Click on the title to link to the Partisan Defense Committee Web site.
COMMENTARY
THIS NOTICE HAS BEEN PASSED ON FROM THE PARTISAN DEFENSE COMMITTEE, P.O BOX 99, CANAL STREET STATION, NEW YORK, NY 10013-0099. I NEED ONLY ADD MILITANTS MUST SUPPORT THE CALL TO FREE THE LAST OF THE OHIO SEVEN. THEY MUST NOT DIE IN PRISON.
In April 2005, we added Tom Manning to our prisoner stipend program along with his comrades Jaan Laaman and Richard Williams, as we had with Ray Luc Levasseur up through his release in 2004. Now Tom Manning and Jaan Laaman are the last two Ohio 7 prisoners still incarcerated, and if the U.S. government has its way, they will spend the rest of their lives behind bars.
Like Williams, Manning grew up poor and working class. He was sent to Vietnam, where he saw the atrocities of U.S. imperialism up close. In the 1970s and '80s, he worked with other leftist radicals in community organizing, prisoner support and welfare advocacy. In a 7 June 1999 statement, Manning wrote: "I am a Freedom Fighter who took up arms to support and defend an International Movement for Human Rights, Self Determination, Justice and Dignity for all Peoples."
Manning spent years in continual lockdown in some of the worst hellholes of the prison system—USP Marion (Illinois) and USP Florence ADMAX (Colorado),
a sensory deprivation unit of steel and concrete with no sound and minimal human contact, designed to break prisoners. Manning is currently at USP Hazelton (West Virginia).
The PDC received a letter dated 27 November 2005, from Jaan Laaman in which he wrote, "This year I came across some profound new evidence and I now have a possibility of reopening and challenging my entire [Massachusetts] conviction and sentence. I have always maintained my innocence in this case and now I may finally be able to prove it."
If Jaan can prevail in this legal challenge he may be eligible for parole on the federal conviction he is also serving. As he put it, "any legal effort is an uphill battle, especially for political prisoners." The PDC has sent a check for $500 to the Jaan Laaman Legal Freedom Fund, PO. Box 681, East Boston, MA 02128. Funds are urgently needed to hire legal defense to pursue Laaman's appeal. We encourage our supporters to help Jaan Laaman's fight for freedom.
You can read about Jaan Laaman and other class-war prisoners in the online magazine he contributes to: www.4strugglemag.org. Or write to 4strugglemag, 2035 St. Laurent Boulevard, Montreal, Quebec, H2X 2T3, Canada. •
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
Saturday, June 10, 2006
BOYCOTT WAL-MART!
COMMENTARY
THE RACE TO THE BOTTOM MUST STOP HERE!
SUPPORT THE BOYCOTT- UNIONIZE WAL-MART
FORGET DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS AND GREENS- BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!
This writer has just received news that the Massachusetts Federation of Teachers (MFT) has voted to support the Wal-Mart boycott. Thus, the MFT joins a growing number of other unions and union federations nationally and internationally in support of this first step in the struggle to organize Wal-Mart. Every militant is obliged to and must support this boycott as a first step in the struggle against this greedy mega-corporation. To list the egregious labor practices of this corporation is like reading pages from the history relating the sweatshop conditions of the American labor movement at the turn of the 20th century. Whatever piddling savings one might receive by shopping at Wal-Mart is negated by the degradation of its labor force. It is high time for the labor movement to move on this outfit and move hard. The race to the bottom stops here.
Whatever the practical effect of the boycott it can only be a first step in the ultimate union organization of Wal-Mart. A boycott is not enough! A consumer boycott, as has been shown by past practices, is only as effective as the diffuse shopping public is aware of it. In general, a consumer boycott has little or no effect at all. In any case it is not decisive. There is no short-cut to effective organization at the point of production and, particularly in the case of Wal-Mart, distribution. The leadership of the organized American labor movement (now centered in the AFL-CIO and Change to Win Coalition) has chiefly used to the tactic of boycott to avoid the hard struggle to unionize the workforce. In the final analysis only organization in the field will bring unionization.
To organize Wal-Mart means there must be the will to organize Wal-Mart. It is necessary to go all out to win once the decision has been made to organize this monster along industrial lines, like the automobile industry in the 1930’s. Previous local efforts (such as in Quebec and Texas) to organize particular stores have shown that this strategy (or lack of strategy) has been a failure. Wal-Mart is just too big and powerful to be taken on piecemeal. This writer has seen estimates that the number of field organizers necessary to effectively organize Wal-Mart is at least 3000. Militants must call on the organized labor movement to fund and sent out that number en masse. The time is now.
Those even slightly familiar with the Wal-Mart operation know that the corporation has a fleet of at least 7000 trucks to transport and deliver goods to its various locations. This should make every militant salivate at the prospect of organizing that fleet. Militants must demand that the Teamsters International Union organize the fleet. Know this, if the trucks, the key to the distribution process are unionized that is a very powerful argument in the workers favor if a showdown with other parts of the Wal-Mart workforce is necessary. This writer suggests that militants read Teamster Rebellion and Teamster Power by Farrell Dobbs; a central organizer of the successful Teamster union drives in Minneapolis and later over the road drivers in the 1930’s. (These books have been reviewed elsewhere in this space, (see April 2006 archives.) One thing is sure, if it took practically a civil war to bring the relatively loosely organized trucking company bosses to their knees in the 1930’s it will be 1000 times harder to do so against this monolithic giant. But the victory will be sweeter.
I mentioned above the need to fund field organizers, and plenty of them, and other support staff. Unlike the 1930’s the organized labor movement has no lack of funds for such an operation today. However, what is necessary is the political will to organize and fight rather rely someone else’s good will. The great lesson from the 1930’s is that you win on the streets, not in the White House or courthouse. Organized labor’s support for the failed Kerry Democratic presidential campaign wasted millions of dollars. Instead of using funds to support bourgeois candidates, mainly so-called Democratic Party ‘friends of labor’, through COPE and other PAC’s for minimal or no returns use the funds to organize Wal-Mart (and the South, while we are at it). That is the real way to use union money.
SUPPORT THE CALL TO ORGANIZE WAL-MART NOW!
NO MONEY FOR POLITICANS-USE THE FUNDS FOR THE ORGANIZING DRIVE AT WAL-MART!
BRING MOTIONS TO YOUR UNION CALLING FOR SUPPORT OF THE WAL-MART BOYCOTT!
BRING MOTIONS TO CALLING ON YOUR UNION TO SUPPORT AN ORGANIZING DRIVE OF WAL-MART!
THIS IS PART OF A SERIES OF ARTICLES ON THE 2006-2008 ELECTION CYCLE UNDER THE HEADLINE- FORGET THE DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS, GREENS-BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!
FOR MORE POLITICAL COMMENTARY AND BOOKS REVIEWS CHECK MY BLOG AT- Http://markinbookreview.blogspot.com/
THE RACE TO THE BOTTOM MUST STOP HERE!
SUPPORT THE BOYCOTT- UNIONIZE WAL-MART
FORGET DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS AND GREENS- BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!
This writer has just received news that the Massachusetts Federation of Teachers (MFT) has voted to support the Wal-Mart boycott. Thus, the MFT joins a growing number of other unions and union federations nationally and internationally in support of this first step in the struggle to organize Wal-Mart. Every militant is obliged to and must support this boycott as a first step in the struggle against this greedy mega-corporation. To list the egregious labor practices of this corporation is like reading pages from the history relating the sweatshop conditions of the American labor movement at the turn of the 20th century. Whatever piddling savings one might receive by shopping at Wal-Mart is negated by the degradation of its labor force. It is high time for the labor movement to move on this outfit and move hard. The race to the bottom stops here.
Whatever the practical effect of the boycott it can only be a first step in the ultimate union organization of Wal-Mart. A boycott is not enough! A consumer boycott, as has been shown by past practices, is only as effective as the diffuse shopping public is aware of it. In general, a consumer boycott has little or no effect at all. In any case it is not decisive. There is no short-cut to effective organization at the point of production and, particularly in the case of Wal-Mart, distribution. The leadership of the organized American labor movement (now centered in the AFL-CIO and Change to Win Coalition) has chiefly used to the tactic of boycott to avoid the hard struggle to unionize the workforce. In the final analysis only organization in the field will bring unionization.
To organize Wal-Mart means there must be the will to organize Wal-Mart. It is necessary to go all out to win once the decision has been made to organize this monster along industrial lines, like the automobile industry in the 1930’s. Previous local efforts (such as in Quebec and Texas) to organize particular stores have shown that this strategy (or lack of strategy) has been a failure. Wal-Mart is just too big and powerful to be taken on piecemeal. This writer has seen estimates that the number of field organizers necessary to effectively organize Wal-Mart is at least 3000. Militants must call on the organized labor movement to fund and sent out that number en masse. The time is now.
Those even slightly familiar with the Wal-Mart operation know that the corporation has a fleet of at least 7000 trucks to transport and deliver goods to its various locations. This should make every militant salivate at the prospect of organizing that fleet. Militants must demand that the Teamsters International Union organize the fleet. Know this, if the trucks, the key to the distribution process are unionized that is a very powerful argument in the workers favor if a showdown with other parts of the Wal-Mart workforce is necessary. This writer suggests that militants read Teamster Rebellion and Teamster Power by Farrell Dobbs; a central organizer of the successful Teamster union drives in Minneapolis and later over the road drivers in the 1930’s. (These books have been reviewed elsewhere in this space, (see April 2006 archives.) One thing is sure, if it took practically a civil war to bring the relatively loosely organized trucking company bosses to their knees in the 1930’s it will be 1000 times harder to do so against this monolithic giant. But the victory will be sweeter.
I mentioned above the need to fund field organizers, and plenty of them, and other support staff. Unlike the 1930’s the organized labor movement has no lack of funds for such an operation today. However, what is necessary is the political will to organize and fight rather rely someone else’s good will. The great lesson from the 1930’s is that you win on the streets, not in the White House or courthouse. Organized labor’s support for the failed Kerry Democratic presidential campaign wasted millions of dollars. Instead of using funds to support bourgeois candidates, mainly so-called Democratic Party ‘friends of labor’, through COPE and other PAC’s for minimal or no returns use the funds to organize Wal-Mart (and the South, while we are at it). That is the real way to use union money.
SUPPORT THE CALL TO ORGANIZE WAL-MART NOW!
NO MONEY FOR POLITICANS-USE THE FUNDS FOR THE ORGANIZING DRIVE AT WAL-MART!
BRING MOTIONS TO YOUR UNION CALLING FOR SUPPORT OF THE WAL-MART BOYCOTT!
BRING MOTIONS TO CALLING ON YOUR UNION TO SUPPORT AN ORGANIZING DRIVE OF WAL-MART!
THIS IS PART OF A SERIES OF ARTICLES ON THE 2006-2008 ELECTION CYCLE UNDER THE HEADLINE- FORGET THE DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS, GREENS-BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!
FOR MORE POLITICAL COMMENTARY AND BOOKS REVIEWS CHECK MY BLOG AT- Http://markinbookreview.blogspot.com/
Thursday, June 08, 2006
*The Cause That Passes Through The Prisons- From The Pen Of James P. Cannon
Click on title to link to the James P.Cannon Internet Archive for James P. Cannon's trial testimony for revolutionary socialist opposition to World War II that is the basis for the book below, "Letters From Prison".
BOOK REVIEW
LETTERS FROM PRISON, JAMES P. CANNON, Pathfinder Press, New York, 1973
If you are interested in the history of the American Left or are a militant trying to understand some of the past lessons of our history concerning the communist response to various social and labor questions this book is for you. This book is part of a continuing series of volumes of the writings of James P. Cannon that were published by the organization he founded, the Socialist Workers Party, in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Cannon died in 1974. Look in this space for other related reviews of this series of documents on and by an important American Communist.
In their introduction the editors motivate the purpose for the publication of the book by stating the Cannon was the finest Communist leader that America had ever produced. This an intriguing question that underlies the reviewer's analysis of these volumes of Cannon's work. The editors trace their political lineage back to Cannon’s leadership of the early Communist Party and later, after his expulsion, to the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party so their perspective is obvious. What does the documentation provided here show?
This certainly is the period of Cannon’s political maturation after a long and fruitful political collaboration working with Leon Trotsky, the exiled Russian revolutionary. The period under discussion in his letters to his long time companion Rose Krasner- the years 1944-45, after Cannon and 17 other leaders of the Socialist Workers Party had been indicted, convicted, refused appeal by the United States Supreme Court and then imprisoned under the then new Smith Act provisions for their revolutionary opposition to American participation in World War II - demonstrate a continued commitment to the goals of revolutionary socialism and a desire to fight for those goals. One thing is sure- in his prime, which includes this period- Cannon had the instincts to want to lead a revolution and had the evident capacity to do so. That he never had an opportunity to lead a revolution is his personal tragedy and ours as well.
When the American Government under Franklin D. Roosevelt goaded on by one of his favorite abject ‘labor lieutenants of capitalism’, Daniel Tobin, President of the International Teamsters Union, went after the real opponents of World war II, the Socialist Workers Party and the Teamsters local their supporters led in Minneapolis, they went to the right address. Unfortunately, unlike in World War I, those organizations were politically virtually the only ones in opposition to the war from the left. The American Socialist Party and the American Communist Party( after a short opposition during the infamous Hitler-Stalin Pact) had both made their peace with imperialism. If anything those organizations were among the chief labor cheerleaders of the prosecutions.
This volume of letters from Sandstone prison by James P. Cannon, central leader of the Socialist Workers Party, are testimony to what happens to revolutionaries when they fundamentally oppose a bourgeois government on its most cherished right, the right to make war. They go to jail. Kicking and screaming, yes, and using every avenue to avoid that fate. But, when the time comes that is what they do. In no case do they flinch from the consequences of the necessary action to oppose war. This comes with the territory of being a revolutionary. While few today remember such boldness in the face of a popular war, militants today who stand in opposition to the current Iraq War would do well to honor that commitment by the Minneapolis 18.
As his letters indicate, political people do not roll over when in prison but within the limiting circumstances they find themselves in they act as political people and carry on as best they can –whether it is Czarist, fascist, Stalinist or bourgeois prisons. In the present case it turned out to be an advantage that many of the party leaders were with Cannon and could essentially form a leadership in exile to supplement the official leadership left behind on the outside. Of course, all things being equal, prison definitely cuts into the effectiveness of a revolutionary but the enforced idleness from the outside struggle can be used as a time to study and for reflection. Cannon did this very ambitiously and systematically. Through Karsner and other sources Cannon kept up with internal party affairs and made plans for the future of the party.
Finally, it is rather ironic that Cannon, who was the guiding force in the American Communist Party’s class struggle defense organization-the International Labor Defense in the mid-1920’s should need the services of the Socialist Workers Party’s class struggle defense organization -the Non-Partisan Labor Defense. What Cannon said in the 1920’s applied to his own case. The struggle of the class-war prisoners- the cause that passes through the prisons- is the concern of the whole working class. An injury to one is an injury to all. That slogan is still valid for today’s militants to organize around.
SOME OF THE BOOKS REVIEWED HERE MAY NOT BE READILY AVAILABLE AT LOCAL LIBRARIES OR BOOKSTORES. CHECK AMAZON.COM FOR AVAILABILITY THERE, BOTH NEW AND USED. YOU CAN ALSO GOOGLE THE JAMES P. CANNON INTERNET ARCHIVES.
BOOK REVIEW
LETTERS FROM PRISON, JAMES P. CANNON, Pathfinder Press, New York, 1973
If you are interested in the history of the American Left or are a militant trying to understand some of the past lessons of our history concerning the communist response to various social and labor questions this book is for you. This book is part of a continuing series of volumes of the writings of James P. Cannon that were published by the organization he founded, the Socialist Workers Party, in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Cannon died in 1974. Look in this space for other related reviews of this series of documents on and by an important American Communist.
In their introduction the editors motivate the purpose for the publication of the book by stating the Cannon was the finest Communist leader that America had ever produced. This an intriguing question that underlies the reviewer's analysis of these volumes of Cannon's work. The editors trace their political lineage back to Cannon’s leadership of the early Communist Party and later, after his expulsion, to the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party so their perspective is obvious. What does the documentation provided here show?
This certainly is the period of Cannon’s political maturation after a long and fruitful political collaboration working with Leon Trotsky, the exiled Russian revolutionary. The period under discussion in his letters to his long time companion Rose Krasner- the years 1944-45, after Cannon and 17 other leaders of the Socialist Workers Party had been indicted, convicted, refused appeal by the United States Supreme Court and then imprisoned under the then new Smith Act provisions for their revolutionary opposition to American participation in World War II - demonstrate a continued commitment to the goals of revolutionary socialism and a desire to fight for those goals. One thing is sure- in his prime, which includes this period- Cannon had the instincts to want to lead a revolution and had the evident capacity to do so. That he never had an opportunity to lead a revolution is his personal tragedy and ours as well.
When the American Government under Franklin D. Roosevelt goaded on by one of his favorite abject ‘labor lieutenants of capitalism’, Daniel Tobin, President of the International Teamsters Union, went after the real opponents of World war II, the Socialist Workers Party and the Teamsters local their supporters led in Minneapolis, they went to the right address. Unfortunately, unlike in World War I, those organizations were politically virtually the only ones in opposition to the war from the left. The American Socialist Party and the American Communist Party( after a short opposition during the infamous Hitler-Stalin Pact) had both made their peace with imperialism. If anything those organizations were among the chief labor cheerleaders of the prosecutions.
This volume of letters from Sandstone prison by James P. Cannon, central leader of the Socialist Workers Party, are testimony to what happens to revolutionaries when they fundamentally oppose a bourgeois government on its most cherished right, the right to make war. They go to jail. Kicking and screaming, yes, and using every avenue to avoid that fate. But, when the time comes that is what they do. In no case do they flinch from the consequences of the necessary action to oppose war. This comes with the territory of being a revolutionary. While few today remember such boldness in the face of a popular war, militants today who stand in opposition to the current Iraq War would do well to honor that commitment by the Minneapolis 18.
As his letters indicate, political people do not roll over when in prison but within the limiting circumstances they find themselves in they act as political people and carry on as best they can –whether it is Czarist, fascist, Stalinist or bourgeois prisons. In the present case it turned out to be an advantage that many of the party leaders were with Cannon and could essentially form a leadership in exile to supplement the official leadership left behind on the outside. Of course, all things being equal, prison definitely cuts into the effectiveness of a revolutionary but the enforced idleness from the outside struggle can be used as a time to study and for reflection. Cannon did this very ambitiously and systematically. Through Karsner and other sources Cannon kept up with internal party affairs and made plans for the future of the party.
Finally, it is rather ironic that Cannon, who was the guiding force in the American Communist Party’s class struggle defense organization-the International Labor Defense in the mid-1920’s should need the services of the Socialist Workers Party’s class struggle defense organization -the Non-Partisan Labor Defense. What Cannon said in the 1920’s applied to his own case. The struggle of the class-war prisoners- the cause that passes through the prisons- is the concern of the whole working class. An injury to one is an injury to all. That slogan is still valid for today’s militants to organize around.
SOME OF THE BOOKS REVIEWED HERE MAY NOT BE READILY AVAILABLE AT LOCAL LIBRARIES OR BOOKSTORES. CHECK AMAZON.COM FOR AVAILABILITY THERE, BOTH NEW AND USED. YOU CAN ALSO GOOGLE THE JAMES P. CANNON INTERNET ARCHIVES.
Wednesday, June 07, 2006
DEFEAT THE ANTI-SAME-SEX MARRIAGE CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT
NO TO THE HETEROSEXUAL ONE MAN, ONE WOMAN MARRIAGE UNTIL DEATH (OR DIVORCE, OR ABANDONMENT, OR TIREDNESS, ETC.) CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT.
COMMENTARY
Damn it! Every time you think some progress has been made in the world to take us out of the dark ages of human experience the yahoos come up with something else. This time it is an effort, not for the first time, to ban gay and lesbian same-sex marriages by no less than a constitutional amendment. Hell, if we are going to discuss the subject of marriage rationally and constitutionally then let us ban marriage altogether by such an amendment.
Markin, stop it now you know you do not mean that. Well no I don’t, despite my unsuccessful experiences with marriage. Although I am personally no fan of the institution, if two people (or for that matter more) want to tie the knot that is their business. The point of my sarcastic remark however is valid. Why, other than the bookkeeping fact of registering a marriage for statistical purposes, should the state get involved in such a subject that is very specific to the individuals involved? KEEP THE GOVERNMENT OUT OF THE BEDROOM!
CONTACT YOUR SENATORS URGING A NO VOTE ON THIS AMENDMENT. BEAT BACK THE YAHOOS ON THIS ONE. AND LET US KEEP THEM ON THE RUN.
POSTSCRIPT- JUNE 10, 2006
As you may know in order to keep the federal constitutional amendment process going a 2/3 majority vote by the United States Senate is necessary. A vote on the anti-same sex marriage amendment has been taken and defeated on this basis. The supporters of democratic rights for all have won a reprieve. A couple of points. How the hell, in the year 2006, can 49 supposedly worldly Senators vote to support such a reactionary measure. Well, I suppose anything is possible in politics- I suppose next they'll try to resurrect prohibition of alcohol-all that got them was a big laugh and shame-faced reversal later. Also, please note, the major sponser of this bill, Senator Allard of Colorado, has been quoted as saying he will continue to bring this bill to a vote each year as long as he draws breath. Be ready. Meanwhile, the battle ground appears to be in the state legislatures. Be ready to fight the battles there.
COMMENTARY
Damn it! Every time you think some progress has been made in the world to take us out of the dark ages of human experience the yahoos come up with something else. This time it is an effort, not for the first time, to ban gay and lesbian same-sex marriages by no less than a constitutional amendment. Hell, if we are going to discuss the subject of marriage rationally and constitutionally then let us ban marriage altogether by such an amendment.
Markin, stop it now you know you do not mean that. Well no I don’t, despite my unsuccessful experiences with marriage. Although I am personally no fan of the institution, if two people (or for that matter more) want to tie the knot that is their business. The point of my sarcastic remark however is valid. Why, other than the bookkeeping fact of registering a marriage for statistical purposes, should the state get involved in such a subject that is very specific to the individuals involved? KEEP THE GOVERNMENT OUT OF THE BEDROOM!
CONTACT YOUR SENATORS URGING A NO VOTE ON THIS AMENDMENT. BEAT BACK THE YAHOOS ON THIS ONE. AND LET US KEEP THEM ON THE RUN.
POSTSCRIPT- JUNE 10, 2006
As you may know in order to keep the federal constitutional amendment process going a 2/3 majority vote by the United States Senate is necessary. A vote on the anti-same sex marriage amendment has been taken and defeated on this basis. The supporters of democratic rights for all have won a reprieve. A couple of points. How the hell, in the year 2006, can 49 supposedly worldly Senators vote to support such a reactionary measure. Well, I suppose anything is possible in politics- I suppose next they'll try to resurrect prohibition of alcohol-all that got them was a big laugh and shame-faced reversal later. Also, please note, the major sponser of this bill, Senator Allard of Colorado, has been quoted as saying he will continue to bring this bill to a vote each year as long as he draws breath. Be ready. Meanwhile, the battle ground appears to be in the state legislatures. Be ready to fight the battles there.
Tuesday, June 06, 2006
THE BOY ORATOR OF THE PLATTE
BOOK REVIEW
A GODLY HERO: THE LIFE OF WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN, MICHAEL KAZIN, Knopf, New York, 2006
William Jennings Bryan is a rather interesting and paradoxical figure in American political history. While America has produced its share of political chameleons Bryan is a different breed- a true believer. Although famous, or infamous, for the fight for cheap silver and later the fight against the teaching of evolution in the public schools, which militants then as now oppose, he stood for more than that. In Bryan one can observe an apparently sincere political fighter who supported many progressive issues vital to the rural and urban working classes of the day, including legalizing the right to strike, reigning in the trusts and the fight against the bankers. A proud forthright fighter, a vanishing type of politician, then as now.
Although Bryan was the Democratic Party candidate for President in 1896, the only one of his three presidential campaigns for militants today to seriously investigate, I do not believe that party would be his home today, nor would the progressive part of his politics resonant with the substance of Democratic policy today. It is ironic that over a century later Bryan’s politics would be far to the left of what passes for the Democratic center today. Nevertheless, on the dark side, his alliance with the Old South Democratic Party and its Jim Crow policies concerning blacks in the South and dependence of the urban political machines in the North precluded any support for the Bryan ticket by militants at that time.
Moreover, there are limits that even a sincerely religious man can bring to political discourse. His Christian fundamentalism never let him really fight to the end for the program of agrarian relief and industrial reform that he articulated so well.
Mr. Kazin’s mainly admiring biography does much to reintroduce the events surrounding the rising and declining fortunes of Mr. Bryan who today, if remembered at all, is mainly known for being on the wrong side of evolution question in the Scopes trial. However, that later issue does not define what Bryan represented in American history. Rather, one must look at the populist, agrarian forces in revolt and the program Bryan tried to implement in his bid for power.
Bryan political career represented the last dying gasp of the agrarian revolt that flared up in the America Midwest and West in the last third of the 19th century. That such a revolt, left to its own devices, was doomed in the face of the rise of industrial production; the increased mechanization of agriculture and with it the decline of the family farm, and the dominance of finance capital do not make that revolt any less poignant. The question faced by Bryan and any other potential leader was the manner in which the revolt would be harnessed to win power and what allies would be sought to fight against the ravages of capitalist expansion.
Mr. Bryan took an essentially parliamentary, traditional road by trying to use the Democratic Party as a vehicle for social change. Many later politicians have also broken their teeth trying that same strategy of using the Democratic Party for progressive social change. In 1896, and perhaps earlier, such a road was futile. In short, Mr. Bryan could have led an independent third party revolt, based on the already existing People’s Party (which in his early career Bryan had been closely linked to) allied with the industrial working classes of the Northeast and Midwest. Interestingly, many of the radical leaders of the early 20th socialist and communist movements who would form third parties, were influenced, directly or indirectly by the 1896 campaign.
This third party strategy was left to other forces that later formed the Socialist party in 1901. Mr. Bryan’s political trajectory, however, was not to join that fight for working class independent political expression. Over time he moved dramatically to the right culminating in support for the suppression of radicals in World War I. We have that seen that political phenomena before, as well. That said, this is an important book that details one type of parliamentary strategy still followed today by many progressives about the way to bring social change. That today the strategy has produced meager returns and is bankrupt does not lessen its interest. In Bryan's time it at least made some rational political sense. Forward.
A GODLY HERO: THE LIFE OF WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN, MICHAEL KAZIN, Knopf, New York, 2006
William Jennings Bryan is a rather interesting and paradoxical figure in American political history. While America has produced its share of political chameleons Bryan is a different breed- a true believer. Although famous, or infamous, for the fight for cheap silver and later the fight against the teaching of evolution in the public schools, which militants then as now oppose, he stood for more than that. In Bryan one can observe an apparently sincere political fighter who supported many progressive issues vital to the rural and urban working classes of the day, including legalizing the right to strike, reigning in the trusts and the fight against the bankers. A proud forthright fighter, a vanishing type of politician, then as now.
Although Bryan was the Democratic Party candidate for President in 1896, the only one of his three presidential campaigns for militants today to seriously investigate, I do not believe that party would be his home today, nor would the progressive part of his politics resonant with the substance of Democratic policy today. It is ironic that over a century later Bryan’s politics would be far to the left of what passes for the Democratic center today. Nevertheless, on the dark side, his alliance with the Old South Democratic Party and its Jim Crow policies concerning blacks in the South and dependence of the urban political machines in the North precluded any support for the Bryan ticket by militants at that time.
Moreover, there are limits that even a sincerely religious man can bring to political discourse. His Christian fundamentalism never let him really fight to the end for the program of agrarian relief and industrial reform that he articulated so well.
Mr. Kazin’s mainly admiring biography does much to reintroduce the events surrounding the rising and declining fortunes of Mr. Bryan who today, if remembered at all, is mainly known for being on the wrong side of evolution question in the Scopes trial. However, that later issue does not define what Bryan represented in American history. Rather, one must look at the populist, agrarian forces in revolt and the program Bryan tried to implement in his bid for power.
Bryan political career represented the last dying gasp of the agrarian revolt that flared up in the America Midwest and West in the last third of the 19th century. That such a revolt, left to its own devices, was doomed in the face of the rise of industrial production; the increased mechanization of agriculture and with it the decline of the family farm, and the dominance of finance capital do not make that revolt any less poignant. The question faced by Bryan and any other potential leader was the manner in which the revolt would be harnessed to win power and what allies would be sought to fight against the ravages of capitalist expansion.
Mr. Bryan took an essentially parliamentary, traditional road by trying to use the Democratic Party as a vehicle for social change. Many later politicians have also broken their teeth trying that same strategy of using the Democratic Party for progressive social change. In 1896, and perhaps earlier, such a road was futile. In short, Mr. Bryan could have led an independent third party revolt, based on the already existing People’s Party (which in his early career Bryan had been closely linked to) allied with the industrial working classes of the Northeast and Midwest. Interestingly, many of the radical leaders of the early 20th socialist and communist movements who would form third parties, were influenced, directly or indirectly by the 1896 campaign.
This third party strategy was left to other forces that later formed the Socialist party in 1901. Mr. Bryan’s political trajectory, however, was not to join that fight for working class independent political expression. Over time he moved dramatically to the right culminating in support for the suppression of radicals in World War I. We have that seen that political phenomena before, as well. That said, this is an important book that details one type of parliamentary strategy still followed today by many progressives about the way to bring social change. That today the strategy has produced meager returns and is bankrupt does not lessen its interest. In Bryan's time it at least made some rational political sense. Forward.
Saturday, June 03, 2006
ON THE SLOGANS- BRING OUR/THE TROOPS HOME!
THEY MAY BE OUR SONS AND DAUGHTERS BUT THESE ARE NOT OUR TROOPS! END THE OCCUPATION OF IRAQ NOW!! IMMEDIATE WITHDRAWAL OF UNITED STATES/ALLIED TROOPS FROM THE MIDDLE EAST!!!
FORGET DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS AND GREENS- BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!
In light of the recent seemingly never-ending revelations concerning American military atrocities toward Iraqi civilians it is high time to set the record straight about the appropriate slogans that anti-war militants use to affect the political outcome of the situation in Iraq. For those militants, including this writer, who have opposed the American war aims since before the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 our main slogan expressing our opposition to imperialism has been for the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all American and Allied forces from the Middle East. That continues to be the thrust of our political struggle today.
The recent revelations also underscore the aimless nature of the occupation. The role of American troops has been reduced to search and destroy missions against the so-called insurgents with the Iraqi population cast merely as subjects for ‘collateral damage’ in pursuit of that strategy. Enough!! Those militants old enough to remember the Vietnam War or who have studied about it must be painfully aware of the similarities to the current situation. Most infamously- Remember My Lai.
Nevertheless the bulk of anti-war militants, abetted by the organizations which have led the anti-war demonstrations such as the United for Justice and Peace Coalition have centered their calls for action on the social patriotic slogans Bring the Troops Home or Bring Our Troops Home. Even though some elements of that movement have begun calling for Immediate Withdrawal recently the demand is still tied to getting our ‘boys and girls’ out of harms way.
Why are such slogans social patriotic? The essence of such calls is that the American troops used to destroy Iraq and murder and maim Iraqi civilians are our troops rather than agents of the American government- the main enemy of the peoples of the world. Those slogans imply there is just a misunderstanding over policy which reasonable people can disagree over. That is transparently just not the case. The hard fact is that we citizens have no control over the military deployment of any troops. To say so creates illusions that we do. While we have no interest in seeing individual soldiers harmed we also cannot take political and military responsibility for their use. If we are going to get anywhere with opposition to the war we better give up that last illusions on that score. We cannot have it both ways. Not on this issue. Get the hell out of Iraq Now!
Revised July 12, 2006
THIS IS PART OF A SERIES OF ARTICLES ON THE 2006-2008 ELECTION CYCLE UNDER THE HEADLINE- FORGET THE DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS, GREENS-BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!
FORGET DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS AND GREENS- BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!
In light of the recent seemingly never-ending revelations concerning American military atrocities toward Iraqi civilians it is high time to set the record straight about the appropriate slogans that anti-war militants use to affect the political outcome of the situation in Iraq. For those militants, including this writer, who have opposed the American war aims since before the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 our main slogan expressing our opposition to imperialism has been for the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all American and Allied forces from the Middle East. That continues to be the thrust of our political struggle today.
The recent revelations also underscore the aimless nature of the occupation. The role of American troops has been reduced to search and destroy missions against the so-called insurgents with the Iraqi population cast merely as subjects for ‘collateral damage’ in pursuit of that strategy. Enough!! Those militants old enough to remember the Vietnam War or who have studied about it must be painfully aware of the similarities to the current situation. Most infamously- Remember My Lai.
Nevertheless the bulk of anti-war militants, abetted by the organizations which have led the anti-war demonstrations such as the United for Justice and Peace Coalition have centered their calls for action on the social patriotic slogans Bring the Troops Home or Bring Our Troops Home. Even though some elements of that movement have begun calling for Immediate Withdrawal recently the demand is still tied to getting our ‘boys and girls’ out of harms way.
Why are such slogans social patriotic? The essence of such calls is that the American troops used to destroy Iraq and murder and maim Iraqi civilians are our troops rather than agents of the American government- the main enemy of the peoples of the world. Those slogans imply there is just a misunderstanding over policy which reasonable people can disagree over. That is transparently just not the case. The hard fact is that we citizens have no control over the military deployment of any troops. To say so creates illusions that we do. While we have no interest in seeing individual soldiers harmed we also cannot take political and military responsibility for their use. If we are going to get anywhere with opposition to the war we better give up that last illusions on that score. We cannot have it both ways. Not on this issue. Get the hell out of Iraq Now!
Revised July 12, 2006
THIS IS PART OF A SERIES OF ARTICLES ON THE 2006-2008 ELECTION CYCLE UNDER THE HEADLINE- FORGET THE DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS, GREENS-BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!
Tuesday, May 30, 2006
A NON-COMMUNIST VIEW OF THE FORMATION OF THE AMERICAN COMMUNIST PARTY
BOOK REVIEW
THE ROOTS OF AMERICAN COMMUNISM, THEODORE DRAPER, The Viking Press, New York, 1957
THE COMPANION VOLUME- AMERICAN COMMUNISM AND SOVIET RUSSIA WAS REVIEWED ON JUNE 21, 2006
As an addition to the historical record of the period from the Russian Revolution of 1917 to the formation and consolidation of the legal, open party in 1923 The Roots of American Communism and its companion volume detailing the period from 1923 to 1929-American Communism and Soviet Russia (which will be reviewed separately) – is the definitive scholarly study on the early history of the American Communist Party. The author, an ex-communist, but at the time of writing an anti-communist unlike other former communists nevertheless does a thorough job or presenting the personalities and issues in a reasonably straightforward manner. Given that these volumes were researched and published during the heart of the Cold War hysteria against the Soviet Union in the 1950’s this is not faint praise.
Also useful for this period in conjunction with these two volumes and to round them out, from the pro-Communist partisan perspective of one of the main leaders, is James P. Cannon’s The First Ten Years of American Communism and the Prometheus Research Library’s James P. Cannon and the Early Communist Movement. Absent from Mr. Draper’s analysis is any real feel for why the early leaders and rank and file of the party put themselves on the line, faced harassment, imprisonment or worst to create an American Bolshevik party. While there is no dearth of memoirs of other participants in the early movement, Cannon’s analysis most honestly fills that gap.
That said, why must militants read these works today? After the demise of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe anything positively related to Communist studies is deeply discounted. Nevertheless, for better or worse, the American Communist Party (and its offshoots) needs to be studied as an ultimately flawed example of a party that failed in its mission to create a radical version of society in America when it became merely a tool of Soviet diplomacy. Now is the time for militants to study the mistakes and draw the lessons of that history.
For those not familiar with this period a few helpful introductory chapters by Mr. Draper give an analysis of the forces that made up the radical scene prior to World War I. Those forces included the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), independent syndicalists influenced by the French anarchist movement and the anti-war left-wing of the Socialist party, including various foreign language federations. Thus, in its formative period the American party (or parties, to be more correct) gathered all those fresh elements which responded to the Bolshevik victory in Russia, saw it as the wave of the future and wanted to establish that kind of socialism here. As this writer has noted elsewhere, while those diffuse forces proved to be difficult to organize, this mix provided for a better internal party life than, say, in England where the militant Celtic and anarcho-syndicalist elements were not recruited resulting in a ‘stillborn’ party.
Mr. Draper also addresses the various important faction fights which occurred inside the party. To make sense of this is sometimes no simple task. That overview also highlights some of the now more obscure personalities, where they stood on the issues and insights into the significance of the crucial early fights in the party. These include questions which are still relevant today; a legal vs. an underground party; the revolutionary attitude toward parliamentary politics; support to third party bourgeois candidates; trade union policy; class war defense as well as how to rein in the intense internal struggle of the various factions for organizational control of the party.
This presentation makes it somewhat easier for those not well-versed in the intricacies of the political disputes which wracked the early American party to understand how these questions tended to pull the party in on itself. In many ways, given the undisputed rise of American imperialism in the immediate aftermath of World War I, this is a story of the ‘dog days’ of the party. Unfortunately, that American rise combined with the international ramifications of the internal disputes in the Russian Communist Party and in the Communist International shipwrecked the party as a revolutionary party toward the end of this period. That subject is more fully addressed in the second volume. Read this book.
SOME OF THE BOOKS REVIEWED HERE MAY NOT BE READILY AVAILABLE AT LOCAL LIBRARIES OR BOOKSTORES. CHECK AMAZON.COM FOR AVAILABILITY THERE, BOTH NEW AND USED.
THE ROOTS OF AMERICAN COMMUNISM, THEODORE DRAPER, The Viking Press, New York, 1957
THE COMPANION VOLUME- AMERICAN COMMUNISM AND SOVIET RUSSIA WAS REVIEWED ON JUNE 21, 2006
As an addition to the historical record of the period from the Russian Revolution of 1917 to the formation and consolidation of the legal, open party in 1923 The Roots of American Communism and its companion volume detailing the period from 1923 to 1929-American Communism and Soviet Russia (which will be reviewed separately) – is the definitive scholarly study on the early history of the American Communist Party. The author, an ex-communist, but at the time of writing an anti-communist unlike other former communists nevertheless does a thorough job or presenting the personalities and issues in a reasonably straightforward manner. Given that these volumes were researched and published during the heart of the Cold War hysteria against the Soviet Union in the 1950’s this is not faint praise.
Also useful for this period in conjunction with these two volumes and to round them out, from the pro-Communist partisan perspective of one of the main leaders, is James P. Cannon’s The First Ten Years of American Communism and the Prometheus Research Library’s James P. Cannon and the Early Communist Movement. Absent from Mr. Draper’s analysis is any real feel for why the early leaders and rank and file of the party put themselves on the line, faced harassment, imprisonment or worst to create an American Bolshevik party. While there is no dearth of memoirs of other participants in the early movement, Cannon’s analysis most honestly fills that gap.
That said, why must militants read these works today? After the demise of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe anything positively related to Communist studies is deeply discounted. Nevertheless, for better or worse, the American Communist Party (and its offshoots) needs to be studied as an ultimately flawed example of a party that failed in its mission to create a radical version of society in America when it became merely a tool of Soviet diplomacy. Now is the time for militants to study the mistakes and draw the lessons of that history.
For those not familiar with this period a few helpful introductory chapters by Mr. Draper give an analysis of the forces that made up the radical scene prior to World War I. Those forces included the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), independent syndicalists influenced by the French anarchist movement and the anti-war left-wing of the Socialist party, including various foreign language federations. Thus, in its formative period the American party (or parties, to be more correct) gathered all those fresh elements which responded to the Bolshevik victory in Russia, saw it as the wave of the future and wanted to establish that kind of socialism here. As this writer has noted elsewhere, while those diffuse forces proved to be difficult to organize, this mix provided for a better internal party life than, say, in England where the militant Celtic and anarcho-syndicalist elements were not recruited resulting in a ‘stillborn’ party.
Mr. Draper also addresses the various important faction fights which occurred inside the party. To make sense of this is sometimes no simple task. That overview also highlights some of the now more obscure personalities, where they stood on the issues and insights into the significance of the crucial early fights in the party. These include questions which are still relevant today; a legal vs. an underground party; the revolutionary attitude toward parliamentary politics; support to third party bourgeois candidates; trade union policy; class war defense as well as how to rein in the intense internal struggle of the various factions for organizational control of the party.
This presentation makes it somewhat easier for those not well-versed in the intricacies of the political disputes which wracked the early American party to understand how these questions tended to pull the party in on itself. In many ways, given the undisputed rise of American imperialism in the immediate aftermath of World War I, this is a story of the ‘dog days’ of the party. Unfortunately, that American rise combined with the international ramifications of the internal disputes in the Russian Communist Party and in the Communist International shipwrecked the party as a revolutionary party toward the end of this period. That subject is more fully addressed in the second volume. Read this book.
SOME OF THE BOOKS REVIEWED HERE MAY NOT BE READILY AVAILABLE AT LOCAL LIBRARIES OR BOOKSTORES. CHECK AMAZON.COM FOR AVAILABILITY THERE, BOTH NEW AND USED.
Monday, May 29, 2006
***A Small Slice Of The Spanish Civil War- From The Pen Of Ernest Heminway
Click on title to link to Wikipedia's entry for "For Whom The Bells Toll".
BOOK REVIEW
FOR WHOM THE BELLS TOLL, ERNEST HEMINGWAY
AS THE 70TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BEGINNING OF THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR APPROACHES THE WRITER IS REVIEWING BOOKS ON AND ABOUT THIS SUBJECT WHICH SHOULD BE OF INTEREST TO TODAY’S MILITANTS
I have been interested, as a pro-Republican partisan, in the Spanish Civil War since I was a teenager. What initially perked my interest, and remains of interest, is the passionate struggle of the Spanish working class to create its own political organization of society, its leadership of the struggle against Spanish Fascism and the romance surrounding the entry of the International Brigades, particularly the American Abraham Lincoln Battalion of the 15th Brigade, into the struggle.
Underlying my interests has always been a nagging question of how that struggle could have been won by the working class. The Spanish proletariat certainly was capable of both heroic action and the ability to create organizations that reflected its own class interests i.e. the worker militias and factory committees. Of all modern working class uprisings after the Russian revolution Spain showed the most promise of success. Russian Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky noted in one of his writings on Spain that the Spanish proletariat at the start of its revolutionary period had a higher political consciousness than the Russian proletariat in 1917.
That understanding of the political consciousness of the Spanish proletariat calls into question the strategies put forth by the parties of the Popular Front, including the Spanish Communist Party- defeat Franco first, and then make the social transformation of society. Ernest Hemingway in his novel For Whom the Bells Toll weighs in on that question here. Whatever value the novel had or has as a narrative of a small slice of the Spanish events one must look elsewhere to discovery the causes of the Republican defeat.
Ernest Hemingway most definitively was in love with Spain and always, lurking just below, the surface was his love affair with death. That combination placed in the context of the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39 makes for an explosive, dramatic tale. The hero is an American, Robert Jordan, aka Ernest Hemingway, of fizzy politics but a desire to help the Spanish people. Additionally Jordan, if expediency demands it, is willing to face danger and death at the command of the Communist-dominated International Brigades (although it is not always clear whether he is an American Lincoln Brigade volunteer or a freelancer). Hemingway's critique of the Stalinist domination of the military command and therefore authors of the military strategy that led to defeat at times overwhelms the story. His skewering of Andre Marty, leader of the International Brigades, also has that same effect. In short, Hemingway believed that 'outside forces’ meddling in Spanish affairs led to death for Jordan and disaster for the Spanish people. Well, nobody expects nor is it mandatory for a novelist to be politically astute or correct. Here Hemingway joins that crowd.
The one subject that Ernest Hemingway seemed consistently to excel at was the telling of war stories. And whatever else might be true of For Whom the Bell Tolls it is preeminently a war story. A classic war romance if you have also seen the movie treatment of the book starring Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman. It might be a male thing, it might be a Hemingway thing, or it might be that the nature of war lends itself to dramatic tension that holds a story together. Today, in some literary circles, it is not considered politically correct to laud works by such dead, white males as Hemingway but the flat out truth is that the man could write. If his work stands outside the current canon of American literary efforts then something is wrong with the new canon.
To make matters worst the current leftist-oriented literary establishment, grizzled, hard-bitten academic warriors that they are, has not been the only force that has taken aim at Hemingway's head. At the time of publication in 1940 the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion, those who actually fought in Spain, and the various Communist Parties throughout the world were unhappy with the novel. Why? Hemingway was too harsh on the deficiencies of the Communists, the International Brigades and the Republican forces in general. Above I mentioned that writers were not expected to be politically astute. That is one thing. But to say that Hemingway was essentially sabotaging the exiled Republican efforts to aid the refugees by the thrust of his novel is also politically wrong. The man did materially and militarily aid the Republican side (financially aiding volunteers and supplying ambulances). That accrues to his honor. In short, Hemingway's writings-yes. Hemingway's politics-no.
BOOK REVIEW
FOR WHOM THE BELLS TOLL, ERNEST HEMINGWAY
AS THE 70TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BEGINNING OF THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR APPROACHES THE WRITER IS REVIEWING BOOKS ON AND ABOUT THIS SUBJECT WHICH SHOULD BE OF INTEREST TO TODAY’S MILITANTS
I have been interested, as a pro-Republican partisan, in the Spanish Civil War since I was a teenager. What initially perked my interest, and remains of interest, is the passionate struggle of the Spanish working class to create its own political organization of society, its leadership of the struggle against Spanish Fascism and the romance surrounding the entry of the International Brigades, particularly the American Abraham Lincoln Battalion of the 15th Brigade, into the struggle.
Underlying my interests has always been a nagging question of how that struggle could have been won by the working class. The Spanish proletariat certainly was capable of both heroic action and the ability to create organizations that reflected its own class interests i.e. the worker militias and factory committees. Of all modern working class uprisings after the Russian revolution Spain showed the most promise of success. Russian Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky noted in one of his writings on Spain that the Spanish proletariat at the start of its revolutionary period had a higher political consciousness than the Russian proletariat in 1917.
That understanding of the political consciousness of the Spanish proletariat calls into question the strategies put forth by the parties of the Popular Front, including the Spanish Communist Party- defeat Franco first, and then make the social transformation of society. Ernest Hemingway in his novel For Whom the Bells Toll weighs in on that question here. Whatever value the novel had or has as a narrative of a small slice of the Spanish events one must look elsewhere to discovery the causes of the Republican defeat.
Ernest Hemingway most definitively was in love with Spain and always, lurking just below, the surface was his love affair with death. That combination placed in the context of the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39 makes for an explosive, dramatic tale. The hero is an American, Robert Jordan, aka Ernest Hemingway, of fizzy politics but a desire to help the Spanish people. Additionally Jordan, if expediency demands it, is willing to face danger and death at the command of the Communist-dominated International Brigades (although it is not always clear whether he is an American Lincoln Brigade volunteer or a freelancer). Hemingway's critique of the Stalinist domination of the military command and therefore authors of the military strategy that led to defeat at times overwhelms the story. His skewering of Andre Marty, leader of the International Brigades, also has that same effect. In short, Hemingway believed that 'outside forces’ meddling in Spanish affairs led to death for Jordan and disaster for the Spanish people. Well, nobody expects nor is it mandatory for a novelist to be politically astute or correct. Here Hemingway joins that crowd.
The one subject that Ernest Hemingway seemed consistently to excel at was the telling of war stories. And whatever else might be true of For Whom the Bell Tolls it is preeminently a war story. A classic war romance if you have also seen the movie treatment of the book starring Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman. It might be a male thing, it might be a Hemingway thing, or it might be that the nature of war lends itself to dramatic tension that holds a story together. Today, in some literary circles, it is not considered politically correct to laud works by such dead, white males as Hemingway but the flat out truth is that the man could write. If his work stands outside the current canon of American literary efforts then something is wrong with the new canon.
To make matters worst the current leftist-oriented literary establishment, grizzled, hard-bitten academic warriors that they are, has not been the only force that has taken aim at Hemingway's head. At the time of publication in 1940 the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion, those who actually fought in Spain, and the various Communist Parties throughout the world were unhappy with the novel. Why? Hemingway was too harsh on the deficiencies of the Communists, the International Brigades and the Republican forces in general. Above I mentioned that writers were not expected to be politically astute. That is one thing. But to say that Hemingway was essentially sabotaging the exiled Republican efforts to aid the refugees by the thrust of his novel is also politically wrong. The man did materially and militarily aid the Republican side (financially aiding volunteers and supplying ambulances). That accrues to his honor. In short, Hemingway's writings-yes. Hemingway's politics-no.
Saturday, May 20, 2006
DON'T MOURN, ORGANIZE!!
BOOK REVIEW
TEAMSTER REBELLION, Farrell Dobbs, Monad Press, New York, 1972 and TEAMSTER POWER, Farrell Dobbs, Monad Press, New York, 1973.
ORGANIZE WALMART! ORGANIZE THE SOUTH! These are the slogans which outline the tasks that the American labor movement, particularly the organized trade union movement under the AFL-CIO and the Change to Win Coalition, need to address. With those tasks in mind it was refreshing for this old militant to re-read Farrell Dobbs’ analysis of the fight to organize the truckers in the 1930’s. These volumes are little handbooks for model labor organizing. Dobbs himself was instrumental in organizing the truckers of Minneapolis in the great strikes in that city in 1934 and as documented here the later, successful organizing of the over the road drivers in the Midwest which created the modern, powerful Teamsters International Union. He was, more importantly, a supporter of what later in the decade became the Socialist Workers Party- American section of the Trotsky-led Fourth International.
Whatever else may be true about Dobbs this man could organize workers. Why? The last sentence in the previous paragraph gives the answer. In the modern labor movement it is not enough to be a militant on the picket line but one must also have a political approach to labor actions. With the merging of corporate and governmental interests on the labor question in the modern state militants better think politically. As the December, 2005 unsuccessful struggle of the transport workers in New York City demonstrates militants better know the enemy and his tactics well. Moreover, these days, unlike in the 1930’s when it went without question by advanced workers, it is as important to know there is an enemy. On the other hand think what it would be like to have a political militant like Dobbs organizing the drivers of those 7000 trucks that Wal-Mart owns to distribute its merchandise. You get my drift. Read what he has to say carefully.
To even introduce this militant labor leader of the 1930’s is to state the fundamental problem of today’s labor leaders. They do not exist in the modern labor movement. Yes, there are militants out there in the rank and file but militant leaders are no longer produced and that is the rub. Unlike the strategy of independent political action which underlined Dobbs’ work the strategy of today’s labor leaders can be summed up in two words- class collaboration. That is a strategy of dependence by the labor movement on the good will of the ‘friends of labor’, essentially the Democratic Party- not to fight for victory in the streets but by what, at times, amounts to parliamentary cretinism. Just start to organize Wal-Mart seriously or organize the South and militants will quickly see who their ‘friends’ are.
The natural audience for this book are today’s labor activists so the reviewer would draw attention to the following issues that Dobbs and his associates had to confront and which militants today will confront in any serious organizing efforts. (1)The role of the labor bureaucracy in limiting the scope of struggle. (2) The role of governmental mediators, courts, legislation and the above-mentioned ‘friends of labor’ in curtailing the struggle. (3) The role of scabs and others, including government troops, who will try to break the up the struggle.
On the positive side- the following should be noted; have your own publicity organ to get out your message; organize other labor and pro-labor sources to assist in strike action; anticipate that governmental and corporate sources will try to ‘freeze’ workers out so have your own transport, commissary and medical operations. Finally, in the words of the old Wobblie (IWW) song by Joe Hill- 'Don’t Mourn, Organize'!!
SOME OF THE BOOKS REVIEWED HERE MAY NOT BE READILY AVAILABLE AT LOCAL LIBRARIES OR BOOKSTORES. CHECK AMAZON.COM FOR AVAILABILITY THERE, BOTH NEW AND USED.
TEAMSTER REBELLION, Farrell Dobbs, Monad Press, New York, 1972 and TEAMSTER POWER, Farrell Dobbs, Monad Press, New York, 1973.
ORGANIZE WALMART! ORGANIZE THE SOUTH! These are the slogans which outline the tasks that the American labor movement, particularly the organized trade union movement under the AFL-CIO and the Change to Win Coalition, need to address. With those tasks in mind it was refreshing for this old militant to re-read Farrell Dobbs’ analysis of the fight to organize the truckers in the 1930’s. These volumes are little handbooks for model labor organizing. Dobbs himself was instrumental in organizing the truckers of Minneapolis in the great strikes in that city in 1934 and as documented here the later, successful organizing of the over the road drivers in the Midwest which created the modern, powerful Teamsters International Union. He was, more importantly, a supporter of what later in the decade became the Socialist Workers Party- American section of the Trotsky-led Fourth International.
Whatever else may be true about Dobbs this man could organize workers. Why? The last sentence in the previous paragraph gives the answer. In the modern labor movement it is not enough to be a militant on the picket line but one must also have a political approach to labor actions. With the merging of corporate and governmental interests on the labor question in the modern state militants better think politically. As the December, 2005 unsuccessful struggle of the transport workers in New York City demonstrates militants better know the enemy and his tactics well. Moreover, these days, unlike in the 1930’s when it went without question by advanced workers, it is as important to know there is an enemy. On the other hand think what it would be like to have a political militant like Dobbs organizing the drivers of those 7000 trucks that Wal-Mart owns to distribute its merchandise. You get my drift. Read what he has to say carefully.
To even introduce this militant labor leader of the 1930’s is to state the fundamental problem of today’s labor leaders. They do not exist in the modern labor movement. Yes, there are militants out there in the rank and file but militant leaders are no longer produced and that is the rub. Unlike the strategy of independent political action which underlined Dobbs’ work the strategy of today’s labor leaders can be summed up in two words- class collaboration. That is a strategy of dependence by the labor movement on the good will of the ‘friends of labor’, essentially the Democratic Party- not to fight for victory in the streets but by what, at times, amounts to parliamentary cretinism. Just start to organize Wal-Mart seriously or organize the South and militants will quickly see who their ‘friends’ are.
The natural audience for this book are today’s labor activists so the reviewer would draw attention to the following issues that Dobbs and his associates had to confront and which militants today will confront in any serious organizing efforts. (1)The role of the labor bureaucracy in limiting the scope of struggle. (2) The role of governmental mediators, courts, legislation and the above-mentioned ‘friends of labor’ in curtailing the struggle. (3) The role of scabs and others, including government troops, who will try to break the up the struggle.
On the positive side- the following should be noted; have your own publicity organ to get out your message; organize other labor and pro-labor sources to assist in strike action; anticipate that governmental and corporate sources will try to ‘freeze’ workers out so have your own transport, commissary and medical operations. Finally, in the words of the old Wobblie (IWW) song by Joe Hill- 'Don’t Mourn, Organize'!!
SOME OF THE BOOKS REVIEWED HERE MAY NOT BE READILY AVAILABLE AT LOCAL LIBRARIES OR BOOKSTORES. CHECK AMAZON.COM FOR AVAILABILITY THERE, BOTH NEW AND USED.
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
*HONOR LOUIS AUGUSTE BLANQUI-19TH CENTURY REVOLUTIONARY MAN OF ACTION
Click on title to link to Wikipedia's entry for the great European revolutionary man of action, Louis Auguste Blanqui.
COMMENTARY
If you are familiar with left terminology or if you ever wondered where the terms Blanquist or Blanquism came from Louis Auguste Blanqui is the 19th century man of revolutionary socialist action from which the terms derive. The terms connote a particular notion of revolutionary strategy- essentially the belief that a small cohesive vanguard of kindred revolutionary soldiers acting under cover of a conspiracy was all that was necessary to overthrow the existing regime and usher in a better, more just society. Marxists basing themselves on historical materialism and massive transformations to create historical change have always fought against such a strategy admiring the fortitude of Blanqui as a revolutionary. Basically, Blanquism represents a pre-industrial theory more suitable to an artisan and peasant based society. The theory’s history stretches back to the defeat of the Conspiracy of Equals led by Babeuf after the Themidorian Reaction of 1794 had signaled the degeneration of the French Revolution. While rejecting Blanqui’s theory one should note that such devoted militants are all too rare in the history of the left and therefore one must honor such an exemplary revolutionary.
Although the Marxist movement, beginning with Marx himself, has mercilessly fought against the substitution list notion that a small band of well-armed revolutionaries can overturn the old regime and bring a more just society the charge of Blanquism has always hovered around the surface of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Many historians and political commentators have declared the Bolshevik seizure of power in October a coup d’etat. That is facile commentary. If one wants to do harm to the notion of a coup d’etat in the classic sense of a closed military conspiracy a la Blanqui this cannot stand up to examination.
First, the Bolsheviks were an urban civilian party with at best tenuous ties to military knowledge and resources. Even simple military operations like the famous bank expropriations after the 1905 Revolution were mainly botched and gave them nothing but headaches with the leadership of pre-World War I international social democracy. Secondly, and decisively, Bolshevik influence over the garrison in Petrograd and eventually elsewhere precluded such a necessity. Although, as Trotsky noted, conspiracy is an element of any insurrection this was in fact an ‘open’ conspiracy that even the Kerensky government had to realize was taking place. The Bosheviks relied on the masses just as we should.
The following is a thumbnail sketch of the trials and tribulations of Blanqui throughout his revolutionary career. Just to detail the number of insurrections and revolutionary actions Blanqui was involved in, as well as the amount of time he spent in prison shows why he, justifiably, was considered a dangerous man when on the loose by every bourgeois government.
Louis Auguste Blanqui (1805-1881) was a French revoluionary socialist famous for his devotion to the cause despite repeated imprisonments and for his tactic of the revolutionary seizure of power by a well-trained body of armed men. He joined an unsuccessful Paris insurrection in 1827 and was thereafter connected with every revolutionary attempt until his death. He played an active role in the July Revolution of 1830; he was sentenced to prison for articles in the paper he edited; he was sentenced again in 1836, but pardoned in 1837.
He was condemned to death for leading an unsuccessful insurrection in 1839, but his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment; he was freed by the February Revolution of 1848, but given a ten-year sentence in 1849 as reaction gained the upper hand. Amnestied in 1859, he was reimprisoned in 1861 but escaped in 1865 and continued his propaganda against the Second Empire government from exile. Returning to France under the general amnesty of 1869, he led two armed demonstrations against the government of Louis Napoleon in Paris in 1870 and temporarily seized power on October 31, 1870. He was condemned to death on March 17, 1871.
The Paris Commune broke out a few days later. Blanqui was elected a member of the revolutionary government, but he was unable to take his seat since he was in the prison of the counterrevolutionary Versailles regime, which had a well-grounded fear that, with his energy and military ability, he might lead the Commune to military victory. He was kept in prison until 1879, when he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies by the workers of Bordeaux. Although the government declared his election invalid, it released him from prison, broken in health. He immediately resumed his agitation. At the end of 1880, he had a stroke after giving a speech at a meeting in Paris, and he died New Year's Day, 1881.
COMMENTARY
If you are familiar with left terminology or if you ever wondered where the terms Blanquist or Blanquism came from Louis Auguste Blanqui is the 19th century man of revolutionary socialist action from which the terms derive. The terms connote a particular notion of revolutionary strategy- essentially the belief that a small cohesive vanguard of kindred revolutionary soldiers acting under cover of a conspiracy was all that was necessary to overthrow the existing regime and usher in a better, more just society. Marxists basing themselves on historical materialism and massive transformations to create historical change have always fought against such a strategy admiring the fortitude of Blanqui as a revolutionary. Basically, Blanquism represents a pre-industrial theory more suitable to an artisan and peasant based society. The theory’s history stretches back to the defeat of the Conspiracy of Equals led by Babeuf after the Themidorian Reaction of 1794 had signaled the degeneration of the French Revolution. While rejecting Blanqui’s theory one should note that such devoted militants are all too rare in the history of the left and therefore one must honor such an exemplary revolutionary.
Although the Marxist movement, beginning with Marx himself, has mercilessly fought against the substitution list notion that a small band of well-armed revolutionaries can overturn the old regime and bring a more just society the charge of Blanquism has always hovered around the surface of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Many historians and political commentators have declared the Bolshevik seizure of power in October a coup d’etat. That is facile commentary. If one wants to do harm to the notion of a coup d’etat in the classic sense of a closed military conspiracy a la Blanqui this cannot stand up to examination.
First, the Bolsheviks were an urban civilian party with at best tenuous ties to military knowledge and resources. Even simple military operations like the famous bank expropriations after the 1905 Revolution were mainly botched and gave them nothing but headaches with the leadership of pre-World War I international social democracy. Secondly, and decisively, Bolshevik influence over the garrison in Petrograd and eventually elsewhere precluded such a necessity. Although, as Trotsky noted, conspiracy is an element of any insurrection this was in fact an ‘open’ conspiracy that even the Kerensky government had to realize was taking place. The Bosheviks relied on the masses just as we should.
The following is a thumbnail sketch of the trials and tribulations of Blanqui throughout his revolutionary career. Just to detail the number of insurrections and revolutionary actions Blanqui was involved in, as well as the amount of time he spent in prison shows why he, justifiably, was considered a dangerous man when on the loose by every bourgeois government.
Louis Auguste Blanqui (1805-1881) was a French revoluionary socialist famous for his devotion to the cause despite repeated imprisonments and for his tactic of the revolutionary seizure of power by a well-trained body of armed men. He joined an unsuccessful Paris insurrection in 1827 and was thereafter connected with every revolutionary attempt until his death. He played an active role in the July Revolution of 1830; he was sentenced to prison for articles in the paper he edited; he was sentenced again in 1836, but pardoned in 1837.
He was condemned to death for leading an unsuccessful insurrection in 1839, but his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment; he was freed by the February Revolution of 1848, but given a ten-year sentence in 1849 as reaction gained the upper hand. Amnestied in 1859, he was reimprisoned in 1861 but escaped in 1865 and continued his propaganda against the Second Empire government from exile. Returning to France under the general amnesty of 1869, he led two armed demonstrations against the government of Louis Napoleon in Paris in 1870 and temporarily seized power on October 31, 1870. He was condemned to death on March 17, 1871.
The Paris Commune broke out a few days later. Blanqui was elected a member of the revolutionary government, but he was unable to take his seat since he was in the prison of the counterrevolutionary Versailles regime, which had a well-grounded fear that, with his energy and military ability, he might lead the Commune to military victory. He was kept in prison until 1879, when he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies by the workers of Bordeaux. Although the government declared his election invalid, it released him from prison, broken in health. He immediately resumed his agitation. At the end of 1880, he had a stroke after giving a speech at a meeting in Paris, and he died New Year's Day, 1881.
Sunday, May 07, 2006
*MOBILIZE LABOR'S POWER TO FREE CLASS-WAR PRISONER MUMIA ABU-JAMAL
Click on the title to link to the Partisan Defense Committee Web site.
THIS ARTICLE FROM PARTISAN DEFENSE NOTES WAS PASSED ON TO THE WRITER BY THE PARTISAN DEFENSE COMMITTTEE, P.O. BOX 99 CANAL STREET STATION, NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10013. Check at right for link to site.
THERE IS NOTHING THAT I NEED TO ADD EXCEPT THAT IF YOU OPPOSE THE DEATH PENALTY THIS IS THE KEY CASE TODAY. ALL MILITANTS OPPOSE THE DEATH PENALTY- FOR THE GUILTY AS WELL AS THE INNOCENT. IT IS JUST EASIER TO HIGHLIGHT A POLITCAL CASE LIKE THIS. IN ANY CASE- MUMIA IS AN INNOCENT MAN. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.
TAKE ACTION TODAY- MAKE A CONTRIBUTION TO HIS DEFENSE. ORGANIZE PROTESTS. PASS MOTIONS IN YOUR UNIONS, SCHOOL COMMUNITY OR RELGIOUS ORGANIZATION DEMANDING MUMIA’S FREEDOM. HAVE THE ORGANIZATION MAKE A CONTRIBUTE TO HIS DEFENSE. PUBLICIZE THIS CASE FAR AND WIDE
Join the Campaign!
Twenty-four years after Mumia Abu-Jamal was sent to death row, framed up on charges of killing Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner, his case has entered what is likely the final stage of legal proceedings. Last December the Third Circuit federal appeals court put his case on the "fast track." Before the court are appeals from the December 2001 ruling by federal judge William Yohn that overturned Mumia's death sentence but overruled every challenge to the frame-up conviction. Mumia appealed, seeking to overturn the conviction, and the Philly district attorney appealed to reinstate the death sentence. In a matter of months, the court will decide what lies next for this innocent man, former Black Panther Party member, MOVE supporter and renowned journalist: death, life in prison, or more legal proceedings.
Mumia's life is in grave danger. He is up against the vast resources of the capitalist state and its mouthpieces in the bourgeois press who howl for his blood. The capitalist rulers who vilify striking transit workers as "thugs," black hurricane victims as "looters" and immigrant workers as "illegal," seek the legal lynching of the man known as the "voice of the voiceless." Shredding their own precedents, court after court has rubber-stamped the wholesale trampling of Mumia's rights at his 1982 sham trial, and barred proof of Mumia's innocence, including the sworn confession of Arnold Beverly that he, not Mumia, shot and killed Faulkner.
With a death warrant hanging over Jamal's head, in August 1995 mobilizations of millions around the world stayed the executioner's hand. "They have tried to break this entire movement up," Pam Africa of International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal told an April 21 meeting in Philadelphia. "But there's a lot of us that are strong and able to stay here and will keep it going no matter what." As Mumia's critical court battle looms, we must mobilize now! As the Spartacist League and Partisan Defense Committee have stated since we first took up Mumia's defense in 1987: while every legal remedy must be pursued on Mumia's behalf, what's needed is a campaign of mass labor-centered united-front actions, uniting a broad spectrum of political views while assuring all the right to have their say. Millions of voices must once again be heard demanding: Free Mumia Abu-Jamal now! Abolish the racist death penalty!
The April 21 meeting greeted a French delegation including Marie-George Buffet, National Secretary of the French Communist Party (PCF), and Jacky Hortaut of the CGT trade-union federation. Rachel Wolkenstein, Partisan Defense Committee counsel and formerly one of Mumia's attorneys, presented a detailed report on the Beverly confession and the other evidence of Mumia's innocence.Wolkenstein has also been invited to speak on the Beverly evidence at an April 29 ceremony in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis to name a street after Mumia leading to the Nelson Mandela Stadium. The ceremony will also feature Mumia's current attorney Robert Bryan, Pam Africa and Ramona Africa, the sole adult survivor of the government's 1985 bombing of Philadelphia MOVE. In January, a French coalition including the PCF, CGT and other labor, anti-racist and left groups kicked off a drive to raise 100,000 euros ($123,000) for Mumia's defense. Most importantly, that fund drive should aim to spur labor action on Mumia's behalf, internationally and especially in the U.S.
Mumia Abu-Jamal Is an Innocent Man!
On March 16, the prosecution filed its opening brief, ostensibly to address the relatively technical legal issue of whether the instructions and the verdict form given to the jury at the death sentence hearing were proper. While Mumia is barred from presenting evidence that he had nothing to do with Faulkner's death, the prosecution's papers predictably open with a venomous, trumped-up "statement of the facts"—every one of which was long ago refuted—to portray Mumia as a premeditated cop killer. This vicious lying attack is a testament that the racist capitalist state will say and do anything to see Mumia executed.
In reality, a mountain of evidence proves Mumia's innocence, including Beverly's confession that he was hired to kill Faulkner because the cop was reportedly interfering with prostitution, gambling, drugs and police payoffs. Beverly's confession is corroborated by the ballistics and physical evidence and the testimony of many other witnesses, several of whom said the shooter fled the scene. Notably, Beverly was wearing a green army jacket that night, which is what at least five witnesses said the shooter wore! Mumia was wearing a red quilted ski jacket with wide vertical blue stripes. There is no green army jacket in the police evidence.
The cops, prosecutors, gutter press and liberals alike have dismissed Beverly's account of a mob hit as "ridiculous." But in December 1981, there were at least three ongoing federal probes of the Philly cops, with targets that included the entire chain of command for the "investigation" of Faulkner's shooting: the head of Homicide, the Central Division commander and the ranking officer at the scene of the shooting, Alfonzo Giordano. Giordano was a longtime henchman of the notoriously racist police chief and later Philly mayor, Frank Rizzo, targeting the Black Panther Party and leftists and overseeing the 1977-78 siege of MOVE's Powelton Village house. Giordano knew exactly who Mumia was, and had both motive and opportunity to frame him up.
Despite this mountain of evidence, Mumia's opening brief, due July 13, is limited by the courts to three issues: the D.A.'s racist jury selection which kept black jurors off Mumia's 1982 trial; the D.A.'s prejudicial closing argument stating that the jury should convict because Mumia would get "appeal after appeal," and the grossly biased state post-conviction hearings before the notorious hanging judge Albert Sabo, who was overheard at the time of the 1982 trial declaring with regard to Mumia, "I'm going to help 'em fry the n — r."
The Spectre of Black Revolution
The fight for Mumia's freedom must be premised on the clear understanding that this is a racist political frame-up of an innocent man. It must be understood that the forces of the capitalist state are unified in their thirst for Mumia's blood and why that is so. Those struggling for Mumia's life and freedom must have no illusions in the bourgeois courts or the representatives of the bloody capitalist rulers — whether they be Democrats, Republicans or Greens.
The capitalist rulers want to see Mumia dead because they see in him the spectre of black revolution, defiant opposition to their system of racist oppression. From 1 969, when he was a teenaged spokesman for the Black Panther Party, Mumia was a marked man in the eyes of the capitalist state. In 1968, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover vowed, "The Negro youth and moderates] must be made to understand that if they succumb to revolutionary teachings, they will be dead revolutionaries." Because of his political views, because of what he wrote and said, Mumia was targeted by the Feds' notorious COINTELPRO (Counter-intelligence Program), under which 38 Panthers were murdered and hundreds more railroaded to prison. On 9 December 1981, the cops saw their chance, shooting Mumia, beating him, and then framing him up for Faulkner's murder.
Mumia's frame-up is an object lesson that the capitalist state — centrally, the cops, courts, prisons and military — is an apparatus of organized violence used to preserve capitalist rule through the suppression of the working class and oppressed. At the pinnacle of this system of state terror is the racist death penalty, a barbaric legacy of chattel slavery, the system that laid the basis for the special oppression of black people in the U.S. The "legal" lynching of Stanley Tookie Williams by the state of California in December, despite a worldwide outcry, signaled the American rulers' determination to fortify their death machine, not least against Mumia.
Mumia's case is what the death penalty is all about. The impulse behind the death penalty is the impulse to genocide. To see the murderous brutality of the racist capitalist system, you need look no further than New Orleans, where the city's black and poor were left to die as Hurricane Katrina hit. As an integral part of our fight for Mumia, the Spartacist League and Labor Black Leagues sponsored a Black History month speaking tour with talks on "The Fight to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal" and "Race, Class and Socialist Revolution: Class-Struggle Road to Black Freedom." These forums underlined our commitment to abolish the death penalty as part of the fight for black equality, just as our fight for Mumia's freedom is part of our perspective of revolutionary integrationism — that the multiracial working class must combat every instance of discrimination while understanding that black liberation will be won only through socialist revolution.
For Class-Struggle Defense!
The key to Mumia's freedom lies in the social power of labor. The proletariat has every interest in fighting against the frame-up of Mumia Abu-Jamal and all instances of racist oppression. It also has the social power to bring production to a halt. The three-day New York City transit strike crippled America's financial capital, while two months of massive protests and strikes in France this spring forced the government to scrap the hated First Employment Contract. Think if that power were mobilized behind Mumia's cause!
Mumia's fight is labor's fight. Every repressive law and court decision bolstering the capitalist state will ultimately be directed at the working class. The fight against racist discrimination, in defense of immigrant rights and all the oppressed is the fight for the unity of the working class against its common class enemy. Taking up Mumia's defense helps to promote proletarian class unity by combatting the racial and ethnic divisions fostered by the ruling class to weaken the working class. It strikes a blow at the capitalist rulers, who are shredding civil liberties in the name of the "war on terror" and pursuing imperialist war in Iraq and elsewhere.
To give an idea of what Mumia is up against: judges of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, in whose hands Mumia's case now rests, testified en masse for the reactionary Samuel Alito during his January Supreme Court confirmation hearings. Among the members of this court is Marjorie Rendell, wife of Pennsylvania's Democratic governor Ed Rendell, the former head of the Democratic National Committee and the Philadelphia D.A. during Mumia's frame-up trial.
A labor-centered campaign on Mumia's behalf must be built on the principle of political independence of the working class from the capitalist class enemy and its state. Mumia's freedom will not be won through reliance on the rigged "justice" system or on capitalist politicians. The labor tops' allegiance to the capitalist system is one of the chief obstacles to unleashing labor's power in its own defense and in defense of all the oppressed.
Following the stay of Mumia's execution in 1995, a movement of millions in his defense was systematically demobilized by the reformist socialist organizers of protests for Mumia. Groups like Workers World Party and Socialist Action tailored their appeals to what would be "acceptable" to Democratic Party liberals. For years these reformists subordinated any demand to free Mumia to calls for a new "fair" trial, as if Mumia would suddenly receive "justice" from the same courts that have kept him on death row for 24 years! The fruit of the reformists' liberal program is that the annual demonstrations on Mumia's birthday on April 24 have dwindled since 1999, with no outdoor demonstrations on that date this year, even as the critical court battle looms.
When the Beverly confession became public in 2001, many of these same supposed socialists assisted the bourgeois media blackout by ignoring or downplaying this explosive evidence. This led Mumia to comment: "Many of you have said that you don't believe in the system, yet, in your hearts you refuse to let it go." Liberals fled Mumia's campaign in droves because they could not stomach that Beverly's confession exposed the fraud of American "justice" and showed the unity of purpose between the cops, the courts and the capitalist rulers.
As PDC counsel Rachel Wolkenstein stated in her Philly speech: "We need to rebuild a mass movement on the basis that Mumia's conviction and death sentence were political and that it is in the interest of all working people—black and white, citizens and immigrants—to join together and fight for his freedom." Raise your voice and join the campaign to free Mumia Abu-Jamal! Organize now in your union, on your campus, in your community to demand: Freedom now for Mumia Abu-Jamal!
THIS ARTICLE FROM PARTISAN DEFENSE NOTES WAS PASSED ON TO THE WRITER BY THE PARTISAN DEFENSE COMMITTTEE, P.O. BOX 99 CANAL STREET STATION, NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10013. Check at right for link to site.
THERE IS NOTHING THAT I NEED TO ADD EXCEPT THAT IF YOU OPPOSE THE DEATH PENALTY THIS IS THE KEY CASE TODAY. ALL MILITANTS OPPOSE THE DEATH PENALTY- FOR THE GUILTY AS WELL AS THE INNOCENT. IT IS JUST EASIER TO HIGHLIGHT A POLITCAL CASE LIKE THIS. IN ANY CASE- MUMIA IS AN INNOCENT MAN. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.
TAKE ACTION TODAY- MAKE A CONTRIBUTION TO HIS DEFENSE. ORGANIZE PROTESTS. PASS MOTIONS IN YOUR UNIONS, SCHOOL COMMUNITY OR RELGIOUS ORGANIZATION DEMANDING MUMIA’S FREEDOM. HAVE THE ORGANIZATION MAKE A CONTRIBUTE TO HIS DEFENSE. PUBLICIZE THIS CASE FAR AND WIDE
Join the Campaign!
Twenty-four years after Mumia Abu-Jamal was sent to death row, framed up on charges of killing Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner, his case has entered what is likely the final stage of legal proceedings. Last December the Third Circuit federal appeals court put his case on the "fast track." Before the court are appeals from the December 2001 ruling by federal judge William Yohn that overturned Mumia's death sentence but overruled every challenge to the frame-up conviction. Mumia appealed, seeking to overturn the conviction, and the Philly district attorney appealed to reinstate the death sentence. In a matter of months, the court will decide what lies next for this innocent man, former Black Panther Party member, MOVE supporter and renowned journalist: death, life in prison, or more legal proceedings.
Mumia's life is in grave danger. He is up against the vast resources of the capitalist state and its mouthpieces in the bourgeois press who howl for his blood. The capitalist rulers who vilify striking transit workers as "thugs," black hurricane victims as "looters" and immigrant workers as "illegal," seek the legal lynching of the man known as the "voice of the voiceless." Shredding their own precedents, court after court has rubber-stamped the wholesale trampling of Mumia's rights at his 1982 sham trial, and barred proof of Mumia's innocence, including the sworn confession of Arnold Beverly that he, not Mumia, shot and killed Faulkner.
With a death warrant hanging over Jamal's head, in August 1995 mobilizations of millions around the world stayed the executioner's hand. "They have tried to break this entire movement up," Pam Africa of International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal told an April 21 meeting in Philadelphia. "But there's a lot of us that are strong and able to stay here and will keep it going no matter what." As Mumia's critical court battle looms, we must mobilize now! As the Spartacist League and Partisan Defense Committee have stated since we first took up Mumia's defense in 1987: while every legal remedy must be pursued on Mumia's behalf, what's needed is a campaign of mass labor-centered united-front actions, uniting a broad spectrum of political views while assuring all the right to have their say. Millions of voices must once again be heard demanding: Free Mumia Abu-Jamal now! Abolish the racist death penalty!
The April 21 meeting greeted a French delegation including Marie-George Buffet, National Secretary of the French Communist Party (PCF), and Jacky Hortaut of the CGT trade-union federation. Rachel Wolkenstein, Partisan Defense Committee counsel and formerly one of Mumia's attorneys, presented a detailed report on the Beverly confession and the other evidence of Mumia's innocence.Wolkenstein has also been invited to speak on the Beverly evidence at an April 29 ceremony in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis to name a street after Mumia leading to the Nelson Mandela Stadium. The ceremony will also feature Mumia's current attorney Robert Bryan, Pam Africa and Ramona Africa, the sole adult survivor of the government's 1985 bombing of Philadelphia MOVE. In January, a French coalition including the PCF, CGT and other labor, anti-racist and left groups kicked off a drive to raise 100,000 euros ($123,000) for Mumia's defense. Most importantly, that fund drive should aim to spur labor action on Mumia's behalf, internationally and especially in the U.S.
Mumia Abu-Jamal Is an Innocent Man!
On March 16, the prosecution filed its opening brief, ostensibly to address the relatively technical legal issue of whether the instructions and the verdict form given to the jury at the death sentence hearing were proper. While Mumia is barred from presenting evidence that he had nothing to do with Faulkner's death, the prosecution's papers predictably open with a venomous, trumped-up "statement of the facts"—every one of which was long ago refuted—to portray Mumia as a premeditated cop killer. This vicious lying attack is a testament that the racist capitalist state will say and do anything to see Mumia executed.
In reality, a mountain of evidence proves Mumia's innocence, including Beverly's confession that he was hired to kill Faulkner because the cop was reportedly interfering with prostitution, gambling, drugs and police payoffs. Beverly's confession is corroborated by the ballistics and physical evidence and the testimony of many other witnesses, several of whom said the shooter fled the scene. Notably, Beverly was wearing a green army jacket that night, which is what at least five witnesses said the shooter wore! Mumia was wearing a red quilted ski jacket with wide vertical blue stripes. There is no green army jacket in the police evidence.
The cops, prosecutors, gutter press and liberals alike have dismissed Beverly's account of a mob hit as "ridiculous." But in December 1981, there were at least three ongoing federal probes of the Philly cops, with targets that included the entire chain of command for the "investigation" of Faulkner's shooting: the head of Homicide, the Central Division commander and the ranking officer at the scene of the shooting, Alfonzo Giordano. Giordano was a longtime henchman of the notoriously racist police chief and later Philly mayor, Frank Rizzo, targeting the Black Panther Party and leftists and overseeing the 1977-78 siege of MOVE's Powelton Village house. Giordano knew exactly who Mumia was, and had both motive and opportunity to frame him up.
Despite this mountain of evidence, Mumia's opening brief, due July 13, is limited by the courts to three issues: the D.A.'s racist jury selection which kept black jurors off Mumia's 1982 trial; the D.A.'s prejudicial closing argument stating that the jury should convict because Mumia would get "appeal after appeal," and the grossly biased state post-conviction hearings before the notorious hanging judge Albert Sabo, who was overheard at the time of the 1982 trial declaring with regard to Mumia, "I'm going to help 'em fry the n — r."
The Spectre of Black Revolution
The fight for Mumia's freedom must be premised on the clear understanding that this is a racist political frame-up of an innocent man. It must be understood that the forces of the capitalist state are unified in their thirst for Mumia's blood and why that is so. Those struggling for Mumia's life and freedom must have no illusions in the bourgeois courts or the representatives of the bloody capitalist rulers — whether they be Democrats, Republicans or Greens.
The capitalist rulers want to see Mumia dead because they see in him the spectre of black revolution, defiant opposition to their system of racist oppression. From 1 969, when he was a teenaged spokesman for the Black Panther Party, Mumia was a marked man in the eyes of the capitalist state. In 1968, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover vowed, "The Negro youth and moderates] must be made to understand that if they succumb to revolutionary teachings, they will be dead revolutionaries." Because of his political views, because of what he wrote and said, Mumia was targeted by the Feds' notorious COINTELPRO (Counter-intelligence Program), under which 38 Panthers were murdered and hundreds more railroaded to prison. On 9 December 1981, the cops saw their chance, shooting Mumia, beating him, and then framing him up for Faulkner's murder.
Mumia's frame-up is an object lesson that the capitalist state — centrally, the cops, courts, prisons and military — is an apparatus of organized violence used to preserve capitalist rule through the suppression of the working class and oppressed. At the pinnacle of this system of state terror is the racist death penalty, a barbaric legacy of chattel slavery, the system that laid the basis for the special oppression of black people in the U.S. The "legal" lynching of Stanley Tookie Williams by the state of California in December, despite a worldwide outcry, signaled the American rulers' determination to fortify their death machine, not least against Mumia.
Mumia's case is what the death penalty is all about. The impulse behind the death penalty is the impulse to genocide. To see the murderous brutality of the racist capitalist system, you need look no further than New Orleans, where the city's black and poor were left to die as Hurricane Katrina hit. As an integral part of our fight for Mumia, the Spartacist League and Labor Black Leagues sponsored a Black History month speaking tour with talks on "The Fight to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal" and "Race, Class and Socialist Revolution: Class-Struggle Road to Black Freedom." These forums underlined our commitment to abolish the death penalty as part of the fight for black equality, just as our fight for Mumia's freedom is part of our perspective of revolutionary integrationism — that the multiracial working class must combat every instance of discrimination while understanding that black liberation will be won only through socialist revolution.
For Class-Struggle Defense!
The key to Mumia's freedom lies in the social power of labor. The proletariat has every interest in fighting against the frame-up of Mumia Abu-Jamal and all instances of racist oppression. It also has the social power to bring production to a halt. The three-day New York City transit strike crippled America's financial capital, while two months of massive protests and strikes in France this spring forced the government to scrap the hated First Employment Contract. Think if that power were mobilized behind Mumia's cause!
Mumia's fight is labor's fight. Every repressive law and court decision bolstering the capitalist state will ultimately be directed at the working class. The fight against racist discrimination, in defense of immigrant rights and all the oppressed is the fight for the unity of the working class against its common class enemy. Taking up Mumia's defense helps to promote proletarian class unity by combatting the racial and ethnic divisions fostered by the ruling class to weaken the working class. It strikes a blow at the capitalist rulers, who are shredding civil liberties in the name of the "war on terror" and pursuing imperialist war in Iraq and elsewhere.
To give an idea of what Mumia is up against: judges of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, in whose hands Mumia's case now rests, testified en masse for the reactionary Samuel Alito during his January Supreme Court confirmation hearings. Among the members of this court is Marjorie Rendell, wife of Pennsylvania's Democratic governor Ed Rendell, the former head of the Democratic National Committee and the Philadelphia D.A. during Mumia's frame-up trial.
A labor-centered campaign on Mumia's behalf must be built on the principle of political independence of the working class from the capitalist class enemy and its state. Mumia's freedom will not be won through reliance on the rigged "justice" system or on capitalist politicians. The labor tops' allegiance to the capitalist system is one of the chief obstacles to unleashing labor's power in its own defense and in defense of all the oppressed.
Following the stay of Mumia's execution in 1995, a movement of millions in his defense was systematically demobilized by the reformist socialist organizers of protests for Mumia. Groups like Workers World Party and Socialist Action tailored their appeals to what would be "acceptable" to Democratic Party liberals. For years these reformists subordinated any demand to free Mumia to calls for a new "fair" trial, as if Mumia would suddenly receive "justice" from the same courts that have kept him on death row for 24 years! The fruit of the reformists' liberal program is that the annual demonstrations on Mumia's birthday on April 24 have dwindled since 1999, with no outdoor demonstrations on that date this year, even as the critical court battle looms.
When the Beverly confession became public in 2001, many of these same supposed socialists assisted the bourgeois media blackout by ignoring or downplaying this explosive evidence. This led Mumia to comment: "Many of you have said that you don't believe in the system, yet, in your hearts you refuse to let it go." Liberals fled Mumia's campaign in droves because they could not stomach that Beverly's confession exposed the fraud of American "justice" and showed the unity of purpose between the cops, the courts and the capitalist rulers.
As PDC counsel Rachel Wolkenstein stated in her Philly speech: "We need to rebuild a mass movement on the basis that Mumia's conviction and death sentence were political and that it is in the interest of all working people—black and white, citizens and immigrants—to join together and fight for his freedom." Raise your voice and join the campaign to free Mumia Abu-Jamal! Organize now in your union, on your campus, in your community to demand: Freedom now for Mumia Abu-Jamal!
Friday, May 05, 2006
*From The Archives Of "Women And Revolution"-Down with the Reactionary Anti-Porn Crusade!
Click on the headline to link to a Website featuring the paintings, nude and non-nude of the great artist, Titian. Close your eyes if you are offended by the nudes. Okay.
Markin comment:
The following is an article from the Spring 1985 issue of "Women and Revolution" that may have some historical interest for old "new leftists", perhaps, and well as for younger militants interested in various cultural and social questions that intersect the class struggle. Or for those just interested in a Marxist position on a series of social questions that are thrust upon us by the vagaries of bourgeois society. I will be posting more such articles from the back issues of "Women and Revolution" during Women's History Month and periodically throughout the year.
**********
Down with the Reactionary Anti-Porn Crusade!
Granddaughters of Carry Nation in Bed with Jerry Falwell
Reprinted from Young Spartacus No. 123, December 1984/January 1985
MADISON— Formerly a hotbed of campus protest, the University of Wisconsin-Madison's "radical" reputation has given way in large part to smug, "me generation" liberalism. The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), scabs on the anti-Vietnam War movement, carry a lot of weight in city and county government. With prudery that suits Madison's Protestant environs, "alternative" lifestylism has been institutionalized. You will live a wholesome life. Some manifestations are just plain silly: Madison was declared a "nuclear-free zone" and sandwiches come with beansprouts whether you order them or not. Some are absolutely infuriating: liquor stores close, at 9:00 p.m. and you can't buy cigarettes anywhere on the huge UW campus.
The latest target for moral uplift of the community is pornography—Penthouse and Playboy have been pulled from the Student Union newsstand on the dubious grounds of "low circulation." DSAer Kathleen Nichols, a Dane County supervisor, is proposing legislation modeled on Andrea Dworkin's Minneapolis ordinance to make pornography a civil rights violation. Material in which "people" are "reduced to body parts," "presented in postures of sexual submission" or "presented as whores by nature" would be outlawed (Badger-Herald, 8 November 1984)! Under this law, you can't consent to buy, sell, photograph or pose for pornographic pictures. As the Badger-Herald commented, "Groups normally in solidarity, such as pseudo-feminists and homosexuals, are at odds. Groups normally in opposition, such as pseudo-feminists and the local fundamentalist ministers, support the ordinance." Talk about obscene!
We print below a slightly edited version of the Spartacus Youth League statement submitted to the Madison Isthmus and UW Daily Cardinal. It appeared in a shortened version in the Isthmus (16 November 1984) while the Cardinal has refused to publish it.
Contrary to prevailing liberal opinion, Madison is part of Reagan's USA, albeit with a twist. Witness the New Right's drive to "clean up America." It's going strong in Madison. There's legislation to ban dirty pictures. On 19 October 1984, demonstrators picketed at a State Street porno store; someone stenciled "Burn Me Down" on the wall—and they mean it. Rampaging fundamentalists? Nope. This particular anti-sex crusade is led by Madison's "alternative" to the Army of God— the "radical" feminists.
Finding Robin Morgan in bed with Jerry Falwell may surprise some who thought feminism had something to do with women's liberation. After all, the '60s feminists posed as right-on revolutionaries. They rejected "male-defined" sex roles, denounced "family values" as scams to keep women isolated, dependent, condemned to domestic servitude. They worried about racism and poor people. But the feminists never opposed the oppressive capitalist system itself: their "program" consists of escapist lifestylism, "consciousness raising," "women's" vegetarian co-ops. That's why the feminist "movement" didn't move. It remained confined to rarefied microcosms like Madison, lily-white and middle-class.
What's left of the "movement" no longer even worries about real human oppression. While the feminists are busy trying to stamp out fishnet stockings and high heels, genuine assaults on women's rights go unanswered. Legalized abortion is seriously threatened; abortion clinics get firebombed, their patients harassed, but you don't hear a peep from the feminists. Then there's the case of Patricia Ridge—a single, black, working mother. Last year her five-year-old son was shot pointblank in her bedroom in a Los Angeles-area housing project by a white cop. The cop got off, but a grand jury tried to charge her with everything from child neglect to Murder Two. The Marxist Spartacist League came to her defense. But the organized feminists did nothing. For them, "women's oppression" equals nude photos: they're blind to real class and race oppression facing working-class and black women.
This "Take Back the Night" crusade is a slice of middle America at its worst—about as progressive as forbidding sex education. It dovetails with the current incitement of every backward, sexist, racist, jingoistic prejudice of American society in preparation for war against the USSR. The Democrats and Republicans have been humming "Onward Christian Soldiers" since Cold War II began under born-again Jimmy Carter; with Reagan the crusade has reached new lows. They both want a "prepared" society with social relations straight out of "Leave It To Beaver." No "extramarital" sex, no porn, no abortion, no gays.
The feminists even share Cold War/Moral Majority terminology (e.g., "Porn is the new terrorism"). And there's a certain ideological congruence. The feminists basically buy the Moral Majority's "me Tarzan, you Jane" view of human sexuality: women are gentle nurturers, children are "innocent" and asexual, while men are sexual aggressors. That's what "Pornography is the theory, rape is the practice" boils down to: men are barely controlled rapists—all it takes is a little leg to set 'em off. In that case, why stop with censoring Penthouse? According to Annie Laurie Gaylor, editor of the Feminist Connection, Rubens and Titian can go too: they painted women ravished by swans! (Perhaps when Gaylor leaves the Connection, she can get a job at the Elvehjem Museum chiseling the genitals off classical statues.)
Then there's the touchy question of First Amendment rights. With the exception of the rabid crackpot Andrea Dworkin, most feminists try to squeak past it by making a snooty differentiation between pornography and "erotica." It works like this. "Erotica" is printed on expensive paper with "tasteful" hand-drawn illustrations; "pornography" goes for $2.50, with tacky overexposed photos. As the saying goes, "perversion" is what you aren't into.
As Marxists, the Spartacist League and Spartacus Youth League oppose all attempts at puritanical censorship, whether launched by outright reactionaries or feminist ayatollahs. You can't legislate sexuality. We defend the right of consenting individuals in any combination of age, race, sex, in any number, to engage in the sexual activity of their choice—or look at the photos of their choice—without state intervention.
Pornography is not violence: it's fantasy. Rape is a form of violent criminal assault. Among other things, we advocate the repeal of gun control laws: women should have the right to carry arms and use them in self-defense. To argue that "porn is rape" or, like Robin Morgan, that any sex not initiated by a woman is rape, is—aside from being pretty damned presumptuous— to trivialize and confuse the issue. Capitalist society— its forced poverty, rigid family structure, hypocritical straitjacket morality—breeds the poisonous frustrations that explode in violence. The liberation of women requires getting rid of the repressive constraints imposed on women by the nuclear family, thus creating the possibility of new relationships based on social equality—free from compulsion and stultifying "moral" restrictions. In short, women's liberation requires socialist revolution.
While the feminist anti-porn crusaders rely on candlelight vigils, their Reaganite allies have access to systematic state repression and vigilante terror. And Reagan has launched a full-scale attack on democratic rights. Political opposition becomes "terrorism." Cop/ media hysteria about child abuse at daycare centers carries the message that the only safe place for kids is locked up at home with a non-working mom. If your sexual preference doesn't suit Jerry Falwell, you could be locked up for life.
That's no idle threat. The campaign for "decency" has been viciously anti-gay from the start. Vanessa Williams lost her crown not least because those photos were of lesbian sex. Boston-area photographer George Jacobs got 20 years for the "crime" of having consensual sex with his 14-year-old roommate. Jacobs was tested to determine if he was a "sexually dangerous person" and could have been put away in a mental hospital permanently. The cops and press went wild over NAMBLA (North American Man-Boy Love Association), an organization for the defense of civil rights of "men and boys involved in consensual sexual and other relationships with each other." NAMBLA members were beaten, framed and sent to psychiatric institutions. And that's nothing compared with the Justice Department's plan to research "behavior modification, chemical treatments, physiological stud¬ies of those suspected of psychosexual dysfunction—as evidenced by...their divorces or homosexuality" (Village Voice, 7 August 1984)!
The reactionary nature of anti-porn legislation masquerading as protection of "civil rights" is spelled out in a new law pending in Suffolk County, New York. The bill is identical to Dworkin's Minneapolis anti-porn law, minus feminist verbiage. It's sponsored by groups like the National Federation for Decency (an actual organization!) explicitly to "wipe out sodomy" and, according-to one supporter, "pornography [that] could cause social decay leading to a possible communist takeover"!
It's not like the feminists can't smell this anti-gay stench; far from it. Kathleen Nichols, lesbian activist member of the "Democratic" Socialists of America, is the Dane County supervisor behind the Madison censorship. This bigot told OUT! magazine that if the ordinance closes adult bookstores where gay men meet, all the better to stop AIDS because "that kind of anonymous sexual congress has resulted in 5500 cases of AIDS" (OUT!, September 1984). For this anti-democratic liberal, male gay sex is a health hazard. This is vile anti-gay bigotry. Do lesbians active in the anti-porn movement believe that once they outlaw everyone else's sexual practices, their own will be protected? They're on mighty thin ice. Check out Khomeini's Iran: no porn there—and they stone homosexuals to death.
Pornography reflects, and only reflects, some human behavior. In this violent, irrational society, those reflections sometimes aren't pretty: but you can't change society by changing its images on a screen. "Positive images" won't materially advance the cause of women's equality any more than those movies with Sidney Poitier as the black neurosurgeon changed the harsh reality of racist oppression. Socialist revolution alone can create the economic basis to replace the nuclear family and liberate women. We don't pretend to know what human relations in socialist society will be like. But we assume that, liberated from the artificial constraints currently imposed on human expression, sexuality under socialism will be more free, more open, more tolerant, more rich and more diverse. May the day come soon.
Carla Norris
for the Spartacus Youth League
Markin comment:
The following is an article from the Spring 1985 issue of "Women and Revolution" that may have some historical interest for old "new leftists", perhaps, and well as for younger militants interested in various cultural and social questions that intersect the class struggle. Or for those just interested in a Marxist position on a series of social questions that are thrust upon us by the vagaries of bourgeois society. I will be posting more such articles from the back issues of "Women and Revolution" during Women's History Month and periodically throughout the year.
**********
Down with the Reactionary Anti-Porn Crusade!
Granddaughters of Carry Nation in Bed with Jerry Falwell
Reprinted from Young Spartacus No. 123, December 1984/January 1985
MADISON— Formerly a hotbed of campus protest, the University of Wisconsin-Madison's "radical" reputation has given way in large part to smug, "me generation" liberalism. The Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), scabs on the anti-Vietnam War movement, carry a lot of weight in city and county government. With prudery that suits Madison's Protestant environs, "alternative" lifestylism has been institutionalized. You will live a wholesome life. Some manifestations are just plain silly: Madison was declared a "nuclear-free zone" and sandwiches come with beansprouts whether you order them or not. Some are absolutely infuriating: liquor stores close, at 9:00 p.m. and you can't buy cigarettes anywhere on the huge UW campus.
The latest target for moral uplift of the community is pornography—Penthouse and Playboy have been pulled from the Student Union newsstand on the dubious grounds of "low circulation." DSAer Kathleen Nichols, a Dane County supervisor, is proposing legislation modeled on Andrea Dworkin's Minneapolis ordinance to make pornography a civil rights violation. Material in which "people" are "reduced to body parts," "presented in postures of sexual submission" or "presented as whores by nature" would be outlawed (Badger-Herald, 8 November 1984)! Under this law, you can't consent to buy, sell, photograph or pose for pornographic pictures. As the Badger-Herald commented, "Groups normally in solidarity, such as pseudo-feminists and homosexuals, are at odds. Groups normally in opposition, such as pseudo-feminists and the local fundamentalist ministers, support the ordinance." Talk about obscene!
We print below a slightly edited version of the Spartacus Youth League statement submitted to the Madison Isthmus and UW Daily Cardinal. It appeared in a shortened version in the Isthmus (16 November 1984) while the Cardinal has refused to publish it.
Contrary to prevailing liberal opinion, Madison is part of Reagan's USA, albeit with a twist. Witness the New Right's drive to "clean up America." It's going strong in Madison. There's legislation to ban dirty pictures. On 19 October 1984, demonstrators picketed at a State Street porno store; someone stenciled "Burn Me Down" on the wall—and they mean it. Rampaging fundamentalists? Nope. This particular anti-sex crusade is led by Madison's "alternative" to the Army of God— the "radical" feminists.
Finding Robin Morgan in bed with Jerry Falwell may surprise some who thought feminism had something to do with women's liberation. After all, the '60s feminists posed as right-on revolutionaries. They rejected "male-defined" sex roles, denounced "family values" as scams to keep women isolated, dependent, condemned to domestic servitude. They worried about racism and poor people. But the feminists never opposed the oppressive capitalist system itself: their "program" consists of escapist lifestylism, "consciousness raising," "women's" vegetarian co-ops. That's why the feminist "movement" didn't move. It remained confined to rarefied microcosms like Madison, lily-white and middle-class.
What's left of the "movement" no longer even worries about real human oppression. While the feminists are busy trying to stamp out fishnet stockings and high heels, genuine assaults on women's rights go unanswered. Legalized abortion is seriously threatened; abortion clinics get firebombed, their patients harassed, but you don't hear a peep from the feminists. Then there's the case of Patricia Ridge—a single, black, working mother. Last year her five-year-old son was shot pointblank in her bedroom in a Los Angeles-area housing project by a white cop. The cop got off, but a grand jury tried to charge her with everything from child neglect to Murder Two. The Marxist Spartacist League came to her defense. But the organized feminists did nothing. For them, "women's oppression" equals nude photos: they're blind to real class and race oppression facing working-class and black women.
This "Take Back the Night" crusade is a slice of middle America at its worst—about as progressive as forbidding sex education. It dovetails with the current incitement of every backward, sexist, racist, jingoistic prejudice of American society in preparation for war against the USSR. The Democrats and Republicans have been humming "Onward Christian Soldiers" since Cold War II began under born-again Jimmy Carter; with Reagan the crusade has reached new lows. They both want a "prepared" society with social relations straight out of "Leave It To Beaver." No "extramarital" sex, no porn, no abortion, no gays.
The feminists even share Cold War/Moral Majority terminology (e.g., "Porn is the new terrorism"). And there's a certain ideological congruence. The feminists basically buy the Moral Majority's "me Tarzan, you Jane" view of human sexuality: women are gentle nurturers, children are "innocent" and asexual, while men are sexual aggressors. That's what "Pornography is the theory, rape is the practice" boils down to: men are barely controlled rapists—all it takes is a little leg to set 'em off. In that case, why stop with censoring Penthouse? According to Annie Laurie Gaylor, editor of the Feminist Connection, Rubens and Titian can go too: they painted women ravished by swans! (Perhaps when Gaylor leaves the Connection, she can get a job at the Elvehjem Museum chiseling the genitals off classical statues.)
Then there's the touchy question of First Amendment rights. With the exception of the rabid crackpot Andrea Dworkin, most feminists try to squeak past it by making a snooty differentiation between pornography and "erotica." It works like this. "Erotica" is printed on expensive paper with "tasteful" hand-drawn illustrations; "pornography" goes for $2.50, with tacky overexposed photos. As the saying goes, "perversion" is what you aren't into.
As Marxists, the Spartacist League and Spartacus Youth League oppose all attempts at puritanical censorship, whether launched by outright reactionaries or feminist ayatollahs. You can't legislate sexuality. We defend the right of consenting individuals in any combination of age, race, sex, in any number, to engage in the sexual activity of their choice—or look at the photos of their choice—without state intervention.
Pornography is not violence: it's fantasy. Rape is a form of violent criminal assault. Among other things, we advocate the repeal of gun control laws: women should have the right to carry arms and use them in self-defense. To argue that "porn is rape" or, like Robin Morgan, that any sex not initiated by a woman is rape, is—aside from being pretty damned presumptuous— to trivialize and confuse the issue. Capitalist society— its forced poverty, rigid family structure, hypocritical straitjacket morality—breeds the poisonous frustrations that explode in violence. The liberation of women requires getting rid of the repressive constraints imposed on women by the nuclear family, thus creating the possibility of new relationships based on social equality—free from compulsion and stultifying "moral" restrictions. In short, women's liberation requires socialist revolution.
While the feminist anti-porn crusaders rely on candlelight vigils, their Reaganite allies have access to systematic state repression and vigilante terror. And Reagan has launched a full-scale attack on democratic rights. Political opposition becomes "terrorism." Cop/ media hysteria about child abuse at daycare centers carries the message that the only safe place for kids is locked up at home with a non-working mom. If your sexual preference doesn't suit Jerry Falwell, you could be locked up for life.
That's no idle threat. The campaign for "decency" has been viciously anti-gay from the start. Vanessa Williams lost her crown not least because those photos were of lesbian sex. Boston-area photographer George Jacobs got 20 years for the "crime" of having consensual sex with his 14-year-old roommate. Jacobs was tested to determine if he was a "sexually dangerous person" and could have been put away in a mental hospital permanently. The cops and press went wild over NAMBLA (North American Man-Boy Love Association), an organization for the defense of civil rights of "men and boys involved in consensual sexual and other relationships with each other." NAMBLA members were beaten, framed and sent to psychiatric institutions. And that's nothing compared with the Justice Department's plan to research "behavior modification, chemical treatments, physiological stud¬ies of those suspected of psychosexual dysfunction—as evidenced by...their divorces or homosexuality" (Village Voice, 7 August 1984)!
The reactionary nature of anti-porn legislation masquerading as protection of "civil rights" is spelled out in a new law pending in Suffolk County, New York. The bill is identical to Dworkin's Minneapolis anti-porn law, minus feminist verbiage. It's sponsored by groups like the National Federation for Decency (an actual organization!) explicitly to "wipe out sodomy" and, according-to one supporter, "pornography [that] could cause social decay leading to a possible communist takeover"!
It's not like the feminists can't smell this anti-gay stench; far from it. Kathleen Nichols, lesbian activist member of the "Democratic" Socialists of America, is the Dane County supervisor behind the Madison censorship. This bigot told OUT! magazine that if the ordinance closes adult bookstores where gay men meet, all the better to stop AIDS because "that kind of anonymous sexual congress has resulted in 5500 cases of AIDS" (OUT!, September 1984). For this anti-democratic liberal, male gay sex is a health hazard. This is vile anti-gay bigotry. Do lesbians active in the anti-porn movement believe that once they outlaw everyone else's sexual practices, their own will be protected? They're on mighty thin ice. Check out Khomeini's Iran: no porn there—and they stone homosexuals to death.
Pornography reflects, and only reflects, some human behavior. In this violent, irrational society, those reflections sometimes aren't pretty: but you can't change society by changing its images on a screen. "Positive images" won't materially advance the cause of women's equality any more than those movies with Sidney Poitier as the black neurosurgeon changed the harsh reality of racist oppression. Socialist revolution alone can create the economic basis to replace the nuclear family and liberate women. We don't pretend to know what human relations in socialist society will be like. But we assume that, liberated from the artificial constraints currently imposed on human expression, sexuality under socialism will be more free, more open, more tolerant, more rich and more diverse. May the day come soon.
Carla Norris
for the Spartacus Youth League
Thursday, May 04, 2006
MR. GORBACHEV (OOPS!), MR. BUSH TEAR DOWN THAT WALL-FULL CITIZENSHIP RIGHTS FOR ALL IMMIGRANTS
SOME COMMENTARY ABOUT THE IMMIGRATION STRUGGLE AND A FOOLPROOF PLAN FOR SOLVING THE IMMIGRATION CRISIS.
FORGET DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS AND GREENS-BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!
Forgive the writer for taking a page from the late, unlamented Ronald Reagan’s playbook but with all this talk on Capitol Hill about walling in the Southwest I got carried away. The point, however, is that such a scheme as is currently proposed in the House version of the immigration bill is flat out crazy. And that, my friends, is a true political statement. No militant can support any of the immigration bills before Congress and if we had workers party representatives in Congress we would emphatically vote such measures down.
A few thoughts on the struggle for full citizenship rights for all immigrants.
As I write these lines there have been a couple of weeks of massive demonstrations for immigrant rights spearheaded by the Hispanic populations of the West and Southwest followed by a massive May Day boycott and further demonstrations. Noteworthy, in Chicago at least, were contingents of Polish, Irish and other nationalities. All these developments are steps in the right direction and points out the stark reality of immigration in America.
Let’s face it, one way or another, in the near or remote past, almost all of us came here as immigrants from someplace else. I will confess that, as far as I know, my father’s forbears were run out of England as horse thieves in the early 1800’s. My mother’s forbears came over from Ireland on the ‘famine ships’ in the 1840’s. Thus, my family tree is a little shaky on what passed for green cards in those days. The point is that people generally do not leave their countries of origin without extremely good reasons to leave. Those who want to shut the door on immigrants here, unless their surnames are Chief Joseph, Red Cloud or Sitting Bull, should be very, very circumspect about their positions. In fact, let us check THEIR green card history. Sorry, even arrival on the Mayflower is not good enough.
It is particularly important that the last waves of immigration gain the same rights that those of us who have been here longer. This is especially true for working class people who have been victimized by the same divide and conquer strategy by the capitalists who run this government and the country. Let’s put the onus where it belongs, on the capitalist who do benefit from such policies. Immigrants do not threaten our livelihoods. Failure to struggle against the bosses does.
One aspect of the current bills is the ‘guest worker’ plan. Let us be clear- THIS IS INDENTURED SERVITUDE- and must be opposed by militants. It is noteworthy that the major labor federations, the AFL-CIO and Change to Win Coalition as well as such an august figure as the National Chairman of the Democratic Party, Howard Dean have expressed at least half-hearted opposition to this portion of the bills. They believe they are being progressive and pro-worker by such a stand. And such a position would be truly progressive- in the 1700’s. For militants today that is not nearly enough.
It is rather ironic that one of the most impoverished sections of the working class-Hispanics- is leading the struggle. This is not accidental, for many of the foreign born militants leading today’s struggles come from countries where they have participated in class struggles against their own boss class (and under less than democratic conditions, including loss of life). It is up to the American labor movement, especially the organized trade union movement, to lead the fight for full citizenship rights for all immigrants in its own self-interest and self-defense. Even a cursory look at the history of social struggles in this country demonstrates that to win any demands sharp class struggle methods are needed. Yesterday’s labor struggles to win union recognition in the 1930’s were not gifts but fought for in the streets, by strikes, sit-downs and other militant methods. The lesson-If you do not fight you cannot win. This battle can be won. Let’s win it.
The writer has been asked what type of immigration bill he would support. Well, I have a simple one point plan. Give each immigrant a local map, and depending on individual economic circumstances, bus fare, train fare or money for a car rental and head him or her to the nearest federal courthouse to be swore in as a citizen. Enough said.
FULL CITIZENSHIP RIGHTS FOR ALL THOSE WHO MAKE IT HERE. NO REPRISALS AGAINST DEMONSTRATORS! DROP CHARGES AGAINST ANY ARRESTEES!
BRING MOTIONS TO SUPPORT THESE DEMANDS BEFORE YOUR UNION, STUDENT GOVERNMENT, POLITCAL ORGANIZATIONS OR RELIGIOUS GROUPS. URGE A NO VOTE ON ALL CURRENT IMMIGRATION LEGISLATION BEFORE CONGRESS.
THIS IS PART OF A SERIES OF ARTICLES OF COMMENTARY ON THE 2006-2008 ELECTION CYCLE UNDER THE HEADLINE- FORGET THE DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS, GREENS-BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!
FORGET DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS AND GREENS-BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!
Forgive the writer for taking a page from the late, unlamented Ronald Reagan’s playbook but with all this talk on Capitol Hill about walling in the Southwest I got carried away. The point, however, is that such a scheme as is currently proposed in the House version of the immigration bill is flat out crazy. And that, my friends, is a true political statement. No militant can support any of the immigration bills before Congress and if we had workers party representatives in Congress we would emphatically vote such measures down.
A few thoughts on the struggle for full citizenship rights for all immigrants.
As I write these lines there have been a couple of weeks of massive demonstrations for immigrant rights spearheaded by the Hispanic populations of the West and Southwest followed by a massive May Day boycott and further demonstrations. Noteworthy, in Chicago at least, were contingents of Polish, Irish and other nationalities. All these developments are steps in the right direction and points out the stark reality of immigration in America.
Let’s face it, one way or another, in the near or remote past, almost all of us came here as immigrants from someplace else. I will confess that, as far as I know, my father’s forbears were run out of England as horse thieves in the early 1800’s. My mother’s forbears came over from Ireland on the ‘famine ships’ in the 1840’s. Thus, my family tree is a little shaky on what passed for green cards in those days. The point is that people generally do not leave their countries of origin without extremely good reasons to leave. Those who want to shut the door on immigrants here, unless their surnames are Chief Joseph, Red Cloud or Sitting Bull, should be very, very circumspect about their positions. In fact, let us check THEIR green card history. Sorry, even arrival on the Mayflower is not good enough.
It is particularly important that the last waves of immigration gain the same rights that those of us who have been here longer. This is especially true for working class people who have been victimized by the same divide and conquer strategy by the capitalists who run this government and the country. Let’s put the onus where it belongs, on the capitalist who do benefit from such policies. Immigrants do not threaten our livelihoods. Failure to struggle against the bosses does.
One aspect of the current bills is the ‘guest worker’ plan. Let us be clear- THIS IS INDENTURED SERVITUDE- and must be opposed by militants. It is noteworthy that the major labor federations, the AFL-CIO and Change to Win Coalition as well as such an august figure as the National Chairman of the Democratic Party, Howard Dean have expressed at least half-hearted opposition to this portion of the bills. They believe they are being progressive and pro-worker by such a stand. And such a position would be truly progressive- in the 1700’s. For militants today that is not nearly enough.
It is rather ironic that one of the most impoverished sections of the working class-Hispanics- is leading the struggle. This is not accidental, for many of the foreign born militants leading today’s struggles come from countries where they have participated in class struggles against their own boss class (and under less than democratic conditions, including loss of life). It is up to the American labor movement, especially the organized trade union movement, to lead the fight for full citizenship rights for all immigrants in its own self-interest and self-defense. Even a cursory look at the history of social struggles in this country demonstrates that to win any demands sharp class struggle methods are needed. Yesterday’s labor struggles to win union recognition in the 1930’s were not gifts but fought for in the streets, by strikes, sit-downs and other militant methods. The lesson-If you do not fight you cannot win. This battle can be won. Let’s win it.
The writer has been asked what type of immigration bill he would support. Well, I have a simple one point plan. Give each immigrant a local map, and depending on individual economic circumstances, bus fare, train fare or money for a car rental and head him or her to the nearest federal courthouse to be swore in as a citizen. Enough said.
FULL CITIZENSHIP RIGHTS FOR ALL THOSE WHO MAKE IT HERE. NO REPRISALS AGAINST DEMONSTRATORS! DROP CHARGES AGAINST ANY ARRESTEES!
BRING MOTIONS TO SUPPORT THESE DEMANDS BEFORE YOUR UNION, STUDENT GOVERNMENT, POLITCAL ORGANIZATIONS OR RELIGIOUS GROUPS. URGE A NO VOTE ON ALL CURRENT IMMIGRATION LEGISLATION BEFORE CONGRESS.
THIS IS PART OF A SERIES OF ARTICLES OF COMMENTARY ON THE 2006-2008 ELECTION CYCLE UNDER THE HEADLINE- FORGET THE DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS, GREENS-BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
OF REVOLUTIONARIES, DILETTANTES AND SUCH
BOOK REVIEW
THE COMMUNIST LEAGUE OF AMERICA, 1932-34- THE WRITINGS AND SPEECHES OF JAMES P. CANNON, Monad Press, New York, 1985.
If you are interested in the history of the American Left or are a militant trying to understand some of the past lessons of our history concerning the socialist response to various social and labor questions this book is for you. This book is part of a continuing series of volumes of the writings of James P. Cannon that were published by the organization he founded, the Socialist Workers Party, in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Cannon died in 1974. Look in this space for other related reviews of this series of documents on and by an important American Communist.
In their introduction the editors motivate the purpose for the publication of the book by stating the Cannon was the finest Communist leader that America had ever produced. This an intriguing question. The editors trace their political lineage back to Cannon’s leadership of the early Communist Party and later after his expulsion to the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party so their perspective is obvious. What does the documentation provided here show? This certainly is the period of Cannon’s political maturation, and the beginning of a long political collaboration working with Trotsky. The period under discussion- from the late 1920’s when he was expelled as leader of the American Communist Party to the early 1930’s and the start of the great labor upsurge which would bring wide spread unionization to the working class. Cannon won his spurs in this struggle to orient this organization toward a revolutionary path. One thing is sure- in his prime, which includes this period- Cannon had the instincts to want to lead a revolution and had the evident capacity to do so. That he never had an opportunity to lead a revolution is his personal tragedy and ours as well.
As an expelled faction of the American Communist Party, which continued to stand on the program of the defense of the Russian Revolution, the Cannon faction needed an orientation. That they considered themselves as an expelled but loyal faction of the Communist Party was the correct orientation for a small propaganda group. The party was where the vast bulk of the advanced political workers were. Immediately going to the “masses”, as has occurred with other expelled groupings then and now, would have proved disastrous. Cannon’s group needed to cohere a programmatic basis and recruit a cadre to win over workers and intellectuals from the party. Its Platform of the Communist Opposition, a generally good programmatic statement, was its key analysis and tool to win cadre.
That said, there are three related points of interest in this book for today’ militants; the necessity of a small propaganda group to struggle in order to cohere an authoritative leadership in the face of severe internal disputes and other difficulties; the necessity for it to break out of its isolation and intersect mass struggles when they develop; and, the necessity of following a policy of regroupment, splits and fusions to create at least a modest vanguard formation, when possible. The history of the American left political landscape is filled with long forgotten groupings that could not surmount these problems. Within limits Cannon dragged the Communist League of America into a modest vanguard formation.
In the post-October Revolution period every serious revolutionary has had to confront the question of the organizational form of the vanguard workers party. The ideas put forth by Marxism have since the time of Marx and Engel held a certain fascination for young alienated intellectuals and others interested in changing the world. And this accrues to the benefit of the working class movement, as the movement needs intellectuals, sometimes desperately, to help formulate theoretical problems and write propaganda.
The problem, particularly acute under the conditions of the small propaganda group under discussion, is to find the right mix of revolutionary intellectuals and advanced workers in order to push the work forward. That means, in Trotsky’s famous phrase, that the revolutionary intellectuals have to, as he did, harness themselves to the work. Failing that intrigues, squabbles and merely literary propaganda prevail. The beginning section of this volume is filled with such doings. This is the axis that the Cannon-Shachtman struggle ran on here during this period. And that tension would later cause problems in the Socialist Workers Party when all hell broke loose over the question of defense of the Soviet Union became operative at the beginning of World War II. Whether this tension between intellectuals and workers can be solved short of the transition to socialism is an open question. In the final analysis the problem was not resolved by this group. Read on.
As an addition to the historical records of this period this book is a very good companion to Cannon’s own THE LEFT OPPOSITION IN THE U.S., 1928-31, Monad Press, New York, 1981 and DOG DAYS: JAMES P. CANNON vs. MAX SHACHTMAN IN THE COMMUNIST LEAGUE OF AMERICA, 1931-1933, PROMETHEUS RESEARCH LIBRARY, Spartacist Publishing Co., New York, 2002.
SOME OF THE BOOKS REVIEWED HERE MAY NOT BE READILY AVAILABLE AT LOCAL LIBRARIES OR BOOKSTORES. CHECK AMAZON.COM FOR AVAILABILITY THERE, BOTH NEW AND USED. YOU CAN ALSO GOOGLE THE JAMES P. CANNON INTERNET ARCHIVES.
THE COMMUNIST LEAGUE OF AMERICA, 1932-34- THE WRITINGS AND SPEECHES OF JAMES P. CANNON, Monad Press, New York, 1985.
If you are interested in the history of the American Left or are a militant trying to understand some of the past lessons of our history concerning the socialist response to various social and labor questions this book is for you. This book is part of a continuing series of volumes of the writings of James P. Cannon that were published by the organization he founded, the Socialist Workers Party, in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Cannon died in 1974. Look in this space for other related reviews of this series of documents on and by an important American Communist.
In their introduction the editors motivate the purpose for the publication of the book by stating the Cannon was the finest Communist leader that America had ever produced. This an intriguing question. The editors trace their political lineage back to Cannon’s leadership of the early Communist Party and later after his expulsion to the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party so their perspective is obvious. What does the documentation provided here show? This certainly is the period of Cannon’s political maturation, and the beginning of a long political collaboration working with Trotsky. The period under discussion- from the late 1920’s when he was expelled as leader of the American Communist Party to the early 1930’s and the start of the great labor upsurge which would bring wide spread unionization to the working class. Cannon won his spurs in this struggle to orient this organization toward a revolutionary path. One thing is sure- in his prime, which includes this period- Cannon had the instincts to want to lead a revolution and had the evident capacity to do so. That he never had an opportunity to lead a revolution is his personal tragedy and ours as well.
As an expelled faction of the American Communist Party, which continued to stand on the program of the defense of the Russian Revolution, the Cannon faction needed an orientation. That they considered themselves as an expelled but loyal faction of the Communist Party was the correct orientation for a small propaganda group. The party was where the vast bulk of the advanced political workers were. Immediately going to the “masses”, as has occurred with other expelled groupings then and now, would have proved disastrous. Cannon’s group needed to cohere a programmatic basis and recruit a cadre to win over workers and intellectuals from the party. Its Platform of the Communist Opposition, a generally good programmatic statement, was its key analysis and tool to win cadre.
That said, there are three related points of interest in this book for today’ militants; the necessity of a small propaganda group to struggle in order to cohere an authoritative leadership in the face of severe internal disputes and other difficulties; the necessity for it to break out of its isolation and intersect mass struggles when they develop; and, the necessity of following a policy of regroupment, splits and fusions to create at least a modest vanguard formation, when possible. The history of the American left political landscape is filled with long forgotten groupings that could not surmount these problems. Within limits Cannon dragged the Communist League of America into a modest vanguard formation.
In the post-October Revolution period every serious revolutionary has had to confront the question of the organizational form of the vanguard workers party. The ideas put forth by Marxism have since the time of Marx and Engel held a certain fascination for young alienated intellectuals and others interested in changing the world. And this accrues to the benefit of the working class movement, as the movement needs intellectuals, sometimes desperately, to help formulate theoretical problems and write propaganda.
The problem, particularly acute under the conditions of the small propaganda group under discussion, is to find the right mix of revolutionary intellectuals and advanced workers in order to push the work forward. That means, in Trotsky’s famous phrase, that the revolutionary intellectuals have to, as he did, harness themselves to the work. Failing that intrigues, squabbles and merely literary propaganda prevail. The beginning section of this volume is filled with such doings. This is the axis that the Cannon-Shachtman struggle ran on here during this period. And that tension would later cause problems in the Socialist Workers Party when all hell broke loose over the question of defense of the Soviet Union became operative at the beginning of World War II. Whether this tension between intellectuals and workers can be solved short of the transition to socialism is an open question. In the final analysis the problem was not resolved by this group. Read on.
As an addition to the historical records of this period this book is a very good companion to Cannon’s own THE LEFT OPPOSITION IN THE U.S., 1928-31, Monad Press, New York, 1981 and DOG DAYS: JAMES P. CANNON vs. MAX SHACHTMAN IN THE COMMUNIST LEAGUE OF AMERICA, 1931-1933, PROMETHEUS RESEARCH LIBRARY, Spartacist Publishing Co., New York, 2002.
SOME OF THE BOOKS REVIEWED HERE MAY NOT BE READILY AVAILABLE AT LOCAL LIBRARIES OR BOOKSTORES. CHECK AMAZON.COM FOR AVAILABILITY THERE, BOTH NEW AND USED. YOU CAN ALSO GOOGLE THE JAMES P. CANNON INTERNET ARCHIVES.
Sunday, April 30, 2006
A HANDBOOK ON WHAT IS TO BE DONE- STARTING OVER
BOOK REVIEW
THE LEFT OPPOSITION IN THE U.S. 1928-31; JAMES P. CANNON, WRITINGS AND SPEECHES, 1928-31, MONAD PRESS, NEW YORK, 1981
If you are interested in the history of the American Left or are a militant trying to understand some of the past lessons of our history concerning the socialist response to various social and labor questions this book is for you. This book is part of a continuing series of volumes of the writings of James P. Cannon that were published by the organization he founded, the Socialist Workers Party, in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Cannon died in 1974. Look in this space for other related reviews of this series of documents on and by an important American Communist.
In their introduction the editors motivate the purpose for the publication of the book by stating the Cannon was the finest Communist leader that America had ever produced. This an intriguing question. The editors trace their political lineage back to Cannon’s leadership of the early Communist Party and later after his expulsion to the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party so their perspective is obvious. What does the documentation provided here show? This certainly is the period of Cannon’s political maturation, and the beginning of a long political collaboration working with Trotsky. The period under discussion- from the late 1920’s when he was expelled as leader of the American Communist Party to the early 1930’s and the start of the great labor upsurge which would bring wide spread unionization to the working class. Cannon won his spurs in this struggle to orient those organizations toward a revolutionary path. One thing is sure-in his prime, which includes this period- Cannon had the instincts to want to lead a revolution and had the evident capacity to do so. That he never had an opportunity to lead a revolution is his personal tragedy and ours as well.
As an expelled faction of the American Communist Party, which continued to stand on the program of the defense of the Russian Revolution, the Cannon group needed an orientation. That they considered themselves as an expelled but loyal faction of the Communist Party was the correct orientation for a small propaganda group. The party was where the vast bulk of the advanced political workers were. Immediately going to the “masses”, as has occurred with other expelled groupings then and now, would have proved disastrous. Cannon’s group needed to cohere a programmatic basis and recruit a cadre to win over workers and intellectuals from the party. Its Platform of the Communist Opposition, a generally good programmatic statement, was its key analysis and tool to win cadre. There are two points in that document that should be of interest to today’s militants. Those are the slogans for a workers party and for the right of national self-determination for blacks (at that time called Negroes).
In a pre-revolutionary or revolutionary period a revolutionary workers organization would recruit militants directly to the party. Other events like the labor upheavals in the United States in the 1930’s fall in the same category. Thus, using some algebraic formula for drawing workers to a broader revolutionary formation is not necessary. At other times, and the late 1920’s and early 1930’s was such a period in the United States, the call for a workers party, presumably based on less than the full program, by a propaganda group would be appropriate. In short, propaganda and agitation in favor of a generic workers party is a tactic. The call for such a formation today by militants in the United States is appropriate. In any case, no militant makes such a call for a workers party based, for example, on the model of the British Labor Party, then or now.
The left-wing movement in America, including the Communist Party and its offshoots has always had problems with what has been called the Black Question. The Communist Opposition’s position on this question reflects that misconception, taken over from the party. This position has always been associated with American Communist Party member Harry Haywood (see his book Black Bolshevik reviewed elsewhere in this space at February 2008 archives). Marxists have always considers support to the right of national self-determination to be a wedge against nationalists and to attempt to take the national question off the agenda and put a working class resolution on the agenda. In any case, that programmatic point has always been predicated on there being a possibility for a defined group to form a nation. Absent that, other methods of struggle are necessary to deal with the special oppression, in this case, of black people.
Part of the problem with the American Communist position was that the conditions which would have created the possibility of a black state were being destroyed with the mechanization of agriculture, the migration of blacks to the Northern industrial centers and the overwhelming need to fight for black people’s rights to survive under the conditions of the Great Depression. If one really thinks about it the only realistic time that this slogan could have been apropriately raised or supported would have been shortly after the American Civil War when the black population was more compacted geographically and there might have been some political will by Radical Republicans to back such a scheme. This misconception on the viability (or desirability) of a black nation would later came back to haunt Cannon’s Socialist Workers Party when the civil rights struggles of the 1950’s and 1960’s presented opportunities for intervention in the black struggle. That organization stood aside at the time rather than recruit blacks to communism.
The Cannon faction was not the only group expelled from the American Communist Party during the period under review. One cannot understand this period inside the Communist movement if one does not understand which ways the winds were blowing from Moscow. A furious struggle for power in the Russian Communist Party, reflected also in the Communist International, was under way during this period. First, the Stalin faction defeated the Trotsky-led Left Opposition, and then shortly thereafter the Bukharin-led Right Opposition was defeated. In America, this was reflected in the expulsion of the Lovestone group, previously the leadership of the Party. The political shakeout from these events was a certain pressure to unite the two expelled factions. Trotsky, and through his influence Cannon argued strenuously that such a combination was unprincipled and unworkable.
Most parliamentary parties, and here this reviewer includes reformist workers parties, do not confront the question such of these abovementioned left-right blocs for the simple reason they are not, and do not want to, carry out a revolution. Therefore, such parties, will freely bloc with any other organization under any advantageous conditions for any reason. Not so a revolutionary party. While it may unite, for the moment, with a wide range of organizations for general democratic demands it must have a fairly homogeneous program if it is to lead a revolution. The program of the Right Opposition, in effect, was a transmission belt for reformism. In short, if you unite you have two parties, at least in embryo, in one organization. The experences of the Russian Revolution and later the Communist International in its better days should have put that right-left unification question to rest for good. However, it continues today and not just as a matter of historical speculation.
For Trotsky, Cannon and the International Left Opposition this necessary separation was shown most dramatically in Spain when the formerly Trotskyist Left Opposition led by Andreas Nin fused with the Right Opposition led by his friend Maurin in 1935. The result, the Party of Marxist Unification (POUM), while being the most honest revolutionary party in the Spanish Civil War floundered over revolutionary strategy due to its confused orientation on the popular front, political rather military support to the bourgeois government and a whole range of questions of revolutionary strategy and tactics. The POUM experience is the textbook example of what not to do in a revolutionary period. Unfortunately, for his confusion on this issue Nin lost his life at the hands of the Stalinists, the POUM leadership was arrested after the May Days in Barcelona and the Spanish Revolution was derailed.
In Communist history, the period under review is called the ‘Third Period’, in theory allegedly the period of the final crisis of capitalism. The conclusions drawn by the Stalinists from this theory was that revolution was on the immediate agenda everywhere and that it was not necessary, and in fact, was counterrevolutionary to make alliances with other forces. This writer has read a fair amount of material about this ‘Third Period’, mainly at the level of high policy in the Communist International, especially in regard to Germany in the pre-Hitler period where it was a disaster. This volume gives a very nice appreciation by Cannon in a number of articles of how that policy worked at the base, in the trade unions and among the unemployed. It is painful to see how the Stalinists withdrew from the organized trade union movement and set up their own “red” unions composed mainly of Communist sympathizers. That the Stalinist did not suffer more damage and isolation after this flawed policy was changed later during the great labor battles of the 1930’s testifies more to the desperate nature of those struggles than any wisdom learned by the Stalinists. Read this book for more on how to build a workers organization in tough times.
As an addition to the historical record of this period this book is a very good companion to Cannon’s own THE COMMUNIST LEAGUE OF AMERICA, 1932-34 and DOG DAYS: JAMES P. CANNON vs. MAX SHACHTMAN IN THE COMMUNIST LEAGUE OF AMERICA, 1931-1933, PROMETHEUS RESEARCH LIBRARY, Spartacist Publishing Co., New York, 2002.
SOME OF THE BOOKS REVIEWED HERE MAY NOT BE READILY AVAILABLE AT LOCAL LIBRARIES OR BOOKSTORES. CHECK AMAZON.COM FOR AVAILABILITY THERE, BOTH NEW AND USED. YOU CAN ALSO GOOGLE THE JAMES P. CANNON INTERNET ARCHIVES.
THE LEFT OPPOSITION IN THE U.S. 1928-31; JAMES P. CANNON, WRITINGS AND SPEECHES, 1928-31, MONAD PRESS, NEW YORK, 1981
If you are interested in the history of the American Left or are a militant trying to understand some of the past lessons of our history concerning the socialist response to various social and labor questions this book is for you. This book is part of a continuing series of volumes of the writings of James P. Cannon that were published by the organization he founded, the Socialist Workers Party, in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Cannon died in 1974. Look in this space for other related reviews of this series of documents on and by an important American Communist.
In their introduction the editors motivate the purpose for the publication of the book by stating the Cannon was the finest Communist leader that America had ever produced. This an intriguing question. The editors trace their political lineage back to Cannon’s leadership of the early Communist Party and later after his expulsion to the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party so their perspective is obvious. What does the documentation provided here show? This certainly is the period of Cannon’s political maturation, and the beginning of a long political collaboration working with Trotsky. The period under discussion- from the late 1920’s when he was expelled as leader of the American Communist Party to the early 1930’s and the start of the great labor upsurge which would bring wide spread unionization to the working class. Cannon won his spurs in this struggle to orient those organizations toward a revolutionary path. One thing is sure-in his prime, which includes this period- Cannon had the instincts to want to lead a revolution and had the evident capacity to do so. That he never had an opportunity to lead a revolution is his personal tragedy and ours as well.
As an expelled faction of the American Communist Party, which continued to stand on the program of the defense of the Russian Revolution, the Cannon group needed an orientation. That they considered themselves as an expelled but loyal faction of the Communist Party was the correct orientation for a small propaganda group. The party was where the vast bulk of the advanced political workers were. Immediately going to the “masses”, as has occurred with other expelled groupings then and now, would have proved disastrous. Cannon’s group needed to cohere a programmatic basis and recruit a cadre to win over workers and intellectuals from the party. Its Platform of the Communist Opposition, a generally good programmatic statement, was its key analysis and tool to win cadre. There are two points in that document that should be of interest to today’s militants. Those are the slogans for a workers party and for the right of national self-determination for blacks (at that time called Negroes).
In a pre-revolutionary or revolutionary period a revolutionary workers organization would recruit militants directly to the party. Other events like the labor upheavals in the United States in the 1930’s fall in the same category. Thus, using some algebraic formula for drawing workers to a broader revolutionary formation is not necessary. At other times, and the late 1920’s and early 1930’s was such a period in the United States, the call for a workers party, presumably based on less than the full program, by a propaganda group would be appropriate. In short, propaganda and agitation in favor of a generic workers party is a tactic. The call for such a formation today by militants in the United States is appropriate. In any case, no militant makes such a call for a workers party based, for example, on the model of the British Labor Party, then or now.
The left-wing movement in America, including the Communist Party and its offshoots has always had problems with what has been called the Black Question. The Communist Opposition’s position on this question reflects that misconception, taken over from the party. This position has always been associated with American Communist Party member Harry Haywood (see his book Black Bolshevik reviewed elsewhere in this space at February 2008 archives). Marxists have always considers support to the right of national self-determination to be a wedge against nationalists and to attempt to take the national question off the agenda and put a working class resolution on the agenda. In any case, that programmatic point has always been predicated on there being a possibility for a defined group to form a nation. Absent that, other methods of struggle are necessary to deal with the special oppression, in this case, of black people.
Part of the problem with the American Communist position was that the conditions which would have created the possibility of a black state were being destroyed with the mechanization of agriculture, the migration of blacks to the Northern industrial centers and the overwhelming need to fight for black people’s rights to survive under the conditions of the Great Depression. If one really thinks about it the only realistic time that this slogan could have been apropriately raised or supported would have been shortly after the American Civil War when the black population was more compacted geographically and there might have been some political will by Radical Republicans to back such a scheme. This misconception on the viability (or desirability) of a black nation would later came back to haunt Cannon’s Socialist Workers Party when the civil rights struggles of the 1950’s and 1960’s presented opportunities for intervention in the black struggle. That organization stood aside at the time rather than recruit blacks to communism.
The Cannon faction was not the only group expelled from the American Communist Party during the period under review. One cannot understand this period inside the Communist movement if one does not understand which ways the winds were blowing from Moscow. A furious struggle for power in the Russian Communist Party, reflected also in the Communist International, was under way during this period. First, the Stalin faction defeated the Trotsky-led Left Opposition, and then shortly thereafter the Bukharin-led Right Opposition was defeated. In America, this was reflected in the expulsion of the Lovestone group, previously the leadership of the Party. The political shakeout from these events was a certain pressure to unite the two expelled factions. Trotsky, and through his influence Cannon argued strenuously that such a combination was unprincipled and unworkable.
Most parliamentary parties, and here this reviewer includes reformist workers parties, do not confront the question such of these abovementioned left-right blocs for the simple reason they are not, and do not want to, carry out a revolution. Therefore, such parties, will freely bloc with any other organization under any advantageous conditions for any reason. Not so a revolutionary party. While it may unite, for the moment, with a wide range of organizations for general democratic demands it must have a fairly homogeneous program if it is to lead a revolution. The program of the Right Opposition, in effect, was a transmission belt for reformism. In short, if you unite you have two parties, at least in embryo, in one organization. The experences of the Russian Revolution and later the Communist International in its better days should have put that right-left unification question to rest for good. However, it continues today and not just as a matter of historical speculation.
For Trotsky, Cannon and the International Left Opposition this necessary separation was shown most dramatically in Spain when the formerly Trotskyist Left Opposition led by Andreas Nin fused with the Right Opposition led by his friend Maurin in 1935. The result, the Party of Marxist Unification (POUM), while being the most honest revolutionary party in the Spanish Civil War floundered over revolutionary strategy due to its confused orientation on the popular front, political rather military support to the bourgeois government and a whole range of questions of revolutionary strategy and tactics. The POUM experience is the textbook example of what not to do in a revolutionary period. Unfortunately, for his confusion on this issue Nin lost his life at the hands of the Stalinists, the POUM leadership was arrested after the May Days in Barcelona and the Spanish Revolution was derailed.
In Communist history, the period under review is called the ‘Third Period’, in theory allegedly the period of the final crisis of capitalism. The conclusions drawn by the Stalinists from this theory was that revolution was on the immediate agenda everywhere and that it was not necessary, and in fact, was counterrevolutionary to make alliances with other forces. This writer has read a fair amount of material about this ‘Third Period’, mainly at the level of high policy in the Communist International, especially in regard to Germany in the pre-Hitler period where it was a disaster. This volume gives a very nice appreciation by Cannon in a number of articles of how that policy worked at the base, in the trade unions and among the unemployed. It is painful to see how the Stalinists withdrew from the organized trade union movement and set up their own “red” unions composed mainly of Communist sympathizers. That the Stalinist did not suffer more damage and isolation after this flawed policy was changed later during the great labor battles of the 1930’s testifies more to the desperate nature of those struggles than any wisdom learned by the Stalinists. Read this book for more on how to build a workers organization in tough times.
As an addition to the historical record of this period this book is a very good companion to Cannon’s own THE COMMUNIST LEAGUE OF AMERICA, 1932-34 and DOG DAYS: JAMES P. CANNON vs. MAX SHACHTMAN IN THE COMMUNIST LEAGUE OF AMERICA, 1931-1933, PROMETHEUS RESEARCH LIBRARY, Spartacist Publishing Co., New York, 2002.
SOME OF THE BOOKS REVIEWED HERE MAY NOT BE READILY AVAILABLE AT LOCAL LIBRARIES OR BOOKSTORES. CHECK AMAZON.COM FOR AVAILABILITY THERE, BOTH NEW AND USED. YOU CAN ALSO GOOGLE THE JAMES P. CANNON INTERNET ARCHIVES.
Saturday, April 29, 2006
THE WILD BOYS ARE LOOSE AGAIN-U.S.HANDS OFF IRAN!!
COMMENTARY
YOU DON’T NEED SEYMOUR HERSH TO KNOW WHICH WAY THE WIND BLOWS.
FORGET DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS AND GREENS- BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!
In the wake of Seymour Hersh’s revelations in the New Yorker concerning the Bush administration’s potential military plans, including a possible nuclear option, toward Iran there has been a hue and cry in political circles against some of the rasher aspects of such action. From the traditional opponents of such an action plan -the Left? No! From liberal politicians? No! If anything those types have been more belligerent and to the right on the issue of Iran than the Bush administration. The cry has come from conservative think tank magazines and hawkish political commentators like New York Times writer Thomas Friedman. After the disastrous consequences of their support for the adventure in Iraq as least a few of the more rational conservatives have learned something. Whether they continue to hold out once the onslaught of patriotism and so-called national interest comes into play remains to be seen. However, their self-made dilemma is not what interests me.
As I write these lines the paint has not even dried on my poster in opposition to the continuing Iraq occupation for an anti-war rally. Now that the newest plans of the Wild Boys in the basements of the White House, Pentagon and State Department have been “leaked” I have to add another slogan to that banner- Hands Off Iran! Overreacting one might say. No!! If we have learned anything in the last few years from the Bush Administration it is that the distance from “war games” and “zero sum game theory” to front page newspaper and television screen casualty counts is a very, very short elevator ride away.
That, however, begs the question of whether the current Islamic leadership in Iran is a threat. Damn right it is a threat. This writer opposed the Shah of Iran when he was an agent of American imperialist interests in the Persian Gulf. This writer also opposed the rise and takeover by the Islamic fundamentalists in 1979 when many Western leftists were, overtly or covertly, supporting these elements as ‘anti-imperialist’ agents of change. Unfortunately, many Iranian militants also supported these same fundamentalists. That did not stop the mullahs from rounding up and executing or imprisoning every leftist or militant worker they could get their hands on. The fate of the Western leftist supporters of the ‘anti-imperialist’ mullahs was almost as tragic. They, at great personal sacrifice, mainly went on to careers in the academy, media or parliament.
So let us have no illusions about the women- hating, anti-Enlightenment, anti- post 8th century hating regime in Teheran (Except apparently, nuclear technology. Did anyone else find it surreal when a recent photograph showed several thousand heavily-veiled Iranian women demonstrating in defense of a nuclear facility?). However, do we really want to outsource “regime change” there to the Bush Administration (or any administration in Washington)? No!!! Just as working people cannot outsource “regime change” in Washington to the liberals here this job of ousting the mullahs belongs to the Iranian workers, students, poor slum dwellers and peasants.
Let’s be clear here though. If the United States, or an agent of the United States, moves militarily against Iran all militants, here and worldwide, are duty bound to defend Iran against such imperialist aggression. Even with the current mullah leadership? Yes. We will hold our noses and do our duty. Their ouster is a separate political battle. We will settle accounts with them in due course.
The anarchists and others have it all wrong when they confine their slogan to Class Against Class in a conflict between capitalist states. Yes, in the final analysis it will come down to that. The problem is today we are dealing with the most powerful military power, relatively and absolutely, the world has ever known against a smaller, almost militarily defenseless country. A victory for American imperialism is not in the interest of the international working class and its allies. Thus, we have a side under those circumstances. And we certainly do not take some ‘third camp’ pacifist position of a plague on both your houses. IMMEDIATE UNCONDITIONAL WITHDRAWAL FROM IRAQ! U.S.HANDS OFF IRAN!! BETTER YET- HANDS OFF THE WORLD!!!
THIS IS PART OF A SERIES OF ARTICLES ON THE 2006-2008 ELECTION CYCLE UNDER THE HEADLINE- FORGET THE DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS, GREENS-BUILD A WORKERS PARTY.
YOU DON’T NEED SEYMOUR HERSH TO KNOW WHICH WAY THE WIND BLOWS.
FORGET DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS AND GREENS- BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!
In the wake of Seymour Hersh’s revelations in the New Yorker concerning the Bush administration’s potential military plans, including a possible nuclear option, toward Iran there has been a hue and cry in political circles against some of the rasher aspects of such action. From the traditional opponents of such an action plan -the Left? No! From liberal politicians? No! If anything those types have been more belligerent and to the right on the issue of Iran than the Bush administration. The cry has come from conservative think tank magazines and hawkish political commentators like New York Times writer Thomas Friedman. After the disastrous consequences of their support for the adventure in Iraq as least a few of the more rational conservatives have learned something. Whether they continue to hold out once the onslaught of patriotism and so-called national interest comes into play remains to be seen. However, their self-made dilemma is not what interests me.
As I write these lines the paint has not even dried on my poster in opposition to the continuing Iraq occupation for an anti-war rally. Now that the newest plans of the Wild Boys in the basements of the White House, Pentagon and State Department have been “leaked” I have to add another slogan to that banner- Hands Off Iran! Overreacting one might say. No!! If we have learned anything in the last few years from the Bush Administration it is that the distance from “war games” and “zero sum game theory” to front page newspaper and television screen casualty counts is a very, very short elevator ride away.
That, however, begs the question of whether the current Islamic leadership in Iran is a threat. Damn right it is a threat. This writer opposed the Shah of Iran when he was an agent of American imperialist interests in the Persian Gulf. This writer also opposed the rise and takeover by the Islamic fundamentalists in 1979 when many Western leftists were, overtly or covertly, supporting these elements as ‘anti-imperialist’ agents of change. Unfortunately, many Iranian militants also supported these same fundamentalists. That did not stop the mullahs from rounding up and executing or imprisoning every leftist or militant worker they could get their hands on. The fate of the Western leftist supporters of the ‘anti-imperialist’ mullahs was almost as tragic. They, at great personal sacrifice, mainly went on to careers in the academy, media or parliament.
So let us have no illusions about the women- hating, anti-Enlightenment, anti- post 8th century hating regime in Teheran (Except apparently, nuclear technology. Did anyone else find it surreal when a recent photograph showed several thousand heavily-veiled Iranian women demonstrating in defense of a nuclear facility?). However, do we really want to outsource “regime change” there to the Bush Administration (or any administration in Washington)? No!!! Just as working people cannot outsource “regime change” in Washington to the liberals here this job of ousting the mullahs belongs to the Iranian workers, students, poor slum dwellers and peasants.
Let’s be clear here though. If the United States, or an agent of the United States, moves militarily against Iran all militants, here and worldwide, are duty bound to defend Iran against such imperialist aggression. Even with the current mullah leadership? Yes. We will hold our noses and do our duty. Their ouster is a separate political battle. We will settle accounts with them in due course.
The anarchists and others have it all wrong when they confine their slogan to Class Against Class in a conflict between capitalist states. Yes, in the final analysis it will come down to that. The problem is today we are dealing with the most powerful military power, relatively and absolutely, the world has ever known against a smaller, almost militarily defenseless country. A victory for American imperialism is not in the interest of the international working class and its allies. Thus, we have a side under those circumstances. And we certainly do not take some ‘third camp’ pacifist position of a plague on both your houses. IMMEDIATE UNCONDITIONAL WITHDRAWAL FROM IRAQ! U.S.HANDS OFF IRAN!! BETTER YET- HANDS OFF THE WORLD!!!
THIS IS PART OF A SERIES OF ARTICLES ON THE 2006-2008 ELECTION CYCLE UNDER THE HEADLINE- FORGET THE DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS, GREENS-BUILD A WORKERS PARTY.
Friday, April 28, 2006
*FREE LEONARD PELTIER!!-He Must Not Die In Prison!
Click on the title to link to the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee Web site.
THIS ARTICLE FROM PARTISAN DEFENSE NOTES WAS PASSED ON TO THE WRITER BY THE PARTISAN DEFENSE COMMITTTEE, P.O. BOX 99 CANAL STREET STATION, NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10013.
THERE IS NOTHING THAT I NEED TO ADD EXCEPT THAT HISTORIANS OVER THE LAST GENERATION HAVE STEPPED OVER ALL OVER THEMSELVES TO CORRECT THE PREVIOUS FALSE ROLE ASSIGNED TO INDIGENOUS PEOPLES. THAT IS TO THE GOOD. BUT THE WRITER HAS ONE QUESTION –WHY IS THIS NATIVE AMERICAN LEADER STILL IN JAIL? ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.
Thirty years ago, on 6 February 1976, American Indian Movement (AIM) leader Leonard Peltier was seized by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in western Canada. Peltier had fled there after a massive U.S. government attack the previous June—by FBI and Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) agents, SWAT cops and white vigilantes—on South Dakota's Pine Ridge reservation during which two FBI agents were killed. After Canadian authorities held Peltier for ten months in solitary confinement in Oakalla Prison, he was extradited to the U.S. on the basis of fabricated FBI testimony. In 1977, Peltier, a member of the Anishinabe and Lakota Nations, was convicted and sentenced to two consecutive life sentences on frame-up murder charges stemming from the shooting of the two FBI agents.
While Peltier had sought refuge in Canada, two others charged in the agents' killings were acquitted in a federal court in Iowa. Jurors stated that they did not believe the government witnesses and that it seemed "pretty much a clear-cut case of self-defense" against the FBI invasion. In Peltier's trial the prosecution concealed ballistics tests showing that his gun could not have been used in the shooting, while the trial judge ruled out any chance of another acquittal on self-defense grounds by barring any evidence of government terror against the Pine Ridge activists. At a 1985 appeal hearing, a government attorney admitted, "We can't prove who shot those agents."
AIM had been in the Feds' gun sights because of its efforts to fight the enforced poverty of Native Americans and the continued theft of their lands by the government and energy companies, which were intent on grabbing rich uranium deposits under Sioux land in South Dakota. The Leonard Peltier Defense Committee stated in 2004: "Virtually every known AIM leader in the United States was incarcerated in either state or federal prisons since (or even before) the organization's formal emergence in 1968, some repeatedly." Between 1973 and 1976, thugs of the Guardians of the Oglala Nation (GOON), armed and trained by the hated BIA and FBI, carried out more than 300 attacks in and around Pine Ridge, killing at least 69 people.
As we wrote during the fight against Peltier's threatened deportation, "The U.S. case against Peltier is political persecution, part of a broader attempt by the FBI to smash AIM through piling up criminal charges against its leaders, just as was done against the Black Panthers" (PTFNo. 112, 4 June 1976). AIM and Peltier were targeted by the FBI's deadly Counter-intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) of disruption, frame-up and murder of the left, black militants and others. Under COINTELPRO, 38 Black Panthers were killed by the FBI and local cops. Panther leader Geronimo ji Jaga (Pratt) spent 27 years in prison for a crime the FBI knew he could not have committed before finally winning release in 1997. Mumia Abu-Jamal—also an innocent man— remains on Pennsylvania's death row today.
In November 2003, a federal appeals court ruled, "Much of the government's behavior at the Pine Ridge Reservation and in its prosecution of Mr. Peltier is to be condemned. The government withheld evidence. It intimidated witnesses. These facts are not disputed." But the court still refused to open the prison doors for Peltier. Last year, U.S. District Court judge William Skretny turned down Peltier's request for documents suppressed by the government, even while acknowledging that he could have been acquitted had the government not improperly withheld them. Peltier attorney Michael Kuzma stated that the evidence withheld by the government amounts to a staggering 142,579 pages!
On February 24, Skretny again ruled that the FBI can keep part of its records secret in the name of "national security." Peltier noted in a message to the March 18 protests against the Iraq occupation, "Our government uses the words 'national security' and fighting the war on transnational terrorism as a smoke screen to cover up further crimes and misconduct by the FBI." Also this February, defense attorney Barry Bachrach argued in St. Louis federal court that the federal government had no jurisdiction in Peltier's case, since the shootings occurred on a reservation.
Millions of people have signed petitions for Peltier over the years, including by 1986 some 17 million people in the former Soviet Union. His frame-up, like that of Geronimo ji Jaga and Mumia Abu-Jamal, demonstrates that there is no justice in the capitalist courts of America. While supporting all possible legal proceedings on behalf of the class-war prisoners, we place no faith whatever in the "justice" of the courts and rely solely on the power of mass protest centered on the integrated labor movement.
After Peltier's third appeal for a new trial was denied in 1993, thousands of prominent liberals, celebrities and others—ranging from Willie Nelson to Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Mother Teresa—called for a presidential pardon. In a recent column titled "Free Leonard Peltier!" (5 February), Mumia Abu-Jamal wrote: "Many Peltier supporters put their trust in a politician named Bill Clinton, who told them that when he got elected he 'wouldn't forget' about the popular Native American leader. Their trust (like that of so many others) was betrayed once Clinton gained his office, and the FBI protested. In the waning days of his presidency, he issued pardons to folks like Marc Rich, and other wealthy campaign contributors. Leonard Peltier was left in his chains!"
Peltier is one of 16 class-war prisoners to whom the Partisan Defense Committee sends monthly stipends. For more information on his case, or to contribute to Peltier's legal defense, write to: Leonard Peltier Defense Committee, 2626 North Mesa #132, El Paso, TX 79902. Free Leonard Peltier and all class-war prisoners!
THIS ARTICLE FROM PARTISAN DEFENSE NOTES WAS PASSED ON TO THE WRITER BY THE PARTISAN DEFENSE COMMITTTEE, P.O. BOX 99 CANAL STREET STATION, NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10013.
THERE IS NOTHING THAT I NEED TO ADD EXCEPT THAT HISTORIANS OVER THE LAST GENERATION HAVE STEPPED OVER ALL OVER THEMSELVES TO CORRECT THE PREVIOUS FALSE ROLE ASSIGNED TO INDIGENOUS PEOPLES. THAT IS TO THE GOOD. BUT THE WRITER HAS ONE QUESTION –WHY IS THIS NATIVE AMERICAN LEADER STILL IN JAIL? ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.
Thirty years ago, on 6 February 1976, American Indian Movement (AIM) leader Leonard Peltier was seized by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in western Canada. Peltier had fled there after a massive U.S. government attack the previous June—by FBI and Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) agents, SWAT cops and white vigilantes—on South Dakota's Pine Ridge reservation during which two FBI agents were killed. After Canadian authorities held Peltier for ten months in solitary confinement in Oakalla Prison, he was extradited to the U.S. on the basis of fabricated FBI testimony. In 1977, Peltier, a member of the Anishinabe and Lakota Nations, was convicted and sentenced to two consecutive life sentences on frame-up murder charges stemming from the shooting of the two FBI agents.
While Peltier had sought refuge in Canada, two others charged in the agents' killings were acquitted in a federal court in Iowa. Jurors stated that they did not believe the government witnesses and that it seemed "pretty much a clear-cut case of self-defense" against the FBI invasion. In Peltier's trial the prosecution concealed ballistics tests showing that his gun could not have been used in the shooting, while the trial judge ruled out any chance of another acquittal on self-defense grounds by barring any evidence of government terror against the Pine Ridge activists. At a 1985 appeal hearing, a government attorney admitted, "We can't prove who shot those agents."
AIM had been in the Feds' gun sights because of its efforts to fight the enforced poverty of Native Americans and the continued theft of their lands by the government and energy companies, which were intent on grabbing rich uranium deposits under Sioux land in South Dakota. The Leonard Peltier Defense Committee stated in 2004: "Virtually every known AIM leader in the United States was incarcerated in either state or federal prisons since (or even before) the organization's formal emergence in 1968, some repeatedly." Between 1973 and 1976, thugs of the Guardians of the Oglala Nation (GOON), armed and trained by the hated BIA and FBI, carried out more than 300 attacks in and around Pine Ridge, killing at least 69 people.
As we wrote during the fight against Peltier's threatened deportation, "The U.S. case against Peltier is political persecution, part of a broader attempt by the FBI to smash AIM through piling up criminal charges against its leaders, just as was done against the Black Panthers" (PTFNo. 112, 4 June 1976). AIM and Peltier were targeted by the FBI's deadly Counter-intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) of disruption, frame-up and murder of the left, black militants and others. Under COINTELPRO, 38 Black Panthers were killed by the FBI and local cops. Panther leader Geronimo ji Jaga (Pratt) spent 27 years in prison for a crime the FBI knew he could not have committed before finally winning release in 1997. Mumia Abu-Jamal—also an innocent man— remains on Pennsylvania's death row today.
In November 2003, a federal appeals court ruled, "Much of the government's behavior at the Pine Ridge Reservation and in its prosecution of Mr. Peltier is to be condemned. The government withheld evidence. It intimidated witnesses. These facts are not disputed." But the court still refused to open the prison doors for Peltier. Last year, U.S. District Court judge William Skretny turned down Peltier's request for documents suppressed by the government, even while acknowledging that he could have been acquitted had the government not improperly withheld them. Peltier attorney Michael Kuzma stated that the evidence withheld by the government amounts to a staggering 142,579 pages!
On February 24, Skretny again ruled that the FBI can keep part of its records secret in the name of "national security." Peltier noted in a message to the March 18 protests against the Iraq occupation, "Our government uses the words 'national security' and fighting the war on transnational terrorism as a smoke screen to cover up further crimes and misconduct by the FBI." Also this February, defense attorney Barry Bachrach argued in St. Louis federal court that the federal government had no jurisdiction in Peltier's case, since the shootings occurred on a reservation.
Millions of people have signed petitions for Peltier over the years, including by 1986 some 17 million people in the former Soviet Union. His frame-up, like that of Geronimo ji Jaga and Mumia Abu-Jamal, demonstrates that there is no justice in the capitalist courts of America. While supporting all possible legal proceedings on behalf of the class-war prisoners, we place no faith whatever in the "justice" of the courts and rely solely on the power of mass protest centered on the integrated labor movement.
After Peltier's third appeal for a new trial was denied in 1993, thousands of prominent liberals, celebrities and others—ranging from Willie Nelson to Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Mother Teresa—called for a presidential pardon. In a recent column titled "Free Leonard Peltier!" (5 February), Mumia Abu-Jamal wrote: "Many Peltier supporters put their trust in a politician named Bill Clinton, who told them that when he got elected he 'wouldn't forget' about the popular Native American leader. Their trust (like that of so many others) was betrayed once Clinton gained his office, and the FBI protested. In the waning days of his presidency, he issued pardons to folks like Marc Rich, and other wealthy campaign contributors. Leonard Peltier was left in his chains!"
Peltier is one of 16 class-war prisoners to whom the Partisan Defense Committee sends monthly stipends. For more information on his case, or to contribute to Peltier's legal defense, write to: Leonard Peltier Defense Committee, 2626 North Mesa #132, El Paso, TX 79902. Free Leonard Peltier and all class-war prisoners!
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