From The Marxist Archives-In Honor Of The Anniversary Of The John Brown-Led Raid On Harpers Ferry- Honor Lenin, Liebknecht, Luxemburg! 

STRIKE THE BLOW-THE LEGEND OF CAPTAIN JOHN BROWN

Reclaiming John Brown for the Left

BOOK REVIEW

JOHN BROWN, ABOLITIONIST, DAVID S. REYNOLDS, ALFRED A. KNOPF, NEW YORK, 2005
From fairly early in my youth I knew the name John Brown and was swept up by the romance surrounding his exploits at Harpers Ferry. For example, I knew that the great anthem of the Civil War -The Battle Hymn of the Republic- had a prior existence as a tribute to John Brown and that Union soldiers marched to that song as they headed south. I was then, however, neither familiar with the import of his exploits for the black liberation struggle nor knew much about the specifics of the politics of the various tendencies in the struggle against slavery. I certainly knew nothing then of Brown’s (and his sons) prior military exploits in the Kansas ‘proxy’ wars against the expansion of slavery. Later study filled in some of those gaps and has only strengthened my strong bond with his memory. Know this, as I reach the age at which John Brown was executed,I still retain my youthful admiration for him. In the context of the turmoil of the times he was the most courageous and audacious revolutionary in the struggle for the abolition of slavery in America. Almost 150 years after his death this writer is proud to stand in the tradition of John Brown.

That said, it is with a great deal of pleasure that I can recommend Mr. Reynolds’s book detailing the life, times and exploits of John Brown, warts and all. Published in 2005, this is an important source (including helpful end notes) for updating various controversies surrounding the John Brown saga. While I may disagree with some of Mr. Reynolds’s conclusions concerning the impact of John Brown’s exploits on later black liberation struggles and to a lesser extent his position on Brown’s impact on his contemporaries, particularly the Transcendentalists, nevertheless on the key point of the central place of John Brown in American revolutionary history there is no dispute. Furthermore, Mr. Reynolds has taken pains to provide substantial detail about the ups and downs of John Brown’s posthumous reputation.

Most importantly, he defends the memory of John Brown against all-comers-that is partisan history on behalf of the ‘losers’ of history at its best. He has reclaimed John Brown to his proper position as an icon for the left against the erroneous and outrageous efforts of modern day religious and secular terrorists to lay any claim to his memory or his work. Below I make a few comments on some of controversies surrounding John Brown developed in Mr. Reynolds’s study.

If one understands the ongoing nature, from his early youth, of John Brown’s commitment to the active struggle against slavery, the scourge of the American Republic in the first half of the 19th century, one can only conclude that he was indeed a man on a mission. As Mr. Reynolds’s points out Brown took every opportunity to fight against slavery including early service as an agent of the Underground Railroad spiriting escaped slaves northward, participation as an extreme radical in all the key anti-slavery propaganda battles of the time as well as challenging other anti-slavery elements to be more militant and in the 1850’s, arms in hand, fighting in the ‘proxy’ wars in Kansas and, of course, the culmination of his life- the raid on Harpers Ferry. Those exploits alone render absurd a very convenient myth by those who supported slavery or turned a blind eye to it and their latter-day apologists for his so-called ‘madness’. This is a political man and to these eyes a very worthy one.

For those who like their political heroes ‘pure’, frankly, it is better to look elsewhere than the life of John Brown. His personal and family life as a failed rural capitalist would hardly lead one to think that this man was to become a key historical figure in any struggle, much less the great struggle against slavery. Some of his actions in Kansas (concerning the murder of some pro-slavery elements under his direction) also cloud his image. However, when the deal went down in the late 1850’s and it was apparent for all to see that there was no other way to end slavery than a fight to the death-John Brown rose to the occasion. And did not cry about it. And did not expect others to cry about it. Call him a ‘monomaniac’ if you like but even a slight acquaintance with great historical figures shows they all have this ‘disease’- that is why they make the history books. No, the ‘madness’ argument will not do.

Whether or not John Brown knew that his military strategy for the Harper’s Ferry raid would, in the short term, be defeated is a matter of dispute. Reams of paper have been spent proving the military foolhardiness of his scheme at Harper’s Ferry. Brown’s plan, however, was essentially a combination of slave revolt modeled after the maroon experiences in Haiti, Nat Turner’s earlier Virginia slave rebellion and rural guerrilla warfare of the ‘third world’ type that we have become more familiar with since that time. 150 years later this strategy does not look so foolhardy in an America of the 1850’s that had no real standing army, fairly weak lines of communications, virtually uninhabited mountains to flee to and the North at their backs.

The execution of the plan is another matter. Brown seemingly made about every mistake in the book in that regard. However, this is missing the essential political point that militant action not continuing parliamentary maneuvering advocated by other abolitionists had become necessary. A few more fighting abolitionists, including Frederick Douglass, and better propaganda work among freedman with connections to the plantations would not have hurt the chances for success at Harpers Ferry.

What is not in dispute is that Brown considered himself a true Calvinist avenging angel in the struggle against slavery and more importantly acted on that belief. In short, he was committed to bring justice to the black masses. This is why his exploits and memory stay alive after over 150 years. It is possible that if Brown did not have this, by 19th century standards as well as our own, old-fashioned Calvinist determination that he would not have been capable of militant action. Certainly other anti-slavery elements never came close to his militancy, including the key Transcendentalist movement led by Emerson and Thoreau and the Concord ‘crowd’ who supported him and kept his memory alive in hard times.

In their eyes he had the heroic manner of the Old Testament prophet. Now this animating spirit is not one that animates modern revolutionaries and so it is hard to understand the depths of his religious convictions on his actions but they were understood, if not fully appreciated, by others in those days. It is better today to look at Brown more politically through his hero (and mine, as well) Oliver Cromwell-a combination of Calvinist avenger and militant warrior. Yes, I can get behind that picture of him.

By all accounts Brown and his small integrated band of brothers fought bravely and coolly against great odds. Ten of Brown's men were killed including two of his sons. Five were captured, tried and executed, including Brown. These results are almost inevitable when one takes up a revolutionary struggle against the old order and one is not victorious. One need only think of, for example, the fate of the defenders of the Paris Commune in 1871. One can fault Brown on this or that tactical maneuver. Nevertheless he and the others bore themselves bravely in defeat. As we are all too painfully familiar there are defeats of the oppressed that lead nowhere. One thinks of the defeat of the German Revolution in the 1920’s. There other defeats that galvanize others into action. This is how Brown’s actions should be measured by history.

Militarily defeated at Harpers Ferry, Brown's political mission to destroy slavery by force of arms nevertheless continued to galvanize important elements in the North at the expense of the pacifistic non-resistant Garrisonian political program for struggle against slavery. Many writers on Brown who reduce his actions to that of a ‘madman’ still cannot believe that his road proved more appropriate to end slavery than either non-resistance or gradualism. That alone makes short shrift of such theories. Historians and others have also misinterpreted later events such as the Bolshevik strategy which led to Russian Revolution in October 1917. More recently, we saw this same incomprehension concerning the victory of the Vietnamese against overwhelming American military superiority. Needless to say, all these events continue to be revised by some historians to take the sting out of there proper political implications.

From a modern prospective Brown’s strategy for black liberation, even if the abolitionist goal he aspired to was immediately successful, reached the outer limits within the confines of capitalism. Brown’s actions were meant to make black people free. Beyond that goal he had no program except the Chatham Charter which seems to have replicated the American constitution but with racial and gender equality as a cornerstone. Unfortunately the Civil War did not provide fundamental economic and political freedom. That is still our fight. Moreover, the Civil War, the defeat of Radical Reconstruction, the reign of ‘Jim Crow’ and the subsequent waves of black migration to the cities changed the character of black oppression in the U.S. from Brown’s time. Black people are now a part of "free labor," and the key to their liberation is in the integrated fight of labor against the current one-sided class war and establishing a government of workers and their allies. Nevertheless, we can stand proudly in the revolutionary tradition of John Brown (and of his friend Frederick Douglass). We need to complete the unfinished democratic tasks of the Civil War, not by emulating Brown’s exemplary actions but to moving the multi-racial American working class to power. Finish the Civil War.
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From the International Communist League Archives

Honor Lenin, Liebknecht, Luxemburg!

This month we honor the memory of the “Three L’s”: Bolshevik leader V.I. Lenin, who died on 21 January 1924, and Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, who were assassinated on 15 January 1919 by reactionary Freikorps officers at the behest of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) government of Friedrich Ebert, Philipp Scheidemann and Gustav Noske. Liebknecht and Luxemburg were revolutionary Marxists who upheld proletarian internationalism against Ebert & Co.’s support for German imperialism in World War I. After belatedly splitting from the SPD and its centrist spin-off, the Independent Socialist Party, Liebknecht and Luxemburg went on to play leading roles in the founding of the German Communist Party (KPD) in December 1918-January 1919. Their murders were part of the Ebert government’s suppression of the proletarian Spartakist uprising of January 1919.

We reprint below a call by the Spartakist Groups and the Trotzkistische Liga Deutschlands for a revolutionary contingent at a 1990 Berlin demonstration honoring Liebknecht and Luxemburg. This call was part of the International Communist League’s intervention into the incipient proletarian political revolution in the bureaucratically deformed workers state of East Germany (DDR). From November 1989 on, we mobilized all the resources at our disposal in an attempt to give revolutionary leadership to the DDR’s working people, many of whom desperately wanted to replace the collapsing Stalinist regime with an egalitarian socialist order. We uniquely fought against capitalist counterrevolution and for the revolutionary reunification of Germany—for proletarian political revolution in the East and socialist revolution in the West. Our comrades emphasized the tradition of revolutionary internationalist solidarity between the German, Polish and Russian proletariats, which the “Three L’s” embodied.

An important component of our intervention in the DDR in 1989-90 was our warning that the West German SPD—the heirs of Ebert, Scheidemann and Noske—represented the Trojan horse of counterrevolution. This was in sharp contrast to the DDR’s Stalinist ruling party, the Socialist Unity Party (SED, renamed SED-PDS in December 1989), whose leaders increasingly embraced social democracy. This included upholding the heritage of Eduard Bernstein, notorious for his anti-revolutionary revisionism, and Karl Kautsky, a centrist renegade who bitterly opposed the Bolshevik Revolution. In late January 1990, under the pressure of a counterrevolutionary onslaught led by the imperialists, the SED-PDS followed the lead of Kremlin leader Mikhail Gorbachev in embracing capitalist reunification and going on to sell out the DDR workers state to West German imperialism.

The following is translated from the 10 January 1990 issue of Arbeiterpressekorrespondenz (Workers Press Correspondence), which was initiated by the TLD and published, sometimes on a daily basis, as a collective organizer of the Spartakist Groups in the heat of the battle against capitalist counterrevolution. In January 1990, the TLD and Spartakist Groups fused to form the Spartakist Workers Party, the ICL’s German section.

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There will be a mass demonstration Saturday, January 14, starting at 9 a.m. at the memorial site in Berlin Friedrichsfelde, in honor of the revolutionary workers’ leaders Liebknecht and Luxemburg on the 71st anniversary of their murder. Following in the footsteps of early Communist tradition, the Spartakist Groups and the Trotzkistische Liga will pay tribute to Luxemburg, Liebknecht and also Lenin. We call on all who wish to honor the “Three L’s” of Bolshevism to assemble around our banner and attend the Spartakist public forum.

In the demonstration call of the SED-PDS, Karl and Rosa are characterized as “outstanding leaders of the German Social Democrats and Communists.” This is closely connected to the SED’s current notion equating Liebknecht and Luxemburg with Kautsky and Bernstein. In this way the SED conceals the fact that it was precisely officers deployed by Social Democrat Gustav Noske who killed these Communists so as to smash the Spartakist uprising of January 1919. Noske (“Someone has to be the bloodhound”) acted on behalf of the government of the Social Democrat Friedrich Ebert, who proudly declared in 1918, “I hate the revolution like the plague!”

For decades, the leaders of the Social Democracy have attempted to cover up their bloody crime, the birthmark of the Weimar Republic. To that end, they have done their all to transform our revolutionary martyrs into social-democratic reformists. Stalin, who was equally fearful of proletarian revolution, similarly tried to rob Luxemburg of her revolutionary honor and greatness. We Spartakists, who fight for communism in the spirit of Lenin and Trotsky, stand for the revolutionary heritage of the two cofounders of the German Communist Party.

Social democrats, now including those in the SED-PDS as well, speak of “unambiguous warnings” by Rosa Luxemburg (as well as by Kautsky and Bernstein!) about the possibility of “a dictatorial-terroristic development in the Soviet Union,” not under the Stalinist bureaucracy but during Lenin’s time! Here they invoke an article she wrote in prison, without any access to accurate reports on the events in Russia, and never published. In doing so, they disregard what Rosa stated at the founding congress of the KPD on December 31 [1918]:

“...when people approach us with calumnies against the Russian Bolsheviks, we should never forget to reply: Where did you learn the ABCs of your current revolution? You got them from the Russians: the workers and soldiers councils.”

The social democrats seek to present Karl as a petty-bourgeois pacifist. But Karl was raised by his father Wilhelm as a “soldier of the revolution.” Speaking on May Day 1916, he counterposed to the Wilhelminian slogan “The war is preferable to insurrection” the socialist slogan “Insurrection, revolution are preferable to the war!” And against both the SPD’s warmongering social patriotism and Kautsky’s and Bernstein’s pacifism, Karl Liebknecht took Lenin’s side when he declared at his court-martial: “Not civil peace but civil war is my slogan!”

Above all, Karl and Rosa were internationalists. Karl—who courageously refused to vote for the war credits on 2 December 1914, saying: “Proletarians of all countries, unite again, despite everything!” Rosa—who was despised by the reactionaries of all countries as a Polish woman, a Jew and a Communist. In combating reformism for decades, both embraced the program of world socialist revolution. This was the cornerstone of the Communist International founded by Lenin and Trotsky, feared by Kautsky and Bernstein, buried by Stalin.

Today the International Communist League is fighting for the rebirth of the Trotskyist Fourth International. We are well aware of the mistakes committed by the leaders of the revolutionary socialists in Germany, in particular their failure to split early enough from the reformists and centrists. It was necessary to forge an independent revolutionary party as the Bolsheviks did, an act that was decisive for the victory of the 1917 October Revolution. But when Lenin applied to Rosa Luxemburg the old Russian couplet, “Eagles may at times fly lower than hens, but hens can never rise to the height of eagles,” he was passing judgment on the hens Kautsky and Bernstein.

In the third week of January 1933, shortly before Hitler came to power and while the Stalinized KPD was still battling “the remnants of Luxemburgism,” the German Trotskyists wrote:

“Outlawed, hunted, Lenin, Liebknecht and Luxemburg stood in battle against a host of enemies during the World War. Nevertheless, the power of their idea vanquished reformism, tsarism and the Hohenzollern [dynasty]. Like them, the International Left Opposition finds itself involved in an unequal struggle: here, with us, the power of the idea—there, the might of the apparatus. For us Bolshevik-Leninists as well, swimming against the stream, Liebknecht’s words remain true: Victory will be ours—despite everything!”

—from Permanente Revolution, third week of January 1933

— For a Leninist-communist party! Return to the road of Lenin and Trotsky!

— Stop the Nazis through workers united-front action!

— Full citizenship rights for foreign workers!

— Down with NATO! Defend the DDR, Soviet Union!

— For a planned economy under a government of workers and soldiers councils!

— No sellout of the DDR! For a red soviet Germany as part of the socialist states of Europe!