*From "The Rag Blog"- Thoughts On Greece And Old Europe- A Guest Commentary

Click on the headline to link to a "The Rag Blog" entry.

*From The "HistoMat" Blog- On Greece- A Guest Commentary

Click on the headline to link to a commentary/report on Greece in the wake of the May 5th events.

*Enough Is Enough -Support The General Strike In Greece May 5th-Victory To The Greek Workers And Their Allies

Click on the headline to line to a "European Left" blog entry in support of the General Strike in Greece scheduled for May 5, 2010.

Markin comment:

Enough of EU/IMF/U.S.-imposed austerity measures against working people everywhere, but most of all today in Greece. The Greek working class speaks for all of us. Make the capitalists pay for their own mistakes. Greece is at the moment the "epicenter" of the world revolution as it takes its first tentative steps into the 21st century after some serious defeats in the late 20th century. We need a victory in Greece, and we need it now. Of course, as Marx, Lenin and Trotsky pointed out long ago the General Strike
at some point poses the question of state power. Build workers councils that fight for a workers government. More, later.

*The Latest Boston Anti-Authoritarian Movement (BAAM)Newsletter#33

Click on the headline to link to the latest BAAM Newsletter #33.

Markin comment:

As always, I disclaim any political kinship with this newsletter. However, I have many times found interesting articles there. This issue has a good article on the struggle in Greece. And, in any case, it is always good to see what the younger anarchist militants are up to.

*The Latest From BAAM-The April 2010 Edition Of The Boston Anti-Authoritarian Movement Newsletter #32

Click on the headline to link to the latest BAAM Newsletter.


Markin comment:

As always, I disclaim any political kinship with this newsletter. However, I have many times found interesting articles there. This issue has a good article on the struggle in Greece. And, in any case, it is always good to see what the younger anarchist militants are up to.

*From The "Steve Lendman Blog"- A Book Review On Monopoly Capitalism-New Style

*The Boston Anti-Authoritarian Movement (BAAM)Newsletter #31 Is Out

Click on the title to link to the latest Boston Anti-Authoritarian Movement (BAAM) "Newsletter". (#31)

Markin comment:

As always, I disclaim any political kinship with this newsletter. However, I have many times found interesting articles there. This issue has a good article on the struggle in Greece. And, in any case, it is always good to see what the younger militants are up to.

*Those Who Fought For Our Communist Future Are Kindred Spirits- Honor Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, "The Rebel Girl", In Her IWW Days

Click on the title to link to the "Women And Marxism" Internet Archive's section on the ex-Wobblie (IWW) and later American Communist Party leader, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn.

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.

*Hand Off The Copenhagen Climate Conference Protesters- Free All Arrestees

Click on the title to link to an "AP" article, December 16, 2009,detailing the police actions against the anti-climate conference protesters.

Markin comment:

It is not clear to me exactly what the anti-climate protesters expected to come out of this conference knowing that the number one abuser, the United States, and the other imperialist powers are basically calling the shots. (And trying, for their own purposes having little to do with climate control, to make China the fall guy). But this I know-those anti-globalization protesters have a right to be on the streets or in the conference rooms. All I would add here, given the grim news about the too rapid heating up of our old planet, is we better get busy with the business of making a socialist revolution in order to really get this impending climate disaster from coming much more quickly than currently projected. In the meantime-Hand Off The Protesters- Release All Detainees!

* From The BAAM Newsletter- December 2009 Issue

Click on title to link to Boston Anti-Authoritarian Movement (BAAM) December 2009 "Newsletter".

Markin comment:

Although this space primarily reflects a Marxist world view and I am far from being sympathetic to anarchist doctrine and anarchism in general (except that, natural, warm spot every militant has for the historical IWW-before World War I) I find this on-line magazine usually has things of interest to the radical public. That is the case with this issue. Read on.

* From The "BAAM Newletter"- The Pittsburgh Anti-Globalizaton Demonstrations

Click on title to link to Boston Anti-Authoritarian Movement (BAAM) November "Newsletter" for an article about the anti-globalization demonstrations at the Pittsburgh G-20 meetings. Also a review of Michael Moore's "Capitalism: A Love Story".

*"The Baader-Meinhof Complex"- A Guest Film Review From Renegade Eye

Click on title to link to Renegade Eye's film review of the movie, "The Baader-Meinhof Complex", about a German revolutionary terrorist group back in the early 1970s, similar to but better organized and certainly more seriously into direct action, than the American group, The Weathermen (Weatherpeople). I have this film on reserve and will review it myself when I have viewed it but Renegade has the main points about right that need to be taken from the film by today's radicals and revolutionaries.

***Labor's Untold Story-The Futility Of Individual Anarchist Action- Alexander Berkman And The Homestead Strike Of 1892

Click on title to link to the Alexander Berkman Archives.

Markin comment:

For those not familiar with this heroic, if foolhardy, anarchist and long time companion of the anarchist lecturer Emma Goldman (whose biography has been reviewed in this space)he attempted to murder one Henry Frick, capitalist, and evil genius of the now famous and, for labor, unsuccessful Homestead Steel strike of 1892. That defeat, by the way, left the steel industry unorganized for the next forty or so years. Take that as a lesson as well as the futility of heroic , or otherwise, individual actions to turn the tide of history. Mass action is the key. So, let's get organized.

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 Russian Revolution in Red and Black- Once Again on Kronstadt

Click on title to link to YouTube footage of the Russian Revolution. Click on from there for other examples.

DVD REVIEW

The Russian Revolution in Color, 2007

The sailors of the Baltic Fleet stationed at Kronstadt on the entrance way to Petrograd played a vanguard and heroic role in the various stages leading up to, and including, the October revolution in Russia in 1917. The sailors of the Baltic Fleet played a vanguard and heroic role in defending that revolution on the many fronts of the three-year Civil War against the Whites. According to the premise of this docudrama, tinged as it is in anarchist and anti-communist colors, the Kronstadt sailors also played a vanguard role in defending the premises of that revolution in their uprising against the seemingly power-crazed Bolsheviks in 1921.

That is where Bolshevik sympathizers, including this writer, part company with the creators of this work on the virtues, especially the political virtues, of the sailors. And it is, whether viewed tragically or not, also the point of departure for those who saw the necessity of defending the Bolshevik experiment, arms in hand, as it lay prostrate after years of civil war and those who later, mainly from their cozy armchairs, made this the definitive point of the degeneration of the revolution of 1917. Moreover, apparently until the end of times someone, somewhere, in some cozy armchair, is going to pose the question of the Kronstadt uprising of 1921 as the defining moment in the process of degeneration of the Russian revolution. I, like the exiled Bolshevik Left-Oppositionist Leon Trotsky, ask the simple question- why? For what purpose? (See archives article entitled Hue and Cry Over Kronstadt, written by Trotsky in 1938).

This two-part docudrama (The Fight For Freedom and Civil War) adequately highlights the social facts that made the Baltic sailors play an important role in the various stages of the revolution during 1917. Their skill levels, their camaraderie and their ties to the peasantry and working class back home made them a lynch pin for all kinds of actions planned by the Bolsheviks once the sailors were won to the need for decisive actions. In fact, as the docudrama points out, at a couple of points-the April and July Days they were ahead of the curve of the revolution. Moreover, the sailors played a decisive role in the actual physical overthrow of the Provisional Government in October and later the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly. Throughout the period, however, one should recognize that they did not act as an independent revolutionary factor but acted, for the most part, as agents of a civilian revolutionary party- Lenin’s Bolsheviks.

Needless to say when the storm cloud of civil war raised its head with the uprising of the Czech Legion and the intervention of the united imperialist powers the Kronstadt sailors were at their posts, especially at the critical moments in front of Kazan. They laid down their heads on all the civil war fronts, as well. I should note here that the pen name that I use in this space, Markin, is to honor one of those heroic sailors who laid down his head on one of the many fronts being contested by the Red and White Armies. It is also rather germane to note here that the bulk of the cadre sailors from 1917 either shared Markin’s fate, took administrative jobs with the Bolshevik government of otherwise provided service to the revolution. The upshot, of all this, is to point out, as Trotsky did, that those sailors who rose against the Bolsheviks in 1921 were not the same cadre that performed heroic service earlier.

That view has been contested, and is contested here by some of the inevitable ‘talking heads’ that are interspersed between various action segments. And that is the rub. As pointed out up above the creators of this film have their own axes to grind. So we get the inevitable diabolical Lenin and the Bolsheviks as the personification of evil, all hungry bureaucrats ready to pounce on any political opposition. In short, the traditional anarchist/anti-communist litany that we have heard for the past 90 years. Here, however, beyond the specific chronology of the Kronstadt uprising itself (and the point Trotsky was trying to make in his 1938 article mentioned above) is the key question of when the revolution degenerated (the whys and what to do about it we will leave for another time).

I would argue that if 1921 is the point of qualitative degeneration (and therefore the point that a third revolution is necessary) then the whole Bolshevik experiment was wrong from the beginning, including the heroic role of the Baltic sailors. That means, and here we have the benefit of hindsight such as it is, that the working class is organically incapable of making a working class revolution to implement socialism. I do not subscribe to that opinion but that should send those who are stuck intellectually imprisoned in Kronstadt 1921 cause for pause.

*Sacco and Vanzetti- The Case That Will Not Die, Nor Should It

Click on the title to link to "Wikipedia"'s entry for the Sacco and Vanzetti case, provided ere as background. As always with this source and its collective editorial policy, especially with controversial political issues like the Sacco and Vanzetti case, be careful checking the accuracy of the information provided at any given time.


Commentary/Review

He or she who defends the memory of Sacco and Vanzetti is a kindred spirit whatever our other political differences might be. In the mist of time in my youth a couple of cases came early to my memory. The Rosenbergs and, in whispered tones, the Sacco and Vanzetti case. And in the year of the 80th Anniversary of their execution by the State of Massachusetts it is again worth reflecting on what that case means to a generation confronted with more than its share of abuses of justice and political hysteria. Below is a review of a documentary that came out in 2006 (2007 on DVD) that goes some way to explore and explain just what happened.

I also note that in the summer of 2007 yet another book has come out on the subject, Sacco and Vanzetti: The Men, The Murders, and the Judgment of Mankind by Bruce Watson. I have not read that book yet but I have read several reviews on it. A disturbing element in that book appears to be the author’s agnostic, if not antagonistic, position on Sacco and Vanzetti’s innocence. One of the reasons the case will never die, although not my reason that it should not, is the periodic attempt to ‘prove’ that one or more of the pair either did the murders or, in the alternative, that they received a fair trial. After I have read this book I will write more on this question. It is the duty of those who defend Sacco and Vanzetti to beat back these attempts to chip away at their legacy despite the overwhelming mountain of evidence in their favor. And to expose a new generation to an understanding of the raw legal and social attitudes of that time (and our time, as well). In the meantime- Honor the memory of Sacco and Vanzetti.

I am reposting that earlier review mentioned above.

SACCO AND VANZETTI- THE DOCUMENTARY

DVD REVIEW

SACCO AND VANZETTI, PETER MILLER, 2006

I have used some of the points mentioned here in previous reviews of books about the Sacco and Vanzetti case.

Those familiar with the radical movement know that at least once in every generation a political criminal case comes up that defines that era. One thinks of the Haymarket Martyrs in the 19th century, the Scottsboro Boys in the 1930's, the Rosenburgs in the post-World War II Cold War period and today Mumia Abu-Jamal. In America after World War I when the Attorney General Palmer-driven ‘red scare’ brought the federal government’s vendetta against foreigners, immigrants and militant labor fighters to a white heat that generation's case was probably the most famous of them all, Sacco and Vanzetti. The exposure of the tensions within American society that came to the surface as a result of that case is the subject of the film under review.

Using documentary footage, reenactment and ‘talking head’ commentary by interested historians, including the well-known author of popular America histories Boston University Professor (emeritus now, I believe)Howard Zinn, the director Peter Miller and his associates bring this case alive for a new generation to examine. In the year 2007 one of the important lessons for leftists to be taken from the case is the question of the most effective way to defend such working class cases. I will address that question further below but here I wish to point out that the one major shortcoming of this film is a lack of discussion on that issue. I might add that this is no mere academic issue as the current case of the death-row prisoner, militant journalist Mumia-Abu-Jamal, graphically illustrates. Notwithstanding that objection this documentary is a very satisfactory visual presentation of the case for those not familiar with it.

A case like that of Sacco and Vanzetti, accused, convicted and then executed in 1927 for a robbery and double murder committed in a holdup of a payroll delivery to a shoe factory in Braintree, Massachusetts in 1920, does not easily conform to any specific notion that the average citizen today has of either the state or federal legal system. Nevertheless, one does not need to buy into the director’s overall thesis that the two foreign-born Italian anarchists in 1920 were railroaded to know that the case against them 'stunk' to high heaven. And that is the rub. Even a cursory look at the evidence presented (taking the state of jurisprudence at that time into consideration) and the facts surrounding the case would force the most mildly liberal political type to know the “frame” was on.

Everyone agrees, or should agree, that in such political criminal cases as Sacco and Vanzetti every legal avenue including appeals, petitions and seeking grants of clemency should be used in order to secure the goal, the freedom of those imprisoned. This film does an adequate job of detailing the various appeals and other legal wrangling that only intensified as the execution neared. Nevertheless it does not adequately address a question that is implicit in its description of the fight to save the lives of Sacco and Vanzetti. How does one organize and who does one appeal to in a radical working class political defense case?

The film spends some time on the liberal local Boston defense organizations and the 'grandees' and other celebrities who became involved in the case, and who were committed almost exclusively to a legal defense strategy. It does not, however, pay much attention to the other more radical elements of the campaign that fought for the pair’s freedom. It gives short shrift to the work of the Communists and their International Red Aid (the American affiliate was named the International Labor Defense and headed by Communist leader James P. Cannon, a man well-known in anarchist circles and a friend of Carlos Tresca, a central figure in the defense case) that organized meetings, conferences and yes, political labor strikes on behalf of Sacco and Vanzetti, especially in Europe. The tension between those two conceptions of political defense work still confronts us to day as we fight the seemingly never-ending legal battles thrown up since 9/11 for today’s Sacco and Vanzetti’s- immigrants, foreigners and radicals (some things do not change with time). If you want plenty of information on the Sacco and Vanzetti case and an interesting thesis about it’s place in radical history, the legal history of Massachusetts and the social history of the United States this is not a bad place to stop. Hopefully it will draw the viewer to read one or more of the many books on the case. Honor the Memory of Sacco and Vanzetti.

*ON THE QUESTION OF CRITICAL SUPPORT TO SOCIALIST ELECTION CAMPAIGNS

Click on the headline to link to a Lenin Internet Archives entry from his Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder-Should we Participate in Bourgeois Parliaments?

COMMENTARY

WHAT TO DO (OR NOT TO DO) WHEN YOU DO NOT HAVE YOUR OWN WORKERS PARTY CANDIDATE TO VOTE FOR IN ELECTIONS

FORGET DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS AND GREENS- BUILD A WORKERS PARTY


In the run-up to the 2006 midterm elections working people are again being subjected to the "choice" between the dual parties of capitalist exploitation, imperialist war and racist oppression. It is a choice between the justly feared and despised Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld Republican cabal in power and a Democratic "opposition" campaigning for a more effective plan for prosecuting the very bipartisan "war on terror" at home and abroad—in particular, how best to cut the losses of U.S. imperialism in the bloody occupation of Iraq in order to more efficiently deploy its forces against the peoples of the world in places like Cuba, Iran, North Korea and China.

It is thus appropriate now that we are in the thick of this downbeat 2006 electoral campaign season to highlight some points concerning what militant leftists can or should do when faced with the above choice while at the same time not having a mass socialist or labor party candidate to support. Unfortunately, the necessity for discussion of the subject matter of this commnetary reflects the continued weakness of the left and of our inability to field a mass socialist or labor party candidate of our own. If militants were strong enough we would not have to worry about supporting other small socialist formations or about the question of political support to them except on our own terms.

Anarchists and anarcho-syndicalists make a virtue out of necessity by abstaining on principle from parliamentary elections. Militant leftists do not. I would note, however, that on the basis of my observations on the 2004 election cycle something of the old hard anarchist opposition to parliamentary elections has been blunted- and not for the better. In the old days anarchists seriously opposed such elections and revolutionary socialists could half agree with them on the issue of opposition to electoral cretinism favored by reformist socialist parties as the path to socialism.

In 2004 I ran into any number of anarchists whose anti-parlimentary position was more frivolous and less well thought out. These types argued that parliamentary politics was so silly that it did not matter who one voted for-including capitalist Democratic Party candidate John Forbes Kerry. That is just plain wrong. Revolutionary militant leftists use such periods, when appropriate, to support candidates that at least provide some cutting edge against the heavy weight of capitalist politics. In short, as an elementary question militants must draw a class line in opposition to all capitalist parties. Thus it is important to know under what conditions support to socialist/labor candidates can be given.

While rejecting the notion that the working class can gain power through the vehicle of bourgeois electoralism it is necessary to recognize that there are times when the intervention of revolutionaries into the parliamentary/electoral cycle can provide a useful platform from which to put forward a socialist program and attempt to further socialist goals. Such tactics include revolutionaries standing as candidates, one can think of the heroic Karl Liebknecht in World War I campaigning on an anti-war platform while subject to conscription in the German Army in this regard. Another tactic is offering critical support to such parties as draw even a minimal class line against the capitalist parties.

In his powerful book on communist principles and tactics, "Left-Wing" Communism—An Infantile Disorder (1920), Bolshevik leader V.I. Lenin explained: "It is entirely a matter of knowing how to apply these tactics in order to raise— not lower—the general level of proletarian class-consciousness, revolutionary spirit, and ability to fight and win." Lenin advised the fledgling British Communists to extend critical support to the British Labour Party in order to expose the Labour traitors' pretensions to "socialism" and to break workers' illusions in them.

On the other hand, at times support for a labor party or socialist party may be precluded for other reasons, such as their participation in a national unity government with other classes (the so-called Popular Front), strikebreaking while governing on behalf of the capitalists (the General Strike in England in 1926 comes to mind) or when other ostensibly socialist formations may better represent the interests of the working class (various Socialist/Communist campaigns).

To give a different but symmetric error from the 'soft' anarchist position noted above in the 2004 campaign season I ran into many, too many leftist, particularly old ex-Communist Party members, who used the Leninist policy in order to "critically" support the Democrat Kerry. As if the the "big tent" Democratic Party was just some garden variety labor party. Wrong. While labor organizations, particularly the labor bureaucracy live by, die by and spend their money on this party neither by program, politics or inclination is it any kind of labor party. No support under any theory, including "lesser evil" politics is warranted by militants. Thus militants need to seek out candidates or organizations who draw the class line. Those who do not do so deserve no support.

As an example of a non-supportable candidate in California the International Socialist Organization is running one of its members for United States Senate on the small-time capitalist Green Party ticket. Aside from some individually supportable democratic demands in the Green Party program, especially on environmental issues, the Green Party is historically one in a long line of capitalist "progressive" third party operations that merely act as pressure groups on the Democratic Party. That precludes any support from militants. That is the clearest example that I know of on the class line question among socialist organizations. Readers may know of others on their local level that I am not aware of. Keep me informed. Enough said.

THIS IS PART OF A SERIES OF ARTICLES OF COMMENTARY ON THE 2006-2008 ELECTION CYCLE UNDER THE HEADLINE- FORGET THE DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS, GREENS-BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!

*Labor's Untold Story- Honor The Labor Organizer And Women's Rights Fighter Lucy Parsons

Click on title to link to The Lucy Parsons Project.

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.

*Labor's Untold Story- Honor The Haymarket Martyr Labor Organizer Albert Parsons

Click on title to link to the "Autobiography of Haymarket Martyr and labor leader Albert Parsons. This hardly the last you will hear about this man in this on-going labor series.

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.

*Eyewitness To The Spanish Civil War-George Orwell's "Homage To Catalonia"

Click on title to link to Wikipedia's entry for the Party Of Marxist Unification (POUM)whose militia George Orwell fought in and an organization thta has been the subject, including in this space, of on-going controversy for its role in the Spanish revolution.

BOOK REVIEW

HOMAGE TO CATALONIA, GEORGE ORWELL, HARCOURT BRACE JOVANOVICH, NEW YORK, 1952

AS WE APPROACH THE 70TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BEGINNING OF THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR MILITANTS NEED TO DRAW THE LESSONS FOR THE DEFEAT OF THAT REVOLUTION.

I have been interested, as a pro-Republican partisan, in the Spanish Civil War since I was a teenager. Underlying my interests has always been a nagging question of how that struggle could have been won by the working class. The Spanish proletariat certainly was capable of both heroic action and the ability to create organizations that reflected its own class interests i.e. the worker militias and factory committees. Of all modern working class revolutions after the Russian revolution Spain showed the most promise of success. Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky noted that the political class consciousness of the Spanish proletariat was higher at the time than that of the Russian proletariat in 1917. George Orwell’s book gives some eyewitness insights into the causes of that defeat from the perspective of a political rank and file militant who fought in the trenches in a Party of Marxist Unification (POUM) militia unit during the key year 1937.

Leon Trotsky in his polemical article ‘The Lessons of Spain-Last Warning’, collected in The Spanish Revolution, 1931-39 , his definitive assessment of the Spanish situation in the wake of the defeat of the Barcelona uprising in May 1937, while asserting that the POUM was the most honest revolutionary party in Spain, stated that in the final analysis the approaching defeat of the revolution could be laid to the policies of the POUM. Orwell’s book parallels that argument on the ground in Spain although he certainly was not a Trotsky partisan.

Let us be clear here- we are not talking about the Orwell who later, after World War II, lost his political moorings and decided that the road to human progress passed through the nefarious intelligence agencies of British imperialism. Unfortunately, many militants have traveled that road. Nor are we talking about the later author of Animal Farm and 1984 who warmed the hearts of Western Cold Warriors. We are talking about the militant George Orwell who fought as a volunteer against fascism in Spain in 1937 when it counted. That Orwell has something to say to militants. We need to listen to him if we are to make sense of the disaster in Spain.

While Homage to Catalonia is in part a journal of Orwell’s personal experiences as a militiaman under the stress of war that part is less useful to militants today. The parts that are important are the political chapters. One should, moreover, discount Orwell’s self-proclaimed blasé attitude toward politics. Here is an intensely political man.

Orwell draws two important conclusions from his experiences. First, the war against Franco could not be won without a simultaneous extension of the revolution to the creation of a workers state. The workers and peasants of Spain could not be persuaded to and would not and fight to the finish merely for ‘democracy’. This premise ran counter to the objective policies pursued by all the pro-Republican parties. Orwell describes very vividly the changes toward defeatism that occurred in working class morale in Barcelona, the Petrograd of Spain, after the May days of 1937during his stay.

The second conclusion Orwell draws is that the role of the Spanish Communist Party and its sponsor, the Soviet Union was not just momentarily anti-revolutionary in the interests of defeating Franco but counterrevolutionary. The Soviet Union had no interest in creating a second workers state. In the final analysis, despite providing weapons, the Soviet Union was more interested in finding allies among the European imperialists than in revolution. In long-range hindsight that seems clear but at the time it was far from obvious to militants on the ground, especially the militants of the Spanish Communist party who got caught up in the Stalinist security apparatus. Of course, this extreme shift to the right on the part of the Stalinists dovetailed with the interests of the liberal Republicans. However, in the end they all had to flee.

This writer notes that at the time many European militants, like Victor Serge, and organizations , like the Independent Labor Party in England, covered for the erroneous policies of the POUM based on their position as the most coherent, organized and militant ostensibly revolutionary organization in Spain. That support was at the time the subject of intense debate on the extreme left. Fair enough. What does not make sense is that since 1991 or so under the impact of the so-called ‘death of communism’ a virtual cottage industry has developed, centered on the British journal Revolutionary History, seeking today to justify the positions of the POUM. Jesus, can’t these people learn something after all this time.

And what was the POUM? That party, partially created by cadre formerly associated with Trotsky in the Spanish Left Opposition, failed on virtually every count. That party made every mistake in the revolutionary book. Those conscious mistakes from its inception included, but were not limited to, the creation of an unprincipled bloc between the former Left Oppositionists and the former Right Oppositionists (Bukharinites) of Juan Maurin to form the POUM in 1935; political support to the Popular Front including entry into the government coalition in Catalonia by its leader, Andreas Nin; creation of its own small trade union federation instead of entry in the massive anarchist led-CNT to fight for the perspective of a workers state; a willful failure to seriously expand the organization outside of Catalonia; creation of its own militia units and other institutions reflecting a hands-off attitude toward political struggle with other parties; and, fatally, an equivocal role in the Barcelona uprising of 1937. In short, at best, the POUM pursued left social democratic policies in a situation that required Bolshevik policies. Read 1937Orwell for other insights into the POUM.

*"Blood Of Spain-"Memories Of The Spanish Civil War- An Oral History From Post-Franco Spain

Click on title to link to a guest commentary on Ronald Fraser's "Blood Of Spain". e

BOOK REVIEW

BLOOD OF SPAIN; AN ORAL HISTORY OF THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR, RONALD FRASER, PANTHEON, 1979

As the 70th Anniversary of the beginning of the Spanish Civil War is approaching this writer is reviewing some important works that militants should read in order to draw the lessons of the defeat of the Spanish revolution. The writer has been interested, as a pro-Republican partisan, in the Spanish Civil War since he was a teenager. What initially perked my interest, and remains of interest, is the passionate struggle of the Spanish working class to create its own political organization of society, its leadership of the struggle against Spanish fascism and the romance surrounding the entry of the International Brigades, particularly the American Abraham Lincoln Battalion of the 15th Brigade, into the struggle.

Underlying my interests has always been a nagging question of how that struggle could have been won by the working class. The Spanish proletariat certainly was capable of both heroic action and the ability to create organizations that reflected its own class interests i.e. the worker militias and factory committees. Of all modern working class revolutions after the Russian revolution Spain showed the most promise of success. Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky noted that the political class-consciousness of the Spanish proletariat at that time was higher than that of the Russian proletariat in 1917. Yet it failed in Spain. Mr. Fraser’s oral history of the period, if only indirectly, gives some answers to the reasons for that failure.

The format Mr. Fraser has chosen, an oral history by participants from all sections of Spanish society and virtually all political parties, is an interesting way to provide those answers. His decision to emphasize the rank and file and middle-level participants as they remembered those experiences in the mid-1970’s rather than the big name leaders was also a wise decision. Lapses of memory and errors by the participants over time, however, are obvious drawbacks to this format. As are the reinforced hardening of political lines due to the suppression of political life under Franco. Additionally, from this partisan writer’s political perspective too much space was given to secondary events at the expense of actions like the May Days in Barcelona, 1937. As was Mr. Fraser's attempt to be politically all-inclusive and even-handed which sometimes confused the issues presented. Nevertheless, this is a book that militants should read in order to get the favor of the conflict.

The Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939 has been the subject of innumerable works from every possible political and military perspective possible. A fair number of such treatises, especially from those responsible for the military and political policies on the Republican side, are merely alibis for the disastrous policies that led to defeat. Mr. Fraser’s work reaches down beyond those perspectives to look at the base of society that actually fought the war. What he finds is the furious nature of the struggle in Spanish society between the old agrarian- based economy and the newer capitalist- based economy; the religious tensions caused by the breakup of the old agrarian society and the tensions between believers and church-burners; the struggle between centralizers and federalists which formed the core of the unresolved national questions, especially in Catalonia; the intense political struggles within the broad sections that supported both left and right, especially the role of the Stalinist police apparatus; the international ideological political factors that played a role, if not, as erroneously assumed, the decisive factor; and, finally, the burning personal antagonisms that in a civil war pit brother against brother, family against family, town against town, etc.. Read on.