Monday, February 01, 2010
*From The Archives Of Bolshevik Anti-War Work- V.I. Lenin On Imperialist War And The Tasks Of Socialists
Click on the title to link to an important political polemic by Vladimir Lenin concerning the fight against imperialist war and the tasks of socialists.
*From The Archives Of Bolshevik Anti-War Work- V.I. Lenin On Imperialist War And The Tasks Of Socialists
Click on the title to link to an important political polemic by Vladimir Lenin concerning the fight against imperialist war and the tasks of socialists.
*From The Archives Of Bolshevik Anti-War Work- V.I. Lenin On Imperialist War And The Tasks Of Socialists
Click on the title to link to an important political polemic by Vladimir Lenin concerning the fight against imperialist war and the tasks of socialists.
*From The Archives Of Bolshevik Anti-War Work- V.I. Lenin On Imperialist War And The Tasks Of Socialists
Click on the title to link to an important political polemic by Vladimir Lenin concerning the fight against imperialist war and the tasks of socialists.
*From The Archives Of Bolshevik Anti-War Work- V.I. Lenin On Imperialist War And The Tasks Of Socialists-The Zimmerwald Manifesto
Click on the title to link to an important political polemic by Vladimir Lenin concerning the fight against imperialist war and the tasks of socialists.
*The Lessons Of Anti-War History- The Way That A People's Representative Should Act On The War Question, And How He Or She Shouldn't
Click on the title to link to a "Lenin Internet Archives" entry entitled "What Has Been Revealed By the Trial of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Duma Group", dated March 19, 1915, that is a useful contrast to the entry below taken from a recent "Progressive Democrats of America" blog entry.
Markin comment:
The two counter-posed entries speak for themselves. I would only add, since the word has reemerged recently in political talk, that we could certainly use a few more Bolsheviks to fight forthrightly on the parliamentary level against Obama's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan today.
************************
From "Progressive Democrats Of America" Website home page.
Congressman Payne: I Won't Oppose War Money Because Obama's President
By David Swanson
January 31, 2010, New Brunswick, NJ
Rep. Donald PayneTake Action: Tell Congress "Stop funding war"
My encounter with Congressman Payne at the PDA-NJ Statewide Conference
Congressman Donald Payne (D., N.J.) has voted against war funding bills for years. Last summer he was one of 32 heroes to vote No under intense pressure from the White House to vote Yes. When I asked him a couple of years ago to sign onto impeaching Bush he immediately said "Sure!" and he did it.
Today I asked him if he would commit to voting No on the next $33 billion for war. I asked him privately, just after he'd given a long speech to a Progressive Democrats of America conference in New Jersey, a speech about how much he opposes the wars.
Payne told me that he didn't want to commit to voting No on the next "emergency war supplemental" because Obama is president, echoing Jan Schakowsky's comments last June when she made a similar reversal.
"Congressman Payne," I said, "aren't the bombs the same? Isn't the dying the same?" He agreed and told me I was preaching to the choir.
"And is the only difference that a different person is president?" I asked. "Yes," he replied.
When I had prefaced my question with praising him for standing strong last June, I had referenced the major promises and threats that other congressmembers had reported receiving from the White House. Payne said he had experienced the same. Yet somehow he had resisted, but is unsure about resisting further.
Earlier in the day, another Democratic congressman from New Jersey, Frank Pallone, had spoken to the PDA conference, and both PDA's national director Tim Carpenter and I had asked him publicly to commit to voting No on the war money.
I thanked Pallone for voting No on war supplementals in 2004 and 2005 and expressed disappointment that he had voted Yes last June. He refused to commit to voting No, with the excuse that something good might be attached to the war money. Yet he had voted No in the past, despite the fact that good hard-to-oppose measures were always applied as lipstick on these bills.
Was Pallone's real thinking that he wanted to obey the president? I can't say for sure, but I can say that he took a lot of questions from PDA members about his positions, and he tended to answer by explaining what Obama's positions are. And I can say that Pallone raised lots of rightwing reasons for not being stronger on issues like healthcare, and other members of the panel he was part of decisively refuted each point but had no impact on the congressman's position whatsoever.
Joining Pallone on the panel were Carpenter and PDA board member Steve Cobble, Co-Chair of PDA's Healthcare Not Warfare campaign Donna Smith, and the president of the New Jersey Industrial Union Council Ray Stever. They laid out the case and the strategy for shifting our resources from wars to human needs, especially single-payer healthcare.
The conference rooms were packed, and everyone involved was eager to get to work, including a lot of people new to PDA's organizing. Joanne O'Neil and the other leaders of New Jersey PDA were pleased with the conference, but far from satisfied with the positions of the two congress members who attended.
To their credit, however, everyone was focused on lobbying, challenging, and pressuring until their representatives agree to represent the people of New Jersey rather than taking their orders from a president who has three more years in office even if his followers get themselves voted out this November.
I expect more congress members from New Jersey, possibly even Payne and Pallone, to be joining those committed to voting No on the wars they claim to oppose: http://defundwar.org.
Markin comment:
The two counter-posed entries speak for themselves. I would only add, since the word has reemerged recently in political talk, that we could certainly use a few more Bolsheviks to fight forthrightly on the parliamentary level against Obama's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan today.
************************
From "Progressive Democrats Of America" Website home page.
Congressman Payne: I Won't Oppose War Money Because Obama's President
By David Swanson
January 31, 2010, New Brunswick, NJ
Rep. Donald PayneTake Action: Tell Congress "Stop funding war"
My encounter with Congressman Payne at the PDA-NJ Statewide Conference
Congressman Donald Payne (D., N.J.) has voted against war funding bills for years. Last summer he was one of 32 heroes to vote No under intense pressure from the White House to vote Yes. When I asked him a couple of years ago to sign onto impeaching Bush he immediately said "Sure!" and he did it.
Today I asked him if he would commit to voting No on the next $33 billion for war. I asked him privately, just after he'd given a long speech to a Progressive Democrats of America conference in New Jersey, a speech about how much he opposes the wars.
Payne told me that he didn't want to commit to voting No on the next "emergency war supplemental" because Obama is president, echoing Jan Schakowsky's comments last June when she made a similar reversal.
"Congressman Payne," I said, "aren't the bombs the same? Isn't the dying the same?" He agreed and told me I was preaching to the choir.
"And is the only difference that a different person is president?" I asked. "Yes," he replied.
When I had prefaced my question with praising him for standing strong last June, I had referenced the major promises and threats that other congressmembers had reported receiving from the White House. Payne said he had experienced the same. Yet somehow he had resisted, but is unsure about resisting further.
Earlier in the day, another Democratic congressman from New Jersey, Frank Pallone, had spoken to the PDA conference, and both PDA's national director Tim Carpenter and I had asked him publicly to commit to voting No on the war money.
I thanked Pallone for voting No on war supplementals in 2004 and 2005 and expressed disappointment that he had voted Yes last June. He refused to commit to voting No, with the excuse that something good might be attached to the war money. Yet he had voted No in the past, despite the fact that good hard-to-oppose measures were always applied as lipstick on these bills.
Was Pallone's real thinking that he wanted to obey the president? I can't say for sure, but I can say that he took a lot of questions from PDA members about his positions, and he tended to answer by explaining what Obama's positions are. And I can say that Pallone raised lots of rightwing reasons for not being stronger on issues like healthcare, and other members of the panel he was part of decisively refuted each point but had no impact on the congressman's position whatsoever.
Joining Pallone on the panel were Carpenter and PDA board member Steve Cobble, Co-Chair of PDA's Healthcare Not Warfare campaign Donna Smith, and the president of the New Jersey Industrial Union Council Ray Stever. They laid out the case and the strategy for shifting our resources from wars to human needs, especially single-payer healthcare.
The conference rooms were packed, and everyone involved was eager to get to work, including a lot of people new to PDA's organizing. Joanne O'Neil and the other leaders of New Jersey PDA were pleased with the conference, but far from satisfied with the positions of the two congress members who attended.
To their credit, however, everyone was focused on lobbying, challenging, and pressuring until their representatives agree to represent the people of New Jersey rather than taking their orders from a president who has three more years in office even if his followers get themselves voted out this November.
I expect more congress members from New Jersey, possibly even Payne and Pallone, to be joining those committed to voting No on the wars they claim to oppose: http://defundwar.org.
*From The Archives Of Bolshevik Anti-War Work- V.I. Lenin On Imperialist War And The Tasks Of Socialists
Click on the title to link to an important political polemic by Vladimir Lenin concerning the fight against imperialist war and the tasks of socialists.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
*Barack Obama Ain't No Bolshevik, He Ain't Even A Menshevik
Click on the title to link to a "The Boston Globe" article, dated January 30, 2010, in which American President Barack Obama defends himself against Republican charges that his ill-fated (and totally inadequate) health care program is a "Bolshevik plot".
Markin comment:
“A specter is haunting Europe- the specter of communism … "(from the start of the Marxist classic, “The Communist Manifesto”)
Most of the time the entries in this blog, givens its purposes, require me to think about some long lost historical event that needs to be mentioned or to recall some political memory that may be of help in today’s struggle for our communist future. Every once in a while though, and fairly infrequently of late, the daily news serves that purpose. The latest internal capitalist ruling class squabble between President Barack Obama and a caucus of Republican congressmen down in Baltimore the other day is a case in point. As part of the proceedings Mr. Obama felt the need to defend himself from the crackpot old-time Cold War charges of being a “Bolshevik”. This comment will serve as a certificate of authenticity that, indeed, President Obama is not a Bolshevik, has never been a Bolshevik, and has never knowingly uttered the names Vladimir Lenin or Leon Trotsky in mixed company, or in his sleep.
Actually, my first reaction on reading the “news” of “comrade” Imperial Commander-in-Chief Obama’s conversion to hard communist politics was to question the quality of the drinking water in Maryland, or the quality of the dope and booze, or the air ventilation system down at that resort. The last time anyone used the word “Bolshevik” in American presidential politics was probably back in Woodrow Wilson’s time, around the time of the Russian October Revolution of 1917, and then only to justify running every known red, radical or Wobblie they could get their hands on out of the country. That happened in a capitalist reactionary panic but things settled down a little shortly thereafter as the American republic entered the “Jazz Age”. Today, twenty years after the demise of the Soviet Union, that characterization in “high” bourgeois politics is crazy, right? All this brouhaha has done is increased exponentially the number of hits on the “Wikipedia” site for the “Bolshevik” entry for those millions of people who are clueless about what the reference is all about.
I will just give, for the readers here who may not know, a very quick snapshot of what a Bolshevik is and see if the shoe fits the President. A Bolshevik is from that wing (the Leninist wing) of the pre-World War I Russian social-democracy that stood on the ground, one way or the other, that the workers, supported by the peasants, would lead the impeding social revolution. The Mensheviks, and I mean no dishonor to one of the left leaders of that wing of Russian social democracy, Julius Martov, who would, like Lenin and Trotsky, turn over in his grave to be compared to a two-bit bourgeois politician like Obama, preferred that the liberal capitalists lead the revolution in economically backward Russia. Does that dispute within the Russian social democracy over the stages of the course of REVOLUTION sound anything like any of the sound bites coming out of Maryland? Or Washington?
Additionally, the Bolsheviks, when the deal went down in 1917, stood for the expropriation of the banks, not bailing them out. For worker control of socialized industrial, leaving the capitalist owners to cooperate or leave. For land to the tiller including the breakup of the large landed estates, with or without the landlord’s consent. For free, quality health care for all, not a bonanza for the insurance industry. And, most importantly, for our immediate tasks here today in America, an end to Russian participation in the imperial slaughter that was World War I, not sending troops to all four corners of the globe in the interests of the American imperial state. Not only does one Barack Obama not stand for those political propositions I do not believe that he is intellectually or emotionally capable of, and certainly his Republican opponents are not, of comprehending such a program.
President Obama can thus plead with a true heart “not guilty” (we will not accept that “no lo” plea that is the natural refuge of bourgeois politicians) to any such thoughts. In fact, the only nodding acquaintance that any of the parties in this current flare-up might have with Bolshevik practice is their version of the organizational principle of democratic centralism, that is once a decision is made by the group then publicly its stand behind that one line. The one line here that these two wings of the capitalist class agree on is- capitalism must be defended to the bitter end. So there is a little modicum of rationality to their worry about Bolshevism but it is not from the Obama White House. That will come from those red flag-draped masses, now beaten down, isolated, and frustrated, that will be coming to their doors if they decide to get in our way when the time for real Bolsheviks to show their stuff comes around.
Markin comment:
“A specter is haunting Europe- the specter of communism … "(from the start of the Marxist classic, “The Communist Manifesto”)
Most of the time the entries in this blog, givens its purposes, require me to think about some long lost historical event that needs to be mentioned or to recall some political memory that may be of help in today’s struggle for our communist future. Every once in a while though, and fairly infrequently of late, the daily news serves that purpose. The latest internal capitalist ruling class squabble between President Barack Obama and a caucus of Republican congressmen down in Baltimore the other day is a case in point. As part of the proceedings Mr. Obama felt the need to defend himself from the crackpot old-time Cold War charges of being a “Bolshevik”. This comment will serve as a certificate of authenticity that, indeed, President Obama is not a Bolshevik, has never been a Bolshevik, and has never knowingly uttered the names Vladimir Lenin or Leon Trotsky in mixed company, or in his sleep.
Actually, my first reaction on reading the “news” of “comrade” Imperial Commander-in-Chief Obama’s conversion to hard communist politics was to question the quality of the drinking water in Maryland, or the quality of the dope and booze, or the air ventilation system down at that resort. The last time anyone used the word “Bolshevik” in American presidential politics was probably back in Woodrow Wilson’s time, around the time of the Russian October Revolution of 1917, and then only to justify running every known red, radical or Wobblie they could get their hands on out of the country. That happened in a capitalist reactionary panic but things settled down a little shortly thereafter as the American republic entered the “Jazz Age”. Today, twenty years after the demise of the Soviet Union, that characterization in “high” bourgeois politics is crazy, right? All this brouhaha has done is increased exponentially the number of hits on the “Wikipedia” site for the “Bolshevik” entry for those millions of people who are clueless about what the reference is all about.
I will just give, for the readers here who may not know, a very quick snapshot of what a Bolshevik is and see if the shoe fits the President. A Bolshevik is from that wing (the Leninist wing) of the pre-World War I Russian social-democracy that stood on the ground, one way or the other, that the workers, supported by the peasants, would lead the impeding social revolution. The Mensheviks, and I mean no dishonor to one of the left leaders of that wing of Russian social democracy, Julius Martov, who would, like Lenin and Trotsky, turn over in his grave to be compared to a two-bit bourgeois politician like Obama, preferred that the liberal capitalists lead the revolution in economically backward Russia. Does that dispute within the Russian social democracy over the stages of the course of REVOLUTION sound anything like any of the sound bites coming out of Maryland? Or Washington?
Additionally, the Bolsheviks, when the deal went down in 1917, stood for the expropriation of the banks, not bailing them out. For worker control of socialized industrial, leaving the capitalist owners to cooperate or leave. For land to the tiller including the breakup of the large landed estates, with or without the landlord’s consent. For free, quality health care for all, not a bonanza for the insurance industry. And, most importantly, for our immediate tasks here today in America, an end to Russian participation in the imperial slaughter that was World War I, not sending troops to all four corners of the globe in the interests of the American imperial state. Not only does one Barack Obama not stand for those political propositions I do not believe that he is intellectually or emotionally capable of, and certainly his Republican opponents are not, of comprehending such a program.
President Obama can thus plead with a true heart “not guilty” (we will not accept that “no lo” plea that is the natural refuge of bourgeois politicians) to any such thoughts. In fact, the only nodding acquaintance that any of the parties in this current flare-up might have with Bolshevik practice is their version of the organizational principle of democratic centralism, that is once a decision is made by the group then publicly its stand behind that one line. The one line here that these two wings of the capitalist class agree on is- capitalism must be defended to the bitter end. So there is a little modicum of rationality to their worry about Bolshevism but it is not from the Obama White House. That will come from those red flag-draped masses, now beaten down, isolated, and frustrated, that will be coming to their doors if they decide to get in our way when the time for real Bolsheviks to show their stuff comes around.
*The Latest From The Lynne Stewart Defense Committee- Lynne Stewart Must Not Die In Jail
Click on the title to link to the Lynne Stewart Defense Committee.
Markin comment:
Lynne Stewart must not die in prison! Free Lynne Stewart and her co-workers now!
Markin comment:
Lynne Stewart must not die in prison! Free Lynne Stewart and her co-workers now!
*The Opening Salvos Of The Spring Anti-War Offensive- From The New England United Website
Click on the title to link to a schedule of speakers and topics at the the New England United Anti-war Conference held on January 30, 2010 at MIT in Cambridge, Ma.
Markin comment:
I will be discussing the issues presented and the strategy, such as it is, agreed upon in later comments.
Markin comment:
I will be discussing the issues presented and the strategy, such as it is, agreed upon in later comments.
*From The Green Left Global News" Blog- On The American Policy On Gays In The Military- Dump It Now!
Click on the title to link to the guest blog entry mentioned in the headline
*From The "HistoMat" Blog- On The Upcoming British Elections
Click on the title to link to the guest blog entry mentioned in the headline
*From The "Renegade Eye" Blog- Alan Woods On The Heroic Anti-Roman Imperialist Fighter-Slave General Spartacus
Click on the title to link to the guest blog entry mentioned in the headline
*From The "HistoMat" Blog- On The Passing Of Another Folkie- Alistair Hulett
Click on the title to link to the guest blog entry mentioned in the headline
*Fron The "HistoMat' Blog- On Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story
Click on the title to link to the guest blog entry mentioned in the headline.
*From The Green Left Global News" Blog- From The Pen Of The Late Radical Activist Howard Zinn
Click on the title to link to the guest blog entry mentioned in the headline.
*From The "HistoMat" Blog- On The Late American Radical Activist Howard Zinn
Click on the title to link to the guest blog entry mentioned in the headline.
*From The "Green Left Global News" Blog - A Guest Commentary
Click on the title to link to the guest blog entry mentioned in the headline.
*From The "Green Left Global News" Blog- A Guest Commentary
Click on the title to link to the guest blog entry mentioned in the headline.
*From The "StevenLendmanBlog"- On Palestine
Click on the title to link to the guest blog entry mentioned in the headline.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)