*From The Archives Of The “Revolutionary History” Journal-The Spanish Left in its Own Words-POUM Policy During the May Events

Click on the headline to link to the “Revolutionary History” Journal entry listed in the title.

Markin comment:

This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discovery” the work of our forbears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.

*From The Archives Of The “Revolutionary History” Journal-The Spanish Left in its Own Words-The POUM attacks the Nationalism of the Spanish Stalinists

Click on the headline to link to the “Revolutionary History” Journal entry listed in the title.

Markin comment:

This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discovery” the work of our forbears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.

*From The Archives Of The “ Revolutionary History” Journal-The Spanish Left in its Own Words-The Programme of the POUM in 1936

Click on the headline to link to the “Revolutionary History” Journal entry listed in the title.

Markin comment:

This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discovery” the work of our forbears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.

*From "The Rag Blog"- On The "Under The Hood" Cafe

Click on the headline to link to a "The Rag Blog" entry on the "Under The Hood" Cafe tribute to a couple of its fallen supporters.

***From The Archives Of The “ Revolutionary History” Journal-Trotsky And The POUM

Click on the headline to link to the “Revolutionary History” Journal entry listed in the title.

http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/spain/spain03.htm

Markin comment:

I have posted,separately, a "Leon Trotsky Internet Archive" article by Leon Trotsky on the place of the POUM in the revolutionary scheme of the Spanish Civil War in this space today. It is always best to go to the source, especially when that source is Leon Trotsky who can more than hold his own, polemically, even from the revolutionary pantheon.

From The Archives Of The “ Revolutionary History” Journal-In Honor Of Trotskyist Walter Held

Click on the headline to link to the “Revolutionary History” Journal entry listed in the title.

Those Who Fought For Our Communist Future Are Kindred Spirits- In Honor Of Walter Held

Every January, as readers of this blog are now, hopefully, familiar with the international communist movement honors the 3 Ls-Lenin, Luxemburg and Liebknecht, fallen leaders of the early 20th century communist movement who died in this month (and whose untimely deaths left a huge, irreplaceable gap in the international leadership of that time). January is thus a time for us to reflect on the roots of our movement and those who brought us along this far. In order to give a fuller measure of honor to our fallen forbears this January, and in future Januarys, this space will honor others who have contributed in some way to the struggle for our communist future. That future classless society, however, will be the true memorial to their sacrifices.

Note on inclusion: As in other series on this site (“Labor’s Untold Story”, “Leaders Of The Bolshevik Revolution”, etc.) this year’s honorees do not exhaust the list of every possible communist worthy of the name. Nor, in fact, is the list limited to Bolshevik-style communists. There will be names included from other traditions (like anarchism, social democracy, the Diggers, Levellers, Jacobins, etc.) whose efforts contributed to the international struggle. Also, as was true of previous series this year’s efforts are no more than an introduction to these heroes of the class struggle. Future years will see more detailed information on each entry, particularly about many of the lesser known figures. Better yet, the reader can pick up the ball and run with it if he or she has more knowledge about the particular exploits of some communist militant, or to include a missing one.

From The Archives Of The “ Revolutionary History” Journal-Stalinism and Spain

Click on the headline to link to the “Revolutionary History” Journal entry listed in the title.


Markin comment:

I have written, many times, elsewhere in this space on the nefarious role of Stalin and Stalinism in sabotaging the Spanish Revolution in the 1930s. Spain was the litmus test for lots of things, not the least of which was its place in the evolving conscious policy of holding back revolutions in the interests of Soviet foreign policy viz-a-viz world imperialism. This was, in the final analysis the fruit of the Stalinist "theory of socialism in one country." With some fits and starts that premise was basic Stalinist policy until the demise of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.

*From "On Point" Radio-“To Kill a Mockingbird” at 50- In Honor Of Harper Lee

Click on the headline to link to an NPR "On Point" Radio entry-'“To Kill a Mockingbird” at 50"'- In Honor Of Harper Lee.

*From “The Rag Blog”- “Bob Feldman 68” Blog- A People’s History Of Afghanistan, Part Eight

Click on the headline to link to a “The Rag Blog” entry from the “Bob Feldman 68” blog on the history of Afghanistan

Markin comment:

This is a great series for those who are not familiar with the critical role of Afghanistan in world politics, if not directly then as part of the history of world imperialism. Thanks, Bob Feldman.

And, speaking of world imperialism, let us keep our eyes on the prize- Obama- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./ Allied Troops And Mercenaries From Afghanistan!

*******

All seven previous parts are also in this space, dtaed May 9, 2010.

*From The "UJP" Website- Protest Demo-Boston Demands: End the Siege on Gaza! -June 4, 2010

*Click on the headline to link to a "UJP" Website entry- "Protest Demo-Boston Demands: End the Siege on Gaza! -June 4, 2010."


Markin comment:

All Out To Defend The Palestinian People-End The Siege! Enough Is Enough!

*From The "HistoMat" Blog- In Defense Of History- A Word On British Tory Ideologue Niall Ferguson And Writing On Empire

*Click on the headline to link to a "HistoMat" Blog entry- "In Defense Of History"- A Word On British Tory Ideologue Niall Ferguson And Writing On Empire.


Markin comment:

The sun never sets on the British Empire, apparently. At least in Tory dreams. But just to make sure there is no "resurrection" revolutionaries in Great Britain should really "turn the world upside down" there. First order of business: Abolish the monarchy, House of Lords, and the state churches- and Niall Ferguson.

*From The Pages Of "Workers Vanguard"- Homicidal New Orleans Cops

Click on theh headline to link to a "Workers Vanguard" article, "Katrina: Danziger Bridge Cover-Up Exposed."

Markin comment:

On a day when I 'just happen' to be reviewing a 1987 film, "The Big Easy", about police corruption in New Orleans over a busted drug deal this entry seem very, very appropriate. And puts us back on the "real time" of the class struggle. So, just when everybody thought old Markin had gone over the edge in gushing over a "police romance" he rights his ship. Whee! Leon Trotsky can breathe easier now.

Not Ready For Prime Time Class Struggle- “The Big Easy” –A Film Review

Click on the headline to link to a "Wikipedia" entry for the movie, "The Big Easy" which fills out the plot line for this review.

DVD Review

The Big Easy, Dennis Quaid, Ellen Barkin, 1987

Sometimes a movie is a little too close to the truth, although it is not recognized as such until later. That is the case with the plot of “The Big Easy” a story line that deals with ‘isolated’ police corruption in the Big Easy, New Orleans. Thus, there is plenty of murder, mayhem, and the rest as a big time drug deal by rogue cops gets busted up by the good cops. Not, howe,ver without some anguish and moral qualms along the way. Well, I told you that it was a fairy tale, didn't I? Today’s charges of police corruption in the headlines, on any given day, from out of New Orleans since well before Hurricane Katrina puts this story line in the shade. Well in the shade.

Okay, that is on the political level. Now to the real action. The love interest that drives the film, of course. You know the boy meets girl thing. Here “go along to get along’ New Orleans cop, Dennis Quaid (Remy), meets avenging “angel” prosecuting attorney, Ellen Barkin (Anne), and after a few, actually very few, preliminaries, they are an item. Oh, did I tell you that Quaid is a good old boy Cajun (or part Cajun, anyway) to add color to this thing. And to take advantage of the New Orleans motif, natch. You are watching this one for the chemistry between Quaid and Barkin, mainly. And, maybe, the sound track that includes some material by various Neville Brothers combinations. The story you have seen and heard a thousand times before

*Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By-Stepphenwolf's "Born To Be Wild"

Click On Title To Link To A "YouTube" Film Clip Of Stepphenwolf Performing "Born To Be Wild". Ah, Those Were The Days.

In this series, presented under the headline “Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By”, I will post some songs that I think will help us get through the “dog days” of the struggle for our communist future. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here.

Markin comment:

On a day when I am reviewing Dennis Hopper's "Easy Rider" this song seems very appropriate.

*******

BORN TO BE WILD

From the 1968 release "Steppenwolf"

Words and music by Mars Bonfire

Get your motor runnin'
Head out on the highway
Lookin' for adventure
And whatever comes our way
Yeah Darlin' go make it happen
Take the world in a love embrace
Fire all of your guns at once
And explode into space

I like smoke and lightning
Heavy metal thunder
Racin' with the wind
And the feelin' that I'm under
Yeah Darlin' go make it happen
Take the world in a love embrace
Fire all of your guns at once
And explode into space

Like a true nature's child
We were born, born to be wild
We can climb so high
I never wanna die

Born to be wild
Born to be wild

© MCA Music (BMI)
All rights for the USA controlled and administered by
MCA Corporation of America, INC

--Used with permission--

*Artist's Corner- Modern Artist and Sculptor Louise Bourgeois Passes On At 98

Click on the headline to link to a "Wikipdeia" entry for sculptor Louise Bourgeois, including a photo of her famous spider sculpture.

*From The UJP Website- The Boston Emergency Gaza Flotilla Attack Protest Demonstration

Click on the headline to link to a "UJP" Website entry- "The Boston Emergency Gaza Flotilla Attack Protest Demonstration", dated May 31, 2010.

*From The "HistoMat" Blog- On The Upcoming Gaza Flotilla Defense Demonstations in Great Britain

Click on the headline to link to a "HistoMat" Blog entry- "On The Gaza Flotilla Demonstations in Great Britain."

Markin comment:

All out everywhere to defend the Palestinian people and their right to survive as a people. Down with Israeli piracy! Down with Israeli imperialism!

From The Archives Of The “ Revolutionary History” Journal-Brief notes on the history of the Left Fraction (in Great Britain)

Click on the headline to link to the “Revolutionary History” Journal entry listed in the title

Markin comment:

Although during the period under review in this article the American Socialist Workers Party was the strongest politically and the French, probably, although organizationally diffuse, the most numerous it is still interesting to see how this was reflected in Great Britain. Historically the UK had a weak official Communist Party. That, I think, got reflected in the weakness of the British Trotskyist movement, including today's generation. The note about the political fate of the author, Harry Selby, tells a tale as well.

From The Archives Of The “ Revolutionary History” Journal-Albert Glotzer On British Trotskyism In 1931

Click on the headline to link to the “Revolutionary History” Journal entry listed in the title


Markin comment:

The last time that the name Albert Glotzer (Max Shachtman's right-hand man (and that is about right, politically, in the old Socialist Workers Party day and right up until the end under the aegis of the American Federation of Teachers' anti-communist hysteric Albert Shanker in the early 1970s) was his "memoir" on Albert Gl..., oops, Leon Trotsky. However in 1931 old Albert knew his Marxism and knew his "Old Man's" work.There are photos of Glotzer from this period somewhere, I think.

From The Archives Of The “ Revolutionary History” Journal-Karl Kautsky's "The intellectuals and the workers"

Click on the headline to link to a "Wikipedia" entry for pre-World War I Marxist leader, Karl Kautsky.

The intellectuals and the workers

Karl Kautsky (1854-1938), the ‘Pope of Marxism’, wrote the following article when he was the major theoretician of the German Social Democracy. It first appeared in Die Neue Zeit (Vol.XXII, no.4, 1903), the journal which Kautsky edited from 1883 to 1917, and appeared in English in the April 1946 edition of Fourth International.

Part of the very problem which once again so keenly preoccupies our attention is the antagonism between the intellectuals and the proletariat.

My colleagues will for the most part wax indignant at my admission of this antagonism. But it actually exists, and as in other cases, it would be a most inexpedient tactic to try to cope with this fact by ignoring it.

This antagonism is a social one, it relates to classes and not individuals. An individual intellectual, like an individual capitalist, may join the proletariat in its class struggle. When he does, he changes his character too. It is not of this type of intellectual, who is still an exception among his fellows, that we shall deal with in the following lines. Unless otherwise indicated I shall use the word intellectual to mean only the common run of intellectual, who take the standpoint of bourgeois society and who are characteristic of intellectuals as a whole, who stand in a certain antagonism to the proletariat.

This antagonism differs, however, from the antagonism between labour and capital. An intellectual is not a capitalist. True, his standard of life is bourgeois and he must maintain it if he is not to become a pauper; but at the same time he has to sell the product of his labour, and frequently his labour power; and he is himself often enough exploited and humiliated by the capitalists. Hence the intellectual does not stand in any economic antagonism to the proletariat. But his status of life and his conditions of labour are not proletarian, and this gives rise to a certain antagonism in sentiments and ideas.

As an isolated individual, the proletarian is a nonentity. His strength, his progress, his hopes and expectations are entirely derived from organisation, from systematic action in conjunction with his fellows. He feels himself big and strong when he is part of a big and strong organism. The organism is the main thing for him; the individual by comparison means very little. The proletarian fights with the utmost devotion as part of the anonymous mass, without prospect of personal advantage or personal glory, performing his duty in any post assigned to him, with a voluntary discipline which pervades all his feelings and thoughts.

Quite different is the case of the intellectual. He fights not by means of power, but by argument. His weapons are his personal knowledge, his personal ability and his personal convictions. He can attain a position only through his personal abilities. Hence the freest play for these seems to him the prime condition for success. It is only with difficulty that he submits to serving as a part which is subordinate to the whole, and then only from necessity, not from inclination. He recognises the need of discipline only for the masses, not for the select few. And naturally he counts himself among the latter,

In addition to this antagonism between the intellectual and the proletarian in sentiment, there is yet another antagonism. The intellectual, armed with the general education of our time, conceives himself as very superior to the proletarian. Even Engels writes of the scholarly mystification with which he approached workers in his youth. The intellectual finds it very easy to overlook in the proletarian his equal as a fellow fighter, at whose side in the combat he must take his place. Instead he sees in the proletarian the latter's low level of intellectual development, which it is the intellectual's task to raise. He sees in the worker not a comrade but a pupil. The intellectual clings to Lassalle’s aphorism on the bond between science and the proletariat, a bond which will raise society to a higher plane. As advocate of science, the intellectuals come to the workers not in order to co-operate with them as comrades, but as an especially friendly external force in society, offering them aid.

For Lassalle, who coined the aphorism on science and the proletariat, science, like the state, stands above the class struggle. Today we know this to be false. For the state is the instrument of the ruling class. Moreover, science itself rises above the classes only insofar as it does not deal with classes, that is, only insofar as it is a natural and not a social science. A scientific examination of society produces an entirely different conclusion when society is observed from a class standpoint, especially from the standpoint of a class which is antagonistic to that society. When brought to the proletariat from the capitalist class, science is invariably adapted to suit capitalist interests. What the proletariat needs is a scientific understanding of its own position in society. That kind of science a worker cannot obtain in the officially and socially approved manner. The proletarian himself must develop his own theory. For this reason he must be completely self-taught, no matter whether his origin is academic or proletarian. The object of study is the activity of the proletariat itself, its role in the process of production, its role in the class struggle. Only from this activity can the theory, the self-consciousness of the proletariat, arise.

The alliance of science with labour and its goal of saving humanity, must therefore be understood not in the sense which the academicians transmit to the people the knowledge which they gain in the bourgeois classroom, but rather in this sense that every one of our co-fighters, academicians and proletarians alike, who are capable of participating in proletarian activity, utilise the common struggle or at least investigate it, in order to draw new scientific knowledge which can in turn be fruitful for further proletarian activity. Since that is how the matter stands, it is impossible to conceive of science being handed down to the proletariat or of an alliance between them as two independent powers. That science, which can contribute to the emancipation of the proletariat, can be developed only by the proletariat and through it. What the liberals bring over from the bourgeois scientific circles cannot serve to expedite the struggle for emancipation, but often only to retard it.

The remarks which follow are by way of digression from our main theme. But today when the question of the intellectuals is of such extreme importance, the digression is not perhaps without value.

Nietzsche’s philosophy with its cult of superman for whom the fulfilment of his own individuality is everything and the subordination of the individual to a great social aim is as vulgar as it is despicable, this philosophy is the real philosophy of the intellectual; and it renders him totally unfit to participate in the class struggle of the proletariat.

Next to Nietzsche, the most outstanding spokesman of a philosophy based on the sentiments of the intellectual is Ibsen. His Doctor Stockmann (An Enemy of the People) is not a socialist, as so many believe, but rather the type of intellectual who is bound to come into conflict with the proletarian movement, and with any popular movement generally, as soon as he attempts to work within it. For the basis of the proletarian movement, as of every democratic movement, is respect for the majority of one’s fellows. A typical intellectual a la Stockmann regards a “compact majority” as a monster which must be overthrown.

From the difference in sentiment between the proletarian and the intellectual, which we have noted above, a conflict can easily arise between the intellectual and the party when the intellectual joins it. That holds equally even if his joining the party does not give rise to any economic difficulties for the intellectual, and even though his theoretical understanding of the movement may be adequate. Not only the very worst elements, but often men of splendid character and devoted to their convictions have on this account suffered shipwreck in the party.

That is why every intellectual must examine himself conscientiously, before joining the party. And that is why the party must examine him to see whether he can integrate himself in the class struggle of the proletariat, and become immersed in it as a simple soldier, without feeling coerced or oppressed. Whoever is capable of this can contribute valuable services to the proletariat according to his talents, and gain great satisfaction from his party activity. Whoever is incapable can expect great friction, disappointment, conflicts, which are of advantage neither to him nor to the party.

An ideal example of an intellectual who thoroughly assimilated the sentiments of a proletarian, and who, although a brilliant writer, quite lost the specific manner of an intellectual, who marched cheerfully with the rank-and-file, who worked in any post assigned to him, who devoted himself wholeheartedly to our great cause, and despised the feeble whinings about the suppression of one's individuality, as individuals trained in the philosophy of Nietzsche and Ibsen are prone to do whenever they happen to be in a minority - that ideal example of the intellectual whom the socialist movement needs, was Wilhelm Liebknecht. We might also mention Marx, who never forced himself to the forefront, and whose hearty discipline in the International, where he often found himself in the minority, was exemplary.

Karl Kautsky