COMMENTARY
TOUGH TIMES FOR THE AMERICAN LABOR MOVEMENT- AND THAT AINT NO LIE
FORGET DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS AND GREENS- BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!
This writer started his blog site in February 2006 (see below for blog site) so this is the first Labor Day scorecard giving his take on the condition of American labor. And it ain’t pretty. That says it all. There was little strike action this year. There was little in the way of unionization to organize labor’s potential strength. American workers continue to have a real decline in their paychecks. The difference between survival and not for most working families is the two job (or more) household. In short, the average family is working more hours to make ends meet. Real inflation in energy and food costs has put many up against the wall. Forget the Federal Reserve Bank’s definition of inflation- one fill up at the pump confounds that noise. One does not have to be a Marxist economist to know that something is desperately wrong when at the beginning of the 21st century with all the technological advances and productivity increases of the past period working people need to work more just to try to stay even. Even the more far-sighted bourgeois thinkers have trouble with that one. In any case, here are some comments on the labor year.
The key, although not the only action necessary, to a turn-around for American labor is the unionization of Wal-Mart and the South. The necessary class struggle politics that would make such drives successful would act as a huge impetus for other areas of the labor movement. This writer further argues that such struggles against such vicious enemies as Wal-Mart can be the catalyst for the organization of a workers party. Okay, okay let the writer dream a little, won’t you? What has happened this year on this issue is that more organizations have taken up the call for a boycott of Wal-Mart. That is all to the good and must be supported by militant leftists but it is only a very small beginning shot in the campaign (See blog, dated June 10, 2006)
The issue of immigration has surfaced strongly this year. Every militant leftist was supportive of the May Day actions of the vast immigrant communities to not be pushed around. Immigration is a labor issue and key to the struggle against the race to the bottom. While May Day and other events were big moments unless there are links to the greater labor movement this very promising movement could fizzle. A central problem is the role of the Democratic Party and the Catholic Church in the organizing efforts. I will deal with this question at a latter time but for now know this- these organizations are an obstruction to real progress on the immigration issue. (See blog, dated May 1, 2006)
By far the most important labor action of the year was the transport workers strike of Local 100 in New York City just before Christmas 2005. Although this turned out to be three day work stoppage that eventually has to rank as a defeat for the labor movement there are some lessons militant leftists can learn from the experience.
*It appears that every time the left, and not only the left, gives up on the possibility of the international labor movement being capable of coming close to what Marx and other projected as its historic role in creating a new society something happens to pull that theory up short. In my generation it was the events which led to a workers general strike and semi-insurrection in France in 1968. Now is it the example of the New York transit workers. Although both efforts were defeated, mainly through the treachery and class collaboration of the trade union leadership, no one then or now can deny the potential political power of the working class. We militant leftists are not just blowing smoke when we say that labor must rule. The key is to channel those possibilities into a struggle for power for a new, more just society.
*Although the transit workers proved to have more than enough militancy to succeed the leadership, frankly, got scared when the capitalists rulers started to play rough. The issues in dispute were hardly radical issues- pensions, wages, working conditions. Actually they represented a rather defensive effort on the part of the transit workers to stop falling further behind in the capitalist race to the bottom. This fight nevertheless could have been won. Perhaps it is because the labor movement has lost continuity with its historic roots in the huge and successful struggles of the 1930’s. But know this -every serious effort at class struggle by the working class will be met by the same kind of reaction and worst that was meted out by the ruling class in New York. Not only do militant leftists have to know this fact but also that every labor action has to be planned carefully to ensure victory. In short, that means a new labor leadership based on a program of struggle is needed. More on this another time. Start reading about the labor struggles in the 1930’s- in auto, the Teamsters, steel, electrical workers, etc. Those were the days.
*The transit workers strike brought out the underlying class tensions of society. Sure the yuppies, ruling class, etc. were inconvenienced as were working people, however, working people in general supported the transit workers’ struggle as their struggle. Know your enemies- yes. But, also know your friends. As for enemies note the ugly role played by the International Transit Workers Union bureaucracy in leaving the New York workers in the lurch. Also note well the treacherous role of the rest of the New York labor bureaucracy in not calling out their members to support the strike. That support was the key to success. A general strike was in the cards there. Needless to say I do not even have to mention the role of the politicians, both Democratic and Republican, in outbidding each other in denouncing the strike.
*The transit workers as governmental workers prove you can strike against the government. But you need to defend against the capitalist onslaught by insisting on amnesty for your membership and for the leadership before going back to work. Also know this, if you did not already, that the courts, the cops and the politicians are not your friends. If nothing else the defeat in New York should burn these lessons in the memories of every serious militant. Next time we can win. Plan for it.
If one needed one more example of why the American labor movement is in the condition it is in then an article this summer by John Sweeney, punitive President of the AFL-CIO, and therefore one of the titular heads of the organized labor movement brings that point home in gory detail. The gist of the article is that the governmental agencies, like the National Labor Relations Board, have over the years (and here he means, in reality, the Bush years) bent over backwards to help the employers in their fight against unionization. Well, John, surprise, surprise. No militant leftist, no forget that, no militant trade unionist has believed in the impartiality of governmental boards, agencies, courts, etc. since about 1936. Yes, that is right, since Roosevelt. Wake up. Again this brings up the question of the leadership of the labor movement. And I do not mean to turn it over to Andy Stein and his Change to Win Coalition. We may be, as some theorists imagine, a post-industrial society, but the conditions of labor seem more like the classic age of rapacious capitalist accumulation of the last century and the early part of this century. We need a labor leadership based on a program of labor independence and struggle for worker rights- and we need it damn soon.
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, August 22, 2006
*From The Archives Of "Women And Revolution"-Class- Struggle Defense Work In The U.S. - Building on the Heritage of the International Labor Defense
Markin comment:
The following is an article from an archival issue of Women and Revolution, Winter-Spring, 1996, 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.
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Class- Struggle Defense Work In The U.S. - Building on the Heritage of the International Labor Defense
We print below an edited speech by Deborah Mackson, executive director of the Partisan Defense Committee, prepared for April 7995 regional educationals in New York, Chicago and Oakland as part of a series of meetings and rallies sponsored by the PDC to mobilize support for Mum/a Abu-Jamal and the fight against the racist death penalty.
Mumia Abu-Jamal describes his current conditions of incarceration on death row at the State Correctional Institution at Greene County, Pennsylvania as "high-tech hell." When Governor Tom Ridge assaults all of the working people and minorities of this country by initiating the first execution of a political prisoner in America since the Rosenbergs, he must hear a resounding "No!" from coast to coast. Because Jamal is an articulate voice for the oppressed, this racist and rotting capitalist state wants to silence him forever. He is indeed dangerous. He is indeed a symbol. He is, indeed, innocent. Hear his powerful words, and you will begin to understand the hatred and fear which inspires the vendetta against this courageous fighter:
"Over many long years, over mountains of fears, through rivers of repression, from the depths of the valley of the shadow of death, I survive to greet you, in the continuing spirit of rebellion.... As America's ruling classes rush backwards into a new Dark Age, the weight of repression comes easier with each passing hour. But as repression increases, so too must resistance.... Like our forefathers, our fore-mothers, our kith and kin, we must fight for every inch of ground gained. The repressive wave sweeping this country will not stop by good wishes, but only by a counterwave of committed people firm in their focus."
We of the Partisan Defense Committee, the Spartacist League and the Labor Black Leagues are committed to a campaign to free this former Black Panther, award-winning journalist and supporter of the controversial MOVE organization who was framed for the 1981 killing of a Philadelphia policeman. Our aim is to effect an international campaign of protest and publicity like that which ultimately saved the nine Scottsboro Boys, framed for rape in Alabama in 1931, from the electric chair. We must mobilize the working class and all the oppressed in the fight to free this class-war prisoner framed by the government's murderous vendetta.
As Marxists, we are opposed to the death penalty on principle. We say that this state does not have the right to decide who lives and who dies. Capital punishment is part of the vast arsenal of terror at the hands of this state, which exists to defend the capitalist system of exploitation and oppression. America's courts are an instrument of the bourgeoisie's war on the working people and the poor; they are neither neutral nor by any stretch of the imagination "color blind."
To us, the defense of America's class-war prisoners— whatever their individual political views may be—is a responsibility of the revolutionary vanguard party which must champion all causes in the interest of the proletariat. The Partisan Defense Committee was initiated by the Spartacist League in 1974 in the tradition of the working-class defense policies of the International Labor Defense, under its founder and first secretary from 1925 to 1928, James P. Cannon. Today, I want to talk to you about how that tradition was built in this country by the best militants of the past 100 years—the leaders of class-struggle organizations like the pre-World War I Industrial Workers of the World, the early Socialist and Communist parties and the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party.
The Roots of Black Oppression
To forge a future, one has to understand the past. The modern American death penalty is the barbaric inheritance of a barbaric system of production: chattel slavery. Like the capitalists who hold state power today, the slavocracy used the instruments of their power, special bodies of armed men and the "justice" system— the laws, courts and prisons—to control people for profit. Directly descendant from the slavocracy's tradition of property in black people is the death penalty. A trail through history illustrates this truth. The "slave codes" codified a series of offenses for which slaves could be killed but for which whites would receive a lesser sentence. In Virginia, the death penalty was mandatory for both slaves and free blacks for any crime for which a white could be imprisoned for three years or more. In Georgia, a black man convicted of raping a white woman faced the death penalty; a white man got two years for the same crime, and punishment was "discretionary" if the victim was black. Slaves could not own property, bear arms, assemble or testify against whites in courts of law. Marriage between slaves was not recognized; families were sold apart; it was illegal to teach a slave to read and write. Slaves were not second- or third-class citizens—they were not human, but legally "personal, movable property," chattel.
William Styron in The Confessions of Nat Turner has the fictional character T.R. Gray explain the slaveowners' rationale to Turner:
"The point is that you are animate chattel and animate chattel is capable of craft and connivery and wily stealth. You ain't a wagon, Reverend, but chattel that possesses moral choice and spiritual volition. Remember that well. Because that's how come the law provides that animate chattel like you can be tried for a felony, and that's how come you're goin' to be tried next Sattidy. "He paused, then said softly without emotion: 'And hung by the neck until dead'."
While the slave codes were a Southern institution, legal and extralegal terror were never exclusive to the South. As early as 1793, fugitive slave laws were on the federal books. The 1850 Fugitive Slave Law was passed in response to the growing abolitionist influence which had inspired several Northern states to pass "personal liberty laws," giving some protection to slaves who had successfully negotiated the Underground Railroad. The 1850 law, seeking to protect the private property of slaveholders, put the burden of proof on captured blacks, but gave them no legal power to prove their freedom—no right to habeas corpus, no right to a jury trial, no right even to testify on their own behalf.
Many blacks were caught in the clutches of this infamous law, which had no bounds. For example, a man in southern Indiana was arrested and returned to an owner’ who claimed he had run away 79 years before. The law knew no pretense. A magistrate's fee doubled if he judged an unfortunate black before the bench a runaway slave instead of a tree man. And fugitives were pursued with vigor. In Battle Cry of Freedom, historian James McPherson recounts the story of Anthony Burns, a slave who stowed away from Virginia to Boston in 1854. The feds spent the equivalent of $2.3 million in current dollars to return him to his "owner." That is approximately equal to what an average death penalty case costs today.
Any hope that "blind justice" could be sought from the U.S. Supreme Court was dashed with the 1856 Dred Scott decision. Chief Justice Taney wrote that at the time the Constitution was adopted, Negroes "had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order...so far inferior, that they had no rights which a white man was bound to respect."
While slavery itself was overthrown in the Civil War and Reconstruction, the needs of the American capitalists for compulsory agricultural labor in the South remained. A new, semi-capitalistic mode of agriculture developed, in which the semi-slave condition of the freed blacks was made permanent by the re-establishment of the social relations of slavery: color discrimination buttressed by segregation and race prejudice.
After the Civil War the slave codes became the "black codes," a separate set of rules defining crime and punishment for blacks and limiting their civil rights. They were enforced by the extralegal terror of the Ku Klux Klan; in the last two decades of the 19th century, lynching vastly outnumbered legal executions. As W.E.B. Du Bois said of lynching:
"It is not simply the Klu Klux Klan; it is not simply weak officials; it is not simply inadequate, unenforced law. It is deeper, far deeper than all this: it is the in-grained spirit of mob and murder, the despising of women and the capitalization of children born of 400 years of Negro slavery and 4,000 years of government for private profit."
The promise of Radical Reconstruction, equality, could only be fulfilled by attacking the problem at its very root: private property in the means of production. Neither Northern capitalists nor Southern planters could abide that revolution, so they made a deal, the Compromise of 1877, in their common interest. That's why we call on American workers, black and white, to finish the Civil War—to complete, through socialist revolution, the unfinished tasks of the Second American Revolution!
In the wake of the Compromise of 1877, the U.S. Supreme Court began to dismantle the Civil Rights Acts of the Reconstruction period. One landmark decision was Plessey v. Ferguson in 1896, which permitted "separate but equal" treatment of black and white in public facilities. But separate is never equal. This was simply the legal cover for the transformation of the "black codes" into "Jim Crow"—the "grandfather clause," poll tax, literacy test, all designed to deny blacks the vote, and the institution of separate facilities from schools to cemeteries. This legal and practical segregation, instituted in the South and transported North, was a tool to divide and rule.
America's Racist Death Penalty
The death penalty was applied at will until 1972. From 1930 to 1967 the U.S. averaged 100 or more executions per year. In 1972, following a decade of civil rights protests, the Supreme Court ruled the death penalty was "cruel and unusual punishment" because of its arbitrary and capricious application. But the hiatus lasted only four years.
In 1976-the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty and has been expanding it ever since. In 1986 the court ruled it unconstitutional to execute the insane, but gave no criteria for defining insanity; in 1988 it approved the execution of 16-year-olds; in 1989 it ruled for the execution of retarded persons. Since 1976, 276 people have been executed in this country. Between January and April of 1995, 17 were killed. And innocence is no barrier, as the Supreme Court recently decreed in the case of Jesse Dewayne Jacobs, executed in Texas in January 1995 after the prosecution submitted that he had not committed the crime for which he had been sentenced. The Supreme Court said it didn't matter, he'd had a "fair trial." What an abomination!
Perhaps the most telling case in recent history was the 1987 McCleskey decision. The evidence submitted to the courts illustrated beyond the shadow of a doubt that racism ruled the application of the death penalty. Overall, a black person convicted of killing a white person is 22 times more likely to be sentenced to death than if the victim is black. When the McCleskey case went to court, liberals across the country hoped for a Brown v. Board of Education decision in regard to the death penalty. The evidence of racial bias was clear and overwhelming. But while the Supreme Court accepted the accuracy of the evidence, it said it doesn't matter. The court showed the real intention of the death penalty when it stated that McCleskey's claim "throws into serious question the principles that underlie our entire criminal justice system" and "the validity of capital punishment in our multi-racial society." Or as a Southern planter wrote in defense of the slave codes, "We have to rely more and more on the power of fear.... We are determined to continue masters" (quoted in Kenneth Stampp, The Peculiar Institution).
Let's take a look for a moment at "our multi-racial society." The U.S. has the highest rate of incarceration in the world: 344 per 100,000. It is one of the two "advanced" industrial countries left in the world which employs capital punishment. As of January 1995, 2,976 men, women and children occupied America's death rows; 48 are women, 37 are juveniles. According to the latest census, blacks make up 12 percent of the population, yet 51 percent of the people awaiting execution are minorities and 40 percent are black.
Eighty-four percent of all capital cases involve white victims even though 50 percent of murder victims in America are black. Of a total of 75 people executed for interracial murders, three involved a black victim and a white defendant, 72 involved a white victim and a black defendant. The death penalty is truly an impulse to genocide against the black population for whom the ruling class no longer sees any need in its profit-grabbing calculations.
Understanding this and understanding the broader importance of the black question in America, we take up Jamal's case as a concrete task in our struggle for black freedom and for proletarian revolution in the interests of the liberation of all of humanity.
Early History of Class-Struggle Defense
From the beginning of the communist movement, a commitment to those persecuted by the ruling classes, whether "on the inside" or out, has been recognized as an integral part of the class struggle. Marx and Engels spent years defending and supporting the refugees of-the Paris Commune.
As Trotskyists, we feel this responsibility keenly because we inherited some of the finest principles for class-struggle defense from James R Cannon, the founder of American Trotskyism. The traditions which inspired the International Labor Defense (ILD) were forged in hard class struggle, dating back to the rise of the labor movement after the Civil War. One of the first acts of the Republican government following the Compromise of 1877 was to pull its troops from the South and send them to quell the railway strikes that had broken out throughout the Northern states. The federal strikebreakers tipped the scales in the hard-fought battles of the time, many of which escalated into general strikes, and the workers were driven back in defeat. But united struggle against the bosses had been launched, and less than a decade later the workers movement had taken up the fight for an eight-hour day.
In the course of this struggle, workers in Chicago amassed at Haymarket Square in early May of 1886. The protest was just winding down when a bomb went off, likely planted by a provocateur. The cops opened fire on the workers, killing one and wounding many. The government’s response was to frame up eight workers, who were sympathetic to anarchist views, on charges of murder. They were tried and convicted, not for the bombing but for their agitation against the employers. Four were hanged, one committed suicide, three were finally pardoned in 1891.
The period from the turn of the century to America's entry into World War I was one of intense social struggle; militant strikes were more numerous than at any time since. The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW—the Wobblies) led union organizing drives, anti-lynching campaigns and a free speech movement. The level of struggle meant more frequent arrests, which gave rise to the need for defense of the class and individuals. The left and most labor currents and organizations rallied to the defense of victims of the class war. Non-sectarian defense was the rule of the day. The Wobbly slogan, "an injury to one is an injury to all," was taken to heart by the vast majority of the workers.
This was Cannon's training ground. One of his heroes was Big Bill Haywood, who conceived the ILD with Cannon in Moscow in 1925. As Cannon said, the history of the ILD is "the story of the projection of Bill Haywood's influence—through me and my associates—into the movement from which he was exiled, an influence for simple honesty and good will and genuine non-partisan solidarity toward all the prisoners of the class war in America."
Big Bill Haywood came from the Western Federation of Miners, one of the most combative unions this country has ever produced. The preamble to their constitution was a series of six points, beginning, "We hold that there is a class struggle in society and that this struggle is caused by economic conditions." It goes on to note, "We hold that the class struggle will continue until the producer is recognized as the sole master of his product," and it asserts that the working class and it alone can and must achieve its own emancipation. It ends, "we, the wage slaves...have associated in the Western Federation of Miners."
Not all labor organizations of the time had this class-struggle perspective. Contrast the tract of Samuel Rompers' American Federation of Labor (AFL), "Labor's Bill of Grievances," which he sent to the president and Congress in 1908:
"We present these grievances to your attention because we have long, patiently and in vain waited for redress.
There is not any matter of which we have complained but for which we nave in an honorable and lawful manner submitted remedies. The remedies for these grievances proposed by labor are in line with fundamental law, and with progress and development made necessary by changed industrial conditions."
The IWW, whose constitution began, "The working class and the employing class have nothing in common," was founded in 1905. Haywood was an initiator and one of its most aggressive and influential organizers. As a result of that and his open socialist beliefs, in 1906 he, along with George Pettibone and Charles Moyer, were arrested for the bombing murder of ex-governor Frank Steunenberg of Idaho (the nemesis of the combative Coeur d'Alene miners). The three were kidnapped from Colorado, put on a military train and taken to Idaho.
The Western Federation of Miners and the IWW launched a tremendous defense movement for the three during the 18 months they were waiting to be tried for their lives. Everyone from the anarchists to the AFL participated. Demonstrations of 50,000 and more were organized all across the country. It was this case that brought James Cannon to political consciousness.
The case was important internationally, too. While they were in jail, Maxim Gorky came to New York and sent a telegram to the three with greetings from the Russian workers. Haywood wired back that their imprisonment was an expression of the class struggle which was the same in America as in Russia and in all other capitalist countries.
On a less friendly note, Teddy Roosevelt, then president of America, publicly declared the three "undesirable citizens." Haywood responded that the laws of the country held they were innocent until proven guilty and that a man in Roosevelt's position should be the last to judge them until the case was decided in court.
The Socialist Party (founded in 1901) also rallied to the defense. While in jail, Haywood was nominated as the party's candidate for governor of Colorado and got 16,000 votes. The leader of the SP, Eugene Debs, wrote his famous "Arouse, Ye Slaves" for the SP's Appeal to Reason:
"If they attempt to murder Moyer, Haywood and their brothers, a million revolutionists, at least, will meet them with guns.... Let them dare to execute their devilish plot and every state in this Union will resound with the tramp of revolution....
"Get ready, comrades, for action!... A special revolutionary convention of the proletariat...would be in order, and, if extreme measures are required, a general strike could be ordered and industry paralyzed as a preliminary to a general uprising."
Haywood's trial began in May of 1907. It was Clarence Darrow for the defense and the infamous Senator William E. Borah for the frame-up (prosecution). That this was a political trial was clear to everybody. The prosecution, for example, introduced into evidence issues of the anarchist journal Alarm from 1886, when Haymarket martyr Albert Parsons was its editor. Haywood thought that Dar-row's summary to the jury in his case was the best effort Darrow ever made in the courtroom. But Haywood also got a bit exasperated with his lawyer. In his autobiography, he tells the story of Darrow coming to jail depressed and worried. The defendants would always try to get him to lighten up. Finally Pettibone got tired of this and told Darrow they knew it would be really hard on him to lose this great case with all its national and international attention, but, hey! he said, "You know it's us fellows that have to be hanged!"
Every day of the trial the defense committee packed the courtroom with what Haywood called "a labor jury of Socialists and union men." This is a practice we proudly follow today. On the stand, Haywood told the story of the Western Federation of Miners and its battles against the bosses, putting them on trial. He refused to be intimidated by Senator Borah. When Borah asked whether Haywood had said that Governor Steunenberg should be exterminated, Haywood replied that to the best of his remembrance, he said he should be "eliminated."
On June 28 Haywood was acquitted. Soon thereafter, so were his comrades. At a Chicago rally organized to greet him upon his release, he told the crowd of 200,000, "We owe our lives to your solidarity." Haywood knew that innocence was not enough. It is that kind of solidarity we are seeking to mobilize today for Mumia Abu-Jamal.
The Labor Movement and World War I
Haywood was elected to the National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party in 1908, during its most left-wing period. In 1910, he was one of the party's delegates to the Socialist Congress of the Second International in Copenhagen. Shortly after, the SP moved to the right, and in 1912 (the year Debs polled nearly a million votes in his campaign for president) a number of leftists, including the young Jim Cannon, left the Socialist Party. A year later, when Haywood was purged from the executive board, there was another mass exodus.
The IWW, in which Haywood and Cannon remained active, expanded the scope of its activities. This was the period of the free speech movement and anti-lynching ' campaigns. One Wobbly pamphlet, "Justice for the Negro: How He Can Get It," discusses the question of integrated struggle and how to stop lynchings:
"The workers of every race and nationality must join in one common group against their one common enemy—the employers—so as to be "able to defend themselves and one another. Protection for the working class lies in complete solidarity of the workers, without regard to race, creed, sex or color. 'One Enemy—One Union!' must be their watchword."
They almost got it right: as syndicalists, they didn't understand the need for a vanguard party to fight for a revolutionary program.
With the beginning of World War I and preparations for U.S. involvement, the government declared political war on the IWW and the left. Thousands of Wobblies were imprisoned under "criminal syndicalism" laws—100 in San Quentin and Folsom alone. In response, the IWW adopted the slogan, "Fill the jails." It was a misguided tactic, but unlike many so-called socialists today, the Wobbliest had a principled position where it counted: they'd go to jail before they'd cross a picket line.
1917 was the year of the Russian Revolution. A month after that world-historic event, Haywood was back on trial in Chicago with some 18 other Wobblies. He was convicted and sentenced to 20 years in Leaven worth prison. In 1919 he was released on bail pending appeal and devoted his time to the IWW's General Defense Committee, launching a campaign to raise bail money for those in prison. When the Red Scare and the Palmer Raids began, Haywood learned that he was a primary target. So, as his appeal went to the Supreme Court, he sailed for the Soviet Union. A student of history, he had no illusions in "blind justice."
Cannon was also heavily influenced by the case of California labor leaders Tom Mooney and Warren Billings. In 1916, as America was preparing to go to war, Mooney and Billings were framed up for a bombing at a Preparedness Day Parade in San Francisco. The Preparedness Movement was a bourgeois movement of "open shop" chamber of commerce, right-wing vigilante groups, who were very serious about getting the U.S. into World War I. They went into Mexico to fight Pancho Villa as practice. The Preparedness Movement was opposed by labor, and in fact two days before the bombing there had been a 5,000-strong labor demonstration in San Francisco.
Mooney and Billings were convicted. Mooney was sentenced to hang, Billings got a life sentence. At first, their case was taken up only by the anarchists. The official AFL labor movement took a hands-off position. But when it became clear that they had been framed with perjured testimony, a "Mooney movement" swept the country.
The Mooney case had a big impact on Russian immigrant workers, among others. Thus the Mooney case was carried back to Russia, and in April of 1917 the Russian anarchists led a Mooney defense demonstration in Petrograd at the American consulate. Worried about Russia pulling out of World War I at that point, Woodrow Wilson personally interceded on behalf of Mooney and Billings. It didn't get them out of jail, but the effect of international pressure was not lost on Cannon.
In the U.S., the cops broke up Mooney defense meetings and arrested those present. The class-struggle nature of the defense movement, involving such actions as one-day strikes, was a felt threat to the ruling class, especially in the face of a war. In a conscious effort to dissipate this movement, the state commuted Mooney's death sentence to life in prison. In combination with the domestic repression following the war, this took the life out of the Mooney movement. Mooney and Billings stayed in prison for 22 years. They were released in 1939, and Mooney spent two and a half of the next three years in the hospital and then-died.
In his eulogy "Good-by Tom Mooney!" Cannon wrote:
"They imprisoned Mooney—as they imprisoned Debs and Haywood and hundreds of others—in order to clear the road of militant labor opposition to the First World War, and they kept him in prison for revenge and for a warning to others."
As World War II began, Cannon would find himself in the same position.
The Tradition of International Labor Defense
The parties of the Second International backed their own ruling classes in World War I, and the Bolsheviks fought for a new international party committed to the Marxist movement's call, "Workers of the World Unite!" In 1919, the leaders of the Russian Revolution founded the Third International, the Comintern, to build revolutionary parties which could take up the struggle against capitalist rule. 1919 was also a year of massive strike activity in the U.S. This wave of class struggle swelled the ranks of the Socialist Party, which then split in September. The most left-wing workers regrouped, giving birth to the American Communist movement, and Cannon was among them.
America in the 1920s was not a nice place to be. Warren Harding was elected in a landslide victory on the slogan of "Return to Normalcy." And "normal" was racist and repressive. His attorney general, A. Mitchell Palmer, launched a war on the left inspired by fear of the Russian Revolution, which resulted in massive deportations of leftists and jailing of American radicals. The young Communist Party went underground. 1920 saw more lynchings and anti-black pogroms than any time in recent memory. The Klan grew like wildfire, and the government passed anti-immigration legislation that would give Newt Gingrich and Pete Wilson wet dreams.
When it was clear that the IWW was for all practical purposes broken, many of its jailed members, including Eugene Debs, were pardoned. The Communists, however, remained in jail. The union movement took it on the chops as well, and by the end of the 1920s only 13 percent of the workforce of this country was unionized.
The 1921 Third Congress of the Comintern was held under the watchword "To the Masses." In the U.S., the newly formed party had been underground and could hardly make a turn to the masses. At the Comintern's urging, the Workers (Communist) Party emerged in December of 1921 with Cannon as its first chairman and main public spokesman.
By the time of the Fourth Congress of the Comintern in 1922, the tactic of the united front had been defined; the Fourth Congress detailed its application. The need for the united front grew out of the post-World War I ebbing of the revolutionary tide following the Russian Revolution. The offensive by the capitalists against the proletariat and its parties was forcing even the reformist-led organizations into partial and defensive struggles to save their very lives.
The slogan "march separately, strike together" encapsulated the two aims of the united-front tactic: class unity and the political fight for a communist program. The Comintern sought both to achieve the maximum unity of the working masses in their defensive struggles and to expose in action the hesitancy of the leadership of the reformist organizations of the Second International to act in the interests of the proletariat and the inability of its program to win against the ruling class.
The united front is a tactic we use today. Our call for labor/black mobilizations to stop the execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal and abolish the racist death penalty has brought together many different organizations and individuals to save Jamal's life. At these rallies and demonstrations, we
have insisted on the right to argue for our program to put an end to racist injustice and capitalist exploitation through socialist revolution.
In line with the policies hashed out at the Third and Fourth Congresses, the Communist International founded an international defense organization, the International Red Aid. These events had a substantial effect on the young American party, and one of the direct results was the foundation in 1925 of the International Labor Defense (ILD).
Cannon's goal was to make the ILD the defense arm of the labor movement. Cannon wrote to Debs on the occasion of his endorsement of the ILD:
"The main problem as I see it is to construct the ILD on the broadest possible basis. To conduct the work in a non-partisan and non-sectarian manner and finally establish the impression by our deeds that the ILD is the defender of every worker persecuted for his activities in the class struggle, without any exceptions and without regard to his affiliations."
From 1925 to 1928, the ILD was pretty successful in achieving that goal. It established principles to which we adhere today:
• United-front defense: The ILD campaigns were organized to allow for the broadest possible participation.
• Class-struggle defense: The ILD sought to mobilize the working class in protest on a national and international scale, relying on the class movement of the workers and
placing no faith in the justice of the capitalist courts, while using every legal avenue open to them.
• Non-sectarian defense: When it was founded, the ILD immediately adopted 106 prisoners, instituting the practice of financially assisting these prisoners and their
families. Many had been jailed as a result of the "criminal syndicalism" laws; some were Wobblies, some were anarchists, some were strike leaders. Not one was a member of the Communist Party. The ILD launched the first Holiday Appeal. Of course, the ILD also vigorously defended its own, understanding the vital importance of the legal rights of the Communist Party to exist and organize.
Social Defense and Union Struggle
The ILD's most well-known case was the defense of Sacco and Vanzetti. The frame-up for murder and robbery of these two immigrant anarchist workers, who were sent to their deaths by the state of Massachusetts in 1927, grew directly out of the "red scare" of the early '20s. The ILD applied with alacrity the main lines of its program: unity of all working-class forces and reliance on the class movement of the workers. Thousands of workers rallied to their cause, and unions around the country contributed to a defense fund set up by Italian workers in the Boston area. But the level of class struggle is key to the outcome of defense cases, and the ILD's exemplary campaign proved insufficient to save the lives of Sacco and Vanzetti.
As the case drew to a close, one of the feints used by the state was to start rumors that Sacco and Vanzetti's death penalty sentence would be commuted to life without parole. This was designed to dissipate the Sacco and Vanzetti movement and prepare their execution. Cannon rang the alarm bells from the pages of the Labor Defender, rallying ILD supporters to mass demonstrations and warning them of the devious and two-faced nature of the bourgeoisie. Cannon had not forgotten the demobilization of the Mooney movement after his sentence had been commuted nor the living death that Mooney and Billings were enduring in their 22 years of internment.
This has significance for us today as we fight against the threatened execution of Jamal. Life in prison is hell. Think about the "life" of Geronimo ji Jaga (Pratt), another former Panther, jailed for a quarter of a century for a crime the state knows he did not commit. While some call upon Pennsylvania governor Ridge to convert Jamal's sentence to life without parole, we demand the freedom of both these innocent men.
The ILD also worked in defense of the class as a whole. In 1926, about 16,000 textile workers hit the bricks in Passaic, New Jersey. Their strike was eventually defeated, but it drew sharp lessons on the role of the state and demonstrated for Cannon the absolute necessity for a permanent, organized and always ready non-partisan labor defense organization. Cannon wrote in the Labor Defender:
"Our I.L.D. is on the job at Passaic. Not a single striker went into court without our lawyer to defend him. There was not a single conviction that was not appealed. Nobody had to remain in jail more than a few days for lack of bail.... A great wave of protest spread thru the labor movement and even the most conservative labor leaders were compelled to give expression to it."
In 1928, the Trotskyist Left Opposition (including Cannon) was expelled from the Communist Party. The ILD remained under the control of the Communist Party and thus became subject to the zigzags of Stalinist policies throughout the 1930s, including the perversion of the united front from a tactic for class unity into an instrument for class collaboration and counterrevolution.
In 1929, Stalin declared the "Third Period," an ultraleft shift, the main tactic of which was to smash the Social Democratic and other leftist parties by creating what the Stalinists called "united fronts from below." The Comintern charged the reformists with "social fascism"; the real fascists were to be dealt with secondarily. In Germany, this policy contributed to Adolph Hitler's seizure of power— there was no united fight against fascism by the workers in the mass Communist and Social Democratic parties. This policy had an effect on the U.S. party and its defense work.
Legal Lynching in the American South
One result of the stock market crash of 1929 and the ensuing Depression was that 200,000people made the rails their home as they moved from place to place looking for work. On 25 March 1931, nine black youths, ranging in age from 13 to 20, were riding the Memphis to Chattanooga freight train. Two young white women, fearful of being jailed for hoboing when the train was stopped after reports that there had been a fight with some white boys, accused the blacks of rape. Among the nine were Olen Montgomery—blind in one eye and with 10 percent vision in the other—headed for Memphis hoping to earn enough money to buy a pair of glasses; Willie Roberson, debilitated by years-long untreated syphilis and gonorrhea—which is important if you're going to be talking about a rape case; and Eugene Williams and Roy Wright, both 13 years old.
The group were nearly lynched on the spot. The trial began in Scottsboro, Alabama on April 6. Four days later, despite medical evidence that no rape had occurred—not to mention gross violations of due process—eight were sentenced to death and one of the 13-year-olds to life in prison. The Communist Party issued a statement condemning the trial as a "legal" lynching. That night, the campaign to free the Scottsboro Boys began.
Freedom was a long time coming. A series of trials and appeals all went badly for the defendants. In 1933, one of the alleged victims, Ruby Bates, recanted her testimony, but it wasn't until 1937 that four of the defendants were freed. Three more were paroled in the 1940s, and in 1948 Haywood Patterson escaped from Angola prison to Michigan, where the governor refused to extradite him. The last, Andy Wright, who had had his 1944 parole revoked, was finally released in 1950. The nine had spent 104 years in jail for a "crime" that never happened.
The ILD made the word "Scottsboro" synonymous, nationally and internationally, with Southern racism, repression and injustice. Their campaign was responsible for saving the Scottsboro Boys from the electric chair. As Haywood Patterson's father wrote in a letter to his son, "You will burn sure if you don't let them preachers alone and trust in the International Labor Defense to handle the case."
The CP's publicity was massive and moving. They organized demonstrations in Harlem and across the country, appealing to the masses to put no confidence in the capitalist courts and to see the struggle for the freedom of these youths as part of the larger class struggle. Young Communists in Dresden, Germany marched on the American consulate, and, when officials refused to accept their petition, hurled bottles through windows. Inside each was the note: "Down with American murder and Imperialism. For the brotherhood of black and white young proletarians. An end to the bloody lynching of our Negro co-workers."
In the South, the defense effort faced not only the racist system but the homegrown fascists of the Ku Klux Klan as well, which launched a campaign under the slogan "The Klan Rides Again to Stamp Out Communism."
The ILD's success in rallying the masses to the defense of the Scottsboro Boys happened despite their sectarian "Third Period" tactics. The ILD denounced the NAACP, the ACLU and most of the trade-union movement as "social fascists" and threw the "Trotskyite" likes of Jim Cannon out of Scottsboro defense meetings. But fascism was on the rise in Europe, and, seeking now to make as many allies as he could, in 1935 Stalin' declared the "Third Period" at an end. A Comintern resolution urged the Communist parties to form "popular fronts" with any and all for progressive ends. In the U.S. this meant supporting Roosevelt and abandoning the struggle to link the defense of black people with the fight against the capitalist system. You can imagine the surprise of the NAACP, who were now greeted warmly by the ILD as "comrades"! This comradeship did not extend to the Trotskyists. The Scottsboro Defense Committee was formed, and a lot of the life went out of the movement as the case dragged on.
Cannon and his party, the Communist League of America, supported the efforts of the ILD to free the Scottsboro Boys. The Trotskyists insisted on the importance of an integrated movement to fight in their defense. Cannon pointed out that it was wrong to view the Scottsboro case solely as a "Negro issue" and agitated in the pages of the Militant for the organization of white workers around the case.
When Clarence Darrow refused to work on the case unless the ILD withdrew because he didn't like its agitation methods, Cannon wrote:
"The ILD was absolutely right in rejecting the presumptuous demands of Darrow and Hays, and the Scottsboro prisoners showed wisdom in supporting the stand of their defense organization. Any other course would have signified an end to the fight to organize the protest of the masses against the legal lynching; and with that would have ended any real hope to save the boys and restore their freedom."
Darrow's big argument was: "You can't mix politics with a law case." Cannon replied:
"That is a reactionary lie. It is father to the poisonous doctrine that a labor case is a purely legal relation between the lawyer and client and the court.... It was the influence of this idea over the Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee which paralyzed the protest mass movement at every step and thereby contributed to the final tragic outcome. Not to the courts alone, and not primarily there, but to the masses must the appeal of the persecuted of class and race be taken. There is the power and there is the justice."
Communists on Trial
During the time that the Scottsboro Boys were languishing in their Southern jails, World War II began in Europe. The American workers had gone through the experience of one of the biggest union organizing drives in the history of the country, resulting in the formation of the CIO, and many of the new industrial unions had won significant victories. Communists, including the Trotskyists, Jim Cannon and the Socialist Workers Party, had participated in and led many of these struggles. War is great for capitalist economies—the destruction creates constant demand, and if you win, you get new markets to exploit. But to go to war, you have to regiment the population at home, and that begins with the suspension of civil liberties.
On the eve of America's entry into World War II, Congress passed the Smith Act, requiring the fingerprinting and registering of all aliens residing in the United States and making it a crime to advocate or teach the "violent overthrow of the United States government" or to belong to a group advocating or teaching it.
For public consumption, this act was billed as an antifascist measure, but the Socialist Workers Party (successor to the Communist League of America) and Minneapolis Teamsters were the first victims of the Smith Act prosecutions. Why did the head of the Teamsters Union, Daniel J. Tobin, the U.S. attorney general, Francis Biddle, and the president of the United States, Franklin Roosevelt, conspire to take away the First Amendment rights of a small Trotskyist party, a party with maybe a couple thousand members and influence in one local of one union?
Part of the answer is that the SWP was effective. The party had led some hard class struggle; it was their comrades who had provided the leadership for the Minneapolis strike of 1934 which led to the formation of Teamsters Local 544. Another part of the answer is politics: the SWP was forthright in its opposition to the coming war. This was a calculated government attack designed to cripple the SWP where it had the most influence in the proletariat as America girded for imperialist war.
In the courtroom, the SWP's goal was to put the capitalist system on trial, a tradition we carry forward in our own cases. On the stand, Cannon pedagogically explained the positions of the SWP on the questions of the day and Marxism in general. But the Minneapolis defendants went to jail for 16 months—sentenced on the same day that Congress voted to enter the war. The ruling class hoped that the party would be leaderless and pass from the stage. But at that time the SWP was still a revolutionary party with a revolutionary program and a collective leadership—so that hope was, in the main, dashed.
A number of CIO unions issued statements in defense of the Minneapolis defendants, as did numerous black organizations. The American Communist Party, however, issued the following statement: "The Communist Party has always exposed, fought against and today joins the fight to exterminate the Trotskyite fifth column from the life of our nation." In line with their support for Roosevelt and the war, the CP aided the government in the Smith Act prosecution of the SWP and aided the FBI in their persecution of the Trotskyists in the trade unions. The CP's disgusting collaboration did not prevent them from being prosecuted under the very same Smith Act, beginning in 1948. The Trotskyists, of course, defended the CP unequivocally against the government prosecution while criticizing the CP's Stalinist politics.
Years later the attorney general, Francis Biddle, apologized for prosecuting the Trotskyists. The bourgeoisie sometimes apologizes when its crisis is safely over. Fifty years after the end of World War II, the U.S. government "apologized" for the wartime roundup and internment of Japanese Americans, offering a token compensation to those whose homes were seized and livelihoods ruined. They say whatever outrageous trampling of civil liberties occurred was an "excess" or "wrong" and of course it will "never happen again." But the Reagan government drew up plans to intern Arab Americans in concentration camps in Louisiana after the bombing of Libya. Those camps are ready and waiting for the next time the bourgeoisie feels its rule is substantially threatened.
Class-Struggle Defense Work
The Partisan Defense Committee was initiated in 1974 by the Spartacist League with the goal of re-establishing in the workers movement united-front, non-sectarian defense principles in the tradition of Cannon's ILD.
This was not anticipated to be, nor has it been, an easy task. Unlike the ILD, which inherited the rich and principled defense traditions of the IWW and the personal authority of mass leaders like Cannon and Haywood, we were the immediate inheritors of a tradition of Stalinist perversion of defense work. In addition, the ILD was founded as a transitional organization, seeking to organize the masses for class-struggle defense work under the leadership of the party. By its second conference, the ILD had 20,000 individual members, a collective, affiliated membership of 75,000, and 156 branches across the country. The PDC attempts to conduct its work in a way that will make the transformation to such an organization possible.
The PDC program of raising money for monthly stipends for class-war prisoners is an example of an ILD practice to which we adhere. We currently send stipends to 17 prisoners, including Jamal, Geronimo ji Jaga and other former supporters of the Black Panther Party, victims of the FBI's murderous COINTELPRO frame-ups; Jerry Dale Lowe, a miner condemned to eleven years in prison for defending his picket line; and members of the MOVE organization locked up because they survived the racist cop assaults on their homes and murder of their family. We also follow the ILD's policy of strict accounting of finances and have modeled our journal, Class-Struggle Defense Notes, on the ILD's Labor Defender.
We take to heart Cannon's point:
"The problem of organization is a very significant one for labor defense as a school for the class struggle. We must not get the idea that we are merely 'defense workers' collecting money for lawyers. That is only a part of what we are doing. We are organizing workers on issues which are directly related to the class struggle. The workers who take part in the work of the ILD are drawn, step by step into the main stream of the class struggle. The workers participating begin to learn the ABC of the labor struggle."
Class-struggle defense is a broad category. We are a small organization and must pick and choose our cases carefully, with an eye to their exemplary nature. The case of Mario Munoz a Chilean miners' leader condemned to death in 1976 by the Argentine military junta, is a good example. This was the PDC's first major defense effort. Co-sponsored with the Committee to Defend Workers and Sailor Prisoners in Chile, the international campaign of protest by unions and civil libertarians won asylum for Munoz and his family in France.
Some of our work has been in defense of the revolutionary party. The Spartacist League takes its legality— the right to exist and organize—very seriously, and has been quick to challenge every libel and legal attack. The party successfully challenged the FBI's slanderous description of the SL as "terrorists" who covertly advocate the violent’ Overthrow of the government. A 1984 settlement forced them to describe the SL as a "Marxist political organization."
The PDC takes up not only the cases but the causes of the whole of the working people. We have initiated labor/black mobilizations against the Klan from San Francisco to Atlanta to Philadelphia to Springfield, Illinois, and mobilized sections of the integrated labor movement to join these efforts to stop the fascists from spewing their race hate.
In 1989, we broadened our thinking about how the PDC could champion causes of the international proletariat and offered to organize an international brigade to Afghanistan to fight alongside the forces of the left-nationalist Kabul regime against the imperialist-backed, anti-woman Islamic fundamentalists on the occasion of the withdrawal of Soviet troops. When our offer of a brigade was declined, we launched a successful campaign to raise money for the victims of the mullah-led assault on Jalalabad. To reflect this, we expanded the definition of the PDC to one of a legal and social defense organization. To carry out this campaign, it was necessary to expand the PDC internationally. Sections of the International Communist League initiated fraternal organizations in Australia, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan.
Currently we focus our efforts on Mumia Abu-Jamal and the fight to abolish the racist death penalty. Our actions in the Jamal case embody many of the principles of our defense work and the integral relationship of that work to the Marxist program of the Spartacist League, in this case particularly in regard to the fight for black liberation, which is key to the American revolution. This is a political death penalty case which illustrates the racism endemic in this country in its crudest, most vicious form and lays bare the essence of the state.
Throughout the very difficult period ahead, we will put all our faith in the mobilization of the working class and none in the capitalist courts. We embark now on exhausting every legal avenue open to Jamal, but we know the result hinges on the class struggle.
We hope you will join us in the fight to free Mumia Abu-Jamal, to abolish the racist death penalty and finish the Civil War. Forward to the third American revolution! •
The following is an article from an archival issue of Women and Revolution, Winter-Spring, 1996, 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.
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Class- Struggle Defense Work In The U.S. - Building on the Heritage of the International Labor Defense
We print below an edited speech by Deborah Mackson, executive director of the Partisan Defense Committee, prepared for April 7995 regional educationals in New York, Chicago and Oakland as part of a series of meetings and rallies sponsored by the PDC to mobilize support for Mum/a Abu-Jamal and the fight against the racist death penalty.
Mumia Abu-Jamal describes his current conditions of incarceration on death row at the State Correctional Institution at Greene County, Pennsylvania as "high-tech hell." When Governor Tom Ridge assaults all of the working people and minorities of this country by initiating the first execution of a political prisoner in America since the Rosenbergs, he must hear a resounding "No!" from coast to coast. Because Jamal is an articulate voice for the oppressed, this racist and rotting capitalist state wants to silence him forever. He is indeed dangerous. He is indeed a symbol. He is, indeed, innocent. Hear his powerful words, and you will begin to understand the hatred and fear which inspires the vendetta against this courageous fighter:
"Over many long years, over mountains of fears, through rivers of repression, from the depths of the valley of the shadow of death, I survive to greet you, in the continuing spirit of rebellion.... As America's ruling classes rush backwards into a new Dark Age, the weight of repression comes easier with each passing hour. But as repression increases, so too must resistance.... Like our forefathers, our fore-mothers, our kith and kin, we must fight for every inch of ground gained. The repressive wave sweeping this country will not stop by good wishes, but only by a counterwave of committed people firm in their focus."
We of the Partisan Defense Committee, the Spartacist League and the Labor Black Leagues are committed to a campaign to free this former Black Panther, award-winning journalist and supporter of the controversial MOVE organization who was framed for the 1981 killing of a Philadelphia policeman. Our aim is to effect an international campaign of protest and publicity like that which ultimately saved the nine Scottsboro Boys, framed for rape in Alabama in 1931, from the electric chair. We must mobilize the working class and all the oppressed in the fight to free this class-war prisoner framed by the government's murderous vendetta.
As Marxists, we are opposed to the death penalty on principle. We say that this state does not have the right to decide who lives and who dies. Capital punishment is part of the vast arsenal of terror at the hands of this state, which exists to defend the capitalist system of exploitation and oppression. America's courts are an instrument of the bourgeoisie's war on the working people and the poor; they are neither neutral nor by any stretch of the imagination "color blind."
To us, the defense of America's class-war prisoners— whatever their individual political views may be—is a responsibility of the revolutionary vanguard party which must champion all causes in the interest of the proletariat. The Partisan Defense Committee was initiated by the Spartacist League in 1974 in the tradition of the working-class defense policies of the International Labor Defense, under its founder and first secretary from 1925 to 1928, James P. Cannon. Today, I want to talk to you about how that tradition was built in this country by the best militants of the past 100 years—the leaders of class-struggle organizations like the pre-World War I Industrial Workers of the World, the early Socialist and Communist parties and the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party.
The Roots of Black Oppression
To forge a future, one has to understand the past. The modern American death penalty is the barbaric inheritance of a barbaric system of production: chattel slavery. Like the capitalists who hold state power today, the slavocracy used the instruments of their power, special bodies of armed men and the "justice" system— the laws, courts and prisons—to control people for profit. Directly descendant from the slavocracy's tradition of property in black people is the death penalty. A trail through history illustrates this truth. The "slave codes" codified a series of offenses for which slaves could be killed but for which whites would receive a lesser sentence. In Virginia, the death penalty was mandatory for both slaves and free blacks for any crime for which a white could be imprisoned for three years or more. In Georgia, a black man convicted of raping a white woman faced the death penalty; a white man got two years for the same crime, and punishment was "discretionary" if the victim was black. Slaves could not own property, bear arms, assemble or testify against whites in courts of law. Marriage between slaves was not recognized; families were sold apart; it was illegal to teach a slave to read and write. Slaves were not second- or third-class citizens—they were not human, but legally "personal, movable property," chattel.
William Styron in The Confessions of Nat Turner has the fictional character T.R. Gray explain the slaveowners' rationale to Turner:
"The point is that you are animate chattel and animate chattel is capable of craft and connivery and wily stealth. You ain't a wagon, Reverend, but chattel that possesses moral choice and spiritual volition. Remember that well. Because that's how come the law provides that animate chattel like you can be tried for a felony, and that's how come you're goin' to be tried next Sattidy. "He paused, then said softly without emotion: 'And hung by the neck until dead'."
While the slave codes were a Southern institution, legal and extralegal terror were never exclusive to the South. As early as 1793, fugitive slave laws were on the federal books. The 1850 Fugitive Slave Law was passed in response to the growing abolitionist influence which had inspired several Northern states to pass "personal liberty laws," giving some protection to slaves who had successfully negotiated the Underground Railroad. The 1850 law, seeking to protect the private property of slaveholders, put the burden of proof on captured blacks, but gave them no legal power to prove their freedom—no right to habeas corpus, no right to a jury trial, no right even to testify on their own behalf.
Many blacks were caught in the clutches of this infamous law, which had no bounds. For example, a man in southern Indiana was arrested and returned to an owner’ who claimed he had run away 79 years before. The law knew no pretense. A magistrate's fee doubled if he judged an unfortunate black before the bench a runaway slave instead of a tree man. And fugitives were pursued with vigor. In Battle Cry of Freedom, historian James McPherson recounts the story of Anthony Burns, a slave who stowed away from Virginia to Boston in 1854. The feds spent the equivalent of $2.3 million in current dollars to return him to his "owner." That is approximately equal to what an average death penalty case costs today.
Any hope that "blind justice" could be sought from the U.S. Supreme Court was dashed with the 1856 Dred Scott decision. Chief Justice Taney wrote that at the time the Constitution was adopted, Negroes "had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order...so far inferior, that they had no rights which a white man was bound to respect."
While slavery itself was overthrown in the Civil War and Reconstruction, the needs of the American capitalists for compulsory agricultural labor in the South remained. A new, semi-capitalistic mode of agriculture developed, in which the semi-slave condition of the freed blacks was made permanent by the re-establishment of the social relations of slavery: color discrimination buttressed by segregation and race prejudice.
After the Civil War the slave codes became the "black codes," a separate set of rules defining crime and punishment for blacks and limiting their civil rights. They were enforced by the extralegal terror of the Ku Klux Klan; in the last two decades of the 19th century, lynching vastly outnumbered legal executions. As W.E.B. Du Bois said of lynching:
"It is not simply the Klu Klux Klan; it is not simply weak officials; it is not simply inadequate, unenforced law. It is deeper, far deeper than all this: it is the in-grained spirit of mob and murder, the despising of women and the capitalization of children born of 400 years of Negro slavery and 4,000 years of government for private profit."
The promise of Radical Reconstruction, equality, could only be fulfilled by attacking the problem at its very root: private property in the means of production. Neither Northern capitalists nor Southern planters could abide that revolution, so they made a deal, the Compromise of 1877, in their common interest. That's why we call on American workers, black and white, to finish the Civil War—to complete, through socialist revolution, the unfinished tasks of the Second American Revolution!
In the wake of the Compromise of 1877, the U.S. Supreme Court began to dismantle the Civil Rights Acts of the Reconstruction period. One landmark decision was Plessey v. Ferguson in 1896, which permitted "separate but equal" treatment of black and white in public facilities. But separate is never equal. This was simply the legal cover for the transformation of the "black codes" into "Jim Crow"—the "grandfather clause," poll tax, literacy test, all designed to deny blacks the vote, and the institution of separate facilities from schools to cemeteries. This legal and practical segregation, instituted in the South and transported North, was a tool to divide and rule.
America's Racist Death Penalty
The death penalty was applied at will until 1972. From 1930 to 1967 the U.S. averaged 100 or more executions per year. In 1972, following a decade of civil rights protests, the Supreme Court ruled the death penalty was "cruel and unusual punishment" because of its arbitrary and capricious application. But the hiatus lasted only four years.
In 1976-the Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty and has been expanding it ever since. In 1986 the court ruled it unconstitutional to execute the insane, but gave no criteria for defining insanity; in 1988 it approved the execution of 16-year-olds; in 1989 it ruled for the execution of retarded persons. Since 1976, 276 people have been executed in this country. Between January and April of 1995, 17 were killed. And innocence is no barrier, as the Supreme Court recently decreed in the case of Jesse Dewayne Jacobs, executed in Texas in January 1995 after the prosecution submitted that he had not committed the crime for which he had been sentenced. The Supreme Court said it didn't matter, he'd had a "fair trial." What an abomination!
Perhaps the most telling case in recent history was the 1987 McCleskey decision. The evidence submitted to the courts illustrated beyond the shadow of a doubt that racism ruled the application of the death penalty. Overall, a black person convicted of killing a white person is 22 times more likely to be sentenced to death than if the victim is black. When the McCleskey case went to court, liberals across the country hoped for a Brown v. Board of Education decision in regard to the death penalty. The evidence of racial bias was clear and overwhelming. But while the Supreme Court accepted the accuracy of the evidence, it said it doesn't matter. The court showed the real intention of the death penalty when it stated that McCleskey's claim "throws into serious question the principles that underlie our entire criminal justice system" and "the validity of capital punishment in our multi-racial society." Or as a Southern planter wrote in defense of the slave codes, "We have to rely more and more on the power of fear.... We are determined to continue masters" (quoted in Kenneth Stampp, The Peculiar Institution).
Let's take a look for a moment at "our multi-racial society." The U.S. has the highest rate of incarceration in the world: 344 per 100,000. It is one of the two "advanced" industrial countries left in the world which employs capital punishment. As of January 1995, 2,976 men, women and children occupied America's death rows; 48 are women, 37 are juveniles. According to the latest census, blacks make up 12 percent of the population, yet 51 percent of the people awaiting execution are minorities and 40 percent are black.
Eighty-four percent of all capital cases involve white victims even though 50 percent of murder victims in America are black. Of a total of 75 people executed for interracial murders, three involved a black victim and a white defendant, 72 involved a white victim and a black defendant. The death penalty is truly an impulse to genocide against the black population for whom the ruling class no longer sees any need in its profit-grabbing calculations.
Understanding this and understanding the broader importance of the black question in America, we take up Jamal's case as a concrete task in our struggle for black freedom and for proletarian revolution in the interests of the liberation of all of humanity.
Early History of Class-Struggle Defense
From the beginning of the communist movement, a commitment to those persecuted by the ruling classes, whether "on the inside" or out, has been recognized as an integral part of the class struggle. Marx and Engels spent years defending and supporting the refugees of-the Paris Commune.
As Trotskyists, we feel this responsibility keenly because we inherited some of the finest principles for class-struggle defense from James R Cannon, the founder of American Trotskyism. The traditions which inspired the International Labor Defense (ILD) were forged in hard class struggle, dating back to the rise of the labor movement after the Civil War. One of the first acts of the Republican government following the Compromise of 1877 was to pull its troops from the South and send them to quell the railway strikes that had broken out throughout the Northern states. The federal strikebreakers tipped the scales in the hard-fought battles of the time, many of which escalated into general strikes, and the workers were driven back in defeat. But united struggle against the bosses had been launched, and less than a decade later the workers movement had taken up the fight for an eight-hour day.
In the course of this struggle, workers in Chicago amassed at Haymarket Square in early May of 1886. The protest was just winding down when a bomb went off, likely planted by a provocateur. The cops opened fire on the workers, killing one and wounding many. The government’s response was to frame up eight workers, who were sympathetic to anarchist views, on charges of murder. They were tried and convicted, not for the bombing but for their agitation against the employers. Four were hanged, one committed suicide, three were finally pardoned in 1891.
The period from the turn of the century to America's entry into World War I was one of intense social struggle; militant strikes were more numerous than at any time since. The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW—the Wobblies) led union organizing drives, anti-lynching campaigns and a free speech movement. The level of struggle meant more frequent arrests, which gave rise to the need for defense of the class and individuals. The left and most labor currents and organizations rallied to the defense of victims of the class war. Non-sectarian defense was the rule of the day. The Wobbly slogan, "an injury to one is an injury to all," was taken to heart by the vast majority of the workers.
This was Cannon's training ground. One of his heroes was Big Bill Haywood, who conceived the ILD with Cannon in Moscow in 1925. As Cannon said, the history of the ILD is "the story of the projection of Bill Haywood's influence—through me and my associates—into the movement from which he was exiled, an influence for simple honesty and good will and genuine non-partisan solidarity toward all the prisoners of the class war in America."
Big Bill Haywood came from the Western Federation of Miners, one of the most combative unions this country has ever produced. The preamble to their constitution was a series of six points, beginning, "We hold that there is a class struggle in society and that this struggle is caused by economic conditions." It goes on to note, "We hold that the class struggle will continue until the producer is recognized as the sole master of his product," and it asserts that the working class and it alone can and must achieve its own emancipation. It ends, "we, the wage slaves...have associated in the Western Federation of Miners."
Not all labor organizations of the time had this class-struggle perspective. Contrast the tract of Samuel Rompers' American Federation of Labor (AFL), "Labor's Bill of Grievances," which he sent to the president and Congress in 1908:
"We present these grievances to your attention because we have long, patiently and in vain waited for redress.
There is not any matter of which we have complained but for which we nave in an honorable and lawful manner submitted remedies. The remedies for these grievances proposed by labor are in line with fundamental law, and with progress and development made necessary by changed industrial conditions."
The IWW, whose constitution began, "The working class and the employing class have nothing in common," was founded in 1905. Haywood was an initiator and one of its most aggressive and influential organizers. As a result of that and his open socialist beliefs, in 1906 he, along with George Pettibone and Charles Moyer, were arrested for the bombing murder of ex-governor Frank Steunenberg of Idaho (the nemesis of the combative Coeur d'Alene miners). The three were kidnapped from Colorado, put on a military train and taken to Idaho.
The Western Federation of Miners and the IWW launched a tremendous defense movement for the three during the 18 months they were waiting to be tried for their lives. Everyone from the anarchists to the AFL participated. Demonstrations of 50,000 and more were organized all across the country. It was this case that brought James Cannon to political consciousness.
The case was important internationally, too. While they were in jail, Maxim Gorky came to New York and sent a telegram to the three with greetings from the Russian workers. Haywood wired back that their imprisonment was an expression of the class struggle which was the same in America as in Russia and in all other capitalist countries.
On a less friendly note, Teddy Roosevelt, then president of America, publicly declared the three "undesirable citizens." Haywood responded that the laws of the country held they were innocent until proven guilty and that a man in Roosevelt's position should be the last to judge them until the case was decided in court.
The Socialist Party (founded in 1901) also rallied to the defense. While in jail, Haywood was nominated as the party's candidate for governor of Colorado and got 16,000 votes. The leader of the SP, Eugene Debs, wrote his famous "Arouse, Ye Slaves" for the SP's Appeal to Reason:
"If they attempt to murder Moyer, Haywood and their brothers, a million revolutionists, at least, will meet them with guns.... Let them dare to execute their devilish plot and every state in this Union will resound with the tramp of revolution....
"Get ready, comrades, for action!... A special revolutionary convention of the proletariat...would be in order, and, if extreme measures are required, a general strike could be ordered and industry paralyzed as a preliminary to a general uprising."
Haywood's trial began in May of 1907. It was Clarence Darrow for the defense and the infamous Senator William E. Borah for the frame-up (prosecution). That this was a political trial was clear to everybody. The prosecution, for example, introduced into evidence issues of the anarchist journal Alarm from 1886, when Haymarket martyr Albert Parsons was its editor. Haywood thought that Dar-row's summary to the jury in his case was the best effort Darrow ever made in the courtroom. But Haywood also got a bit exasperated with his lawyer. In his autobiography, he tells the story of Darrow coming to jail depressed and worried. The defendants would always try to get him to lighten up. Finally Pettibone got tired of this and told Darrow they knew it would be really hard on him to lose this great case with all its national and international attention, but, hey! he said, "You know it's us fellows that have to be hanged!"
Every day of the trial the defense committee packed the courtroom with what Haywood called "a labor jury of Socialists and union men." This is a practice we proudly follow today. On the stand, Haywood told the story of the Western Federation of Miners and its battles against the bosses, putting them on trial. He refused to be intimidated by Senator Borah. When Borah asked whether Haywood had said that Governor Steunenberg should be exterminated, Haywood replied that to the best of his remembrance, he said he should be "eliminated."
On June 28 Haywood was acquitted. Soon thereafter, so were his comrades. At a Chicago rally organized to greet him upon his release, he told the crowd of 200,000, "We owe our lives to your solidarity." Haywood knew that innocence was not enough. It is that kind of solidarity we are seeking to mobilize today for Mumia Abu-Jamal.
The Labor Movement and World War I
Haywood was elected to the National Executive Committee of the Socialist Party in 1908, during its most left-wing period. In 1910, he was one of the party's delegates to the Socialist Congress of the Second International in Copenhagen. Shortly after, the SP moved to the right, and in 1912 (the year Debs polled nearly a million votes in his campaign for president) a number of leftists, including the young Jim Cannon, left the Socialist Party. A year later, when Haywood was purged from the executive board, there was another mass exodus.
The IWW, in which Haywood and Cannon remained active, expanded the scope of its activities. This was the period of the free speech movement and anti-lynching ' campaigns. One Wobbly pamphlet, "Justice for the Negro: How He Can Get It," discusses the question of integrated struggle and how to stop lynchings:
"The workers of every race and nationality must join in one common group against their one common enemy—the employers—so as to be "able to defend themselves and one another. Protection for the working class lies in complete solidarity of the workers, without regard to race, creed, sex or color. 'One Enemy—One Union!' must be their watchword."
They almost got it right: as syndicalists, they didn't understand the need for a vanguard party to fight for a revolutionary program.
With the beginning of World War I and preparations for U.S. involvement, the government declared political war on the IWW and the left. Thousands of Wobblies were imprisoned under "criminal syndicalism" laws—100 in San Quentin and Folsom alone. In response, the IWW adopted the slogan, "Fill the jails." It was a misguided tactic, but unlike many so-called socialists today, the Wobbliest had a principled position where it counted: they'd go to jail before they'd cross a picket line.
1917 was the year of the Russian Revolution. A month after that world-historic event, Haywood was back on trial in Chicago with some 18 other Wobblies. He was convicted and sentenced to 20 years in Leaven worth prison. In 1919 he was released on bail pending appeal and devoted his time to the IWW's General Defense Committee, launching a campaign to raise bail money for those in prison. When the Red Scare and the Palmer Raids began, Haywood learned that he was a primary target. So, as his appeal went to the Supreme Court, he sailed for the Soviet Union. A student of history, he had no illusions in "blind justice."
Cannon was also heavily influenced by the case of California labor leaders Tom Mooney and Warren Billings. In 1916, as America was preparing to go to war, Mooney and Billings were framed up for a bombing at a Preparedness Day Parade in San Francisco. The Preparedness Movement was a bourgeois movement of "open shop" chamber of commerce, right-wing vigilante groups, who were very serious about getting the U.S. into World War I. They went into Mexico to fight Pancho Villa as practice. The Preparedness Movement was opposed by labor, and in fact two days before the bombing there had been a 5,000-strong labor demonstration in San Francisco.
Mooney and Billings were convicted. Mooney was sentenced to hang, Billings got a life sentence. At first, their case was taken up only by the anarchists. The official AFL labor movement took a hands-off position. But when it became clear that they had been framed with perjured testimony, a "Mooney movement" swept the country.
The Mooney case had a big impact on Russian immigrant workers, among others. Thus the Mooney case was carried back to Russia, and in April of 1917 the Russian anarchists led a Mooney defense demonstration in Petrograd at the American consulate. Worried about Russia pulling out of World War I at that point, Woodrow Wilson personally interceded on behalf of Mooney and Billings. It didn't get them out of jail, but the effect of international pressure was not lost on Cannon.
In the U.S., the cops broke up Mooney defense meetings and arrested those present. The class-struggle nature of the defense movement, involving such actions as one-day strikes, was a felt threat to the ruling class, especially in the face of a war. In a conscious effort to dissipate this movement, the state commuted Mooney's death sentence to life in prison. In combination with the domestic repression following the war, this took the life out of the Mooney movement. Mooney and Billings stayed in prison for 22 years. They were released in 1939, and Mooney spent two and a half of the next three years in the hospital and then-died.
In his eulogy "Good-by Tom Mooney!" Cannon wrote:
"They imprisoned Mooney—as they imprisoned Debs and Haywood and hundreds of others—in order to clear the road of militant labor opposition to the First World War, and they kept him in prison for revenge and for a warning to others."
As World War II began, Cannon would find himself in the same position.
The Tradition of International Labor Defense
The parties of the Second International backed their own ruling classes in World War I, and the Bolsheviks fought for a new international party committed to the Marxist movement's call, "Workers of the World Unite!" In 1919, the leaders of the Russian Revolution founded the Third International, the Comintern, to build revolutionary parties which could take up the struggle against capitalist rule. 1919 was also a year of massive strike activity in the U.S. This wave of class struggle swelled the ranks of the Socialist Party, which then split in September. The most left-wing workers regrouped, giving birth to the American Communist movement, and Cannon was among them.
America in the 1920s was not a nice place to be. Warren Harding was elected in a landslide victory on the slogan of "Return to Normalcy." And "normal" was racist and repressive. His attorney general, A. Mitchell Palmer, launched a war on the left inspired by fear of the Russian Revolution, which resulted in massive deportations of leftists and jailing of American radicals. The young Communist Party went underground. 1920 saw more lynchings and anti-black pogroms than any time in recent memory. The Klan grew like wildfire, and the government passed anti-immigration legislation that would give Newt Gingrich and Pete Wilson wet dreams.
When it was clear that the IWW was for all practical purposes broken, many of its jailed members, including Eugene Debs, were pardoned. The Communists, however, remained in jail. The union movement took it on the chops as well, and by the end of the 1920s only 13 percent of the workforce of this country was unionized.
The 1921 Third Congress of the Comintern was held under the watchword "To the Masses." In the U.S., the newly formed party had been underground and could hardly make a turn to the masses. At the Comintern's urging, the Workers (Communist) Party emerged in December of 1921 with Cannon as its first chairman and main public spokesman.
By the time of the Fourth Congress of the Comintern in 1922, the tactic of the united front had been defined; the Fourth Congress detailed its application. The need for the united front grew out of the post-World War I ebbing of the revolutionary tide following the Russian Revolution. The offensive by the capitalists against the proletariat and its parties was forcing even the reformist-led organizations into partial and defensive struggles to save their very lives.
The slogan "march separately, strike together" encapsulated the two aims of the united-front tactic: class unity and the political fight for a communist program. The Comintern sought both to achieve the maximum unity of the working masses in their defensive struggles and to expose in action the hesitancy of the leadership of the reformist organizations of the Second International to act in the interests of the proletariat and the inability of its program to win against the ruling class.
The united front is a tactic we use today. Our call for labor/black mobilizations to stop the execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal and abolish the racist death penalty has brought together many different organizations and individuals to save Jamal's life. At these rallies and demonstrations, we
have insisted on the right to argue for our program to put an end to racist injustice and capitalist exploitation through socialist revolution.
In line with the policies hashed out at the Third and Fourth Congresses, the Communist International founded an international defense organization, the International Red Aid. These events had a substantial effect on the young American party, and one of the direct results was the foundation in 1925 of the International Labor Defense (ILD).
Cannon's goal was to make the ILD the defense arm of the labor movement. Cannon wrote to Debs on the occasion of his endorsement of the ILD:
"The main problem as I see it is to construct the ILD on the broadest possible basis. To conduct the work in a non-partisan and non-sectarian manner and finally establish the impression by our deeds that the ILD is the defender of every worker persecuted for his activities in the class struggle, without any exceptions and without regard to his affiliations."
From 1925 to 1928, the ILD was pretty successful in achieving that goal. It established principles to which we adhere today:
• United-front defense: The ILD campaigns were organized to allow for the broadest possible participation.
• Class-struggle defense: The ILD sought to mobilize the working class in protest on a national and international scale, relying on the class movement of the workers and
placing no faith in the justice of the capitalist courts, while using every legal avenue open to them.
• Non-sectarian defense: When it was founded, the ILD immediately adopted 106 prisoners, instituting the practice of financially assisting these prisoners and their
families. Many had been jailed as a result of the "criminal syndicalism" laws; some were Wobblies, some were anarchists, some were strike leaders. Not one was a member of the Communist Party. The ILD launched the first Holiday Appeal. Of course, the ILD also vigorously defended its own, understanding the vital importance of the legal rights of the Communist Party to exist and organize.
Social Defense and Union Struggle
The ILD's most well-known case was the defense of Sacco and Vanzetti. The frame-up for murder and robbery of these two immigrant anarchist workers, who were sent to their deaths by the state of Massachusetts in 1927, grew directly out of the "red scare" of the early '20s. The ILD applied with alacrity the main lines of its program: unity of all working-class forces and reliance on the class movement of the workers. Thousands of workers rallied to their cause, and unions around the country contributed to a defense fund set up by Italian workers in the Boston area. But the level of class struggle is key to the outcome of defense cases, and the ILD's exemplary campaign proved insufficient to save the lives of Sacco and Vanzetti.
As the case drew to a close, one of the feints used by the state was to start rumors that Sacco and Vanzetti's death penalty sentence would be commuted to life without parole. This was designed to dissipate the Sacco and Vanzetti movement and prepare their execution. Cannon rang the alarm bells from the pages of the Labor Defender, rallying ILD supporters to mass demonstrations and warning them of the devious and two-faced nature of the bourgeoisie. Cannon had not forgotten the demobilization of the Mooney movement after his sentence had been commuted nor the living death that Mooney and Billings were enduring in their 22 years of internment.
This has significance for us today as we fight against the threatened execution of Jamal. Life in prison is hell. Think about the "life" of Geronimo ji Jaga (Pratt), another former Panther, jailed for a quarter of a century for a crime the state knows he did not commit. While some call upon Pennsylvania governor Ridge to convert Jamal's sentence to life without parole, we demand the freedom of both these innocent men.
The ILD also worked in defense of the class as a whole. In 1926, about 16,000 textile workers hit the bricks in Passaic, New Jersey. Their strike was eventually defeated, but it drew sharp lessons on the role of the state and demonstrated for Cannon the absolute necessity for a permanent, organized and always ready non-partisan labor defense organization. Cannon wrote in the Labor Defender:
"Our I.L.D. is on the job at Passaic. Not a single striker went into court without our lawyer to defend him. There was not a single conviction that was not appealed. Nobody had to remain in jail more than a few days for lack of bail.... A great wave of protest spread thru the labor movement and even the most conservative labor leaders were compelled to give expression to it."
In 1928, the Trotskyist Left Opposition (including Cannon) was expelled from the Communist Party. The ILD remained under the control of the Communist Party and thus became subject to the zigzags of Stalinist policies throughout the 1930s, including the perversion of the united front from a tactic for class unity into an instrument for class collaboration and counterrevolution.
In 1929, Stalin declared the "Third Period," an ultraleft shift, the main tactic of which was to smash the Social Democratic and other leftist parties by creating what the Stalinists called "united fronts from below." The Comintern charged the reformists with "social fascism"; the real fascists were to be dealt with secondarily. In Germany, this policy contributed to Adolph Hitler's seizure of power— there was no united fight against fascism by the workers in the mass Communist and Social Democratic parties. This policy had an effect on the U.S. party and its defense work.
Legal Lynching in the American South
One result of the stock market crash of 1929 and the ensuing Depression was that 200,000people made the rails their home as they moved from place to place looking for work. On 25 March 1931, nine black youths, ranging in age from 13 to 20, were riding the Memphis to Chattanooga freight train. Two young white women, fearful of being jailed for hoboing when the train was stopped after reports that there had been a fight with some white boys, accused the blacks of rape. Among the nine were Olen Montgomery—blind in one eye and with 10 percent vision in the other—headed for Memphis hoping to earn enough money to buy a pair of glasses; Willie Roberson, debilitated by years-long untreated syphilis and gonorrhea—which is important if you're going to be talking about a rape case; and Eugene Williams and Roy Wright, both 13 years old.
The group were nearly lynched on the spot. The trial began in Scottsboro, Alabama on April 6. Four days later, despite medical evidence that no rape had occurred—not to mention gross violations of due process—eight were sentenced to death and one of the 13-year-olds to life in prison. The Communist Party issued a statement condemning the trial as a "legal" lynching. That night, the campaign to free the Scottsboro Boys began.
Freedom was a long time coming. A series of trials and appeals all went badly for the defendants. In 1933, one of the alleged victims, Ruby Bates, recanted her testimony, but it wasn't until 1937 that four of the defendants were freed. Three more were paroled in the 1940s, and in 1948 Haywood Patterson escaped from Angola prison to Michigan, where the governor refused to extradite him. The last, Andy Wright, who had had his 1944 parole revoked, was finally released in 1950. The nine had spent 104 years in jail for a "crime" that never happened.
The ILD made the word "Scottsboro" synonymous, nationally and internationally, with Southern racism, repression and injustice. Their campaign was responsible for saving the Scottsboro Boys from the electric chair. As Haywood Patterson's father wrote in a letter to his son, "You will burn sure if you don't let them preachers alone and trust in the International Labor Defense to handle the case."
The CP's publicity was massive and moving. They organized demonstrations in Harlem and across the country, appealing to the masses to put no confidence in the capitalist courts and to see the struggle for the freedom of these youths as part of the larger class struggle. Young Communists in Dresden, Germany marched on the American consulate, and, when officials refused to accept their petition, hurled bottles through windows. Inside each was the note: "Down with American murder and Imperialism. For the brotherhood of black and white young proletarians. An end to the bloody lynching of our Negro co-workers."
In the South, the defense effort faced not only the racist system but the homegrown fascists of the Ku Klux Klan as well, which launched a campaign under the slogan "The Klan Rides Again to Stamp Out Communism."
The ILD's success in rallying the masses to the defense of the Scottsboro Boys happened despite their sectarian "Third Period" tactics. The ILD denounced the NAACP, the ACLU and most of the trade-union movement as "social fascists" and threw the "Trotskyite" likes of Jim Cannon out of Scottsboro defense meetings. But fascism was on the rise in Europe, and, seeking now to make as many allies as he could, in 1935 Stalin' declared the "Third Period" at an end. A Comintern resolution urged the Communist parties to form "popular fronts" with any and all for progressive ends. In the U.S. this meant supporting Roosevelt and abandoning the struggle to link the defense of black people with the fight against the capitalist system. You can imagine the surprise of the NAACP, who were now greeted warmly by the ILD as "comrades"! This comradeship did not extend to the Trotskyists. The Scottsboro Defense Committee was formed, and a lot of the life went out of the movement as the case dragged on.
Cannon and his party, the Communist League of America, supported the efforts of the ILD to free the Scottsboro Boys. The Trotskyists insisted on the importance of an integrated movement to fight in their defense. Cannon pointed out that it was wrong to view the Scottsboro case solely as a "Negro issue" and agitated in the pages of the Militant for the organization of white workers around the case.
When Clarence Darrow refused to work on the case unless the ILD withdrew because he didn't like its agitation methods, Cannon wrote:
"The ILD was absolutely right in rejecting the presumptuous demands of Darrow and Hays, and the Scottsboro prisoners showed wisdom in supporting the stand of their defense organization. Any other course would have signified an end to the fight to organize the protest of the masses against the legal lynching; and with that would have ended any real hope to save the boys and restore their freedom."
Darrow's big argument was: "You can't mix politics with a law case." Cannon replied:
"That is a reactionary lie. It is father to the poisonous doctrine that a labor case is a purely legal relation between the lawyer and client and the court.... It was the influence of this idea over the Sacco-Vanzetti Defense Committee which paralyzed the protest mass movement at every step and thereby contributed to the final tragic outcome. Not to the courts alone, and not primarily there, but to the masses must the appeal of the persecuted of class and race be taken. There is the power and there is the justice."
Communists on Trial
During the time that the Scottsboro Boys were languishing in their Southern jails, World War II began in Europe. The American workers had gone through the experience of one of the biggest union organizing drives in the history of the country, resulting in the formation of the CIO, and many of the new industrial unions had won significant victories. Communists, including the Trotskyists, Jim Cannon and the Socialist Workers Party, had participated in and led many of these struggles. War is great for capitalist economies—the destruction creates constant demand, and if you win, you get new markets to exploit. But to go to war, you have to regiment the population at home, and that begins with the suspension of civil liberties.
On the eve of America's entry into World War II, Congress passed the Smith Act, requiring the fingerprinting and registering of all aliens residing in the United States and making it a crime to advocate or teach the "violent overthrow of the United States government" or to belong to a group advocating or teaching it.
For public consumption, this act was billed as an antifascist measure, but the Socialist Workers Party (successor to the Communist League of America) and Minneapolis Teamsters were the first victims of the Smith Act prosecutions. Why did the head of the Teamsters Union, Daniel J. Tobin, the U.S. attorney general, Francis Biddle, and the president of the United States, Franklin Roosevelt, conspire to take away the First Amendment rights of a small Trotskyist party, a party with maybe a couple thousand members and influence in one local of one union?
Part of the answer is that the SWP was effective. The party had led some hard class struggle; it was their comrades who had provided the leadership for the Minneapolis strike of 1934 which led to the formation of Teamsters Local 544. Another part of the answer is politics: the SWP was forthright in its opposition to the coming war. This was a calculated government attack designed to cripple the SWP where it had the most influence in the proletariat as America girded for imperialist war.
In the courtroom, the SWP's goal was to put the capitalist system on trial, a tradition we carry forward in our own cases. On the stand, Cannon pedagogically explained the positions of the SWP on the questions of the day and Marxism in general. But the Minneapolis defendants went to jail for 16 months—sentenced on the same day that Congress voted to enter the war. The ruling class hoped that the party would be leaderless and pass from the stage. But at that time the SWP was still a revolutionary party with a revolutionary program and a collective leadership—so that hope was, in the main, dashed.
A number of CIO unions issued statements in defense of the Minneapolis defendants, as did numerous black organizations. The American Communist Party, however, issued the following statement: "The Communist Party has always exposed, fought against and today joins the fight to exterminate the Trotskyite fifth column from the life of our nation." In line with their support for Roosevelt and the war, the CP aided the government in the Smith Act prosecution of the SWP and aided the FBI in their persecution of the Trotskyists in the trade unions. The CP's disgusting collaboration did not prevent them from being prosecuted under the very same Smith Act, beginning in 1948. The Trotskyists, of course, defended the CP unequivocally against the government prosecution while criticizing the CP's Stalinist politics.
Years later the attorney general, Francis Biddle, apologized for prosecuting the Trotskyists. The bourgeoisie sometimes apologizes when its crisis is safely over. Fifty years after the end of World War II, the U.S. government "apologized" for the wartime roundup and internment of Japanese Americans, offering a token compensation to those whose homes were seized and livelihoods ruined. They say whatever outrageous trampling of civil liberties occurred was an "excess" or "wrong" and of course it will "never happen again." But the Reagan government drew up plans to intern Arab Americans in concentration camps in Louisiana after the bombing of Libya. Those camps are ready and waiting for the next time the bourgeoisie feels its rule is substantially threatened.
Class-Struggle Defense Work
The Partisan Defense Committee was initiated in 1974 by the Spartacist League with the goal of re-establishing in the workers movement united-front, non-sectarian defense principles in the tradition of Cannon's ILD.
This was not anticipated to be, nor has it been, an easy task. Unlike the ILD, which inherited the rich and principled defense traditions of the IWW and the personal authority of mass leaders like Cannon and Haywood, we were the immediate inheritors of a tradition of Stalinist perversion of defense work. In addition, the ILD was founded as a transitional organization, seeking to organize the masses for class-struggle defense work under the leadership of the party. By its second conference, the ILD had 20,000 individual members, a collective, affiliated membership of 75,000, and 156 branches across the country. The PDC attempts to conduct its work in a way that will make the transformation to such an organization possible.
The PDC program of raising money for monthly stipends for class-war prisoners is an example of an ILD practice to which we adhere. We currently send stipends to 17 prisoners, including Jamal, Geronimo ji Jaga and other former supporters of the Black Panther Party, victims of the FBI's murderous COINTELPRO frame-ups; Jerry Dale Lowe, a miner condemned to eleven years in prison for defending his picket line; and members of the MOVE organization locked up because they survived the racist cop assaults on their homes and murder of their family. We also follow the ILD's policy of strict accounting of finances and have modeled our journal, Class-Struggle Defense Notes, on the ILD's Labor Defender.
We take to heart Cannon's point:
"The problem of organization is a very significant one for labor defense as a school for the class struggle. We must not get the idea that we are merely 'defense workers' collecting money for lawyers. That is only a part of what we are doing. We are organizing workers on issues which are directly related to the class struggle. The workers who take part in the work of the ILD are drawn, step by step into the main stream of the class struggle. The workers participating begin to learn the ABC of the labor struggle."
Class-struggle defense is a broad category. We are a small organization and must pick and choose our cases carefully, with an eye to their exemplary nature. The case of Mario Munoz a Chilean miners' leader condemned to death in 1976 by the Argentine military junta, is a good example. This was the PDC's first major defense effort. Co-sponsored with the Committee to Defend Workers and Sailor Prisoners in Chile, the international campaign of protest by unions and civil libertarians won asylum for Munoz and his family in France.
Some of our work has been in defense of the revolutionary party. The Spartacist League takes its legality— the right to exist and organize—very seriously, and has been quick to challenge every libel and legal attack. The party successfully challenged the FBI's slanderous description of the SL as "terrorists" who covertly advocate the violent’ Overthrow of the government. A 1984 settlement forced them to describe the SL as a "Marxist political organization."
The PDC takes up not only the cases but the causes of the whole of the working people. We have initiated labor/black mobilizations against the Klan from San Francisco to Atlanta to Philadelphia to Springfield, Illinois, and mobilized sections of the integrated labor movement to join these efforts to stop the fascists from spewing their race hate.
In 1989, we broadened our thinking about how the PDC could champion causes of the international proletariat and offered to organize an international brigade to Afghanistan to fight alongside the forces of the left-nationalist Kabul regime against the imperialist-backed, anti-woman Islamic fundamentalists on the occasion of the withdrawal of Soviet troops. When our offer of a brigade was declined, we launched a successful campaign to raise money for the victims of the mullah-led assault on Jalalabad. To reflect this, we expanded the definition of the PDC to one of a legal and social defense organization. To carry out this campaign, it was necessary to expand the PDC internationally. Sections of the International Communist League initiated fraternal organizations in Australia, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan.
Currently we focus our efforts on Mumia Abu-Jamal and the fight to abolish the racist death penalty. Our actions in the Jamal case embody many of the principles of our defense work and the integral relationship of that work to the Marxist program of the Spartacist League, in this case particularly in regard to the fight for black liberation, which is key to the American revolution. This is a political death penalty case which illustrates the racism endemic in this country in its crudest, most vicious form and lays bare the essence of the state.
Throughout the very difficult period ahead, we will put all our faith in the mobilization of the working class and none in the capitalist courts. We embark now on exhausting every legal avenue open to Jamal, but we know the result hinges on the class struggle.
We hope you will join us in the fight to free Mumia Abu-Jamal, to abolish the racist death penalty and finish the Civil War. Forward to the third American revolution! •
Monday, August 21, 2006
SENATOR KERRY RAISES HIS "ANTI-WAR" PROFILE
COMMENTARY
LAMBASTS SOFTBALL TARGET LIEBERMAN ON WAR
Apparently even ostrich-like Democratic Party politicians are starting to realize that as the 2006 elections are approaching the war in Iraq is the central axis of politics this season. Massachusetts Democratic U.S. Senator Kerry, punitive presidential candidate in 2004, has even got that message- a little. But, John, everybody and his brother (or sister) is running for cover on this one. There is not enough room on that train (now) for everyone. No one, apparently, wants to be the next Senator Lieberman.
Obviously, Senator Kerry is gearing up for another presidential run as the ‘born-again’ anti-war candidate. To bolster those credentials he recently took some pot-shots at his old friend Lieberman for being a lackey of the Bush Administration’s war policy. This, seemingly, is his bid for nomination for this year’s Profiles in Courage Award. Talk about ‘softball’ politics. Sure, Lieberman should be beaten down. And kicked when he is down. My point is that the beating should have come from real anti-war militants, not the aging yuppies of this world like John Kerry and Ned Lamont. Those of us who opposed this war from before its start should have very long memories. Make these fools run the gauntlet.
This writer makes no bones about the fact that he long ago gave up on the Democratic Party as a vehicle for progressive change. The fight against the Iraqi War has only emphasized how right that decision has been. However some readers may not see it that way. At a time when only the immediate Bush family appears to still support the war something more than verbal opposition to the war is necessary. On the parliamentary level the only real way to end this war is to cut off the war budget. I have been beating the drums on this theme throughout this series on the election cycle. I pose the question again here for anti-war militants. Ask Senator Kerry or any candidate for that matter -Will you vote against the war budget? Yes or No. To pose the question is to know the answer. It is high time to move on to other forms of political expression besides the neverending Republicrat cycle.
FORGET DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS AND GREENS- BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!
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!
LAMBASTS SOFTBALL TARGET LIEBERMAN ON WAR
Apparently even ostrich-like Democratic Party politicians are starting to realize that as the 2006 elections are approaching the war in Iraq is the central axis of politics this season. Massachusetts Democratic U.S. Senator Kerry, punitive presidential candidate in 2004, has even got that message- a little. But, John, everybody and his brother (or sister) is running for cover on this one. There is not enough room on that train (now) for everyone. No one, apparently, wants to be the next Senator Lieberman.
Obviously, Senator Kerry is gearing up for another presidential run as the ‘born-again’ anti-war candidate. To bolster those credentials he recently took some pot-shots at his old friend Lieberman for being a lackey of the Bush Administration’s war policy. This, seemingly, is his bid for nomination for this year’s Profiles in Courage Award. Talk about ‘softball’ politics. Sure, Lieberman should be beaten down. And kicked when he is down. My point is that the beating should have come from real anti-war militants, not the aging yuppies of this world like John Kerry and Ned Lamont. Those of us who opposed this war from before its start should have very long memories. Make these fools run the gauntlet.
This writer makes no bones about the fact that he long ago gave up on the Democratic Party as a vehicle for progressive change. The fight against the Iraqi War has only emphasized how right that decision has been. However some readers may not see it that way. At a time when only the immediate Bush family appears to still support the war something more than verbal opposition to the war is necessary. On the parliamentary level the only real way to end this war is to cut off the war budget. I have been beating the drums on this theme throughout this series on the election cycle. I pose the question again here for anti-war militants. Ask Senator Kerry or any candidate for that matter -Will you vote against the war budget? Yes or No. To pose the question is to know the answer. It is high time to move on to other forms of political expression besides the neverending Republicrat cycle.
FORGET DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS AND GREENS- BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!
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!
SENATOR CANTWELL'S CANT
COMMENTARY
HILLARY “HAWK” WEST RUNS FOR COVER
FORGET DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS AND GREENS- BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!
Apparently even ostrich-like Democratic Party politicians are starting to realize that as the 2006 elections are approaching the war in Iraq is the central axis of politics this season. Washington State Democratic U.S. Senator Cantwell, long a fervent supporter of the Bush Administration's war, has even got that message-a little. Recently the august Senator stated, for the record, that if she knew then what she knows now she would have voted against the Congressional authorization for the war. Christ, they are all running for cover on this one. No one, apparently, wants to be the next Senator Lieberman. But those of us who opposed this war from before its start should have very long memories. Make these fools run the gauntlet.
This writer makes no bones about the fact that he long ago gave up on the Democratic Party as a vehicle for progressive change. The fight against the Iraqi War has only emphasized how right that decision has been. However some readers may not see it that way. At a time when only the immediate Bush family appears to still support the war something more than verbal opposition to the war is necessary. On the parliamentary level the only real way to end this war is to cut off the war budget. I have been beating the drums on this theme throughout this series on the election cycle. I pose the question again here for anti-war militants. Ask Senator Cantwell or any candidate for that matter -Will you vote against the war budget? Yes or No. To pose the question is to know the answer. It is high time to move on to other forms of political expression than the Republicrats.
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!
HILLARY “HAWK” WEST RUNS FOR COVER
FORGET DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS AND GREENS- BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!
Apparently even ostrich-like Democratic Party politicians are starting to realize that as the 2006 elections are approaching the war in Iraq is the central axis of politics this season. Washington State Democratic U.S. Senator Cantwell, long a fervent supporter of the Bush Administration's war, has even got that message-a little. Recently the august Senator stated, for the record, that if she knew then what she knows now she would have voted against the Congressional authorization for the war. Christ, they are all running for cover on this one. No one, apparently, wants to be the next Senator Lieberman. But those of us who opposed this war from before its start should have very long memories. Make these fools run the gauntlet.
This writer makes no bones about the fact that he long ago gave up on the Democratic Party as a vehicle for progressive change. The fight against the Iraqi War has only emphasized how right that decision has been. However some readers may not see it that way. At a time when only the immediate Bush family appears to still support the war something more than verbal opposition to the war is necessary. On the parliamentary level the only real way to end this war is to cut off the war budget. I have been beating the drums on this theme throughout this series on the election cycle. I pose the question again here for anti-war militants. Ask Senator Cantwell or any candidate for that matter -Will you vote against the war budget? Yes or No. To pose the question is to know the answer. It is high time to move on to other forms of political expression than the Republicrats.
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!
Saturday, August 19, 2006
A SMALL VICTORY (IF ONLY TEMPORARY) FOR THE FOURTH AMENDMENT
COMMENTARY
SHOCKING REVELATION: A FEDERAL JUDGE ACTUALLY KNOWS THE 4th AMENDMENT EXISTS. APPARENTLY NOT EVERY LAW SCHOOL TUITION WAS WASTED.
Every once in a while a judge does something right. While militant leftists have no illusions in the bourgeois judicial system, as such, we will grasp in both hands every little minor victory, even if temporary, that comes our way. In this case a federal district court judge, Judge Diggs Taylor, has held that the National Security Agency’s warrantless wiretapping of every piece of information not nailed down and that the agency can get its hands on is unconstitutional. Judge Diggs Taylor will not be getting invited to any Federalist Society seminars or other such cozy affairs any time soon.
Naturally, the Bush Administration, normally slow to act when democratic rights are to be enforced, has ordered the Justice Department to appeal this decision- immediately, "with all deliberate speed". When the 6th Circuit Appeals Court or the Supremes get this one you know its fate. I will take bets, even up, on a 5-4 quashing of this decision even though I have it on good authority that Justices Scalia, Thomas, Kennedy et. al are all unaware that there IS a Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Now for the politics. Yes, the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights are pretty faded as working documents for any kind of just society today. But, damn, something like the Fourth Amendment against general searches and seizures even though its parameters are getting narrower and narrower with virtually every new court decision is something militant leftists defend. WE WOULD WANT THIS SAFEGUARD UNDER A WORKERS GOVERNMENT- WE DESPERATELY NEED IT NOW.
We are the best defenders of that right if for no other reason that it makes our work easier. Hell, what do you think the original American revolutionaries, particularly those the plebian elements, were fighting against? That very same prohibition against general writs that the National Security Agency and the Bush Administration are more than happy to flaunt in our faces. Do we really want to give 'big brother' the right to look at everything we do. On the other hand we are not Pollyannas. We are not blinded by a mistaken believe in the “sweet” rule of law that gets bandied amount by the media, judges, and politicans. And honored more in the breech than the observance. If this government wants to get information (even if no usable in court) it will find a way to get it warrant or no warrant. Nevertheless we will savory this decision a little for now.
SHOCKING REVELATION: A FEDERAL JUDGE ACTUALLY KNOWS THE 4th AMENDMENT EXISTS. APPARENTLY NOT EVERY LAW SCHOOL TUITION WAS WASTED.
Every once in a while a judge does something right. While militant leftists have no illusions in the bourgeois judicial system, as such, we will grasp in both hands every little minor victory, even if temporary, that comes our way. In this case a federal district court judge, Judge Diggs Taylor, has held that the National Security Agency’s warrantless wiretapping of every piece of information not nailed down and that the agency can get its hands on is unconstitutional. Judge Diggs Taylor will not be getting invited to any Federalist Society seminars or other such cozy affairs any time soon.
Naturally, the Bush Administration, normally slow to act when democratic rights are to be enforced, has ordered the Justice Department to appeal this decision- immediately, "with all deliberate speed". When the 6th Circuit Appeals Court or the Supremes get this one you know its fate. I will take bets, even up, on a 5-4 quashing of this decision even though I have it on good authority that Justices Scalia, Thomas, Kennedy et. al are all unaware that there IS a Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Now for the politics. Yes, the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights are pretty faded as working documents for any kind of just society today. But, damn, something like the Fourth Amendment against general searches and seizures even though its parameters are getting narrower and narrower with virtually every new court decision is something militant leftists defend. WE WOULD WANT THIS SAFEGUARD UNDER A WORKERS GOVERNMENT- WE DESPERATELY NEED IT NOW.
We are the best defenders of that right if for no other reason that it makes our work easier. Hell, what do you think the original American revolutionaries, particularly those the plebian elements, were fighting against? That very same prohibition against general writs that the National Security Agency and the Bush Administration are more than happy to flaunt in our faces. Do we really want to give 'big brother' the right to look at everything we do. On the other hand we are not Pollyannas. We are not blinded by a mistaken believe in the “sweet” rule of law that gets bandied amount by the media, judges, and politicans. And honored more in the breech than the observance. If this government wants to get information (even if no usable in court) it will find a way to get it warrant or no warrant. Nevertheless we will savory this decision a little for now.
Friday, August 18, 2006
*WRITE-IN LYNNE STEWART FOR UNITED STATES SENATOR FROM NEW YORK ON NOVEMBER 7TH
Click on the title to link to the Lynne Stewart Defense Committee.
FORGET HILLARY “HAWK”-NEW YORK NEEDS A REAL ANTI-WAR, PRO-WORKER CANDIDATE
FORGET DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS AND GREENS- BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!
In light of the recent defeat of pro-Iraqi War Senator Joseph Lieberman by post-Yuppie Ned Lamont in the Connecticut Democratic primary, in large part due to his anti-war stance, I got to thinking about what a real anti-war, pro-worker and oppressed minorities candidate would look like against pro-war Hillary “Hawk” Clinton in New York. Convicted (for “materially support for terrorism”: read zealous lawyerly advocacy) New York Attorney Lynne Stewart (unfortunately, currently disbarred) came naturally to mind.
For those unfamiliar with Lynne Stewart or her case the following is a note from the Partisan Defense Committee which supports the efforts to get her conviction overturned:
“On June 19, Lynne Stewart's counsel filed court papers seeking to discover if any warrantless or illegal electronic surveillance was conducted on her or anyone involved in her case. Then on July 5, Lynne's attorneys filed a Sentencing Memorandum on her behalf asking for a non-custodial sentence, i.e., one involving no jail time. As you are aware, Lynne Stewart was falsely convicted of material support for terrorism for her work representing an imprisoned client, Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, a direct attack on the right to an attorney and First Amendment rights for all. She is also recovering from surgery for breast cancer and subsequent radiation and hormone therapy. Currently she awaits sentencing on September 25 to be preceded by a rally at Riverside Church in New York on September 24. We say again her conviction and those of her co-defendants were an outrage. Hands Off Lynne Stewart, Mohamed Yousry and Ahmed Abdel Sattar!”
For further information contact the PDC, P.O. Box 99, Canal Street Station, New York, NY 10013-0099, The Lynne Stewart Defense Fund or see my blog, dated June 13, 2006.
Some will say, no matter how meritorious her candidacy Ms. Stewart has been convicted of a serious federal felony. Grow up! If we counted all the indicted felons, unindicted co-conspirators, and those waiting for or in fear of indictment hanging around Washington the Congressional pages would be the only ones left to run the government. Hell, maybe, they are? Besides, think about this- imagine the respect Ms. Stewart would get from those federal district court judges and appeals court judges if she had the power to vote on their nominations and impeachments.
Let me motivate the Stewart candidacy a little further.
While no one sheds tears over Lieberman’s lose we militant leftists have a problem. The anti-war surge expressed in the Lamont vote got channeled back to the same old politics-as-usual Democratic Party rather than break out to a nucleus of an anti-war, pro-worker formation. While the liberal bloggers, et. al may be happy Ned Lamont is hardly our friend at a time when even the generals running the war in Iraq are running for cover. If you do not believe me let me pose one question. At this time the only serious parliamentary move that can end the war is a vote against the war budget. (Yes, I know I argued this idea before in this space but the idea still holds true-the point is to do something about it). Those believers in Mr. Lamont pose this question to him- If elected, will you vote for the Iraq War budget? Yes or No?
We KNOW what Ms. Stewart’s response to that question would be. New Yorkers should pose that question to Hillary “Hawk”. We need a little laughter here. Christ, Ms. Clinton just came out, hands trembling, for Secretary of War Rumsfeld’s resignation a couple of weeks ago. My mother came out for that resignation about two years ago. And she is a life-long Republican.
Both Hillary “Hawk” and Lynne Stewart are women. I did not want to incur the wrath of my feminist friends by proposing a man to replace Ms. Clinton. After all we need women to break down the doors to the historic men’s club atmosphere of the United States Senate. True enough, but as I have pointed out before in regard to Senator Clinton, she, and in this she is not alone, stands for the proposition that for all the virtues of the fight for the equality of women over the past decades women can have politics just as ugly as men's politics. Some victory.
Furthermore, some will argue, Hillary is a progressive and we do not want to divide the progressive forces, etc., etc. Get over it! Yes, Hillary was a “progressive”, or what passed for such at Wellesley when she got uppity in her valedictorian speech. But, hell that was a long, long time ago. Since that time she has adhered to classic Clintonian Democratic Party centrism. Translation- she stays as close as close to the Republicans as possible without wearing an elephant on her lapel. Unfortunately for her the Republican Party these days is to the right of Genghis Khan (although that may be a slander on Mr. Khan because, as recently reported on the occasion of the 800th anniversary of his birth, the Mongolian nationalists are currently touting his progressive nature- for the times). But, let’s get to the bottom line- Hillary is operating in the coin of the realm of bourgeois politics- looking out for the main chance. Lynne has spent here career on behalf of the voiceless and unrepresented- looking to give people a fighting chance.
Finally, both women are lawyers (or were). Unlike, I believe it was Shakespeare’s Richard III this writer does not believe that a program to kill all the lawyers will get us very far. Yes, Hillary was lawyer. And yes, if memory serves me right she lawyered for the Children’s Defense Fund. And God knows the kids need as much protection as they can get. But, if memory serves she also worked for a high-powered firm that got a little sticky in the Whitewater investigation. In short, she is a ‘rainmaker’. Lynne on the other hand never saw an unpopular cause she could turn down. In short, she is a ‘fuss-maker’. I will take a ‘fuss-maker” every time. Enough said for now.
DISCLAIMER: FOR ALL INTERESTED PARTIES- IN ORDER NOT TO BE ACCCUSED OF GIVING MATERIAL AID TO THOSE WHO GAVE MATERIAL AID TO THOSE WHO GAVE MATERIAL AID, ETC. THIS WRITER STATES THAT THIS ENDORSEMENT OF MS. STEWART IS UNSOLICITED. I DO NOT KNOW MS. STEWART PERSONALLY AND HAVE NOT COMMUNICATED WITH HER ABOUT THIS ELECTION. WE BREATH THE SAME POLITICAL AIR- AND BELIEVE ME THAT ACCRUES ALL TO MY BENEFIT.
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 HILLARY “HAWK”-NEW YORK NEEDS A REAL ANTI-WAR, PRO-WORKER CANDIDATE
FORGET DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS AND GREENS- BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!
In light of the recent defeat of pro-Iraqi War Senator Joseph Lieberman by post-Yuppie Ned Lamont in the Connecticut Democratic primary, in large part due to his anti-war stance, I got to thinking about what a real anti-war, pro-worker and oppressed minorities candidate would look like against pro-war Hillary “Hawk” Clinton in New York. Convicted (for “materially support for terrorism”: read zealous lawyerly advocacy) New York Attorney Lynne Stewart (unfortunately, currently disbarred) came naturally to mind.
For those unfamiliar with Lynne Stewart or her case the following is a note from the Partisan Defense Committee which supports the efforts to get her conviction overturned:
“On June 19, Lynne Stewart's counsel filed court papers seeking to discover if any warrantless or illegal electronic surveillance was conducted on her or anyone involved in her case. Then on July 5, Lynne's attorneys filed a Sentencing Memorandum on her behalf asking for a non-custodial sentence, i.e., one involving no jail time. As you are aware, Lynne Stewart was falsely convicted of material support for terrorism for her work representing an imprisoned client, Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, a direct attack on the right to an attorney and First Amendment rights for all. She is also recovering from surgery for breast cancer and subsequent radiation and hormone therapy. Currently she awaits sentencing on September 25 to be preceded by a rally at Riverside Church in New York on September 24. We say again her conviction and those of her co-defendants were an outrage. Hands Off Lynne Stewart, Mohamed Yousry and Ahmed Abdel Sattar!”
For further information contact the PDC, P.O. Box 99, Canal Street Station, New York, NY 10013-0099, The Lynne Stewart Defense Fund or see my blog, dated June 13, 2006.
Some will say, no matter how meritorious her candidacy Ms. Stewart has been convicted of a serious federal felony. Grow up! If we counted all the indicted felons, unindicted co-conspirators, and those waiting for or in fear of indictment hanging around Washington the Congressional pages would be the only ones left to run the government. Hell, maybe, they are? Besides, think about this- imagine the respect Ms. Stewart would get from those federal district court judges and appeals court judges if she had the power to vote on their nominations and impeachments.
Let me motivate the Stewart candidacy a little further.
While no one sheds tears over Lieberman’s lose we militant leftists have a problem. The anti-war surge expressed in the Lamont vote got channeled back to the same old politics-as-usual Democratic Party rather than break out to a nucleus of an anti-war, pro-worker formation. While the liberal bloggers, et. al may be happy Ned Lamont is hardly our friend at a time when even the generals running the war in Iraq are running for cover. If you do not believe me let me pose one question. At this time the only serious parliamentary move that can end the war is a vote against the war budget. (Yes, I know I argued this idea before in this space but the idea still holds true-the point is to do something about it). Those believers in Mr. Lamont pose this question to him- If elected, will you vote for the Iraq War budget? Yes or No?
We KNOW what Ms. Stewart’s response to that question would be. New Yorkers should pose that question to Hillary “Hawk”. We need a little laughter here. Christ, Ms. Clinton just came out, hands trembling, for Secretary of War Rumsfeld’s resignation a couple of weeks ago. My mother came out for that resignation about two years ago. And she is a life-long Republican.
Both Hillary “Hawk” and Lynne Stewart are women. I did not want to incur the wrath of my feminist friends by proposing a man to replace Ms. Clinton. After all we need women to break down the doors to the historic men’s club atmosphere of the United States Senate. True enough, but as I have pointed out before in regard to Senator Clinton, she, and in this she is not alone, stands for the proposition that for all the virtues of the fight for the equality of women over the past decades women can have politics just as ugly as men's politics. Some victory.
Furthermore, some will argue, Hillary is a progressive and we do not want to divide the progressive forces, etc., etc. Get over it! Yes, Hillary was a “progressive”, or what passed for such at Wellesley when she got uppity in her valedictorian speech. But, hell that was a long, long time ago. Since that time she has adhered to classic Clintonian Democratic Party centrism. Translation- she stays as close as close to the Republicans as possible without wearing an elephant on her lapel. Unfortunately for her the Republican Party these days is to the right of Genghis Khan (although that may be a slander on Mr. Khan because, as recently reported on the occasion of the 800th anniversary of his birth, the Mongolian nationalists are currently touting his progressive nature- for the times). But, let’s get to the bottom line- Hillary is operating in the coin of the realm of bourgeois politics- looking out for the main chance. Lynne has spent here career on behalf of the voiceless and unrepresented- looking to give people a fighting chance.
Finally, both women are lawyers (or were). Unlike, I believe it was Shakespeare’s Richard III this writer does not believe that a program to kill all the lawyers will get us very far. Yes, Hillary was lawyer. And yes, if memory serves me right she lawyered for the Children’s Defense Fund. And God knows the kids need as much protection as they can get. But, if memory serves she also worked for a high-powered firm that got a little sticky in the Whitewater investigation. In short, she is a ‘rainmaker’. Lynne on the other hand never saw an unpopular cause she could turn down. In short, she is a ‘fuss-maker’. I will take a ‘fuss-maker” every time. Enough said for now.
DISCLAIMER: FOR ALL INTERESTED PARTIES- IN ORDER NOT TO BE ACCCUSED OF GIVING MATERIAL AID TO THOSE WHO GAVE MATERIAL AID TO THOSE WHO GAVE MATERIAL AID, ETC. THIS WRITER STATES THAT THIS ENDORSEMENT OF MS. STEWART IS UNSOLICITED. I DO NOT KNOW MS. STEWART PERSONALLY AND HAVE NOT COMMUNICATED WITH HER ABOUT THIS ELECTION. WE BREATH THE SAME POLITICAL AIR- AND BELIEVE ME THAT ACCRUES ALL TO MY BENEFIT.
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, August 15, 2006
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE?
COMMENTARY
DEFEND THE ENLIGHTENMENT
PRIVATE RELIGIOUS EXPRESSION –YES (IF YOU NEED IT). PUBLIC FUNDING-NO
Let us face it there has been a deep and sustained retrogression of progressive human thought over the last generation or so. Apparently the progressive goals of the Enlightenment have run out of steam and night has fallen over much of human thought. And not for the first time. Remember the Middle Ages. In many ways militant leftists are reduced to a flat-out defense of those values that in an earlier time we thought were merely the base-line from which human progress would surge. The fight against religious obscurantism represented by the key fight to separate church and state in order to make religious expression, at most, a personal expression was one of those important values. We are definitely back on the base-line on this one.
Why do I bring this up now? A glance at the news on any given day brings forth new horrors done in the name of religion. And these actions most certainly are not to defend the right to personal religious expression. Name the religion-Christianity, Judaism, Islamism, Hinduism, etc., and the fundamentalists are spearheading the drive to impose their religions on the body politic- weapons in hand. Damn, even the Hari Krishnas are getting belligerent these days. What has got this writer’s blood pressure up today, however, is the erosion of the principle of separation of church and state in this country.
A recent newspaper article really brought this point home. Apparently a town in the suburbs of Houston, Texas is the capital of the religious building boom. And town administrators, although they do not apparently know what to do about it, are not happy. This small town has 51 churches, temples, shines, whatever, all exempt from local property tax laws. All it seems you need to set up shop there is to have been directed there by god. Curious, very curious. Shinto, Hindu, 12th Day Adventist, Jainist it doe not matter. Apply and you are in. The town administrator in charge of permits, bewildered by it all, sees no way out in the face of god’s wrath. Let us help him.
To answer our befuddled Texas town public official. Here is the word. Tell your applicants this- If you want your storefront or shopping mall church- pay up. No more tax exemptions. Hey, remember this country was founded on a principle of free private religious expression- in the gathered churches of those times you paid your own way. Where the hell did we go wrong?
Religion is deeply embedded in the human psyche. No question about that. As long as humankind fought against the mysterious forces of nature, for the most part unsuccessfully, a religious explanation for humankind’s plight made some sense. And certainly it was no worst than some other explanations. However, as humankind through science, technology and more sophisticated organization of society began to tame nature that rationale lost its force. That is where the ideas of the Enlightenment began to come into there own. Religion, if necessary, became a personal expression of citizens in a secular society. Or, at least, for the past couple of centuries we thought that is where we were heading. We are duty-bound to start that fight all over again. Why? If one recalls the last time that religious fundamentalism motivated human thought was ascendant was during medieval times. That used to be called the Dark Ages. And, brothers and sisters, that lasted for a long time. Forward, again.
DEFEND THE ENLIGHTENMENT
PRIVATE RELIGIOUS EXPRESSION –YES (IF YOU NEED IT). PUBLIC FUNDING-NO
Let us face it there has been a deep and sustained retrogression of progressive human thought over the last generation or so. Apparently the progressive goals of the Enlightenment have run out of steam and night has fallen over much of human thought. And not for the first time. Remember the Middle Ages. In many ways militant leftists are reduced to a flat-out defense of those values that in an earlier time we thought were merely the base-line from which human progress would surge. The fight against religious obscurantism represented by the key fight to separate church and state in order to make religious expression, at most, a personal expression was one of those important values. We are definitely back on the base-line on this one.
Why do I bring this up now? A glance at the news on any given day brings forth new horrors done in the name of religion. And these actions most certainly are not to defend the right to personal religious expression. Name the religion-Christianity, Judaism, Islamism, Hinduism, etc., and the fundamentalists are spearheading the drive to impose their religions on the body politic- weapons in hand. Damn, even the Hari Krishnas are getting belligerent these days. What has got this writer’s blood pressure up today, however, is the erosion of the principle of separation of church and state in this country.
A recent newspaper article really brought this point home. Apparently a town in the suburbs of Houston, Texas is the capital of the religious building boom. And town administrators, although they do not apparently know what to do about it, are not happy. This small town has 51 churches, temples, shines, whatever, all exempt from local property tax laws. All it seems you need to set up shop there is to have been directed there by god. Curious, very curious. Shinto, Hindu, 12th Day Adventist, Jainist it doe not matter. Apply and you are in. The town administrator in charge of permits, bewildered by it all, sees no way out in the face of god’s wrath. Let us help him.
To answer our befuddled Texas town public official. Here is the word. Tell your applicants this- If you want your storefront or shopping mall church- pay up. No more tax exemptions. Hey, remember this country was founded on a principle of free private religious expression- in the gathered churches of those times you paid your own way. Where the hell did we go wrong?
Religion is deeply embedded in the human psyche. No question about that. As long as humankind fought against the mysterious forces of nature, for the most part unsuccessfully, a religious explanation for humankind’s plight made some sense. And certainly it was no worst than some other explanations. However, as humankind through science, technology and more sophisticated organization of society began to tame nature that rationale lost its force. That is where the ideas of the Enlightenment began to come into there own. Religion, if necessary, became a personal expression of citizens in a secular society. Or, at least, for the past couple of centuries we thought that is where we were heading. We are duty-bound to start that fight all over again. Why? If one recalls the last time that religious fundamentalism motivated human thought was ascendant was during medieval times. That used to be called the Dark Ages. And, brothers and sisters, that lasted for a long time. Forward, again.
Friday, August 04, 2006
THE GENERALS SIGNAL THE RETREAT-THERE IS NO LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL IN IRAQ!
FORGET TIMETABLES FOR WITHDRAWAL- CUT AND RUN NOW (JOG, TROT, CRAWL, SWIM, IF NECESSARY)
THE GENERALS AND POLITICANS HAVE ABANDONED THE RANK AND FILE SOLDIERS IN IRAQ TO THEIR FATE. BROTHER AND SISTER SOLDIERS- THE BALL IS IN YOUR COURT- GET THE TROOP TRANSPORTS READY
ORIGINALLY POSTED: August 2006
I’ll keep this short and sweet. The time for discussion on Iraq is long over. Forget the Bush Administration’s lies! Forget the weapons of mass destruction! Forget staying the course, the ‘war on terrorism’, Saddam’s ugly face, the so-called ‘fight for democracy’ in the Middle East, supporting the troops or the thousand and one reasons which have surfaced over the years (yes, years) for supporting the imperialist adventure in Iraq. That is so much background noise now. Here is what counts. That is the appearance on August 3, 2006 of the senior commanding generals, the guys who run the day to day operations of the American military, with the Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld in tow, before the Senate Armed Services Committee. And you better etch the pictures from that proceeding in your minds. Hereafter anytime someone tries to raise his or her head in defense of the Iraq war (or staying there one more minute) refer them to this scene.
What the generals did not say to the committee is as important as what they said. THE WAR IS LOST. These generals are privy to much more information than they would ever publicly acknowledge so when they go, willingly or not, before a Senate Committee and announce that chaos has descended on Iraq one does not need to be Karl Marx to know how really bad the situation is there. These guys are not retired generals sniping at the boss from their consulting firms, think tanks, or vacation retreats. THESE GUYS RUN THE SHOW. These generals did not earn that fruit salad on their chests by being Pollyannas. They would rather fall on their swords than use words like defeat and retreat. It just does not register that the delights of ‘shock and awe’ has turned in quagmire. So be it.
They have, however, learned something over the years. For one thing, do not repeat General Westmoreland’s ‘follies’ in Vietnam by painting a rosy picture of success as the U.S. Embassy is being overrun by a bunch of seemingly crazed foreigners. That is most definitely bad for credibility. For another, these guys started their careers fighting on the ground in the boondocks of Vietnam so they KNOW what a civil war is. Vietnam was a class civil war and Iraq is a sectarian civil war but in either case they want no part of it. No way. Nevertheless, the generals are still more than willing to transfer rank and file soldiers to the hellhole of Baghdad to be used as ‘cannon fodder’ in that same civil war. Some things they do not learn.
This writer makes no bones about his long time opposition to the Iraq war in particular and American imperialism in general. Over the years I have taken my political beatings and been abused by the ‘sunshine patriots’ over this or that policy. Hey, this is politics so it comes with the territory. Besides I have enjoyed beating up on Bush & Co. when they were riding and now that they are riding low I still enjoy beating these bums down. In fact, let me give them an extra rabbit punch for good measure. Just to make sure they stay down.
No, I will not cry over the defeat of an imperialist adventure but I feel no sense of righteousness over this. Why? While I never supported the social patriotic slogan-Support the Troops- THEY ARE NOT AND NEVER WERE OUR TROOPS. THEY OPERATE UNDER ORDERS FROM THE RULING CLASSES. THAT IS NOT THE SAME THING - there is still the unfinished business. Those troops still need to get the hell out of Iraq. Bush and the Generals have stabbed them in the back. The Democratic and Republican politicians have stabbed them in the back. We of the anti-war movement have failed them. It is up to the rank and file soldiers in Iraq now-the ball in their court. At this point the only way out is through their own efforts. What we civilians can do is form committees of soldier and sailor solidarity in order to fraternize with their efforts. More on this latter. I am preparing AN OPEN LETTER TO THE RANK AND FILE SOLDIERS IN IRAQ (see August 2006 archives) to offer some ideas on organizing themselves out of the chaos. Look for it in this space soon.
A SPECIAL NOTE ON HILLARY "HAWK" CLINTON, UNITED STATES SENATOR FROM NEW YORK AND PUNITIVE (not putative) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE IN 2008. ‘Hawk” finally gets it on Iraq- a very, very, very little. Her solution. Have Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld offer his resignation. This, I assume represents Ms. Clinton’s attempt to win this year’s Profiles in Courage Award. Christ, the Congressional pages were calling for that bastard’s resignation about a year ago. I do not care about the personal fate of Ms. Clinton or her ambitions. However, her case brings to mind the ghost of Hubert Horatio Humphrey in 1968. Enough said.
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!
THE GENERALS AND POLITICANS HAVE ABANDONED THE RANK AND FILE SOLDIERS IN IRAQ TO THEIR FATE. BROTHER AND SISTER SOLDIERS- THE BALL IS IN YOUR COURT- GET THE TROOP TRANSPORTS READY
ORIGINALLY POSTED: August 2006
I’ll keep this short and sweet. The time for discussion on Iraq is long over. Forget the Bush Administration’s lies! Forget the weapons of mass destruction! Forget staying the course, the ‘war on terrorism’, Saddam’s ugly face, the so-called ‘fight for democracy’ in the Middle East, supporting the troops or the thousand and one reasons which have surfaced over the years (yes, years) for supporting the imperialist adventure in Iraq. That is so much background noise now. Here is what counts. That is the appearance on August 3, 2006 of the senior commanding generals, the guys who run the day to day operations of the American military, with the Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld in tow, before the Senate Armed Services Committee. And you better etch the pictures from that proceeding in your minds. Hereafter anytime someone tries to raise his or her head in defense of the Iraq war (or staying there one more minute) refer them to this scene.
What the generals did not say to the committee is as important as what they said. THE WAR IS LOST. These generals are privy to much more information than they would ever publicly acknowledge so when they go, willingly or not, before a Senate Committee and announce that chaos has descended on Iraq one does not need to be Karl Marx to know how really bad the situation is there. These guys are not retired generals sniping at the boss from their consulting firms, think tanks, or vacation retreats. THESE GUYS RUN THE SHOW. These generals did not earn that fruit salad on their chests by being Pollyannas. They would rather fall on their swords than use words like defeat and retreat. It just does not register that the delights of ‘shock and awe’ has turned in quagmire. So be it.
They have, however, learned something over the years. For one thing, do not repeat General Westmoreland’s ‘follies’ in Vietnam by painting a rosy picture of success as the U.S. Embassy is being overrun by a bunch of seemingly crazed foreigners. That is most definitely bad for credibility. For another, these guys started their careers fighting on the ground in the boondocks of Vietnam so they KNOW what a civil war is. Vietnam was a class civil war and Iraq is a sectarian civil war but in either case they want no part of it. No way. Nevertheless, the generals are still more than willing to transfer rank and file soldiers to the hellhole of Baghdad to be used as ‘cannon fodder’ in that same civil war. Some things they do not learn.
This writer makes no bones about his long time opposition to the Iraq war in particular and American imperialism in general. Over the years I have taken my political beatings and been abused by the ‘sunshine patriots’ over this or that policy. Hey, this is politics so it comes with the territory. Besides I have enjoyed beating up on Bush & Co. when they were riding and now that they are riding low I still enjoy beating these bums down. In fact, let me give them an extra rabbit punch for good measure. Just to make sure they stay down.
No, I will not cry over the defeat of an imperialist adventure but I feel no sense of righteousness over this. Why? While I never supported the social patriotic slogan-Support the Troops- THEY ARE NOT AND NEVER WERE OUR TROOPS. THEY OPERATE UNDER ORDERS FROM THE RULING CLASSES. THAT IS NOT THE SAME THING - there is still the unfinished business. Those troops still need to get the hell out of Iraq. Bush and the Generals have stabbed them in the back. The Democratic and Republican politicians have stabbed them in the back. We of the anti-war movement have failed them. It is up to the rank and file soldiers in Iraq now-the ball in their court. At this point the only way out is through their own efforts. What we civilians can do is form committees of soldier and sailor solidarity in order to fraternize with their efforts. More on this latter. I am preparing AN OPEN LETTER TO THE RANK AND FILE SOLDIERS IN IRAQ (see August 2006 archives) to offer some ideas on organizing themselves out of the chaos. Look for it in this space soon.
A SPECIAL NOTE ON HILLARY "HAWK" CLINTON, UNITED STATES SENATOR FROM NEW YORK AND PUNITIVE (not putative) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE IN 2008. ‘Hawk” finally gets it on Iraq- a very, very, very little. Her solution. Have Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld offer his resignation. This, I assume represents Ms. Clinton’s attempt to win this year’s Profiles in Courage Award. Christ, the Congressional pages were calling for that bastard’s resignation about a year ago. I do not care about the personal fate of Ms. Clinton or her ambitions. However, her case brings to mind the ghost of Hubert Horatio Humphrey in 1968. Enough said.
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, August 01, 2006
ISRAEL OUT OF GAZA-DEFEND THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE!
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!
COMMENTARY
As usual the Palestinian people are the odd people out now that the Israeli-Hezbollah war is raging and world attention is focused on that event. Nevertheless, the plight of the Palestinians in Gaza (and the West Bank, for that matter) continues to be desperate. Note well here, Hezbollah’s fight against Israel contains not even the fig leaf of a notion of a ‘second front’ in defense of the Palestinian people. As usual, everybody is sad about their plight but precious little is done about it. It is enough to emphasize here that the current situation once again graphically points out how fruitless it is to believe that a just solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict can ever be resolved short of a general socialist solution in the Middle East- and even then there will be problems, let us not kid ourselves on that score. In the short term, getting Israel out of all the occupied areas, releasing Palestinian governmental figures, and calling for an end to United States military aid to Israel is called for. DEFEND THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE! - ISRAEL OUT OF GAZA!
COMMENTARY
As usual the Palestinian people are the odd people out now that the Israeli-Hezbollah war is raging and world attention is focused on that event. Nevertheless, the plight of the Palestinians in Gaza (and the West Bank, for that matter) continues to be desperate. Note well here, Hezbollah’s fight against Israel contains not even the fig leaf of a notion of a ‘second front’ in defense of the Palestinian people. As usual, everybody is sad about their plight but precious little is done about it. It is enough to emphasize here that the current situation once again graphically points out how fruitless it is to believe that a just solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict can ever be resolved short of a general socialist solution in the Middle East- and even then there will be problems, let us not kid ourselves on that score. In the short term, getting Israel out of all the occupied areas, releasing Palestinian governmental figures, and calling for an end to United States military aid to Israel is called for. DEFEND THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE! - ISRAEL OUT OF GAZA!
ISRAEL OUT OF LEBANON NOW! DEFEND THE LEBANESE PEOPLE!
THE HELL WITH CEASEFIRES-IMMEDIATE ISRAELI WITHDRAWAL NOW!
UNITED STATES- STOP MILITARY AID TO THE ISRAELI OFFENSIVE!
ISRAEL OUT OF GAZA- DEFEND THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE!
COMMENTARY
When this writer started this blog (see below) in February, 2006 his intention was mainly to review books and make very occasional commentary that might be of interest to militant leftists in the struggle to change the world for the better. The events of the past several months have tended to reverse his priorities as an already dangerous world has only become more dangerous. As Karl Marx in the 19th century once remarked- men (updated in the 21st century for political correctness to mean humankind) make their own history although not always rationally or to their liking. Well, the events of this summer of 2006 are certainly not to this leftist’s liking. Here are some points leftists should ponder. Be forewarned. They aint pretty.
There is no need to go into the details of the current Israeli-Lebanese war. If any one reading this is not familiar with the events of the last several weeks in this Middle Eastern hotspot then nothing I can say here would aid those individuals. Informed leftists, however, need to take a position on the developments in the region. Leftist do not base their analysis of a war on who started it. Christ, if we had to do that here we would have support both sides or neither side because every nation state(or quasi-nation state as in the case of Hezbollah) can come up with more than ample ‘evidence’ that it is only acting in self-defense, expressing its right to self-determination etc, etc.. In short, the other guy started it.
Nor in this particular case are we concerned about a ‘proxy’ war being fought by Hezbollah on behalf of Iran and/ or Syria. Or Israel as a 'proxy' for American imperialism. These opponents have their own scores to settle. While Hezbollah has apparently long been supplied by Iran and/or Syria the forces on the ground are a substitute for a Lebanese national army in South Lebanon. This is in fact an old fight between these opponents. Only now it appears, one way or the other, it is going to be fought to the finish.
Israel is a modern, sub-imperialist capitalist state which has overwhelming military superiority in this contest. Lebanon, after the destructive events of the past 30 years, is barely a nation-state. Hezbollah’s militia, for all intents and purposes, stands in as the Lebanese national army in South Lebanon. Given the vast disproportion between the forces in dispute leftists are duty bound to stand in defense of the weaker force here- Hezbollah’s militia. A military victory here for Israel is not in the interest of the oppressed of the world, including Israel’s own working classes. As a practical matter militant leftists here must call for the American and other governments to stop military shipments to Israel. Now! I told you it wasn’t pretty.
I hope that I am not the only militant leftist who is feeling squeamish about the duty to defend Hezbollah’s militia against the Israeli onslaught. They are not even making a pretense that their actions are a ‘second front’ in aid of the beleaguered Palestinian people who are in desperate straits in Gaza and the West Bank. That would, at least, give us a little something to hang on to in defense of them. Moreover, Hezbollah, as I understand it, in Arabic means “Army of God”. Hell, militant leftists are in a bad way in the Middle East when the “Army of God” is the ‘progressive’ side in a conflict.
When the deal goes down Hezbollah is eventually the same force we will have to fight if we want to see a desperately needed socialist solution in the Middle East, as hard as that solution is to imagine today. If anyone needs a quick history lesson on this remember the kindred spirits of Hezbollah who, gladly assisted by the American government, fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980’s. Most of those fighters went on to form the Taliban. No, these are definitely not our people. However, that is another fight for another time. Right now in this situation this is what we are up against. Yes, we make our own history- but, damn, let’s start to set the terms of engagement around so we can at least support forces that can see past the 8th century. Enough said.
UNITED STATES- STOP MILITARY AID TO THE ISRAELI OFFENSIVE!
ISRAEL OUT OF GAZA- DEFEND THE PALESTINIAN PEOPLE!
COMMENTARY
When this writer started this blog (see below) in February, 2006 his intention was mainly to review books and make very occasional commentary that might be of interest to militant leftists in the struggle to change the world for the better. The events of the past several months have tended to reverse his priorities as an already dangerous world has only become more dangerous. As Karl Marx in the 19th century once remarked- men (updated in the 21st century for political correctness to mean humankind) make their own history although not always rationally or to their liking. Well, the events of this summer of 2006 are certainly not to this leftist’s liking. Here are some points leftists should ponder. Be forewarned. They aint pretty.
There is no need to go into the details of the current Israeli-Lebanese war. If any one reading this is not familiar with the events of the last several weeks in this Middle Eastern hotspot then nothing I can say here would aid those individuals. Informed leftists, however, need to take a position on the developments in the region. Leftist do not base their analysis of a war on who started it. Christ, if we had to do that here we would have support both sides or neither side because every nation state(or quasi-nation state as in the case of Hezbollah) can come up with more than ample ‘evidence’ that it is only acting in self-defense, expressing its right to self-determination etc, etc.. In short, the other guy started it.
Nor in this particular case are we concerned about a ‘proxy’ war being fought by Hezbollah on behalf of Iran and/ or Syria. Or Israel as a 'proxy' for American imperialism. These opponents have their own scores to settle. While Hezbollah has apparently long been supplied by Iran and/or Syria the forces on the ground are a substitute for a Lebanese national army in South Lebanon. This is in fact an old fight between these opponents. Only now it appears, one way or the other, it is going to be fought to the finish.
Israel is a modern, sub-imperialist capitalist state which has overwhelming military superiority in this contest. Lebanon, after the destructive events of the past 30 years, is barely a nation-state. Hezbollah’s militia, for all intents and purposes, stands in as the Lebanese national army in South Lebanon. Given the vast disproportion between the forces in dispute leftists are duty bound to stand in defense of the weaker force here- Hezbollah’s militia. A military victory here for Israel is not in the interest of the oppressed of the world, including Israel’s own working classes. As a practical matter militant leftists here must call for the American and other governments to stop military shipments to Israel. Now! I told you it wasn’t pretty.
I hope that I am not the only militant leftist who is feeling squeamish about the duty to defend Hezbollah’s militia against the Israeli onslaught. They are not even making a pretense that their actions are a ‘second front’ in aid of the beleaguered Palestinian people who are in desperate straits in Gaza and the West Bank. That would, at least, give us a little something to hang on to in defense of them. Moreover, Hezbollah, as I understand it, in Arabic means “Army of God”. Hell, militant leftists are in a bad way in the Middle East when the “Army of God” is the ‘progressive’ side in a conflict.
When the deal goes down Hezbollah is eventually the same force we will have to fight if we want to see a desperately needed socialist solution in the Middle East, as hard as that solution is to imagine today. If anyone needs a quick history lesson on this remember the kindred spirits of Hezbollah who, gladly assisted by the American government, fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980’s. Most of those fighters went on to form the Taliban. No, these are definitely not our people. However, that is another fight for another time. Right now in this situation this is what we are up against. Yes, we make our own history- but, damn, let’s start to set the terms of engagement around so we can at least support forces that can see past the 8th century. Enough said.
Monday, July 31, 2006
*THE GREAT, GREAT, GREAT, GREAT GRANDDADDY OF MODERN REVOLUTIONARIES- English Revolutionary Oliver Cromwell
Click on the title to link to a "Wikipedia" entry for Oliver Cromwell.
THE GREAT-GREAT-GREAT GRANDDADDY OF MODERN REVOLUTIONARIES
BOOK REVIEW
GOD’S ENGLISHMAN-OLIVER CROMWELL AND THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. Christopher Hill, Harper Torchbooks, New York, 1970
The late eminent British Marxist historian Christopher Hill, more noted for studies (to be reviewed later, elsewhere) of the ‘underclass’ in the English Revolution of 1640-1660, has written a serviceable biography of the outstanding bourgeois leader of the English Revolution-Oliver Cromwell. Professor Hill in his analysis displays Cromwell ‘warts and all’ in order to place him in proper historical perspective. Other biographers, particularly British biographers, seem to have never forgiven Cromwell his ‘indiscretion’ of beheading Charles I and therefore dismiss his importance in the fight for bourgeois democracy. Professor Hill has no such inhibition.
This writer’s sympathies lie more with the social program put forth by John Lilburne and the Levellers and the social actions of Gerard Winstanley and the True Levellers (or Diggers) on Saint George’s Hill. Hill’s studies of those movements and others, as expressed in the religious terms of the day, initially drew me to the study of the English Revolution. Nevertheless, those plebeian-based programs in the England of the 1600’s were more a vision (a vision in many ways still in need of realization) than a practical reality. Even Cromwell’s achievements were a near and partially reversible thing. Such are the ways of humankind’s history.
For leftists Cromwell therefore is not the natural hero of that Revolution. However, his role as military leader of the parliamentary armies when it counted, his fight for the political supremacy of the rising bourgeois class to which he belonged and his practical discrediting of the theory of the divine right of kings-by beheading the defeated king- Charles I place him in the pantheon of our revolutionary forbears. For today’s leftists these are the ‘lessons’, so to speak, that we can learn from Cromwell’s struggle.
The English Revolution was by any definition a great revolution. It is therefore interesting to compare and contrast that revolution to the two other great revolutions of the modern era- the French and the Russian. The most notably thing all three have in common is once the old regime has been defeated it is necessary to reconstruct the governmental apparatus on a new basis whether parliamentary rule, national assembly rule or soviet role. The obvious contrast between revolutions is what class takes power- patricians or plebeians? That has been the underlying strain of all modern social revolutionary movements. Who holds power at the end of the process is a different and separate question, generally not to the liking of leftists trying to push the revolution forward.
Cromwell, unlike Napoleon or Stalin, was from the beginning both a key military and political leader on the parliamentary side. Moreover, in the final analysis it was his skill in organizing the New Model Army (from his famous "Ironsides" troops ) that was decisive for the parliamentary victories. Thus, the army played an unusually heavy role in the political struggles, especially among the plebeian masses which formed the core of the army (through the ‘Agitators’). In an age when there were no parties, in the modern sense, the plebeian base of the army is where the political fight to extend parliamentary democracy was waged. That it was defeated by military action led by Cromwell at Burford in 1649 represented a defeat for plebeian democracy. In that sense Cromwell also represented the Thermidorian reaction (from the French Revolutionary period represented by the overthrow of Robespierre and Saint Just by more moderate Jacobins in 1794) that has been noted by historians as a condition that occurs when the revolutionary energies become exhausted. Thus, Cromwell is central to the rise of the revolutionary movement and its dissipation. For other examples, read this book.
NOTE- The above review has not dealt with Oliver Cromwell and the Irish question. The central importance of Cromwell in his time was his role in the development of parliamentary supremacy, the revolutionary role of armed forces in the conflict with the old regime, and discrediting the theory of the divine right of kings. For those efforts his rightly holds a place in revolutionary history. Cromwell’s Irish policy, if one can call the deliberate military subjugation of a whole people and indiscriminate slaughter a policy, was ugly. This writer makes no apologies for it. Note well, however, that no British political leader, up to and including Mr. Tony Blair, has had a good policy on the Irish question. That is a question that British and Irish revolutionaries will have to deal with when they take power and finally make some retribution for the wretched history of Irish-English relations.
THE GREAT-GREAT-GREAT GRANDDADDY OF MODERN REVOLUTIONARIES
BOOK REVIEW
GOD’S ENGLISHMAN-OLIVER CROMWELL AND THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION. Christopher Hill, Harper Torchbooks, New York, 1970
The late eminent British Marxist historian Christopher Hill, more noted for studies (to be reviewed later, elsewhere) of the ‘underclass’ in the English Revolution of 1640-1660, has written a serviceable biography of the outstanding bourgeois leader of the English Revolution-Oliver Cromwell. Professor Hill in his analysis displays Cromwell ‘warts and all’ in order to place him in proper historical perspective. Other biographers, particularly British biographers, seem to have never forgiven Cromwell his ‘indiscretion’ of beheading Charles I and therefore dismiss his importance in the fight for bourgeois democracy. Professor Hill has no such inhibition.
This writer’s sympathies lie more with the social program put forth by John Lilburne and the Levellers and the social actions of Gerard Winstanley and the True Levellers (or Diggers) on Saint George’s Hill. Hill’s studies of those movements and others, as expressed in the religious terms of the day, initially drew me to the study of the English Revolution. Nevertheless, those plebeian-based programs in the England of the 1600’s were more a vision (a vision in many ways still in need of realization) than a practical reality. Even Cromwell’s achievements were a near and partially reversible thing. Such are the ways of humankind’s history.
For leftists Cromwell therefore is not the natural hero of that Revolution. However, his role as military leader of the parliamentary armies when it counted, his fight for the political supremacy of the rising bourgeois class to which he belonged and his practical discrediting of the theory of the divine right of kings-by beheading the defeated king- Charles I place him in the pantheon of our revolutionary forbears. For today’s leftists these are the ‘lessons’, so to speak, that we can learn from Cromwell’s struggle.
The English Revolution was by any definition a great revolution. It is therefore interesting to compare and contrast that revolution to the two other great revolutions of the modern era- the French and the Russian. The most notably thing all three have in common is once the old regime has been defeated it is necessary to reconstruct the governmental apparatus on a new basis whether parliamentary rule, national assembly rule or soviet role. The obvious contrast between revolutions is what class takes power- patricians or plebeians? That has been the underlying strain of all modern social revolutionary movements. Who holds power at the end of the process is a different and separate question, generally not to the liking of leftists trying to push the revolution forward.
Cromwell, unlike Napoleon or Stalin, was from the beginning both a key military and political leader on the parliamentary side. Moreover, in the final analysis it was his skill in organizing the New Model Army (from his famous "Ironsides" troops ) that was decisive for the parliamentary victories. Thus, the army played an unusually heavy role in the political struggles, especially among the plebeian masses which formed the core of the army (through the ‘Agitators’). In an age when there were no parties, in the modern sense, the plebeian base of the army is where the political fight to extend parliamentary democracy was waged. That it was defeated by military action led by Cromwell at Burford in 1649 represented a defeat for plebeian democracy. In that sense Cromwell also represented the Thermidorian reaction (from the French Revolutionary period represented by the overthrow of Robespierre and Saint Just by more moderate Jacobins in 1794) that has been noted by historians as a condition that occurs when the revolutionary energies become exhausted. Thus, Cromwell is central to the rise of the revolutionary movement and its dissipation. For other examples, read this book.
NOTE- The above review has not dealt with Oliver Cromwell and the Irish question. The central importance of Cromwell in his time was his role in the development of parliamentary supremacy, the revolutionary role of armed forces in the conflict with the old regime, and discrediting the theory of the divine right of kings. For those efforts his rightly holds a place in revolutionary history. Cromwell’s Irish policy, if one can call the deliberate military subjugation of a whole people and indiscriminate slaughter a policy, was ugly. This writer makes no apologies for it. Note well, however, that no British political leader, up to and including Mr. Tony Blair, has had a good policy on the Irish question. That is a question that British and Irish revolutionaries will have to deal with when they take power and finally make some retribution for the wretched history of Irish-English relations.
Monday, July 24, 2006
ON THE DOINGS OF THE IMPERIAL GOVERNMENT
COMMENTARY
SEPARATION OF POWERS? CHECKS AND BALANCES?
FORGET DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS AND GREENS- BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!
Under most circumstances this writer would not comment extensively on the inner workings of the various branches of the federal government. One of the reasons for this reticent is that, while in 1789 militants might have been able to support parts of the bourgeois democratic constitutional scheme as ratified, the main fight of militants then was over the Bill of Rights (as should have been the fight over permitting the continuation of slavery to be enshrined in the frame of government-over 200 years later it still makes ugly reading). Another reason is that this writer makes no bones about his desire to see a more democratic form of government based on workers councils and a workers government. That governmental form is premised on workers councils having both executive and legislative functions. Unlike those politicians, commentators and historians infatuated by the so-called separation of powers and the alleged principle of checks and balances of bourgeois democracy enshrined in the American constitution there is no inherent virtue to such combinations. Hence the following musings.
Item#1 On Wednesday July 20, 2006 the United States House of Representatives voted for God (and that is with a capital G because WE know whose god they were referring to). This caused many a troubled mind in this secular body but they had to do the ‘right’ thing by their constituents. Here’s what happened. Congress voted to enact legislation that would bar the judiciary branch from taking cases challenging the constitutionally of the ‘under God’ phase in the Pledge of Allegiance. Yes, I know-the world is going to hell in a hand basket but these people have plenty of time on their hands to fret over this. The Senate still has to vote on this ‘softball’ legislation. I swear these people should be required to read the biographies of their Founding Fathers (and Mothers, o.k.) before they take office. A workers party representative in Congress would obviously vote against this legislation. Moreover, while militants are by nature not religious-we have enough to do fighting for some kind of reasonable society on earth, heaven and hell can take of themselves- we most definitely care, as a democratic question, about a secular society imposing its version of god on us. Or anybody else’s god, gods, etc. Here’s my point though, Congress slaps the judiciary. Point to Congress.
Item#2 In the last session of the Supreme Court the justices by a 5-3 margin gave President Bush and the imperial presidency a little slap on the wrist over his private military tribunals for detainees in the ‘war on terror’. He, hereafter, needs to go beg his Republican Congress hard for authority to do so- and, as the Court thoughtfully reminded him, with a little due process in the bargain. A workers party Supreme Court justice today would vote for this minor curtailment of imperial executive power but with his or her own concurring opinion denouncing this whole sham. However, point to Supremes.
Caveat- the minority view (which if you add Chief Justice Roberts and can swing Justice Kennedy could become a majority) on private military tribunals is essentially that outside the above-mentioned ‘under God’ in item#1 there are basically no limits to presidential war powers. Wasn’t the Divine Right of Kings discredited about 400 years ago? Stay tuned for possible point to Executive.
Item#3 This is old news but President Bush has taken up the hobby of making ‘presidential interpretations’ on signing statements when he signs new legislation. The long and short of this is that on the Really Important Legislation the Bush position is –I’ll follow it if I like and if I don’t, I won’t. Hey, doesn’t Congress make the laws? Please refer to the above statement in item#2 about divine rights. Point to Executive.
Now all the above may be just the usual guerilla warfare between the 'independent' branches of government. But, the real point is that all these maneuvers bode ill for militants and ordinary citizens alike. No there is not a conspiracy brewing, although there probably are conspirators around. Nor is a coup d’etat in the air. However, the gap between the governmental authority and the governed has widened (and continues to widen). And that does none of us any good. Militants defend democratic rights (this writer would argue that we are the most consistent defenders of such rights) against governmental and private encroachment. Be ready. Enough said.
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!
SEPARATION OF POWERS? CHECKS AND BALANCES?
FORGET DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS AND GREENS- BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!
Under most circumstances this writer would not comment extensively on the inner workings of the various branches of the federal government. One of the reasons for this reticent is that, while in 1789 militants might have been able to support parts of the bourgeois democratic constitutional scheme as ratified, the main fight of militants then was over the Bill of Rights (as should have been the fight over permitting the continuation of slavery to be enshrined in the frame of government-over 200 years later it still makes ugly reading). Another reason is that this writer makes no bones about his desire to see a more democratic form of government based on workers councils and a workers government. That governmental form is premised on workers councils having both executive and legislative functions. Unlike those politicians, commentators and historians infatuated by the so-called separation of powers and the alleged principle of checks and balances of bourgeois democracy enshrined in the American constitution there is no inherent virtue to such combinations. Hence the following musings.
Item#1 On Wednesday July 20, 2006 the United States House of Representatives voted for God (and that is with a capital G because WE know whose god they were referring to). This caused many a troubled mind in this secular body but they had to do the ‘right’ thing by their constituents. Here’s what happened. Congress voted to enact legislation that would bar the judiciary branch from taking cases challenging the constitutionally of the ‘under God’ phase in the Pledge of Allegiance. Yes, I know-the world is going to hell in a hand basket but these people have plenty of time on their hands to fret over this. The Senate still has to vote on this ‘softball’ legislation. I swear these people should be required to read the biographies of their Founding Fathers (and Mothers, o.k.) before they take office. A workers party representative in Congress would obviously vote against this legislation. Moreover, while militants are by nature not religious-we have enough to do fighting for some kind of reasonable society on earth, heaven and hell can take of themselves- we most definitely care, as a democratic question, about a secular society imposing its version of god on us. Or anybody else’s god, gods, etc. Here’s my point though, Congress slaps the judiciary. Point to Congress.
Item#2 In the last session of the Supreme Court the justices by a 5-3 margin gave President Bush and the imperial presidency a little slap on the wrist over his private military tribunals for detainees in the ‘war on terror’. He, hereafter, needs to go beg his Republican Congress hard for authority to do so- and, as the Court thoughtfully reminded him, with a little due process in the bargain. A workers party Supreme Court justice today would vote for this minor curtailment of imperial executive power but with his or her own concurring opinion denouncing this whole sham. However, point to Supremes.
Caveat- the minority view (which if you add Chief Justice Roberts and can swing Justice Kennedy could become a majority) on private military tribunals is essentially that outside the above-mentioned ‘under God’ in item#1 there are basically no limits to presidential war powers. Wasn’t the Divine Right of Kings discredited about 400 years ago? Stay tuned for possible point to Executive.
Item#3 This is old news but President Bush has taken up the hobby of making ‘presidential interpretations’ on signing statements when he signs new legislation. The long and short of this is that on the Really Important Legislation the Bush position is –I’ll follow it if I like and if I don’t, I won’t. Hey, doesn’t Congress make the laws? Please refer to the above statement in item#2 about divine rights. Point to Executive.
Now all the above may be just the usual guerilla warfare between the 'independent' branches of government. But, the real point is that all these maneuvers bode ill for militants and ordinary citizens alike. No there is not a conspiracy brewing, although there probably are conspirators around. Nor is a coup d’etat in the air. However, the gap between the governmental authority and the governed has widened (and continues to widen). And that does none of us any good. Militants defend democratic rights (this writer would argue that we are the most consistent defenders of such rights) against governmental and private encroachment. Be ready. Enough said.
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!
Thursday, July 13, 2006
NO VOTE FOR "INDEPENDENT" BERNIE SANDERS FOR U.S. SENATOR IN VERMONT
IF HE WALKS LIKE A DEMOCRAT-IF HE TALKS LIKE A DEMOCRAT-IF HE TAKES HIS ASSIGNMENTS FROM THE DEMOCRATS-ISN’T HE A DEMOCRAT?
FORGET DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS AND GREENS- BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!
NOTE: This blog was originally written prior to the Vermont Democratic primaries this summer. I have republished it here as a reminder. Since that time Mr. Sanders has build up a commanding lead over his Republican and “Democratic” and other third party challengers. As a recent Boston Globe article pointed out this self-proclaimed socialist would be the first such avowed socialist elected since the late, unlamented Wisconsin American Socialist Party Congressman Victor Berger did so in the 1920’s.
The article also pointed out that Mr. Sanders has a picture of socialist icon Eugene V. Debs hanging on a wall in his office. Every militant cherishes the memory of Debs, however, his party- the Socialist party in the 1920’s and thereafter turned into something very different from the militant anti-war, anti-capitalist party that Debs did so much to make a militant organization of the working class and its allies.
Other forces, notably the American Communist Party inherited that tradition. That the Communist Party thereafter lost its authority in the working class does not negate the fact that it gathered the best militants around it. I note further that apparently Mr. Sanders has no picture of the likes of revolutionary militant “Big Bill” Haywood gracing his office. Now that would, indeed, impress me.
All the above information is presented to point out that we are a long, very long way away from the old, militant traditions. Mr. Sanders represents the more insipid parliamentary road to socialism. We just do not have the centuries necessary to wait for that strategy to unfold, assuming it was the right strategy. But, for the sake of consistency, I point out to Mr. Sander’s supporters as I did last summer’s blog, re-posted below, the overarching question of the times. On the war in Iraq- Will you next year break the unanimous logjam for approval and vote against the war budget. YES OR NO. That is the only parliamentary maneuver against the war that means anything. I will invoke the shades of Debs here. He ran for President of the United States on the Socialist ticket from the Atlanta Penitentiary. Why? He was serving time for opposition to World War I. Against that courageous act is a simple parliamentary vote so difficult?
JULY 13, 2006
Is nothing sacred anymore? Picking on poor old Bernie Sanders the self-proclaimed “democratic socialist’’ Independent Congressman from Vermont who is running for the United States Senate. He is attempting to fill the seat of the retiring former Republican, now ‘Independent’ Jim Jeffords. Must be something in the Vermont milk that drives this independent thing. Okay, sure we did appreciate that Sanders (as an elementary act of political hygiene) voted against the Iraq War and all, but come to find out his voting record looks like a carbon copy of Ted Kennedy’s, the OTHER United States Senator from Massachusetts. And Kennedy is MR. DEMOCRAT. Which makes this writer wonder if Bernie walks like a Democrat, if he talks like a Democrat, if he takes his assignments from the Congressional Democrats-isn’t he a Democrat? Especially since the Vermont Democratic party is stepping all over itself NOT to run a Democratic candidate in the fall elections against Sanders. They even offered to put him on their party line. Bernie, however, is a little coquettish and insists on running as an ‘Independent’. I put this down to a personality quirk, though.
In any case, Congressman Sanders is a textbook example of why the so-called parliamentary road to socialism is utopian. As if the history of the international left, at least since 1914, hasn’t hammered militants over the head that unless you change the form of government the capitalists win every time. They have had a long time and much experience in the ways of keeping power. They are damn good at it. Remember that.
Make no mistake; militants use the parliamentary system, especially elections, to get their message out. We also use legislative office as a tribunal to talk over the heads of the politicians. But when the deal goes down we need our own governmental forms to get the things working people need. Bernie may have known that long ago when he started out but lost it somewhere along the way. Maybe it is that milk?
For those militants who insist on voting for Sanders anyway I pose a challenge. Make Congressman Sanders answer this simple question- Will he vote, YES or NO, against the Iraqi War budget next year, if elected? Forget those ‘softball’ non-binding ‘sense of the Congress’ resolutions on Immediate Withdrawal. On the parliamentary level that is the only vote that counts now in the fight against the war. Ask.
THIS IS PART OF A SERIES OF ARTICLES ON THE 2006-2008 ELECTION CYCLE UNDER THE HEADLINE- FORGET THE DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS, GREENS-BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!
FORGET DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS AND GREENS- BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!
NOTE: This blog was originally written prior to the Vermont Democratic primaries this summer. I have republished it here as a reminder. Since that time Mr. Sanders has build up a commanding lead over his Republican and “Democratic” and other third party challengers. As a recent Boston Globe article pointed out this self-proclaimed socialist would be the first such avowed socialist elected since the late, unlamented Wisconsin American Socialist Party Congressman Victor Berger did so in the 1920’s.
The article also pointed out that Mr. Sanders has a picture of socialist icon Eugene V. Debs hanging on a wall in his office. Every militant cherishes the memory of Debs, however, his party- the Socialist party in the 1920’s and thereafter turned into something very different from the militant anti-war, anti-capitalist party that Debs did so much to make a militant organization of the working class and its allies.
Other forces, notably the American Communist Party inherited that tradition. That the Communist Party thereafter lost its authority in the working class does not negate the fact that it gathered the best militants around it. I note further that apparently Mr. Sanders has no picture of the likes of revolutionary militant “Big Bill” Haywood gracing his office. Now that would, indeed, impress me.
All the above information is presented to point out that we are a long, very long way away from the old, militant traditions. Mr. Sanders represents the more insipid parliamentary road to socialism. We just do not have the centuries necessary to wait for that strategy to unfold, assuming it was the right strategy. But, for the sake of consistency, I point out to Mr. Sander’s supporters as I did last summer’s blog, re-posted below, the overarching question of the times. On the war in Iraq- Will you next year break the unanimous logjam for approval and vote against the war budget. YES OR NO. That is the only parliamentary maneuver against the war that means anything. I will invoke the shades of Debs here. He ran for President of the United States on the Socialist ticket from the Atlanta Penitentiary. Why? He was serving time for opposition to World War I. Against that courageous act is a simple parliamentary vote so difficult?
JULY 13, 2006
Is nothing sacred anymore? Picking on poor old Bernie Sanders the self-proclaimed “democratic socialist’’ Independent Congressman from Vermont who is running for the United States Senate. He is attempting to fill the seat of the retiring former Republican, now ‘Independent’ Jim Jeffords. Must be something in the Vermont milk that drives this independent thing. Okay, sure we did appreciate that Sanders (as an elementary act of political hygiene) voted against the Iraq War and all, but come to find out his voting record looks like a carbon copy of Ted Kennedy’s, the OTHER United States Senator from Massachusetts. And Kennedy is MR. DEMOCRAT. Which makes this writer wonder if Bernie walks like a Democrat, if he talks like a Democrat, if he takes his assignments from the Congressional Democrats-isn’t he a Democrat? Especially since the Vermont Democratic party is stepping all over itself NOT to run a Democratic candidate in the fall elections against Sanders. They even offered to put him on their party line. Bernie, however, is a little coquettish and insists on running as an ‘Independent’. I put this down to a personality quirk, though.
In any case, Congressman Sanders is a textbook example of why the so-called parliamentary road to socialism is utopian. As if the history of the international left, at least since 1914, hasn’t hammered militants over the head that unless you change the form of government the capitalists win every time. They have had a long time and much experience in the ways of keeping power. They are damn good at it. Remember that.
Make no mistake; militants use the parliamentary system, especially elections, to get their message out. We also use legislative office as a tribunal to talk over the heads of the politicians. But when the deal goes down we need our own governmental forms to get the things working people need. Bernie may have known that long ago when he started out but lost it somewhere along the way. Maybe it is that milk?
For those militants who insist on voting for Sanders anyway I pose a challenge. Make Congressman Sanders answer this simple question- Will he vote, YES or NO, against the Iraqi War budget next year, if elected? Forget those ‘softball’ non-binding ‘sense of the Congress’ resolutions on Immediate Withdrawal. On the parliamentary level that is the only vote that counts now in the fight against the war. Ask.
THIS IS PART OF A SERIES OF ARTICLES ON THE 2006-2008 ELECTION CYCLE UNDER THE HEADLINE- FORGET THE DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS, GREENS-BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!
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