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.
Thursday, August 05, 2010
*From The Archives Of The “Revolutionary History” Journal-Trotskyism in India
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.
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 Wilds Of Cyberspace-The Latest From The "By Any Means Necessary" Website
Click on the title to link to the website mentioned in the headline for the latest news and opinion from that site.
Once More Around the Bloc: Tactics, Democracy, and Mass Politics‘If Protesting is a Conspiracy, Then We are All Proud to Conspire!’
Posted by rowlandkeshena on July 29, 2010
By Derrick O’Keefe. This appeared on Socialist Voice.
On July 17, 200 people marched and rallied in Vancouver, Canada to protest the police repression of protests during the G8/G20 summit meetings in Toronto June 25-27.
Speakers at the rally included representatives of Amnesty International and the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, Derrick O’Keefe of the Vancouver Stopwar coalition, and New Democratic Party MP Don Davies.
Also speaking were three young people who took part in the protests and were arrested, including Montreal resident Natalie Gray, who was shot twice by police rubber bullets then detained and abused for 30 hours. Gray has retained noted civil rights lawyer Clayton Ruby and is suing the Toronto Police. Her talk at the July 17 rally has been published by rabble.ca.
All speakers delivered powerful affirmations of the right to speak out and organize against the policies of the G8/G20 summit gatherings, including the call by Toronto protest organizers and participants for a full and independent public inquiry into the police operation that cost more than $1 billion and incarcerated some 1,000 people.
The following is Derrick O’Keefe’s talk to the Vancouver rally.
hanks to everyone for coming out today. There are rallies like this one across the country today. There is a rally in Toronto, and I’ve heard that there are a lot of bubbles in the air heading over the police’s heads at this rally. Did you hear about this? A young woman was arrested in Toronto during the G20 summit for blowing bubbles, if you can believe that. What do we think of that? ["Shame!"]
Our idea of free speech includes bubble blowing – it’s not a chemical weapon. And this just gives you an idea of what happened in Toronto and what the atmosphere was. I went out to Toronto with the Canadian Peace Alliance. On my first night there, I spoke at a forum about Canadian foreign policy in Afghanistan and in Palestine. I was speaking on a panel with a journalist who writes for The Guardian, named Jesse Rosenfeld.
While we were having this ordinary public forum in a small art space on Bloor Street, we noticed there were police peeking through the windows, about six of them. Someone went out to ask the police, “What are you doing? This is a public forum.” They asked, “Are there any protesters inside?”
So they were treating everyone in Toronto that week as a potential protester, as a potential dissident and therefore as a criminal. This was the climate that was created, and it was obvious. They didn’t need any pretext, they didn’t need anything to justify what they did. This was planned. You could see in the days leading up to the weekend of protest that there were going to be mass arrests. There were 20,000 police officers in Toronto, that’s more than one for every protester who was out for the big day of action on Saturday, June 26.
What do we say about turning a major Canadian city into a police state? ["Shame!"]
What do we say about spending 1.3 billion dollars for a week-end of photo-ops for some of the biggest thugs and war criminals in the world? ["Shame!"]
What do we say to a government that would be party to ordering the biggest mass arrest in Canadian history and then stonewall and deny a full public inquiry?["Shame!"]
That’s why we’re here today.
I know some people have said that the police weren’t really doing their job, but if you think about it, in a society like ours with so many injustices, the police were doing their job, just in a little more over-the-top way than normal.
They were serving and protecting, but who were they serving and protecting at the G20?
They were protecting the criminals who were inside the fence, the criminals who are destroying our environment, the criminals who are waging illegal wars abroad, and the criminals who are attacking your rights every single day, who are attacking the poor people right across the country!
It wasn’t enough that they arrested over 1000 people. They arrested journalists. They arrested Jesse Rosenfeld, the young guy on the forum panel with me; on Saturday night, they punched him in the gut and hauled him away for witnessing a peaceful sit-in in front of the Novotel hotel where G20 delegates were staying.
They arrested bystanders who had just walked out of their homes to see what was going on.
And they even arrested some corporate media reporters live on the air – which helped the media coverage quality. But that is a real shame and an attack on free speech.
It wasn’t enough that they did these mass arrests – today there are still people in jail. I think it’s about a dozen people, facing conspiracy charges. I suppose that’s appropriate, because there was once a time in this country where you could be charged with criminal conspiracy just for getting together and talking about organizing a union. You could be charged with criminal conspiracy if you were a group of women getting together and talking about the fight for the right to vote, or the right to choose. They have always tried to criminalize dissent when people get together and fight for their rights.
We’re here to say that if organizing for social justice, if dissenting, if protesting is a conspiracy – then we are all conspirators, and we are proud to conspire! [Cheers, applause]
And as long as any one of our comrades, as long as any social justice activist is in jail in this country for organizing, we are going to continue to conspire, we are going to continue to protest, and we are going to continue to stand up for our rights! [Cheers, applause]
So let’s continue pushing for a public inquiry, but more importantly, let’s continue asserting our rights. Because you don’t win anything without constant protest, without constant vigilance. Every right that we have won has involved people going to jail, it has involved people going outside of the laws of day sometimes when those laws were unjust, and that continues to be the case today! [Cheers, applause]
We don’t have to beg for our right to protest, we don’t even have to politely ask. Everything we have in that Charter of Rights and Freedoms was demanded, was fought for, and was taken from the government of Canada. We will continue, every day if we have to, to take our rights and to assert our free speech from coast to coast to coast! [Cheers, applause]
So let’s finish up with a little more of that slogan, “This is what democracy looks like! Because this is what democracy looks like, and this is what political participation looks like!”
[Chants: This is what democracy looks like!]
Once More Around the Bloc: Tactics, Democracy, and Mass Politics‘If Protesting is a Conspiracy, Then We are All Proud to Conspire!’
Posted by rowlandkeshena on July 29, 2010
By Derrick O’Keefe. This appeared on Socialist Voice.
On July 17, 200 people marched and rallied in Vancouver, Canada to protest the police repression of protests during the G8/G20 summit meetings in Toronto June 25-27.
Speakers at the rally included representatives of Amnesty International and the British Columbia Civil Liberties Association, Derrick O’Keefe of the Vancouver Stopwar coalition, and New Democratic Party MP Don Davies.
Also speaking were three young people who took part in the protests and were arrested, including Montreal resident Natalie Gray, who was shot twice by police rubber bullets then detained and abused for 30 hours. Gray has retained noted civil rights lawyer Clayton Ruby and is suing the Toronto Police. Her talk at the July 17 rally has been published by rabble.ca.
All speakers delivered powerful affirmations of the right to speak out and organize against the policies of the G8/G20 summit gatherings, including the call by Toronto protest organizers and participants for a full and independent public inquiry into the police operation that cost more than $1 billion and incarcerated some 1,000 people.
The following is Derrick O’Keefe’s talk to the Vancouver rally.
hanks to everyone for coming out today. There are rallies like this one across the country today. There is a rally in Toronto, and I’ve heard that there are a lot of bubbles in the air heading over the police’s heads at this rally. Did you hear about this? A young woman was arrested in Toronto during the G20 summit for blowing bubbles, if you can believe that. What do we think of that? ["Shame!"]
Our idea of free speech includes bubble blowing – it’s not a chemical weapon. And this just gives you an idea of what happened in Toronto and what the atmosphere was. I went out to Toronto with the Canadian Peace Alliance. On my first night there, I spoke at a forum about Canadian foreign policy in Afghanistan and in Palestine. I was speaking on a panel with a journalist who writes for The Guardian, named Jesse Rosenfeld.
While we were having this ordinary public forum in a small art space on Bloor Street, we noticed there were police peeking through the windows, about six of them. Someone went out to ask the police, “What are you doing? This is a public forum.” They asked, “Are there any protesters inside?”
So they were treating everyone in Toronto that week as a potential protester, as a potential dissident and therefore as a criminal. This was the climate that was created, and it was obvious. They didn’t need any pretext, they didn’t need anything to justify what they did. This was planned. You could see in the days leading up to the weekend of protest that there were going to be mass arrests. There were 20,000 police officers in Toronto, that’s more than one for every protester who was out for the big day of action on Saturday, June 26.
What do we say about turning a major Canadian city into a police state? ["Shame!"]
What do we say about spending 1.3 billion dollars for a week-end of photo-ops for some of the biggest thugs and war criminals in the world? ["Shame!"]
What do we say to a government that would be party to ordering the biggest mass arrest in Canadian history and then stonewall and deny a full public inquiry?["Shame!"]
That’s why we’re here today.
I know some people have said that the police weren’t really doing their job, but if you think about it, in a society like ours with so many injustices, the police were doing their job, just in a little more over-the-top way than normal.
They were serving and protecting, but who were they serving and protecting at the G20?
They were protecting the criminals who were inside the fence, the criminals who are destroying our environment, the criminals who are waging illegal wars abroad, and the criminals who are attacking your rights every single day, who are attacking the poor people right across the country!
It wasn’t enough that they arrested over 1000 people. They arrested journalists. They arrested Jesse Rosenfeld, the young guy on the forum panel with me; on Saturday night, they punched him in the gut and hauled him away for witnessing a peaceful sit-in in front of the Novotel hotel where G20 delegates were staying.
They arrested bystanders who had just walked out of their homes to see what was going on.
And they even arrested some corporate media reporters live on the air – which helped the media coverage quality. But that is a real shame and an attack on free speech.
It wasn’t enough that they did these mass arrests – today there are still people in jail. I think it’s about a dozen people, facing conspiracy charges. I suppose that’s appropriate, because there was once a time in this country where you could be charged with criminal conspiracy just for getting together and talking about organizing a union. You could be charged with criminal conspiracy if you were a group of women getting together and talking about the fight for the right to vote, or the right to choose. They have always tried to criminalize dissent when people get together and fight for their rights.
We’re here to say that if organizing for social justice, if dissenting, if protesting is a conspiracy – then we are all conspirators, and we are proud to conspire! [Cheers, applause]
And as long as any one of our comrades, as long as any social justice activist is in jail in this country for organizing, we are going to continue to conspire, we are going to continue to protest, and we are going to continue to stand up for our rights! [Cheers, applause]
So let’s continue pushing for a public inquiry, but more importantly, let’s continue asserting our rights. Because you don’t win anything without constant protest, without constant vigilance. Every right that we have won has involved people going to jail, it has involved people going outside of the laws of day sometimes when those laws were unjust, and that continues to be the case today! [Cheers, applause]
We don’t have to beg for our right to protest, we don’t even have to politely ask. Everything we have in that Charter of Rights and Freedoms was demanded, was fought for, and was taken from the government of Canada. We will continue, every day if we have to, to take our rights and to assert our free speech from coast to coast to coast! [Cheers, applause]
So let’s finish up with a little more of that slogan, “This is what democracy looks like! Because this is what democracy looks like, and this is what political participation looks like!”
[Chants: This is what democracy looks like!]
*From The Wilds Of Cyberspace- The Latest From The "Socialist Appeal" Website-“Socialism” No Longer a Dirty Word
Click on the title to link to the website mentioned in the headline for the latest news and opinion from that site.
Socialism” No Longer a Dirty Word
Written by Socialist Appeal
Tuesday, 06 July 2010
A recent Pew Research Center poll, arguably by the most respected polling company in the country, asked over 1,500 randomly selected Americans to describe their reactions to terms such as “capitalism” and “socialism.” Pew summarized the results of the poll with the title: “Socialism not so negative; capitalism not so positive.”
Only a narrow majority of 52% of all Americans react positively to “capitalism.” Thirty-seven percent say they have a negative reaction and the rest aren’t sure.
Among the “millennial generation,” those currently between 18 and 30, just 43% of Americans describe “capitalism” as positive, while 43%, describe “socialism” as positive. In other words, young people are equally divided between capitalism and socialism.
Among Democrats, 47% see capitalism as positive, while 44% see socialism positively. While it is impossible to know just what people understand by these terms, it is clear that interest in socialism is rising.
According to Boston College professor Charles Derber: “On nearly every major issue, from support minimum wage and unions, preference for diplomacy over force, deep concern for the environment, belief that big business is corrupting democracy, and support for many major social programs including Social Security and Medicare, the progressive position has been strong and relatively stable. If “socialism” means support for these issues, the interpretation of the Pew poll is a Center-Left country. If socialism means a search for a genuine systemic alternative, then America, particularly its youth, is emerging as a majoritarian social democracy, or in a majoritarian search for a more cooperativist, green, and more peaceful and socially just order.”
This comes at a time when the media tells us that the “Tea Party” represents the true face of protest and frustration in the U.S. The last thing they want is to give anyone the idea that the pent-up discontent can be expressed in a leftward direction. But sooner, rather than later, we can be sure it will, and in a big way.
Socialism” No Longer a Dirty Word
Written by Socialist Appeal
Tuesday, 06 July 2010
A recent Pew Research Center poll, arguably by the most respected polling company in the country, asked over 1,500 randomly selected Americans to describe their reactions to terms such as “capitalism” and “socialism.” Pew summarized the results of the poll with the title: “Socialism not so negative; capitalism not so positive.”
Only a narrow majority of 52% of all Americans react positively to “capitalism.” Thirty-seven percent say they have a negative reaction and the rest aren’t sure.
Among the “millennial generation,” those currently between 18 and 30, just 43% of Americans describe “capitalism” as positive, while 43%, describe “socialism” as positive. In other words, young people are equally divided between capitalism and socialism.
Among Democrats, 47% see capitalism as positive, while 44% see socialism positively. While it is impossible to know just what people understand by these terms, it is clear that interest in socialism is rising.
According to Boston College professor Charles Derber: “On nearly every major issue, from support minimum wage and unions, preference for diplomacy over force, deep concern for the environment, belief that big business is corrupting democracy, and support for many major social programs including Social Security and Medicare, the progressive position has been strong and relatively stable. If “socialism” means support for these issues, the interpretation of the Pew poll is a Center-Left country. If socialism means a search for a genuine systemic alternative, then America, particularly its youth, is emerging as a majoritarian social democracy, or in a majoritarian search for a more cooperativist, green, and more peaceful and socially just order.”
This comes at a time when the media tells us that the “Tea Party” represents the true face of protest and frustration in the U.S. The last thing they want is to give anyone the idea that the pent-up discontent can be expressed in a leftward direction. But sooner, rather than later, we can be sure it will, and in a big way.
*From The Archives Of The “Revolutionary History” Journal-Dutch Trotskyism during the Occupation
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.
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.
*Not Ready For Prime Time Class Struggle- Greg Brown's "Marriage Chant"
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Greg Brown and Ani Difranco performing his Marriage Chant.
Markin comment:
On a day when the question of marriage is in the air (the favorable decision in the California Proposition 8 case) I cannot resist the urge to throw out this Greg Brown number. Although I, personally, have had more than my fair share of the marriage ups and downs, the details of which need not detain us here, and thus some of Greg's lyric do not "speak" to me that's okay today. Remember your mother's advise though -Just look before you leap, okay? By the way, change the lyrics here to fit your particular "predicament", (oops) sexual preference.
Marriage ChantGreg Brown Lyrics from his Convenant album
marriage is impossible marriage is dull
your dance card is empty your plate is too full
it's something no sensible person would do
i wish i was married i wish I was married
i wish i was married to you
marriage is unnatural marriage is hard
you rotate your tires you work in the yard
you fight about nothing every hour or two
i wish i was married i wish i was married
i wish i was married to you
the children throw fits in airports & such
they projectile vomit on aunt ruthie at lunch
& your in-laws know just what you should do
but i wish i was married i wish i was married
i wish i was married to you
i'd like to fix you my special broth when you're sick
i'd like to fight with you when you're bein' real thick
there is no end to what i would like to do
i wish i was married i wish i was married
i wish i was married to you
i like the roll in rock & roll
& all i know is you're the sister of my soul
& we make a circle just we two
& i wish i was married i wish i was married
i wish i was married to you
the sky unpredictable mysterious the sea
do we wish most for what never can be
it never can be i guess that's true
but i wish i was married i wish i was married
i wish i was uh huh huh to you
the grass is always greener is what they say to me
if I was your husband maybe I'd agree
i like brown grass & vows that stay true
& i wish i was married i wish i was married
i wish i was married to you to you to you mmhmm to you
Transcribed by Shirley Cottle.
Markin comment:
On a day when the question of marriage is in the air (the favorable decision in the California Proposition 8 case) I cannot resist the urge to throw out this Greg Brown number. Although I, personally, have had more than my fair share of the marriage ups and downs, the details of which need not detain us here, and thus some of Greg's lyric do not "speak" to me that's okay today. Remember your mother's advise though -Just look before you leap, okay? By the way, change the lyrics here to fit your particular "predicament", (oops) sexual preference.
Marriage ChantGreg Brown Lyrics from his Convenant album
marriage is impossible marriage is dull
your dance card is empty your plate is too full
it's something no sensible person would do
i wish i was married i wish I was married
i wish i was married to you
marriage is unnatural marriage is hard
you rotate your tires you work in the yard
you fight about nothing every hour or two
i wish i was married i wish i was married
i wish i was married to you
the children throw fits in airports & such
they projectile vomit on aunt ruthie at lunch
& your in-laws know just what you should do
but i wish i was married i wish i was married
i wish i was married to you
i'd like to fix you my special broth when you're sick
i'd like to fight with you when you're bein' real thick
there is no end to what i would like to do
i wish i was married i wish i was married
i wish i was married to you
i like the roll in rock & roll
& all i know is you're the sister of my soul
& we make a circle just we two
& i wish i was married i wish i was married
i wish i was married to you
the sky unpredictable mysterious the sea
do we wish most for what never can be
it never can be i guess that's true
but i wish i was married i wish i was married
i wish i was uh huh huh to you
the grass is always greener is what they say to me
if I was your husband maybe I'd agree
i like brown grass & vows that stay true
& i wish i was married i wish i was married
i wish i was married to you to you to you mmhmm to you
Transcribed by Shirley Cottle.
* A Nice Legal Victory, For Now, For Gay Marriage Rights-Down With California Prop 8
Click on the headline to link a Good As You Are website online copy of the Federal District Court judge's decision in Perry et. al v. Schwarznegger (the California Proposition 8 case).
Markin comment:
We will take our simple, democratic, do the right thing, get the state and federal government out of the marriage-deciding business anyway, whenever we can. This issue, the issue of gay marriage rights, seems to be gaining traction mainly through the the legal process in the states (and, as here, in the lower federal courts). State voters are behind the curve on this one. So be it-but we will defend this gay rights issue in the streets, if necessary. If the decision in California, the most populous state, finally holds that would be a big, big step in turning this issue around nationwide, especially the way legal decisions get made and law get pushed forward (a little). (Remember Brown v. School Board and Roe v. Wade.) Caveat: the judge stayed the order so there will be further wrangling over the appeals process. Drop the stay and let California gays and lesbians marry right now. Get the bouquets ready to throw.
Markin comment:
We will take our simple, democratic, do the right thing, get the state and federal government out of the marriage-deciding business anyway, whenever we can. This issue, the issue of gay marriage rights, seems to be gaining traction mainly through the the legal process in the states (and, as here, in the lower federal courts). State voters are behind the curve on this one. So be it-but we will defend this gay rights issue in the streets, if necessary. If the decision in California, the most populous state, finally holds that would be a big, big step in turning this issue around nationwide, especially the way legal decisions get made and law get pushed forward (a little). (Remember Brown v. School Board and Roe v. Wade.) Caveat: the judge stayed the order so there will be further wrangling over the appeals process. Drop the stay and let California gays and lesbians marry right now. Get the bouquets ready to throw.
Wednesday, August 04, 2010
*From The Archives Of The "Spartacist" Journal- "Terrorism And Communism"- A Guest Commentary
Click on the headline to link to a Spartacist theoretical journal entry (August-September 1970) from The International Communist League (via the International Bolshevik Tendency website) on Terrorism and Communism.
Markin comment:
This above-linked article is still a pretty good general Communist exposition on this subject.
Note: In the interest of political clarity please be aware that the material provided here from the early issues of the Spartacist theoretical journal archives of what is now the International Communist League (ICL, formerly International Spartacist Tendency, ISpT) is posted via the International Bolshevik Tendency website. I am not a political supporter of either organization in the accepted Leninist sense of that term, although, more often than not, and at times and on certain questions very much more often than not, my own political views and those of the International Communist League coincide. I am, and I make no bones about it, a fervent supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a social and legal defense organization linked to the ICL and committed, in the traditions of the IWW, the early International Labor Defense- legal defense arm of the Communist International, and the early defense work of the American Socialist Workers Party, to the struggles for freedom of all class-war prisoners and defense of other related social struggles.
Markin comment:
This above-linked article is still a pretty good general Communist exposition on this subject.
Note: In the interest of political clarity please be aware that the material provided here from the early issues of the Spartacist theoretical journal archives of what is now the International Communist League (ICL, formerly International Spartacist Tendency, ISpT) is posted via the International Bolshevik Tendency website. I am not a political supporter of either organization in the accepted Leninist sense of that term, although, more often than not, and at times and on certain questions very much more often than not, my own political views and those of the International Communist League coincide. I am, and I make no bones about it, a fervent supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a social and legal defense organization linked to the ICL and committed, in the traditions of the IWW, the early International Labor Defense- legal defense arm of the Communist International, and the early defense work of the American Socialist Workers Party, to the struggles for freedom of all class-war prisoners and defense of other related social struggles.
*From The Wilds Of Cyberspace-The Latest From The "International Bolshevik Tendency" Website- On The Black Bloc
Click on the title to link to the website mentioned in the headline for the latest news and opinion from that site.
Letter to Fightback (IMT)
on the Black Bloc et al
3 July 2010
Toronto
Comrades,
On 30 June, four supporters of the International Bolshevik Tendency attended the “townhall” meeting on police repression during the G-20 that you co-sponsored with the Esplanade Community Group and the Toronto Young New Democrats. As we were not called on during the discussion round, we are writing to clarify our rather sharp differences with the leadership of Fightback and the International Marxist Tendency (IMT) on this important question.
To begin with the obvious: the crackdown on dissent we have witnessed in the past week powerfully vindicates the Marxist proposition that the capitalist state is essentially a weapon wielded by the exploiters against their victims. The police aggression toward bystanders and protesters alike—with Québécois youth particularly targeted—was the largest display of state repression seen in Canada for decades. Tens of thousands of people have seen with their own eyes how the “fundamental rights and freedoms” supposedly guaranteed by law can be arbitrarily (and secretly) shredded at the whim of the ruling class.
The duty of the left and workers’ movement is to demand the freedom of all those arrested and thrown into the overcrowded cages at the “Torontonamo” detention center and the dropping of all charges—including those laid for breaking windows or torching cop cars. Marxists do not share the illusion that trashing a few symbols of corporate and/or state power will somehow pave the way for a revolutionary challenge to capitalism. But we understand the anger against the manifest injustice of the capitalist world order that motivates young militants, and we seek to win the best of them to a strategy that can actually succeed.
Echoing Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair, who denounced “Black Bloc terrorists” for the trivial property damage (Toronto Sun, 29 June), various liberal commentators have decried the “violence” and criticized the cops for not going after the Black Bloc “hooligans” hard enough. At the Monday, 28 June rally to demand the release of the prisoners, Naomi Klein told the cops: “Don’t play public relations—do your goddamned job!” NDP leader Jack Layton earlier declared that “vandalism is criminal and totally unacceptable” (National Post, 27 June).
Marxists do not advocate the tactics of the Black Bloc because, however emotionally fulfilling for the individuals involved, they are at bottom an expression of frustration by powerless and socially isolated (if personally courageous) militants. Their focus on striking symbolic blows against the oppressors is conditioned by the absence of a mass working-class movement with a level of political consciousness sufficient to potentially overturn capitalist rule.
This issue has a history that stretches back to the anarchist “propaganda of the deed” notion of the late 19th century. Then, as now, the capitalist rulers made use of isolated actions by individual militants (sometimes instigated by police agents provocateurs) as a justification for repression. Yet anyone with an ounce of revolutionary commitment knows that the real criminals are the imperialist mass murderers who were wined and dined behind the G-20 security fence, and that the young militants who aspired to pull it down are on our side of the class line.
The Marxist position on isolated acts of “left-wing terrorism”—a category that could hardly be stretched to include the relatively minor property damage that took place during the G-20—was summed up by Leon Trotsky as follows:
“We Marxists consider the tactic of individual terror inexpedient in the tasks of the liberating struggle of the proletariat as well as oppressed nationalities. A single isolated hero cannot replace the masses. But we understand only too clearly the inevitability of such convulsive acts of despair and vengeance. All our emotions, all our sympathies are with the self-sacrificing avengers even though they have been unable to discover the correct road.”
—“For Grynszpan,” February 1939
The response of much of the self-proclaimed “revolutionary” left to the recent events in Toronto has been rather different. A Socialist Action leaflet observed:
“The anger of the Bloc-istas against the social injustices perpetuated by the G20 is understandable. But their tactics are worse than deplorable. They proved to be straight men for Harper’s predictable punch lines about how ‘security’ spending was justified. The Bloc-istas also gave the cops ammunition to brutalize and jail over 900 innocents, using expanded police powers of search and arrest granted by a secret Ontario Liberal Cabinet decision just weeks prior to the summits.
“Now that a majority of the 900-plus detainees have been released without charge, questions are multiplying. Why did 20,000 cops, including literally hundreds of them within spitting distance of burning vehicles and shattering store windows, just let it happen? Was it an exercise in policing or PR? And if cop claims are true that they had infiltrated the Bloc-istas, how many police were involved in prompting, as opposed to just spying on, the planners of mayhem? NDP and Labour leaders should be expressing rage over these issues instead of obsessing over petty property damage.”
—“Summits of Deceit and Repression,” distributed on 30 June
The description of the Black Bloc’s actions as “worse than deplorable,” because the cops used them as a pretext for rounding up “innocents,” aligns Socialist Action’s position with Jack Layton’s denunciation of “criminal” behavior. There is a logic to politics, and the NDP’s role as a prop for the capitalist status quo requires those who want to find a home in the party of the labor aristocracy to accept its bourgeois distinction between “innocents” and “criminals” among the protesters.
The leadership of Fightback has been even worse than Socialist Action in its repudiation of the young militants: “The labour movement must now fully denounce the black blockers and draw a dividing line—they are not welcome in our movement or on our demonstrations” (www.marxist.ca, 27 June). A few days later you went further: “We state that the Black Bloc are not part of our movement and there is no difference between them and police provocateurs. As seen in other protests, some of them may in fact be police agents” (www.marxist.ca, 30 June). In your 27 June statement you even claimed that: “The workers at Novotel, the trade unionists at Queen’s Park, and the peaceful demonstrators downtown were all beaten, abused, and arrested because of the black bloc…” (emphasis added). Suggesting that, without the Black Bloc, the police would have respected everyone’s “civil rights” can only sow dangerous illusions in the bourgeois state. Marxism teaches that the way the police treat strikers, minorities, leftists, etc. is not determined by legal niceties but rather by the exigencies of maintaining capitalist domination and control.
Fightback’s apparent willingness to blame the Black Bloc for the behavior of the cops contrasts with various accounts in the right-wing press. A columnist in the Toronto Sun (30 June) headlined her report of how a bicycle cop gave her a “bruised elbow and tricep” at the peaceful 28 June demonstration: “Police brutality—on 2 wheels.” The “Report on Business” section of the Globe and Mail (28 June) contained an article in which the author, complaining that the police heavy-handedness was “bad for business,” sardonically commented:
“Come to Toronto, for work or pleasure, and enjoy having your civil liberties trampled and your right to free expression stifled. Avail yourself of our hospitality in a crowded detention pen, with free stale buns and water when (or if) your hosts get around to it. Partake of an invigorating massage, courtesy of police officers wielding truncheons. The best part—there’s no charge! Except that seems to mean the cops will pick you up, hold you, then let you go without ever following through criminal charges or prosecution, suggesting they had nothing on you in the first place.”
The refusal to defend the Black Bloc is particularly scandalous in light of the IMT’s history of supporting police “unions” and “strikes.” A year ago, Fightback’s own Alex Grant wrote that the “lower ranks of the police and army are made up of working class boys in uniform” (www.marxist.ca, 28 May 2009). Rob Sewell, a leading member of the IMT’s British section, spoke glowingly of a “sea of burly blokes with white base-ball caps” in describing a march by London police to demand higher wages for their thuggery (www.marxist.com, 29 January 2008). The IMT’s view of cops as “workers in uniform” is not only a difficult pill to swallow for those protesters who fell under their batons—it flatly contradicts Trotsky’s position that a “worker who becomes a policeman in the service of the capitalist state is a bourgeois cop, not a worker” (What Next? Vital Questions for the German Proletariat, January 1932).
Your demand that the subjectively revolutionary youths who smashed a few windows during the G-20 be driven out of the movement is as alien to Marxism as your claim that the cops who rounded up and imprisoned protesters are simply “workers in uniform.” This is not Leninism, but social-democratic reformism. The first step for members of Fightback who are serious about building a revolutionary socialist party is to renounce this position and demand that all charges against all G-20 protesters be dropped immediately.
Trotskyist Greetings,
Josh Decker
for the International Bolshevik Tendency
Letter to Fightback (IMT)
on the Black Bloc et al
3 July 2010
Toronto
Comrades,
On 30 June, four supporters of the International Bolshevik Tendency attended the “townhall” meeting on police repression during the G-20 that you co-sponsored with the Esplanade Community Group and the Toronto Young New Democrats. As we were not called on during the discussion round, we are writing to clarify our rather sharp differences with the leadership of Fightback and the International Marxist Tendency (IMT) on this important question.
To begin with the obvious: the crackdown on dissent we have witnessed in the past week powerfully vindicates the Marxist proposition that the capitalist state is essentially a weapon wielded by the exploiters against their victims. The police aggression toward bystanders and protesters alike—with Québécois youth particularly targeted—was the largest display of state repression seen in Canada for decades. Tens of thousands of people have seen with their own eyes how the “fundamental rights and freedoms” supposedly guaranteed by law can be arbitrarily (and secretly) shredded at the whim of the ruling class.
The duty of the left and workers’ movement is to demand the freedom of all those arrested and thrown into the overcrowded cages at the “Torontonamo” detention center and the dropping of all charges—including those laid for breaking windows or torching cop cars. Marxists do not share the illusion that trashing a few symbols of corporate and/or state power will somehow pave the way for a revolutionary challenge to capitalism. But we understand the anger against the manifest injustice of the capitalist world order that motivates young militants, and we seek to win the best of them to a strategy that can actually succeed.
Echoing Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair, who denounced “Black Bloc terrorists” for the trivial property damage (Toronto Sun, 29 June), various liberal commentators have decried the “violence” and criticized the cops for not going after the Black Bloc “hooligans” hard enough. At the Monday, 28 June rally to demand the release of the prisoners, Naomi Klein told the cops: “Don’t play public relations—do your goddamned job!” NDP leader Jack Layton earlier declared that “vandalism is criminal and totally unacceptable” (National Post, 27 June).
Marxists do not advocate the tactics of the Black Bloc because, however emotionally fulfilling for the individuals involved, they are at bottom an expression of frustration by powerless and socially isolated (if personally courageous) militants. Their focus on striking symbolic blows against the oppressors is conditioned by the absence of a mass working-class movement with a level of political consciousness sufficient to potentially overturn capitalist rule.
This issue has a history that stretches back to the anarchist “propaganda of the deed” notion of the late 19th century. Then, as now, the capitalist rulers made use of isolated actions by individual militants (sometimes instigated by police agents provocateurs) as a justification for repression. Yet anyone with an ounce of revolutionary commitment knows that the real criminals are the imperialist mass murderers who were wined and dined behind the G-20 security fence, and that the young militants who aspired to pull it down are on our side of the class line.
The Marxist position on isolated acts of “left-wing terrorism”—a category that could hardly be stretched to include the relatively minor property damage that took place during the G-20—was summed up by Leon Trotsky as follows:
“We Marxists consider the tactic of individual terror inexpedient in the tasks of the liberating struggle of the proletariat as well as oppressed nationalities. A single isolated hero cannot replace the masses. But we understand only too clearly the inevitability of such convulsive acts of despair and vengeance. All our emotions, all our sympathies are with the self-sacrificing avengers even though they have been unable to discover the correct road.”
—“For Grynszpan,” February 1939
The response of much of the self-proclaimed “revolutionary” left to the recent events in Toronto has been rather different. A Socialist Action leaflet observed:
“The anger of the Bloc-istas against the social injustices perpetuated by the G20 is understandable. But their tactics are worse than deplorable. They proved to be straight men for Harper’s predictable punch lines about how ‘security’ spending was justified. The Bloc-istas also gave the cops ammunition to brutalize and jail over 900 innocents, using expanded police powers of search and arrest granted by a secret Ontario Liberal Cabinet decision just weeks prior to the summits.
“Now that a majority of the 900-plus detainees have been released without charge, questions are multiplying. Why did 20,000 cops, including literally hundreds of them within spitting distance of burning vehicles and shattering store windows, just let it happen? Was it an exercise in policing or PR? And if cop claims are true that they had infiltrated the Bloc-istas, how many police were involved in prompting, as opposed to just spying on, the planners of mayhem? NDP and Labour leaders should be expressing rage over these issues instead of obsessing over petty property damage.”
—“Summits of Deceit and Repression,” distributed on 30 June
The description of the Black Bloc’s actions as “worse than deplorable,” because the cops used them as a pretext for rounding up “innocents,” aligns Socialist Action’s position with Jack Layton’s denunciation of “criminal” behavior. There is a logic to politics, and the NDP’s role as a prop for the capitalist status quo requires those who want to find a home in the party of the labor aristocracy to accept its bourgeois distinction between “innocents” and “criminals” among the protesters.
The leadership of Fightback has been even worse than Socialist Action in its repudiation of the young militants: “The labour movement must now fully denounce the black blockers and draw a dividing line—they are not welcome in our movement or on our demonstrations” (www.marxist.ca, 27 June). A few days later you went further: “We state that the Black Bloc are not part of our movement and there is no difference between them and police provocateurs. As seen in other protests, some of them may in fact be police agents” (www.marxist.ca, 30 June). In your 27 June statement you even claimed that: “The workers at Novotel, the trade unionists at Queen’s Park, and the peaceful demonstrators downtown were all beaten, abused, and arrested because of the black bloc…” (emphasis added). Suggesting that, without the Black Bloc, the police would have respected everyone’s “civil rights” can only sow dangerous illusions in the bourgeois state. Marxism teaches that the way the police treat strikers, minorities, leftists, etc. is not determined by legal niceties but rather by the exigencies of maintaining capitalist domination and control.
Fightback’s apparent willingness to blame the Black Bloc for the behavior of the cops contrasts with various accounts in the right-wing press. A columnist in the Toronto Sun (30 June) headlined her report of how a bicycle cop gave her a “bruised elbow and tricep” at the peaceful 28 June demonstration: “Police brutality—on 2 wheels.” The “Report on Business” section of the Globe and Mail (28 June) contained an article in which the author, complaining that the police heavy-handedness was “bad for business,” sardonically commented:
“Come to Toronto, for work or pleasure, and enjoy having your civil liberties trampled and your right to free expression stifled. Avail yourself of our hospitality in a crowded detention pen, with free stale buns and water when (or if) your hosts get around to it. Partake of an invigorating massage, courtesy of police officers wielding truncheons. The best part—there’s no charge! Except that seems to mean the cops will pick you up, hold you, then let you go without ever following through criminal charges or prosecution, suggesting they had nothing on you in the first place.”
The refusal to defend the Black Bloc is particularly scandalous in light of the IMT’s history of supporting police “unions” and “strikes.” A year ago, Fightback’s own Alex Grant wrote that the “lower ranks of the police and army are made up of working class boys in uniform” (www.marxist.ca, 28 May 2009). Rob Sewell, a leading member of the IMT’s British section, spoke glowingly of a “sea of burly blokes with white base-ball caps” in describing a march by London police to demand higher wages for their thuggery (www.marxist.com, 29 January 2008). The IMT’s view of cops as “workers in uniform” is not only a difficult pill to swallow for those protesters who fell under their batons—it flatly contradicts Trotsky’s position that a “worker who becomes a policeman in the service of the capitalist state is a bourgeois cop, not a worker” (What Next? Vital Questions for the German Proletariat, January 1932).
Your demand that the subjectively revolutionary youths who smashed a few windows during the G-20 be driven out of the movement is as alien to Marxism as your claim that the cops who rounded up and imprisoned protesters are simply “workers in uniform.” This is not Leninism, but social-democratic reformism. The first step for members of Fightback who are serious about building a revolutionary socialist party is to renounce this position and demand that all charges against all G-20 protesters be dropped immediately.
Trotskyist Greetings,
Josh Decker
for the International Bolshevik Tendency
*From "The Rag Blog"- Recent Class-War Prisoner Marilyn Buck Passes On- Free All Class-War Prisoners Now!
Click on the headline to link to a The Rag Blog entry- Recent Class-War Prisoner Marilyn Buck Passes On
Markin comment:
I will just repeat here a comment that I have made previously on an entry on "The Rag Blog" on Marilyn Buck's case:
"Every young leftist militant, hell, every old leftist militant and even those who have lost their way since the 1960s and forgot what we were fighting for then, and now, should read this story. It tells two tales- if you go up against the American imperial state you better be ready to win, or else. And it also tells that there really was some very, very good human material, like Marilyn Buck, in the 1960s with which we could have built that better world we were fighting for if we could have understood the first tale better. I wish, and I wish like crazy, that we had a few more, actually quite a few more, militants like Marilyn Buck these days. Let's get moving. All honor to Marilyn Buck and the other fighters, like Mumia, still behind bars for "seeking that newer world."
Farewell, fellow liberation fighter.
**************
Thursday, September 27, 2007 Bob Feldman
`Marilyn Buck'
Way out in California
Is where they have her locked
For she is strong and beautiful
And her name is Marilyn Buck.
They sentenced her to eighty years
Because she is morally tough
Her rebel soul they cannot break
And her name is Marilyn Buck.
From Texas to Chicago
The War she tried to stop
She fought alongside Black comrades
And her name is Marilyn Buck.
Assata Shakur, from prison freed,
Did give them all a shock
And another rebel they could not find
Her name was Marilyn Buck.
The Capitol bombed, where the Congress met
To finance CIA plots
And one of the resisters charged
Her name was Marilyn Buck.
Political prisoners still locked up
The list is very long
There’s Mutulu Shakur and Sekou Odinga
And each one deserves their own song.
There’s Sundiata Acoli and Mumia
And Herman Bell and Robert Seth Hayes
And Jamil Al-Amin and the Africas
And Carlos Alberto Torres.
So if you get discouraged
And wish you had more luck
Remember the freedom fighters
And the soulful Marilyn Buck.
Yes, way out in California
Is where they have her locked
For she is strong and beautiful
And her name is Marilyn Buck.
To listen to this protest folk song, you can go to the following music site link:
http://www.last.fm/music/Bob+A.+Feldman/Biographical+Folk+Songs/Marilyn+Buck
The Marilyn Buck protest folk song is sung to the tune of the traditional folk song, “Mary Hamilton.” Marilyn Buck ( http://www.prisonactivist.org/pps+pows/marilynbuck/ is currently imprisoned in the Pleasanton federal prison in Dublin, California. For more information about the current situation of U.S. political prisoners like Mutulu Shakur, Sekou Odinga, Sundiata Acoli, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Herman Bell, Robert Seth Hayes, Jamil Al-Amin (f/k/a H.Rap Brown), the Africas and Carlos Alberto Torres, you can check out the Jericho Amnesty Movement site at http://www.thejerichomovement.com/ and the Prison Activist Resource Center at www.prisonactivist.org/pps+pows/ .
Markin comment:
I will just repeat here a comment that I have made previously on an entry on "The Rag Blog" on Marilyn Buck's case:
"Every young leftist militant, hell, every old leftist militant and even those who have lost their way since the 1960s and forgot what we were fighting for then, and now, should read this story. It tells two tales- if you go up against the American imperial state you better be ready to win, or else. And it also tells that there really was some very, very good human material, like Marilyn Buck, in the 1960s with which we could have built that better world we were fighting for if we could have understood the first tale better. I wish, and I wish like crazy, that we had a few more, actually quite a few more, militants like Marilyn Buck these days. Let's get moving. All honor to Marilyn Buck and the other fighters, like Mumia, still behind bars for "seeking that newer world."
Farewell, fellow liberation fighter.
**************
Thursday, September 27, 2007 Bob Feldman
`Marilyn Buck'
Way out in California
Is where they have her locked
For she is strong and beautiful
And her name is Marilyn Buck.
They sentenced her to eighty years
Because she is morally tough
Her rebel soul they cannot break
And her name is Marilyn Buck.
From Texas to Chicago
The War she tried to stop
She fought alongside Black comrades
And her name is Marilyn Buck.
Assata Shakur, from prison freed,
Did give them all a shock
And another rebel they could not find
Her name was Marilyn Buck.
The Capitol bombed, where the Congress met
To finance CIA plots
And one of the resisters charged
Her name was Marilyn Buck.
Political prisoners still locked up
The list is very long
There’s Mutulu Shakur and Sekou Odinga
And each one deserves their own song.
There’s Sundiata Acoli and Mumia
And Herman Bell and Robert Seth Hayes
And Jamil Al-Amin and the Africas
And Carlos Alberto Torres.
So if you get discouraged
And wish you had more luck
Remember the freedom fighters
And the soulful Marilyn Buck.
Yes, way out in California
Is where they have her locked
For she is strong and beautiful
And her name is Marilyn Buck.
To listen to this protest folk song, you can go to the following music site link:
http://www.last.fm/music/Bob+A.+Feldman/Biographical+Folk+Songs/Marilyn+Buck
The Marilyn Buck protest folk song is sung to the tune of the traditional folk song, “Mary Hamilton.” Marilyn Buck ( http://www.prisonactivist.org/pps+pows/marilynbuck/ is currently imprisoned in the Pleasanton federal prison in Dublin, California. For more information about the current situation of U.S. political prisoners like Mutulu Shakur, Sekou Odinga, Sundiata Acoli, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Herman Bell, Robert Seth Hayes, Jamil Al-Amin (f/k/a H.Rap Brown), the Africas and Carlos Alberto Torres, you can check out the Jericho Amnesty Movement site at http://www.thejerichomovement.com/ and the Prison Activist Resource Center at www.prisonactivist.org/pps+pows/ .
Tuesday, August 03, 2010
*Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By-Phil Och's "Sailors And Soldiers Song"
Click on the title to link to a site to hear Phil Och's Sailors and Soldiers Song.
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.
**********
Sailors and Soldiers Lyrics
Phil Ochs
Sailors and soldiers
uniformed shoulders
they're growing older
over the sea
The troops they are leaving
firmly believing
no reason for greiving
Far from the banners,
Far from the glamour,
Far from the planners,
Who sent them to die
herded like cattle
they head for the battle
their rifles will rattle
over the sea
Too young to be shaving
yet the flags they are waving
for the fury they are braving
over the sea
proudly parading
with their medals they are
but their glory is fading
over the sea
Sailors and soldiers
Sailors and soldiers
Sailors and soldiers
&c...
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.
**********
Sailors and Soldiers Lyrics
Phil Ochs
Sailors and soldiers
uniformed shoulders
they're growing older
over the sea
The troops they are leaving
firmly believing
no reason for greiving
Far from the banners,
Far from the glamour,
Far from the planners,
Who sent them to die
herded like cattle
they head for the battle
their rifles will rattle
over the sea
Too young to be shaving
yet the flags they are waving
for the fury they are braving
over the sea
proudly parading
with their medals they are
but their glory is fading
over the sea
Sailors and soldiers
Sailors and soldiers
Sailors and soldiers
&c...
*Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By-Pete Seeger's "Turn, Turn, Turn"
Click on the title to link a YouTube film clip of Pete Seeger and Judy Collins perfroming Turn, Turn, Turn from his 1960s Rainbow Quest television show.
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.
********
Markin comment:
I would add here, if I were a song writer- a time for class struggle and a time for anti-imperialist, anti-war struggle. You figure out the melody, okay.
To Everything (Turn, Turn, Turn)-Pete Seeger lyrics
There is a season (Turn, Turn, Turn)
And a time for every purpose, under Heaven
A time to be born, a time to die
A time to plant, a time to reap
A time to kill, a time to heal
A time to laugh, a time to weep
To Everything (Turn, Turn, Turn)
There is a season (Turn, Turn, Turn)
And a time for every purpose, under Heaven
A time to build up, a time to break down
A time to dance, a time to mourn
A time to cast away stones, a time to gather stones together
To Everything (Turn, Turn, Turn)
There is a season (Turn, Turn, Turn)
And a time for every purpose, under Heaven
A time of love, a time of hate
A time of war, a time of peace
A time you may embrace, a time to refrain from embracing
To Everything (Turn, Turn, Turn)
There is a season (Turn, Turn, Turn)
And a time for every purpose, under Heaven
A time to gain, a time to lose
A time to rend, a time to sew
A time to love, a time to hate
A time for peace, I swear it's not too late
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.
********
Markin comment:
I would add here, if I were a song writer- a time for class struggle and a time for anti-imperialist, anti-war struggle. You figure out the melody, okay.
To Everything (Turn, Turn, Turn)-Pete Seeger lyrics
There is a season (Turn, Turn, Turn)
And a time for every purpose, under Heaven
A time to be born, a time to die
A time to plant, a time to reap
A time to kill, a time to heal
A time to laugh, a time to weep
To Everything (Turn, Turn, Turn)
There is a season (Turn, Turn, Turn)
And a time for every purpose, under Heaven
A time to build up, a time to break down
A time to dance, a time to mourn
A time to cast away stones, a time to gather stones together
To Everything (Turn, Turn, Turn)
There is a season (Turn, Turn, Turn)
And a time for every purpose, under Heaven
A time of love, a time of hate
A time of war, a time of peace
A time you may embrace, a time to refrain from embracing
To Everything (Turn, Turn, Turn)
There is a season (Turn, Turn, Turn)
And a time for every purpose, under Heaven
A time to gain, a time to lose
A time to rend, a time to sew
A time to love, a time to hate
A time for peace, I swear it's not too late
*From The Wilds Of Cyberspace-The Latest From The "International Socialist Organization" Website
Click on the title to link to the website mentioned in the headline for the latest news and opinion from that site.
ISR Issue 72, July–August 2010
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Economic crisis and class struggle
Are recessions better for the left or right, asks Phil Gasper?
The most fundamental argument in favor of socialism is that capitalism is an irrational system that over the long term cannot meet the basic needs of the majority of the population because of its tendency to go into economic crisis. But what if economic crisis leads not to the growth of the left but to the rise of the far right? This is the argument of the radical economist Doug Henwood in a short article published in May on the MRzine Web site.
Henwood begins by criticizing “radicals [who] have fantasized that a serious recession—or depression—would lead to mass radicalization,” and he goes on to argue that there is empirical support for the opposite view—that economic crisis actually benefits the far right not the radical left. The evidence he cites is recent research by the economists Markus Brükner and Hans Peter Grüner. Brükner and Grüner studied sixteen European countries and discovered that between 1970 and 2002, every 1 percent decline in economic growth in these countries was associated with an increase in the vote share of far right and nationalist parties of between 1 and 2 percent.
By contrast, Brükner and Grüner found no corresponding increase in electoral support for communist parties during the same periods of economic decline. Henwood concludes that “recessions are not good for the left and are good for the right,” and that Brükner and Grüner’s research “helps explain the rise of the Tea Partiers and other strange life forms on the right.”
The first thing to note is that this is an incredibly narrow study on which to base the sweeping conclusion that “recessions are not good for the left and are good for the right.” In fact Henwood himself immediately notes one “major exception,” namely the United States during the Great Depression, when economic crisis led to a series of mass strikes, the birth of industrial unions, and the growth of the Communist Party to about 80,000 members. However, he adds that this was only because the scale of the crisis was so severe, with unemployment rates reaching 25 percent and, additionally, the “Great Depression didn’t do much for the left in Europe.”
In fact that last claim is not accurate. While the far right obviously grew as a result of the Depression, eventually seizing power in Germany, Spain, and Austria, the left also grew in many European countries, and there was nothing inevitable about its ultimate defeat. In Germany, the Social Democratic and Communist Parties had millions of supporters, and in the election of November 1932, the last genuinely free vote before Hitler took power, their combined support was several percentage points ahead of the Nazis. The tragedy was that the two left-wing parties were fatally divided and unable to agree on a common strategy to defeat the far right in the streets as well as at the ballot box. Similarly in Spain the left grew significantly. It eventually lost the civil war as a result of major conflicts between the different left-wing parties and outside support for Franco’s fascists.
Second, economic crises are a fact of life under capitalism, and one of the main arguments in favor of a different kind of economic system. Henwood instructs the left to “stop hoping for the worst,” but our hopes either way are irrelevant to how the economy actually performs, and severe recessions will periodically take place no matter what we think about them. If it were true that in such circumstances the right will grow and the left will not, there would be grounds for thoroughgoing political pessimism. During periods of economic growth and stability, the radical transformation of society would seem unnecessary, while during periods of economic crisis it would be impossible.
Henwood is certainly right about one thing—there is no automatic relationship between economic crisis and “mass radicalization.” But it is equally wrong to think that there is an automatic connection between crisis and the growth of the right. Whether or not an economic slump results in an increase in class struggle and gains for the left depends on a whole set of complex factors, including the nature of the crisis and the constellation of political forces going into it.
Perhaps no one has written about the relationship between economic booms, slumps, and political consciousness with more insight than the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky, who addressed these issues several times in the 1920s and the 1930s. In a report he wrote for the Communist International in 1921, Trotsky noted that, “there is no automatic dependence of the proletarian revolutionary movement upon a crisis. There is only a dialectical interaction. It is essential to understand this.” The example that Trotksy used to illustrate this point is worth quoting at length:
Let us look at the relations in Russia. The 1905 revolution was defeated. The workers bore great sacrifices. In 1906 and 1907 the last revolutionary flare-ups occurred and by the autumn of 1907 a great world crisis broke out. The signal for it was given by Wall Street’s Black Friday. Throughout 1907 and 1908 and 1909 the most terrible crisis reigned in Russia too. It killed the movement completely, because the workers had suffered so greatly during the struggle that this depression could act only to dishearten them. There were many disputes among us over what would lead to the revolution: a crisis or a favorable conjuncture?
At that time many of us defended the viewpoint that the Russian revolutionary movement could be regenerated only by a favorable economic conjuncture. And that is what took place. In 1910, 1911 and 1912, there was an improvement in our economic situation and a favorable conjuncture which acted to reassemble the demoralized and devitalized workers who had lost their courage. They realized again how important they were in production; and they passed over to an offensive, first in the economic field and later in the political field as well. On the eve of the war [in 1914] the working class had become so consolidated, thanks to this period of prosperity, that it was able to pass to a direct assault.
This period of class militancy was cut short by the outbreak of the First World War, when a wave of patriotism swept over the country, engulfing all but the most class-conscious workers. But as the war dragged on and Russia suffered massive casualties, patriotism gave way to cynicism and then anger, which eventually culminated in the successful revolutions of 1917.
One conclusion that Trotsky drew from examples like these was that class struggle was not simply the result of economic slump or of economic boom, but was often the result of the rapid shift from slump to boom and back again. Slumps can show the necessity for change, but they can also weaken the power of the working class as some lose their jobs and others become desperate to hang on to theirs. A return to economic growth can give workers renewed confidence to make significant demands, but if the new expansion is long-lived, the possibility for radical change will be lost until a new crisis begins. Here is Trotsky again:
Many of you will recall that Marx and Engels wrote in 1851—when the boom was at its peak—that it was necessary at that time to recognize that the Revolution of 1848 had terminated, or, at any rate, had been interrupted until the next crisis. Engels wrote that while the crisis of 1847 was the mother of revolution, the boom of 1849–51 was the mother of triumphant counter-revolution. It would, however, be very one-sided and utterly false to interpret these judgments in the sense that a crisis invariably engenders revolutionary action while a boom, on the contrary, pacifies the working class…
The irresolute and half-way Revolution of 1848 did, however, sweep away the remnants of the regime of guilds and serfdom and thereby extended the framework of capitalist development. Under these conditions and these conditions alone, the boom of 1851 marked the beginning of an entire epoch of capitalist prosperity which lasted till 1873. In citing Engels it is very dangerous to overlook these basic facts…. At issue here is not whether an improvement in the conjuncture is possible, but whether the fluctuations of the conjuncture are proceeding along an ascending or descending curve. This is the most important aspect of the whole question.
So it was the long period of capitalist expansion in the 1850s and 1860s that stabilized the system and led to a relatively low level of class struggle. By contrast, the period after the First World War, according to Trotsky, was one of long-term instability and decline, during which “upswings can only be of a superficial…character, while crises become more and more prolonged and deeper going.”
The effect of booms and slumps will thus depend in part on the underlying state of the economy—whether it is in a period of sustained expansion in which recessions are relatively minor interruptions, or whether it is in a period of decline in which the booms are short-lived and sustained growth cannot be achieved.
Today we find ourselves in a period of long-term economic instability, in which a return to sustained growth seems unlikely any time in the near future. During the past decade the U.S. economy has experienced two recessions—the most recent, the worst since the Great Depression—and low growth. Even when the economy was growing in the middle of the decade real wages continued to decline. Now the economy is growing again, but unemployment remains high (the real figure is around 15 percent) and there is a strong chance that there will soon be another recession.
Will the current period prove more favorable to the left or to the right? Over the past eighteen months we have certainly seen the growth of the right, including vicious scapegoating of immigrants and the emergence of the Tea Party, with its attacks on “big government” and the supposed socialism of the Obama administration, and its strong undercurrent of racism. Some commentators, including Noam Chomsky, are convinced that there is a real threat of fascism, with parallels to the decline of Weimar Germany and the rise of the Nazis.
There is certainly no reason to be complacent about these developments, but the comparison with Germany in the 1930s makes little sense. Far from being a mass movement, the journalists Anthony DiMaggio and Paul Street describe the Tea Party as “a top-down interest group led by national and local political officials and financed by corporate America” and “fundamentally dependent upon the Republican Party.”
While the Tea Party has been able to mobilize a few thousand people and demonstrations around the country, these have been dwarfed by recent progressive mobilizations, including hundreds of thousands demonstrating for LGBT and immigrant rights. But progressive demonstrations generally receive very little media attention, while the cable channels—particularly, of course, Fox News—have given Tea Party events a level of exposure totally disproportionate to the numbers involved.
DiMaggio and Street argue that, despite some impressive recent mobilizations, much of the left has been “significantly pacified and demobilized by Obama and the corporate Democrats, has surely failed to capitalize on the recent economic downturn, and has generally failed to establish a progressive movement in the short term.” But they also point out that “the Tea Party represents a concession from Republican Party elites that they (along with their Democratic counterparts) no longer enjoy much legitimacy among the American people. Their only way of appealing to voters is to appear as if they are not political leaders, but ‘average people’ taking part in a populist uprising against a corrupt political system.”
Opinion polls show that there has been a significant shift to the left in terms of political attitudes over the past few years. In May, a survey by the Pew Research Center found that 43 percent of people under the age of thirty in the United States view socialism favorably, exactly the same percentage as those with a favorable view of capitalism. That figure alone shows that there is a remarkable opportunity for the left to grow in the current period. We have to honestly acknowledge that organizations to the left of the Democratic Party are tiny and that the labor movement in this country is at a low ebb. But if we are serious about changing the world, now is the time to get involved and rebuild them. The left can grow in a period of economic crisis.
Phil Gasper is the editor of The Communist Manifesto: A Road Map to History’s Most Important Document (Haymarket Books, 2005) and a member of the ISR editorial board.
ISR Issue 72, July–August 2010
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Economic crisis and class struggle
Are recessions better for the left or right, asks Phil Gasper?
The most fundamental argument in favor of socialism is that capitalism is an irrational system that over the long term cannot meet the basic needs of the majority of the population because of its tendency to go into economic crisis. But what if economic crisis leads not to the growth of the left but to the rise of the far right? This is the argument of the radical economist Doug Henwood in a short article published in May on the MRzine Web site.
Henwood begins by criticizing “radicals [who] have fantasized that a serious recession—or depression—would lead to mass radicalization,” and he goes on to argue that there is empirical support for the opposite view—that economic crisis actually benefits the far right not the radical left. The evidence he cites is recent research by the economists Markus Brükner and Hans Peter Grüner. Brükner and Grüner studied sixteen European countries and discovered that between 1970 and 2002, every 1 percent decline in economic growth in these countries was associated with an increase in the vote share of far right and nationalist parties of between 1 and 2 percent.
By contrast, Brükner and Grüner found no corresponding increase in electoral support for communist parties during the same periods of economic decline. Henwood concludes that “recessions are not good for the left and are good for the right,” and that Brükner and Grüner’s research “helps explain the rise of the Tea Partiers and other strange life forms on the right.”
The first thing to note is that this is an incredibly narrow study on which to base the sweeping conclusion that “recessions are not good for the left and are good for the right.” In fact Henwood himself immediately notes one “major exception,” namely the United States during the Great Depression, when economic crisis led to a series of mass strikes, the birth of industrial unions, and the growth of the Communist Party to about 80,000 members. However, he adds that this was only because the scale of the crisis was so severe, with unemployment rates reaching 25 percent and, additionally, the “Great Depression didn’t do much for the left in Europe.”
In fact that last claim is not accurate. While the far right obviously grew as a result of the Depression, eventually seizing power in Germany, Spain, and Austria, the left also grew in many European countries, and there was nothing inevitable about its ultimate defeat. In Germany, the Social Democratic and Communist Parties had millions of supporters, and in the election of November 1932, the last genuinely free vote before Hitler took power, their combined support was several percentage points ahead of the Nazis. The tragedy was that the two left-wing parties were fatally divided and unable to agree on a common strategy to defeat the far right in the streets as well as at the ballot box. Similarly in Spain the left grew significantly. It eventually lost the civil war as a result of major conflicts between the different left-wing parties and outside support for Franco’s fascists.
Second, economic crises are a fact of life under capitalism, and one of the main arguments in favor of a different kind of economic system. Henwood instructs the left to “stop hoping for the worst,” but our hopes either way are irrelevant to how the economy actually performs, and severe recessions will periodically take place no matter what we think about them. If it were true that in such circumstances the right will grow and the left will not, there would be grounds for thoroughgoing political pessimism. During periods of economic growth and stability, the radical transformation of society would seem unnecessary, while during periods of economic crisis it would be impossible.
Henwood is certainly right about one thing—there is no automatic relationship between economic crisis and “mass radicalization.” But it is equally wrong to think that there is an automatic connection between crisis and the growth of the right. Whether or not an economic slump results in an increase in class struggle and gains for the left depends on a whole set of complex factors, including the nature of the crisis and the constellation of political forces going into it.
Perhaps no one has written about the relationship between economic booms, slumps, and political consciousness with more insight than the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky, who addressed these issues several times in the 1920s and the 1930s. In a report he wrote for the Communist International in 1921, Trotsky noted that, “there is no automatic dependence of the proletarian revolutionary movement upon a crisis. There is only a dialectical interaction. It is essential to understand this.” The example that Trotksy used to illustrate this point is worth quoting at length:
Let us look at the relations in Russia. The 1905 revolution was defeated. The workers bore great sacrifices. In 1906 and 1907 the last revolutionary flare-ups occurred and by the autumn of 1907 a great world crisis broke out. The signal for it was given by Wall Street’s Black Friday. Throughout 1907 and 1908 and 1909 the most terrible crisis reigned in Russia too. It killed the movement completely, because the workers had suffered so greatly during the struggle that this depression could act only to dishearten them. There were many disputes among us over what would lead to the revolution: a crisis or a favorable conjuncture?
At that time many of us defended the viewpoint that the Russian revolutionary movement could be regenerated only by a favorable economic conjuncture. And that is what took place. In 1910, 1911 and 1912, there was an improvement in our economic situation and a favorable conjuncture which acted to reassemble the demoralized and devitalized workers who had lost their courage. They realized again how important they were in production; and they passed over to an offensive, first in the economic field and later in the political field as well. On the eve of the war [in 1914] the working class had become so consolidated, thanks to this period of prosperity, that it was able to pass to a direct assault.
This period of class militancy was cut short by the outbreak of the First World War, when a wave of patriotism swept over the country, engulfing all but the most class-conscious workers. But as the war dragged on and Russia suffered massive casualties, patriotism gave way to cynicism and then anger, which eventually culminated in the successful revolutions of 1917.
One conclusion that Trotsky drew from examples like these was that class struggle was not simply the result of economic slump or of economic boom, but was often the result of the rapid shift from slump to boom and back again. Slumps can show the necessity for change, but they can also weaken the power of the working class as some lose their jobs and others become desperate to hang on to theirs. A return to economic growth can give workers renewed confidence to make significant demands, but if the new expansion is long-lived, the possibility for radical change will be lost until a new crisis begins. Here is Trotsky again:
Many of you will recall that Marx and Engels wrote in 1851—when the boom was at its peak—that it was necessary at that time to recognize that the Revolution of 1848 had terminated, or, at any rate, had been interrupted until the next crisis. Engels wrote that while the crisis of 1847 was the mother of revolution, the boom of 1849–51 was the mother of triumphant counter-revolution. It would, however, be very one-sided and utterly false to interpret these judgments in the sense that a crisis invariably engenders revolutionary action while a boom, on the contrary, pacifies the working class…
The irresolute and half-way Revolution of 1848 did, however, sweep away the remnants of the regime of guilds and serfdom and thereby extended the framework of capitalist development. Under these conditions and these conditions alone, the boom of 1851 marked the beginning of an entire epoch of capitalist prosperity which lasted till 1873. In citing Engels it is very dangerous to overlook these basic facts…. At issue here is not whether an improvement in the conjuncture is possible, but whether the fluctuations of the conjuncture are proceeding along an ascending or descending curve. This is the most important aspect of the whole question.
So it was the long period of capitalist expansion in the 1850s and 1860s that stabilized the system and led to a relatively low level of class struggle. By contrast, the period after the First World War, according to Trotsky, was one of long-term instability and decline, during which “upswings can only be of a superficial…character, while crises become more and more prolonged and deeper going.”
The effect of booms and slumps will thus depend in part on the underlying state of the economy—whether it is in a period of sustained expansion in which recessions are relatively minor interruptions, or whether it is in a period of decline in which the booms are short-lived and sustained growth cannot be achieved.
Today we find ourselves in a period of long-term economic instability, in which a return to sustained growth seems unlikely any time in the near future. During the past decade the U.S. economy has experienced two recessions—the most recent, the worst since the Great Depression—and low growth. Even when the economy was growing in the middle of the decade real wages continued to decline. Now the economy is growing again, but unemployment remains high (the real figure is around 15 percent) and there is a strong chance that there will soon be another recession.
Will the current period prove more favorable to the left or to the right? Over the past eighteen months we have certainly seen the growth of the right, including vicious scapegoating of immigrants and the emergence of the Tea Party, with its attacks on “big government” and the supposed socialism of the Obama administration, and its strong undercurrent of racism. Some commentators, including Noam Chomsky, are convinced that there is a real threat of fascism, with parallels to the decline of Weimar Germany and the rise of the Nazis.
There is certainly no reason to be complacent about these developments, but the comparison with Germany in the 1930s makes little sense. Far from being a mass movement, the journalists Anthony DiMaggio and Paul Street describe the Tea Party as “a top-down interest group led by national and local political officials and financed by corporate America” and “fundamentally dependent upon the Republican Party.”
While the Tea Party has been able to mobilize a few thousand people and demonstrations around the country, these have been dwarfed by recent progressive mobilizations, including hundreds of thousands demonstrating for LGBT and immigrant rights. But progressive demonstrations generally receive very little media attention, while the cable channels—particularly, of course, Fox News—have given Tea Party events a level of exposure totally disproportionate to the numbers involved.
DiMaggio and Street argue that, despite some impressive recent mobilizations, much of the left has been “significantly pacified and demobilized by Obama and the corporate Democrats, has surely failed to capitalize on the recent economic downturn, and has generally failed to establish a progressive movement in the short term.” But they also point out that “the Tea Party represents a concession from Republican Party elites that they (along with their Democratic counterparts) no longer enjoy much legitimacy among the American people. Their only way of appealing to voters is to appear as if they are not political leaders, but ‘average people’ taking part in a populist uprising against a corrupt political system.”
Opinion polls show that there has been a significant shift to the left in terms of political attitudes over the past few years. In May, a survey by the Pew Research Center found that 43 percent of people under the age of thirty in the United States view socialism favorably, exactly the same percentage as those with a favorable view of capitalism. That figure alone shows that there is a remarkable opportunity for the left to grow in the current period. We have to honestly acknowledge that organizations to the left of the Democratic Party are tiny and that the labor movement in this country is at a low ebb. But if we are serious about changing the world, now is the time to get involved and rebuild them. The left can grow in a period of economic crisis.
Phil Gasper is the editor of The Communist Manifesto: A Road Map to History’s Most Important Document (Haymarket Books, 2005) and a member of the ISR editorial board.
*From The Wilds Of Cyberspace-The Latest From The "Massachusetts Citizens Against the Death Penalty" Website- Down With The Death Penalty Everywhere!
Click on the title to link to the website mentioned in the headline for the latest news and opinion from that site.
NEW HAMPSHIRE:
Testimony of Justice Joseph Nadeau before the New Hampshire Commission to Study the Death Penalty:
On New Hampshire's death penalty
It has been my good fortune to serve as a judge in New Hampshire for 37 years. For 13 of those years I was presiding justice of the Durham District Court. I served as a justice of the Superior Court for 18 years, nine of which I spent as chief justice. And I sat on the Supreme Court for six years before retiring in December of 2005.
Last week, I appeared before the New Hampshire Commission to Study the Death Penalty, not to talk about facts and statistics or trials and cases but to address the moral issue of death as punishment.
The way we have been dealing with the death penalty for years is to talk about enacting laws, adopting procedures, establishing practices and providing mechanisms, as if by creating an elaborate process we could somehow sanitize the death penalty and thereby ignore the moral issues that capital punishment presents. We cannot.
I appeared before the Commission to answer one straightforward but complex question: Do I believe the systematic killing of another human being by the state, in my name, is justified?
My answer to that question is, No.
Why do we continue to struggle with the acceptability of death as punishment? I believe one reason we engage in this process is that no matter what some people say publicly about capital punishment, deep inside many are not as certain as they proclaim.
I believe another reason is that our thinking evolves, as people, technology, and societies progress. And what is acceptable at one time in our history may become unwelcome at another. So we are encouraged to re-examine our core principles and to consider whether death continues to be an acceptable punishment in New Hampshire.
There is no question that people who commit murder must be punished and should be removed from society. Life in prison without parole does both. It is interesting to note that two states, New Hampshire, which has not employed the death penalty since before Pearl Harbor, and North Dakota which does not condone capital punishment, did not need death to achieve the lowest murder rates in the nation every year of this century.
No legal system is perfect. Human beings make mistakes. That is one reason we accept the notion that occasionally the guilty will go free and the innocent will be convicted. But I do not believe anyone accepts the notion that it is all right for a person to be wrongfully executed. So with the most respected judicial system in the world, how can we willingly embrace a sentence which cannot be reversed after it is imposed; and how can we continue to believe that it is morally acceptable for the state to take a human life?
My answer is, we cannot.
As most of us, I have never experienced the emotions felt by a murder victim's loved ones, and I may never know for sure that I could not be persuaded by the desire for personal revenge to seek the death penalty for a person I knew killed someone I love. But for me, neither of these deficiencies makes opposition to the death penalty any less compelling.
So after 37 years on the bench; after presiding over hundreds of jury trials; after sitting on numerous criminal cases; after listening to witnesses in scores of sentencing hearings; after considering information in thousands of probation reports; after imposing sentences upon countless convicted defendants; after entertaining the arguments of lawyers at every level of skill; after talking with a host of judges and corrections officials; and after continued personal reflection; this is what I believe about capital punishment:
The threat of its use is not a deterrent to the commission of a homicide, because those who kill do not consider the sentence before they act or do not expect to be caught, or both.
The threat of its use is not necessary to protect the people of New Hampshire for the same reason.
Its abolition does not dishonor those who serve in law enforcement because honor comes from personal pride and earned respect, not from the ability of the state to execute a human being.
Its abolition does not diminish the voice of murder victims because the right of all victims to be heard is intended to come at the time defendants are sentenced not at the time they are charged.
It provides no more justice than life in prison without parole because justice is not measured by the sentences we impose.
To seek and carry out the death penalty costs the state much more in time and taxes than to prosecute and confine a person to prison for life.
To seek and carry out the death penalty consumes inordinate resources of courts, prosecution, defense and law enforcement.
The decision whether to seek the death penalty is too easily swayed by public opinion, political pressure and media attention.
Its potential as a prosecutorial tool is outweighed by its capacity for misuse.
It is too easily subject to selective prosecution.
It is too likely to be imposed upon minorities and the poor.
It is too likely to depend upon the persuasiveness of lawyers.
Its imposition is too readily subject to the emotions of individual jurors.
Its imposition is too clearly dependent upon the composition of the particular jury empanelled for each case.
It inevitably leads to disparate sentences.
It creates the unacceptable risk that a person may be wrongfully executed.
It exalts rage over reason.
It diminishes our character as a people.
And in the end, I believe it serves just 1 purpose: vengeance.
It is for these reasons, and from a personal abhorrence of the premeditated execution of a human being by the state, that I appeared before the Commission to speak in favor of the abolition of the death penalty in New Hampshire.
(source: Joseph Nadeau, Foster's Daily Democrat)
NEW HAMPSHIRE:
Testimony of Justice Joseph Nadeau before the New Hampshire Commission to Study the Death Penalty:
On New Hampshire's death penalty
It has been my good fortune to serve as a judge in New Hampshire for 37 years. For 13 of those years I was presiding justice of the Durham District Court. I served as a justice of the Superior Court for 18 years, nine of which I spent as chief justice. And I sat on the Supreme Court for six years before retiring in December of 2005.
Last week, I appeared before the New Hampshire Commission to Study the Death Penalty, not to talk about facts and statistics or trials and cases but to address the moral issue of death as punishment.
The way we have been dealing with the death penalty for years is to talk about enacting laws, adopting procedures, establishing practices and providing mechanisms, as if by creating an elaborate process we could somehow sanitize the death penalty and thereby ignore the moral issues that capital punishment presents. We cannot.
I appeared before the Commission to answer one straightforward but complex question: Do I believe the systematic killing of another human being by the state, in my name, is justified?
My answer to that question is, No.
Why do we continue to struggle with the acceptability of death as punishment? I believe one reason we engage in this process is that no matter what some people say publicly about capital punishment, deep inside many are not as certain as they proclaim.
I believe another reason is that our thinking evolves, as people, technology, and societies progress. And what is acceptable at one time in our history may become unwelcome at another. So we are encouraged to re-examine our core principles and to consider whether death continues to be an acceptable punishment in New Hampshire.
There is no question that people who commit murder must be punished and should be removed from society. Life in prison without parole does both. It is interesting to note that two states, New Hampshire, which has not employed the death penalty since before Pearl Harbor, and North Dakota which does not condone capital punishment, did not need death to achieve the lowest murder rates in the nation every year of this century.
No legal system is perfect. Human beings make mistakes. That is one reason we accept the notion that occasionally the guilty will go free and the innocent will be convicted. But I do not believe anyone accepts the notion that it is all right for a person to be wrongfully executed. So with the most respected judicial system in the world, how can we willingly embrace a sentence which cannot be reversed after it is imposed; and how can we continue to believe that it is morally acceptable for the state to take a human life?
My answer is, we cannot.
As most of us, I have never experienced the emotions felt by a murder victim's loved ones, and I may never know for sure that I could not be persuaded by the desire for personal revenge to seek the death penalty for a person I knew killed someone I love. But for me, neither of these deficiencies makes opposition to the death penalty any less compelling.
So after 37 years on the bench; after presiding over hundreds of jury trials; after sitting on numerous criminal cases; after listening to witnesses in scores of sentencing hearings; after considering information in thousands of probation reports; after imposing sentences upon countless convicted defendants; after entertaining the arguments of lawyers at every level of skill; after talking with a host of judges and corrections officials; and after continued personal reflection; this is what I believe about capital punishment:
The threat of its use is not a deterrent to the commission of a homicide, because those who kill do not consider the sentence before they act or do not expect to be caught, or both.
The threat of its use is not necessary to protect the people of New Hampshire for the same reason.
Its abolition does not dishonor those who serve in law enforcement because honor comes from personal pride and earned respect, not from the ability of the state to execute a human being.
Its abolition does not diminish the voice of murder victims because the right of all victims to be heard is intended to come at the time defendants are sentenced not at the time they are charged.
It provides no more justice than life in prison without parole because justice is not measured by the sentences we impose.
To seek and carry out the death penalty costs the state much more in time and taxes than to prosecute and confine a person to prison for life.
To seek and carry out the death penalty consumes inordinate resources of courts, prosecution, defense and law enforcement.
The decision whether to seek the death penalty is too easily swayed by public opinion, political pressure and media attention.
Its potential as a prosecutorial tool is outweighed by its capacity for misuse.
It is too easily subject to selective prosecution.
It is too likely to be imposed upon minorities and the poor.
It is too likely to depend upon the persuasiveness of lawyers.
Its imposition is too readily subject to the emotions of individual jurors.
Its imposition is too clearly dependent upon the composition of the particular jury empanelled for each case.
It inevitably leads to disparate sentences.
It creates the unacceptable risk that a person may be wrongfully executed.
It exalts rage over reason.
It diminishes our character as a people.
And in the end, I believe it serves just 1 purpose: vengeance.
It is for these reasons, and from a personal abhorrence of the premeditated execution of a human being by the state, that I appeared before the Commission to speak in favor of the abolition of the death penalty in New Hampshire.
(source: Joseph Nadeau, Foster's Daily Democrat)
*From The Blogosphere-The Latest From The "Left In East Dakota" Blog
Click on the title to link to the blog mentioned in the headline for the latest news and opinion from that site.
Nurses' Strike in Minnesota
Written by Graeme Anfinson (CWA 37002, personal capacity)
Friday, 25 June 2010
The rainy weather and mountain of security guards didn’t deter some 12,000 Minnesota nurses from going on a one-day strike at 14 different hospitals across the Twin Cities on Thursday, June 10th. The Minnesota Nurses Association, which is part of the newly formed National Nurses United, voted overwhelmingly for the strike, after hospital administrators refused to respond to even one of the contract negotiation proposals the nurses put forward. This was the largest nurses’ strike in U.S. history. A solidarity strike by 13,000 California nurses was also planned, but was eventually blocked by a judge in San Francisco.
National Nurses United have made headlines and gained 155,000 members since forming just six months ago. They have done this by aggressively putting contentious issues like nurse-to-patient ratio and membership mobilizations at the forefront of their organizing agenda. This is in direct contrast to the American Nurses Association, as well as much of the rest of organized labor, who have struggled with organizing, while becoming ever more comfortable with the bosses. Unfortunately, many have not seemed to understand that there is a direct correlation between the two.
The main issues affecting Twin Cities’ nurses are staffing and pension cuts. As with all workers during this current crisis of capitalism, the bosses are trying to squeeze more productivity out of fewer people. As a result, this leaves hospitals understaffed, with fewer nurses dealing with more patients and more responsibilities, as technological complexity increases and more and more baby boomers enter the system. Despite what many of us were taught in Economics 101, in the real world, when productivity goes up, compensation tends to go down. Despite nurses’ pensions only making up a little over 1% of the hospitals’ yearly revenue, they are asking nurses to accept cuts to their pensions as well as receive little to no pay increase. All this while these hospitals raked in some $700 million in profits in 2009.
We were able to join the nurses on the picket line and express our solidarity as members of the Workers International League and as members of the Communication Workers of America- Newspaper Guild, Local 37002, the union Socialist Appeal is organized under. The mood among the picketers was buoyant and optimistic. Many talked about how they had never been very political before, or even very involved with their union, but this event had changed all that.
One nurse lamented the fact that the hospital administration was making it impossible for her to provide decent care to her patients, denounced the “hierarchy structure” of the hospital, and called it a “class system.” She went on to tell us that hospitals had become increasingly “corporatized,” and that “profits and health care don’t mix. It’s the nature of the beast. It’s like trying to wear pants as a shirt or a shirt as pants.”
She was by no means a “radical” socialist or even a union activist. These were the words of an ordinary working nurse, saddened that she and her co-workers were being reduced to mere cogs in a corporate profit-making machine. She explained that she didn’t even want to go on strike, that it was a difficult moral decision for her to leave the patients in the hands of a reduced staff of scabs, doctors and administrators, but that the stakes were too high for her and future generations of nurses not to take action.
Even with hospital officials offering thousands of dollars to people for one day’s work, they only were able to fill a fraction of the openings. Ironically, many doctors were forced to do more hands-on work with patients, which is something the nurses have been fighting for. The public was largely supportive, with many honking car horns and raised fists, and one pregnant woman even came outside to grab one of the picket signs and bring it into the hospital in solidarity.
Despite all this, however, hospital officials have shown no desire to negotiate. They locked many nurses out of work the next day and accused them of “abandoning their patients.” One union activist was even physically thrown out by security and ended up having to go to the hospital’s emergency room.
Management understands their interests and are united in trying to defeat the nurses. Organized Labor in the Twin Cities must do the same, and back the MNA in their fight against accepting any and all concessions. The unions should mobilize the public to bring pressure to bear on the hospitals’ board of directors.
The MNA has now voted 84% in favor of an open-ended strike, with negotiations to resume shortly. Nurse Ashley Christensen had this to say about the strike authorization: “The hospitals have put us in a corner. The response is fight or flight. We have to fight.”
Nonetheless, The pressure is on the MNA leadership to take the threat of an actual indefinite strike off the table until late July, and they have indicated they are open to negotiate on some of their demands. However, the militant mood and broad support for the nurses should embolden the union to resist any and all concessions and to fight for their just demands. A victory in Minnesota can begin to reverse the tide of defeats and concession contracts the labor movement has been hammered with for the past few years, and serve as an example to health care and other workers around the country.
The Workers International League fully support the nurses in their struggle and will continue to report on the situation. Stay tuned to socialistappeal.org for details and contact us if you would like to get involved.
Source: Socialist Appeal (USA)
Nurses' Strike in Minnesota
Written by Graeme Anfinson (CWA 37002, personal capacity)
Friday, 25 June 2010
The rainy weather and mountain of security guards didn’t deter some 12,000 Minnesota nurses from going on a one-day strike at 14 different hospitals across the Twin Cities on Thursday, June 10th. The Minnesota Nurses Association, which is part of the newly formed National Nurses United, voted overwhelmingly for the strike, after hospital administrators refused to respond to even one of the contract negotiation proposals the nurses put forward. This was the largest nurses’ strike in U.S. history. A solidarity strike by 13,000 California nurses was also planned, but was eventually blocked by a judge in San Francisco.
National Nurses United have made headlines and gained 155,000 members since forming just six months ago. They have done this by aggressively putting contentious issues like nurse-to-patient ratio and membership mobilizations at the forefront of their organizing agenda. This is in direct contrast to the American Nurses Association, as well as much of the rest of organized labor, who have struggled with organizing, while becoming ever more comfortable with the bosses. Unfortunately, many have not seemed to understand that there is a direct correlation between the two.
The main issues affecting Twin Cities’ nurses are staffing and pension cuts. As with all workers during this current crisis of capitalism, the bosses are trying to squeeze more productivity out of fewer people. As a result, this leaves hospitals understaffed, with fewer nurses dealing with more patients and more responsibilities, as technological complexity increases and more and more baby boomers enter the system. Despite what many of us were taught in Economics 101, in the real world, when productivity goes up, compensation tends to go down. Despite nurses’ pensions only making up a little over 1% of the hospitals’ yearly revenue, they are asking nurses to accept cuts to their pensions as well as receive little to no pay increase. All this while these hospitals raked in some $700 million in profits in 2009.
We were able to join the nurses on the picket line and express our solidarity as members of the Workers International League and as members of the Communication Workers of America- Newspaper Guild, Local 37002, the union Socialist Appeal is organized under. The mood among the picketers was buoyant and optimistic. Many talked about how they had never been very political before, or even very involved with their union, but this event had changed all that.
One nurse lamented the fact that the hospital administration was making it impossible for her to provide decent care to her patients, denounced the “hierarchy structure” of the hospital, and called it a “class system.” She went on to tell us that hospitals had become increasingly “corporatized,” and that “profits and health care don’t mix. It’s the nature of the beast. It’s like trying to wear pants as a shirt or a shirt as pants.”
She was by no means a “radical” socialist or even a union activist. These were the words of an ordinary working nurse, saddened that she and her co-workers were being reduced to mere cogs in a corporate profit-making machine. She explained that she didn’t even want to go on strike, that it was a difficult moral decision for her to leave the patients in the hands of a reduced staff of scabs, doctors and administrators, but that the stakes were too high for her and future generations of nurses not to take action.
Even with hospital officials offering thousands of dollars to people for one day’s work, they only were able to fill a fraction of the openings. Ironically, many doctors were forced to do more hands-on work with patients, which is something the nurses have been fighting for. The public was largely supportive, with many honking car horns and raised fists, and one pregnant woman even came outside to grab one of the picket signs and bring it into the hospital in solidarity.
Despite all this, however, hospital officials have shown no desire to negotiate. They locked many nurses out of work the next day and accused them of “abandoning their patients.” One union activist was even physically thrown out by security and ended up having to go to the hospital’s emergency room.
Management understands their interests and are united in trying to defeat the nurses. Organized Labor in the Twin Cities must do the same, and back the MNA in their fight against accepting any and all concessions. The unions should mobilize the public to bring pressure to bear on the hospitals’ board of directors.
The MNA has now voted 84% in favor of an open-ended strike, with negotiations to resume shortly. Nurse Ashley Christensen had this to say about the strike authorization: “The hospitals have put us in a corner. The response is fight or flight. We have to fight.”
Nonetheless, The pressure is on the MNA leadership to take the threat of an actual indefinite strike off the table until late July, and they have indicated they are open to negotiate on some of their demands. However, the militant mood and broad support for the nurses should embolden the union to resist any and all concessions and to fight for their just demands. A victory in Minnesota can begin to reverse the tide of defeats and concession contracts the labor movement has been hammered with for the past few years, and serve as an example to health care and other workers around the country.
The Workers International League fully support the nurses in their struggle and will continue to report on the situation. Stay tuned to socialistappeal.org for details and contact us if you would like to get involved.
Source: Socialist Appeal (USA)
Monday, August 02, 2010
*From The Blogosphere-The Lastet From The "Minnesota Hands Off Honduras Coalition"
Click on the title to link to the blog mentioned in the headline for the latest news and opinion from that site.
*From The Wilds Of Cyberspace-The Latest From The "Leonard Peltier Defense Committee" Website- Free Leonard Now!
Click on the title to link to the website mentioned in the headline for the latest news and opinion from that site.
*****
IN THE SPIRIT OF LEONARD PELTIER VISIONS OF US PRISONER #89637-132
Date: Thursday January 31st, 7:00 pm
Location: El Museo Cultural de Santa Fe,
1615 B Paseo de Peralta,
Santa Fe, New Mexico
phone: 505-992-0591
info@ElMuseoCultural.org
Directions and info for El Museo: http://elmuseocultural.org/
Date: Saturday February 2nd, 7:00 pm
Location:Railyard Performance Center
1611 B Paseo de Peralta,
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Phone: 505-982-8309
Author/Editor/Spoken-Word Performer Harvey Arden along with guest performers.
Mark Holtzman [ aka. Silent Bear ] will honor the gathering with his music on the Jan 31 venue only.
These and other dedicated and talented people will offer their personal thoughts of Leonard Peltier. Harvey Arden with the passion and spirit in the words of Leonard Peltier will make the event something not to be missed.
This passionate spoken word performance is based on the Leonard Peltier book-Prison Writings: My Life Is My Sun Dance.
Prison Writings was written in 1999 by the Native American political prisoner, Leonard Peltier, whose words were adapted into a powerful stage-play by his editor, Harvey Arden. Leonard's words are just as poignant today as when the book first appeared and deserves the attention of the entire nation.
Prison Writings is a collection of Peltier's essays and poems, reflecting his life and his work from within the prison walls. Defending his People and being Indian is his only crime. The cultural traditions of his people connect Leonard and each of us to the Great Mystery [ Wakan Tanka ]. This spirit connection and his personal sacrifice to the Creator keeps him strong and unbroken. His life is connected to each of us. Each day this innocent man suffers for his people; in fact ,now that you know his truth, he also suffers for you.
What will you do now?
During the horrific early 1970's Reign of Terror on the Lakota (Sioux)reservation at Pine Ridge South Dakota, an infamous time of violence and corruption existed. Complicit tribal officials hired local thugs known as ' GOONS --'Guardians of the Oglala Nation', who--with the blessing of the U.S. Government--carried out an unprovoked series of assaults on the traditional people on the Pine Ridge reservation. SD. Behind these attacks was Big Energy's desire for uranium under Sioux lands, then being secretly negotiated between the U.S. government and compliant Tribal officials.
Two FBI agents were killed on June 26, 1975 during a gun battle on The Jumping Bull Property. Leonard Peltier was falsely framed for the murder of the two FBI agents. The other defendants charged with the same crime had been acquitted by a jury. They were defending their people from an unprovoked attack. Self defense a basic right was denied Leonard Peltier and his legal team.
Following the discovery of new evidence obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. Mr. Peltier demanded a new trial. The Eighth Circuit court ruled, "There is a possibility that the jury would have acquitted Leonard Peltier had the records and data improperly withheld from the defense been made available to him." Yet, the court denied Mr.Peltier a new trial. The jury sentenced Mr. Peltier to two consecutive life terms.
Judge Heaney, who authored the decision denying a new trial, has since voiced firm support for Mr. Peltier's release, stating that:
" The FBI used improper tactics to convict Mr. Peltier".
Judge Heaney also stated that:" The FBI was equally responsible for the shoot-out, and that Mr. Peltier's release would promote healing with Native Americans ".
So why is this story of Judicial Racism hidden from the public eye ?
The late Pope John Paul II, the Dalai Lama, Amnesty International,International Indian Treaty Council, the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Coretta Scott King, Mikhail Gorbachev, Gloria Steinem, Wilma Mankiller, Robert Redford, the European Parliament, and a host of other notables all have worked, petitioned,and pleaded for his release.
For the American Indian Nations as well as the world at large, the continued imprisonment of Leonard Peltier is Americas Judicial embarrassment.
The spirit of the Sun- dancer who is Leonard Peltier confronted with the treachery and ugliness of life has transcended and Has become the message, of hope, courage, and integrity for his People for his family and each of us.
Peltier has been behind prison bars for more than half of his life (he turned 63 this past September). He remains a model prisoner,establishing numerous humanitarian projects within the prison system as well as back on the Pine Ridge Reservation.
Petitions will be available at both performances appealing for Leonard's release in his upcoming parole hearing. If Mr. Peltier is denied release at this hearing -he will not receive another
opportunity for freedom until the 2017 parole hearing. His official release date is 2041.
Leonards voice from inside the cage asks you,
" What will you do now ."
Be the change, question everything, its your duty as a citizen.
Be one voice if in your heart you can stand in support.
Join your voice with our's and together we can create change.
For further information or to become part of the healing....
Please contact:
Leonard Peltier Defense Committee (LPDC)- http://www.leonardpeltier.net/
The Oglala Commemoration can be reached at http://www.oglalacommemoration.com/
holding events each June 26th and following Leonards requests to implement many projects on the Rez.
Information about Harvey Arden or to order his books-
http://www.haveyouthought.com/.
Locally, Prison Writings may be found at Hotel Santa Fe's Picuris Art Shop- 505-982-1200
(and will be available along with other titles by Mr. Arden at the above events).
http://www.mylifeismysundance.com/
to learn more about these and other upcoming Peltier events-including the screen play being produced in Santa Fe this Summer, " My Life is My Sun dance" or contact Keith Rabin at keith@mylifeismysundance.com
Respectfully,
Leonard Peltier Defense Committee
Note:
Some excerpts were furnished by: Stephanie M. Schwartz (SilvrDrach@Gmail.com) from the article,"Transcendent Magic," March 2007 issue of Namaste Magazine. Please read the entire article compiled by Stephanie M Schwartz. See the hand outs at the event.
We thank her greatly.
In Peace
posted by Leonard @ 9:06 PM
*****
IN THE SPIRIT OF LEONARD PELTIER VISIONS OF US PRISONER #89637-132
Date: Thursday January 31st, 7:00 pm
Location: El Museo Cultural de Santa Fe,
1615 B Paseo de Peralta,
Santa Fe, New Mexico
phone: 505-992-0591
info@ElMuseoCultural.org
Directions and info for El Museo: http://elmuseocultural.org/
Date: Saturday February 2nd, 7:00 pm
Location:Railyard Performance Center
1611 B Paseo de Peralta,
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Phone: 505-982-8309
Author/Editor/Spoken-Word Performer Harvey Arden along with guest performers.
Mark Holtzman [ aka. Silent Bear ] will honor the gathering with his music on the Jan 31 venue only.
These and other dedicated and talented people will offer their personal thoughts of Leonard Peltier. Harvey Arden with the passion and spirit in the words of Leonard Peltier will make the event something not to be missed.
This passionate spoken word performance is based on the Leonard Peltier book-Prison Writings: My Life Is My Sun Dance.
Prison Writings was written in 1999 by the Native American political prisoner, Leonard Peltier, whose words were adapted into a powerful stage-play by his editor, Harvey Arden. Leonard's words are just as poignant today as when the book first appeared and deserves the attention of the entire nation.
Prison Writings is a collection of Peltier's essays and poems, reflecting his life and his work from within the prison walls. Defending his People and being Indian is his only crime. The cultural traditions of his people connect Leonard and each of us to the Great Mystery [ Wakan Tanka ]. This spirit connection and his personal sacrifice to the Creator keeps him strong and unbroken. His life is connected to each of us. Each day this innocent man suffers for his people; in fact ,now that you know his truth, he also suffers for you.
What will you do now?
During the horrific early 1970's Reign of Terror on the Lakota (Sioux)reservation at Pine Ridge South Dakota, an infamous time of violence and corruption existed. Complicit tribal officials hired local thugs known as ' GOONS --'Guardians of the Oglala Nation', who--with the blessing of the U.S. Government--carried out an unprovoked series of assaults on the traditional people on the Pine Ridge reservation. SD. Behind these attacks was Big Energy's desire for uranium under Sioux lands, then being secretly negotiated between the U.S. government and compliant Tribal officials.
Two FBI agents were killed on June 26, 1975 during a gun battle on The Jumping Bull Property. Leonard Peltier was falsely framed for the murder of the two FBI agents. The other defendants charged with the same crime had been acquitted by a jury. They were defending their people from an unprovoked attack. Self defense a basic right was denied Leonard Peltier and his legal team.
Following the discovery of new evidence obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. Mr. Peltier demanded a new trial. The Eighth Circuit court ruled, "There is a possibility that the jury would have acquitted Leonard Peltier had the records and data improperly withheld from the defense been made available to him." Yet, the court denied Mr.Peltier a new trial. The jury sentenced Mr. Peltier to two consecutive life terms.
Judge Heaney, who authored the decision denying a new trial, has since voiced firm support for Mr. Peltier's release, stating that:
" The FBI used improper tactics to convict Mr. Peltier".
Judge Heaney also stated that:" The FBI was equally responsible for the shoot-out, and that Mr. Peltier's release would promote healing with Native Americans ".
So why is this story of Judicial Racism hidden from the public eye ?
The late Pope John Paul II, the Dalai Lama, Amnesty International,International Indian Treaty Council, the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Coretta Scott King, Mikhail Gorbachev, Gloria Steinem, Wilma Mankiller, Robert Redford, the European Parliament, and a host of other notables all have worked, petitioned,and pleaded for his release.
For the American Indian Nations as well as the world at large, the continued imprisonment of Leonard Peltier is Americas Judicial embarrassment.
The spirit of the Sun- dancer who is Leonard Peltier confronted with the treachery and ugliness of life has transcended and Has become the message, of hope, courage, and integrity for his People for his family and each of us.
Peltier has been behind prison bars for more than half of his life (he turned 63 this past September). He remains a model prisoner,establishing numerous humanitarian projects within the prison system as well as back on the Pine Ridge Reservation.
Petitions will be available at both performances appealing for Leonard's release in his upcoming parole hearing. If Mr. Peltier is denied release at this hearing -he will not receive another
opportunity for freedom until the 2017 parole hearing. His official release date is 2041.
Leonards voice from inside the cage asks you,
" What will you do now ."
Be the change, question everything, its your duty as a citizen.
Be one voice if in your heart you can stand in support.
Join your voice with our's and together we can create change.
For further information or to become part of the healing....
Please contact:
Leonard Peltier Defense Committee (LPDC)- http://www.leonardpeltier.net/
The Oglala Commemoration can be reached at http://www.oglalacommemoration.com/
holding events each June 26th and following Leonards requests to implement many projects on the Rez.
Information about Harvey Arden or to order his books-
http://www.haveyouthought.com/.
Locally, Prison Writings may be found at Hotel Santa Fe's Picuris Art Shop- 505-982-1200
(and will be available along with other titles by Mr. Arden at the above events).
http://www.mylifeismysundance.com/
to learn more about these and other upcoming Peltier events-including the screen play being produced in Santa Fe this Summer, " My Life is My Sun dance" or contact Keith Rabin at keith@mylifeismysundance.com
Respectfully,
Leonard Peltier Defense Committee
Note:
Some excerpts were furnished by: Stephanie M. Schwartz (SilvrDrach@Gmail.com) from the article,"Transcendent Magic," March 2007 issue of Namaste Magazine. Please read the entire article compiled by Stephanie M Schwartz. See the hand outs at the event.
We thank her greatly.
In Peace
posted by Leonard @ 9:06 PM
*From The Wilds Of Cyberspace-The Latest From The "End Us War. Org." Website-Troops Out Of Iraq And Afghanistan Now!
Click on the title to link to the website mentioned in the headline for the latest news and opinion from that site.
Markin comment:
I think that we need to "speak" a little more Bolshevik on this issue than what is offered here by this group but at this point in the anti-war struggle every point of opposition accrues to our benefit. Obama-Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal From Afghanistan and Iraq!
Friday, July 30, 2010
House approves $37 billion war-funding bill, 308-114.
War Is A Crime: SIGN THE END US WARS PLEDGE!
Please add your name and district by writing to sign [at] enduswars.org to be published on the Pledge page.
For All Voters:
I will actively oppose any candidate who has, during the current 111th Congress (2009-2011), voted for (or otherwise facilitated) appropriations to fund the criminal and illegal US military adventures in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, or Georgia; for kidnappings, assassinations, and other acts of war carried out by the US government on foreign territory; or for any bill or measure intended to support military actions and/or covert operations against Iran. I will make every effort to identify, recruit, fund, publicize, and support anti-war candidates of any party whatsoever. To earn my support, these candidates must pledge in public and in writing that they will vote and speak out against, and oppose by all available means any bill which includes funding for the policies and acts of aggression enumerated above.
For All Congressional Candidates:
I hereby pledge that if elected I will vote, speak out against, and oppose by all available means any bill which includes funding for all policies and acts of aggression including the criminal and illegal US military adventures in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, or Georgia; for kidnappings, assassinations, and other acts of war carried out by the US government on foreign territory; or for any bill or measure intended to support military actions and/or covert operations against Iran.
Markin comment:
I think that we need to "speak" a little more Bolshevik on this issue than what is offered here by this group but at this point in the anti-war struggle every point of opposition accrues to our benefit. Obama-Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal From Afghanistan and Iraq!
Friday, July 30, 2010
House approves $37 billion war-funding bill, 308-114.
War Is A Crime: SIGN THE END US WARS PLEDGE!
Please add your name and district by writing to sign [at] enduswars.org to be published on the Pledge page.
For All Voters:
I will actively oppose any candidate who has, during the current 111th Congress (2009-2011), voted for (or otherwise facilitated) appropriations to fund the criminal and illegal US military adventures in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, or Georgia; for kidnappings, assassinations, and other acts of war carried out by the US government on foreign territory; or for any bill or measure intended to support military actions and/or covert operations against Iran. I will make every effort to identify, recruit, fund, publicize, and support anti-war candidates of any party whatsoever. To earn my support, these candidates must pledge in public and in writing that they will vote and speak out against, and oppose by all available means any bill which includes funding for the policies and acts of aggression enumerated above.
For All Congressional Candidates:
I hereby pledge that if elected I will vote, speak out against, and oppose by all available means any bill which includes funding for all policies and acts of aggression including the criminal and illegal US military adventures in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, or Georgia; for kidnappings, assassinations, and other acts of war carried out by the US government on foreign territory; or for any bill or measure intended to support military actions and/or covert operations against Iran.
Sunday, August 01, 2010
*From Cyberspace-"The Max Shachtman Internet Archives"-Introduction to Leon Trotsky’s "Problems of the Chinese Revolution"(1931)
Click on the title to link to the website mentioned in the headline for the latest news and opinion from that site.
Markin comment:
The article below is prima facie evidence that when Max Shachtman was a revolutionary in his younger days he could "speak" Marxism with the best of them. Right, Leon Trotsky and Jim Cannon?
****************
Max Shachtman (1931)
Introduction to Leon Trotsky’s
Problems of the Chinese Revolution
There is hardly an event of greater world historical significance since the proletarian revolution in Russia than the awakening of the cruelly exploited and oppressed Orient, which found its most dramatic and most tragic expression in the great Chinese revolutionary movement of 1925-1927. For the first time in history, the capitalist countries of Europe, long ago matured for the socialist overthrow, gave way in revolutionary precedence to an Eastern land which bid fair to condense the experiences of capitalist evolution, under the titanic blows of the social revolution, into a brief span of time and, unlike the Occidental countries, enter boldly upon the path of socialist development. A more audacious enterprise, history could not imagine. Even the Russian working class was compelled to pass through a long period of capitalist development before it was peremptorily confronted with the opportunity and the need of breaking down the last barrier to the emancipation and free development of humanity. The Chinese proletariat, reaching a virile manhood at the crossroads of a revolutionary epoch, armed also with the strength of uncounted millions of insurgent peasants, was given the rare opportunity to choose between capitalist enslavement under its “own” bourgeoisie or socialist growth in alliance with the Soviet Union and the revolutionary working class of the West.
There is no point here in arguing the academic question as to whether China has matured economically for the establishment or construction of a socialist society. It is not a question to be settled statistically or statically in China—any more than it could have been established for Russia in 1917. This problem is solved primarily on an international scale, in the conflict between the socialist and the capitalist sectors of world economy. What has, however, been demonstrated since the day of the successful counter-revolution in China, if theoretical consideration and forecast were still inadequate, was that the basic problems of China, its. democratic tasks of national unification and independence, self- determination for its various peoples, and the agrarian revolution included, could be solved in no other way than by the victory of the workers acting independently as a class. In other words, all the problems and antagonisms arising out of the struggle against imperialist subjection, against the remnants of feudal relationships, which could have been but were not solved by the revolution of 1925-1927 or by the regime which succeeded it, will find a solution only with the success of the dictatorship of the proletariat in China. It is in the opportunity offered for the attainment of this goal that lies the great importance of the Chinese revolution of 1925-1927.
But it is precisely in examining this opportunity that we encounter a monstrous historical anomaly. The revolution ended not with a victory, but with a horribly sanguinary defeat for the proletariat and the peasantry. How was this possible? In the European bourgeois revolutions of 1848, the young proletariat and the peasantry were the fighting troops for the equally youthful bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie triumphed over feudalism, and also over the proletariat. The latter still lived in the period of the rise of capitalism; it had not yet learned how to act independently as a class; it did not have at its head a conscious revolutionary leadership. Even the defeat of the Paris Commune of 1871 is not difficult to understand, nor could anybody have expected that this first faint dawn of the proletarian revolution could, under the circumstances of time and place, see the full daylight of life. One can even go farther ahead in history, to the very end of the world war. The German proletariat overthrew the kaiser in 1918, but it did not come to power because its social democratic leadership, corrupted by the bourgeoisie, ran to the head of the marching column of mutinous workers for the purpose of turning them off to the road of bourgeois democracy.
But in China we had a partly armed proletariat. Even the peasantry was armed to a certain extent. A Communist party was in the field and had every opportunity to develop. The prestige of the Soviet Union was incalculable—every Chinese worker knew that Bolshevism had rid Russia of the imperialists and of the bankers and exploiters, every Chinese peasant knew that the Soviets had given the Russian peasant the land. The official political counsellor to the nationalist government was the Russian Communist, Borodin, just as one of its principal military directors was the Russian Communist, Galen. On every occasion, the workers and the peasants showed their desire to emulate the Russians—the former by their struggles against their own bourgeoisie, the latter by their constant attempts to carry out the first real steps of the agrarian revolution. In the Communist party itself, there was a strong current that favored breaking away from the domination of the bourgeoisie and its Kuo Min Tang and taking the path of independent class action. Yet, with all these and other favorable conditions, the proletariat not only did not come within reach of taking power, but was made the last object crushed under the heel of the bourgeois counter-revolution which did take and hold the power.
Where does the most active cause for this truly monstrous catastrophe lie? It was not so much objective difficulties that stood in the way. It was not the classic interference of the socialist agents of capital in the labor movement. The Chinese proletariat was prohibited by the policies and instructions of the leadership of the Communist International, the organizing center of the world revolution, from fulfilling the role imposed upon it by history! There is the source that must be sought to explain the bitter tragedy of the Chinese revolution.
No greater indictment can be presented against the faction of Stalin and Bucharin than this: invested with all the formal authority of the Soviet Union, of the Communist International, holding to so great an extent the destiny of China—one might say, of the whole East—in their hands, entrusted with the awful responsibility of guiding an unprecedentedly huge revolutionary movement, all they did was to translate the theories and practises of Menshevism into the language of Chinese politics, palm them off as Bolshevism, and, in the name of Lenin, pursue a course against which Lenin had fought throughout his whole political life.
All through the revolutionary period, the official leadership of the Communist International staked its cards upon the national bourgeoisie instead of upon the worker and the peasant, upon Chiang Kai-Shek, and then upon Wang Chin Wei, but not upon the Shanghai proletarian. Worse yet, the latter was told in no uncertain terms that the national bourgeoisie was the leader of the revolution, figuring as the main partner in the ill-conceived “bloc of the four classes”. The Chinese Communist Party was driven into the bourgeois Kuo Min Tang with the Stalinist whip, and there it was compelled to swear allegiance to the petty bourgeois philosophy of Sun Yat Senism. The policy of class struggle was liquidated in the interests of the “united national front”. Strikes were prohibited or else settled by “arbitration commissions” in the best class collaborationist style, for how could the worker have a conflict of interests with the Chinese employer who was his leader in the “united national front” of the Kuo Min Tang? So as not to irritate the bourgeoisie, Stalin sent telegrams to the Chinese Communist Party, instructing it to restrain the peasants from taking the land. On pain of denunciation as “Trotskyists”, the equivalent among the Stalinist churchmen to excommunication, the Chinese Communists were prohibited from forming Soviets, first under the Chiang Kai-Shek regime and later under the Wuhan government because, you see, the latter was already the revolutionary center. Even though the caliber of the man was known—he had already attempted a reactionary coup d’État early in 1926—a veritable cult was built up for Chiang Kai-Shek by the international Communist press. What more striking condemnation of the official course is needed than the fact—characteristic of the whole policy—that on the eve of Chiang Kai-Shek’s march into Shanghai to establish the counter-revolutionary regime and to massacre the militant workers, the French Communist Party and its central organ L’HumanitÉ, sent him a solemn message of greetings, hailing the establishment of the Shanghai … Commune. Such “mistakes” are not accidental. They flowed from the whole past course. By the policy of Stalin and Bucharin, not only the Chinese Communists, but the international revolutionary movement was obliged to make the mistake of confusing a Gallifet with a Communard, the counter-revolution with the Commune.
For how many years, and how heavily has the Chinese proletarian and the Chinese peasant paid for this mistake in identity!
It would, however, be wrong to believe that this mistake was made by the whole Communist movement. No. The responsibility lies entirely upon the factions of Stalin and Bucharin, and lies doubly heavy because the Bolshevik wing of the party was wiser than they and did not trample upon the teachings of Marx and Lenin, or turn its back upon the revolutionary experiences and traditions of the past. It analyzed correctly that which was at the moment, it used Marxism not to spit at but as an instrument for probing into and preparing for the future, it warned against the consequences of the prevailing policy, and at every stage of the struggle it advanced the essentially correct course. In every important particular, it was as correct in its prospect as it has been justified a thousand times over in retrospect.
There is no possible justification, however, for the line of the officialdom. What the lessons of the past and the events of the moment might have failed to teach them, the Bolshevik-Leninists of Russia pointed out to them day in and day out. They were rewarded for this work by having abuse heaped upon them, by having their views deliberately distorted and misrepresented, by having their speeches hushed up and their writings suppressed, and, when the facts of life had accumulated into mountainous evidence of their correctness, they were finally expelled from the party, imprisoned, exiled or banished from the borders of the Soviet Union. The latter fate was reserved for the greatest living Bolshevik because he, more than anyone else, refused to regard the Gallifets of the Chinese revolution as its leaders, as its Communards.
But the bureaucratic, small-minded method of solving political and theoretical disputes solves nothing but a temporary consolidation of the power of the usurpers. Marx and his followers in the labor movement spent years, decades, in studying every phase of the ill-starred Paris Commune. In the discussion of the Commune and the defeated Russian revolution of 1905, Bolshevism became the dominant current in the movement and was finally able to lead the proletariat to power. In the same sense, it can be said today that without a thorough, all-sided study and assimilation of the lessons of the Chinese revolution, the Bolshevik regiments of tomorrow will not be assembled and trained to measure up to their tasks. For the lessons of the Chinese revolution have a living, timely application to the problems of the revolutionary movement in every country in the world. They relate to the fundamental principle questions of Marxism.
But such a study is today forbidden in the official Communist movement. This makes it all the more imperative that it be undertaken, for a real beginning has hardly been made. It is with this in mind that the following contributions by comrade Trotsky have been assembled and presented to American readers. With the exception of a few pages, none of them has even been published in the English language. As has unfortunately been the case with most of the serious Marxian writings of recent times, the works presented here have for the most part had to be sent out of the Soviet Union secretly. Their distribution has been made illegal by the Stalinist regime, and even when they were first presented to the Russian party and to the Communist International, those who listened to them or read them were confined to a select few hardened bureaucrats upon whom logic, arguments and facts made no impression. At the very height of the revolutionary events in China, the masses of the Communist workers were prevented from hearing the standpoint of the Left Opposition.
So overcome with the fear of the Apposition’s arguments were the bureaucrats, that they not only prevented the publication of the former’s documents, but even their own writings and speeches, which events proceeded so rapidly to deride, had to be kept concealed. Thus, Stalin’s speech in defense of Chiang Kai-Shek, made a few days before the coup d’État in Shanghai, has never been made public. The whole Eighth Plenary Session of the Executive Committee of the Communist International, at which the discussion of the Chinese question occupied the main point on the agenda, met under the conditions of a complete censorship. For the first time in the history of the Communist International, the proceedings of so signal a Plenum were not made public, in full or in part, in the party press of any country. The Communist world knew about its sessions only from the official resolution finally adopted and from a scant article in Pravda, reprinted in the International Press Correspondence. The censorship was not, it seems, completely air-tight. Some of the Opposition’s documents and a speech or two, made their way to Germany soon after the Plenum, and they were issued in pamphlet form, first by the German Left Oppositionists and later by the French. Only for the purpose of counteracting the effect of these documents did the official publishing house of the Comintern finally print, one year after the Plenum, a slim brochure containing the speeches delivered by Bucharin, Stalin, Manuilsky, Smeral, Pepper, Ferdi, Petrov, and a number of other apparatus men, plus one of Trotsky’s speeches and one of Vuyovitch’s. Aside from this, and an odd pamphlet here and there by Tang Ping Shan—the official spokesman for Stalin and Bucharin in China who later turned renegade from Communism—by Heller, and a few others, the literary contributions of the Communist International on the problems of the Chinese revolution, in modern non-Russian languages, are confined to journalistic dispatches from China which distinguished themselves in every case by the fact that a week later the events robbed them of any pretension to truth or analytical importance. In English, the official literature is more limited and more worthless: a pamphlet by Earl Browder, another by R. Doonping—kindness and mercy dictate that nothing more be said about them.
These facts, as well as the intrinsic value of the material presented in this book, make a study of it one of the main duties of the revolutionary worker today. That it deals so largely “with the past” does not rob it of one iota of its value. The present cannot be understood unless the past in which it is rooted is understood. The criminal opportunism of yesterday is being paid for by the light-hearted adventurism of the Comintern in China today. The idea of the Soviets as the instruments of the proletarian insurrection and later the dictatorship, is being abused by Stalinism today, in the period of counter-revolution, as it was in 1927, in the period of the revolutionary ascent. Yesterday, the bourgeois regime of Wuhan was passed off as a substitute for arming the workers and peasants independently and forming their Soviets. Today, the struggles of isolated, desperate peasant bands, aroused by the belated echo in the village of the revolutionary clashes of four years ago, and doomed to degeneration without the leadership of a strong, well-knit, thoroughly restored movement of proletarian revolutionists in the cities—are this time passed off by the Stalinists as the Soviet regime. And above all, the “super-historical” formula of the “democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry” continues to be set up against the Marxian conception of the permanent revolution so as to guarantee in advance that the coming Chinese revolution will be strangled just as fatally as the last one.
There remain three other points which require comment before these remarks are brought to an end.
Among the conceptions, or rather the misconceptions, concerning the standpoint of the Opposition in the Chinese question, as contrasted to that defended by the official spokesmen, is that the divergences were confined to an issue which is now “outlived”: the establishment of Soviets in the 1927 period. It would be more accurate to say that the differences of the kernel of the Opposition with the Stalinist standpoint were and remain concerned with all the fundamental principal questions of the Chinese revolution in all its phases and at every stage. Even in the ranks of the Opposition, particularly among the ultra-Leftists, the idea took shape that the Opposition’s struggle was confined to views which excluded any “democratic” development for China, or the imperative need for advancing in China the most resolute and extreme slogans of democracy. Especially at the present stage of the counter-revolution, the need for putting forward the slogans of democracy in China becomes unpostponable. The Communists will lead the masses of workers and peasants on to the socialist path by demonstrations in life that only the dictatorship of the proletariat can solve for the people all the democratic tasks which stand on the order of the day for China. In this respect, there is no conflict between the emphasis placed by the Opposition in 1925-1927 and the emphasis it places on the slogans necessary for today. The conflict really arises in the ranks of Stalinism which, while putting forward the perspective of the “democratic dictatorship”, categorically rejects the advancement of the most necessary democratic slogans!
Further, in connection with the question of the “democratic dictatorship”, an apparent conflict may be perceived in the documents which make up this book. In the later articles, comrade Trotsky counterposes the permanent revolution to the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry, whereas the early articles do not make such a contrast; indeed, the 1927 Platform of the Opposition speaks for the revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry. The conflict is more apparent than real and is derived from two sources. The first is that in the bloc established in 1926 between the “Trotsky” and the “Zinoviev” Oppositions (the Moscow Opposition of 1923 and the Leningrad Opposition of 1925), formal concessions of this kind were made by the former to the Left Centrists of Leningrad in the interests of maintaining the bloc against the Menshevik policy of Stalin and Bucharin. The second is that in 1925-1927, the slogan of the “democratic dictatorship”, borrowed literally and purely formally from Lenin’s pre-1917 writings, had not yet so clearly been filled with the reactionary content which the epigones poured into it. The Opposition, as proceeds plainly even from the early articles of comrade Trotsky, construed the slogan in the same sense that Lenin construed it in and after 1917, that is, that the “democratic dictatorship” was realized in the “democratic period” (the first six months) of the October revolution, but realized under the dictatorship of the proletariat. Long before the revolution, Lenin had written that the slogan had a past and a future. For China, the epigones, looking backward only to the past—and even there with a distorted vision—filled the slogan with a reactionary content, which they still seek to apply not only to “backward China”, but to about four-fifths of the whole world … including modern Spain. One of the greatest contributions to the movement made by the Opposition, and in the first place, by comrade Trotsky, is the setting of the old Leninist slogan in its proper historical perspective, the frank—and not slavish—examination of the value of the slogan in the light of revolutionary experiences, and the restoration to its rightful place of the Marxian conception of the permanent revolution, expressed by Lenin for the East in particular, in those sections of the theses of the Second Congress of the Communist International which speak of the non-capitalist path of development of the backward colonial and semi- colonial countries.
A third point which may interest readers, or arouse a certain amount of confusion, is another apparent contradiction in the standpoint of the Opposition. It is only in the later documents that comrade Trotsky speaks about the Opposition having stood against the integration of the proletarian party, the Communist Party of China, into the party of the bourgeoisie, the Kuo Min Tang. Any misunderstanding that may arise will be eliminated by reproducing part of a letter written by comrade Trotsky to the present writer on December 10, 1930, which I take the liberty of quoting.
”You are quite right when you point out that the Russian Opposition, as late as the first half of 1927, did not demand openly the withdrawal from the Kuo Min Tang. I believe, however, that I have already commented on this fact publicly somewhere. I personally was from the very beginning, that is, from 1923, resolutely opposed to the Communist party joining the Kuo Min Tang, as well as against the acceptance of the Kuo Min Tang into the `Kuomintern’. Radek was always with Zinoviev against me. The younger members of the Opposition of 1923 were with me almost to a man. Rakovsky was in Paris and not sufficiently informed. Up to 1926, I always voted independently in the Political Bureau on this question, against all the others. In 1925, simultaneously with the theses on the Eastern Chinese Railway which I have quoted in the Opposition press, I once more presented the formal proposal that the Communist party leave the Kuo Min Tang instantly. This was unanimously rejected and contributed a great deal to the baiting later on. In 1926 and 1927, I had uninterrupted conflicts with the Zinovievists on this question. Two or three times, the matter stood at the breaking point. Our center consisted of approximately equal numbers from both of the allied tendencies, for it was after all only a bloc. At the voting, the position of the 1923 Opposition was betrayed by Radek, out of principle, and by Piatakov, out of unprincipledness. Our faction (1923) was furious about it, demanded that Radek and Piatakov be recalled from the center. But since it was a question of splitting with the Zinovievists, it was the general decision that I must submit publicly in this question and acquaint the Opposition in writing with my standpoint. And that is how it happened that the demand was put up by us so late, in spite of the fact that the Political Bureau and the Plenum of the Central Committee always contrasted my view with the official view of the Opposition. Now I can say with certainty that I made a mistake by submitting formally in this question. In any case, this mistake became quite clear only by the further evolution of the Zinovievists. At that time, the split with them appeared to the overwhelming majority of our faction as absolutely fatal. Thus, the manifesto [of the International Left Opposition on the Chinese question, issued late in 1930] in no way contradicts the facts when it contends that the Russian Opposition, the real one, was against the Communist party joining the Kuo Min Tang. Out of the thousands of imprisoned, exiled, etc., hardly a single one was with Radek in this question. This fact too I have referred to in many letters, namely, that the great majority of the capitulators were not sure and firm in the Chinese and the Anglo-Russian question. That is very characteristic! …”
The documents which follow are arranged more or less in chronological order. As a whole, they present a fairly thorough picture of the course of the Chinese revolution and the struggle for Bolshevism which the Opposition carried on in all the periods of its development, up to the present day. How brilliantly they demonstrate the indispensability of Marxism— which serves the revolutionist to foresee the coming day and to prepare for it—can be left to the reader to judge. As appendices, we have included articles and speeches by other comrades. The suppressed theses of Zinoviev present invaluable facts and documents, even though they present the relations between the Communist party and the Kuo Min Tang in a confused manner. The Shanghai letter by three Russian comrades, all of them opponents of “Trotskyism”, shows that the leadership of the Comintern was well aware of the real state of affairs in China. The letter is presented here for the first time. It suffered the same fate of suppression as so much other important material. Indeed, one of its authors, the youth comrade Nassonov, together with the party comrade, Mandalyan, were recalled in disgrace from China by Stalin. As punishment, Nassonov was “exiled” to the United States as representative of the Young Communist International, and I still recall how he would tell me that in spite of everything, Stalin had been “compelled in the end to carry out” his viewpoint….
In conclusion, the writer wishes to express his gratitude, and the appreciation of the publishers, to his comrades, Sam Gordon and Morris Lewit, who gave such indispensable assistance in the final checking of the translations.
NEW YORK, August 7,
1931
Max Shachtman.
Markin comment:
The article below is prima facie evidence that when Max Shachtman was a revolutionary in his younger days he could "speak" Marxism with the best of them. Right, Leon Trotsky and Jim Cannon?
****************
Max Shachtman (1931)
Introduction to Leon Trotsky’s
Problems of the Chinese Revolution
There is hardly an event of greater world historical significance since the proletarian revolution in Russia than the awakening of the cruelly exploited and oppressed Orient, which found its most dramatic and most tragic expression in the great Chinese revolutionary movement of 1925-1927. For the first time in history, the capitalist countries of Europe, long ago matured for the socialist overthrow, gave way in revolutionary precedence to an Eastern land which bid fair to condense the experiences of capitalist evolution, under the titanic blows of the social revolution, into a brief span of time and, unlike the Occidental countries, enter boldly upon the path of socialist development. A more audacious enterprise, history could not imagine. Even the Russian working class was compelled to pass through a long period of capitalist development before it was peremptorily confronted with the opportunity and the need of breaking down the last barrier to the emancipation and free development of humanity. The Chinese proletariat, reaching a virile manhood at the crossroads of a revolutionary epoch, armed also with the strength of uncounted millions of insurgent peasants, was given the rare opportunity to choose between capitalist enslavement under its “own” bourgeoisie or socialist growth in alliance with the Soviet Union and the revolutionary working class of the West.
There is no point here in arguing the academic question as to whether China has matured economically for the establishment or construction of a socialist society. It is not a question to be settled statistically or statically in China—any more than it could have been established for Russia in 1917. This problem is solved primarily on an international scale, in the conflict between the socialist and the capitalist sectors of world economy. What has, however, been demonstrated since the day of the successful counter-revolution in China, if theoretical consideration and forecast were still inadequate, was that the basic problems of China, its. democratic tasks of national unification and independence, self- determination for its various peoples, and the agrarian revolution included, could be solved in no other way than by the victory of the workers acting independently as a class. In other words, all the problems and antagonisms arising out of the struggle against imperialist subjection, against the remnants of feudal relationships, which could have been but were not solved by the revolution of 1925-1927 or by the regime which succeeded it, will find a solution only with the success of the dictatorship of the proletariat in China. It is in the opportunity offered for the attainment of this goal that lies the great importance of the Chinese revolution of 1925-1927.
But it is precisely in examining this opportunity that we encounter a monstrous historical anomaly. The revolution ended not with a victory, but with a horribly sanguinary defeat for the proletariat and the peasantry. How was this possible? In the European bourgeois revolutions of 1848, the young proletariat and the peasantry were the fighting troops for the equally youthful bourgeoisie. The bourgeoisie triumphed over feudalism, and also over the proletariat. The latter still lived in the period of the rise of capitalism; it had not yet learned how to act independently as a class; it did not have at its head a conscious revolutionary leadership. Even the defeat of the Paris Commune of 1871 is not difficult to understand, nor could anybody have expected that this first faint dawn of the proletarian revolution could, under the circumstances of time and place, see the full daylight of life. One can even go farther ahead in history, to the very end of the world war. The German proletariat overthrew the kaiser in 1918, but it did not come to power because its social democratic leadership, corrupted by the bourgeoisie, ran to the head of the marching column of mutinous workers for the purpose of turning them off to the road of bourgeois democracy.
But in China we had a partly armed proletariat. Even the peasantry was armed to a certain extent. A Communist party was in the field and had every opportunity to develop. The prestige of the Soviet Union was incalculable—every Chinese worker knew that Bolshevism had rid Russia of the imperialists and of the bankers and exploiters, every Chinese peasant knew that the Soviets had given the Russian peasant the land. The official political counsellor to the nationalist government was the Russian Communist, Borodin, just as one of its principal military directors was the Russian Communist, Galen. On every occasion, the workers and the peasants showed their desire to emulate the Russians—the former by their struggles against their own bourgeoisie, the latter by their constant attempts to carry out the first real steps of the agrarian revolution. In the Communist party itself, there was a strong current that favored breaking away from the domination of the bourgeoisie and its Kuo Min Tang and taking the path of independent class action. Yet, with all these and other favorable conditions, the proletariat not only did not come within reach of taking power, but was made the last object crushed under the heel of the bourgeois counter-revolution which did take and hold the power.
Where does the most active cause for this truly monstrous catastrophe lie? It was not so much objective difficulties that stood in the way. It was not the classic interference of the socialist agents of capital in the labor movement. The Chinese proletariat was prohibited by the policies and instructions of the leadership of the Communist International, the organizing center of the world revolution, from fulfilling the role imposed upon it by history! There is the source that must be sought to explain the bitter tragedy of the Chinese revolution.
No greater indictment can be presented against the faction of Stalin and Bucharin than this: invested with all the formal authority of the Soviet Union, of the Communist International, holding to so great an extent the destiny of China—one might say, of the whole East—in their hands, entrusted with the awful responsibility of guiding an unprecedentedly huge revolutionary movement, all they did was to translate the theories and practises of Menshevism into the language of Chinese politics, palm them off as Bolshevism, and, in the name of Lenin, pursue a course against which Lenin had fought throughout his whole political life.
All through the revolutionary period, the official leadership of the Communist International staked its cards upon the national bourgeoisie instead of upon the worker and the peasant, upon Chiang Kai-Shek, and then upon Wang Chin Wei, but not upon the Shanghai proletarian. Worse yet, the latter was told in no uncertain terms that the national bourgeoisie was the leader of the revolution, figuring as the main partner in the ill-conceived “bloc of the four classes”. The Chinese Communist Party was driven into the bourgeois Kuo Min Tang with the Stalinist whip, and there it was compelled to swear allegiance to the petty bourgeois philosophy of Sun Yat Senism. The policy of class struggle was liquidated in the interests of the “united national front”. Strikes were prohibited or else settled by “arbitration commissions” in the best class collaborationist style, for how could the worker have a conflict of interests with the Chinese employer who was his leader in the “united national front” of the Kuo Min Tang? So as not to irritate the bourgeoisie, Stalin sent telegrams to the Chinese Communist Party, instructing it to restrain the peasants from taking the land. On pain of denunciation as “Trotskyists”, the equivalent among the Stalinist churchmen to excommunication, the Chinese Communists were prohibited from forming Soviets, first under the Chiang Kai-Shek regime and later under the Wuhan government because, you see, the latter was already the revolutionary center. Even though the caliber of the man was known—he had already attempted a reactionary coup d’État early in 1926—a veritable cult was built up for Chiang Kai-Shek by the international Communist press. What more striking condemnation of the official course is needed than the fact—characteristic of the whole policy—that on the eve of Chiang Kai-Shek’s march into Shanghai to establish the counter-revolutionary regime and to massacre the militant workers, the French Communist Party and its central organ L’HumanitÉ, sent him a solemn message of greetings, hailing the establishment of the Shanghai … Commune. Such “mistakes” are not accidental. They flowed from the whole past course. By the policy of Stalin and Bucharin, not only the Chinese Communists, but the international revolutionary movement was obliged to make the mistake of confusing a Gallifet with a Communard, the counter-revolution with the Commune.
For how many years, and how heavily has the Chinese proletarian and the Chinese peasant paid for this mistake in identity!
It would, however, be wrong to believe that this mistake was made by the whole Communist movement. No. The responsibility lies entirely upon the factions of Stalin and Bucharin, and lies doubly heavy because the Bolshevik wing of the party was wiser than they and did not trample upon the teachings of Marx and Lenin, or turn its back upon the revolutionary experiences and traditions of the past. It analyzed correctly that which was at the moment, it used Marxism not to spit at but as an instrument for probing into and preparing for the future, it warned against the consequences of the prevailing policy, and at every stage of the struggle it advanced the essentially correct course. In every important particular, it was as correct in its prospect as it has been justified a thousand times over in retrospect.
There is no possible justification, however, for the line of the officialdom. What the lessons of the past and the events of the moment might have failed to teach them, the Bolshevik-Leninists of Russia pointed out to them day in and day out. They were rewarded for this work by having abuse heaped upon them, by having their views deliberately distorted and misrepresented, by having their speeches hushed up and their writings suppressed, and, when the facts of life had accumulated into mountainous evidence of their correctness, they were finally expelled from the party, imprisoned, exiled or banished from the borders of the Soviet Union. The latter fate was reserved for the greatest living Bolshevik because he, more than anyone else, refused to regard the Gallifets of the Chinese revolution as its leaders, as its Communards.
But the bureaucratic, small-minded method of solving political and theoretical disputes solves nothing but a temporary consolidation of the power of the usurpers. Marx and his followers in the labor movement spent years, decades, in studying every phase of the ill-starred Paris Commune. In the discussion of the Commune and the defeated Russian revolution of 1905, Bolshevism became the dominant current in the movement and was finally able to lead the proletariat to power. In the same sense, it can be said today that without a thorough, all-sided study and assimilation of the lessons of the Chinese revolution, the Bolshevik regiments of tomorrow will not be assembled and trained to measure up to their tasks. For the lessons of the Chinese revolution have a living, timely application to the problems of the revolutionary movement in every country in the world. They relate to the fundamental principle questions of Marxism.
But such a study is today forbidden in the official Communist movement. This makes it all the more imperative that it be undertaken, for a real beginning has hardly been made. It is with this in mind that the following contributions by comrade Trotsky have been assembled and presented to American readers. With the exception of a few pages, none of them has even been published in the English language. As has unfortunately been the case with most of the serious Marxian writings of recent times, the works presented here have for the most part had to be sent out of the Soviet Union secretly. Their distribution has been made illegal by the Stalinist regime, and even when they were first presented to the Russian party and to the Communist International, those who listened to them or read them were confined to a select few hardened bureaucrats upon whom logic, arguments and facts made no impression. At the very height of the revolutionary events in China, the masses of the Communist workers were prevented from hearing the standpoint of the Left Opposition.
So overcome with the fear of the Apposition’s arguments were the bureaucrats, that they not only prevented the publication of the former’s documents, but even their own writings and speeches, which events proceeded so rapidly to deride, had to be kept concealed. Thus, Stalin’s speech in defense of Chiang Kai-Shek, made a few days before the coup d’État in Shanghai, has never been made public. The whole Eighth Plenary Session of the Executive Committee of the Communist International, at which the discussion of the Chinese question occupied the main point on the agenda, met under the conditions of a complete censorship. For the first time in the history of the Communist International, the proceedings of so signal a Plenum were not made public, in full or in part, in the party press of any country. The Communist world knew about its sessions only from the official resolution finally adopted and from a scant article in Pravda, reprinted in the International Press Correspondence. The censorship was not, it seems, completely air-tight. Some of the Opposition’s documents and a speech or two, made their way to Germany soon after the Plenum, and they were issued in pamphlet form, first by the German Left Oppositionists and later by the French. Only for the purpose of counteracting the effect of these documents did the official publishing house of the Comintern finally print, one year after the Plenum, a slim brochure containing the speeches delivered by Bucharin, Stalin, Manuilsky, Smeral, Pepper, Ferdi, Petrov, and a number of other apparatus men, plus one of Trotsky’s speeches and one of Vuyovitch’s. Aside from this, and an odd pamphlet here and there by Tang Ping Shan—the official spokesman for Stalin and Bucharin in China who later turned renegade from Communism—by Heller, and a few others, the literary contributions of the Communist International on the problems of the Chinese revolution, in modern non-Russian languages, are confined to journalistic dispatches from China which distinguished themselves in every case by the fact that a week later the events robbed them of any pretension to truth or analytical importance. In English, the official literature is more limited and more worthless: a pamphlet by Earl Browder, another by R. Doonping—kindness and mercy dictate that nothing more be said about them.
These facts, as well as the intrinsic value of the material presented in this book, make a study of it one of the main duties of the revolutionary worker today. That it deals so largely “with the past” does not rob it of one iota of its value. The present cannot be understood unless the past in which it is rooted is understood. The criminal opportunism of yesterday is being paid for by the light-hearted adventurism of the Comintern in China today. The idea of the Soviets as the instruments of the proletarian insurrection and later the dictatorship, is being abused by Stalinism today, in the period of counter-revolution, as it was in 1927, in the period of the revolutionary ascent. Yesterday, the bourgeois regime of Wuhan was passed off as a substitute for arming the workers and peasants independently and forming their Soviets. Today, the struggles of isolated, desperate peasant bands, aroused by the belated echo in the village of the revolutionary clashes of four years ago, and doomed to degeneration without the leadership of a strong, well-knit, thoroughly restored movement of proletarian revolutionists in the cities—are this time passed off by the Stalinists as the Soviet regime. And above all, the “super-historical” formula of the “democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry” continues to be set up against the Marxian conception of the permanent revolution so as to guarantee in advance that the coming Chinese revolution will be strangled just as fatally as the last one.
There remain three other points which require comment before these remarks are brought to an end.
Among the conceptions, or rather the misconceptions, concerning the standpoint of the Opposition in the Chinese question, as contrasted to that defended by the official spokesmen, is that the divergences were confined to an issue which is now “outlived”: the establishment of Soviets in the 1927 period. It would be more accurate to say that the differences of the kernel of the Opposition with the Stalinist standpoint were and remain concerned with all the fundamental principal questions of the Chinese revolution in all its phases and at every stage. Even in the ranks of the Opposition, particularly among the ultra-Leftists, the idea took shape that the Opposition’s struggle was confined to views which excluded any “democratic” development for China, or the imperative need for advancing in China the most resolute and extreme slogans of democracy. Especially at the present stage of the counter-revolution, the need for putting forward the slogans of democracy in China becomes unpostponable. The Communists will lead the masses of workers and peasants on to the socialist path by demonstrations in life that only the dictatorship of the proletariat can solve for the people all the democratic tasks which stand on the order of the day for China. In this respect, there is no conflict between the emphasis placed by the Opposition in 1925-1927 and the emphasis it places on the slogans necessary for today. The conflict really arises in the ranks of Stalinism which, while putting forward the perspective of the “democratic dictatorship”, categorically rejects the advancement of the most necessary democratic slogans!
Further, in connection with the question of the “democratic dictatorship”, an apparent conflict may be perceived in the documents which make up this book. In the later articles, comrade Trotsky counterposes the permanent revolution to the democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry, whereas the early articles do not make such a contrast; indeed, the 1927 Platform of the Opposition speaks for the revolutionary democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry. The conflict is more apparent than real and is derived from two sources. The first is that in the bloc established in 1926 between the “Trotsky” and the “Zinoviev” Oppositions (the Moscow Opposition of 1923 and the Leningrad Opposition of 1925), formal concessions of this kind were made by the former to the Left Centrists of Leningrad in the interests of maintaining the bloc against the Menshevik policy of Stalin and Bucharin. The second is that in 1925-1927, the slogan of the “democratic dictatorship”, borrowed literally and purely formally from Lenin’s pre-1917 writings, had not yet so clearly been filled with the reactionary content which the epigones poured into it. The Opposition, as proceeds plainly even from the early articles of comrade Trotsky, construed the slogan in the same sense that Lenin construed it in and after 1917, that is, that the “democratic dictatorship” was realized in the “democratic period” (the first six months) of the October revolution, but realized under the dictatorship of the proletariat. Long before the revolution, Lenin had written that the slogan had a past and a future. For China, the epigones, looking backward only to the past—and even there with a distorted vision—filled the slogan with a reactionary content, which they still seek to apply not only to “backward China”, but to about four-fifths of the whole world … including modern Spain. One of the greatest contributions to the movement made by the Opposition, and in the first place, by comrade Trotsky, is the setting of the old Leninist slogan in its proper historical perspective, the frank—and not slavish—examination of the value of the slogan in the light of revolutionary experiences, and the restoration to its rightful place of the Marxian conception of the permanent revolution, expressed by Lenin for the East in particular, in those sections of the theses of the Second Congress of the Communist International which speak of the non-capitalist path of development of the backward colonial and semi- colonial countries.
A third point which may interest readers, or arouse a certain amount of confusion, is another apparent contradiction in the standpoint of the Opposition. It is only in the later documents that comrade Trotsky speaks about the Opposition having stood against the integration of the proletarian party, the Communist Party of China, into the party of the bourgeoisie, the Kuo Min Tang. Any misunderstanding that may arise will be eliminated by reproducing part of a letter written by comrade Trotsky to the present writer on December 10, 1930, which I take the liberty of quoting.
”You are quite right when you point out that the Russian Opposition, as late as the first half of 1927, did not demand openly the withdrawal from the Kuo Min Tang. I believe, however, that I have already commented on this fact publicly somewhere. I personally was from the very beginning, that is, from 1923, resolutely opposed to the Communist party joining the Kuo Min Tang, as well as against the acceptance of the Kuo Min Tang into the `Kuomintern’. Radek was always with Zinoviev against me. The younger members of the Opposition of 1923 were with me almost to a man. Rakovsky was in Paris and not sufficiently informed. Up to 1926, I always voted independently in the Political Bureau on this question, against all the others. In 1925, simultaneously with the theses on the Eastern Chinese Railway which I have quoted in the Opposition press, I once more presented the formal proposal that the Communist party leave the Kuo Min Tang instantly. This was unanimously rejected and contributed a great deal to the baiting later on. In 1926 and 1927, I had uninterrupted conflicts with the Zinovievists on this question. Two or three times, the matter stood at the breaking point. Our center consisted of approximately equal numbers from both of the allied tendencies, for it was after all only a bloc. At the voting, the position of the 1923 Opposition was betrayed by Radek, out of principle, and by Piatakov, out of unprincipledness. Our faction (1923) was furious about it, demanded that Radek and Piatakov be recalled from the center. But since it was a question of splitting with the Zinovievists, it was the general decision that I must submit publicly in this question and acquaint the Opposition in writing with my standpoint. And that is how it happened that the demand was put up by us so late, in spite of the fact that the Political Bureau and the Plenum of the Central Committee always contrasted my view with the official view of the Opposition. Now I can say with certainty that I made a mistake by submitting formally in this question. In any case, this mistake became quite clear only by the further evolution of the Zinovievists. At that time, the split with them appeared to the overwhelming majority of our faction as absolutely fatal. Thus, the manifesto [of the International Left Opposition on the Chinese question, issued late in 1930] in no way contradicts the facts when it contends that the Russian Opposition, the real one, was against the Communist party joining the Kuo Min Tang. Out of the thousands of imprisoned, exiled, etc., hardly a single one was with Radek in this question. This fact too I have referred to in many letters, namely, that the great majority of the capitulators were not sure and firm in the Chinese and the Anglo-Russian question. That is very characteristic! …”
The documents which follow are arranged more or less in chronological order. As a whole, they present a fairly thorough picture of the course of the Chinese revolution and the struggle for Bolshevism which the Opposition carried on in all the periods of its development, up to the present day. How brilliantly they demonstrate the indispensability of Marxism— which serves the revolutionist to foresee the coming day and to prepare for it—can be left to the reader to judge. As appendices, we have included articles and speeches by other comrades. The suppressed theses of Zinoviev present invaluable facts and documents, even though they present the relations between the Communist party and the Kuo Min Tang in a confused manner. The Shanghai letter by three Russian comrades, all of them opponents of “Trotskyism”, shows that the leadership of the Comintern was well aware of the real state of affairs in China. The letter is presented here for the first time. It suffered the same fate of suppression as so much other important material. Indeed, one of its authors, the youth comrade Nassonov, together with the party comrade, Mandalyan, were recalled in disgrace from China by Stalin. As punishment, Nassonov was “exiled” to the United States as representative of the Young Communist International, and I still recall how he would tell me that in spite of everything, Stalin had been “compelled in the end to carry out” his viewpoint….
In conclusion, the writer wishes to express his gratitude, and the appreciation of the publishers, to his comrades, Sam Gordon and Morris Lewit, who gave such indispensable assistance in the final checking of the translations.
NEW YORK, August 7,
1931
Max Shachtman.
*From The Wilds Of Cyberspace-The Latest From The "Free The San Francisco Eight Committee" Website
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Markin comment:
As I have written before- Enough Is Enough- Drop The Charges Against Francisco Torres
**********
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Waiting for more discovery in last SF8 case
Numerous supporters of the San Francisco 8 came to the San Francisco courthouse at the beginning of the month (July 1) even though the only issue to be decided was the scheduling of future court dates. This was an important show of support for Francisco Torres, the last of the SF 8 still facing charges, since the prosecution may have hoped that the summer doldrums and long gaps between court appearances would erode solidarity.
The judge set September 17 for the next status appearance and for establishing the briefing schedule for the motion to dismiss the remaining charges.
Defense attorney Chuck Bourdon explained that the FBI has still not provided all the evidence in the discovery process, claiming that they are still looking for it. In the meantime it only becomes more apparent that the long delays in the thirty-nine-year old case are prejudicial to the cause of justice.
So mark your calendars: September 17 at 850 Bryant Street, San Francisco.
Markin comment:
As I have written before- Enough Is Enough- Drop The Charges Against Francisco Torres
**********
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Waiting for more discovery in last SF8 case
Numerous supporters of the San Francisco 8 came to the San Francisco courthouse at the beginning of the month (July 1) even though the only issue to be decided was the scheduling of future court dates. This was an important show of support for Francisco Torres, the last of the SF 8 still facing charges, since the prosecution may have hoped that the summer doldrums and long gaps between court appearances would erode solidarity.
The judge set September 17 for the next status appearance and for establishing the briefing schedule for the motion to dismiss the remaining charges.
Defense attorney Chuck Bourdon explained that the FBI has still not provided all the evidence in the discovery process, claiming that they are still looking for it. In the meantime it only becomes more apparent that the long delays in the thirty-nine-year old case are prejudicial to the cause of justice.
So mark your calendars: September 17 at 850 Bryant Street, San Francisco.
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