Showing posts with label reformism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reformism. Show all posts
Friday, July 23, 2010
*From The Pages Of "Workers Hammer"-On The British Labour Party, Circa 2010- A Guest Commentary
*Click onthe headline to link to a Workers Hammer article from Spring 2010 on the British Labour Party and the then upcoming elections.
*Once Again, On The British Labour Party Question- On "Entryism"- A Short Note
Click on the headline to link to an American Left History blog entry-From The "In Defense Of Marxism" Website Via "Renegade Eye"- On The British Labour Party- A Guest Commentary, dated Sunday July 18, 2010, for the article mentioned below and my comment.
Markin comment:
I had not intended my comment about the IMT leader Sewell’s “In Defense Of Marxism” British Labour Party article to be anything other than a short commentary. However, someone here has asked me to fill in the blanks a little about the task of revolutionaries in entering (or, alternatively, at least seriously challenging from the outside) the British Labour Party for leadership of its working class mass constituency. I mentioned in that previous comment (see linked article above)the notion of splitting that party into its component parts, reformist and revolutionary, in order to drive the class struggle in Great Britain forward. The following are a few thoughts on that issue:
Look, today, in the post-Soviet “death of communism” political landscape that we are just coming out of, despite the overwhelming objective economic situation which cries out, and cries out to high heaven, for socialist solutions we revolutionaries who follow the banner, seriously follow the banner, of Marxism, especially as it follows its Trotskyist line through the history of the international working class movement are as scarce as hen’s teeth. We pose, and rightly so, as champions of the historic needs (and historic destiny, as well) of the working class. In that sense we oppose, and oppose vigorously, all reformist roadblocks, both inside that movement and out, but mainly today inside. But our forces are small, our needs are great, and our maneuverability limited.
Nevertheless we are not without tactical possibilities. And here is where the notion of “entry” (as opposed to the formal, politically obligatory, membership of individual militants) into the British Labour Party comes into play, if such a tactic is warranted today given the political trajectory of that party. While, as stated in my previous commentary, it is not at all clear to me that there is any motion that warrants such “entry” rather than working from the outside I was asked about the rationale for doing so and that is what this comment is about.
In a perfect working class universe under conditions of bourgeois rule we would want, and we would expect, given the viciousness of our blood-drenched opponent, to have one mass party, one mass revolutionary, party to confront the enemy. The history of our movement, however, even before Marx and his seminal work, and clarion call, The Communist Manifesto, in the 19th century has, repeatedly, demonstrated that such a situation is the exception rather than the rule. (The Manifesto itself, in its third part, is a nothing less than an intense polemical battle against those other socialist tendencies of the time for the “soul” of the European working class.)
Periodically the great divide between the prevailing, essentially parliamentary, reformist notions of the working class coming to power and an understanding of the necessity of a revolutionary takeover has created conditions where the advanced workers (and others, in their wake) follow the revolutionary party. That is our great shining example of the October Bolshevik revolution in Russia in 1917. Even there, the Bolsheviks had to fight, tooth and nail, against the Menshevik tendency (the reformist branch of the Russian working class movement of the time, although they, at least some elements of it, were not necessarily aware of it at the time given conditions in Czarist Russia) to break the workers movement from bourgeois society.
So how do those lessons help serve revolutionaries in Great Britain today. Whether the “entry” tactic is called for, or not, today the hard reality, and the hard reality especially in Great Britain, given the dead weight of the Labour party as an obstacle to revolution (hell, even to reform lately), is that one cannot reasonably expect to split that party without a life or death fight against the reformist, no, sub-reformist leadership of that party. Trying to be an organic part of Labour, to merely attempt to push it to the left (a little) and be "militant", just will not do. Generations of British revolutionaries have broken their teeth on that concept.
And as a final caveat take this: Without a perspective, as broadly outlined above, history has also shown, and shown painfully at times, that merely trying to be an organic part of the Labour Party is the kiss of death, the "kiss of the spider woman” for revolutionaries and their organizations. Look to the example of earlier generations of British revolutionaries (and not that far back either, look at the 1980s) who were spit out, and spit out unceremoniously, when the deal went down. Whether those revolutionaries explained things to the workers, patiently and soberly, or not.
Markin comment:
I had not intended my comment about the IMT leader Sewell’s “In Defense Of Marxism” British Labour Party article to be anything other than a short commentary. However, someone here has asked me to fill in the blanks a little about the task of revolutionaries in entering (or, alternatively, at least seriously challenging from the outside) the British Labour Party for leadership of its working class mass constituency. I mentioned in that previous comment (see linked article above)the notion of splitting that party into its component parts, reformist and revolutionary, in order to drive the class struggle in Great Britain forward. The following are a few thoughts on that issue:
Look, today, in the post-Soviet “death of communism” political landscape that we are just coming out of, despite the overwhelming objective economic situation which cries out, and cries out to high heaven, for socialist solutions we revolutionaries who follow the banner, seriously follow the banner, of Marxism, especially as it follows its Trotskyist line through the history of the international working class movement are as scarce as hen’s teeth. We pose, and rightly so, as champions of the historic needs (and historic destiny, as well) of the working class. In that sense we oppose, and oppose vigorously, all reformist roadblocks, both inside that movement and out, but mainly today inside. But our forces are small, our needs are great, and our maneuverability limited.
Nevertheless we are not without tactical possibilities. And here is where the notion of “entry” (as opposed to the formal, politically obligatory, membership of individual militants) into the British Labour Party comes into play, if such a tactic is warranted today given the political trajectory of that party. While, as stated in my previous commentary, it is not at all clear to me that there is any motion that warrants such “entry” rather than working from the outside I was asked about the rationale for doing so and that is what this comment is about.
In a perfect working class universe under conditions of bourgeois rule we would want, and we would expect, given the viciousness of our blood-drenched opponent, to have one mass party, one mass revolutionary, party to confront the enemy. The history of our movement, however, even before Marx and his seminal work, and clarion call, The Communist Manifesto, in the 19th century has, repeatedly, demonstrated that such a situation is the exception rather than the rule. (The Manifesto itself, in its third part, is a nothing less than an intense polemical battle against those other socialist tendencies of the time for the “soul” of the European working class.)
Periodically the great divide between the prevailing, essentially parliamentary, reformist notions of the working class coming to power and an understanding of the necessity of a revolutionary takeover has created conditions where the advanced workers (and others, in their wake) follow the revolutionary party. That is our great shining example of the October Bolshevik revolution in Russia in 1917. Even there, the Bolsheviks had to fight, tooth and nail, against the Menshevik tendency (the reformist branch of the Russian working class movement of the time, although they, at least some elements of it, were not necessarily aware of it at the time given conditions in Czarist Russia) to break the workers movement from bourgeois society.
So how do those lessons help serve revolutionaries in Great Britain today. Whether the “entry” tactic is called for, or not, today the hard reality, and the hard reality especially in Great Britain, given the dead weight of the Labour party as an obstacle to revolution (hell, even to reform lately), is that one cannot reasonably expect to split that party without a life or death fight against the reformist, no, sub-reformist leadership of that party. Trying to be an organic part of Labour, to merely attempt to push it to the left (a little) and be "militant", just will not do. Generations of British revolutionaries have broken their teeth on that concept.
And as a final caveat take this: Without a perspective, as broadly outlined above, history has also shown, and shown painfully at times, that merely trying to be an organic part of the Labour Party is the kiss of death, the "kiss of the spider woman” for revolutionaries and their organizations. Look to the example of earlier generations of British revolutionaries (and not that far back either, look at the 1980s) who were spit out, and spit out unceremoniously, when the deal went down. Whether those revolutionaries explained things to the workers, patiently and soberly, or not.
Monday, June 21, 2010
*From The "Workers' Press" Blog- Resignation (With Analysis) From The International Marxist Tendency (IMT)
Click on the headline to link to a "Workers' Press" Blog- "Resignation (With Analysis) From The International Marxist Tendency (IMT)."
Markin comment:
This is an interesting document from a former member of the American section of the International Marxist Tendency. Frankly, I don't know much about this organization other than of their adoration for Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, his scheme for some kind of Fifth International, and various, admittedly, interesting historical articles from their site, that IMT supporter "Renegade Eye" puts on his blog. For the IMT position on the allegations in this document, if any, click on links to that site at the right.
Markin comment:
This is an interesting document from a former member of the American section of the International Marxist Tendency. Frankly, I don't know much about this organization other than of their adoration for Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, his scheme for some kind of Fifth International, and various, admittedly, interesting historical articles from their site, that IMT supporter "Renegade Eye" puts on his blog. For the IMT position on the allegations in this document, if any, click on links to that site at the right.
Tuesday, June 01, 2010
From The Archives Of The “ Revolutionary History” Journal-Karl Kautsky's "The intellectuals and the workers"
Click on the headline to link to a "Wikipedia" entry for pre-World War I Marxist leader, Karl Kautsky.
The intellectuals and the workers
Karl Kautsky (1854-1938), the ‘Pope of Marxism’, wrote the following article when he was the major theoretician of the German Social Democracy. It first appeared in Die Neue Zeit (Vol.XXII, no.4, 1903), the journal which Kautsky edited from 1883 to 1917, and appeared in English in the April 1946 edition of Fourth International.
Part of the very problem which once again so keenly preoccupies our attention is the antagonism between the intellectuals and the proletariat.
My colleagues will for the most part wax indignant at my admission of this antagonism. But it actually exists, and as in other cases, it would be a most inexpedient tactic to try to cope with this fact by ignoring it.
This antagonism is a social one, it relates to classes and not individuals. An individual intellectual, like an individual capitalist, may join the proletariat in its class struggle. When he does, he changes his character too. It is not of this type of intellectual, who is still an exception among his fellows, that we shall deal with in the following lines. Unless otherwise indicated I shall use the word intellectual to mean only the common run of intellectual, who take the standpoint of bourgeois society and who are characteristic of intellectuals as a whole, who stand in a certain antagonism to the proletariat.
This antagonism differs, however, from the antagonism between labour and capital. An intellectual is not a capitalist. True, his standard of life is bourgeois and he must maintain it if he is not to become a pauper; but at the same time he has to sell the product of his labour, and frequently his labour power; and he is himself often enough exploited and humiliated by the capitalists. Hence the intellectual does not stand in any economic antagonism to the proletariat. But his status of life and his conditions of labour are not proletarian, and this gives rise to a certain antagonism in sentiments and ideas.
As an isolated individual, the proletarian is a nonentity. His strength, his progress, his hopes and expectations are entirely derived from organisation, from systematic action in conjunction with his fellows. He feels himself big and strong when he is part of a big and strong organism. The organism is the main thing for him; the individual by comparison means very little. The proletarian fights with the utmost devotion as part of the anonymous mass, without prospect of personal advantage or personal glory, performing his duty in any post assigned to him, with a voluntary discipline which pervades all his feelings and thoughts.
Quite different is the case of the intellectual. He fights not by means of power, but by argument. His weapons are his personal knowledge, his personal ability and his personal convictions. He can attain a position only through his personal abilities. Hence the freest play for these seems to him the prime condition for success. It is only with difficulty that he submits to serving as a part which is subordinate to the whole, and then only from necessity, not from inclination. He recognises the need of discipline only for the masses, not for the select few. And naturally he counts himself among the latter,
In addition to this antagonism between the intellectual and the proletarian in sentiment, there is yet another antagonism. The intellectual, armed with the general education of our time, conceives himself as very superior to the proletarian. Even Engels writes of the scholarly mystification with which he approached workers in his youth. The intellectual finds it very easy to overlook in the proletarian his equal as a fellow fighter, at whose side in the combat he must take his place. Instead he sees in the proletarian the latter's low level of intellectual development, which it is the intellectual's task to raise. He sees in the worker not a comrade but a pupil. The intellectual clings to Lassalle’s aphorism on the bond between science and the proletariat, a bond which will raise society to a higher plane. As advocate of science, the intellectuals come to the workers not in order to co-operate with them as comrades, but as an especially friendly external force in society, offering them aid.
For Lassalle, who coined the aphorism on science and the proletariat, science, like the state, stands above the class struggle. Today we know this to be false. For the state is the instrument of the ruling class. Moreover, science itself rises above the classes only insofar as it does not deal with classes, that is, only insofar as it is a natural and not a social science. A scientific examination of society produces an entirely different conclusion when society is observed from a class standpoint, especially from the standpoint of a class which is antagonistic to that society. When brought to the proletariat from the capitalist class, science is invariably adapted to suit capitalist interests. What the proletariat needs is a scientific understanding of its own position in society. That kind of science a worker cannot obtain in the officially and socially approved manner. The proletarian himself must develop his own theory. For this reason he must be completely self-taught, no matter whether his origin is academic or proletarian. The object of study is the activity of the proletariat itself, its role in the process of production, its role in the class struggle. Only from this activity can the theory, the self-consciousness of the proletariat, arise.
The alliance of science with labour and its goal of saving humanity, must therefore be understood not in the sense which the academicians transmit to the people the knowledge which they gain in the bourgeois classroom, but rather in this sense that every one of our co-fighters, academicians and proletarians alike, who are capable of participating in proletarian activity, utilise the common struggle or at least investigate it, in order to draw new scientific knowledge which can in turn be fruitful for further proletarian activity. Since that is how the matter stands, it is impossible to conceive of science being handed down to the proletariat or of an alliance between them as two independent powers. That science, which can contribute to the emancipation of the proletariat, can be developed only by the proletariat and through it. What the liberals bring over from the bourgeois scientific circles cannot serve to expedite the struggle for emancipation, but often only to retard it.
The remarks which follow are by way of digression from our main theme. But today when the question of the intellectuals is of such extreme importance, the digression is not perhaps without value.
Nietzsche’s philosophy with its cult of superman for whom the fulfilment of his own individuality is everything and the subordination of the individual to a great social aim is as vulgar as it is despicable, this philosophy is the real philosophy of the intellectual; and it renders him totally unfit to participate in the class struggle of the proletariat.
Next to Nietzsche, the most outstanding spokesman of a philosophy based on the sentiments of the intellectual is Ibsen. His Doctor Stockmann (An Enemy of the People) is not a socialist, as so many believe, but rather the type of intellectual who is bound to come into conflict with the proletarian movement, and with any popular movement generally, as soon as he attempts to work within it. For the basis of the proletarian movement, as of every democratic movement, is respect for the majority of one’s fellows. A typical intellectual a la Stockmann regards a “compact majority” as a monster which must be overthrown.
From the difference in sentiment between the proletarian and the intellectual, which we have noted above, a conflict can easily arise between the intellectual and the party when the intellectual joins it. That holds equally even if his joining the party does not give rise to any economic difficulties for the intellectual, and even though his theoretical understanding of the movement may be adequate. Not only the very worst elements, but often men of splendid character and devoted to their convictions have on this account suffered shipwreck in the party.
That is why every intellectual must examine himself conscientiously, before joining the party. And that is why the party must examine him to see whether he can integrate himself in the class struggle of the proletariat, and become immersed in it as a simple soldier, without feeling coerced or oppressed. Whoever is capable of this can contribute valuable services to the proletariat according to his talents, and gain great satisfaction from his party activity. Whoever is incapable can expect great friction, disappointment, conflicts, which are of advantage neither to him nor to the party.
An ideal example of an intellectual who thoroughly assimilated the sentiments of a proletarian, and who, although a brilliant writer, quite lost the specific manner of an intellectual, who marched cheerfully with the rank-and-file, who worked in any post assigned to him, who devoted himself wholeheartedly to our great cause, and despised the feeble whinings about the suppression of one's individuality, as individuals trained in the philosophy of Nietzsche and Ibsen are prone to do whenever they happen to be in a minority - that ideal example of the intellectual whom the socialist movement needs, was Wilhelm Liebknecht. We might also mention Marx, who never forced himself to the forefront, and whose hearty discipline in the International, where he often found himself in the minority, was exemplary.
Karl Kautsky
The intellectuals and the workers
Karl Kautsky (1854-1938), the ‘Pope of Marxism’, wrote the following article when he was the major theoretician of the German Social Democracy. It first appeared in Die Neue Zeit (Vol.XXII, no.4, 1903), the journal which Kautsky edited from 1883 to 1917, and appeared in English in the April 1946 edition of Fourth International.
Part of the very problem which once again so keenly preoccupies our attention is the antagonism between the intellectuals and the proletariat.
My colleagues will for the most part wax indignant at my admission of this antagonism. But it actually exists, and as in other cases, it would be a most inexpedient tactic to try to cope with this fact by ignoring it.
This antagonism is a social one, it relates to classes and not individuals. An individual intellectual, like an individual capitalist, may join the proletariat in its class struggle. When he does, he changes his character too. It is not of this type of intellectual, who is still an exception among his fellows, that we shall deal with in the following lines. Unless otherwise indicated I shall use the word intellectual to mean only the common run of intellectual, who take the standpoint of bourgeois society and who are characteristic of intellectuals as a whole, who stand in a certain antagonism to the proletariat.
This antagonism differs, however, from the antagonism between labour and capital. An intellectual is not a capitalist. True, his standard of life is bourgeois and he must maintain it if he is not to become a pauper; but at the same time he has to sell the product of his labour, and frequently his labour power; and he is himself often enough exploited and humiliated by the capitalists. Hence the intellectual does not stand in any economic antagonism to the proletariat. But his status of life and his conditions of labour are not proletarian, and this gives rise to a certain antagonism in sentiments and ideas.
As an isolated individual, the proletarian is a nonentity. His strength, his progress, his hopes and expectations are entirely derived from organisation, from systematic action in conjunction with his fellows. He feels himself big and strong when he is part of a big and strong organism. The organism is the main thing for him; the individual by comparison means very little. The proletarian fights with the utmost devotion as part of the anonymous mass, without prospect of personal advantage or personal glory, performing his duty in any post assigned to him, with a voluntary discipline which pervades all his feelings and thoughts.
Quite different is the case of the intellectual. He fights not by means of power, but by argument. His weapons are his personal knowledge, his personal ability and his personal convictions. He can attain a position only through his personal abilities. Hence the freest play for these seems to him the prime condition for success. It is only with difficulty that he submits to serving as a part which is subordinate to the whole, and then only from necessity, not from inclination. He recognises the need of discipline only for the masses, not for the select few. And naturally he counts himself among the latter,
In addition to this antagonism between the intellectual and the proletarian in sentiment, there is yet another antagonism. The intellectual, armed with the general education of our time, conceives himself as very superior to the proletarian. Even Engels writes of the scholarly mystification with which he approached workers in his youth. The intellectual finds it very easy to overlook in the proletarian his equal as a fellow fighter, at whose side in the combat he must take his place. Instead he sees in the proletarian the latter's low level of intellectual development, which it is the intellectual's task to raise. He sees in the worker not a comrade but a pupil. The intellectual clings to Lassalle’s aphorism on the bond between science and the proletariat, a bond which will raise society to a higher plane. As advocate of science, the intellectuals come to the workers not in order to co-operate with them as comrades, but as an especially friendly external force in society, offering them aid.
For Lassalle, who coined the aphorism on science and the proletariat, science, like the state, stands above the class struggle. Today we know this to be false. For the state is the instrument of the ruling class. Moreover, science itself rises above the classes only insofar as it does not deal with classes, that is, only insofar as it is a natural and not a social science. A scientific examination of society produces an entirely different conclusion when society is observed from a class standpoint, especially from the standpoint of a class which is antagonistic to that society. When brought to the proletariat from the capitalist class, science is invariably adapted to suit capitalist interests. What the proletariat needs is a scientific understanding of its own position in society. That kind of science a worker cannot obtain in the officially and socially approved manner. The proletarian himself must develop his own theory. For this reason he must be completely self-taught, no matter whether his origin is academic or proletarian. The object of study is the activity of the proletariat itself, its role in the process of production, its role in the class struggle. Only from this activity can the theory, the self-consciousness of the proletariat, arise.
The alliance of science with labour and its goal of saving humanity, must therefore be understood not in the sense which the academicians transmit to the people the knowledge which they gain in the bourgeois classroom, but rather in this sense that every one of our co-fighters, academicians and proletarians alike, who are capable of participating in proletarian activity, utilise the common struggle or at least investigate it, in order to draw new scientific knowledge which can in turn be fruitful for further proletarian activity. Since that is how the matter stands, it is impossible to conceive of science being handed down to the proletariat or of an alliance between them as two independent powers. That science, which can contribute to the emancipation of the proletariat, can be developed only by the proletariat and through it. What the liberals bring over from the bourgeois scientific circles cannot serve to expedite the struggle for emancipation, but often only to retard it.
The remarks which follow are by way of digression from our main theme. But today when the question of the intellectuals is of such extreme importance, the digression is not perhaps without value.
Nietzsche’s philosophy with its cult of superman for whom the fulfilment of his own individuality is everything and the subordination of the individual to a great social aim is as vulgar as it is despicable, this philosophy is the real philosophy of the intellectual; and it renders him totally unfit to participate in the class struggle of the proletariat.
Next to Nietzsche, the most outstanding spokesman of a philosophy based on the sentiments of the intellectual is Ibsen. His Doctor Stockmann (An Enemy of the People) is not a socialist, as so many believe, but rather the type of intellectual who is bound to come into conflict with the proletarian movement, and with any popular movement generally, as soon as he attempts to work within it. For the basis of the proletarian movement, as of every democratic movement, is respect for the majority of one’s fellows. A typical intellectual a la Stockmann regards a “compact majority” as a monster which must be overthrown.
From the difference in sentiment between the proletarian and the intellectual, which we have noted above, a conflict can easily arise between the intellectual and the party when the intellectual joins it. That holds equally even if his joining the party does not give rise to any economic difficulties for the intellectual, and even though his theoretical understanding of the movement may be adequate. Not only the very worst elements, but often men of splendid character and devoted to their convictions have on this account suffered shipwreck in the party.
That is why every intellectual must examine himself conscientiously, before joining the party. And that is why the party must examine him to see whether he can integrate himself in the class struggle of the proletariat, and become immersed in it as a simple soldier, without feeling coerced or oppressed. Whoever is capable of this can contribute valuable services to the proletariat according to his talents, and gain great satisfaction from his party activity. Whoever is incapable can expect great friction, disappointment, conflicts, which are of advantage neither to him nor to the party.
An ideal example of an intellectual who thoroughly assimilated the sentiments of a proletarian, and who, although a brilliant writer, quite lost the specific manner of an intellectual, who marched cheerfully with the rank-and-file, who worked in any post assigned to him, who devoted himself wholeheartedly to our great cause, and despised the feeble whinings about the suppression of one's individuality, as individuals trained in the philosophy of Nietzsche and Ibsen are prone to do whenever they happen to be in a minority - that ideal example of the intellectual whom the socialist movement needs, was Wilhelm Liebknecht. We might also mention Marx, who never forced himself to the forefront, and whose hearty discipline in the International, where he often found himself in the minority, was exemplary.
Karl Kautsky
Saturday, May 22, 2010
*From The "HistoMat" Blog- The Skewering Of "Bad Boy" (ex) Christopher Hitchens
Click on the headline to link to the "HistoMat" blog for a little well-served and well-placed skewering of one Christopher Hitchens-poster boy for ?.
Saturday, February 20, 2010
*A Polemic On Haiti And What Revolutionaries Can Do About It- The Internationalist Group vs. The Spartacist League-Part 2
Click on the headline to link to an Internationalist Group online article, dated January 30, 2010, "Spartacist League Backs U.S. Invasion of Haiti" referred to in the article posted below.
Below is the second part of the International Group/Spartacist League polemic on the prospects for socialist revolution in Haiti and the question of the call for the U.S. to withdraw its troops there under present conditions.
Workers Vanguard No. 952
12 February 2010
Third World Cheerleading and Cynical Phrasemongering
Haiti: IG Conjures Up Revolution Amid the Rubble
Confronting the massive toll of death and destruction in the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti, Marxists were obliged to underline the history of imperialist depredations that left the Haitian masses utterly exposed in the face of this natural disaster. Workers Vanguard’s front-page article, “Haiti Earthquake Horror: Imperialism, Racism and Starvation” (WV No. 951, 29 January), also documented the role of the Haitian lackeys of imperialism, including the populist Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the former Haitian leader embraced by the reformist left internationally. We told the bitter truth: Haitian society had been pulped by the earthquake. The desperate conditions of Haiti today cannot be resolved within Haiti: “The key to the liberation of Haiti lies in proletarian revolution throughout the hemisphere, in which the mobilization of the sizable Haitian proletariat in the diaspora can play a key role.”
We exposed the reformist “socialists” who cheered Obama’s election as U.S. Commander-in-Chief and now plead for U.S. aid without the exercise of American military might, revealing their touching faith in the bourgeois state. Our article also attacked the grotesque and cynical phrasemongering of the centrist Internationalist Group (IG). In the IG’s fantasyland, the earthquake placed workers revolution on the immediate agenda in Haiti: “This small but militant proletariat can place itself at the head of the impoverished urban and rural masses seeking to organize their own power, particularly at present where the machinery of the capitalist state is largely reduced to rubble and a few marauding bands of police” (“Haiti: Workers Solidarity, Yes! Imperialist Occupation, No!” Internationalist, January 2010). To this end, the IG demanded that “all U.S./U.N. forces get out,” claiming: “This huge military occupation is not intended to deliver aid, but to put down unrest by the poor and working people of Haiti” (emphasis in original). As we wrote in response:
“Notwithstanding the IG’s deranged and grotesque fantasies, there are no good alternatives facing Haiti today. The U.S. military is the only force on the ground with the capacity—e.g., trucks, planes, ships—to organize the transport of what food, water, medical and other supplies are getting to Haiti’s population. And they’re doing it in the typical piggish U.S. imperialist manner. We have always opposed U.S. and UN occupations in Haiti and everywhere—and it may become necessary to call for U.S./UN out of Haiti in the near future—but we are not going to call for an end to such aid as the desperate Haitian masses can get their hands on.”
The IG seizes on this statement in a subsequent polemic posted on its Web site to revile the SL for nothing less than having “gone over from bending under pressure from the ruling class to outright apology for imperialism” (“Spartacist League Backs U.S. Imperialist Invasion of Haiti,” 30 January). Not only does the IG lie about our position but, by omission, it lies about its own position, doctoring a quote from its earlier statement in order to disappear its call for a revolutionary uprising “particularly at present where the machinery of the capitalist state is largely reduced to rubble and a few marauding bands of police.” The IG’s squeamish self-censorship is simply further evidence that this oh-so-revolutionary rhetoric was nothing but vicarious bravado. Has the IG informed the Haitian workers and oppressed masses that now is the time for them to rise up in revolution and drive the U.S. troops into the sea? There is certainly no evidence of this on the IG’s Web site, which has yet to even carry a French translation of their articles on the earthquake.
“Democratic” Imperialism and the Aristide Connection
In fact, the IG’s declarations are not intended for the Haitian masses but for the consumption of the domestic Third Worldist and reformist swamp the IG inhabits. Take, for example, the Workers World Party (WWP), which joins the IG in proclaiming “U.S. Troops Invade Haiti—Pentagon Sabotages Relief Effort, Escalates Suffering” (Workers World, 4 February). With greater honesty than the IG, WWP openly urges the Obama administration to engage in a purely humanitarian mission in Haiti. Workers World approvingly quotes Kim Ives of the weekly paper Haiti Liberté saying, “The earthquake was half a revolution, removing all the government buildings and virtually eliminating the repressive power of the state. That’s why the U.S. is rushing in to replace that state power, to control Haiti’s future and to prevent the people of Haiti from carrying out the other half.”
It should be noted that Ives is a passionate supporter of Aristide, who was toppled from power in 1991 shortly after his election, reinstalled by Democratic president Bill Clinton in 1994 at the point of U.S. Marine bayonets, and removed from office a second time through a U.S.-led invasion force in 2004. We opposed both the 1994 and 2004 invasions and called for the immediate withdrawal of all imperialist troops. Aristide protégé René Préval is now president of Haiti. Our previous article documented the role played by Aristide, Préval & Co. as quislings for the U.S. imperialists in helping to police the impoverished Haitian masses. Yet in its two articles on the earthquake, the IG has only oblique and passing references to Aristide.
It is no accident that the IG largely sidesteps the issue of Aristide. In its second article, the IG warns darkly that the U.S. military may “go beyond the patrolling of Haiti” by the existing United Nations occupation force and “take over the government and impose something like a U.N. protectorate on Haiti.” Put simply, this is a crass prettification of the imperialist occupation that resulted from the 2004 U.S.-led invasion. Haiti has been a UN protectorate in all but name for the past six years: the imperialist occupiers have been the real state power there, lording it over the Haitian masses. Préval was hand-picked by Washington in large part because, as a representative of Aristide’s “Lavalas” movement, he could hope to retain popular support and dampen unrest. Like Aristide, Préval is simply a toady of the imperialists. Exposing this reality is central to combating the widespread illusions among Haitian working people in the populism represented by Aristide. However, the IG’s shrieking about the supposed imperialist “invasion” of a country already under imperialist occupation does just the opposite. It essentially portrays Préval and his predecessor Aristide not as quislings of the imperialist powers but as the embodiment of national independence. The pro-Aristide liberals make this explicit. A petition initiated by the Canada Haiti Action Network on January 21, signed by Noam Chomsky, among others, declares:
“We demand that US commanders immediately restore executive control of the relief effort to Haiti’s leaders, and to help rather than replace the local officials they claim to support....
“We call on the de facto rulers of Haiti to facilitate, as the reconstruction begins, the renewal of popular participation in the determination of collective priorities and decisions.”
The petition goes on to call on the imperialists to bring back from exile “Haiti’s most popular and most inspiring political leader, Jean-Bertrand Aristide.”
The IG, the liberals and the reformists are perpetuating the fraud that Aristide and Préval are capable of some modicum of independent functioning. Under the imperialist occupation of Haiti that began in 2004, disaster relief has not been implemented by imperialism’s corrupt and ineffective agents in the Haitian government, who totally lack the requisite means and ability. Yet we don’t recall the IG screaming about an imperialist invasion when the U.S. and Canada dispatched warships to Haiti after the country was devastated by four hurricanes in the summer of 2008.
To back up its current claims of an “invasion,” the IG simply manufactures its own alternative reality, assuring us that “none” of the U.S. ships “carried cargo for Haiti” and that “U.S. military planes did not deliver anything.” Yet, even the IG acknowledges that the UN has been feeding up to 310,000 people. In the IG’s fantasy version of events, the question of how those hundreds of tons of supplies got to Haiti remains a mystery. The IG might also ponder why the “nuclear-powered aircraft carrier,” the USS Carl Vinson, which the IG, in its diatribe against us, adduced as evidence of the U.S. presence in Haiti as purely and simply an invasion force, has already left Haiti along with a number of other U.S. warships.
In our article, we pointed out that U.S. authorities are building a concentration camp at Guantánamo where they can detain any Haitian refugees caught trying to flee the country by sea. At the same time, we noted that the Cuban deformed workers state, despite being under the guns of U.S. imperialism, had opened its airspace to American military planes in order to speed up aid efforts to Haiti. We challenged the IG to declare whether the Cuban government should be condemned for what, in the IG’s twisted logic, can only be seen as support to an imperialist invasion of Haiti. So far, the IG has preferred to duck that question. Yet this issue has taken on considerable importance as the U.S. military camp in Guantánamo has emerged as a key logistical hub for U.S. Navy planes flying relief supplies into Port-au-Prince. Because of the Cuban government’s overflight permission, which Havana has extended until the end of February, U.S. military and civilian planes carrying relief supplies for Haiti from the U.S. can save considerable time by flying directly to Guantánamo.
Nationalist Populism vs. Proletarian Internationalism
The cynicism of the IG’s vituperations against our refusal to oppose the U.S. military providing aid to the Haitian people is revealed not least by the fact that the IG itself did not oppose the deployment of National Guard troops to New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. In fact, in language similar to what we say regarding Haiti, the IG declared: “Revolutionary communists would certainly not stand in the way of troops actually providing aid or helping rescue survivors” (“New Orleans Death Trap: Thousands of Black Poor Left to Die,” Internationalist, September 2005). As far as the IG is concerned, it’s okay for U.S. military forces to provide aid to survivors of a natural disaster in the U.S., but not in the Third World.
Nor did the IG call for a workers revolt amid the devastation left in the wake of Katrina. Rather they took a page from Martin Luther King Jr. and called for a “march on Washington,” fatuously declaiming: “The sight of thousands of unemployed homeless camped out on the ellipse and the mall in full view of Bush’s White House and the Capitol, recalling the hunger marches of the early 1930s, would send shivers down the spine of the ruling class.”
In its response to us, the IG dismisses out of hand our reference to Leon Trotsky’s 1938 article, “Learn to Think,” sneering: “WV throws in a quote from Leon Trotsky about not interfering with soldiers extinguishing a fire or rescuing drowning people during a flood. But Trotsky was explicitly talking of a ‘national’ army, not an imperialist invasion force.” No. In fact, Trotsky was speaking here of not opposing on principle aid by an imperialist power to a national struggle in a semicolonial country. Trotsky’s example that “the workers would not interfere with soldiers who are extinguishing a fire” was meant to be a self-evident statement aimed at urging woodenheaded simpletons to learn to think. This is clearly too profound for the opportunists of the IG. By the IG’s logic, workers in the U.S. should be actively blocking any aid being shipped to Haiti by the U.S. military.
Adaptation to Third World populist nationalism is what lies behind the IG’s conjuring up fantasies of proletarian revolution in Haiti. The IG shrieks: “Haiti has now joined a growing list of places where, according to the SL, there is no working class. It started off with Bolivia in 2005, then came Oaxaca in 2006, now Haiti in 2010.” Well, it actually started much earlier than 2005. For example, in 1985, when current IG lÃder máximo Jan Norden was still editor of Workers Vanguard, we wrote in “South Africa: Razor’s Edge” (WV No. 376, 5 April 1985):
“South Africa is the one place in sub-Saharan Africa where there is the possibility for a workers state, because here the black population has been partially absorbed, at the bottom, into a modern industrialized society which can, based on the revolutionary reorganization of society, provide a decent life for its citizens.”
This, precisely, is the rather elementary point for Marxists, that socialist revolution requires an industrial proletarian concentration that is sufficient for overturning capitalist class rule and establishing a workers state, the dictatorship of the proletariat. And if such is not the case? “Then the struggle for national liberation will produce only very partial results, results directed entirely against the working masses” (Leon Trotsky, The Permanent Revolution [1930]). This is clearly evident in Haiti, where bitter and bloody popular uprisings in recent decades have led to nothing more than the installation of bourgeois-populist regimes ultimately backed by the might of U.S. imperialism.
The same applies in contemporary Bolivia, where measures by the imperialists and the domestic bourgeoisie, centrally the shutting down of the nationalized tin mines, led to the material devastation and atomization of the once powerful mining proletariat. The 2005 “Bolivian revolution” that the IG and other fake leftists enthused over was in fact a plebeian upheaval that resulted in the coming to power of bourgeois populist Evo Morales. And while Mexico does have a powerful industrial proletariat, the struggle in Oaxaca, one of the most economically backward parts of the country, was limited to teachers and sectors of the petty bourgeoisie such as students and peasants. We pointed out: “Although the struggle in Oaxaca could serve as a spark to ignite workers struggle, in itself it does not pose a ‘revolutionary danger’,” as the IG would have it (“Down With Bloody State of Siege in Oaxaca!” WV No. 880, 10 November 2006). At bottom the IG’s glorification of the struggle in Oaxaca reflects its opportunist tailing of the populist milieu around the bourgeois Party of the Democratic Revolution.
The IG notwithstanding, the virtual absence of an industrial proletariat in Haiti, even before the devastation wreaked by the earthquake, is an obvious fact. Despite some modest economic development over the past few years, mainly centered on the garment industry, the financial trade magazine TendersInfo (5 October 2009) reported last fall: “The country now has 25 garment factories that export primarily to the United States and employ more than 24,000 workers, mostly women.” By comparison, the garment industry in Bangladesh consists of 4,500 factories employing more than 2.5 million workers. Of course, Bangladesh is a much bigger country than Haiti. However, even as a proportion of GDP, the economic weight of the textile industry in Bangladesh is almost twice that in Haiti.
However, this does not mean that the masses in Haiti are consigned in perpetuity to imperialist oppression. Again, as we pointed out in our last article, there is a sizable Haitian proletariat in the diaspora, which went unmentioned in the IG’s revolution-mongering around the earthquake. These workers can be a vital link to class struggle by the powerful North American proletariat. But to infuse the multiracial U.S. working class with an understanding of its role as the gravedigger of U.S. imperialism requires a political struggle against the pro-capitalist labor misleaders who chain the working class to its capitalist exploiters, centrally through political support to the Democratic Party.
And here is where the soft opportunist underbelly of the IG’s Third World cheerleading is most exposed. At the time of the 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, we called for military defense of that country while stressing the need for class struggle against the American ruling class at home. At the same time, we highlighted our call at the time of the Soviet intervention beginning in December 1979 to “Hail Red Army in Afghanistan!” In contrast, when the IG initiated a November 2001 Hunter College rally in New York to protest plans by the administration to drive out undocumented immigrant students, IG speakers did not so much as mention the Soviet intervention, for fear of offending those anti-Communist leftists at the rally who had been on the imperialist side against the Red Army in Afghanistan (see “IG Disappears Red Army Fight Against Islamic Reaction in Afghanistan,” WV No. 772, 11 January 2002). While disappearing the one force capable of effecting a social revolution in Afghanistan, the IG idiotically raised the call for proletarian revolution in Afghanistan, where there is absolutely no industrial proletariat, writing in the Internationalist (September 2001): “Genuine communists defend semi-colonial countries against imperialist attack as we fight for socialist revolution against their bourgeois and, in the case of Afghanistan, feudalistic leaders.”
A few years later, the IG went a step further, amnestying the pro-capitalist International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) tops over the May Day 2008 antiwar West Coast port shutdown. That action was a powerful demonstration of the kind of working-class struggle needed against the imperialist occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. But, as we wrote, “the ILWU leadership politically undermined this action by channeling the ranks’ anger at the Iraqi occupation and desire to defend their union into pro-Democratic Party ‘national unity’ patriotism,” and support for Obama as the future Commander-in-Chief of U.S. imperialism (“ILWU Shuts West Coast Ports on May Day,” WV No. 914, 9 May 2008). Thus, we noted that the ILWU tops buried any mention of the war in Afghanistan, which Obama championed.
The IG, echoing its favorite left-talking labor faker, ILWU Local 10 Exec Board member Jack Heyman, screamed bloody murder over our supposed slander. But antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan, who was a speaker at the ILWU rally and was then running as an independent candidate against Democrat Nancy Pelosi, confirmed what we said. Sheehan told Workers Vanguard that Heyman’s co-emcee at the rally and fellow Exec Board member Clarence Thomas “said that I couldn’t say anything bad about Nancy Pelosi or talk about Afghanistan; I was supposed to stay focused only on Iraq” (quoted in “Antiwar Reformists, Labor Bureaucrats and the Democratic Party: The Syphilitic Chain,” WV No. 945, 23 October 2009)!
To paraphrase the IG: it is one thing to read in history books about former revolutionaries capitulating to programs alien to Marxism, but here we see the process unfolding in real time, before our eyes.
Below is the second part of the International Group/Spartacist League polemic on the prospects for socialist revolution in Haiti and the question of the call for the U.S. to withdraw its troops there under present conditions.
Workers Vanguard No. 952
12 February 2010
Third World Cheerleading and Cynical Phrasemongering
Haiti: IG Conjures Up Revolution Amid the Rubble
Confronting the massive toll of death and destruction in the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti, Marxists were obliged to underline the history of imperialist depredations that left the Haitian masses utterly exposed in the face of this natural disaster. Workers Vanguard’s front-page article, “Haiti Earthquake Horror: Imperialism, Racism and Starvation” (WV No. 951, 29 January), also documented the role of the Haitian lackeys of imperialism, including the populist Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the former Haitian leader embraced by the reformist left internationally. We told the bitter truth: Haitian society had been pulped by the earthquake. The desperate conditions of Haiti today cannot be resolved within Haiti: “The key to the liberation of Haiti lies in proletarian revolution throughout the hemisphere, in which the mobilization of the sizable Haitian proletariat in the diaspora can play a key role.”
We exposed the reformist “socialists” who cheered Obama’s election as U.S. Commander-in-Chief and now plead for U.S. aid without the exercise of American military might, revealing their touching faith in the bourgeois state. Our article also attacked the grotesque and cynical phrasemongering of the centrist Internationalist Group (IG). In the IG’s fantasyland, the earthquake placed workers revolution on the immediate agenda in Haiti: “This small but militant proletariat can place itself at the head of the impoverished urban and rural masses seeking to organize their own power, particularly at present where the machinery of the capitalist state is largely reduced to rubble and a few marauding bands of police” (“Haiti: Workers Solidarity, Yes! Imperialist Occupation, No!” Internationalist, January 2010). To this end, the IG demanded that “all U.S./U.N. forces get out,” claiming: “This huge military occupation is not intended to deliver aid, but to put down unrest by the poor and working people of Haiti” (emphasis in original). As we wrote in response:
“Notwithstanding the IG’s deranged and grotesque fantasies, there are no good alternatives facing Haiti today. The U.S. military is the only force on the ground with the capacity—e.g., trucks, planes, ships—to organize the transport of what food, water, medical and other supplies are getting to Haiti’s population. And they’re doing it in the typical piggish U.S. imperialist manner. We have always opposed U.S. and UN occupations in Haiti and everywhere—and it may become necessary to call for U.S./UN out of Haiti in the near future—but we are not going to call for an end to such aid as the desperate Haitian masses can get their hands on.”
The IG seizes on this statement in a subsequent polemic posted on its Web site to revile the SL for nothing less than having “gone over from bending under pressure from the ruling class to outright apology for imperialism” (“Spartacist League Backs U.S. Imperialist Invasion of Haiti,” 30 January). Not only does the IG lie about our position but, by omission, it lies about its own position, doctoring a quote from its earlier statement in order to disappear its call for a revolutionary uprising “particularly at present where the machinery of the capitalist state is largely reduced to rubble and a few marauding bands of police.” The IG’s squeamish self-censorship is simply further evidence that this oh-so-revolutionary rhetoric was nothing but vicarious bravado. Has the IG informed the Haitian workers and oppressed masses that now is the time for them to rise up in revolution and drive the U.S. troops into the sea? There is certainly no evidence of this on the IG’s Web site, which has yet to even carry a French translation of their articles on the earthquake.
“Democratic” Imperialism and the Aristide Connection
In fact, the IG’s declarations are not intended for the Haitian masses but for the consumption of the domestic Third Worldist and reformist swamp the IG inhabits. Take, for example, the Workers World Party (WWP), which joins the IG in proclaiming “U.S. Troops Invade Haiti—Pentagon Sabotages Relief Effort, Escalates Suffering” (Workers World, 4 February). With greater honesty than the IG, WWP openly urges the Obama administration to engage in a purely humanitarian mission in Haiti. Workers World approvingly quotes Kim Ives of the weekly paper Haiti Liberté saying, “The earthquake was half a revolution, removing all the government buildings and virtually eliminating the repressive power of the state. That’s why the U.S. is rushing in to replace that state power, to control Haiti’s future and to prevent the people of Haiti from carrying out the other half.”
It should be noted that Ives is a passionate supporter of Aristide, who was toppled from power in 1991 shortly after his election, reinstalled by Democratic president Bill Clinton in 1994 at the point of U.S. Marine bayonets, and removed from office a second time through a U.S.-led invasion force in 2004. We opposed both the 1994 and 2004 invasions and called for the immediate withdrawal of all imperialist troops. Aristide protégé René Préval is now president of Haiti. Our previous article documented the role played by Aristide, Préval & Co. as quislings for the U.S. imperialists in helping to police the impoverished Haitian masses. Yet in its two articles on the earthquake, the IG has only oblique and passing references to Aristide.
It is no accident that the IG largely sidesteps the issue of Aristide. In its second article, the IG warns darkly that the U.S. military may “go beyond the patrolling of Haiti” by the existing United Nations occupation force and “take over the government and impose something like a U.N. protectorate on Haiti.” Put simply, this is a crass prettification of the imperialist occupation that resulted from the 2004 U.S.-led invasion. Haiti has been a UN protectorate in all but name for the past six years: the imperialist occupiers have been the real state power there, lording it over the Haitian masses. Préval was hand-picked by Washington in large part because, as a representative of Aristide’s “Lavalas” movement, he could hope to retain popular support and dampen unrest. Like Aristide, Préval is simply a toady of the imperialists. Exposing this reality is central to combating the widespread illusions among Haitian working people in the populism represented by Aristide. However, the IG’s shrieking about the supposed imperialist “invasion” of a country already under imperialist occupation does just the opposite. It essentially portrays Préval and his predecessor Aristide not as quislings of the imperialist powers but as the embodiment of national independence. The pro-Aristide liberals make this explicit. A petition initiated by the Canada Haiti Action Network on January 21, signed by Noam Chomsky, among others, declares:
“We demand that US commanders immediately restore executive control of the relief effort to Haiti’s leaders, and to help rather than replace the local officials they claim to support....
“We call on the de facto rulers of Haiti to facilitate, as the reconstruction begins, the renewal of popular participation in the determination of collective priorities and decisions.”
The petition goes on to call on the imperialists to bring back from exile “Haiti’s most popular and most inspiring political leader, Jean-Bertrand Aristide.”
The IG, the liberals and the reformists are perpetuating the fraud that Aristide and Préval are capable of some modicum of independent functioning. Under the imperialist occupation of Haiti that began in 2004, disaster relief has not been implemented by imperialism’s corrupt and ineffective agents in the Haitian government, who totally lack the requisite means and ability. Yet we don’t recall the IG screaming about an imperialist invasion when the U.S. and Canada dispatched warships to Haiti after the country was devastated by four hurricanes in the summer of 2008.
To back up its current claims of an “invasion,” the IG simply manufactures its own alternative reality, assuring us that “none” of the U.S. ships “carried cargo for Haiti” and that “U.S. military planes did not deliver anything.” Yet, even the IG acknowledges that the UN has been feeding up to 310,000 people. In the IG’s fantasy version of events, the question of how those hundreds of tons of supplies got to Haiti remains a mystery. The IG might also ponder why the “nuclear-powered aircraft carrier,” the USS Carl Vinson, which the IG, in its diatribe against us, adduced as evidence of the U.S. presence in Haiti as purely and simply an invasion force, has already left Haiti along with a number of other U.S. warships.
In our article, we pointed out that U.S. authorities are building a concentration camp at Guantánamo where they can detain any Haitian refugees caught trying to flee the country by sea. At the same time, we noted that the Cuban deformed workers state, despite being under the guns of U.S. imperialism, had opened its airspace to American military planes in order to speed up aid efforts to Haiti. We challenged the IG to declare whether the Cuban government should be condemned for what, in the IG’s twisted logic, can only be seen as support to an imperialist invasion of Haiti. So far, the IG has preferred to duck that question. Yet this issue has taken on considerable importance as the U.S. military camp in Guantánamo has emerged as a key logistical hub for U.S. Navy planes flying relief supplies into Port-au-Prince. Because of the Cuban government’s overflight permission, which Havana has extended until the end of February, U.S. military and civilian planes carrying relief supplies for Haiti from the U.S. can save considerable time by flying directly to Guantánamo.
Nationalist Populism vs. Proletarian Internationalism
The cynicism of the IG’s vituperations against our refusal to oppose the U.S. military providing aid to the Haitian people is revealed not least by the fact that the IG itself did not oppose the deployment of National Guard troops to New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. In fact, in language similar to what we say regarding Haiti, the IG declared: “Revolutionary communists would certainly not stand in the way of troops actually providing aid or helping rescue survivors” (“New Orleans Death Trap: Thousands of Black Poor Left to Die,” Internationalist, September 2005). As far as the IG is concerned, it’s okay for U.S. military forces to provide aid to survivors of a natural disaster in the U.S., but not in the Third World.
Nor did the IG call for a workers revolt amid the devastation left in the wake of Katrina. Rather they took a page from Martin Luther King Jr. and called for a “march on Washington,” fatuously declaiming: “The sight of thousands of unemployed homeless camped out on the ellipse and the mall in full view of Bush’s White House and the Capitol, recalling the hunger marches of the early 1930s, would send shivers down the spine of the ruling class.”
In its response to us, the IG dismisses out of hand our reference to Leon Trotsky’s 1938 article, “Learn to Think,” sneering: “WV throws in a quote from Leon Trotsky about not interfering with soldiers extinguishing a fire or rescuing drowning people during a flood. But Trotsky was explicitly talking of a ‘national’ army, not an imperialist invasion force.” No. In fact, Trotsky was speaking here of not opposing on principle aid by an imperialist power to a national struggle in a semicolonial country. Trotsky’s example that “the workers would not interfere with soldiers who are extinguishing a fire” was meant to be a self-evident statement aimed at urging woodenheaded simpletons to learn to think. This is clearly too profound for the opportunists of the IG. By the IG’s logic, workers in the U.S. should be actively blocking any aid being shipped to Haiti by the U.S. military.
Adaptation to Third World populist nationalism is what lies behind the IG’s conjuring up fantasies of proletarian revolution in Haiti. The IG shrieks: “Haiti has now joined a growing list of places where, according to the SL, there is no working class. It started off with Bolivia in 2005, then came Oaxaca in 2006, now Haiti in 2010.” Well, it actually started much earlier than 2005. For example, in 1985, when current IG lÃder máximo Jan Norden was still editor of Workers Vanguard, we wrote in “South Africa: Razor’s Edge” (WV No. 376, 5 April 1985):
“South Africa is the one place in sub-Saharan Africa where there is the possibility for a workers state, because here the black population has been partially absorbed, at the bottom, into a modern industrialized society which can, based on the revolutionary reorganization of society, provide a decent life for its citizens.”
This, precisely, is the rather elementary point for Marxists, that socialist revolution requires an industrial proletarian concentration that is sufficient for overturning capitalist class rule and establishing a workers state, the dictatorship of the proletariat. And if such is not the case? “Then the struggle for national liberation will produce only very partial results, results directed entirely against the working masses” (Leon Trotsky, The Permanent Revolution [1930]). This is clearly evident in Haiti, where bitter and bloody popular uprisings in recent decades have led to nothing more than the installation of bourgeois-populist regimes ultimately backed by the might of U.S. imperialism.
The same applies in contemporary Bolivia, where measures by the imperialists and the domestic bourgeoisie, centrally the shutting down of the nationalized tin mines, led to the material devastation and atomization of the once powerful mining proletariat. The 2005 “Bolivian revolution” that the IG and other fake leftists enthused over was in fact a plebeian upheaval that resulted in the coming to power of bourgeois populist Evo Morales. And while Mexico does have a powerful industrial proletariat, the struggle in Oaxaca, one of the most economically backward parts of the country, was limited to teachers and sectors of the petty bourgeoisie such as students and peasants. We pointed out: “Although the struggle in Oaxaca could serve as a spark to ignite workers struggle, in itself it does not pose a ‘revolutionary danger’,” as the IG would have it (“Down With Bloody State of Siege in Oaxaca!” WV No. 880, 10 November 2006). At bottom the IG’s glorification of the struggle in Oaxaca reflects its opportunist tailing of the populist milieu around the bourgeois Party of the Democratic Revolution.
The IG notwithstanding, the virtual absence of an industrial proletariat in Haiti, even before the devastation wreaked by the earthquake, is an obvious fact. Despite some modest economic development over the past few years, mainly centered on the garment industry, the financial trade magazine TendersInfo (5 October 2009) reported last fall: “The country now has 25 garment factories that export primarily to the United States and employ more than 24,000 workers, mostly women.” By comparison, the garment industry in Bangladesh consists of 4,500 factories employing more than 2.5 million workers. Of course, Bangladesh is a much bigger country than Haiti. However, even as a proportion of GDP, the economic weight of the textile industry in Bangladesh is almost twice that in Haiti.
However, this does not mean that the masses in Haiti are consigned in perpetuity to imperialist oppression. Again, as we pointed out in our last article, there is a sizable Haitian proletariat in the diaspora, which went unmentioned in the IG’s revolution-mongering around the earthquake. These workers can be a vital link to class struggle by the powerful North American proletariat. But to infuse the multiracial U.S. working class with an understanding of its role as the gravedigger of U.S. imperialism requires a political struggle against the pro-capitalist labor misleaders who chain the working class to its capitalist exploiters, centrally through political support to the Democratic Party.
And here is where the soft opportunist underbelly of the IG’s Third World cheerleading is most exposed. At the time of the 2001 U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, we called for military defense of that country while stressing the need for class struggle against the American ruling class at home. At the same time, we highlighted our call at the time of the Soviet intervention beginning in December 1979 to “Hail Red Army in Afghanistan!” In contrast, when the IG initiated a November 2001 Hunter College rally in New York to protest plans by the administration to drive out undocumented immigrant students, IG speakers did not so much as mention the Soviet intervention, for fear of offending those anti-Communist leftists at the rally who had been on the imperialist side against the Red Army in Afghanistan (see “IG Disappears Red Army Fight Against Islamic Reaction in Afghanistan,” WV No. 772, 11 January 2002). While disappearing the one force capable of effecting a social revolution in Afghanistan, the IG idiotically raised the call for proletarian revolution in Afghanistan, where there is absolutely no industrial proletariat, writing in the Internationalist (September 2001): “Genuine communists defend semi-colonial countries against imperialist attack as we fight for socialist revolution against their bourgeois and, in the case of Afghanistan, feudalistic leaders.”
A few years later, the IG went a step further, amnestying the pro-capitalist International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) tops over the May Day 2008 antiwar West Coast port shutdown. That action was a powerful demonstration of the kind of working-class struggle needed against the imperialist occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. But, as we wrote, “the ILWU leadership politically undermined this action by channeling the ranks’ anger at the Iraqi occupation and desire to defend their union into pro-Democratic Party ‘national unity’ patriotism,” and support for Obama as the future Commander-in-Chief of U.S. imperialism (“ILWU Shuts West Coast Ports on May Day,” WV No. 914, 9 May 2008). Thus, we noted that the ILWU tops buried any mention of the war in Afghanistan, which Obama championed.
The IG, echoing its favorite left-talking labor faker, ILWU Local 10 Exec Board member Jack Heyman, screamed bloody murder over our supposed slander. But antiwar activist Cindy Sheehan, who was a speaker at the ILWU rally and was then running as an independent candidate against Democrat Nancy Pelosi, confirmed what we said. Sheehan told Workers Vanguard that Heyman’s co-emcee at the rally and fellow Exec Board member Clarence Thomas “said that I couldn’t say anything bad about Nancy Pelosi or talk about Afghanistan; I was supposed to stay focused only on Iraq” (quoted in “Antiwar Reformists, Labor Bureaucrats and the Democratic Party: The Syphilitic Chain,” WV No. 945, 23 October 2009)!
To paraphrase the IG: it is one thing to read in history books about former revolutionaries capitulating to programs alien to Marxism, but here we see the process unfolding in real time, before our eyes.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
*Present At The Creation- Writer Gore Vidal’s Novel On The Rise Of The American Imperium- “Empire”-A Review
Click on title to link to YouTube's film clip of an interview with Gore Vidal in 2007.
Book Review
Empire: A Novel, Gore Vidal, Random House, New York, 1987
The name Gore Vidal should be no stranger to the readers of this space. I have in the recent past reviewed his earlier American historical novels “Burr”, “Lincoln”, and “1876” that form something of a backdrop to the book under review, “Empire”. Although I have noted, in those previous reviews, that I generally take my history lessons “straight” from historical writers, occasionally, as with the case of Vidal, I am more than happy to see history tweaked a little in novel form. Vidal does not disappoint here, although the cast of characters, past and present, overall form a weaker story line at the end of the 19th century with the rise of the power-driven American imperial impulses than his earlier efforts. That may say something about what kind of misbegotten characters the age produced, variously known as the “Gilded Age”, “The Age Of The Robber Barons” and the “Age Of The Rise Of The American Imperium”, as those in power threw into the dustbin of history that quaint and old-fashioned term coined by Lincoln about the American republic being “the last, best hope for mankind”.
Vidal’s historical novels work on two levels, which may account for their appeal to political types like me. First is the thread that holds all the novels together in the person, fictionalized or not, of Aaron Burr and his progeny, or better, alleged progeny who, helter-skelter, keep making odd appearances in each work and generally product a main character for each succeeding novel. Here the Burr connection is in the person of Caroline Sanford, a young, feisty, independent woman of the late 19th century linked to Burr through her grandfather (maybe)who wants to take her part in a quintessentially man’s world riding the crest of the rising prominence of the print media. Her struggle for her place in the sun (and her fight with her half-brother over rightful inheritance)is the core personal story told here.
The second level is the liberal use of real historical figures, usually high government officials or other worthies, as seen in their “off-duty” endeavors, usually pursuing some power position or a sexual adventure. Or both. That’s about right for this milieu, agreed? Although the gap between fictional and real characters is sometimes blurred, here mainly Lincoln’s old personal White House secretary John Hay who now has come, front and center, into his own as President McKinley’s Secretary of State in the aftermath of the 1898 Spanish-American War, that ‘splendid little war that started the American republic full-throttle on the road to the imperium. Obviously, no Gilded Age period piece is complete without many pages on the “exploits”, political and military, of one “Teddy” Roosevelt. Brother Vidal takes old Teddy down a peg or two here.
To finish off the period, and to note the decline of the original Puritan/Yankee spirit that drove the early history of this country, the last major prominent member of the Adams clan(excluding Brook Adams who has a cameo role here), Henry, is brought in as a weak conscious-driven counterweight to the “hard-pans” (read: new rich) who would dominate the American scene in the 20th century and whose progeny still burden us today. This is a quick read but a thoughtful novel of the perils of America's starting down that imperial road to replace the British Empire as the main world power. Worst though we are still dealing with the ramifications of those decisions today. Read the real history but also read Vidal.
Book Review
Empire: A Novel, Gore Vidal, Random House, New York, 1987
The name Gore Vidal should be no stranger to the readers of this space. I have in the recent past reviewed his earlier American historical novels “Burr”, “Lincoln”, and “1876” that form something of a backdrop to the book under review, “Empire”. Although I have noted, in those previous reviews, that I generally take my history lessons “straight” from historical writers, occasionally, as with the case of Vidal, I am more than happy to see history tweaked a little in novel form. Vidal does not disappoint here, although the cast of characters, past and present, overall form a weaker story line at the end of the 19th century with the rise of the power-driven American imperial impulses than his earlier efforts. That may say something about what kind of misbegotten characters the age produced, variously known as the “Gilded Age”, “The Age Of The Robber Barons” and the “Age Of The Rise Of The American Imperium”, as those in power threw into the dustbin of history that quaint and old-fashioned term coined by Lincoln about the American republic being “the last, best hope for mankind”.
Vidal’s historical novels work on two levels, which may account for their appeal to political types like me. First is the thread that holds all the novels together in the person, fictionalized or not, of Aaron Burr and his progeny, or better, alleged progeny who, helter-skelter, keep making odd appearances in each work and generally product a main character for each succeeding novel. Here the Burr connection is in the person of Caroline Sanford, a young, feisty, independent woman of the late 19th century linked to Burr through her grandfather (maybe)who wants to take her part in a quintessentially man’s world riding the crest of the rising prominence of the print media. Her struggle for her place in the sun (and her fight with her half-brother over rightful inheritance)is the core personal story told here.
The second level is the liberal use of real historical figures, usually high government officials or other worthies, as seen in their “off-duty” endeavors, usually pursuing some power position or a sexual adventure. Or both. That’s about right for this milieu, agreed? Although the gap between fictional and real characters is sometimes blurred, here mainly Lincoln’s old personal White House secretary John Hay who now has come, front and center, into his own as President McKinley’s Secretary of State in the aftermath of the 1898 Spanish-American War, that ‘splendid little war that started the American republic full-throttle on the road to the imperium. Obviously, no Gilded Age period piece is complete without many pages on the “exploits”, political and military, of one “Teddy” Roosevelt. Brother Vidal takes old Teddy down a peg or two here.
To finish off the period, and to note the decline of the original Puritan/Yankee spirit that drove the early history of this country, the last major prominent member of the Adams clan(excluding Brook Adams who has a cameo role here), Henry, is brought in as a weak conscious-driven counterweight to the “hard-pans” (read: new rich) who would dominate the American scene in the 20th century and whose progeny still burden us today. This is a quick read but a thoughtful novel of the perils of America's starting down that imperial road to replace the British Empire as the main world power. Worst though we are still dealing with the ramifications of those decisions today. Read the real history but also read Vidal.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
*From "An Unrepentant Communist"- A Guest Politcal Obituary Of An English Communist Party Leader
Click on title to link to "An Unrepentant Communist's" entry on Ken Gill, an old line English Communist Party leader. This entry is here to acknowledge some history but also to see where some militants like Gill went off the rails in the struggle for the revolution.
Sunday, January 04, 2009
*The Politcal Evolution of James P. Cannon-A Parable
Click on title to link to the James P. Cannon Internet Archive's copy of his late thinking (he died in 1974) on the role of the revolutionary party in the struggle for socialism. This is at some distance from his early adherent to the vanguard party formulations of the early American Communist Party and Socialist Workers Party.
BOOK REVIEW
James P. Cannon: A Political Tribute, Education For Socialists, Pathfinder Press, New York, 1974
To set the tone for this review here is a little parable, of sorts:
At the beginning of my conscious political career, back in the mist of time, which started out as a youthful liberal Americans For Democratic Action (ADA)-type activist in the early 1960’s I distinctly remember an older liberal politician at some event pointing out someone to me as an American Communist Party member. Apparently that information was passed on to me in order to make me shudder at the mere thought of it. Just as distinctly I remember, despite the continuing residue of the McCarthyite “red scare” at that time, merely shrugging my shoulders as if to say “so what”. Later, as I moved leftward toward a more social-democratic type political stance I was actively seeking out communists in order to form an anti-imperialist united front on Vietnam (although that is putting my politics in that situation in far too sophisticated a manner). Finding a publicly identifiable one then, however, was as scarce as hen’s teeth (if one was looking outside their friendly roost inside, deep inside, the Democratic Party). Finally, as I moved farther left and became radicalized whenever I ran into a Communist Party member at an event I would think- “oh, no there goes our radical edge”, or words to that effect.
Now what does this little parable have to do with a review of a political tribute to an old revolutionary leader, James P. Cannon, at the time of his death in 1974 and about whom I have spilled much ink on in this space defending as a man who in his prime could have led an American socialist revolution. Well, when I went looking for serious revolutionaries to work in the early 1970’s I had the same opinion of the organization that he helped found and nurture, the Socialist Workers Party, as I did toward the Communist Party. In short, whatever virtues Cannon brought to that organization in his prime and whatever lingering loyalties he had to that party by the time of his death the torch had passed to others in other organizations to carry out his work. Such things happen all the time in politics.
Thus this document, put out by the organization that honored his name THEN if not his earlier political history other than in a formal sense, has more value as a slice of radical history than as a trustworthy account of the work of one James P. Cannon. There is a very big disconnect between the work that Cannon reminiscences about here and the actual practice of the SWP, except to use the authority of his name to cover their essentially liberal programmatic efforts. To put it simply the various interviews, conducted mainly in the last year of Cannon’s life, that make up the bulk of this pamphlet are the words of an eighty year old man who is to the LEFT of his party. He is still ever the party loyalist but it is to the history of his party.
There is a very important section in this short pamphlet that every radical should read that contains an interview with Cannon in 1973 about proper class struggle legal defense work. Cannon won his spurs, and solidified his position as a Communist Party leader, with his leadership of the party’s legal defense arm the International Labor Defense (ILD). Cannon has interesting comments about the role of that organization in the defense of Sacco and Vanzetti, the key labor defense struggle of the 1920’s. The main point for today’s radicals to understand is the fundamental principle of left and labor politics codified in the old slogan- “an injury to one is an injury to all”. Moreover, the operational norm for such work is a non-sectarian united front. Everybody works together to win the case at hand while maintaining their own political independent. This, sadly, has been honored more in the breech than in the observance.
I would also note, to reinforce my statement about the aged Cannon above, that his reminiscences about the old labor defense days did not gibe with what was the main SWP political program in the early 1970’d after the demise of the anti-war movement. At that time, as the Nixon/Watergate issues were heating up, the SWP put forth a campaign exclusively centered on suing the federal government for various violation of its democratic rights throughout its history- the infamous “Watersuit”. While no one on the left denies the need to fight for our own political existence by challenging the government through the legal process when appropriate the whole thrust of the SWP’s work in this period was to continue to cater to the liberals with whom they had become very conformable working with in the anti-war movement. Cannon accepted this program as good coin, at least in the interview. We are not obliged to follow him in that commendation.
This pamphlet also contains a few other interviews of note about the history of the American left and labor movement in the first half of the 20th century. One deals with this various radical figures that Cannon ran across in his long political life, some as associates, and some as opponents. Another deals with the black liberation struggle although not fully enough to warrant comment here. The one I believe worthy of comment is “Youth and The Socialist Movement”, Cannon’s understanding of the role of youth in building the movement throughout his long career. This article makes points that should be useful for us to think about today as we entry the Obamian age, an age to a large extent created by the energies of youth looking for a way out of the long night of the Bush years.
Cannon noted that the radicalization of the 1930’s was spearheaded mainly by young workers. Students and other middle class youth then were more likely to be “scabs” or political conservatives than allies of the working class. In the radicalization of the 1960’s, aided by the surge in college enrollment, the movement was headed by non-working class youth. The impending radicalization of youth in this, the early part of the 21st century, may very well combine both those elements from the beginning. Wouldn’t that be a hell of a fight? That is the something the younger James P. Cannon could appreciate. Let me finish with this-at this late date the proper way to pay political tribute to James P. Cannon is to work to build a workers party that fights for a workers government. That would be a very fitting tribute.
BOOK REVIEW
James P. Cannon: A Political Tribute, Education For Socialists, Pathfinder Press, New York, 1974
To set the tone for this review here is a little parable, of sorts:
At the beginning of my conscious political career, back in the mist of time, which started out as a youthful liberal Americans For Democratic Action (ADA)-type activist in the early 1960’s I distinctly remember an older liberal politician at some event pointing out someone to me as an American Communist Party member. Apparently that information was passed on to me in order to make me shudder at the mere thought of it. Just as distinctly I remember, despite the continuing residue of the McCarthyite “red scare” at that time, merely shrugging my shoulders as if to say “so what”. Later, as I moved leftward toward a more social-democratic type political stance I was actively seeking out communists in order to form an anti-imperialist united front on Vietnam (although that is putting my politics in that situation in far too sophisticated a manner). Finding a publicly identifiable one then, however, was as scarce as hen’s teeth (if one was looking outside their friendly roost inside, deep inside, the Democratic Party). Finally, as I moved farther left and became radicalized whenever I ran into a Communist Party member at an event I would think- “oh, no there goes our radical edge”, or words to that effect.
Now what does this little parable have to do with a review of a political tribute to an old revolutionary leader, James P. Cannon, at the time of his death in 1974 and about whom I have spilled much ink on in this space defending as a man who in his prime could have led an American socialist revolution. Well, when I went looking for serious revolutionaries to work in the early 1970’s I had the same opinion of the organization that he helped found and nurture, the Socialist Workers Party, as I did toward the Communist Party. In short, whatever virtues Cannon brought to that organization in his prime and whatever lingering loyalties he had to that party by the time of his death the torch had passed to others in other organizations to carry out his work. Such things happen all the time in politics.
Thus this document, put out by the organization that honored his name THEN if not his earlier political history other than in a formal sense, has more value as a slice of radical history than as a trustworthy account of the work of one James P. Cannon. There is a very big disconnect between the work that Cannon reminiscences about here and the actual practice of the SWP, except to use the authority of his name to cover their essentially liberal programmatic efforts. To put it simply the various interviews, conducted mainly in the last year of Cannon’s life, that make up the bulk of this pamphlet are the words of an eighty year old man who is to the LEFT of his party. He is still ever the party loyalist but it is to the history of his party.
There is a very important section in this short pamphlet that every radical should read that contains an interview with Cannon in 1973 about proper class struggle legal defense work. Cannon won his spurs, and solidified his position as a Communist Party leader, with his leadership of the party’s legal defense arm the International Labor Defense (ILD). Cannon has interesting comments about the role of that organization in the defense of Sacco and Vanzetti, the key labor defense struggle of the 1920’s. The main point for today’s radicals to understand is the fundamental principle of left and labor politics codified in the old slogan- “an injury to one is an injury to all”. Moreover, the operational norm for such work is a non-sectarian united front. Everybody works together to win the case at hand while maintaining their own political independent. This, sadly, has been honored more in the breech than in the observance.
I would also note, to reinforce my statement about the aged Cannon above, that his reminiscences about the old labor defense days did not gibe with what was the main SWP political program in the early 1970’d after the demise of the anti-war movement. At that time, as the Nixon/Watergate issues were heating up, the SWP put forth a campaign exclusively centered on suing the federal government for various violation of its democratic rights throughout its history- the infamous “Watersuit”. While no one on the left denies the need to fight for our own political existence by challenging the government through the legal process when appropriate the whole thrust of the SWP’s work in this period was to continue to cater to the liberals with whom they had become very conformable working with in the anti-war movement. Cannon accepted this program as good coin, at least in the interview. We are not obliged to follow him in that commendation.
This pamphlet also contains a few other interviews of note about the history of the American left and labor movement in the first half of the 20th century. One deals with this various radical figures that Cannon ran across in his long political life, some as associates, and some as opponents. Another deals with the black liberation struggle although not fully enough to warrant comment here. The one I believe worthy of comment is “Youth and The Socialist Movement”, Cannon’s understanding of the role of youth in building the movement throughout his long career. This article makes points that should be useful for us to think about today as we entry the Obamian age, an age to a large extent created by the energies of youth looking for a way out of the long night of the Bush years.
Cannon noted that the radicalization of the 1930’s was spearheaded mainly by young workers. Students and other middle class youth then were more likely to be “scabs” or political conservatives than allies of the working class. In the radicalization of the 1960’s, aided by the surge in college enrollment, the movement was headed by non-working class youth. The impending radicalization of youth in this, the early part of the 21st century, may very well combine both those elements from the beginning. Wouldn’t that be a hell of a fight? That is the something the younger James P. Cannon could appreciate. Let me finish with this-at this late date the proper way to pay political tribute to James P. Cannon is to work to build a workers party that fights for a workers government. That would be a very fitting tribute.
Saturday, May 12, 2007
*Goodbye Tony Blair, But With No Tears-Build A Militant Labor Party In The Britsh Isles-Now!
Click on title to link to Wikipedia's entry for the histroy of the Labor Party in Britain.
COMMENTARY
BUSH LOSES HIS POODLE, BUT HE STILL HAS A BULLDOG FOR A FRIEND
BUILD A MILITANT WORKERS PARTY IN THE BRITISH ISLES
The face of bourgeois politics in Europe has changed over the last year. However, there is no need for leftist militants internationally to rejoice. Although there have been changes in governmental control in a number of countries including France, Northern Ireland and presently in Great Britain no picture has emerged that, except for the general opposition to the United States-led Iraqi War, links any of these developments to an increase in social struggles. On the contrary, except perhaps for the far-left in France, the opposite appears to be the case. Obviously, the situation in France is the most worrisome for leftists and the situation in Northern Ireland appears almost tragic against the original IRA/Sinn Fein struggle to get the British out. Today, however, I want to focus on the recent resignation announcement of one Anthony Blair, British Prime Minister-President George Bush’s pet poodle but also seemingly the last major international political player who unequivocally went down the line with American imperialist policy on Iraq.
Mr. Blair made no bones about his desire of turning the tepid reformist Labor Party into a mini-version of the United States Democratic Party. He carried this transformation out with Mr. Gordon Brown the heir presumptive to the leadership of the British Labor Party and probable next Prime Minister. In this endeavor they were, sad to say, successful. New Labor is dependent on the trade unions but that is less so than in the past. It is clear that in Britain a new workers party is necessary. That means that militants there must put themselves in a position to split the left-wing of New Labor and create a new party based on a socialist program. That means it is necessary to be in that New Labor Party even if one has to hold one's nose in doing so.
To state the task is easy. To do it is obviously much harder given the British labor movement’s seeming undying commitment to the traditions of the old Labor Party. But damn there is no other way forward. One last point that should shame all militant leftists. After ten years Mr. Blair is going to be able to resign. For his criminal role in Iraq as Mr. Bush’s publicity agent and spear carrier Mr. Blair should have, for starters, been booted out on a vote of no confidence by Parliament long ago. Real justice still waits to be served.
COMMENTARY
BUSH LOSES HIS POODLE, BUT HE STILL HAS A BULLDOG FOR A FRIEND
BUILD A MILITANT WORKERS PARTY IN THE BRITISH ISLES
The face of bourgeois politics in Europe has changed over the last year. However, there is no need for leftist militants internationally to rejoice. Although there have been changes in governmental control in a number of countries including France, Northern Ireland and presently in Great Britain no picture has emerged that, except for the general opposition to the United States-led Iraqi War, links any of these developments to an increase in social struggles. On the contrary, except perhaps for the far-left in France, the opposite appears to be the case. Obviously, the situation in France is the most worrisome for leftists and the situation in Northern Ireland appears almost tragic against the original IRA/Sinn Fein struggle to get the British out. Today, however, I want to focus on the recent resignation announcement of one Anthony Blair, British Prime Minister-President George Bush’s pet poodle but also seemingly the last major international political player who unequivocally went down the line with American imperialist policy on Iraq.
Mr. Blair made no bones about his desire of turning the tepid reformist Labor Party into a mini-version of the United States Democratic Party. He carried this transformation out with Mr. Gordon Brown the heir presumptive to the leadership of the British Labor Party and probable next Prime Minister. In this endeavor they were, sad to say, successful. New Labor is dependent on the trade unions but that is less so than in the past. It is clear that in Britain a new workers party is necessary. That means that militants there must put themselves in a position to split the left-wing of New Labor and create a new party based on a socialist program. That means it is necessary to be in that New Labor Party even if one has to hold one's nose in doing so.
To state the task is easy. To do it is obviously much harder given the British labor movement’s seeming undying commitment to the traditions of the old Labor Party. But damn there is no other way forward. One last point that should shame all militant leftists. After ten years Mr. Blair is going to be able to resign. For his criminal role in Iraq as Mr. Bush’s publicity agent and spear carrier Mr. Blair should have, for starters, been booted out on a vote of no confidence by Parliament long ago. Real justice still waits to be served.
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