Showing posts with label american socialist party. Show all posts
Showing posts with label american socialist party. Show all posts

Friday, August 04, 2017

*The Political Evolution of Eugene V. Debs- Professor Currie's View

Click on title to link to the James P. Cannon Internet Archives copy of his tribute to, and political analysis of, the place of Eugene V. Debs in the pantheon of American and international labor movements.

BOOK REVIEW

Eugene V. Debs, Harold W. Currie, Twayne Publishers, Boston, 1976


Every January militants of the left wing of the international labor movement, the European sections more than the American, honor the Three L’s, the key leaders of the movement in the early 20th century- Lenin, Luxemburg and Liebknecht. Since opening this space in early 2006 I have paid individual honor to all three in successive years. In that same spirit for this year’s, and for future January observances, I will highlight some other lesser figures of the revolutionary pantheon or those who contributed in some way to the development of this movement, mainly American at first as befits the title of this blog but eventually others in the international movement as well. This year’s first honoree was the Trotskyist founder and organization leader James P. Cannon. Cannon represented that first American generation who formed the core of cadre directly influenced to the left by the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Here I take a step back to the pre-World War I period and honor probably the most well-known socialist of that period, Eugene V. Debs.

For many reasons, the most important of which for our purposes here are the question of the nature o the revolutionary party and of revolutionary leadership, the Russian Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 was a turning point in the international labor movement. In its aftermath, there was a definitive and I would argue, necessary split, between those leftists (and here I use that term generically to mean socialists, communists, anarchists, syndicalists and the like) who sought to reform the capitalist state from within and those who saw that it needed to be destroyed ‘root and branch’ and new institutions established to create a more just society. This division today continues, in truncated form to be sure, to define the contours of the question. The heroic American pre- World War II socialist labor leader and icon, Eugene V. Debs, as is very well described in this little book, contained within his personal political trajectory all the contradictions of that split. As will be described below in more detail we honor Debs for his generosity of socialist spirit while at the same time underscoring that his profile is, in the final analysis, not that of something who could have led a proletarian revolution in the earlier part of the 20th century.

Professor Currie has here done the very valuable service of outlining the highlights of Debs’ political career and of his inner ideological turmoil for those who need a short course on what set Debs, above all others except, perhaps, “Big Bill” Haywood in the pre-World War I movement. The professor makes clear that his is a political profile and not the extensive detailed informational one of traditional biography. For that, if one is so inclined in that direction after reading this primer, then it is still necessary to go Ray Ginger’s “The Bending Cross: A Biography of Eugene V. Debs”. I will review that effort in this space at a later time. For now though let me give the highlights I found that every serious labor militant or every serious student of socialism needs to think through.

If history has told us anything over the past one hundred and fifty years plus of the organized labor movement it is that mere trade union consciousness under conditions of capitalist domination, while commendable and necessary, is merely the beginning of wisdom. By now several generations of labor militants have passed through the school of trade unionism with varying results; although precious few have gone beyond that to the class consciousness necessary to “turn the world upside down” to use an old expression from the 17th century English Revolution. In the late 19th when American capitalism was consolidating itself moving onto its industrial phases the landscape was filled with pitched class battles between labor and capital.

One of those key battles in the 1890’s was led by one Eugene V. Debs and his American Railway Union against the mammoth rail giant, The Pullman Company. At that time the rails were the key mode of transportation in the bustling new industrial capitalist commerce. At that time, by his own reckoning, Debs saw the struggle from a merely trade unionist point of view, that is a specific localized economic struggle for better wages and conditions rather than taking on the capitalist system and its state. That strike was defeated and as a result Debs and others became “guests’ of that state in a local jail in Illinois for six months or so. The key conclusion drawn from this ‘lesson’, for our purposes, was that Debs personally finally realized that the close connection between the capitalists and THEIR state (troops, media, jails, courts) was organic and needed to be addressed.
Development of working class political class consciousness comes in many ways; I know that from my own personal experiences running up against the capitalist state.

For Debs this “up close and personal” confrontation with the capitalist drove him, reluctantly at first and with some reservations, to see the need for socialist solutions to the plight of the workingman (and women). Professor Currie details this transformation very nicely, including the seemingly inevitable thrashing about that every political person does when a politically transformative experience occurs. In Debs’ case this involved an early infatuation with the ideas of cooperative commonwealths then popular among radicals as a way to basically provide a parallel alternative society away from capitalism. Well again, having gone thorough that same kind of process of conversion myself (in my case 'autonomous' urban communes, you know, the ‘hippie’ experience of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s); Debs fairly quickly came to realize that an organized political response was necessary and he linked up his efforts with the emerging American Socialist Party.

Before World War I the major political model for politically organizing the working class was provided by the Marxist-dominated German Social Democratic Party. At that time, and in this period of pre-imperialist capitalist development, this was unquestionably the model to be followed. By way of explanation the key organizing principle of that organization, besides providing party discipline for united action, was to create a “big tent” party for the social transformation of society. Under that rubric the notion was to organize anyone and everyone, from socialist-feminists, socialist vegetarians, pacifists, municipal reformers, incipient trade union bureaucrats, hard core reformists, evolutionary socialists and- revolutionaries like Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg who we honor to this day.
The American Social Party that Debs joined exhibited all those tendencies (and some even more outlandish) of the German model. And as long as no great events acted to disrupt the “unity” of this amorphous formation the various tensions within the organization concerning reform or revolution were subdued for a time. Not forever though.

Various revolutionary tendencies within the workers’ movement have historically had opposing positions concerning parliamentary politics: what to do politically while waiting for the opportune moment to take political power. The controversy centered (and today centers around) whether to run for elective executive and/or legislative offices. Since World War I a very strong argument has developed that revolutionaries should not run for executive offices of the capitalist state on the principle that we do not want to be responsible for the running of the capitalist state. On the other hand running for legislative office under the principle of acting as “tribunes of the people” continues to have validity. The case of the German revolutionary social democrat Karl Liebknecht using his legislative office to denounce the German war effort DURING the war is a very high expression of that position. This question, arguably, was a little less clears in the pre-war period.

If Eugene V. Debs is remembered politically today it is probably for his five famous runs for the American presidency (one, in 1920, run from jail) from 1900 to 1920 (except 1916). Of those the most famous is the 1912 four- way fight (Teddy Roosevelt and his “Bull Moose” Party providing the fourth) in which he got almost a million votes and something like 5 percent of the vote- this is the high water mark of socialist electoral politics then and now. Professor Currie goes into some detail here about the demands on these campaigns personally on the aging Debs and of the internal political oppositions to his candidacies. I would only mention that a strong argument could be made here for support of the idea of a revolutionary (and, at least until the early 1920’s Debs considered himself, subjectively, a revolutionary) running for executive office- the presidency- without violating political principle (of course, with the always present proviso that if elected he would refuse to serve). Certainly the issues to be fought around- the emerging American imperial presence in the world, the fierce wage struggles, the capitalist trustification and cartelization of industry, the complicity of the courts, the struggle for women’s right to vote, the struggle against the emerging anti- black Jim Crow regime in the South would make such a platform a useful propaganda tool. Especially, as the good professor as noted, since Debs was one of the premier socialist orators of the day, if perhaps too flowery and long-winded for today’s eye or ear.

As the American Socialist party developed in the early 20th century, and grew by leaps and bounds in this period, a somewhat parallel development was occurring somewhat outside this basically parliamentary movement. In 1905, led by the revolutionary militant “Big Bill” Haywood and with an enthusiastic (then) Debs present probably the most famous mass militant labor organization in American history was formed, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, Wobblies). As it name denotes this organization stood as, in effect, the nucleus of the industrial unionism that would win the day among the unorganized in the 1930’s with the efforts of the CIO. But it also was, as James P. Cannon an early IWW organizer noted in one of his books, the nucleus of a revolutionary political party. One of the reasons, among others, for its demise was that it never was able to resolve that contradiction between party and union. But that is an analysis for another day.
What is important to note here is that organization form fit in, very nicely indeed, with Debs’ notions of organizing the unorganized, the need for industrial unionization (as opposed to the prevailing narrow craft orientation of the Samuel Gompers-led AFL). Nevertheless Debs, to his credit, was no “dual unionist”, that is, committed to ignoring or going around the AFL and establishing “revolutionary” unions. This question of “boring from within” organized labor or “dual unions” continues to this day, and historically has been a very thorny question among militants faced with the bureaucratic inertia of the trade union bureaucracy. Debs came down on the side of the angels on this one (even if he later took unfavorable positions on IWW actions).

Although Debs is probably best known for his presidential runs (including that one from Atlanta prison in 1920 that I always enjoy seeing pictures of the one where he converses with his campaign staff in his cell) he really should be, if he is remembered for only one thing, remembered for his principled opposition to American war preparedness and eventual entry into World War I in 1917. Although it is unclear in my mind how much of Debs’ position stemmed from personal pacifism, how much from Hoosier isolationism (after all he was the quintessential Midwestern labor politician, having been raised and lived all his life in Indiana) and how much was an anti-imperialist statement he nevertheless, of all major socialist spokesmen to speak nothing of major politicians in general , was virtually alone in his opposition when Woodrow Wilson pulled the hammer down and entered American forces into the European conflict.

That, my friends, should command respect from almost everyone, political friend or foe alike. Needless to say for his opposition he was eventually tried and convicted of, of all things, the catch-all charge of sedition and conspiracy. Some things never change. Moreover, that prison term is why Debs had to run from prison in 1920. Professor Currie does a good job here giving the narrative of the basis of his conviction, the tenor of the times, the appeals process and his eventual release by President Harding.

I started out this exposition of Debs’ political trajectory under the sign of the Russian Revolution and here I come full circle. I have, I believe, highlighted the points that we honor Debs for and now to balance the wheel we need to discuss his shortcomings (which are also a reflection of the shortcomings of the internationalist socialist movement then, and now). The almost universal betrayal of its anti- war positions of the pre-war international social democracy, as organized in the Second International and led by the German Party, by its subordination to the war aims of its respective individual capitalist governments exposed a deep crevice in the theory and practice of the movement.

As the experiences of the Russian revolution pointed out it was no longer possible for reformists and revolutionaries to coexist in the same party. Literally, on more than one occasion, these formally connected tendencies were on opposite sides of the barricades when the social tensions of society exploded. It was not a pretty sight and called for a splitting and realignment of the revolutionary forces internationally. The organizational expression of this was the formation, in the aftermath of the Russian revolution, of the Communist International in 1919. Part of that process, in America, included a left-wing split (or purge depending on the source read) and the creation, at first, of two communist organizations. As the most authoritative left-wing socialist of the day one would have thought that Debs would have inclined to the communists. That was not to be the case as he stayed with the remnant of the American Socialist Party until his death in the late 1920’s.

No one would argue that the early communist movement in America was not filled with more than its share of political mistakes, esoterica and just plain weirdness but that is where the revolutionaries were in the 1920’s. And this brings us really to Debs’ ultimate problem as a socialist leader and why I made that statement above that he could not lead a proletarian revolution in America, assuming that he was his desire. Professor Currie, and not he alone among academic students of Debs, has pointed out that Debs had a life long aversion to political faction and in-fighting. I would agree, as any rational radical politician would, that faction and in-fighting are not virtuous in and of themselves and are a net drain on the tasks of propaganda, recruitment and united front actions that should drive left-wing political work. However, as critical turning points in the international socialism movement have shown sometimes the tensions between the political appetites of supposed like-minded individuals cannot be contained in one organization. This question is most dramatically posed, of course, in a revolutionary period when the tensions are whittled down to choices for or against the revolution. One side of the barricade or the other.

That said, Debs’ personality, demeanor and ultimately his political program of trying to keep “big tent” socialist together tarnished his image as a socialist leader. Professor Currie also has several sections at the end of his book on Debs’ positions on convicts, women, and blacks, education, religion and government. Debs was no theorist, socialist or otherwise, and many of his positions would not pass muster among radicals today. I note his economic determinism argument that the black question is subsumed in the class question. I have discussed this question elsewhere and will not address it here. I would only note, for a socialist, his position is just flat out wrong. I also note that, outside his support for women’s suffrage and working women’s rights to equal page his attitude toward women was strictly Victorian. As was his wishy-washy attitude toward religion. That said, Eugene V. Debs, warts and all, gets a fair exposition here. And should get a fair nod from history as the premier American socialist of the pre-World War I period.

Thursday, November 03, 2016

Not So From The Archives-A View From The Left- Reformist Left Plays in Bernie’s Sandbox

 
IF HE WALKS LIKE A DEMOCRAT-IF HE TALKS LIKE A DEMOCRAT-IF HE TAKES HIS ASSIGNMENTS FROM THE DEMOCRATS-ISN’T HE A DEMOCRAT?

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


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Workers Vanguard No. 1072
7 August 2015
 
Reformist Left Plays in Bernie’s Sandbox
 
Oscar Wilde’s description of British upper-class fox hunting—“the unspeakable in pursuit of the inedible”—is an apt summation of the spectacle of reformist “socialists” hotly debating whether or not to support Bernie Sanders’ campaign for president. Socialist Alternative (SAlt) kicked off that debate more than a year ago. Flush with excitement over the 2013 election of its supporter Kshama Sawant to Seattle’s city council, SAlt announced: “There has not been a more propitious time in modern American history to begin to build a pro-working class political force” (socialistalternative.org, 16 April 2014). SAlt then began to churn out articles pleading with Sanders to make a run for president as an independent rather than as a Democrat. Finding this offer one he could easily refuse, Sanders announced his run for the Democratic Party nomination as well as his intention to support whichever candidate the Democrats nominate, presumably Hillary Clinton.
Thus rebuffed, SAlt rallied with Pepe Le Pew-like doggedness to Plan B: its members will work in the Sanders primary campaign while not advocating a vote to him (as a Democrat) in order to pressure him to run in the general election as an independent. Belaboring the obvious, SAlt acknowledged that Sanders’ campaign could “be used as a convenient ‘left flank’ by Clinton to draw in support from union members and activists who are fed up with corporate politics” (socialistalternative.org, 9 May). Wringing its hands, SAlt opines: “It would be tragic if Sanders’ campaign ends up playing this role,” as if it could be anything other than a vehicle to rope the disaffected back into the Democratic Party fold. Indeed, despite his rare and completely nominal claims to being an “independent socialist,” for the past 25 years Sanders has been a member of the Democratic Party congressional caucuses.
In this capacity, the Vermont Senator’s record of service to U.S. imperialism has been nearly impeccable. In the 1990s, he supported the NATO war against Serbia instigated by Democratic Party president Bill Clinton as well as the UN starvation sanctions that killed more than 1.5 million Iraqis. Over the years, he has generally backed every U.S. military intervention abroad, including in Afghanistan and Iraq. In 2001, Sanders voted in favor of the “Authorization for the Use of Military Force,” which launched U.S. imperialism’s war and occupation of Afghanistan and later Iraq. More recently, he backed a Senate resolution supporting the 2014 Israeli massacre of Palestinians in Gaza.
On the home front, Sanders enlisted in the “war against crime” (read: black people), supporting Clinton’s 1994 “Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act,” which vastly expanded the crimes punishable by death at the hands of the federal government, poured 100,000 more cops onto the streets to patrol the inner cities and provided billions more in funding for prisons. It is small wonder that Sanders’ response to the explosion of outrage in black Baltimore against racist cop terror was to comment: “Being a cop is a hard job.”
With such a background, Sanders has even elicited some criticism from the inveterate opportunists of the International Socialist Organization (ISO), who are engaged in a debate with SAlt over the probity of the latter’s tactics in supporting the candidate. Arguing that “his record should lead socialists to question” Sanders’ purported “independence” is none other than ISO leader Todd Chretien, himself an experienced participant in bourgeois electoralism. In 2006, Chretien ran for the small-time capitalist Green Party’s nomination for the U.S. Senate in California. For years, the Green Party has served as a stopover for disgruntled liberals on the road back to the Democratic Party.
All the ISO’s current hypocritical lectures on “independence” are designed to mask their own capitulation to the Democrats mediated through the likes of the Greens. Moreover, news of the large crowds Sanders has attracted with his verbiage about “political revolution against the billionaires” exerts the kind of pull that the ISO cannot resist: numbers. Chretien promises that the ISO will not be “stuck on the sidelines”:
“Not at all. The Sanders’ campaign gives us an opportunity to debate socialist politics. If Sanders wants to bring movement and union activists into the Democratic Party through its left entrance, we should try to get them back out that door and into the streets. We can engage on political issues with People for Bernie groups and encourage them to take part in activism outside the electoral arena.”
—socialistworker.org, 20 May
In short, the ISO proposes to redirect the energies of campaigners for “Bernie” to putatively more promising tasks—like maybe re-hydrating the desiccated remains of the Occupy movement or some other vehicle designed to pressure the capitalist Democratic Party to “serve the people.”
To this end, the ISO trots out Howie Hawkins, a leader of the Green Party who won nearly 5 percent of the vote in his 2014 New York gubernatorial campaign against Democrat Andrew Cuomo. In an article titled “Bernie Sanders Is No Eugene Debs” (socialistworker.org, 26 May), Hawkins argues, “Too many self-proclaimed socialists in the U.S. have abandoned the socialist principle of independent political action.” He should know! From the Peace & Freedom Party in the late 1960s to the Greens today, Hawkins is a veteran of capitalist “third parties” whose purpose is to channel social discontent into the ballot box. After some grandiose misuse of longtime Socialist Party leader Debs and also of Karl Marx, Hawkins gets down to business: “From an independent socialist point of view, all the money and time going into Sanders’ handoff to Clinton is time and money that could be going into getting Jill Stein’s Green Party candidacy on every ballot in the country.”
The independence of the working class from all the parties—the Greens included—that represent the interests of the capitalist exploiters is the elementary precondition for struggle against this system of wage slavery. It was well over 150 years ago, following the failed bourgeois revolutions of 1848, that Marx and Engels grasped that any support to or mixing of banners with the parties of the bourgeoisie or petty bourgeoisie was anathema to the workers’ fight. Against calls for support to the German Democratic Party of the time, Marx argued in his 1850 “Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League”:
“It is our interest and our task to make the revolution permanent until all the more or less propertied classes have been driven from their ruling positions, until the proletariat has conquered state power and until the association of the proletarians has progressed sufficiently far—not only in one country but in all the leading countries of the world—that competition between the proletarians of these countries ceases and at least the decisive forces of production are concentrated in the hands of the workers. Our concern cannot simply be to modify private property, but to abolish it, not to hush up class antagonisms but to abolish classes, not to improve the existing society but to found a new one.”
In Defense of Debs
The reformist riders in the third-party clown car at the Democratic Party rodeo invoke the heritage of Eugene V. Debs. Such fondness is not for the Debs who campaigned for the overthrow of the capitalist order by the revolutionary proletariat but rather for the early Socialist Party, which included both fighters for workers revolution and outright racists and apologists for the American imperialist order. SAlt positively salivates: “For all the faults of the Socialist Party in the first few decades of the 20th Century, it would be an excellent development if we had today a similar ‘socialist’ organization of tens of thousands of people with dozens of elected officials” (socialistalternative.org, 7 July).
James P. Cannon, a founding leader of the American Communist movement and later of American Trotskyism, was part of the left wing of the Socialist Party that exited that organization under the impact of the 1917 Russian Revolution. In his article “The Debs Centennial” (Fourth International, Vol. 17, No. 1, Winter 1956), Cannon reviled those who “have discovered new virtues in the old Socialist Party, which polled so many votes in the time of Debs” for doing “an injustice to the memory of Debs.” He concluded: “The triumph of the cause he served so magnificently will require a different political instrument—a different kind of party—than the one he supported. The model for that is the party of Lenin.”
While the reformists pitch their respective tents in the camp of the parties of the capitalist class enemy, we in the SL struggle for a revolutionary workers party like Lenin’s and Trotsky’s Bolsheviks that aims for nothing other and nothing less than the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of workers rule. Such a perspective is dismissed as at best a hopeless utopia by SAlt and the ISO, who preach that one must reach people “where they are at.” But the Bolshevik Revolution actually happened. And there were a good number of subsequent proletarian uprisings that failed due to both the lack of a revolutionary party to lead the workers to victory and the treachery of self-proclaimed “socialists” who defended the capitalist order.
The course charted by the ISO and SAlt—a progression of baby steps of reform through building “movements” that will pressure the capitalist state into enacting a decent social order—has never happened anywhere. Not in the 19th century, not in the 20th, nor will it ever. But as the current embodiment of social-democratic opposition to working-class struggle and socialist revolution, the ISO and SAlt have a bridge or two they are trying to sell in the current round of bourgeois elections in America.




NOTE: This blog was originally written prior to the Vermont Democratic primaries this summer. I have republished it here as a reminder. Since that time Mr. Sanders has build up a commanding lead over his Republican and “Democratic” and other third party challengers. As a recent Boston Globe article pointed out this self-proclaimed socialist would be the first such avowed socialist elected since the late, unlamented Wisconsin American Socialist Party Congressman Victor Berger did so in the 1920’s. The article also pointed out that Mr. Sanders has a picture of socialist icon Eugene V. Debs hanging on a wall in his office. Every militant cherishes the memory of Debs, however, his party- the Socialist party in the 1920’s and thereafter turned into something very different from the militant anti-war, anti-capitalist party that Debs did so much to make a militant organization of the working class and its allies. Other forces, notably the American Communist Party inherited that tradition. That the Communist Party thereafter lost its authority in the working class does not negate the fact that it gathered the best militants around it. I note further that apparently Mr. Sanders has no picture of the likes of revolutionary militant “Big Bill” Haywood gracing his office.
Now that would, indeed, impress me.

All the above information is presented to point out that we are a long, very long way away from the old, militant traditions. Mr. Sanders represents the more insipid parliamentary road to socialism. We just do not have the centuries necessary to wait for that strategy to unfold, assuming it was the right strategy. But, for the sake of consistency, I point out to Mr. Sander’s supporters as I did last summer’s blog, re-posted below, the overarching question of the times. On the war in Iraq- Will you next year break the unanimous logjam for approval and vote against the war budget. YES OR NO. That is the only parliamentary maneuver against the war that means anything. I will invoke the shades of Debs here. He ran for President of the United States on the Socialist ticket from the Atlanta Penitentiary. Why? He was serving time for opposition to World War I. Against that courageous act is a simple parliamentary vote so difficult?

JULY 13, 2006

Is nothing sacred anymore? Picking on poor old Bernie Sanders the self-proclaimed “democratic socialist’’ Independent Congressman from Vermont who is running for the United States Senate. He is attempting to fill the seat of the retiring former Republican, now ‘Independent’ Jim Jeffords. Must be something in the Vermont milk that drives this independent thing. Okay, sure we did appreciate that Sanders (as an elementary act of political hygiene) voted against the Iraq War and all, but come to find out his voting record looks like a carbon copy of Ted Kennedy’s, the OTHER United States Senator from Massachusetts. And Kennedy is MR. DEMOCRAT. Which makes this writer wonder if Bernie walks like a Democrat, if he talks like a Democrat, if he takes his assignments from the Congressional Democrats-isn’t he a Democrat? Especially since the Vermont Democratic party is stepping all over itself NOT to run a Democratic candidate in the fall elections against Sanders. They even offered to put him on their party line. Bernie, however, is a little coquettish and insists on running as an ‘Independent’. I put this down to a personality quirk, though.

In any case, Congressman Sanders is a textbook example of why the so-called parliamentary road to socialism is utopian. As if the history of the international left, at least since 1914, hasn’t hammered militants over the head with the hard fact that unless you change the form of government the capitalists win every time. They have had a long time and much experience in the ways of keeping power. They are damn good at it. Remember that.

Make no mistake; militants use the parliamentary system, especially elections, to get their message out. We also use legislative office as a tribunal to talk over the heads of the politicians. But when the deal goes down we need our own governmental forms to get the things working people need. Bernie may have known that long ago when he started out but lost it somewhere along the way. Maybe it is that milk?

For those militants who insist on voting for Sanders anyway I pose a challenge. Make Congressman Sanders answer this simple question- Will he vote, YES or NO, against the Iraqi War budget next year, if elected? Forget those ‘softball’ non-binding ‘sense of the Congress’ resolutions on Immediate Withdrawal. On the parliamentary level that is the only vote that counts now in the fight against the war. Ask.


THIS IS PART OF A SERIES OF ARTICLES ON THE 2006-2008 ELECTION CYCLE UNDER THE HEADLINE- FORGET THE DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS, GREENS-BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!
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Workers Vanguard No. 1072
7 August 2015
 
Reformist Left Plays in Bernie’s Sandbox
 
Oscar Wilde’s description of British upper-class fox hunting—“the unspeakable in pursuit of the inedible”—is an apt summation of the spectacle of reformist “socialists” hotly debating whether or not to support Bernie Sanders’ campaign for president. Socialist Alternative (SAlt) kicked off that debate more than a year ago. Flush with excitement over the 2013 election of its supporter Kshama Sawant to Seattle’s city council, SAlt announced: “There has not been a more propitious time in modern American history to begin to build a pro-working class political force” (socialistalternative.org, 16 April 2014). SAlt then began to churn out articles pleading with Sanders to make a run for president as an independent rather than as a Democrat. Finding this offer one he could easily refuse, Sanders announced his run for the Democratic Party nomination as well as his intention to support whichever candidate the Democrats nominate, presumably Hillary Clinton.
Thus rebuffed, SAlt rallied with Pepe Le Pew-like doggedness to Plan B: its members will work in the Sanders primary campaign while not advocating a vote to him (as a Democrat) in order to pressure him to run in the general election as an independent. Belaboring the obvious, SAlt acknowledged that Sanders’ campaign could “be used as a convenient ‘left flank’ by Clinton to draw in support from union members and activists who are fed up with corporate politics” (socialistalternative.org, 9 May). Wringing its hands, SAlt opines: “It would be tragic if Sanders’ campaign ends up playing this role,” as if it could be anything other than a vehicle to rope the disaffected back into the Democratic Party fold. Indeed, despite his rare and completely nominal claims to being an “independent socialist,” for the past 25 years Sanders has been a member of the Democratic Party congressional caucuses.
In this capacity, the Vermont Senator’s record of service to U.S. imperialism has been nearly impeccable. In the 1990s, he supported the NATO war against Serbia instigated by Democratic Party president Bill Clinton as well as the UN starvation sanctions that killed more than 1.5 million Iraqis. Over the years, he has generally backed every U.S. military intervention abroad, including in Afghanistan and Iraq. In 2001, Sanders voted in favor of the “Authorization for the Use of Military Force,” which launched U.S. imperialism’s war and occupation of Afghanistan and later Iraq. More recently, he backed a Senate resolution supporting the 2014 Israeli massacre of Palestinians in Gaza.
On the home front, Sanders enlisted in the “war against crime” (read: black people), supporting Clinton’s 1994 “Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act,” which vastly expanded the crimes punishable by death at the hands of the federal government, poured 100,000 more cops onto the streets to patrol the inner cities and provided billions more in funding for prisons. It is small wonder that Sanders’ response to the explosion of outrage in black Baltimore against racist cop terror was to comment: “Being a cop is a hard job.”
With such a background, Sanders has even elicited some criticism from the inveterate opportunists of the International Socialist Organization (ISO), who are engaged in a debate with SAlt over the probity of the latter’s tactics in supporting the candidate. Arguing that “his record should lead socialists to question” Sanders’ purported “independence” is none other than ISO leader Todd Chretien, himself an experienced participant in bourgeois electoralism. In 2006, Chretien ran for the small-time capitalist Green Party’s nomination for the U.S. Senate in California. For years, the Green Party has served as a stopover for disgruntled liberals on the road back to the Democratic Party.
All the ISO’s current hypocritical lectures on “independence” are designed to mask their own capitulation to the Democrats mediated through the likes of the Greens. Moreover, news of the large crowds Sanders has attracted with his verbiage about “political revolution against the billionaires” exerts the kind of pull that the ISO cannot resist: numbers. Chretien promises that the ISO will not be “stuck on the sidelines”:
“Not at all. The Sanders’ campaign gives us an opportunity to debate socialist politics. If Sanders wants to bring movement and union activists into the Democratic Party through its left entrance, we should try to get them back out that door and into the streets. We can engage on political issues with People for Bernie groups and encourage them to take part in activism outside the electoral arena.”
—socialistworker.org, 20 May
In short, the ISO proposes to redirect the energies of campaigners for “Bernie” to putatively more promising tasks—like maybe re-hydrating the desiccated remains of the Occupy movement or some other vehicle designed to pressure the capitalist Democratic Party to “serve the people.”
To this end, the ISO trots out Howie Hawkins, a leader of the Green Party who won nearly 5 percent of the vote in his 2014 New York gubernatorial campaign against Democrat Andrew Cuomo. In an article titled “Bernie Sanders Is No Eugene Debs” (socialistworker.org, 26 May), Hawkins argues, “Too many self-proclaimed socialists in the U.S. have abandoned the socialist principle of independent political action.” He should know! From the Peace & Freedom Party in the late 1960s to the Greens today, Hawkins is a veteran of capitalist “third parties” whose purpose is to channel social discontent into the ballot box. After some grandiose misuse of longtime Socialist Party leader Debs and also of Karl Marx, Hawkins gets down to business: “From an independent socialist point of view, all the money and time going into Sanders’ handoff to Clinton is time and money that could be going into getting Jill Stein’s Green Party candidacy on every ballot in the country.”
The independence of the working class from all the parties—the Greens included—that represent the interests of the capitalist exploiters is the elementary precondition for struggle against this system of wage slavery. It was well over 150 years ago, following the failed bourgeois revolutions of 1848, that Marx and Engels grasped that any support to or mixing of banners with the parties of the bourgeoisie or petty bourgeoisie was anathema to the workers’ fight. Against calls for support to the German Democratic Party of the time, Marx argued in his 1850 “Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League”:
“It is our interest and our task to make the revolution permanent until all the more or less propertied classes have been driven from their ruling positions, until the proletariat has conquered state power and until the association of the proletarians has progressed sufficiently far—not only in one country but in all the leading countries of the world—that competition between the proletarians of these countries ceases and at least the decisive forces of production are concentrated in the hands of the workers. Our concern cannot simply be to modify private property, but to abolish it, not to hush up class antagonisms but to abolish classes, not to improve the existing society but to found a new one.”
In Defense of Debs
The reformist riders in the third-party clown car at the Democratic Party rodeo invoke the heritage of Eugene V. Debs. Such fondness is not for the Debs who campaigned for the overthrow of the capitalist order by the revolutionary proletariat but rather for the early Socialist Party, which included both fighters for workers revolution and outright racists and apologists for the American imperialist order. SAlt positively salivates: “For all the faults of the Socialist Party in the first few decades of the 20th Century, it would be an excellent development if we had today a similar ‘socialist’ organization of tens of thousands of people with dozens of elected officials” (socialistalternative.org, 7 July).
James P. Cannon, a founding leader of the American Communist movement and later of American Trotskyism, was part of the left wing of the Socialist Party that exited that organization under the impact of the 1917 Russian Revolution. In his article “The Debs Centennial” (Fourth International, Vol. 17, No. 1, Winter 1956), Cannon reviled those who “have discovered new virtues in the old Socialist Party, which polled so many votes in the time of Debs” for doing “an injustice to the memory of Debs.” He concluded: “The triumph of the cause he served so magnificently will require a different political instrument—a different kind of party—than the one he supported. The model for that is the party of Lenin.”
While the reformists pitch their respective tents in the camp of the parties of the capitalist class enemy, we in the SL struggle for a revolutionary workers party like Lenin’s and Trotsky’s Bolsheviks that aims for nothing other and nothing less than the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of workers rule. Such a perspective is dismissed as at best a hopeless utopia by SAlt and the ISO, who preach that one must reach people “where they are at.” But the Bolshevik Revolution actually happened. And there were a good number of subsequent proletarian uprisings that failed due to both the lack of a revolutionary party to lead the workers to victory and the treachery of self-proclaimed “socialists” who defended the capitalist order.
The course charted by the ISO and SAlt—a progression of baby steps of reform through building “movements” that will pressure the capitalist state into enacting a decent social order—has never happened anywhere. Not in the 19th century, not in the 20th, nor will it ever. But as the current embodiment of social-democratic opposition to working-class struggle and socialist revolution, the ISO and SAlt have a bridge or two they are trying to sell in the current round of bourgeois elections in America.

Sunday, September 04, 2016

***Labor's Untold Story- The Rise (And Fall) Of The People's Party Of 1892

Click on title to link to Wikipedia's entry for the People's Party (U.S.) of 1892.

Every Month Is Labor History Month

This Commentary is part of a series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!

As a first run through, and in some cases until I can get enough other sources in order to make a decent presentation, I will start with short entries on each topic that I will eventually go into greater detail about. Or, better yet, take my suggested topic and run with it yourself.

Friday, May 06, 2016

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

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

Every January, as readers of this blog are now, hopefully, familiar with the international communist movement honors the 3 Ls-Lenin, Luxemburg and Leibknecht, fallen leaders of the early 20th century communist movement who died in this month (and whose untimely deaths left a huge, irreplaceable gap in the international leadership of that time). January is thus a time for us to reflect on the roots of our movement and those who brought us along this far. In order to give a fuller measure of honor to our fallen forbears this January, and in future Januarys, this space will honor others who have contributed in some way to the struggle for our communist future. That future classless society, however, will be the true memorial to their sacrifices.

Note on inclusion: As in other series on this site (“Labor’s Untold Story”, “Leaders Of The Bolshevik Revolution”, etc.) this year’s honorees do not exhaust the list of every possible communist worthy of the name. Nor, in fact, is the list limited to Bolshevik-style communists. There will be names included from other traditions (like anarchism, social democracy, the Diggers, Levellers, Jacobins, etc.) whose efforts contributed to the international struggle. Also, as was true of previous series this year’s efforts are no more than an introduction to these heroes of the class struggle. Future years will see more detailed information on each entry, particularly about many of the lesser known figures. Better yet, the reader can pick up the ball and run with it if he or she has more knowledge about the particular exploits of some communist militant, or to include a missing one.

Sunday, November 01, 2015

***Labor's Untold Story- 'Mother' Bloor's And The Early Socialist Movement

Click on to title to link to Wikipedia's entry for Mother Bloor.

Every Month Is Labor History Month


This Commentary is part of a series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!

As a first run through, and in some cases until I can get enough other sources in order to make a decent presentation, I will start with short entries on each topic that I will eventually go into greater detail about. Or, better yet, take my suggested topic and run with it yourself.

***The Struggle For The Labor Party In The United States- American Socialist Workers Party Leader James P.Cannon-On Eugene V. Debs And The Idea Of The Party Of The Whole Working Class

Click on the headline to link to a James P. Cannon Internet Archives online copy of On Eugene V. Debs And The Idea Of The Party Of The Whole Working Class

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.

Saturday, September 03, 2011

***The Struggle For The Labor Party In The United States-The Program Of The American Labor Party (1936)- A Link

Click on the headline to link to the Program Of The American Labor Party (1936)

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.
*********


Friday, September 02, 2011

***The Struggle For The Labor Party In The United States-The Socialist Party's Attempt At A Labor Party-The American Labor Party (1936)

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the American Labor Party

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.
*********


Tuesday, September 08, 2009

*Labor's Untold Story- Honor The Memory Of 19th Century Labor Organizer Ignatius Donnelly

Click on title to link to Wikipedia's entry for Ignatius Donnelly.

This Commentary is part of a series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!

As a first run through, and in some cases until I can get enough other sources in order to make a decent presentation, I will start with short entries on each topic that I will eventually go into greater detail about. Or, better yet, take my suggested topic and run with it yourself.