Egyptian president, or even, for a time, Saddam Hussein. No one was waiting for a saviour on Wednesday. Before nearly three decades of accumulated authority — the power of a state that can mobilize thousands to heed its whims — people had themselves.
“I’m fighting for my freedom,” Noha al-Ustaz said as she broke bricks on the curb. “For my right to express myself. For an end to oppression. For an end to injustice.”
Mubarak is justly regarded as a traitor and an American and Israeli stooge. The same sentiment is shared by many parts of the Arab world. The same conditions that provoked revolution in Tunisia and Egypt will cause a domino effect across other Arab states. That is why the demands of the Egyptian people have found an echo in the streets from Algeria to Morocco, from Palestinian camps in Jordan to the slums of Baghdad’s Sadr City.
Cynical western observers have often described the Egyptian people as apathetic and passive. Now this stereotype, the product of superficial thinking and feelings of racial superiority, has been stood on its head. Where is the apathy now? This is an ancient, proud and noble people who were exploited, oppressed, insulted and humiliated for generations by foreign masters and their corrupt local agents. They are in the process of breaking with the past and building a new and better future.
The Revolution has given a voice to those who had no voice, it has articulated the sense of hopelessness, the frustration, the humiliations at the hands of the police and the outrage of the youth who do not have enough money to get married and raise a family. The masses are not just fighting for bread and elementary human rights. They are fighting for human dignity. Thanks to the Revolution, the people of Egypt have stood up and raised themselves to their true stature.
“From minute-by-minute coverage on Arabic channels to conversations from Iraq to Morocco, the Middle East watched breathlessly at a moment as compelling as any in the Arab world in a lifetime. For the first time in a generation, Arabs seem to be looking again to Egypt for leadership, and that sense of destiny was voiced throughout the day.”
These words of the New York Times show the real situation. All this is having a tremendous impact that extends far beyond the Middle East and North Africa. Revolutionary Egypt can now begin to occupy its real place in world history.
London 4 February, 2011
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)