*HONOR INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY

Click on title to link to "A History Of International Women's Day In Words and Images" by Joyce Stevens.

HONOR INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY

COMMENTARY

MARCH 8TH IS INTERNATIONAL WOMEN'S DAY A TIME TO REFLECT ON THE VICTORIES AND DEFEATS OF THE PAST AND PAINSTAKINGLY ANALYZE THE NEED FOR FUTURE STRUGGLES.

Although International Women's Day is marked on 8 March every year this year it is extremely important to take note of where women’s rights stand under the onslaught of domestic and international reaction. In America, women’s rights to abortion access and other reproductive rights are under extreme attack. The recent Supreme Court appointments only emphasis that condition more acutely as black and other minority women are having a harder time making ends meet due to decreased federal and state support. All women are subjected to increased rates of disease and social dislocation and the effects of continuing rise of religious fundamentalism, always a bad sign for women.

Internationally, although International Women’s Day is suppose to be a day for global celebration for the economic, political and social achievements of women the fate of women in the so-called “Third World ” shows serious problems on the economic and social fronts. Increases in poverty and preventable diseases show how far we are from an equitable world. Most ominously, the continued rise of religious fundamentalism, always a deadly proposition for women in those societies, has only decreased the prospects for women’s liberation in the world. All these calamities only highlight the overwhelming need to resolve the struggle for women’s liberation by fighting for a more just social order. Needless to say the limiting effects of the family only enhance the continued subjugation of women. We must provide alternatives organizational forms and expend plenty of money to resolve this dilemma to insure a vast expansion of women’s intellectual and social creativity. That said, for those unfamiliar with the history of this important day here is a thumbnail sketch.

The Socialist Party of America held the first International Women’s Day on 28 February 1909 in the United States following a declaration. Subsequently, it has commemorated other historical events such as the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire (New York, 1911) where over 140 women lost their lives. In 1910 the Socialist International held the first international women’s conference in Copenhagen and the important German Socialist Clara Zetkin established an ‘International Women’s Day’, after submission of a motion. The following year, IWD was marked by over a million people in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland. Furthermore, on the eve of World War I, women across Europe held peace rallies on 8 March 1913.

Demonstrations marking International Women's Day in Russia proved to be the first stage of the Russian Revolution of 1917. Following the October Revolution, the Bolshevik leader Alexandra Kollontai persuaded Lenin to make it an official holiday, and during the Soviet period it continued to celebrate "the heroic woman worker". However, the holiday quickly lost its political flavor and became an occasion for men to express their sympathy or love for the women around them. Forget that idea. That is what Valentine's Day is for. Let us return to the tradition of working class struggle around this holiday and build a workers party that fights for women’s liberation and all the oppressed.

From The Archives-The Struggle To Win The Youth To The Fight For Our Communist Future-Juliet Mitchell On Freud And Marx-"Pyschoanalysis And Feminism"- A Book Review (March 1975)

Markin comment on this series:

One of the declared purposes of this space is to draw the lessons of our left-wing past here in America and internationally, especially from the pro-communist wing. To that end I have made commentaries and provided archival works in order to help draw those lessons for today’s left-wing activists to learn, or at least ponder over. More importantly, for the long haul, to help educate today’s youth in the struggle for our common communist future. That is no small task or easy task given the differences of generations; differences of political milieus worked in; differences of social structure to work around; and, increasingly more important, the differences in appreciation of technological advances, and their uses.

There is no question that back in my youth I could have used, desperately used, many of the archival materials available today. When I developed political consciousness very early on, albeit liberal political consciousness, I could have used this material as I knew, I knew deep inside my heart and mind, that a junior Cold War liberal of the American For Democratic Action (ADA) stripe was not the end of my leftward political trajectory. More importantly, I could have used a socialist or communist youth organization to help me articulate the doubts I had about the virtues of liberal capitalism and be recruited to a more left-wing world view. As it was I spent far too long in the throes of the left-liberal/soft social-democratic milieu where I was dying politically. A group like the Young Communist League (W.E.B. Dubois Clubs in those days), the Young People’s Socialist League, or the Young Socialist Alliance representing the youth organizations of the American Communist Party, American Socialist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S.) respectively would have saved much wasted time and energy. I knew they were around but not in my area.

The archival material to be used in this series is weighted heavily toward the youth movements of the early American Communist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S). For more recent material I have relied on material from the Spartacus Youth Clubs, the youth group of the Spartacist League (U.S.), both because they are more readily available to me and because, and this should give cause for pause, there are not many other non-CP, non-SWP youth groups around. As I gather more material from other youth sources I will place them in this series.

Finally I would like to finish up with the preamble to the Spartacist Youth Club’s What We Fight For statement of purpose:

"The Spartacus Youth Clubs intervene into social struggles armed with the revolutionary internationalist program of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. We work to mobilize youth in struggle as partisans of the working class, championing the liberation of black people, women and all the oppressed. The SYCs fight to win youth to the perspective of building the Leninist vanguard party that will lead the working class in socialist revolution, laying the basis for a world free of capitalist exploitation and imperialist slaughter."

This seems to me be somewhere in the right direction for what a Bolshevik youth group should be doing these days; a proving ground to become professional revolutionaries with enough wiggle room to learn from their mistakes, and successes. More later.
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March Is Women's History Month

PSYCHOANALYSIS AND FEMINISM by Juliet Mitchell. New York: Random House, Pantheon Books, $8.95 hardcover, 456 pp.

A Review by Ed Clarkson

The pioneering theories of Sigmund Freud have engendered stormy controversy in scientific, literary and political circles ever since their embryonic formulation around the turn of the century. The birth of the psychoanalytic movement was attended by a split between co-workers Freud and Breuer, and dissension was frequently to beset the developing psychoanalytic school as many of Freud's collaborators and followers rejected central tenets of his theories—the role of the unconscious, the importance of sexuality and its energizer libido, and the critical significance of the Oedipus conflict in personality development.

Likewise in the communist movement heated debates have raged over the validity of Freudianism as a science of human behavior. As a consequence of the growing bureaucratic degeneration of the backward and isolated Soviet workers state, Freudian theory came under attack in the Soviet Union in the mid-1920's from both Stalinist-Bukharinist bureaucratic philistines in the party and the intelligentsia following Pavlov, whose ideas had the dual advantage of being more ostensibly materialistic and having a Russian origin—no small consideration for the proponents of ^"socialism in one country."

Marxism vs. Freudianism?

It was the embattled Trotsky who insisted against the vulgar materialists that Freudian psychoanalytic theory required attentive consideration. In a 1926 essay on culture and socialism, which is breathtaking in its brilliance, Trotsky evaluates Freud as follows:
"The school of the Viennese psychoanalyst Freud proceeds in a different way [than Pavlov]. It assumes in advance that the driving force of the most complex and delicate of psychic processes is a physiological need. In this general sense it is materialistic, if you leave aside the question whether it does not assign too big a place to the sexual factor at the expense of others, for this is already a dispute within the frontiers of materialism.

But the psychoanalyst does not approach problems of consciousness experimentally, going from the lowest phenomena to the highest, from the simple reflex to the complex reflex; instead, he attempts to take all these intermediate stages in one jump, from above downwards, from the religious myth, the lyrical poem, or the dream, straight to the physiological basis of the psyche....

"The attempt to declare psychoanalysis 'incompatible' with Marxism and simply turn one's back on Freudian-ism is too simple, or, more accurately, too simplistic. But we are in any case not obliged to adopt Freudianism. It is a working hypothesis that can produce and undoubtedly does produce deductions and conjectures that proceed along the lines of materialist psychology."

Psychological theories conflict with dialectical materialism when they attempt to demonstrate that human beings are innately incapable of organizing society in such a manner that would qualitatively advance their material conditions of existence. For instance, Robert Audrey's theory of territoriality and Konrad Lorenz' theory of aggression are counterposed to Marxism precisely because they set out to prove that human cooperation beyond the narrow limits established by class, particularly capitalist, society is impossible.

There is a historical fatalism to be found in Freud's thought, especially in his pessimistic post-WWI writings, in which Thanatos (the death wish) hovers over a self-immolating humanity. Because Freud's petty-bourgeois world view does intrude upon his effort to formulate a scientific theory .of behavior, many in the working-class movement regard Freudianism with hostility.

In Civilization and Its Discontents (1930) Freud declares that the possibilities • for human satisfaction and happiness are "limited from the start by our constitution," and "the natural human aversion to work gives rise to the most difficult social problems." The abolition of private property would "in no way alter the individual difference in power and influence." Commenting on a by then Stalinized Soviet Union, Freud confirms his skepticism by accepting the bureaucracy's claims of "socialist" society:

"The Russian Communists, too, hope to be able to cause human aggressiveness to disappear by guaranteeing the satisfaction of all material needs and by establishing equality in other respects among all members of the community. That, in my opinion, is an illusion. They themselves are armed to-day with the most scrupulous care and not the least important of the methods by which they keep their supporters together is hatred of everyone beyond their frontiers." -"Why War?," Collected Papers, Vol. 5

Freud and Feminism

While his views on Marxism and the Soviet Union brought Freud denunciation by the Stalinists and fellow-traveling intellectuals, His theories of femininity similarly evoked considerable antipathy from "feminists. For Freud, two themes were of "paramount importance" in analysis: "the wish for a penis in women and, in men, the struggle against passivity [toward other men]... “("Analysis Terminable and Interminable^ *° Collected Papers Vol. 5). To feminists this theory of penis envy seemed to doom women td the status of biological second-class citizenship—men in wish, but not in being.

In the context of the general anti-Marxist and anti-Freudian biases of New Left feminism, the "socialist-feminism" of Juliet Mitchell's first book, Woman's Estate (1971), appeared as a left bulge in "Movement" feminism. A quasi-Marxist and a "scientific" Freudian, Mitchell argued that Marxism was both relevant to the liberation of women (which it certainly is) and in harmony with the feminist "principle" of women" organizing separately as women (which it is not). Woman's Estate even criticized, albeit mildly, the implications of the anti-Leninist basis of New Left feminism:
"Feminist consciousness will not \// 'naturally' develop into socialism, nor should it. If we simply develop feminist consciousness (as radical feminists suggest) we will get, not political consciousness, but the equivalent of national chauvinism among Third World nations or economist!) among working-class organizations."

The penchant of American behaviorist psychologists to focus on "antisocial" behavior, recently expressed in the extreme by Skinner's apologetics for a benevolent totalitarianism, has prompted the radical petty-bourgeois intelligentsia, yesterday sympathetic to the "progressive" pragmatism of Skinner's Walden II, to search elsewhere for a psychological justification for their liberalism. Much in vogue in the feminist milieu have been the humanist psychology of Maslow, the hyper-genital theories of Reich and the "schizophrenia-is-good-for-you" ravings of Laing.

Debunking Reich and Laing

Juliet Mitchell's most recent book, Psychoanalysis and Feminism, is an 1 attempt to come to terms with a declining movement which has become hardened in its anti-Marxism, anti-Freudianism and virulent bourgeois feminism. By this time, the reconciliation attempted in Woman's Estate between an eclectic Marxism, Freudianism and anti-capitalist feminism had obviously become untenable. Something had to give; it was Juliet Mitchell's "Marxism."

For those who prefer Freud to his detractors, Psychoanalysis and Feminism will prove, at least in part, an eminently satisfying work. Mitchell presents an intelligent and for the most part accurate exposition of the core elements of Freudian theory, especially the analysis of femininity. This is combined with insightful critiques of the "radical psychotherapists" Reich and Laing and of Freud's feminist critics, Simone de Beauvoir, Betty Friedan, Eva Figes, Germaine Greer, Shoal-Smith Firestone and Kate Millet.

Mitchell argues convincingly that most criticisms of psychoanalysis are based on a misunderstanding of an important distinction in Freudian psychology: the distinction between the psychic representation of the conflict of social reality with instinctual forces (the data of psychoanalysis) and the biological instincts themselves. Freud fully realized that he was dealing only with the former; the latter he regarded as the subject of investigation for a future, more advanced science.

Reich asserts the matter in more "basic" terms: the repression of sexual energy is bad, its "ultimate" orgasmic expression good; heterosexual genitality is natural, homosexuality unnatural; the vagina is thus the biological counterpart of the penis. Lost are Freud's insights into the inherently bisexual natural of human sexual development and the extent to which the conflict between human drives and social reality both shape (through sublimation) and distort happiness and role. For Reich, instinct is all. Similarly, where Freud analyzes both normal and abnormal behavior as manifested through the a-logical operations of the unconscious, Laing sees the delusional world of the schizophrenic as a logical response to a current conflict. For Laing, humans are simply reactive.
Although Mitchell is frequently brilliant and incisive in her defense of the "science" of psychoanalysis, she is disquieted by Freud's insistence that all understanding of behavior, in the final analysis, must be grounded on the bedrock of biology. In Mitchell's schema biological determinism has no place, and her uneasiness with its presence in Freudian theory leads her to distort precisely that area of Freudianism she is most concerned to defend—his hypotheses concerning the "psychological consequences of the anatomical distinction between the sexes."

Freudianism and the Oppression of Women

Generally Freud carefully distinguishes between the psychological impact of biological factors and the factors themselves. When Freud takes up the problem of the psychological development of women, however, he sidesteps this distinction.
Freud posits that the fear of castration for males is caused not merely by the sight or conception of penisless beings (women), but in addition by an actual, although perhaps implied, threat of castration. The female case is different:

"A momentous "discovery which little girls are destined to make [is that] they notice the penis of a brother or playmate, strikingly visible and of larger proportions, at once recognize it as the superior counterpart of their own small and inconspicuous organ, and from that time forward fall a victim to envy for the penis.... A little girl... makes her judgment and her decision in a flash. She has seen it and knows that she is without and wants to have it." (our emphasis)

— "Some Psychological Consequences of the Anatomical Distinction Between the Sexes," Collected Papers, Vol. 5

For Freud, the esteem for the penis is established not socially, but phylo-genetically: "The penis (to follow Ferenczi) owes its extraordinarily high narcissistic cathexis to its organic significance for the propagation of the species" (ibid.). The penis is valorized because of its role in reproduction.

Although the clitoris is "analogous to the male organ," Freud regards the vagina as the "true female organ" (Female Sexuality). Freud thus considers women as constitutionally inferior to men.

Freud's error is a logical one, based, no doubt, on the intrusion of male chauvinist assumptions into his scientific thinking. His letters to his wife are1 adequate testimony to his susceptibility to such influences. They reek of sexism, although of the icky-poo, "women-as-the-salt-of-the-earth" variety. Mitchell's aversion to Freud's biologicisms, however, is motivated not by political opposition to their anti-feminist implications, but by the desire for an idealistic revision of psychoanalysis which could provide the long-sought feminist "answer" to Marxist dialectical materialism.

Mitchell Contra Engels
In Psychoanalysis and Feminism, Mitchell sweeps aside the self-proclaimed Marxist orientation of Woman's Estate and poses anew the, "fundamental question of the cause of women's oppression:

"The longevity of the oppression of women must be based on something more than conspiracy, something more complicated than biological handicap and more durable than economic exploitation (although in differing degrees all these may feature)."

The missing link turns out to be "culture"; specifically, patriarchal culture:
"It seems to be the case that contemporary anthropology supports Freud's contention that human society in many ways equals patriarchy rather than Engels' notion that patriarchy can be limited to strictly literate civilization."

Using the anthropological theories of academic doyen Claude Levi-Strauss, Mitchell argues that since the exchange of women by men between kinship groupings (exogamy) has characterized all human societies, all human society has been patriarchal, i.e., "fathers not men" have "determinate power." The Oedipus complex now becomes for Mitchell the internalized manifestation of the cultural tyranny represented in the incest taboo. With the dissolution of the Oedipus complex, "man finally enters into his humanity."

Mitchell realizes that kinship systems are obviously neither operative nor relevant in modern capitalist society and therefore maintains that the bourgeois nuclear family is socially redundant, merely "created to give that law [the patriarchal law] a last hearing." The struggle against the oppression of women no longer must be directed against capitalism or even the "domination of men," but must become a "struggle based on a theory of the social non-necessity at this stage of development of the laws instituted by patriarchy."

This contention that fathers have "determinate" power flies in the face of the fact that their role in anthropologically earlier (avuncular) societies was not significantly greater than the mother's. Nor is the father's son prohibited from copulating with the father's wife (the Oedipus complex as understood by Freud), although biological mother-son sexual relationships have apparently generally been taboo. The most primitive societies seldom have mechanisms for identifying either the father’s sons or his mates (i.e., the nuclear family).

Incest (the prohibition of heterosexual copulation between certain biologically related individuals) only imperfectly correlates with the more primitive forms of unilinearity (kinship determined by membership to either the mother's or the father's clan) and exogamy (marrying out of one's clan). The incest taboo as such is a more recent historical development associated with increasingly differentiated social arrangements and the rise of the monogamous family.

Completely absent from Mitchell's analysis is any sense why the "law of patriarchy" should endure. Basing his hypothesis on inadequate anthropological data (Morgan's studies), Engels wrongly inferred that a matriarchal stage preceded the development of patriarchy. But the essence of Engels' method, however, is the appreciation of the role of social relationships (the emergence of private property) in causing a qualitative perforation of the condition of women. Mitchell draws her analysis, however, from Freud's unfounded, fanciful hypothesis that in the dawn of primitive society exogamy and the incest taboo resulted from the successful alliance of sons against the sexual privileges of the all-powerful father, which resulted in the cannibalization of the father and the sharing out of his women.

Forward to the Pages of Ms.

Psychoanalysis and Feminism thus floats above any concern for the actual oppression of women. The degradation suffered by women imprisoned within the nuclear family and oppressed by capitalist society simply becomes the equivalent perforce of men exchanging women. Prostitution, social isolation, divestiture of legal rights, sole responsibility for child raising—all features of the monogamous nuclear family noticeably absent in most primitive societies —recede in importance for Juliet Mitchell. The bourgeois nuclear family is "not in itself important. V Rather, it is the kinship system, which "in our society... barely can be seen to regulate social relationships," that is the source of women's oppression, because "it is within kinship structures that women, as women, are situated"!

Mitchell has accomplished an idealist subversion of even that rudimentary Marxist understanding revealed in Woman's Estate. Now she conceptualizes culture as having its own dynamic (exactly what, remains unstated) and being transmitted through the unconscious independent of material conditions. Mitchell now recognizes "two autonomous areas: the economic mode of capitalism and the ideological mode of patriarchy."

In Woman's Estate Mitchell envisioned the revolution as the product of a coalition of oppressed groups, each raising its consciousness of its own particular oppression by a theoretical operation-bootstrap and then working to a point of solidarity. From her revised perspective, Mitchell has come to consider even a tactical unity between the women's liberation movement and the labor movement as unnecessary:

"Because patriarchy is by no means identical with capitalism the successes and strengths of the two revolutionary movements [the women's liberation movement and the working-class movement] will not follow along neatly parallel paths."

Not only are these paths not "neatly parallel," but they may in fact diverge. Mitchell readily admits that "It is perfectly possible for feminism to make more gains under social democracy than it does in the first years of socialism." Indeed, if capitalism has already rendered women's oppression redundant, then it is difficult to explain why the liberation of women could not occur under any form of capitalist government, from reformist Laborism or the popular front to fascism. In fact, the most optimum conditions could well be a fascism where there are sufficiently strong drives toward racial purity as to necessitate the challenging of the "utility" of the incest taboo.

The politics of Psychoanalysis and Feminism are a justification for "Movement” feminism at any of its-stages, from the radical, anti-capitalist; New Left period through its current trivial, careerist and venal expression. For Juliet Mitchell the battle against cultural oppression no longer need be waged in the streets; the need for a Popular Front against Patriarchy can 'be propagated with equal efficacy from the pages of MS.

On The 80th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Fourth International-*A Snapshot View Of The Leaders Of The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution- Leon Trotsky

Click on title to link to Wikipedia's entry for the great 1917 Bolshevik revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky. No added comment is needed in this space for the work, life and deeds of this man.

On The 80th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Fourth International-*Books To While Away The Class Struggle By-Professor Patenaude's "Leon Trotsky: Downfall Of A Revolutionary"-The Last Days Of The Old Man

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Leon Trotsky commenting on the Moscow Trials.

Recently I have begun to post entries under the headline- Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By and Films To While Away The Class Struggle By-that will include progressive and labor-oriented songs and films that might be of general interest to the radical public. I have decided to do the same for some books that may perk that same interest under the title in this entry’s headline. Markin


Book Review

Leon Trotsky: Downfall Of A Revolutionary, Betrand Patenaude, Harper, New York, 2009



As I noted in a recent review of Professor Robert Service’s biography, Trotsky, the spirit of the great Russian Bolshevik revolutionary, Leon Trotsky, animates the political material reviewed in this space, and is some senses the way the materials are presented make no sense without acknowledging that hard truth. I have also noted, as well, that of all the biographies, sketches, memoirs, etc. concerning the life and times of this extraordinary revolutionary that Isaac Deutscher’s three volume Prophet series done in the 1950s and 1960s still, to my mind, is the definitive such study of the man. As I also noted in the above-mentioned review after reading that Trotsky biography and this more specialized volume that centers on the last period of his life and his subsequent assassination by a Stalinist agent down in Mexico in 1940, both which have the benefit of the latest in archival, particularly Soviet archival, material I still hold to that opinion. However, the present book under review, by looking at Trotsky’s life from the perspective of his last years in exile and projecting back to the highlights of his earlier career and deeds was an interesting quick read on Trotsky’s life for those who need a fairly short primer on his life.

As I also stated in the Service review I admit to being somewhat surprised by Professor Patenaude‘s book. Not, as might be expected, for its veiled liberal disdain for the Soviet experiment and for Bolshevism. That kind of expectation comes with wading into liberal academic territory. It is, moreover, old hat by now and gets one no closer to the core of Trotsky’s place in world revolutionary history than most of the other Trotsky books written from that hardly exclusive perspective. What is surprising is that Professor Patenaude felt the need to write a biography of the fallen revolutionary Leon Trotsky in the year 2009 long after his ghost, and that of the Soviet Union, that he was instrumental in creating, especially its military structure, have left the scene. Furthermore, as with Professor Service’s book, while I believe this book has a certain merit as a contemporary Trotsky primer it certainly has not revealed much new in the way of biographical material despite the opening up of the archives. That is the sense, or one of the senses, that I mean when I say I continue to stand in awe of Isaac Deutscher’s exhaustive study.

For those not familiar with Trotsky’s life the good professor sketchily projects back to his Ukrainian Jewish childhood, his early pre-revolutionary academic activities, and his emersion into the Russian revolutionary milieu in Russia and in exile at the turn of the 20th century. He notes Trotsky’s very public leadership of the Russian revolution of 1905 as chairman of the St. Petersburg Soviet and after its defeat its political defense, the pre-World War I free agent journalist period during which he attempted to bring the Bolshevik and Menshevik factions together and earned the scorn of both sides, and the struggle against World War I and the betrayal of internationalism by the Second International. Time is spent on the 1917 February and October revolutions in Russia where Trotsky linked his fate with the Bolsheviks and became a central leader of that party and of the Soviet state, the subsequent civil war to defend that October revolution, and Trotsky’s key role in creating the Red Army and the Communist International. He also details the post-Lenin inner-Bolshevik Party struggle where Trotsky’s star started to fate, and in the aftermath his internal and then eternal exiles, highlighted by the Mexican exile, after his defeats at the hands of Stalin, and his fight to create the stillborn Fourth International to replace the Communist International in the fight for world socialist revolution. And, of course, he goes in great depth about the set-up of his assassination at the hands of a Stalinist agent in 1940. Along the way he also gives scope to Trotsky’s wide ranging literary and intellectual interests that permitted him to continue to make his mark on the political world after his exile, to make a living, and to fund his various political projects.

In one sense it is hard for a biographer, any biographer, to say something new about such an open book political man as Leon Trotsky. Both because he wrote much, including his memoirs, about his political life and his positions from early on well before the Russian Revolution of 1905 and because the events that he was associated with left little room for not previously making it onto the pages of history. So what is left for a biographer? Well, since no one has scoured the newly opened archives and found that Trotsky really did take German gold during World War I. Or that he really, as charged in the Moscow trials, was an agent of the Mikado, British imperialism or Hitlerite Germany then what is left is speculation, now apparently endless speculation, about his personal character flaws.

This is actually the ground that makes this book, like Professor Service’s, interesting as he, like others before him detail Trotsky’s prickly personality, his failure to suffer fools gladly (or at all) either close political associates or distant foes, his aloofness and haughtiness that made him less than the perfect choice for leadership of political factions in the struggle for power. Those, in the end, were a key to Trotsky’s political undoing. Professor Patenaude also details more extensively than I have seen elsewhere some of Trotsky private moments like his late life affair with the Mexican surrealist/naturalist artist, Frida Kahlo (and wife of muralist Diego Rivera), his bumpy road passion for his long suffering wife and companion, Natalia, his myriad health issues and his strained relationships with most of his kin folk.

For those who have not read a previous Trotsky biography and who understand that Professor Patenaude's work is a mere sketch of the vast number of issues and events that Trotsky’s life represented then there is much that can be gleaned from his work. But, I always come back to when dealing with the life of the much maligned, besmirched, and denigrated revolutionary Leon Trotsky. Trotsky, warts and all, comes as close as any historic figure that has come out of bourgeois society to being the proto-type for the new communist man that humankind has produced thus far. In that sense Leon Trotsky is in need of no certificate of revolutionary good conduct from the good professor, ex-Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, this writer or the reader. Enough said.

*A Snapshot On The 80th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Fourth International-View Of The Leaders Of The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution- Leon Trotsky

Click on title to link to Wikipedia's entry for the great 1917 Bolshevik revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky. No added comment is needed in this space for the work, life and deeds of this man.

*The100thAnniversaryYearOfTheBolshevik-LedOctoberRevolution-LessonsForToday- From The Pages Of "Workers Vanguard"- Fight For A Revolutionary Workers Party- A Guest Commentary

Click on the headline to link to a "Workers Vanguard" article, dated November 7, 2008, concerning the struggle to create a revolutionary labor party in America.

Markin comment:

I will "steal" the quote from Bertolt Brecht used in the above-linked article. It fits better than any commentary that I could provide about the nature of the times, and the tasks ahead.

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Taking my cue from Workers Vanguard No. 921 (26 September), I am going to start with a quote from Bertolt Brecht. This is from a poem called “Those Who Take the Meat from the Table,” written in the 1930s in the midst of the Great Depression:

Those who take the meat from the table
Teach contentment.
Those for whom the taxes are destined
Demand sacrifice.
Those who eat their fill speak to the hungry
Of wonderful times to come.
Those who lead the country into the abyss
Call ruling too difficult
For ordinary men.

The100thAnniversaryYearOfTheBolshevik-LedOctoberRevolution-Lessons- From The Archives Of The Spartacist League (U.S.)- Trotskyism, What It Isn't and What It Is!

Click on the headline to link to the article described in the title.

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. Deb’s 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.

Today I am starting 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.

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Markin comment on this article.

The name Leon Trotsky, his Marxist-driven strategic doctrine of permanent revolution, the leading role that he played in the pre-1917 Russian revolutionary movement as a free-lancer, the role that he played in the October revolution as a hard converted Bolshevik, his later military leadership of the defense of that revolution against the Whites and all manner of counter-revolutionaries and his epic battles for the soul of that revolution against the ascendant international Stalinist bureaucracy have occasioned so many lies wrapped in so many distortions wrapped in so many obfuscations, although not wrapped in any enigmas, that I for one when I was just a young (well, maybe not so young at that) revolutionary starting out I just had to learn more.

In those days it was hard because you had to wade through the Moscow-centered orthodox Stalinist slanders, the orthodox Maoist-centered Chinese Stalinist misunderstandings, hell, the Albanian Stalinist-centered goofiness thrown against his revolutionary virtue. That task muddled through, it was still necessary, as this article's subject indicates, to see who was marching in step, or at least half-step, with Trotsky and his Fourth Internationalist movement and who was preening. This last task, as wading once against through this article brought back to mind, was tough learning for a young man steeped in "anti-sectarian", "anti-cultish" social democracy. But I did learn more, and the more I learned the easier it was to see who was wagging the dog’s tail (like that expression?) and who was acting as an agent of the Mikado, the Argentine German Nazi underground, MI6, the CIA, some phantom Trotskyist lonelyhearts club, or your dear Aunt Sally. In any case it was not, I repeat, not Leon Trotsky. But as I constantly reiterate, old comrade Trotsky have never been, is not now, and will not be in need in the future of my certificate of revolutionary good conduct, that of any state agency, or yours. Still you have to investigate, as simply an intelligent proposition, his legacy for yourselves. And this is a decent primer.

The100thAnniversaryYearOfTheBolshevik-LedOctoberRevolution-Lessons-*From The Pen Of Vladimir Lenin- On The Need For Marxist Leadership

Click on the headline to link to a "Communist International Internet Archive" online copy of Lenin's 1920 report to the Second Congress Of the Communist International

Markin comment:

Leon Trotsky, co-leader of the Russian Revolution of 1917 along with Vladimir Lenin, was an early and vocal opponent of the norms of Bolshevik leadership prior to 1917. After he "saw the light" in 1917, in the heat of battle, there was no more important or impassioned proponent for that concept, nationally and internationally, until his murder in 1940 by a Stalinist agent. He argued, strenuously and repeatedly, that there was no substitute for a revolutionary party to lead the revolution. The international working class landscape of the 20th century is filled with examples of efforts that failed to take that piece of wisdom into account.

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Workers Vanguard No. 923
24 October 2008

On the Need for Marxist Leadership

(Quote of the Week)

Amid the carnage of the first interimperialist World War and as the treacherous leaders of the Second International supported their own bourgeoisies, Lenin and Trotsky’s Bolsheviks led the Russian proletariat to the seizure of state power in the 1917 October Revolution. Speaking at the 1920 Second Congress of the Communist International, which took place during revolutionary upheavals in capitalist Europe as well as a global economic crisis, Lenin stressed the indispensability of proletarian revolutionary leadership. The destruction of the Soviet Union in 1991-92 has led to a profound, though uneven, regression in political consciousness internationally, with most advanced workers no longer identifying their struggles with socialism. We fight to reimplant the ideas of Marxism as part of the struggle to forge revolutionary parties internationally.

Comrades, we have now come to the question of the revolutionary crisis as the basis of our revolutionary action. And here we must first of all note two widespread errors. On the one hand, bourgeois economists depict this crisis simply as “unrest,” to use the elegant expression of the British. On the other hand, revolutionaries sometimes try to prove that the crisis is absolutely insoluble.

This is a mistake. There is no such thing as an absolutely hopeless situation. The bourgeoisie are behaving like barefaced plunderers who have lost their heads; they are committing folly after folly, thus aggravating the situation and hastening their doom. All that is true. But nobody can “prove” that it is absolutely impossible for them to pacify a minority of the exploited with some petty concessions, and suppress some movement or uprising of some section of the oppressed and exploited. To try to “prove” in advance that there is “absolutely” no way out of the situation would be sheer pedantry, or playing with concepts and catchwords. Practice alone can serve as real “proof” in this and similar questions. All over the world, the bourgeois system is experiencing a tremendous revolutionary crisis. The revolutionary parties must now “prove” in practice that they have sufficient understanding and organisation, contact with the exploited masses, and determination and skill to utilise this crisis for a successful, a victorious revolution.

It is mainly to prepare this “proof” that we have gathered at this Congress of the Communist International.

—V.I. Lenin, “Report on the International Situation and the Fundamental Tasks of the Communist International” (July 1920)

From The Archives Of The “Revolutionary History” Journal- Guest Book Reviews

Markin comment:

This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discover” the work of our forbears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.
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Reviews

S.F. Kissim, War and the Marxists: Socialist Theory and Practice in Capitalist Wars, Volumes One and Two, Andre Deutsch, London, 1988 and 1989, pp291 and 262, £17.96 each


The programmatic reason for the great split in the international working class movement was the issue of war, and, more particularly, the attitude to the First World War. It was not the other topics, such as colonialism or immigration, which divided the Second International at the Stuttgart conference of 1907, let alone the future organisation of the economy under a Socialist government, which was never discussed, that foreshadowed this great schism, while the issues of war and militarism were also the main topics at both the Copenhagen and Basel congresses that followed Stuttgart. It is therefore most welcome that the late Siegfried Kissin’s scholarly and well written study of this area has now been published. It consists of two volumes, the first being the attitude taken by the Socialist movement up to the final split in the International at the end of the ‘First Great War for Civilisation’ while the second takes the story up to the end of the Second World War and, among other things, deals with the debates in the Trotskyist movement on that issue.

The contents of the first volume should be almost unreservedly welcomed by the readers of Revolutionary History. Kissin tells us of the positions taken up by Marx and Engels on various nineteenth century conflicts and the debates among Socialists both before and during the First War. Marx and Engels had a very much more flexible and less intransigent view of the many wars in their time than we are now accustomed to think of as ‘Marxist’. They were seldom defeatist, and since many of us are only familiar with the later debate from a rather one-sided Leninist polemic, much of the material that Kissin introduces will be fresh and new. The position of the Founding Fathers in any particular case depended on an assessment of the effects of victory or defeat for the prospects of Socialism in a world context. Later the differences amongst those denounced by Lenin – differences which at the time might have appeared more important to the participants than those which divided the centre and moderate left from the Bolsheviks – are clearly brought out, and add a good deal to our understanding of the flavour and context of the dispute at the time. A final, if controversial piece looks at the differences between Rosa Luxemburg and Lenin on the 1914-18 war, where Kissin seems to come down on Luxemburg’s side. Even in the First World War case, however, Kissin argues that in the parliamentary democracies of England and France it was not necessary to work actively for and desire the defeat of one’s own government, though he would denounce the ‘social-patriots’’ belief that the war meant a truce in the class struggle.

One fascinating aspect with contemporary echoes is his account of the debate on the Boer War, which for me has parallels with the Falklands campaign. Kissin makes the point that defeatism, as in the Boer War example, does not have to be revolutionary and that there maybe cases (Britain in the Falklands war was surely one), where the defeat of one’s own side would merely lead to a change from a conservative to a slightly more left wing government at the next election, rather than a revolution. This is nearly always the case in colonial wars where the nation’s existence is not perceived to be imperilled. In this event, as he says, there may well be liberals and pacifists who are thorough defeatists, though none of this makes the defeatist position incorrect. And just as it could be argued – as it was by Hyndman – that a British defeat would leave the South African Blacks enslaved by the Afrikaners, so, I suppose, it could be argued that in the Falklands British victory was a great benefit to the Argentine, if not to the British working class. In the event, the Blacks were enslaved anyway, and the end of the Junta has seen an even further fall in Argentine living standards. As the First World War showed, there could be more than one honest opinion on this. Indeed, one impression from reading Kissin about the German SPD in 1914 is how naive many of them were about their own government and how ‘wet’ they appear, faced with dissimulating noblemen who clearly did believe in the class war, made little distinction between the ‘internal’ and ‘external’ enemy and saw these nice SDP deputies as adversaries to be tricked and beaten like foreign foes. Distant Lenin saw far more clearly than the German Socialists what the game was about.

In Kissin’s three page conclusion in Volume One, he attempts to forecast what attitude Marx and Engels would have taken to the events in the early twentieth century, and here he sets them up in opposition to Lenin and the Bolsheviks. Of course, this is not the first time that this has been done, but at least he makes a good job in arguing his case. A more basic reservation that I have is that Kissin sees the issues of war and conflict in rather static terms, so that he approvingly quotes Luxemburg’s forecast of German nationalist revival and another war as a consequence of Germany’s defeat. But this was surely not an inevitable result of such a defeat, and it was a close-run thing between revolution and counter-revolution.

The second volume continues the story with a description of the positions taken on the many pre-Second World War conflicts by left wingers from both the Social Democratic and Communist traditions. Kissin tests the later Stalinist wrigglings against the classical Leninist position with damning conclusions. Finally, in the last part of the book he discusses the Trotskyists and, by printing a paper he submitted to the Edinburgh WIL in 1943, he makes his own position on the Second World War clear. He was an unabashed defencist, as he thought that the war was not primarily a national one, but a European civil war between the working class allied to a section of the bourgeoisie against Fascism, and the other bourgeois fraction. So, just as left wingers in Spain had supported Azana against Franco, in Britain they should stand with Churchill against Hitler. They should, of course, maintain a programme distinct from that of the conservative and Stalinist patriots. Such a programme would include the demand for independence for India and the colonies, constant fraternal appeals to the German workers and a guarantee of no vindictive Versailles peace, but a promise to integrate Germany into a peaceful Europe after the overthrow of the Nazis, together with demands for workers’ control of war production, election of officers tend so on. Such a position had much more in common with ‘Proletarian Military Policy’ of the SWP or the WIL than the RSL and other more pacifistic and abstentionist Trotskyists who were inclined to see the war as a re-run of 1914-18. He argues that victories for Hitler meant the smashing of all the gains from working class struggle, and the imposition of Fascist and authoritarian regimes in the occupied countries. In the event he was correct, as there was a greater left wing movement among the people of the Allied countries as a result of victory than among the populations of the defeated Axis.

The great value of the book is the immense range of evidence that Kissin has collected to illustrate his theme. There are some splendid choice items from the period of the Hitler-Stalin pact – in particular some statements by the late unlamented Walter Ulbricht and a fascinating account of how in 1939 the Labour Party leadership, which had started by declaring that the enemy was Hitler, not the German people, ended up in 1945 with a much more social-patriotic line which was only slightly more civilised than that of the Communists. The Labour lefts like Bevan stand out for their decency on this issue.

There are a number of omissions and inaccuracies in the book, above all in the final section on the Trotskyists, which probably arose as he seems to have researched it in isolation, perhaps not realising that there were a number of other people honestly seeking to understand this period. He does not seem to have been aware of Bornstein and Richardson’s War and the International, or of the debates in the United States between the Workers Party and the SWP on the problem of the war with Japan, which was much more purely an inter-imperialist conflict than the war in Europe. Indeed, Kissin thinks that the Workers Party quickly disappeared after the 1940 split, which was by no means the case. Neither has he read Guérin's analysis of Trotsky’s political evolution at the beginning of the war though this analysis has considerable similarities with his own. Furthermore, he does not mention the tiny group of French defeatists led by Barta, though today those in that tradition around the paper Lutte Ouvrière seem to be the largest Trotskyist tendency in France.

These are, however, minor blemishes. For those on the left who seek to understand the history of war and the Marxist attitude to it, and whatever disagreements one might have with the author’s judgements, these two volumes will be an invaluable source of information.

Ted Crawford

*100thAnniversaryOfTheRussianRevolution - A Liberal's View Of Leon Trotsky-Professor Carmichael's Biography Of The Bolshevik Revolutionary

*100thAnniversaryOfTheRussianRevolution - A Liberal's View Of Leon Trotsky-Professor Carmichael's Biography Of The Bolshevik Revolutionary


Click on title to link to American Socialist Workers Party founder and Leon Trotsky co-thinker James P. Cannon's appreciation of the life of Trotsky at a memorial meeting held in New York City in 1940 immediately after the assassination of Trotsky by a Stalinist agent. This insider look by a political activist is placed here as a contrast to the liberal academic view held by the author in the book reviewed below.


BOOK REVIEW

TROTSKY-An Appreciation of His Life, JOEL CARMICHAEL, ST. MARTIN’S PRESS, NEW YORK, 1975

THIS MONTH IS THE 67TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE MURDER OF LEON TROTSKY BY A STALINIST AGENT-ALL HONOR TO THE MEMORY OF THE GREAT RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONARY

As readers of this space may know I make no bones about being an admirer of the work of Leon Trotsky (see archives). I also believe that the definitive biography of the man is Isaac Deutscher’s three-volume set. Nevertheless, others have written biographies on Trotsky that are either less balanced than Deutscher’s or come at it from a different angle with a different ax to grind. Joel Carmichael’s is a standard liberal democratic take on Trotsky’s life and work. Mr. Carmichael, as others before and after him like Irving Howe, takes on the huge task of attempting to whittle down one of the big figures of 20th century history against the backdrop of that mushy Cold War liberalism that retarded the intellectual development of even fairly critical Western minds in the post-World War II period.

That standard academic response invoked admiration for the personality and intellectual achievements of Trotsky the man while abhorring his politics, especially those pursued as a high Soviet official when he had political power. In the process Mr. Carmichael tries to account for Trotsky’s ‘fall’ from power in the psycho-biographic parlance that was popular in the 1970’s. In short, Mr. Carmichael concludes essentially that if only Trotsky was less of a loner and a better Bolshevik Party infighter his personal fate and history may have worked out better. Hell we, Trotsky’s admirers, have been screaming about his very important failure to umambiously lead the 1923-24 fight against the Stalinization of the Bolshevik Party (also known following the French revolutionary example as the Themidorian reaction) struggle for years. All without benefit of pseudo-Freudian analysis, by the way. In the end Mr. Carmichael’s take on Trotsky demonstrates more about the weakness of the liberal psycho-biographical method than a serious examination into Trotsky’s politics. There are some chasms that cannot be breeched and this is one of them.

In classic fashion Carmichael, as others have done as well, sets up Trotsky’s virtues early. Thus he recognizes and appreciates the early romantic revolutionary and free-lance journalist in the true Russian tradition who faced jail and exile without flinching; the brilliant, if flawed, Marxist theoretician who defied all-comers at debate and whose theory of permanent revolution set the standard for defining the strategic pace of the Russian revolution; the great organizer of the revolutionary fight for power in 1917 and later organizer of the Red Army victory in the Civil War; the premier Communist literary critic of his age; the ‘premature’ anti-Stalinist who fought against the degeneration of the revolution; the lonely exile rolling the rock up the mountain despite personal tragedy and political isolation. However, my friends, Carmichael’s biographical approach tries to debunk an intensely political man by one who plainly is a political opponent of everything that Trotsky stood for. I only wish he had been more honest and open about it rather than use psycho-babble as a device. Thus, all Carmichael’s patently obvious and necessary recognition of Trotsky as one of the great figures of the first half of the 20th century is a screen for taking Trotsky off of Olympus.

And here again Carmichael uses all the wearisome formulas in the liberal democratic handbook; the flawed nature of Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution as applied to Russia in 1917 and also to later semi-colonial and colonial countries; the undemocratic nature of the Bolshevik seizure of power in regard to other socialist parties; the horrors of the Civil War which helped lead to the degeneration of the revolution; Trotsky’s recognized tendency as a Soviet official to be attracted to administrative solutions; his adamant defense of the heroic days of the Bolshevik party and the Soviet Union, even in its degenerated state, against all comers until the end of his life; his weakness as a party political organizer in the fierce intra-party factional struggles and later in attempting to found new communist parties and a new international.

Of course the kindest interpretation one can make for Carmichael’s polemic, like that of Irving Howe who approached Trotsky’s life from the social-democratic perspective, is that he believes like many another erstwhile biographer that Trotsky should have given up the political struggle and become- what? Another bourgeois academic or better yet an editor of Partisan Review or The Nation? Obviously Mr. Carmichael did not pay sufficient attention to the parts that he considered Trotsky’s virtues. The parts about the intrepid revolutionary with a great sense of history and his role in it. And the wherewithal to find his place in it. Does that seem like the Trotsky that Carmichael has written about? No. A fairer way to put it is this. Trotsky probably represented the highest expression of what it was like to be a communist man, warts and all, in the sea of a non-Communist world. And that is high historical praise indeed. Let future biographers take note.

*A Snapshot View Of The Leaders Of The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution- Leon Trotsky

Click on title to link to Wikipedia's entry for the great 1917 Bolshevik revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky. No added comment is needed in this space for the work, life and deeds of this man.

*A Snapshot View Of The Leaders Of The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution- Leon Trotsky

Click on title to link to Wikipedia's entry for the great 1917 Bolshevik revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky. No added comment is needed in this space for the work, life and deeds of this man.

*A Snapshot View Of The Leaders Of The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution- Leon Trotsky

Click on title to link to Wikipedia's entry for the great 1917 Bolshevik revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky. No added comment is needed in this space for the work, life and deeds of this man.

*A Snapshot View Of The Leaders Of The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution- Leon Trotsky

Click on title to link to Wikipedia's entry for the great 1917 Bolshevik revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky. No added comment is needed in this space for the work, life and deeds of this man.

*Books To While Away The Class Struggle By-Professor Robert Service's "Trotsky: A Biography "

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Leon Trotsky, leader of the Red Army.



Recently I have begun to post entries under the headline- Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By and Films To While Away The Class Struggle By-that will include progressive and labor-oriented songs and films that might be of general interest to the radical public. I have decided to do the same for some books that may perk that same interest under the title in this entry’s headline. Markin



Book Review



Trotsky: A Biography, Robert Service, Belknap Press Of The Harvard University Press, 2009



I have, on more than one previous occasion, noted that the spirit of the great Russian Bolshevik revolutionary, Leon Trotsky, animates the political material reviewed in this space, and is some ways the materials presented makes no sense without acknowledging that hard truth. I have also noted, as well, that of all the biographies, sketches, memoirs, etc. concerning the life and times of this extraordinary revolutionary that Isaac Deutscher’s three volume Prophet series done in the 1950s and 1960s still, to my mind, is the definitive such study of the man. After reading this Trotsky biography and another more specialized volume that centers on the last period of his life and his subsequent assassination by a Stalinist agent down in Mexico in 1940, both which have the benefit of the latest in archival, particularly Soviet archival, material I still hold to that opinion. However, the present book under review, gives a fairly decent exposition in one volume of Trotsky’s life, warts and all, from a liberal anti-communist academic perspective.

I admit to being somewhat surprised by Professor Service’s book. Not, as mentioned above for its expected liberal disdain for the Soviet experiment, that kind of expectation comes with wading into liberal academic territory. That disdain has been, moreover, telegraphed by Professor previously in his biographies of Stalin and Lenin. What is surprising is that Professor Service felt the need to write a biography of the fallen revolutionary Leon Trotsky in the year 2009 long after his ghost, and that of the Soviet Union, that he was instrumental in creating, especially its military structure, have left the scene and apparently no longer, according to his remarks at the end of the book animate world politics. Furthermore, while I believe this book has a certain merit as a contemporary Trotsky primer it certainly has not revealed much new in the way of biographical material despite the opening up of the archives. That is the sense, or one of the senses, that I mean when I say I continue to stand in awe of Isaac Deutscher’s exhaustive study.

For those not familiar with Trotsky’s life Service details his Ukrainian Jewish childhood, his early pre-revolutionary activities, his immersion into the Russian revolutionary milieu in Russian and in exile, his leadership of the Russian revolution of 1905 and after its defeat its defense , the pre-World War I free agent period, the struggle against World War I, the 1917 February and October revolutions where he links his fate with the Bolsheviks , the civil war to defend that October revolution, and Trotsky’s key role in creating the Red Army and the Communist International. He also details the post-Lenin inner-Bolshevik Party struggle where Trotsky’s star started to fate, his internal and then eternal exiles after his defeats at the hand so f Stalin, his fight to create the stillborn Fourth International to replace the Communist International in the fight for world socialist revolution and his assassination at the hands of a Stalinist agent in 1940. Along the way he also gives scope to Trotsky’s wide ranging literary and intellectual interest that permitted him to continue to make his mark on the political world after his exile, to make a living and to fund his various political projects.

In one sense it is hard for a biographer, any biographer, to say something new about such an open book political man as Leon Trotsky. Both because he wrote much, including his memoirs, My Life, self-serving as Professor Service believes or not, about his political life and positions from early on well before the Russian Revolution of 1905 and because the events that he was associated with left little room for not previously making it onto the pages of history. So what is left for a biographer, Robert Service or Isaac Deutscher included. Well, since no one has scoured the archives and found that Trotsky really did take German gold during World War I. Or that he really, as charged in the Moscow trials, was an agent of the Mikado, British imperialism or Hitlerite Germany then what is left is speculation, now apparently endless speculation, about his personal character flaws.

This is actually the ground that makes Service’s book interesting as he, like others before him detail Trotsky’s prickly personality, his failure to suffer fools gladly (or at all), his aloofness and haughtiness that made him less than the perfect choice for leadership of political factions in the struggle for power. Service’s Trotsky comes out loud and clear as being primarily one of the last of the free agent revolutionaries that while, perhaps, belonging to revolutionary organizations set their own agenda. That, in the end, was a key to Trotsky’s political undoing. Service also details more extensively than I have seen elsewhere some of Trotsky private traits like his late life affair with the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, his health issues and his strained relationships with most of his kin folk.

For those who have not read a previous Trotsky biography and who understand that Professor Service is one of those liberal academics who see Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin as basically all part of the same anti-Western democratic political original sin, Bolshevism, then there is much that can be gleaned from his work. But, I always come back to this hard fact when dealing with the life of the much maligned, besmirched, and denigrated revolutionary Leon Trotsky. Trotsky, warts and all, comes as close as any historic figure that has come out of bourgeois society to being the proto-type for the new communist man that humankind has products thus far. In that sense Leon Trotsky is in need of no certificate of revolutionary good conduct from Robert Service, Mikhail Gorbachev, this writer or the reader. Enough said.

*On May Day-The Anarchist Tradition In The International Working Class Movement-For Sacco and Vanzetti

Repost

Friday, May 01, 2009

*On May Day-The Anarchist Tradition In The International Working Class Movement


Markin comment:

Today, May Day, is officially celebrated extensively throughout the world by the international working class to commemorate labor’s struggles, although ironically (and sadly) not in the United States. One of the purposes for its celebration back in the late 1800’s was to highlight the struggle (the continuing struggle, I might add) for an eight hour work day. This day also commemorates Chicago’s Haymarket Martyrs, working class anarchists who were railroaded by the American justice system for being workers while ‘foreign’ and for being workers while “anarchists”.

Although this writer long ago abandoned his flirtation with the anarchist movement that had held some attraction to him in his youth and has become, as a life-long Marxist, a strong political opponent of that movement today seems an appropriate time to look back at its not altogether shabby history. The book reviewed below, Professor Joll’s “The Anarchists”, was the first book that I read when I was moving away from mainstream liberalism and looking for a revolutionary road to change society. As with all such older works (originally written in 1964) additional research is necessary to bring the story up to date (especially as it ends with the anarchist experience in Spain in the 1930’s). Nevertheless this work still stands as a good primer for the early history of the anarchist movement, its various trends and tendencies, its controversies with other working class movements, especially Marxism, and its shortcomings.

Book Review

The Anarchists, James Joll, Little, Brown and Company, Boston 1964

It is rather ironic to be discussing old time communistic working class political tendencies on a day, May Day, that celebrates the struggles of various leftist, anti- capitalist tendencies, especially Marxism and Anarchism the latter whose history is outlined in the book reviewed here, in the international working class movement. The irony is that, sadly, for all intends and purposes, in the main, the international working class movement has abandoned (at least temporarily) the struggle for socialism of any kind as part of its day to day struggles. Nonetheless, for those who seek to break out of the impasse of international capitalism a fresh look at these tendencies is warranted. I have reviewed various Marxist-oriented movements elsewhere in this space. Today Professor Joll's brief look at the history of the early anarchist movement (up to the Spanish Civil War) is a good primer for getting a handle on that political philosophy.

That there has never been a unitary working class response to capitalism and industrialization is a weakness. That there have been various left-wing tendencies fighting for political leadership of the class is not so. During most of the 20th century the great fights were between the various Marxist-oriented reformist Social Democrats and the ostensibly revolutionary Communists. However the great fights in the late 19th century were between the Marxists and anarchists of various persuasions. Those fights are extensively detailed by Professor Joll here. Given the reemergence over the past decade or various, mainly non-working class-centered, anarchist tendencies, especially of the "propaganda of the deed" variety, it is important for today's labor militants looking for some socialist political direction to learn (or learn more) about.

Professor Joll does some yeoman's work here describing the antecedents of the working class movement, especially the key trends that trace their lineage back to the 18th century French Revolution and the Enlightenment. It is the long term reaction to the failure of that revolution, the weakness of its political organization and its aborted libertarian aims to redress plebeian grievances that provided an opening to anarchist thought. Joll details the various plans, blueprints, panaceas and what not that floated thought the pre-1848 European political milieu (from Godwin to Weitling to the "Communist Manifesto") as the industrial form of organization took hold in Western society. In short, the revolutions of 1848 represented a last gasp outer limit that the bourgeoisie was willing to go to establish its rule in alliance with the working class under the sign of the French Revolution. Marx drew one conclusion from that understanding- the need to create independent working class political organization- the various anarchist trends drew others (independent communes, political withdrawal, permanent insurrection, etc.). This is where the great fight starts.

If mid-19th century Europe was a hot bed for various socialist-oriented theories those theories got hashed out through personalities as much as program. This is the age of Marx, Engels and LaSalle but also of the great anarchist thinkers Proudhon and Bakunin whose names are forever associated with the early anarchist movement, for good or ill. Those thinkers also represented, in embryo, the two great trends within anarchy that fought it out, mainly on European soil, for poltical dominance over most of the next century. If socialism has its reformist and revolutionary wings the same is true of the anarchism movement with its break between what I will call "philosophical anarchists" and "deed anarchists" that reflect the different perspectives of Proudhon and Bakunin. As with the socialist movement there is some overlap but one does not have be all that politically sophisticated to be able to distinguish between where the two lines of thought were heading.

With the defeat of the short-lived and bloodily defeated Paris Commune of 1871, an event that is commemorated with reverence in both communist and anarchist movements, although each drew different conclusions from its demise, European bourgeois society went through a period of relative stabilization with a vast expansion of the industrial enterprise. Needless to say such periods try the souls of revolutionaries, great and small. Part of this frustration worked itself out in the anarchist movement with, on the one hand, a `quietist' turn toward intellectual schemes and literary propaganda work (always appropriate, by the way) by the likes of Kropotkin, and on the other, the emergence of an individualist response by, at times, heroic anarchists committed to "propaganda by the deed".

During this period (about twenty years or so) there were some very spectacular assassinations, and attempted assassinations, of various American and European bourgeois political figures, most famously in America Alexander Berkman's (the fiery anarchist polemicist and orator Emma Goldman's companion of the time) attempt on steel magnate Ford Frick and the successful assassination of President McKinley. Also, needless to say, the wheels of bourgeois society continued working with little interruption. I would point out that the best socialists and communists have always defended such heroic, if misguided, actions by the "anarchists of the deed" while pointing out this truth- It's the system that had to go not individual representatives no matter how fitting for such actions, brothers and sisters.

If , as mentioned above, the great political battles within the international working class in the post-World War I period were between reformist socialists and revolutionary communists before that war the great fight was between various anarchist tendencies in the working class, mainly anarcho-syndicalists, and socialists. That fight reached a fever pitch around the question of defense of the Russian Revolution of 1917. In theory, at least, both anarchism and communism posit the replacement of the role of state as a "cop" with a new role as mere administrator of things (at most). The question is how to get there and how long it will take to place that possibility on the historic agenda. Here the Paris Commune experience is instructive. The anarchists, and here I admit complete solidarity with the Marxist side of the argument, apparently learned nothing from the decentralized confusion created in that revolutionary process, including the fundamental question of defense of the revolution. The Marxists, and in the case of the Russian Revolution its Bolshevik wing, took those lessons to heart and created a political/military party, worked through soviets (workers councils) and defended the revolution with a Red Army, arms in hand.

Whatever happened later in the Soviet experience and, as a supporter of the great Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky I find plenty to discuss, the Russian Revolution was the great test of the pre-war competing socialist political philosophies and that event split the anarchist movement, as well. Some like Victor Serge, Alfred Rosmer in Europe, "Big Bill" Haywood and some elements of the American-based Industrial Workers of The World (IWW) went over to the Communist International. Inside Russia, depending on the time, anarchist supported the revolution by going over to the Bolsheviks or, during the civil war formed independent "black flag" armies like those of Mahkno in the Ukraine that were generally pro-Soviet, or in the latter period became military opponents of the Soviet regime, most notably at Kronstadt in 1921. Professor Joll outlines the details here although one really needs to read more on this by one of the leading Russian anarchists of the time, Voline's "History of The Russian Anarchists". A mere paragraph here can only alert serious pro-labor militants to the need to work through the political differences. That the anarchist position came up short in Russia does not negate the need today to deal politically with the fringe reemergence of these tendencies. I would only add here that when the anarchists are reduced to talking about the "virtues" of Mahkno and of the Kronstadt sailors in 1921 there is something of an impediment to any fruitful discussion. But so be it.

Professor Joll's last and most important section, at least for today's militant's trying to sort through the questions of the state and revolutionary theory, is the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39. In the heat of revolution and civil war all theories get thoroughly tested and it was here that the anarchist attitude toward the state, any state, floundered. Although I have discussed the key questions of the Spanish Civil War elsewhere in this space those questions have been centered on the disputes among socialists and communists and the crisis of revolutionary leadership provoked by the civil war. Needless to say, in Spain at least, no discussion is complete without discussing the role of the anarchists, the largest tendency with political authority within the working class and among the landless rural laborers.

While a full discussion is beyond the scope of this book, and of this review, to sum up the anarchist experience in a nutshell- while the anarchists tried to ignore the state the state did not ignore them. When the deal went down they supported the state- the bourgeois state at a time, in the summer of 1936, when they and no other political formation could have taken political power. And made it stick. Instead the anarchist and anarchist-influenced organizations like the FAI (Iberian Anarchist Federation) and CNT (National Federation of Workers) passed the power back to the bourgeoisie (or their agents) and settled for a few (short-lived) ministerial posts. I hope I have provoked some argument here because now in the early 21st century that question of the state is again placed on the agenda for today's anarchists of the second mobilization. It is a question that will not go away for anarchists, socialists or communists alike. Read Professor Joll's book to get a primer on the historical contours of these disputes.

********

As is always appropriate on international working class holidays and days of remembrance here is the song most closely associated with that movement “The Internationale” in English, French and German. I will not vouch for the closeness of the translations but certainly of the spirit. Workers Of The World Unite!

The Internationale [variant words in square brackets]

Arise ye workers [starvelings] from your slumbers
Arise ye prisoners of want
For reason in revolt now thunders
And at last ends the age of cant.
Away with all your superstitions
Servile masses arise, arise
We'll change henceforth [forthwith] the old tradition [conditions]
And spurn the dust to win the prize.

So comrades, come rally
And the last fight let us face
The Internationale unites the human race.
So comrades, come rally
And the last fight let us face
The Internationale unites the human race.

No more deluded by reaction
On tyrants only we'll make war
The soldiers too will take strike action
They'll break ranks and fight no more
And if those cannibals keep trying
To sacrifice us to their pride
They soon shall hear the bullets flying
We'll shoot the generals on our own side.

No saviour from on high delivers
No faith have we in prince or peer
Our own right hand the chains must shiver
Chains of hatred, greed and fear
E'er the thieves will out with their booty [give up their booty]
And give to all a happier lot.
Each [those] at the forge must do their duty
And we'll strike while the iron is hot.




________________________________________

L'Internationale

Debout les damnés de la terre
Debout les forçats de la faim
La raison tonne en son cratère
C'est l'éruption de la fin
Du passe faisons table rase
Foules, esclaves, debout, debout
Le monde va changer de base
Nous ne sommes rien, soyons tout

C'est la lutte finale
Groupons-nous, et demain (bis)
L'Internationale
Sera le genre humain

Il n'est pas de sauveurs suprêmes
Ni Dieu, ni César, ni tribun
Producteurs, sauvons-nous nous-mêmes
Décrétons le salut commun
Pour que le voleur rende gorge
Pour tirer l'esprit du cachot
Soufflons nous-mêmes notre forge
Battons le fer quand il est chaud

L'état comprime et la loi triche
L'impôt saigne le malheureux
Nul devoir ne s'impose au riche
Le droit du pauvre est un mot creux
C'est assez, languir en tutelle
L'égalité veut d'autres lois
Pas de droits sans devoirs dit-elle
Egaux, pas de devoirs sans droits

Hideux dans leur apothéose
Les rois de la mine et du rail
Ont-ils jamais fait autre chose
Que dévaliser le travail
Dans les coffres-forts de la bande
Ce qu'il a crée s'est fondu
En décrétant qu'on le lui rende
Le peuple ne veut que son dû.

Les rois nous saoulaient de fumées
Paix entre nous, guerre aux tyrans
Appliquons la grève aux armées
Crosse en l'air, et rompons les rangs
S'ils s'obstinent, ces cannibales
A faire de nous des héros
Ils sauront bientôt que nos balles
Sont pour nos propres généraux

Ouvriers, paysans, nous sommes
Le grand parti des travailleurs
La terre n'appartient qu'aux hommes
L'oisif ira loger ailleurs
Combien, de nos chairs se repaissent
Mais si les corbeaux, les vautours
Un de ces matins disparaissent
Le soleil brillera toujours.


________________________________________

Die Internationale

Wacht auf, Verdammte dieser Erde,
die stets man noch zum Hungern zwingt!
Das Recht wie Glut im Kraterherde
nun mit Macht zum Durchbruch dringt.
Reinen Tisch macht mit dem Bedranger!
Heer der Sklaven, wache auf!
Ein nichts zu sein, tragt es nicht langer
Alles zu werden, stromt zuhauf!

Volker, hort die Signale!
Auf, zum letzten Gefecht!
Die Internationale
Erkampft das Menschenrecht

Es rettet uns kein hoh'res Wesen
kein Gott, kein Kaiser, noch Tribun
Uns aus dem Elend zu erlosen
konnen wir nur selber tun!
Leeres Wort: des armen Rechte,
Leeres Wort: des Reichen Pflicht!
Unmundigt nennt man uns Knechte,
duldet die Schmach langer nicht!

In Stadt und Land, ihr Arbeitsleute,
wir sind die starkste Partei'n
Die Mussigganger schiebt beiseite!
Diese Welt muss unser sein;
Unser Blut sei nicht mehr der Raben
und der machtigen Geier Frass!
Erst wenn wir sie vertrieben haben
dann scheint die Sonn' ohn' Unterlass!

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

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

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

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism_and_homosexuality

Markin comment:

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


In Defense of Homosexual Rights: The Marxist Tradition

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

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

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

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

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

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

***Those Who Fought For Our Future Are Kindred Spirits- Honor Pioneer American Socialist Leader Daniel DeLeon

Click on the title to link to a "Wikipedia" entry for pioneer American socialist, Daniel DeLeon

Every January, as readers of this blog are now, hopefully, familiar with the international communist movement honors the 3 Ls-Lenin, Luxemburg and Leibknecht, 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. In order to give a fuller measure of honor to our fallen forbears this January, and in future Januarys, 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, 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.

*For Sacco And Vanzetti -On May Day-The Anarchist Tradition In The International Working Class Movement

Click On Title To Link To BAAM Newsletter (local Boston anarchist collective) site for two good introductory articles about the labor struggles of the 19th century and a biographic sketch of the heroic anarchist (and later American Communist Party member) Lucy Parsons, widow of Haymarket martyr Albert Parson and revolutionary fighter in her own right. While my sympathies are clearly with the communist wing on the left wing continuum, especially the struggles led by Leon Trotsky to save the heritage of the Russian Revolution in the 1920’s and 1930’s, the main points of these articles are made by kindred spirits that all labor militants can stand in solidarity with as part of our common labor history.

Commentary

Today, May Day, is officially celebrated extensively throughout the world by the international working class to commemorate labor’s struggles, although ironically (and sadly) not in the United States. One of the purposes for its celebration back in the late 1800’s was to highlight the struggle (the continuing struggle, I might add) for an eight hour work day. This day also commemorates Chicago’s Haymarket Martyrs, working class anarchists who were railroaded by the American justice system for being workers while ‘foreign’ and for being workers while “anarchists”.

Although this writer long ago abandoned his flirtation with the anarchist movement that had held some attraction to him in his youth and has become, as a life-long Marxist, a strong political opponent of that movement today seems an appropriate time to look back at its not altogether shabby history. The book reviewed below, Professor Joll’s “The Anarchists”, was the first book that I read when I was moving away from mainstream liberalism and looking for a revolutionary road to change society. As with all such older works (originally written in 1964) additional research is necessary to bring the story up to date (especially as it ends with the anarchist experience in Spain in the 1930’s). Nevertheless this work still stands as a good primer for the early history of the anarchist movement, its various trends and tendencies, its controversies with other working class movements, especially Marxism, and its shortcomings.

Book Review

The Anarchists, James Joll, Little, Brown and Company, Boston 1964

It is rather ironic to be discussing old time communistic working class political tendencies on a day, May Day, that celebrates the struggles of various leftist, anti- capitalist tendencies, especially Marxism and Anarchism the latter whose history is outlined in the book reviewed here, in the international working class movement. The irony is that, sadly, for all intends and purposes, in the main, the international working class movement has abandoned (at least temporarily) the struggle for socialism of any kind as part of its day to day struggles. Nonetheless, for those who seek to break out of the impasse of international capitalism a fresh look at these tendencies is warranted. I have reviewed various Marxist-oriented movements elsewhere in this space. Today Professor Joll's brief look at the history of the early anarchist movement (up to the Spanish Civil War) is a good primer for getting a handle on that political philosophy.

That there has never been a unitary working class response to capitalism and industrialization is a weakness. That there have been various left-wing tendencies fighting for political leadership of the class is not so. During most of the 20th century the great fights were between the various Marxist-oriented reformist Social Democrats and the ostensibly revolutionary Communists. However the great fights in the late 19th century were between the Marxists and anarchists of various persuasions. Those fights are extensively detailed by Professor Joll here. Given the reemergence over the past decade or various, mainly non-working class-centered, anarchist tendencies, especially of the "propaganda of the deed" variety, it is important for today's labor militants looking for some socialist political direction to learn (or learn more) about.

Professor Joll does some yeoman's work here describing the antecedents of the working class movement, especially the key trends that trace their lineage back to the 18th century French Revolution and the Enlightenment. It is the long term reaction to the failure of that revolution, the weakness of its political organization and its aborted libertarian aims to redress plebeian grievances that provided an opening to anarchist thought. Joll details the various plans, blueprints, panaceas and what not that floated thought the pre-1848 European political milieu (from Godwin to Weitling to the "Communist Manifesto") as the industrial form of organization took hold in Western society. In short, the revolutions of 1848 represented a last gasp outer limit that the bourgeoisie was willing to go to establish its rule in alliance with the working class under the sign of the French Revolution. Marx drew one conclusion from that understanding- the need to create independent working class political organization- the various anarchist trends drew others (independent communes, political withdrawal, permanent insurrection, etc.). This is where the great fight starts.

If mid-19th century Europe was a hot bed for various socialist-oriented theories those theories got hashed out through personalities as much as program. This is the age of Marx, Engels and LaSalle but also of the great anarchist thinkers Proudhon and Bakunin whose names are forever associated with the early anarchist movement, for good or ill. Those thinkers also represented, in embryo, the two great trends within anarchy that fought it out, mainly on European soil, for poltical dominance over most of the next century. If socialism has its reformist and revolutionary wings the same is true of the anarchism movement with its break between what I will call "philosophical anarchists" and "deed anarchists" that reflect the different perspectives of Proudhon and Bakunin. As with the socialist movement there is some overlap but one does not have be all that politically sophisticated to be able to distinguish between where the two lines of thought were heading.

With the defeat of the short-lived and bloodily defeated Paris Commune of 1871, an event that is commemorated with reverence in both communist and anarchist movements, although each drew different conclusions from its demise, European bourgeois society went through a period of relative stabilization with a vast expansion of the industrial enterprise. Needless to say such periods try the souls of revolutionaries, great and small. Part of this frustration worked itself out in the anarchist movement with, on the one hand, a `quietist' turn toward intellectual schemes and literary propaganda work (always appropriate, by the way) by the likes of Kropotkin, and on the other, the emergence of an individualist response by, at times, heroic anarchists committed to "propaganda by the deed".

During this period (about twenty years or so) there were some very spectacular assassinations, and attempted assassinations, of various American and European bourgeois political figures, most famously in America Alexander Berkman's (the fiery anarchist polemicist and orator Emma Goldman's companion of the time) attempt on steel magnate Ford Frick and the successful assassination of President McKinley. Also, needless to say, the wheels of bourgeois society continued working with little interruption. I would point out that the best socialists and communists have always defended such heroic, if misguided, actions by the "anarchists of the deed" while pointing out this truth- It's the system that had to go not individual representatives no matter how fitting for such actions, brothers and sisters.

If , as mentioned above, the great political battles within the international working class in the post-World War I period were between reformist socialists and revolutionary communists before that war the great fight was between various anarchist tendencies in the working class, mainly anarcho-syndicalists, and socialists. That fight reached a fever pitch around the question of defense of the Russian Revolution of 1917. In theory, at least, both anarchism and communism posit the replacement of the role of state as a "cop" with a new role as mere administrator of things (at most). The question is how to get there and how long it will take to place that possibility on the historic agenda. Here the Paris Commune experience is instructive. The anarchists, and here I admit complete solidarity with the Marxist side of the argument, apparently learned nothing from the decentralized confusion created in that revolutionary process, including the fundamental question of defense of the revolution. The Marxists, and in the case of the Russian Revolution its Bolshevik wing, took those lessons to heart and created a political/military party, worked through soviets (workers councils) and defended the revolution with a Red Army, arms in hand.

Whatever happened later in the Soviet experience and, as a supporter of the great Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky I find plenty to discuss, the Russian Revolution was the great test of the pre-war competing socialist political philosophies and that event split the anarchist movement, as well. Some like Victor Serge, Alfred Rosmer in Europe, "Big Bill" Haywood and some elements of the American-based Industrial Workers of The World (IWW) went over to the Communist International. Inside Russia, depending on the time, anarchist supported the revolution by going over to the Bolsheviks or, during the civil war formed independent "black flag" armies like those of Mahkno in the Ukraine that were generally pro-Soviet, or in the latter period became military opponents of the Soviet regime, most notably at Kronstadt in 1921. Professor Joll outlines the details here although one really needs to read more on this by one of the leading Russian anarchists of the time, Voline's "History of The Russian Anarchists". A mere paragraph here can only alert serious pro-labor militants to the need to work through the political differences. That the anarchist position came up short in Russia does not negate the need today to deal politically with the fringe reemergence of these tendencies. I would only add here that when the anarchists are reduced to talking about the "virtues" of Mahkno and of the Kronstadt sailors in 1921 there is something of an impediment to any fruitful discussion. But so be it.

Professor Joll's last and most important section, at least for today's militant's trying to sort through the questions of the state and revolutionary theory, is the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39. In the heat of revolution and civil war all theories get thoroughly tested and it was here that the anarchist attitude toward the state, any state, floundered. Although I have discussed the key questions of the Spanish Civil War elsewhere in this space those questions have been centered on the disputes among socialists and communists and the crisis of revolutionary leadership provoked by the civil war. Needless to say, in Spain at least, no discussion is complete without discussing the role of the anarchists, the largest tendency with political authority within the working class and among the landless rural laborers.

While a full discussion is beyond the scope of this book, and of this review, to sum up the anarchist experience in a nutshell- while the anarchists tried to ignore the state the state did not ignore them. When the deal went down they supported the state- the bourgeois state at a time, in the summer of 1936, when they and no other political formation could have taken political power. And made it stick. Instead the anarchist and anarchist-influenced organizations like the FAI (Iberian Anarchist Federation) and CNT (National Federation of Workers) passed the power back to the bourgeoisie (or their agents) and settled for a few (short-lived) ministerial posts. I hope I have provoked some argument here because now in the early 21st century that question of the state is again placed on the agenda for today's anarchists of the second mobilization. It is a question that will not go away for anarchists, socialists or communists alike. Read Professor Joll's book to get a primer on the historical contours of these disputes.

********

As is always appropriate on international working class holidays and days of remembrance here is the song most closely associated with that movement “The Internationale” in English, French and German. I will not vouch for the closeness of the translations but certainly of the spirit. Workers Of The World Unite!

The Internationale [variant words in square brackets]

Arise ye workers [starvelings] from your slumbers
Arise ye prisoners of want
For reason in revolt now thunders
And at last ends the age of cant.
Away with all your superstitions
Servile masses arise, arise
We'll change henceforth [forthwith] the old tradition [conditions]
And spurn the dust to win the prize.

So comrades, come rally
And the last fight let us face
The Internationale unites the human race.
So comrades, come rally
And the last fight let us face
The Internationale unites the human race.

No more deluded by reaction
On tyrants only we'll make war
The soldiers too will take strike action
They'll break ranks and fight no more
And if those cannibals keep trying
To sacrifice us to their pride
They soon shall hear the bullets flying
We'll shoot the generals on our own side.

No saviour from on high delivers
No faith have we in prince or peer
Our own right hand the chains must shiver
Chains of hatred, greed and fear
E'er the thieves will out with their booty [give up their booty]
And give to all a happier lot.
Each [those] at the forge must do their duty
And we'll strike while the iron is hot.




________________________________________

L'Internationale

Debout les damnés de la terre
Debout les forçats de la faim
La raison tonne en son cratère
C'est l'éruption de la fin
Du passe faisons table rase
Foules, esclaves, debout, debout
Le monde va changer de base
Nous ne sommes rien, soyons tout

C'est la lutte finale
Groupons-nous, et demain (bis)
L'Internationale
Sera le genre humain

Il n'est pas de sauveurs suprêmes
Ni Dieu, ni César, ni tribun
Producteurs, sauvons-nous nous-mêmes
Décrétons le salut commun
Pour que le voleur rende gorge
Pour tirer l'esprit du cachot
Soufflons nous-mêmes notre forge
Battons le fer quand il est chaud

L'état comprime et la loi triche
L'impôt saigne le malheureux
Nul devoir ne s'impose au riche
Le droit du pauvre est un mot creux
C'est assez, languir en tutelle
L'égalité veut d'autres lois
Pas de droits sans devoirs dit-elle
Egaux, pas de devoirs sans droits

Hideux dans leur apothéose
Les rois de la mine et du rail
Ont-ils jamais fait autre chose
Que dévaliser le travail
Dans les coffres-forts de la bande
Ce qu'il a crée s'est fondu
En décrétant qu'on le lui rende
Le peuple ne veut que son dû.

Les rois nous saoulaient de fumées
Paix entre nous, guerre aux tyrans
Appliquons la grève aux armées
Crosse en l'air, et rompons les rangs
S'ils s'obstinent, ces cannibales
A faire de nous des héros
Ils sauront bientôt que nos balles
Sont pour nos propres généraux

Ouvriers, paysans, nous sommes
Le grand parti des travailleurs
La terre n'appartient qu'aux hommes
L'oisif ira loger ailleurs
Combien, de nos chairs se repaissent
Mais si les corbeaux, les vautours
Un de ces matins disparaissent
Le soleil brillera toujours.


________________________________________

Die Internationale

Wacht auf, Verdammte dieser Erde,
die stets man noch zum Hungern zwingt!
Das Recht wie Glut im Kraterherde
nun mit Macht zum Durchbruch dringt.
Reinen Tisch macht mit dem Bedranger!
Heer der Sklaven, wache auf!
Ein nichts zu sein, tragt es nicht langer
Alles zu werden, stromt zuhauf!

Volker, hort die Signale!
Auf, zum letzten Gefecht!
Die Internationale
Erkampft das Menschenrecht

Es rettet uns kein hoh'res Wesen
kein Gott, kein Kaiser, noch Tribun
Uns aus dem Elend zu erlosen
konnen wir nur selber tun!
Leeres Wort: des armen Rechte,
Leeres Wort: des Reichen Pflicht!
Unmundigt nennt man uns Knechte,
duldet die Schmach langer nicht!

In Stadt und Land, ihr Arbeitsleute,
wir sind die starkste Partei'n
Die Mussigganger schiebt beiseite!
Diese Welt muss unser sein;
Unser Blut sei nicht mehr der Raben
und der machtigen Geier Frass!
Erst wenn wir sie vertrieben haben
dann scheint die Sonn' ohn' Unterlass!