In Honor Of The 100th Anniversary Of The Founding of The Communist International-From The Archives- *Honor The 91st Anniversary Of The Russian Revolution- From Leon Trotsky's "The History Of The Russian Revolution"-"The October Insurrection"

Click on title to link to the Leon Trotsky Internet Archives version of Bolshevik chief insurrection organizer Leon Trotsky's Volume Three, Chapter 46, "The October Insurrection", from his seminal "The History Of The Russian Revolution"

On The 100th Anniversary Of Newly-Fledged German Communist Leader Rosa Luxemburg And Karl Liebknecht-Oh, What Might Have Been-*In Honor Of The Anniversary Of The Russian Revolution-Our Anthem-"The Internationale"

Click on title to link to YouTube's film clip of our international working class anthem ,"The Internationale".


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!

*A Red Partisan- John Reed's Bird's Eye View Of The Russian Revolution of 1917

Click on title to link to the fourth part of a four-part series by John Reed, up close and personal on the Russian revolution of 1917, originally published in "The Liberator" in 1918.

*The100thAnniversaryYearOfTheBolshevik-LedOctoberRevolution-LessonsForToday- From The Film Archives-In Honor Of The Birthday Anniversary Of Bolshevik Leader Leon Trotsky

Click on title to link to part one (of five, just click from part one) of YouTube's film clips detailing the highlights (and lows) of the life and death of the great Bolshevik leader, Leon Trotsky. In Honor Of His Birthday Anniversary.

In Honor Of The 100th Anniversary Of The Founding of The Communist International-From The Archives- *Political Journalist's Corner- John Reed's 1919 "The Revolutionary Age" Article, "Aspects Of The Russian Revolution"

Click on title to link to the John Reed Internet Archive's 1919 "The Revolutionary Age" article by John Reed, "Aspects of the Russian Revolution".

On The Anniversary Of The Greensboro Massacre 1979- Never Forget

Click on title to link to a YouTube film clip of some of the events of that day in 1979 when various right-wing paramilitary thugs murdered five communist workers.

Commentary

This is the 31st Anniversary of the heinous crimes of 1979 against communist workers in Greensboro, North Carolina

This is a repost of last year's commemorative commentary. The struggle remains the same. As does the message- Never Forget!

REMEMBER SLAIN LABOR MILITANTS-CESAR CAUCE, MICHAEL NATHAN, BILL SAMPSON, SANDI SMITH AND JIM WALLER

For those too young to remember or who unfortunately have forgotten the incident commemorated here this is a capsule summary of what occurred on that bloody day:

On November 3, 1979 in Greensboro, North Carolina, five anti-racist activists and union organizers, supporters of the Communist Workers Party (CWP), were fatally gunned down by Ku Klux Klan and Nazi fascists. Nine carloads of Klansmen and Nazis drove up to a black housing project-the gathering place for an anti-Klan march organized by the CWP. In broad daylight, the fascists pulled out their weapons and unleashed an 88-second fusillade that was captured on television cameras. They then drove off, leaving the dead and dying in pools of blood. From the outset, the Klan/Nazi killers were aided and abetted by the government, from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agent who helped train the killers and plot the assassination to the "former" FBI informer who rode shotgun in the motorcade of death and the Greensboro cop who brought up the rear. The five militants listed above died as a result. The Greensboro Klan/Nazis literally got away with murder, acquitted twice by all-white juries.

This writer has recently been raked over the coals by some leftists who were appalled that he called for a no free speech platform for Nazis and fascists (see below) and argued that labor should mobilize its forces and run these vermin off the streets whenever they raise their heads. Despite recent efforts to blur the lines of the heinous nature of and political motivation for these murders in Greensboro by some kind of truth and reconciliation process militant leftists should etch in their brains the reality of the Klan/Nazis. There is nothing to debate with this kind. The niceties of parliamentary democracy have no place in a strategy to defeat these bastards. The Greensboro massacre is prime evidence that any other way is suicidal for militants. No more Germany, 1933's. No more Greensboro, 1979's. Never Forget Greensboro.

REPOST FROM SEPTEMBER 15, 2006

In a recent blog (dated, September 4, 2006) this writer mentioned that one of the Klan groups in this country held a demonstration at the Gettysburg National Cemetery over the Labor Day 2006 weekend around a list of demands that included bringing the troops home from Iraq in order to patrol the borders. Symbols mean a lot in politics and the notion that Klansmen were permitted to demonstrate at a key symbol in the fight to end slavery and preserve the union raised my temperature more than a little. As I said then Gettysburg is hallowed ground fought and paid for in great struggle and much blood. At that time the writer posed the question of what, if any, opposition to the demonstration leftists had put together to run these hooded fools out of town. In response, this writer was raked over the coals for calling for an organized fight by labor to nip these elements in the bud. Why? Apparently some people believe that running the fools out of town would have violated the Klan's free speech rights. Something is desperately wrong here about both the nature of free speech and the nature of the Klan/fascist menace.

First, let us be clear, militant leftists defend every democratic right as best we can. I have often argued in this space that to a great extend militant leftists are the only active defenders of such rights- on the streets where it counts. That said, the parameters of such rights, as all democratic rights, cannot trump the needs of the class struggle. In short, militant leftist have no interest in defending or extending the rights of fascists to fill the air with gibberish. Now that may offend some American Civil Liberties Union-types but any self-respecting militant knows that such a position is right is his or her 'gut'.

In the final analysis we will be fighting the Klan-types on the streets and the issue will no be rights of free expression (except maybe in defense of ours) but the survival of our organizations. A short glance at history is to the point.
One of the great tragedies of the Western labor movement was the defeat and destruction of the German labor movement in the wake of the fascist Hitler's rise to power in 1933. In the final analysis that destruction was brought on by the fatally erroneous policies of both the German Social Democratic and Communists parties. Neither party, willfully, saw the danger in time and compounded that error when refused to call for or establish a united front of all labor organizations to confront and destroy Hitler and his storm troopers. We know the result. And it was not necessary. Moreover, Hitler's organization at one time (in the mid-1920's) was small and unimportant like today's Klan/Nazi threat. But that does not mean that under certain circumstances that could not change. And that, my friends, is exactly the point.

In Honor Of The 100th Anniversary Of The Founding of The Communist International-From The Archives- *The Crisis Of World Capitalism- A Guest Commentary By Alan Woods

Click on title to link to article by Alan Woods concerning the crisis of the world capitalism economic order. This article is presented for informational purposes, some of Woods' conclusions I agree with, some not. The main point, in any case, for our purposes today is to not only analyze what the particular breakdown of the international capitalist order is at the moment but how to overthrow that order and create a more rational socialist order. As we now know from painful experience there is no economic crisis that the capitalists can not "solve". Economic analysis helps but organizing the labor movement is critical.

*From The Archives -Obama-Immediate Uncondtional Withdrawal From Afghanistan- Gearing Up For The Fall Anti-War Season-An October 7 Anti-War Action

Click on title to link to site that has in the past covered the opposition to the Bush/Obama Afghan War policies. This site is linked for informational purposes only.

Below is information, recently received by e-mail, pertaining to some upcoming Fall 2009 actions planned by forces sympathetic to various United For Justice With Peace (UJP)organizations. I am passing it on for informational purposes only. I do not, make that definitely do not, agree with UJPs premises, slogans or strategy. The only agreement I have at this point is on the need to take to the streets to oppose the Obama war policies, including this latest round of escalations in troop numbers (as well as the projections of Afghan Commander General McCrystal for more troops). The time to give Obama a pass on his war policies is long over. Forward.


Peace NO War Network
http://www.PeaceNOWar.net
War is not the answer, for only love can conquer hate
Not in our Name! And another world is possible!

http://www.PeaceNoWar.net
e-mail: Info@PeaceNoWar.net
Tel: (213)403-0131

Please Join PeaceNoWar Listserv, send e-mail to: peacenowar-subscribe@lists.riseup.net


End the War in Afghanistan and Pakistan!
Change ≠ War!



President Barack Obama was elected on a platform of CHANGE and with hopes for diplomacy, not war! As the war in Iraq winds down, more troops have been sent to Afghanistan. Some in the Pentagon are calling for more!

Now, 54% of the people believe the Afghanistan war is a mistake. The peace movement is challenged to organize the hope for CHANGE into a movement to end the war in Afghanistan as one of the big steps towards addressing the crisis in our communities.

Our best interests and the interests of the Afghanistan people lie in the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. forces. With every bomb dropped and every civilian and military death, we are no closer to helping the Afghan people and the region to grapple with their problems. In fact, the U.S. presence is the biggest obstacle to doing so.


On October 7, the beginning of the 9th year of occupation and war in Afghanistan, we must mobilize nationwide a call for diplomacy, not war. Change ≠ War!

United For Peace and Justice is calling on the grassroots movements for peace and economic and social justice to gather in their cities and towns on October 7 for action, dialog, and reflection on the 8 years of death and dying in Afghanistan and now in Pakistan.

United For Peace and Justice is calling on its member groups across the country to initiate local actions or educational events in your community on October 7:

Teach-Ins on the costs, human and economic, of the occupation and war in Afghanistan and impact on the region.

Vigils, pickets and delegations to Congressional offices, as well as faxes, emails and calls.

Rallies, demonstrations, vigils and marches to bring the peace and justice message into the streets.

House parties to raise money for Afghanistan relief or other aid to the Afghan people.

Creative actions to highlight the devastating effects of the Drone air strikes.
In the month of October, many activities are being planned here and around the world. On October 5, a coalition led by the National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance (NCNR) will have a procession to the White House, deliver a petition and hold a non-violent direct action in Washington, DC. It is urgent that we also bring our message to Washington and we hope you will join this initiative.

The Iraq Moratorium has called for local actions on October 17 to mark the 40th anniversary of the Vietnam War Moratorium. The Iraq Moratorium says, "Over 2 million people participated in thousands of communities [during the Vietnam War] and brought the anti-war movement into the political mainstream of American society. The lessons from that event in 1969 can help us strengthen the antiwar movement today."

The Struggle For The Labor Party In The United States- Leon Trotsky Speaks-"On the Labor Party Question in America"-To The Communist League Of America (pre-SWP)-1932

Markin comment on this series:

Obviously, for a Marxist, the question of working class political power is central to the possibilities for the main thrust of his or her politics- the quest for that socialist revolution that initiates the socialist reconstruction of society. But working class politics, no less than any other kinds of political expressions has to take an organization form, a disciplined organizational form in the end, but organization nevertheless. In that sense every Marxist worth his or her salt, from individual labor militants to leagues, tendencies, and whatever other formations are out there these days on the left, struggles to built a revolutionary labor party, a Bolshevik-style party.

Glaringly, in the United States there is no such party, nor even a politically independent reformist labor party, as exists in Great Britain. And no, the Democratic Party, imperialist commander-in-chief Obama's Democratic Party is not a labor party. Although plenty of people believe it is an adequate substitute, including some avowed socialists. But they are just flat-out wrong. This series is thus predicated on providing information about, analysis of, and acting as a spur to a close look at the history of the labor party question in America by those who have actually attempted to create one, or at to propagandize for one.

As usual, I will start this series with the work of the International Communist League/Spartacist League/U.S. as I have been mining their archival materials of late. I am most familiar with the history of their work on this question, although on this question the Socialist Workers Party's efforts run a close second, especially in their revolutionary period. Lastly, and most importantly, I am comfortable starting with the ICL/SL efforts on the labor party question since after having reviewed in this space in previous series their G.I. work and youth work (Campus Spartacist and the Revolutionary Marxist Caucus Newsletter inside SDS) I noted that throughout their history they have consistently called for the creation of such a party in the various social arenas in which they have worked. Other organizational and independent efforts, most notably by the Socialist Workers Party and the American Communist Party will follow.
**********
Leon Trotsky

On the Labor Party Question in America
(1932)


Written: 1932.
First Published: 1932.
Source: Class Struggle Official Organ Of The Communist League Of Struggle (Adhering to the International Left Opposition), Volume 2 Number 7, August 1932. We have added an appendix that was included in the uncopyrighted version of the Merit Publishers version of this interview at the bottom of this article.
Online Version: Vera Buch & Albert Weisbord Internet Archive.
Transcribed/HTML Markup: Albert Weisbord Internet Archive/David Walters.


I reread the theses of the Second Conference of the American League concerning the question of the Labor Party. I find it excellent in every part and I sign it with both hands. I find it necessary to emphasize my full agreement with these all the more as my interview to the New York Times of March 1932 gave rise to the misunderstanding and misinterpretation, especially from the part of the Lovestone group.

1. What was my idea about the “Labor Party” in that statement? I affirmed that American politics will be Europeanized in the sense that the inevitable and imminent development of a party of the working class will totally change the political face of the US. This is a commonplace for a Marxist. The question was not of a “Labor Party” in the specific English sense of that word, but in the general European sense without designating what form such a party would take or what phases it would pass through. There was not the slightest necessity in this interview to enter into the internal tactical differences within the Communist ranks. The translation of my interview from the Russian text which employs the words, “Rabochaya partia” into the English was defective in that it permitted one to get a concrete and specific interpretation of what should have been general.

2. One can declare that even the general term “Party of the working class”, does not exclude a “Labor Party”, in the English sense. Be that as it may. However, such an eventuality has nothing to do with a precise tactical question. We can admit hypothetically that the American trade union bureaucracy will be forced in certain historical conditions, to imitate the British trade union bureaucracy in creating a kind of party based upon the trade unions. But that eventuality, which appears to me to be very problematical, does not constitute an aim for which the Communists must strive and on which one must concentrate the attention of the proletarian vanguard.

3. A long period of confusion in the Comintern led many people to forget a very simple but absolutely irrevocable principle that a Marxist, a proletarian revolutionist, cannot present himself before the working class with two banners. He cannot say at a workers meeting: I have tickets for a first class party and other tickets cheaper for the stupid ones. If I am a Communist I must fight for the Communist Party.

4. One can affirm that under the American conditions a “Labor Party” in the British sense would be a progressive step and by recognizing this and stating so, we ourselves, even though indirectly, help to establish such a party. But that is precisely the reason I will never assume the responsibility to affirm abstractly and dogmatically that the creation of a “Labor Party” would be a “progressive step” even in the United States because I do not know under what circumstances, under what guidance, and for what purposes that party would be created. It seems to me more probable that especially in America, which does not possess any important tradition of independent political action by the working class (as Chartism in England, for example) and where the trade union bureaucracy is more reactionary and corrupt than it was in the height of the British Empire. The creation of a “Labor Party” in America could be provoked only by a mighty revolutionary pressure of the working masses and by the growing threat of Communism. It is absolutely clear that under these conditions the Labor Party would signify not a progressive step but a hindrance to the progressive evolution of the working class.

5. In what form the party of the working class will become a genuine mass party in the United States in the immediate future we cannot prophesy because the Socialist and “Labor” Parties are very different in different countries even in Europe. In Belgium, for example, we see an intermediary sort of party arise. Certainly the phases of development of the proletarian party in America will be sui generis (unique). We can only affirm with the greatest assurance: Especially since the United States, in the period from 1921-1924 has had already an important rehearsal in the creation of a “Labor” or “Farmer-Labor” Party a resurrection of a similar movement cannot be a simple repetition of that experience, but a far more pregnant and more crystallized movement i.e., either under the guidance of the revolutionary Communist Party or under the guidance of reformist elements against the growing Communist Party. And if even in 1921-1924, the Communist Party did not find great possibilities for independent action inside the organization of an inchoate “Labor Party”, it would have less possibility in the new phase of an analogous movement.

6. One can imagine that the trade union bureaucracy and its Socialist and left democratic advisers may show themselves to be more perspicacious and begin the formation of a “Labor Party” before the revolutionary movement becomes too threatening. In view of the groping imperialism and provincial narrowness of the American labor bureaucracy and aristocracy of labor such perspicacity seems very improbable. The failure of such an attempt in the past shows us that the bureaucracy, so tenacious in its immediate aims, is absolutely incapable of a systematic political action on a great scale even in the interest of capitalist society. The bureaucracy must receive a blow on the skull for such a “radical” initiative. However, if the creation of a “Labor Party” would prevent, in a certain period, the large success of Communism, our elementary duty must be not to proclaim the progressiveness of the “Labor Party”, but its insufficiency, ambiguity, and limitations, and its historical role as a hindrance to the proletarian revolution.

7. Must we join that “Labor Party” or remain outside? This is no more a question of principle, but of circumstances and possibilities. The question itself has arisen from the experience of the British Communists and the “Labor Party”, and that experience has served far more the “Labor Party” than the Communists. It is evident that the possibility of participating in and of utilizing a “Labor Party” movement would be greater in the period of its inception, that is, in the period when the part is not a party but an amorphic politic mass movement. That we must participate in it at that time and with the greatest energy is without question, but not to help form a “Labor Party”, which will exclude us and fight against us but to push the progressive elements of the movement more and more to the left by our activity and propaganda. I know this seems too simple for the new great school which searches in every way for a method to jump over its feeble head.

8. To consider a “Labor Party” as an integrated series of united fronts signifies a misunderstanding of the notions, both of united fronts and of the party. The united front is determined by concrete circumstances and for concrete aims. The Party is permanent. By a united front, we reserve for ourselves a free hand to break with our temporary allies. In a common party with these allies, we are bound by discipline and even by the fact of the party itself. The experience of the Kuomintang and of the Anglo-Russian Committee must be well understood. The strategic line dictated by the lack of spirit of independence of the Communist Party and by the desire to enter into the “big” party (Kuomintang, “Labor Party”) produced inevitably all the consequences of opportunistic adaptation to the will of the allies and through them to the enemies. We must educate our comrades in the belief in the invincibility of the Communist idea and in the future of the Communist Party. The parallel struggle for another party produces inevitably in their minds a duality and drives them on the road of opportunism.

9. The policy of the united front has not only its great disadvantages but its limits and its dangers. The united front even in the form of temporary blocs often impels one to opportunistic deviations frequently fatal as for example Brandler in 1923. That danger becomes absolutely overwhelming in a situation when the so-called Communist Party becomes a part of a “Labor Party” created by the grace of the propaganda and action of the Communist Party itself.

10. That the Labor Party can become an arena of our successful struggle and that the Labor Party created as a barrier to Communism can, under certain circumstances, strengthen the Communist Party is true, but only under the condition that we consider the Labor Party not as “our” party, but as an arena in which we are acting as an absolutely independent Communist Party.

11. All the resolutions about the British Labor Party must be taken into consideration not as they were written before the experiences of the Comintern and the British Communist Party in that regard, but in the light of that experience. The attempt mechanically to apply them now in 1932 to the American conditions is characteristic of the epigones’ mind and has nothing to do with Marxism and Leninism.

12. It is not necessary to say that the idea of a Farmer-Labor Party is a treacherous mockery of Marxism.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Appendix: Excerpt From Interview
The New York Times of March 3, 1932, carried an interview with Trotsky, then an exile in Turkey. One of the questions was: “How do you view the position of the United States in the present world situation?” Trotsky gave the following reply:

“ I think, as a result of the present crisis, the predominance of American over European capitalism will grow still more pronounced. In the same way, as a result of every crisis, you see a growth in the predominance of the big enterprise over the small, the trust over the isolated undertaking. However, this inevitable growth of the world hegemony of the United States will entail further deep contradictions both in the economy and in the politics of the great American Republic.

“ In asserting the dictatorship of the dollar over the whole world, the ruling class of the United States will introduce the contradictions of the whole world into the very basis of its own dominance. The economy and the politics of the United States will depend more and more directly upon crises, wars, and revolutions in all parts of the world. The position of’observer’ cannot long be maintained formally. I think that America will create the most colossal system of land, sea, and air militarism that can be imagined.

“ The conclusive emergence of America from its old ‘provincialism,’ the struggle for markets, the growth of armaments, and active world policy, the experience of the present crisis —all these things will inevitably introduce deep changes into the inner life of the United States.

“ The emergence of a labor party is inevitable. It may begin to grow with an ‘American tempo,’ leading to the liquidation of one of the two old parties, just as the Liberals have disappeared in England.

“ To sum it up, you must say the Soviet Union will be American-ized technically, Europe will either be sovietized or descend to bar-barism, the United States will be Europeanized politically.”

*From The Archives -As We Enter Year 3 Of The Anniversary Of WWI-From The Pen Of V.I. Lenin In 1914- "Dead Chauvinism And Living Socialism"

Click on title to link to V.I. Lenin's 1914 article "Dead Chauvinism And Living Socialism"

In Honor Of The Anniversary Of The Paris Commune-From The Archives-***Poet's Corner- Bertolt Brecht's "To Those Born After"-In Honor Of The Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Communist International (1919)

Poet's Corner- Bertolt Brecht's "To Those Born After"-In Honor Of The Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Communist International (1919)

Markin comment:

Old Brecht may not have been from the be-bop generation but he, in his way, knew how to speak truth to power through his poetry and plays.

To Those Born After

I

To the cities I came in a time of disorder
That was ruled by hunger.
I sheltered with the people in a time of uproar
And then I joined in their rebellion.
That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth.

I ate my dinners between the battles,
I lay down to sleep among the murderers,
I didn't care for much for love
And for nature's beauties I had little patience.
That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth.

The city streets all led to foul swamps in my time,
My speech betrayed me to the butchers.
I could do only little
But without me those that ruled could not sleep so easily:
That's what I hoped.
That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth.

Our forces were slight and small,
Our goal lay in the far distance
Clearly in our sights,
If for me myself beyond my reaching.
That's how I passed my time that was given to me on this Earth.

II

You who will come to the surface
From the flood that's overwhelmed us and drowned us all
Must think, when you speak of our weakness in times of darkness
That you've not had to face:

Days when we were used to changing countries
More often than shoes,
Through the war of the classes despairing
That there was only injustice and no outrage.

Even so we realised
Hatred of oppression still distorts the features,
Anger at injustice still makes voices raised and ugly.
Oh we, who wished to lay for the foundations for peace and friendliness,
Could never be friendly ourselves.

And in the future when no longer
Do human beings still treat themselves as animals,
Look back on us with indulgence.

In Honor Of The 100th Anniversary Of The Founding of The Communist International-*From The American Communist Movement Archives- On The United Front Question- A View From History

Markin comment:

This post is presented as a contribution to the continuing discussion on the vital question of the united front tactic in the struggle for our communist future. On this question, as I know from bitter and frustrating personal experience, we need all the education we can get.

*********

On the United Front- based on the RCY "National Bureau Document on the United Front," 3 July 1973. (RCY is the Revolutionary Communist Youth, the then youth group of the Spartacist League/U.S.-Markin)

The united front (UF), as embodied in the work of the early Communist International (CI) and the subsequent struggle of Trotsky for a revolutionary international, grew out of the experience of building the Bolshevik party. The struggle over the UF in the CI was due to what might be called the "uneven and combined development" of the parties and groups, especially in Western Europe, which rallied to the Bolshevik Revolution and the CI. These parties and groups had their origins in social democracy (Germany, France, Italy) and often represented the fusion of left-wing social democracy with revolutionary syndicalism (U.S. and France). Their schooling in social democracy gave them a conception of the party as a "party of the whole class," or as one of the most articulate and left-wing exponents of this conception, Rosa Luxemburg, stated in Leninism or Marxism?:

"The fact is that the Social Democracy is not joined to the organization of the proletariat. It is itself the proletariat." (emphasis in original)

Although she was in the forefront of the fight against Bernsteinism which saw the transformation of capitalism into socialism as organic and evolutionary, yet, like Bernstein, she saw the transformation of consciousness within the working class, from capitalist to socialist consciousness, as an organic, evolutionary, undifferentiated process. Luxemburg saw the party and class consciousness emerging organically from "the struggle itself." For Lenin the "struggle itself," the experiences of the masses of workers, were shaped both materially and ideologically by bourgeois society. From the "struggle itself" at best only trade-union consciousness could emerge. Scientific socialism had to be brought to, joined to, the "struggle itself." For Luxemburg, the party represented the proletariat as it is. Such a party can at best be only a party of trade unionism, of reformism. For Lenin the party represented the proletariat as it must be if it is to carry through its historic mission of the socialist reconstruction of society.

Thus, the common error of left-wing social democracy was the liquidation of the party into the class:

"...the Social Democratic movement cannot allow the ejection of an air-tight partition between the class-conscious nucleus of the proletariat already in the party and its immediate popular environment, the nonparty sections of the proletariat."

—Leninism or Marxism?

The party is seen as an "all-inclusive" bloc of tendencies of which the central apparatus, the party functionaries, the party bureaucracy, is seen as the most conservative since it is the most distant from the "struggle itself," while the ranks of the party, and even the non-party workers, are seen as subjectively more revolutionary. This is, of course, often the case in social-democratic parties and reformist trade unions, but this is precisely because these organizations have merged with the "struggle itself" which, confined to the laws of the capitalist market, never transcend the simple battle to exchange labor power for its equivalent, i.e., never transcend wage slavery. Within this context, democratic centralism is seen simply as the subordination of the revolutionary ranks to the conservative apparatus. Indeed, democratic centralism is the appropriate form only for a revolutionary party. Luxemburg's fears that the German Social Democracy's (SPD) adoption of democratic centralism would mean simply the subordination of the revolutionary wing of the party to the Kautskyites was well-founded. But it was her responsibility, while struggling for the maximum freedom within the SPD, to build a revolutionary democratic-centralist faction within it.

Thus, while Luxemburg's history as a heroic revolutionary is unimpeachable (it is not accidental that our tendency has adopted the name "Spartacist"), her views on party discipline, party building and the relationship between the party and the class were simply the most left-wing expression of social-democratic organizational norms. These norms equated the party with the class or placed the class above the party, denied the necessary vanguard role of the party of proletarian revolution and, hence, were fundamentally liquidationist.

The UF: Class Unity and Communist Hegemony

For the CI and Trotsky the UF had two equally important and inseparable aims: class unity and communist hegemony. Flowing from the dual nature of the UF is the necessity to maintain both the complete organizational independence of the communist party and the complete freedom to criticize one's temporary allies within the UF. The dual nature of the UF is captured in the CI slogan, "March separately, strike together." Each participant in the UF retains its organizational identity; agreement in the UF need pertain only to the details of the specific action to be carried out and can only be reached through unanimous agreement. Another slogan which captures the dual nature of the UF is "freedom of criticism, unity in action." Organizations like the Class Struggle League which take the definition of the UF and substitute it for the definition of the combat party effectively liquidate the party into the UF. This is the very essence of centrism.

The struggle for the UF at the Third and Fourth CI Congresses represented the recognition that the post-WWI revolutionary upsurge had passed over the heads of many of its national sections because they were unable to lead a majority of the working class into battle for the conquest of power. By the Third Congress the upsurge had already begun to recede, taking off the agenda, at least for the immediate period, the conquest of power, and placing on the agenda the conquest of the masses.

The need for the UF flowed from the fact that the majority of workers in most countries had gone through the post-war revolutionary upsurge retaining their allegiance to the reformist leaderships in the trade unions and the social-democratic parties. At the same time, capitalism itself, in the wake of the receding revolutionary tide, went on the offensive. It was not a question of a "revolutionary offensive" as was seen by the "ultra-lefts" in the CI, but of a capitalist offensive that was forcing even the reformist-led organizations into partial and defensive struggles to fight for their life, to fight simply to maintain the organizational gains and standard of living they had won in the past. This situation placed on the agenda the need for a united workers front against the capitalist offensive.
The question was posed to the national sections of the CI: What was to be done in the face of the capitalist offensive which drove even reformist organizations to battle and intensified the objective need in the proletariat for class unity? The majority of the CI drew the conclusion that propaganda and agitation alone were not sufficient to break the mass of workers from their reformist leaderships. The infamy of the reformists, fighting capacity of the communists and viability of the communist program had to be demonstrated in action. A period in which the reformists are drawn into battle, albeit in a half-hearted, partial way, is precisely the best time to expose their infamy through common action side by side with them, where the workers can measure in their own immediate experiences and struggle the fighting capacity and program of the communists vs. those of their reformist leadership.

In the CI discussions a distinction was drawn between the "UF from above" which was an agreement reached between communist and non-communist leaderships to carry out a particular class action and the "UF from below" which was a direct appeal made to non-communist workers over the heads of their leaders. Certain members of the CI wanted the UF to mean only "from below" believing that agreements with opportunists must necessarily be opportunist agreements. Trotsky and others arguing against this viewpoint stated that if the rank and file of organizations were not ready to march under the leadership of the communists during the post-war upsurge, they would not break with their leaderships to march with communist calls to action now. Now that capitalism had taken the offensive and the revisionist and reformist leaderships of proletarian organizations were forced to call class actions or at least forced to talk of calling them, it was necessary to intersect this development. Communists should not only participate in partial and defensive struggles but should initiate them when necessary and fight to win the leadership of them when possible. Therefore, agreements with reformist and centrist leaders could not be precluded, though communists should be ever ready to break with the centrists and reformists when their vacillations become a brake on the struggle. In the course of such a break the communists might very well go over to a "UF from below." In any case either the reformists and centrists would refuse to enter into common struggle with the communists, in which case they would be discredited, or their pusillanimous behavior in the course of the struggle would tend to discredit them and enhance the authority of the communists.

The UF: Sharpening the Political Struggle

Thus the tactic of the UF should never be seen as a cessation of political struggle, as a non-aggression pact or mutual amnesty with other tendencies. The CI slogan for the UF—"freedom of criticism, unity in action"—anticipated that the UF would sharpen the political struggle and exacerbate hostilities between communist and non-communist leaderships. The UF as a political weapon in the struggle for communist hegemony is often put forth in anticipation that reformists and centrists will refuse to participate in common action with the communists, even though the former have committed themselves, at least verbally, to such actions. Whether these non-communist leaderships of proletarian organizations refuse to respond to the UF call or respond only in a half-hearted way, the call can serve to discredit their authority over the non-communist workers and "set the base against the top."

An important international application of the CI UF tactic was the CI call for common class action with the Second International and the Vienna Union or "Two-and-a-Half International." Negotiations for common action broke down, and the Two-and-a-Half International was forced to move to the right to prevent its membership from engaging in common battles with the communists. This eventually drove the Vienna Union into fusion with the Second International. While CI members who were skeptical about the UF policy considered the fusion of the Two-and-a-Half International and Second International a defeat, Trotsky and other CI supporters of the UF considered the fusion to be a positive gain for the communists in as much as it cleared the path of an obstacle between the communists and the reformists. There was no longer a third pole which claimed to be both "revolutionary" and non-communist, thereby confusing militant workers and creating obstacles in the class struggle.

Likewise, in the late '60s, Progressive Labor Party (PL) was an obstacle between the SL and those sections of the New Left which were moving leftward toward proletarian socialism. PL's verbal commitment to a pro-working-class and non-exclusionist Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) provided the framework in which the UF could be applied to a whole series of issues, from the question of military recruiting on campus, strike support and the question of unemployment, to whether SDS should be an explicitly socialist organization. The application of the UF tactic to PL essentially offered PL two choices. Either it could carry through with its verbal commitment to a pro-working-class non-exclusionist SDS and conduct common actions with the SL/RCY which would ultimately force it to break with its Stalinist heritage, or it could retreat to the right. PL took the latter course which, while dashing our hopes of winning a section of the PL cadre, removed PL as an obstacle to our recruitment of those sections of the New Left 'which were moving in a proletarian socialist direction.

The struggle for communist hegemony has as its aim the. political polarization of all ostensible revolutionary organizations into revolutionary and non-revolutionary components, and the regroupment of all organizations, tendencies and factions which stand for revolutionary Marxism into the united Leninist vanguard party. The UF is an important component of the regroupment tactic for it is precisely through common action that the political struggle of counterpoised programs can reach its sharpest expression. Thus, it was both full political discussion (Zinoviev's famous speech at Halle) and common action that won a majority of the German Independent Socialists over to the German CP. The center of our regroupment orientation during the late '60s was PL/SDS. PL/SDS' abandonment of a proletarian perspective and their capitulation to academic liberalism with the "anti-racist textbook" campaign combined with our acquisition of groups and tendencies from the PL periphery (like the Buffalo Marxist Collective) are both the negative and positive confirmations of the correctness of our regroupment perspective for that period.

Ultra-Left and Opportunist Opposition to the UF

Rejection of the UF or of the "UF from above," while often clothed in the rhetoric of revolutionary intransigence, in reality represented a kind of political passivity, conservatism and lack of revolutionary will. Such "leftism" was, in fact, an acceptance of the status quo and the division of the workers movement into the communists who had revolutionary intransigence and the reformists who had the working class. Opposition to the UF came not only from the left but also from the right, especially from those groups whose break with social democracy had been organizational but not methodological.

Most of Trotsky's CI polemics in defense of the UF were directed against centrist elements in the French CP which resisted communist organizational norms, refused to support international democratic centralism or Leninist functioning in their own party, refused to subordinate their press, parliamentarian or trade-union fractions to party discipline, publicly attacked the CI in their press and in public meetings, resisted carrying out communist propaganda in the military or in the trade unions and refused to take up the fight against French colonialism. It was the left wing of the French CP, those former Socialists and syndicalists who supported Lenin's break with social democracy during WWI and who immediately declared themselves for the CI who fought for the UF within the French party. It was those centrist elements whose break with social democracy was belated and who resisted affiliation with the CI and the purge of the social-chauvinist traitors from their ranks who also fought against the UF. Thus opposition to the UF produced its own "united front" running from Hermann Goiter and Bordiga on the left to Frossard on the right. Opportunist opposition to the UF like that of ultra-leftism is based on political passivity and conservatism. The opportunist projects his own opportunism on to the UF. He cannot conceive of alliances aside from the deals that are made in the back rooms of parliament and trade-union offices: mutual accommodation and non-aggression pacts. Trained in the school of social democracy where the party is conceived of as blocs of diverse tendencies, the centrist who holds a liquidationist conception of the party cannot conceive of the UF except as liquidationist. Reluctant to break with his reformist cronies, the centrist is now unwilling to turn around and do battle with them in common action. Hostility to the UF is simply an inverted non-aggression pact with the reformists, an implicit agreement not to fight them on their own turf.

Stalin and the UF

With Stalin's ascent to power and the conversion of the CI from an instrument of world revolution into an instrument of realpolitik diplomacy based on the narrow, conservative interests of the Soviet bureaucracy, the UF was degraded as a tactic for class unity and transformed into an instrument for class collaboration and counterrevolution. In China the "bloc from within" was transformed into the complete liquidation of the Chinese CP into the Kuomintang (KMT). The KMT was made a "sympathizer" section of the CI, Chiang Kai-shek was made a "fraternal" member of the I.E.C. and the KMT army was equipped with Soviet arms and trained by Soviet military advisors, but kept entirely in the control of the warlords like Chiang who ran the KMT. By the Second KMT Congress in January 1926 the Chinese CP held one-fifth of the total seats on the KMT Central Executive Committee, headed the Peasant and Organization Departments and (through Chou En-lai) Whampoa Academy which trained the leading military cadre. Even so, Chiang was able through his control over the army, beginning with the 20 March 1926 coup in Canton and culminating in the March 1927 suppression of the Shanghai uprising, to turn the "bloc from within" into the block upon which the Chinese CP was beheaded.

In Britain the CI UF policy was embodied in the "Anglo-Russian Trade Union Unity Committee" which was formed in May 1925 between the leaderships of the British and Russian trade unions. The Committee served to give a revolutionary cover to the British trade-union leadership's betrayal of the 1926 General Strike and the Committee broke up only after the British union leaders broke with it a year later. The position of the Trotskyist Left Opposition was that the original formation of the Anglo-Russian Committee was tactically defensible as the Committee represented a temporary alliance with British trade-union leaders who, under mass working-class pressure, were moving slightly leftward and were willing, for at least a short period, to come out for the defense of the Soviet Union and international trade-union unity, and it was necessary to hold them to these positions. Under the impact of the sharpening class struggle culminating in a pre-revolutionary situation it should have been anticipated that these reformist union leaders would be driven over into the defense of the bourgeois order. To maintain a bloc with them under these conditions was simply to lend the prestige of the Bolshevik Revolution and communism to these strike breakers.

The accumulating failures of Stalin's 1924-27 policies of conciliating the colonial bourgeoisie and trade-union reformists abroad and the kulaks at home led straight to the "third period" policies of liquidating the kulaks and completely undoing the work of the Third and Fourth Congresses in regard to the UF. The UF "from below" was proclaimed to be the only permissible tactic for the CI sections.

The UF: Strategy or Tactic?

There is a tendency to conclude from Trotsky's strong polemics in defense of the UF in his German writings that the UF is not simply a tactic but a strategy. For example, a 1966 International Committee document which was probably authored by the Organisation Communiste Internationalist states:

'"Class against class' is the very cement which binds together the transitional slogans as a whole. "That is why the Workers' United Front is not simply a slogan, but a strategic axis in the policy of Trotskyist organizations. The strategy of the United Front is embodied in various tactical expressions which range from limited agreements for united actions between different organizations to the Soviets, the 'natural form of the united front at the time of combat,' as Leon Trotsky said in Whither France?" —quoted in Spartacist Internal Information Bulletin No. 19

Trotsky repeats time and time again in What Next? (from which the "soviet is the highest form of the united front" quote is taken) that the UF is a tactic and not a strategy, and that to consider the UF a strategy rather than a tactic is the essence of centrism. What Next? is not only a polemic against the ultra-left sectarian policies of the Stalintern, but it is also a polemic against the UF and soviet fetishism of centrist groups like the SAP (Socialist Workers Party of Germany). For example, Trotsky states:

"In any case, the policy of the united front cannot serve as a program for a revolutionary party. And in the meantime, the entire activity of the SAP is now being built on it. As a result, the policy of the united front is carried over into the party itself, that is, it serves to smear over the contradictions between the various tendencies. And that is precisely the fundamental function of centrism."

—The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany

Even more succinctly Trotsky states in "Centrism and the Fourth International":

"A centrist swears readily by the policy of the united front, emptying it of its revolutionary content and transforming it from a tactical method into a supreme principle." —Writings of Leon Trotsky, 1933-34

In his polemic against the UF fetishism of groups like the SAP and the Brandlerites, Trotsky polemicized against the conception that the UF is for all times and all places, a kind of workers' parliament where the various tendencies hold endless debates and draw up endless resolutions (the fantasy world of the National Caucus of Labor Committees during its strike-support proto-soviet coalition days). The UF can only be a reality during periods of social struggle, when the need for sharp class battles makes class unity a burning objective necessity that shakes the ranks of the non-communist workers' organizations from their lethargy and day-to-day humdrum organizational parochialism, and places strongly before them the need for class unity that transcends their particular organizations; or during unsettled periods in the left movement when the possibilities of and necessity for regroupment clearly exist. Only then will the road be opened for the communist party to approach the non-communist worker and his organizations with the call for a real UF.

The trade unions, the workers militia, the Soviets are all forms of the UF precisely because they are organizations which stand above parties, and reflect the uneven development of the consciousness of the working class. At the same time they represent the needs of the class for unity in its struggle with capitalism. But to see only the class-unity side of the UF (whether in reference to unions or Soviets) is the mistake of centrism. The UF is equally important because it provides one of the roads for the communist party to conquer the class. "Class unity around a revolutionary program" necessarily means class unity led by the vanguard party which embodies that revolutionary program, or it is meaningless. Programs do not exist suspended in midair, they are necessarily embodied in parties. As Trotsky states in What Next?:

"The interests of the class cannot be formulated otherwise than in the shape of a program; the program cannot be defended otherwise than by creating the party. "The class, taken by itself, is only material for exploitation. The proletariat assumes an independent role only at that moment when from a social class in itself it becomes a political class for itself. This cannot take place otherwise than through the medium of a party. The party is that historical organ by means of which the class becomes class conscious. To say that 'the class stands higher than the party,' is to assert that the class in the raw stands higher than the class which is on the road to class consciousness. Not only is this incorrect; it is reactionary."

The question is not: What strategy for the party?—the UF. The question is: What strategy must be put forth in the course of the UF? This can only be answered by the struggle of parties. The answer to What Next? can only be programmatic and will be found in the party that embodies the necessary revolutionary program. As Trotsky points out, the Soviets by themselves are incapable of leading the proletariat to power. "Everything depends upon the party that leads the Soviets" (The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany).

The "People's Front"

It is important to answer certain questions that have arisen on the left concerning the relation between the popular front, which generally takes the form of a parliamentary bloc, and class-collaborationist non-parliamentary movements, like the Socialist Workers Party's (SWP) National Peace Action Coalition (NPAC). This question obviously has disturbed enough members of the SWP/YSA for the organization to issue an,"Education for Socialists" pamphlet entitled Alliances and the Revolutionary Party: The Tactic of the United Front and How It Differs from the Popular Front by Les Evans, and another pamphlet in the same series which included the first two chapters of James Burnham's The People's Front: The New Betrayal, which was first published by the SWP in 1937. What the SWP will no longer republish is the last chapter of Burnham's pamphlet which describes how the Stalinists applied the People's Front to the U.S. where they were not strong enough to bargain away proletarian revolution for ministerial posts. Burnham writes:

"Most significant of all is the application of the People's Front policy to 'anti-war work.' Through a multitude of pacifist organizations, and especially through the directly controlled American League against War and Fascism, the Stalinists aim at the creation of a 'broad, classless, People's Front of all those opposed to war.' The class-collaborationist character of the People's Front policy is strikingly revealed through the Stalinist attitude in these organizations. They rule out in advance the Marxist analysis of war as necessarily resulting from the inner conflicts of capitalism and therefore genuinely opposed only by revolutionary class struggle against the capitalist order; and, in contrast, maintain that all persons, from whatever social class or group, whether or not opposed to capitalism, can 'unite' to stop war."

The Trotskyist movement has long held that the application of the popular-front policy in the U.S. has always taken the form of "single-issue broad-based coalitions" against war, fascism, racism or some other injustice. The application of the "People's Front" strategy formulated at the Seventh Congress of the CI to countries where the CPs did not have sufficient strength to demand of the bourgeoisie ministerial posts, has always taken the form of "anti-imperialist," "antiwar," "anti-fascist," etc. coalitions.

The popular front is a political bloc, which may or may not take the form of a governmental coalition, in which the politics of the working-class component of the bloc are subordinated to the politics of the bourgeoisie, to the defense of the bourgeois state and capitalism. The bourgeoisie, as the ruling class, is supremely self-conscious of its own class interests. Any ongoing coalition or alliance with the bourgeoisie must necessarily take place on the bourgeoisie's own terms, and on the basis of their politics. It is not necessary for the bourgeoisie as a whole, or even a section of the bourgeoisie, to play an active role in the political bloc for the popular front to exist. Thus Browder, as a loyal technician of the popular front may have offered to shake hands with J.P. Morgan, but no one has ever accused Browder of breaking with the popular front when Morgan did not reciprocate. Likewise, during the Spanish Civil War, the bourgeoisie, by and large, supported Franco, not the Republican Popular Front. Azana and his Radicals were nothing more than a handful of lawyers and professors, nonetheless they constituted what Trotsky called the "shadow of the bourgeoisie," i.e., their presence in the popular front was the guarantee to the Spanish and world bourgeoisie that the Republic stood for the defense of capitalism and the bourgeois order:

"Politically most striking is the fact that the Spanish Popular Front lacked in reality even a parallelogram of forces. The bourgeoisie's place was occupied by its shadow. Through the medium of the Stalinists, Socialists, and Anarchists, the Spanish bourgeoisie subordinated the proletariat to itself without even bothering to participate in the Popular Front.

The overwhelming majority of the exploiters of all political shades openly went over to the camp of Franco. Without any theory of 'permanent revolution,' the Spanish bourgeoisie understood from the outset that the revolutionary mass movement, no matter how it starts, is directed against private ownership of land and the means of production, and that it is utterly impossible to cope with this movement by democratic measures.

"That is why only insignificant debris from the possessing classes remained in the republican camp: Messrs. Azafia, Companys, and the like—political attorneys of the bourgeoisie but not the bourgeoisie itself. Having staked everything on a military dictatorship, the possessing classes were able, at the same time, to make use of their political representatives of yesterday in order to paralyze, disorganize, and afterward strangle the socialist movement of the masses in 'republican' territory.

"Without in the slightest degree representing the Spanish bourgeoisie, the left republicans still less represented the workers and peasants. They represented no one but themselves. Thanks, however, to their allies—the Socialists, Stalinists, and Anarchists—these political phantoms played the decisive role in the revolution. How? Very simply. By incarnating the principles of the 'democratic revolution,' that is, the inviolability of private property."

—Trotsky, "The Lessons of Spain: The Last Warning"

The mere fact that the Italian CP courts the bourgeois parties, though it is unable to capture even one lonely splinter left Christian Democrat, is sufficient to brand the CP's politics and appetites as for the popular front. Even before the Radicals entered the recent French "Union of the Left," the CP-SP bloc was popular-frontist both in its program and its appetites.

NPAC, WONAAC, SDS and Pop Frontism

The reason that we characterize NPAC, Women's National Abortion Action Coalition (WONAAC) and SDS (after SDS had locked onto its "anti-racist textbook" campaign) as popular fronts is precisely because they attempted to reduce the program for struggling against fundamental aspects of capitalism—imperialism, sexual and racial oppression—to campaigns which consisted primarily of parades in the case of NPAC, parades mixed with legislative motions that were beneath parliamentarian cretinism in the case of WONAAC, and the SDS caricature of parliamentarian cretinism (i.e., calling on Congress and state legislatures to censure racist textbooks). Thus, the SWP and PL offered themselves up to the bourgeoisie as safety valves for the popular discontent with various aspects of capitalist oppression, channeling social discontent into avenues which were both socially impotent and diffusive but which would serve to reinforce illusions about capitalist institutions, capitalist politicians and academic liberalism.

When the SWP first adopted the "single-issue" coalition gimmick in the anti-war movement, they claimed this strategy was not popular-frontist because no section of the bourgeoisie accepted the "single issue" of "Out Now." However, as soon as the U.S. bourgeoisie realized that a decisive military victory was impossible in Vietnam, and the bourgeoisie became defeatist, it was precisely the program of the SWP/NPAC they adopted. As more and more capitalist politicians not only endorsed the "Out Now" slogan and also NPAC parades, the SWP suddenly discovered that the bourgeoisie had "capitulated" to the SWP. But what was fundamental was the question of program, and the program of NPAC was not revolutionary defeatism but bourgeois defeatism, not utilizing imperialist war to advance the class struggle, but ending the war so as to disrupt U.S. imperialist hegemony as little as possible.

Likewise, WONAAC's successive dilutions of its program (from opposition to abortion laws to opposition only to "anti-abortion laws" in order to keep up with the parliamentarian maneuvers of Bella Abzug) was an explicitly conscious effort to tailor program to the needs of their bourgeois allies. PL and SDS went from getting thrown out of the July 1971 NPAC conference because of their vocal opposition to Vance Hartke's presence, to printing articles in support of McGovern for President in the pages of New Left Notes. The "anti-racist textbook" campaign, like NPAC and WONAAC, led straight to Miami Beach and the 1972 Democratic Party Convention, where the SWP/YSA could watch on television the consummation of seven years of "single-issue coalition" politics as the Democratic Party sucked in both the "activists" and issues of past campaigns. Even more despicable was the sight of SDS, on its knees before the entrance to the Democratic Party Convention, begging McGovern to adopt its "anti-racism bill" as a plank in the Democratic Party platform. The difference between the SWP and PL and the CP in Chile, Ceylon, post-WWII France and republican Spain is that the SWP and PL did not have social power to send delegates to the Democratic Party Convention, though their politics were clearly represented by their erstwhile allies within the convention hall. Also, the bourgeoisie did not need a McGovern-Gus Hall-Linda Jenness-SDS government.

A descriptive distinction can be drawn between popular-front alliances among two or more separate political parties (e.g., the French Union of the Left) and popular-frontist groups (e.g., NPAC, WONAAC, SDS). One can point to the 1930s, where the European CPs, for the most part, entered into popular-front alliances, whereas the CPUSA, lacking the mass working-class base to sell to the bourgeoisie in exchange for ministerial portfolios, built various antiwar, anti-racist, class-collaborationist front groups paralleling the activities of the European CPs. The attitude of Trotskyists, of course, is no different toward these socially weaker popular-frontist formations. We are as opposed to entry into SDS [see "SDS Destroyed by Liberalism," RCY Newsletter No. 12, May-June 1972] as into the Union of the Left, whose size and social roots, however, make it a greater obstacle to the growth of revolutionary consciousness within the working class than the former. The People's Front was never conceived of as only a government coalition, although that is, for the Stalinists, the "highest form" of the People's Front. The People's Front has always meant the political subordination of the left to the program of the liberal bourgeoisie.

Excluding the Bourgeoisie

The "exclusion of the bourgeoisie" has been one of our key demands at anti-war and women's liberation conferences. The exclusion of the bourgeoisie from social movements which claim to fight the basic injustices of capitalism has been a fundamental position of the Marxist movement since Marx polemicized against those Utopian Socialists such as Robert Owen who thought the bourgeoisie could be won to socialism. Ending imperialist war and the oppression of women and blacks means ending capitalism, and what was simply Utopian for the predecessors of Marx, becomes in the mouths of those who claim to be Marxists rank opportunism.

The prerequisite for an organization to be characterized as part of the working-class movement, even if it is thoroughly reformist, is the exclusion of the bourgeoisie. Even here there are exceptions, for the European CPs may occasionally attract a petty capitalist into its ranks. However, this is most clear with an organization like the British Labour Party whose leadership has a perennial appetite to administer British imperialism, but whose formal politics claim to stand in the tradition of class-struggle socialism and whose by-laws exclude members of the bourgeoisie. Thus, we distinguish the reformist politics of the Labour Party program, which it will betray when it gets into power, from the explicitly capitalist politics of the popular front, which are beneath reformism, and which the popular front will carry out if it gets into power. Thus both the Labour Party and the French Union of the Left had the same appetite to administer their respective national capitalisms, but in order to do so the Labour Party must betray its program when in power, while the Union of the Left will carry it out. Thus, with the Labour Party campaigning in its own name and on its own program, we can give it critical support, pointing out that its program is partial, limited, reformist, etc., and that the Labour Party will betray this program once in power. But for the Union of the" Left there is no such contradiction to exploit. The Union of the Left will simply carry out the program it promises, for all it promises is to be better defenders of the bourgeois order than the explicitly capitalist parties. Critical support is an application of the UF, the counter-position of the program of proletarian revolution to that of reformism, a momentary pact from "above" to put the Labour Party into power, which very soon goes over to a UF "from below" when the Labour Party calls out the cops and army to defend the factories, when the workers through industrial action, try to collect on the Labour Party's electoral promises.

Happy 200th Birthday Karl--On The 150th Anniversary Of Marx's "Das Capital"(1867)-Economic Crisis: Karl Marx Was Right-Guest Commentary

On The 150th Anniversary Of Marx's "Das Capital"(1867)-Economic Crisis: Karl Marx Was Right-Guest Commentary

Guest Commentary

Workers Vanguard No. 937
22 May 2009


New Spartacist Pamphlet

Economic Crisis: Karl Marx Was Right

We reprint below the introduction to the just-released Spartacist pamphlet, Capitalist Anarchy and the Immiseration of the Working Class.

The anarchy and brutality of the capitalist system has been revealed again in a global economic crisis, which threatens to reach the proportions of the Great Depression. As millions are thrown out of work, as massive numbers of foreclosures throw people out of their homes, as hunger stalks the poor, black people and other minorities, the sick and vulnerable, the U.S. has seen a bitter winter of deprivation. The impact of this crisis extends far beyond the U.S., threatening the lives and livelihoods of the working class and oppressed internationally. It is left to revolutionary Marxists both to explain the roots of the current crisis and to provide the program necessary to put an end to this barbaric, irrational system through the emancipation of the proletariat and establishment of its class rule, thus laying the basis for the construction of a socialist planned economy as a transition to a classless, egalitarian and harmonious society on a global scale. That is the purpose of this pamphlet, composed of articles previously published in Workers Vanguard.

Leon Trotsky’s The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International (also known as the Transitional Program), adopted as the basic programmatic document of the founding conference of the Fourth International in September 1938, is particularly relevant and urgent today. The political situation of the late 1930s and that of the post-Soviet world in which we live today are quite different, to be sure. But Trotsky’s declaration that “under the conditions of disintegrating capitalism, the masses continue to live the impoverished life of the oppressed, threatened now more than at any other time with the danger of being cast into the pit of pauperism” could have been written about conditions in Detroit and elsewhere today. The same is the case with the call in the Transitional Program that: “The Fourth International declares uncompromising war on the politics of the capitalists, which to a considerable degree, like the politics of their agents, the reformists, aims to place the whole burden of militarism, the crises, the disorganization of the monetary system, and all other scourges stemming from capitalism’s death agony upon the backs of the toilers. The Fourth International demands employment and decent living conditions for all” (emphasis in original). Such transitional demands, as Trotsky wrote, stemmed “from today’s conditions and from today’s consciousness of wide layers of the working class” and unalterably led “to one final conclusion: the conquest of power by the proletariat.”

Against the tried and failed stratagems pushed by liberals and fake socialists—from the Keynesian project of “benevolent” intervention by the capitalist state to the British Labour Party’s bourgeois nationalizations in the post-World War II period—we Marxists understand that no amount of tinkering with the existing system can wrench it into serving the needs of the proletariat and the oppressed. The 1997-98 Workers Vanguard series “Wall Street and the War Against Labor,” reprinted here, takes this up in the U.S. context. It also deals with the labor movement in the U.S. and the roots of its historic economic militancy and political backwardness—a backwardness due not least to the continuing oppression of black people as a race-color caste, integrated into the industrial proletariat but at the same time forcibly segregated at the bottom of society.

The more recent articles reprinted in this pamphlet put forward our revolutionary program against those who purvey illusions in the Democratic Party and its current Obama administration as well as for class-struggle opposition to the pro-capitalist trade-union bureaucracy. Part and parcel of such a struggle is a fight against nationalist, chauvinist protectionism, anti-immigrant racism and the anti-Communist poison spread by the union tops against those states where capitalism has been overthrown, centrally China but also the other deformed workers states of North Korea, Cuba, Vietnam. Our program is that of unconditional military defense of those states against imperialist attack and internal counterrevolution and for proletarian political revolution to replace the nationalist bureaucratic regimes that undermine their defense. Our model remains that of the victorious October Revolution of 1917 led by Lenin and Trotsky’s Bolshevik Party. For class against class! For new October Revolutions

*From The Archives-POPULAR FRONT POLITICS AND THE IRAQ ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT

Click on title to link to Karl Marx's 1850, yes that is not a misprint the question has been with us for a long time, 1850 "Address Of The Central Committee Of The Communist League" which deals with the popular fronts of his day in the aftermath of the revolutions of 1848.

COMMENTARY

DOWN WITH THE WAR! DOWN WITH THE WAR BUDGET!

Radicals and revolutionaries, including Marxist revolutionaries, have been struggling with the implications of popular front politics at least since the European Revolutions of 1848. At that time, due more to the question of political immaturity and inexperience, left-wing working class militants and their allies tried to line up with, and in most cases in subordination to, their national bourgeoisies in the fights for the demands of the classic bourgeois revolutions. And for their troubles these same ‘allies’ suppressed these militants and their demands once the situation became too ‘hot’ and the various capitalist parties made their peace with the old regimes. One of the great lessons that Karl Marx (and his co-thinker Frederich Engels) derived from that turn of events was an understanding that an essential ingredient to successful socialist revolution was the need for independent working class organization and action and a political break with the capitalist parties.

Of course, as latter working class history has made painfully clear that seemingly elemental task has been easier said than done. Since Marx's time time endless numbers of ‘socialist’ politicians and ‘vanguard’ political organizations have broken their teeth on denying the truth of his assertions. One need only think of the classic Popular Fronts in Spain and France the 1930’s and Chile in the 1970’s created explicitly by leftwing forces to act as brakes on developing revolutionary situations to know that such a strategy means political death for the revolution and the physical destruction of revolutionary cadre for decades.


What gives? What do those historic events have to do with today’s opposition to the war in Iraq? Simple, while not all popular fronts are created equal they all serve the same ends. As a primer one should know that the popular front is a left-wing political strategy where its advocates call on all ‘progressive’ forces and people of ‘good will’ including capitalist parties and politicians to unite around some ‘good old cause’. Well, what is wrong with that? On democratic issues such as the right to vote or opposition to government snooping and in political defense cases not a thing. Except we call that a united front. Why? Because depending on the case the fight is a limited one, the time is short and there is no political reason not to gain the support of as many people as possible. No, the popular front is a very different animal. It is a conscious strategy on the part of some left-wing forces to limit the aims of any particular fight to those acceptable to the capitalist parties.

For those who do not believe the import of such distinctions let me give one example. Take a simple slogan like –STOP THE WAR. In the build-up to the Iraq War that did not have a bad sound, if not particularly poliitcally sophisticated. Big burly former football linebackers and pacifist little old ladies in tennis shoes could agree to that. However, until early 2006 this was still the central slogan of the anti-war movement. The more appropriate IMMEDIATE, UNCONDITIONAL WITHDRAWAL OF ALL UNITED STATES AND ALLIED TROOPS FROM IRAQ did not get official sanction until that time. Why? Because those big burly football players and gentile old ladies did not want to go that far? Hell, no. The real reason was no ‘respectable’ capitalist politician, except maybe Congressman Kucinich on a good day, was making that call. And that is the rub. The case of the various umbrella anti-war coalitions such as the ANSWER Coalition and United For Peace and Justice here in America (and elsewhere as this is decidedly an international phenomena) are classic examples of a non-parliamentary popular front. Any thoughtful militant who wonders why the anti-war movement here is spinning its wheels can look to that conscious strategy on the part of the current anti-war leaderships as the root cause of the dilemma.

I have noted above, at least twice, the fact that the popular front strategy is a conscious one on the part of those ‘progressives’ who pursue it. And for those who do not want to make a revolution or are just serious about 'pressure' politics on the face of it that policy makes sense. The capitalist parties and their politicians have no need, except as electoral cannon fodder, to seek an on-going bloc with non-parliamentary leftwing forces. One should note that it has only been this year (2007) that even minor league Democratic politicians have gotten on the platforms at anti-war events. No, this is strictly a strategy pursued by 'get rich quick' artists of the left who pursue this course in order to be at one with the ‘masses’ or not get ‘isolated’ from the political consciousness of the masses. That at the end of the day the wily (and in some case not so wily, take John Kerry in 2004, for example) capitalist politicians reap the rewards of this political treachery seems not to have occurred to these same artists. The next battleground on the fight against the popular front will be on the upcoming war budget. It will not be pretty. However, those are the central slogans for the immediate future. You will definitely see the limits of popular front politics on that one. DOWN WITH THE WAR, DOWN WITH THE WAR BUDGET, BREAK WITH THE CAPITALIST PARTIES.

In Honor Of The 100th Anniversary Of The Founding of The Communist International-From The Archives- *From The Pages Of “Workers Vanguard”-In Memory of Polish Socialist Ludwik Hass-1918-2008

Click on the headline to link to the article from “Workers Vanguard” described in the title.


Markin comment:

As almost always these historical articles and polemics are purposefully helpful to clarify the issues in the struggle against world imperialism, particularly the “monster” here in America.

Happy 200th Birthday Karl Marx-The Anniversary of The Paris Commune

Click on title to link to Wikipedia's entry for the Paris Commune.

Commentary

This is a repost of the March 2008 commentary on the anniversary of the Paris Commune proletarian uprising of 1871.


March 18th is the 147th Anniversary of the Paris Commune. All honor to the men and women who fought to the death to defend this first beacon of working class revolution.


History of the Paris Commune, Prosper Olivier Lissagaray, translated by Eleanor Marx, Black and Red Press, St. Petersburg, Florida, 2007



When one studies the history of the Paris Commune of 1871 one learns something new from it even though from the perspective of revolutionary strategy the Communards made virtually every mistake in the book. This book by a participant and survivor of the Commune has historically been the starting point for any pro-Commune analysis. The original English translation by Eleanor Marx, daughter of Karl Marx, has given the imprimatur of the Marx family to that view.

Through a close study of the Paris Commune one learn its lessons and measure it against the experience acquired by later revolutionary struggles and above all by later revolutions, not only the successful Russian Revolution of October 1917 but the failed German, Hungarian, Bulgarian, Chinese and Spanish revolutions in the immediate aftermath of World War I. More contemporaneously we have the experiences of the partial victories of the later Chinese, Cuban and Vietnamese revolutions.

Notwithstanding the contradictory nature of these later experiences, as if to show that history is not always totally a history of horrors against the fate of the masses we honor the Paris Commune as a beacon of the coming world proletarian revolution. It is just for that reason that Karl Marx fought tooth and nail in the First International to defend it against the rage of capitalist Europe. It is one of our peaks. The Commune also presented in embryo the first post-1848 Revolution instance of what was later characterized by Lenin at the beginning of World War I as the crisis of revolutionary leadership of the international labor movement. So this question that after Lenin’s death preoccupied Trotsky for much of the later part of his life really has a much longer lineage that I had previously recognized. Unfortunately, as we are too painfully aware that question is still to be resolved. Therefore, even at this great remove, it is necessary to learn the lessons of that experience in facing today’s crisis of leadership in the international labor movement.

As a final thought, I note that in the preface to this edition that the editors have given their own view about the lessons to be learned from the experience of the Paris Commune. Although virtually every page of Lissagaray’s account drips with examples of the necessity of a vanguard party their view negates that necessity. While we can argue until hell freezes over, and should, about the form that a future socialist state will take one would think that there should be no dispute on that necessity at this late date in history. In any case read this important work (including the above-mentioned provocative preface) as it tells the tale of an important part of our working class history.

Added Note: March, 2009

In recently re-reading Prosper Olivier Lissagaray’s first-hand account of the internal political and military doings of the Paris Commune I was once again struck by the crying need for a revolutionary party to sort out that tumultuous sea of conflicting political programs and slogans, to reign in the full scale personal revolutionary posturing and to bring order to the counterproductive and counter-posed military directives. Of course some of this confusion reflects the fact that this is the first time that the proletariat made a serious bid for power in its own name. Nevertheless it is with certain sadness, as is always the case when I read about the Commune, that this was, and is, the only successful example, if only for a short time, that the proletariat unambiguously held power in Western Europe. Thus the urgency to learn its lessons.

Once again, as Lissagaray details, there were no shortages of workers ready to give their lives, and gladly, for the Commune. He goes into great detail about the individual military exploits of some of the elements. Certainly Thiers and his National Assembly had no better cadre material on their side, and I would argue they had less than the Commune. Moreover, after a much delayed and haphazard currying out process an adequate, if patchwork, military leadership was through up by the Commune. The names of the Pole Dombrowski and the old revolutionary Delescluze, Minister of War, come up repeatedly as reflecting that military élan. It is thus more necessary than ever to look at the details about the confusion of the leadership thrown up by events of March 1871. Mainly this is a question of who is leading whom. Is it the Council of the Commune or the Central Committee of the National Guard? The conflicts between these two bodies and their lack of coordination are maddening reading even today.

Look, the political situation among the pro-socialist forces in Russia in 1917, the event that revolutionaries naturally made the comparison to, was not qualitatively better than Paris in 1871. Is the Provisional Government in charge or is it of the Soviets? Thus, one really has to look to the lack, an almost willful lack on the part of some of the so-called anarchist elements in the Commune, direction and ask: Where is there a party, or even a nucleus, of a revolutionary party that knows what it fights for… and loves what it knows to paraphrase Cromwell in the English revolution? Thus, read or re-read with that in mind so that the Paris Commune does not forever remain as that one shining example in the West of what a proletariat could do when the deal went down. All Honor To The Paris Communards!




BELOW IS A TRIBUTE TO THE PARIS COMMUNE WRITTEN BY THE BOLSHEVIK REVOLUTIONARY LEON TROTSKY IN RUSSIAN IN 1921 AND LATER TRANSLATED IN THE JOURNAL NEW INTERNATIONAL OF MARCH 1935, VOL. 2, NO.2

LESSONS OF THE PARIS COMMUNE

EACH TIME that we study the history of the Commune we see it from a new aspect, thanks to the experience acquired by the later revolutionary struggles and above all by the latest revolutions, not only the Russian but the German and Hungarian revolutions. The Franco-German war was a bloody explosion, harbinger of an immense world slaughter, the Commune of Paris a lightning harbinger of a world proletarian revolution.

The Commune shows us the heroism of the working masses, their capacity to unite into a single bloc, their talent to sacrifice themselves in the name of the future, but at the same time it shows us the incapacity of the masses to choose their path, their indecision in the leadership of the movement, their fatal penchant to come to a halt after the first successes, thus permitting the enemy to regain its breath, to reestablish its position.

The Commune came too late. It had all the possibilities of taking the power on September 4 and that would have permitted the proletariat of Paris to place itself at a single stroke at the head of the workers of the country in their struggle against all the forces of the past, against Bismarck as well as against Thiers. But the power fell into the hands of the democratic praters, the deputies of Paris. The Parisian proletariat had neither a party, nor leaders to whom it would have been closely bound by previous struggles. The petty bourgeois patriots who thought themselves socialists and sought the support of the workers did not really have any confidence in themselves. They shook the proletariat's faith in itself, they were continually in quest of celebrated lawyers, of journalists, of deputies, whose baggage consisted only of a dozen vaguely revolutionary phrases, in order to entrust them with the leadership of the movement.

The reason why Jules Favre, Picard, Gamier-Pages and Co. took power in Paris on September 4 is the same as that which permitted Pall-Boncour, A. Varenne, Renaudel and numerous others to be for a time the masters of the party of the proletariat. The Renaudels and the Boncours and even the Longuets and the Pressemanes are much closer, by virtue of their sympathies, their intellectual habits and their conduct, to the Jules Favres and the Jules Ferrys than to the revolutionary proletariat. Their socialist phraseology is nothing but an historic mask which permits them to impose themselves upon the masses. And it is just because Favre, Simon, Picard and the others used and abused a democratico-liberal phraseology that their sons and their grandsons are obliged to resort to a socialist phraseology. But the sons and the grandsons have remained worthy of their fathers and continue their work. And when it will be necessary to decide not the question of the composition of a ministerial clique but the much more important question of knowing what class in France must take power, Renaudel, Varenne, Longuet and their similars will be in the camp of Millerand-collaborator of Galliffet, the butcher of the Commune .... When the revolutionary babblers of the salons and of parliament find themselves face to face, in real life, with the revolution, they never recognize it.

The workers' party-the real one-is not a machine for parliamentary manoeuvres, it is the accumulated and organized experience of the proletariat. It is only with the aid of the party, which rests upon the whole history of its past, which foresees theoretically the paths of development, all its stages, and which extracts from it the necessary formula of action, that the proletariat frees itself from the need of always recommencing its history: its hesitations, its lack of decision, its mistakes.

The proletariat of Paris did not have such a party. The bourgeois socialists with whom the Commune swarmed, raised their eyes to heaven, waited for a miracle or else a prophetic word, hesitated, and during that time the masses groped about and lost their heads because of the indecision of some and the fantasy of others. The result was that the revolution broke out in their very midst, too late, and Paris was encircled. Six months elapsed before the proletariat had reestablished in its memory the lessons of past revolutions, of battles of yore, of the reiterated betrayals of democracy-and it seized power.

These six months proved to be an irreparable loss. If the centralized party of revolutionary action had been found at the head of the proletariat of France in September 1870, the whole history of France and with it the whole history of humanity would have taken another direction.If the power was found in the hands of the proletariat of Paris on March 18, it was not because it had been deliberately seized, but because its enemies had quitted Paris.

These latter were losing ground continuously, the workers despised and detested them, the petty bourgeoisie no longer had confidence in them and the big bourgeoisie feared that they were no longer capable of defending it. The soldiers were hostile to the officers. The government fled Paris in order to concentrate its forces elsewhere. And it was then that the proletariat became master of the situation.
But it understood this fact only on the morrow. The revolution fell upon it unexpectedly.

This first success was a new source of passivity. The enemy had fled to Versailles. Wasn't that a victory? At that moment the governmental band could have been crushed almost without the spilling of blood. In Paris, all the ministers, with Thiers at their head, could have been taken prisoner. Nobody would have raised a hand to defend them. It was not done. There was no organization of a centralized party, having a rounded view of things and special organs for realizing its decisions.

The debris of the infantry did not want to fall back to Versailles. The thread which tied the officers and the soldiers was pretty tenuous. And had there been a directing party center at Paris, it would have incorporated into the retreating armies-since there was the possibility of retreating-a few hundred or even a few dozen devoted workers, and given them the following instructions: enhance the discontent of the soldiers against the officers, profit by the first favorable psychological moment to free the soldiers from their officers and bring them back to Paris to unite with the people. This could easily have been realized, according to the admissions of Thiers' supporters themselves. Nobody even thought of it. Nor was there anybody to think of it. In the midst of great events, moreover, such decisions can be adopted only by a revolutionary party which looks forward to a revolution, prepares for it, does not lose its head, by a party which is accustomed to having a rounded view and is not afraid to act.

And a party of action is just what the French proletariat did not have.

The Central Committee of the National Guard is in effect a Council of Deputies of the armed workers and the petty bourgeoisie. Such a Council, elected directly by the masses who have taken the revolutionary road, represents an excellent apparatus of action. But at the same time, and just because of its immediate and elementary connection with the masses who are in the state in which the revolutionary has found them, it reflects not only all the strong sides but also the weak sides of the masses, and it reflects at first the weak sides still more than it does the strong: it manifests the spirit of indecision, of waiting, the tendency to be inactive after the first successes.

The Central Committee of the National Guard needed to be led. It was indispensable to have an organization incarnating the political experience of the proletariat and always present-not only in the Central Committee, but in the legions, in the battalion, in the deepest sectors of the French proletariat. By means of the Councils of Deputies-in the given case they were organs of the National Guard-the party could have been in continual contact with the masses, known their state of mind; its leading center con! I each day put forward a slogan which, through the medium of the party's militants, would have penetrated into the masses, uniting their thought and their will.

Hardly had the government fallen back to Versailles than the National Guard hastened to unload its responsibility, at the very moment when this responsibility was enormous. The Central Committee imagined "legal" elections to the Commune. It entered into negotiations with the mayors of Paris in order to cover itself, from the Right, with "legality".

Had a violent attack been prepared against Versailles at the same time, the negotiations with the mayors would have been a ruse fully justified from the military standpoint and in conformity with the goal. But in reality, these negotiations were being conducted only in order to avert the struggle by some miracle or other. The petty bourgeois radicals and the socialistic idealists, respecting "legality" and the men who embodied a portion of the "legal" state-the deputies, the mayors, etc.-hoped at the bottom of their souls that Thiers would halt respectfully before revolutionary Paris the minute the latter covered itself with the "legal" Commune.

Passivity and indecision were supported in this case by the sacred principle of federation and autonomy. Paris, you see, is only one commune among many other communes. Paris wants to impose nothing upon anyone; it does not struggle for the dictatorship, unless it be for the 'dictatorship of example".

In sum, it was nothing but an attempt to replace the proletarian revolution, which was developing, by a petty bourgeois reform: communal autonomy. The real revolutionary task consisted of assuring the proletariat the power all over the country. Paris had to serve as its base, its support, its stronghold. And to attain this goal, it was necessary to vanquish Versailles without the loss of time and to send agitators, organizers, and armed forces throughout France. It was necessary to enter into contact with sympathizers, to strengthen the hesitators and to shatter the opposition of the adversary. Instead of this policy of offensive and aggression which was the only thing that could save the situation, the leaders of Paris attempted to seclude themselves in their communal autonomy: they will not attack the others if the others do not attack them; each town has its sacred right of self-government. This idealistic chatter-of the same gender as mundane anarchism covered up in reality a cowardice in face of revolutionary action which should have been conducted incessantly up to the very end, for otherwise it should not have been begun.

The hostility to capitalist organization-a heritage of petty bourgeois localism and autonomism-is without a doubt the weak side of a certain section of the French proletariat. Autonomy for the districts, for the wards, for the battalions, for the towns, is the supreme guarantee of real activity and individual independence for certain revolutionists. But that is a great mistake which cost the French proletariat dearly.

Under the form of the "struggle against despotic centralism" and against "stifling" discipline, a fight takes place for the self preservation of various groups and sub-groupings of the working class, for their petty interests, with their petty ward leaders and their local oracles. The entire working class, while preserving its cultural originality and its political nuances, can act methodically and firmly, without remaining in the tow of events, and directing each time its mortal blows against the weak sectors of its enemies, on the condition that at its head, above the wards, the districts, the groups, there is an apparatus which is centralized and bound together by an iron discipline. The tendency towards particularism, whatever the form it may assume, is a heritage of the dead past. The sooner French communist-socialist communism and syndicalist communism-emancipates itself from it, the better it will be for the proletarian revolution.

The party does not create the revolution at will, it does not choose the moment for seizing power as it likes, but it intervenes actively in the events, penetrates at every moment the state of mind of the revolutionary masses and evaluates the power of resistance of the enemy, and thus determines the most favorable moment for decisive action. This is the most difficult side of its task. The party has no decision that is valid for every case. Needed are a correct theory, an intimate contact with the masses, the comprehension of the situation, a revolutionary perception, a great resoluteness. The more profoundly a revolutionary party penetrates into all the domains of the proletarian struggle, the more unified it is by the unity of goal and discipline, the speedier and better will it arrive at resolving its task.

The difficulty consists in having this organization of a centralized party, internally welded by an iron discipline, linked intimately with the movement of the masses, with its ebbs and flows. The conquest of power cannot be achieved save on the condition of a powerful revolutionary pressure of the toiling masses. But in this act the element of preparation is entirely inevitable. The better the party will understand the conjuncture and the moment, the better the bases of resistance will be prepared, the better the force and the roles will be distributed, the surer will be the success and the less victims will it cost. The correlation of a carefully prepared action and a mass movement is the politico-strategical task of the taking of power.

The comparison of March 18, 1871 with November 7, 1917 is very instructive from this point of view. In Paris, there is an absolute lack of initiative for action on the part of the leading revolutionary circles. The proletariat, armed by the bourgeois government, is in reality master of the town, has all the material means of power-cannon and rifles-at its disposal, but it is not aware of it. The bourgeoisie makes an attempt to retake the weapon of the giant: it wants to steal the cannon of the proletariat. The attempt fails. The government flees in panic from Paris to Versailles. The field is clear. But it is only on the morrow that the proletariat understands that it is the master of Paris. The "leaders" are in the wake of events, they record them when the latter are already accomplished, and they do everything in their power to blunt the revolutionary edge.

In Petrograd, the events developed differently. The party moved firmly, resolutely, to the seizure of power, having its men everywhere, consolidating each position, extending every fissure between the workers and the garrison on the one side and the government on the other.

The armed demonstration of the July days is a vast reconnoitering conducted by the party to sound the degree of close contact between the masses and the power of resistance of the enemy. The reconnoitering is transformed into a struggle of outposts. We are thrown back, but at the same time the action establishes a connection between the party and the depths of the masses. The months of August, September and October see a powerful revolutionary flux. The party profits by it and augments considerably its points of support in the working class and the garrison. Later, the harmony between the conspirative preparations and the mass action takes place almost automatically. The Second Congress of the Soviets is fixed for November. All our preceding agitation was to lead to the seizure of power by the Congress. Thus, the overturn was adapted in advance to November 7. This fact was well known and understood by the enemy. Kerensky and his councillors could not fail to make efforts to consolidate themselves, to however small an extent, in Petrograd for the decisive moment. Also, they stood in need of shipping out of the capital the most revolutionary sections of the garrison. We on our part profited by this attempt by Kerensky in order to make it the source of a new conflict which had a decisive importance. We openly accused the Kerensky government-our accusation subsequently found a written confirmation in an official document-of having planned the removal of a third of the Petrograd garrison not out of military considerations but for the purpose of counter-revolutionary combinations. This conflict bound us still more closely to the garrison and put before the latter a well-defined task, to support the Soviet Congress fixed for November 7. And since the government insisted-even if in a feeble enough manner-that the garrison be sent off, we created in the Petrograd Soviet, already in our hands, a Revolutionary War Committee, on the pretext of verifying the military reasons for the governmental plan.

Thus we had a purely military organ, standing at the head of the Petrograd garrison, which was in reality a legal organ of armed insurrection. At the same time we designated (communist) commissars in all the military units, in the military stores, etc. The clandestine military organization accomplished specific technical tasks and furnished the Revolutionary War Committee with fully trustworthy militants for important military tasks. The essential work concerning the preparation, the realization and the armed insurrection took place openly, and so methodically and naturally that the bourgeoisie, led by Kerensky, did not clearly understand what was taking place under their very eyes. (In Paris, the proletariat understood only on the following day that it had been really victorious-a victory which it had not, moreover, deliberately sought-that it was master of the situation. In Petrograd, it was the contrary. Our party, basing itself on the workers and the garrison, had already seized the power, the bourgeoisie passed a fairly tranquil night and learned only on the following morning that the helm of the country was in the hands of its gravedigger.)

As to strategy, there were many differences of opinion in our party.

A part of the Central Committee declared itself, as is known, against the taking of power, believing that the moment had not yet arrived, that Petrograd was detached from the rest of the country, the proletariat from the peasantry, etc.

Other comrades believed that we were not attributing sufficient importance to the elements of military complot. One of the members of the Central Committee demanded in October the surrounding of the Alexandrine Theater where the Democratic Conference was in session, and the proclamation of the dictatorship of the Central Committee of the party. He said: in concentrating our agitation as well as our preparatory military work for the moment of the Second Congress, we are showing our plan to the adversary, we are giving him the possibility of preparing himself and even of dealing us a preventive blow. But there is no doubt that the attempt at a military complot and the surrounding of the Alexandrine Theater would have been a fact too alien to the development of the events, that it would have been an event disconcerting to the masses. Even in the Petrograd Soviet, where our faction dominated, such an enterprise, anticipating the logical development of the struggle, would have provoked great disorder at that moment, above all among the garrison where there were hesitant and not very trustful regiments, primarily the cavalry regiments. It would have been much easier for Kerensky to crush a complot unexpected by the masses than to attack the garrison consolidating itself more and more on its positions: the defense of its inviolability in the name of the future Congress of the Soviets. Therefore the majority of the Central Committee rejected the plan to surround the Democratic Conference and it was right. The conjuncture was very well judged: the armed insurrection, almost without bloodshed, triumphed exactly on the date, fixed in advance and openly, for the convening of the Second Soviet Congress.

This strategy cannot, however, become a general rule, it requires specific conditions. Nobody believed any longer in the war with the Germans, and the less revolutionary soldiers did not want to quit Petrograd for the front. And even if the garrison as a whole was on the side of the workers for this single reason, it became stronger in its point of view to the extent that Kerensky's machinations were revealed. But this mood of the Petrograd garrison had a still deeper cause in the situation of the peasant class and in the development of the imperialist war. Had there been a split in the garrison and had Kerensky obtained the possibility of support from a few regiments, our plan would have failed. The elements of purely military complot (conspiracy and great speed of action) would have prevailed. It would have been necessary, of course, to choose another moment for the insurrection.

The Commune also had the complete possibility of winning even the peasant regiments, for the latter had lost all confidence and all respect for the power and the command. Yet it undertook nothing towards this end. The fault here is not in the relationships of the peasant and the working classes, but in the revolutionary strategy.

What will be the situation in this regard in the European countries in the present epoch? It is not easy to foretell anything on this score. Yet, with the events developing slowly and the bourgeois governments exerting all their efforts to utilize past experiences, it may be foreseen that the proletariat, in order to attract the sympathies of the soldiers, will have to overcome a great and well organized resistance at a given moment. A skillful and well~ timed attack on the part of the revolution will then be necessary. The duty of the party is to prepare itself for it. That is just why it must maintain and develop its character of a centralized organization, which openly guides the revolutionary movement of the masses and is at the same time a clandestine apparatus of the armed insurrection.

The question of the electibility of the command was one of the reasons of the conflict between the National Guard and Thiers. Paris refused to accept the command designated by Thiers. Varlin subsequently formulated the demand that the command of the National Guard, from top to bottom, ought to be elected by the National Guardsmen themselves. That is where the Central Committee of the National Guard found its support.

This question must he envisaged from two sides: from the political and the military sides, which are interlinked but which should be distinguished. The political task consisted in purging the National Guard of the counter¬revolutionary command. Complete electibility was the only means for it, the majority of the National Guard being composed of workers and revolutionary petty bourgeois. And in addition, the motto "electibility of the command", being extended also to the infantry, Thiers would have been deprived at a single stroke of his essential weapon, the counterrevolutionary officers. In order to realize this plan, a party organization, having its men in all the military units, was required. In a word, electibility in this ease had as its immediate task not to give good commanders to the batallions, but to liberate them from commanders devoted to the bourgeoisie. Electibility served as a wedge for splitting the army into two parts, along class lines. Thus did matters occur with its in the period of Kerensky, above all on the eve of October.

But the liberation of the army from the old commanding apparatus inevitably involves the weakening of organizational cohesion and the diminution of combative power. As a rule, the elected command is pretty weak from the technico-military standpoint and with regard to the maintenance of order and of discipline. Thus, at the moment when the army frees itself from the old counterrevolutionary command which oppressed it, the question arises of giving it a revolutionary command capable of fulfilling its mission. And this question can by no means be resolved by simple elections. Before wide masses of soldiers acquire the experience of well choosing and selecting commanders, the revolution will be beaten by the enemy which is guided in the choice of its command by the experience of centuries. The methods of shapeless democracy (simple electibility) must be supplemented and to a certain extent replaced by measures of selection from above. The revolution must create an organ composed of experienced, reliable organizers, in which one can have absolute confidence, give it full powers to choose, designate and educate the command. If particularism and democratic autonomism are extremely dangerous to the proletarian revolution in general, they are ten times more dangerous to the army. We saw that in the tragic example of the Commune.

The Central Committee of the National Guard drew its authority from democratic electibility. At the moment when the Central Committee needed to develop to the maximum its initiative in the offensive, deprived of the leadership of a proletarian party, it lost its head, hastened to transmit its powers to the representatives of the Commune which required a broader democratic basis. And it was a great mistake in that period to play with elections. But once the elections had been held and the Commune brought together, ft was necessary to concentrate everything in the Commune at a single blow and to have it create an organ possessing real power to reorganize the National Guard. This was not the case. By the side of the elected Commune there remained the Central Committee; the elected character of the latter gave it a political authority thanks to which it was able to compete with the Commune. But at the same time that deprived it of the energy and the firmness necessary in the purely military questions which, after the organization of the Commune, justified its existence. Electibility, democratic methods, are but one of the instruments in the hands of the proletariat and its party. Electibility can in no wise be a fetish, a remedy for all evils. The methods of electibility must be combined with those of appointments. The power of the Commune came from the elected National Guard. But once created, the Commune should have reorganized with a strong hand the National Guard, from top to bottom, given it reliable leaders and established a regime of very strict discipline. The Commune did not do this, being itself deprived of a powerful revolutionary directing center. It too was crushed.

We can thus thumb the whole history of the Commune, page by page, and we will find in it one single lesson: a strong party leadership is needed. More than any other proletariat has the French made sacrifices for the revolution. But also more than any other has it been duped. Many times has the bourgeoisie dazzled it with all the colors of republicanism, of radicalism, of socialism, so as always to fasten upon it the fetters of capitalism. By means of its agents, its lawyers and its journalists, the bourgeoisie has put forward a whole mass of democratic, parliamentary, autonomist formulae which are nothing but impediments on the feet of the proletariat, hampering its forward movement.

The temperament of the French proletariat is a revolutionary lava. But this lava is now covered with the ashes of skepticism result of numerous deceptions and disenchantments. Also, the revolutionary proletarians of France must be severer towards their party and unmask more pitilessly any non-conformity between word and action. The French workers have need of an organization, strong as steel, with leaders controlled by the masses at every new stage of the revolutionary movement.

How much time will history afford us to prepare ourselves? We do not know. For fifty years the French bourgeoisie has retained the power in its hands after having elected the Third Republic on the bones of the Communards. Those fighters of '71 were not lacking in heroism. What they lacked was clarity in method and a centralized leading organization. That is why they were vanquished. Half a century elapsed before the proletariat of France could pose the question of avenging the death of the Communards. But this time, the action will be firmer, more concentrated. The heirs of Thiers will have to pay the historic debt in full.

Leon TROTSKY


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.




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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.


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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!