Markin comment:
Every Month Is Labor History MonthThis post is part of an on-going series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!
Other Septembers in this series I have concentrated on various sometimes now obscure leaders and rank and file militants in the international working class movement, especially those who made contributions here in America like "Big Bill" Haywood and Eugene V. Debs. This year, given the pressing need for clarity around the labor party question in America(algebraically expressed in our movement as the struggle for a workers party that fights for a workers government) I have gone back to the sources-Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and their correspondence on working class organization with various associates and opponents. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely given the state of working class organization here these days, many of their comments, taken in due regard for changed times and circumstances, are germane today. This correspondence is only a start and should just whet the reader's appetite to research further.
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Value, Price and Profit
XII. General Relation of Profits, Wages, and Prices
Deduct from the value of a commodity the value replacing the value of the raw materials and other means of production used upon it, that is to say, deduct the value representing the past labour contained in it, and the remainder of its value will resolve into the quantity of labour added by the working man last employed. If that working man works twelve hours daily, if twelve hours of average labour crystallize themselves in an amount of gold equal to six shillings, this additional value of six shillings is the only value his labour will have created. This given value, determined by the time of his labour, is the only fund from which both he and the capitalist have to draw their respective shares or dividends, the only value to be divided into wages and profits. It is evident that this value itself will not be altered by the variable proportions in which it may be divided amongst the two parties. There will also be nothing changed if in the place of one working man you put the whole working population, twelve million working days, for example, instead of one.
Since the capitalist and workman have only to divide this limited value, that is, the value measured by the total labour of the working man, the more the one gets the less will the other get, and vice versa. Whenever a quantity is given, one part of it will increase inversely as the other decreases. If the wages change, profits will change in an opposite direction. If wages fall, profits will rise; and if wages rise, profits will fall. If the working man, on our former supposition, gets three shillings, equal to one half of the value he has created, or if his whole working day consists half of paid, half of unpaid labour, the rate of profit will be 100 percent, because the capitalist would also get three shillings. If the working man receives only two shillings, or works only one third of the whole day for himself, the capitalist will get four shillings, and the rate of profit will be 200 per cent. If the working man receives four shillings, the capitalist will only receive two, and the rate of profit would sink to 50 percent, but all these variations will not affect the value of the commodity. A general rise of wages would, therefore, result in a fall of the general rate of profit, but not affect values.
But although the values of commodities, which must ultimately regulate their market prices, are exclusively determined by the total quantities of labour fixed in them, and not by the division of that quantity into paid and unpaid labour, it by no means follows that the values of the single commodities, or lots of commodities, produced during twelve hours, for example, will remain constant. The number or mass of commodities produced in a given time of labour, or by a given quantity of labour, depends upon the productive power of the labour employed, and not upon its extent or length. With one degree of the productive power of spinning labour, for example, a working day of twelve hours may produce twelve pounds of yarn, with a lesser degree of productive power only two pounds. If then twelve hours' average labour were realized in the value of six shillings in the one case, the twelve pounds of yarn would cost six shillings, in the other case the two pounds of yarn would also cost six shillings. One pound of yarn would, therefore, cost sixpence in the one case, and three shillings in the other. The difference of price would result from the difference in the productive powers of labour employed. One hour of labour would be realized in one pound of yarn with the greater productive power, while with the smaller productive power, six hours of labour would be realized in one pound of yarn. The price of a pound of yarn would, in the one instance, be only sixpence, although wages were relatively high and the rate of profit low; it would be three shillings in the other instance, although wages were low and the rate of profit high. This would be so because the price of the pound of yarn is regulated by the total amount of labour worked up in it, and not by the proportional division of that total amount into paid and unpaid labour. The fact I have mentioned before that high-price labour may produce cheap, and low-priced labour may produce dear commodities, loses, therefore, its paradoxical appearance. It is only the expression of the general law that the value of a commodity is regulated by the quantity of labour worked up in it, and the the quantity of labour worked up in it depends altogether upon the productive powers of labour employed, and will therefore, vary with every variation in the productivity of labour.
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XIII. Main Cases of Attempts at Raising Wages or Resisting their Fall
Let us now seriously consider the main cases in which a rise of wages is attempted or a reduction of wages resisted.
1. We have seen that the value of the labouring power, or in more popular parlance, the value of labour, is determined by the value of necessaries, or the quantity of labour required to produce them.
If, then, in a given country the value of the daily average necessaries of the labourer represented six hours of labour expressed in three shillings, the labourer would have to work six hours daily to produce an equivalent for this daily maintenance. If the whole working day was twelve hours, the capitalist would pay him the value of his labour by paying him three shillings. Half the working day would be unpaid labour, and the rate of profit would amount to 100 percent. But now suppose that, consequent upon a decrease of productivity, more labour should be wanted to produce, say, the same amount of agricultural produce, so that the price of the average daily necessaries should rise from three to four shillings. In that case the value of labour would rise by one third, or 33 1/3 percent. Eight hours of the working day would be required to produce an equivalent for the daily maintenance of the labourer, according to his old standard of living. The surplus labour would therefore sink from six hours to four, and the rate of profit from 100 to 50 percent. But in insisting upon a rise of wages, the labourer would only insist upon getting the increased value of his labour, like every other seller of a commodity, who, the costs of his commodities having increased, tries to get its increased value paid. If wages did not rise, or not sufficiently rise, to compensate for the increased values of necessaries, the price of labour would sink below the value of labour, and the labourer's standard of life would deteriorate.
But a change might also take place in an opposite direction. By virtue of the increased productivity of labour, the same amount of the average daily necessaries might sink from three to two shillings, or only four hours out of the working day, instead of six, be wanted to reproduce an equivalent for the value of the daily necessaries. The working man would now be able to buy with two shillings as many necessaries as he did before with three shillings. Indeed, the value of labour would have sunk, but diminished value would command the same amount of commodities as before. Then profits would rise from three to four shillings, and the rate of profit from 100 to 200 percent. Although the labourer's absolute standard of life would have remained the same, his relative wages, and therewith his relative social position, as compared with that of the capitalist, would have been lowered. If the working man should resist that reduction of relative wages, he would only try to get some share in the increased productive powers of his own labour, and to maintain his former relative position in the social scale. Thus, after the abolition of the Corn Laws, and in flagrant violation of the most solemn pledges given during the anti-corn law agitation, the English factory lords generally reduced wages ten per cent. The resistance of the workmen was at first baffled, but, consequent upon circumstances I cannot now enter upon, the ten per cent lost were afterwards regained.
2. The values of necessaries, and consequently the value of labour, might remain the same, but a change might occur in their money prices, consequent upon a previous change in the value of money. By the discovery of more fertile mines and so forth, two ounces of gold might, for example, cost no more labour to produce than one ounce did before. The value of gold would then be depreciated by one half, or fifty per cent. As the values of all other commodities would then be expressed in twice their former money prices, so also the same with the value of labour. Twelve hours of labour, formerly expressed in six shillings, would now be expressed in twelve shillings. If the working man's wages should remain three shillings, instead of rising to six shillings, the money price of his labour would only be equal to half the value of his labour, and his standard of life would fearfully deteriorate. This would also happen in a greater or lesser degree if his wages should rise, but not proportionately to the fall in the value of gold. In such a case nothing would have been changed, either in the productive powers of labour, or in supply and demand, or in values.
Nothing would have changed except the money names of those values. To say that in such a case the workman ought not to insist upon a proportionate rise of wages, is to say that he must be content to be paid with names, instead of with things. All past history proves that whenever such a depreciation of money occurs, the capitalists are on the alert to seize this opportunity for defrauding the workman. A very large school of political economists assert that, consequent upon the new discoveries of gold lands, the better working of silver mines, and the cheaper supply of quicksilver, the value of precious metals has again depreciated. This would explain the general and simultaneous attempts on the Continent at a rise of wages.
3. We have till now supposed that the working day has given limits. The working day, however, has, by itself, no constant limits. It is the constant tendency of capital to stretch it to its utmost physically possible length, because in the same degree surplus labour, and consequently the profit resulting therefrom, will be increased. The more capital succeeds in prolonging the working day, the greater the amount of other peoples' labour it will appropriate.
During the seventeenth and even the first two thirds of the eighteenth century a ten hours' working day was the normal working day all over England. During the anti-Jacobin war, which was in fact a war waged by the British barons against the British working masses, capital celebrated its bacchanalia, and prolonged the working day from ten to twelve, fourteen, eighteen hours. Malthus, by no means a man whom you would suspect of a maudlin sentimentalism declared in a pamphlet, published about 1815, that if this sort of thing was to go on the life of the nation would be attacked at its very source. A few years before the general introduction of newly-invented machinery, about 1765, a pamphlet appeared in England under the title, An Essay On Trade. The anonymous author, an avowed enemy of the working classes, declaims on the necessity of expanding the limits of the working day. Amongst other means to this end, he proposes working houses, which, he says, ought to be “Houses of Terror.” And what is the length of the working he prescribes for these “Houses of Terror"? Twelve hours, the very same time which in 1832 was declared by capitalists, political economists, and ministers to be not only the existing but the necessary time of labour for a child under twelve years.
By selling his labouring power, and he must do so under the present system, the working man makes over to the capitalist the consumption of that power, but within certain rational limits. He sells his labouring power in order to maintain it, apart from its natural wear and tear, but not to destroy it. In selling his labouring power at its daily or weekly value, it is understood that in one day or one week that labouring power shall not be submitted to two days' or two weeks' waste or wear and tear. Take a machine worth 1000 Pounds. If it is used up in ten years it will add to the value of the commodities in whose production it assists 100 Pounds yearly. If it is used up in five years it will add 200 Pounds yearly, or the value of its annual wear and tear is in inverse ratio to the quickness with which it is consumed. But this distinguishes the working man from the machine. Machinery does not wear out exactly in the same ratio in which it is used. Man, on the contrary, decays in a greater ratio than would be visible from the mere numerical addition of work.
In their attempts at reducing the working day to its former rational dimensions, or, where they cannot enforce a legal fixation of a normal working day, at checking overwork by a rise of wages, a rise not only in proportion to the surplus time exacted, but in a greater proportion, working men fulfill only a duty to themselves and their race. They only set limits to the tyrannical usurpations of capital. Time is the room of human development. A man who has no free time to dispose of, whose whole lifetime, apart from the mere physical interruptions by sleep, meals, and so forth, is absorbed by his labour for the capitalist, is less than a beast of burden. He is a mere machine for producing Foreign Wealth, broken in body and brutalized in mind. Yet the whole history of modern industry shows that capital, if not checked, will recklessly and ruthlessly work to cast down the whole working class to this utmost state of degradation.
In prolonging the working day the capitalist may pay higher wages and still lower the value of labor, if the rise of wages does not correspond to the greater amount of labour extracted, and the quicker decay of the labouring power thus caused. This may be done in another way. Your middle-class statisticians will tell you, for instance, that the average wages of factory families in Lancashire has risen. They forget that instead of the labour of the man, the head of the family, his wife and perhaps three or four children are now thrown under the Juggernaut wheels of capital, and that the rise of the aggregate wages does not correspond to the aggregate surplus labour extracted from the family.
Even with given limits of the working day, such as they now exist in all branches of industry subjected to the factory laws, a rise of wages may become necessary, if only to keep up the old standard value of labour. By increasing the intensity of labour, a man may be made to expend as much vital force in one hour as he formerly did in two. This has, to a certain degree, been effected in the trades, placed under the Factory Acts, by the acceleration of machinery, and the greater number of working machines which a single individual has now to superintend. If the increase in the intensity of labour or the mass of labour spent in an hour keeps some fair proportion to the decrease in the extent of the working day, the working man will still be the winner. If this limit is overshot, he loses in one form what he has gained in another, and ten hours of labour may then become as ruinous as twelve hours were before. In checking this tendency of capital, by struggling for a rise of wages corresponding to the rising intensity of labour, the working man only resists the depreciation of his labour and the deterioration of his race.
4. All of you know that, from reasons I have not now to explain, capitalistic production moves through certain periodical cycles. It moves through a state of quiescence, growing animation, prosperity, overtrade, crisis, and stagnation. The market prices of commodities, and the market rates of profit, follow these phases, now sinking below their averages, now rising above them.
Considering the whole cycle, you will find that one deviation of the market price is being compensated by the other, and that, taking the average of the cycle, the market prices of commodities are regulated by their values. Well! During the phases of sinking market prices and the phases of crisis and stagnation, the working man, if not thrown out of employment altogether, is sure to have his wages lowered. Not to be defrauded, he must, even with such a fall of market prices, debate with the capitalist in what proportional degree a fall of wages has become necessary. If, during the phases of prosperity, when extra profits are made, he did not battle for a rise of wages, he would, taking the average of one industrial cycle, not even receive his average wages, or the value of his labour. It is the utmost height of folly to demand, that while his wages are necessarily affected by the adverse phases of the cycle, he should exclude himself from compensation during the prosperous phases of the cycle. Generally, the values of all commodities are only realized by the compensation of the continuously changing market prices, springing from the continuous fluctuations of demand and supply. On the basis of the present system labour is only a commodity like others. It must, therefore, pass through the same fluctuations to fetch an average price corresponding to its value.
It would be absurd to treat it on the one hand as a commodity, and to want on the other hand to exempt it from the laws which regulate the prices of commodities. The slave receives a permanent and fixed amount of maintenance; the wage-labourer does not. He must try to get a rise of wages in the one instance, if only to compensate for a fall of wages in the other. If he resigned himself to accept the will, the dictates of the capitalist as a permanent economical law, he would share in all the miseries of the slave, without the security of the slave.
5. In all the cases I have considered, and they form ninety-nine out of a hundred, you have seen that a struggle for a rise of wages follows only in the track of previous changes, and is the necessary offspring of previous changes in the amount of production, the productive powers of labour, the value of labour, the value of money, the extent or the intensity of labour extracted, the fluctuations of market prices, dependent upon the fluctuations of demand and supply, and consistent with the different phases of the industrial cycle; in one word, as reactions of labour against the previous action of capital. By treating the struggle for a rise of wages independently of all these circumstances, by looking only upon the change of wages, and overlooking all other changes from which they emanate, you proceed from a false premise in order to arrive at false conclusions.
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XIV. The Struggle Between Capital and Labour and its Results
1. Having shown that the periodical resistance on the part of the working men against a reduction of wages, and their periodical attempts at getting a rise of wages, are inseparable from the wages system, and dictated by the very fact of labour being assimilated to commodities, and therefore subject to the laws, regulating the general movement of prices; having furthermore, shown that a general rise of wages would result in a fall in the general rate of profit, but not affect the average prices of commodities, or their values, the question now ultimately arises, how far, in this incessant struggle between capital and labour, the latter is likely to prove successful.
I might answer by a generalization, and say that, as with all other commodities, so with labour, its market price will, in the long run, adapt itself to its value; that, therefore, despite all the ups and downs, and do what he may, the working man will, on an average, only receive the value of his labour, which resolves into the value of his labouring power, which is determined by the value of the necessaries required for its maintenance and reproduction, which value of necessaries finally is regulated by the quantity of labour wanted to produce them.
But there are some peculiar features which distinguish the value of the labouring power, or the value of labour, from the values of all other commodities. The value of the labouring power is formed by two elements -- the one merely physical, the other historical or social. Its ultimate limit is determined by the physical element, that is to say, to maintain and reproduce itself, to perpetuate its physical existence, the working class must receive the necessaries absolutely indispensable for living and multiplying. The value of those indispensable necessaries forms, therefore, the ultimate limit of the value of labour. On the other hand, the length of the working day is also limited by ultimate, although very elastic boundaries. Its ultimate limit is given by the physical force of the labouring man. If the daily exhaustion of his vital forces exceeds a certain degree, it cannot be exerted anew, day by day.
However, as I said, this limit is very elastic. A quick succession of unhealthy and short-lived generations will keep the labour market as well supplied as a series of vigorous and long-lived generations. Besides this mere physical element, the value of labour is in every country determined by a traditional standard of life. It is not mere physical life, but it is the satisfaction of certain wants springing from the social conditions in which people are placed and reared up. The English standard of life may be reduced to the Irish standard; the standard of life of a German peasant to that of a Livonian peasant. The important part which historical tradition and social habitude play in this respect, you may learn from Mr. Thornton's work on over-population, where he shows that the average wages in different agricultural districts of England still nowadays differ more or less according to the more or less favourable circumstances under which the districts have emerged from the state of serfdom.
This historical or social element, entering into the value of labour, may be expanded, or contracted, or altogether extinguished, so that nothing remains but the physical limit. During the time of the anti-Jacobin war, undertaken, as the incorrigible tax-eater and sinecurist, old George Rose, used to say, to save the comforts of our holy religion from the inroads of the French infidels, the honest English farmers, so tenderly handled in a former chapter of ours, depressed the wages of the agricultural labourers even beneath that mere physical minimum, but made up by Poor Laws the remainder necessary for the physical perpetuation of the race. This was a glorious way to convert the wages labourer into a slave, and Shakespeare's proud yeoman into a pauper.
By comparing the standard wages or values of labour in different countries, and by comparing them in different historical epochs of the same country, you will find that the value of labour itself is not a fixed but a variable magnitude, even supposing the values of all other commodities to remain constant.
A similar comparison would prove that not only the market rates of profit change, but its average rates.
But as to profits, there exists no law which determines their minimum. We cannot say what is the ultimate limit of their decrease. And why cannot we fix that limit? Because, although we can fix the minimum of wages, we cannot fix their maximum.
We can only say that, the limits of the working day being given, the maximum of profit corresponds to the physical minimum of wages; and that wages being given, the maximum of profit corresponds to such a prolongation of the working day as is compatible with the physical forces of the labourer. The maximum of profit is therefore limited by the physical minimum of wages and the physical maximum of the working day. It is evident that between the two limits of the maximum rate of profit and immense scale of variations is possible. The fixation of its actual degree is only settled by the continuous struggle between capital and labour, the capitalist constantly tending to reduce wages to their physical minimum, and to extend the working day to its physical maximum, while the working man constantly presses in the opposite direction.
The matter resolves itself into a question of the respective powers of the combatants.
2. As to the limitation of the working day in England, as in all other countries, it has never been settled except by legislative interference. Without the working men's continuous pressure from without that interference would never have taken place. But at all events, the result was not to be attained by private settlement between the working men and the capitalists. This very necessity of general political action affords the proof that in its merely economical action capital is the stronger side.
As to the limits of the value of labour, its actual settlement always depends upon supply and demand, I mean the demand for labour on the part of capital, and the supply of labour by the working men. In colonial countries the law of supply and demand favours the working man. Hence the relatively high standard of wages in the United States. Capital may there try its utmost. It cannot prevent the labour market from being continuously emptied by the continuous conversion of wages labourers into independent, self-sustaining peasants. The position of a wages labourer is for a very large part of the American people but a probational state, which they are sure to leave within a longer or shorter term. To mend this colonial state of things the paternal British Government accepted for some time what is called the modern colonization theory, which consists in putting an artificial high price upon colonial land, in order to prevent the too quick conversion of the wages labourer into the independent peasant.
But let us now come to old civilized countries, in which capital domineers over the whole process of production. Take, for example, the rise in England of agricultural wages from 1849 to 1859. What was its consequence? The farmers could not, as our friend Weston would have advised them, raise the value of wheat, nor even its market prices. They had, on the contrary, to submit to their fall. But during these eleven years they introduced machinery of all sorts, adopted more scientific methods, converted part of arable land into pasture, increased the size of farms, and with this the scale of production, and by these and other processes diminishing the demand for labour by increasing its productive power, made the agricultural population again relatively redundant. This is the general method in which a reaction, quicker or slower, of capital against a rise of wages takes place in old, settled countries. Ricardo has justly remarked that machinery is in constant competition with labour, and can often be only introduced when the price of labour has reached a certain height, but the appliance of machinery is but one of the many methods for increasing the productive powers of labour. The very same development which makes common labour relatively redundant simplifies, on the other hand, skilled labour, and thus depreciates it.
The same law obtains in another form. With the development of the productive powers of labour the accumulation of capital will be accelerated, even despite a relatively high rate of wages. Hence, one might infer, as Adam Smith, in whose days modern industry was still in its infancy, did infer, that the accelerated accumulation of capital must turn the balance in favour of the working man, by securing a growing demand for his labour. From this same standpoint many contemporary writers have wondered that English capital having grown in that last twenty years so much quicker than English population, wages should not have been more enhanced. But simultaneously with the progress of accumulation there takes place a progressive change in the composition of capital. That part of the aggregate capital which consists of fixed capital, machinery, raw materials, means of production in all possible forms, progressively increases as compared with the other part of capital, which is laid out in wages or in the purchase of labour. This law has been stated in a more or less accurate manner by Mr. Barton, Ricardo, Sismondi, Professor Richard Jones, Professor Ramsey, Cherbuilliez, and others.
If the proportion of these two elements of capital was originally one to one, it will, in the progress of industry, become five to one, and so forth. If of a total capital of 600, 300 is laid out in instruments, raw materials, and so forth, and 300 in wages, the total capital wants only to be doubled to create a demand for 600 working men instead of for 300. But if of a capital of 600, 500 is laid out in machinery, materials, and so forth and 100 only in wages, the same capital must increase from 600 to 3,600 in order to create a demand for 600 workmen instead of 300. In the progress of industry the demand for labour keeps, therefore, no pace with the accumulation of capital. It will still increase, but increase in a constantly diminishing ratio as compared with the increase of capital.
These few hints will suffice to show that the very development of modern industry must progressively turn the scale in favour of the capitalist against the working man, and that consequently the general tendency of capitalistic production is not to raise, but to sink the average standard of wages, or to push the value of labour more or less to its minimum limit. Such being the tendency of things in this system, is this saying that the working class ought to renounce their resistance against the encroachments of capital, and abandon their attempts at making the best of the occasional chances for their temporary improvement? If they did, they would be degraded to one level mass of broken wretches past salvation. I think I have shown that their struggles for the standard of wages are incidents inseparable from the whole wages system, that in 99 cases out of 100 their efforts at raising wages are only efforts at maintaining the given value of labour, and that the necessity of debating their price with the capitalist is inherent to their condition of having to sell themselves as commodities. By cowardly giving way in their everyday conflict with capital, they would certainly disqualify themselves for the initiating of any larger movement.
At the same time, and quite apart from the general servitude involved in the wages system, the working class ought not to exaggerate to themselves the ultimate working of these everyday struggles. They ought not to forget that they are fighting with effects, but not with the causes of those effects; that they are retarding the downward movement, but not changing its direction; that they are applying palliatives, not curing the malady. They ought, therefore, not to be exclusively absorbed in these unavoidable guerilla fights incessantly springing up from the never ceasing encroachments of capital or changes of the market. They ought to understand that, with all the miseries it imposes upon them, the present system simultaneously engenders the material conditions and the social forms necessary for an economical reconstruction of society. Instead of the conservative motto: “A fair day's wage for a fair day's work!” they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword: “Abolition of the wages system!"
After this very long and, I fear, tedious exposition, which I was obliged to enter into to do some justice to the subject matter, I shall conclude by proposing the following resolutions:
Firstly. A general rise in the rate of wages would result in a fall of the general rate of profit, but, broadly speaking, not affect the prices of commodities.
Secondly. The general tendency of capitalist production is not to raise, but to sink the average standard of wages.
Thirdly. Trades Unions work well as centers of resistance against the encroachments of capital. They fail partially from an injudicious use of their power. They fail generally from limiting themselves to a guerilla war against the effects of the existing system, instead of simultaneously trying to change it, instead of using their organized forces as a lever for the final emancipation of the working class that is to say the ultimate abolition of the wages system.
Monday, September 19, 2011
The Latest From The "Minnesota Hands Off Honduras Coalition" Blog
Click on the headline to link to the latest from the Minnesota Hands Off Honduras Coalition Blog
Markin comment:
This is a great site to follow the situation in Honduras that, no question, gets almost no bourgeois media play. In English and Spanish which is a great help to arouse our Hispanic brothers and sisters here in the "heart of the beast" to help out in the struggle.
Markin comment:
This is a great site to follow the situation in Honduras that, no question, gets almost no bourgeois media play. In English and Spanish which is a great help to arouse our Hispanic brothers and sisters here in the "heart of the beast" to help out in the struggle.
The Latest From The Lynne Stewart Defense Committee- Free Lynne Stewart Now And Her Co-Workers Now!
Click on the headline to link to the Justice For Lynn Stewart Defense Committee for the latest in her case.
Markin comment:
Free Lynne Stewart and her co-workers! Free Grandma Now!
Markin comment:
Free Lynne Stewart and her co-workers! Free Grandma Now!
Workers of The World Unite, You Have Nothing To Lose But Your Chains”-The Struggle For Trotsky's Fourth (Communist) International-From The Archives-The Founding Conference Of The Fourth International (1938)-"On The Molinier Group"
Click on the headline to link to the Toward A History Of The Fourth International website for the article listed above.
Markin comment (repost from September 2010):
Recently, when the question of an international, a new workers international, a fifth international, was broached by the International Marxist Tendency (IMT), faintly echoing the call by Venezuelan caudillo, Hugo Chavez, I got to thinking a little bit more on the subject. Moreover, it must be something in the air (maybe caused by these global climatic changes) because I have also seen recent commentary on the need to go back to something that looks very much like Karl Marx’s one-size-fits-all First International. Of course, just what the doctor by all means, be my guest, but only if the shades of Proudhon and Bakunin can join. Boys and girls that First International was disbanded in the wake of the demise of the Paris Commune for a reason, okay. Mixing political banners (Marxism and fifty-seven varieties of anarchism) is appropriate to a united front, not a hell-bent revolutionary International fighting, and fighting hard, for our communist future. Forward
The Second International, for those six, no seven, people who might care, is still alive and well (at least for periodic international conferences) as a mail-drop for homeless social democrats who want to maintain a fig leaf of internationalism without having to do much about it. Needless to say, one Joseph Stalin and his cohorts liquidated the Communist (Third) International in 1943, long after it turned from a revolutionary headquarters into an outpost of Soviet foreign policy. By then no revolutionary missed its demise, nor shed a tear goodbye. And of course there are always a million commentaries by groups, cults, leagues, tendencies, etc. claiming to stand in the tradition (although, rarely, the program) of the Leon Trotsky-inspired Fourth International that, logically and programmatically, is the starting point of any discussion of the modern struggle for a new communist international.
With that caveat in mind this month, the September American Labor Day month, but more importantly the month in 1938 that the ill-fated Fourth International was founded I am posting some documents around the history of that formation, and its program, the program known by the shorthand, Transitional Program. If you want to call for a fifth, sixth, seventh, what have you, revolutionary international, and you are serious about it beyond the "mail-drop" potential, then you have to look seriously into that organization's origins, and the world-class Bolshevik revolutionary who inspired it. Forward.
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Markin comment on this document
Everybody, and that most notably included Leon Trotsky, knew something was going awry with the Bolshevik Revolution by 1923 for many reasons, some of them beyond correction outside of an international extension of the revolution, especially to Germany that would provide the vital industrial infrastructure to aid the struggling Soviet Union. Nevertheless, and this is important to note about serious revolutionary politics and politicians in general, the fight in 1923 still needed to aimed at winning the party cadre over. That was the failing point of many oppositionists, inside and outside the party, then.
By 1933, with the rise of the virtually unopposed rise and consolidation of Nazism in Germany clearly putting paid to the Communist International’s (read: Stalin’s) erroneous strategy, working inside the party, or acting as an expelled fraction of the party, was no longer tenable. Like earlier with the First and Second Internationals the Communist International was now dead as a revolutionary organizational center. Time now to gather, by fits and starts, the cadre for a new international- the Fourth International
Needless to say in trying to organize a new international in tough times, with not enough seasoned cadre, not enough not-Leon Trotsky leadership, not enough money, and not enough, well, of anything internal bickering
and personality disputes are going to slow down any efforts. The "star" system in the French movement which was at the heart of this dispute is still with us today by the way. And not just in France.
Markin comment (repost from September 2010):
Recently, when the question of an international, a new workers international, a fifth international, was broached by the International Marxist Tendency (IMT), faintly echoing the call by Venezuelan caudillo, Hugo Chavez, I got to thinking a little bit more on the subject. Moreover, it must be something in the air (maybe caused by these global climatic changes) because I have also seen recent commentary on the need to go back to something that looks very much like Karl Marx’s one-size-fits-all First International. Of course, just what the doctor by all means, be my guest, but only if the shades of Proudhon and Bakunin can join. Boys and girls that First International was disbanded in the wake of the demise of the Paris Commune for a reason, okay. Mixing political banners (Marxism and fifty-seven varieties of anarchism) is appropriate to a united front, not a hell-bent revolutionary International fighting, and fighting hard, for our communist future. Forward
The Second International, for those six, no seven, people who might care, is still alive and well (at least for periodic international conferences) as a mail-drop for homeless social democrats who want to maintain a fig leaf of internationalism without having to do much about it. Needless to say, one Joseph Stalin and his cohorts liquidated the Communist (Third) International in 1943, long after it turned from a revolutionary headquarters into an outpost of Soviet foreign policy. By then no revolutionary missed its demise, nor shed a tear goodbye. And of course there are always a million commentaries by groups, cults, leagues, tendencies, etc. claiming to stand in the tradition (although, rarely, the program) of the Leon Trotsky-inspired Fourth International that, logically and programmatically, is the starting point of any discussion of the modern struggle for a new communist international.
With that caveat in mind this month, the September American Labor Day month, but more importantly the month in 1938 that the ill-fated Fourth International was founded I am posting some documents around the history of that formation, and its program, the program known by the shorthand, Transitional Program. If you want to call for a fifth, sixth, seventh, what have you, revolutionary international, and you are serious about it beyond the "mail-drop" potential, then you have to look seriously into that organization's origins, and the world-class Bolshevik revolutionary who inspired it. Forward.
*********
Markin comment on this document
Everybody, and that most notably included Leon Trotsky, knew something was going awry with the Bolshevik Revolution by 1923 for many reasons, some of them beyond correction outside of an international extension of the revolution, especially to Germany that would provide the vital industrial infrastructure to aid the struggling Soviet Union. Nevertheless, and this is important to note about serious revolutionary politics and politicians in general, the fight in 1923 still needed to aimed at winning the party cadre over. That was the failing point of many oppositionists, inside and outside the party, then.
By 1933, with the rise of the virtually unopposed rise and consolidation of Nazism in Germany clearly putting paid to the Communist International’s (read: Stalin’s) erroneous strategy, working inside the party, or acting as an expelled fraction of the party, was no longer tenable. Like earlier with the First and Second Internationals the Communist International was now dead as a revolutionary organizational center. Time now to gather, by fits and starts, the cadre for a new international- the Fourth International
Needless to say in trying to organize a new international in tough times, with not enough seasoned cadre, not enough not-Leon Trotsky leadership, not enough money, and not enough, well, of anything internal bickering
and personality disputes are going to slow down any efforts. The "star" system in the French movement which was at the heart of this dispute is still with us today by the way. And not just in France.
Jose Padilla's Sentence Overturned-The Wrong Way
Click on the headline to link to a report of the overturning (the wrong way) of political prisoner (and torture victim) Jose Padilla's, sentencing by a U.S. Appeals Court.
Markin comment:
We saw with New York Attorney Lynne Stewart's upwardly enhanced sentence (from two to ten years) that any case that touches on the so-called "war on terrorism" creates a feeding frenzy in the U.S. Justice Department and the federal courts. Yes, justice, bourgeois justice, is blind, very blind.
Markin comment:
We saw with New York Attorney Lynne Stewart's upwardly enhanced sentence (from two to ten years) that any case that touches on the so-called "war on terrorism" creates a feeding frenzy in the U.S. Justice Department and the federal courts. Yes, justice, bourgeois justice, is blind, very blind.
Sunday, September 18, 2011
Karl Marx's "Communist Manifesto" Of 1848- A Quaint Curiosity?-Hell, No, A Document For Our Times-Additional Material-Frederick Engels 1847-The Principles of Communism
Click on the headline to link to a Marxist Internet Archive online copy of the Manifesto Of The Communist Party- the foundational document of the modern international communist movement.
Markin comment:
Every once in a while, sometimes when things are going well for our movement which is not the case today, or when they are going badly which is closer to today's truth, I have to re-read this document. Although it is no magic elixir and contains no easy fixes it certainly, in its main parts, reads as a very modern document. Perhaps because the tasks outlined for the communist future then are still before us today.
P.S. I always have to comment on Chapter III. Socialist and Communist Literature of the polemic with this note. Before coming over to Marxism many years ago I probably held just about every political position that they (Marx and Engels) polemicized against, except maybe feudalistic socialism. And I am so not sure that I might not have held that position at some point. Read on-and fight, fight for our communist future.
******
Markin comment on this document:
Once agin, old comrade Engels lays out, in 1847 mind you, the communist program, communist perspective, and frankly, communist optimism for the future pretty well here. Forward!
Markin comment:
Every once in a while, sometimes when things are going well for our movement which is not the case today, or when they are going badly which is closer to today's truth, I have to re-read this document. Although it is no magic elixir and contains no easy fixes it certainly, in its main parts, reads as a very modern document. Perhaps because the tasks outlined for the communist future then are still before us today.
P.S. I always have to comment on Chapter III. Socialist and Communist Literature of the polemic with this note. Before coming over to Marxism many years ago I probably held just about every political position that they (Marx and Engels) polemicized against, except maybe feudalistic socialism. And I am so not sure that I might not have held that position at some point. Read on-and fight, fight for our communist future.
******
Markin comment on this document:
Once agin, old comrade Engels lays out, in 1847 mind you, the communist program, communist perspective, and frankly, communist optimism for the future pretty well here. Forward!
Karl Marx's "Communist Manifesto" Of 1848- A Quaint Curiosity?-Hell, No, A Document For Our Times-Additional Material-Works of Frederick Engels 1847 -Draft of a Communist Confession of Faith
Click on the headline to link to a Marxist Internet Archive online copy of the Manifesto Of The Communist Party- the foundational document of the modern international communist movement.
Markin comment:
Every once in a while, sometimes when things are going well for our movement which is not the case today, or when they are going badly which is closer to today's truth, I have to re-read this document. Although it is no magic elixir and contains no easy fixes it certainly, in its main parts, reads as a very modern document. Perhaps because the tasks outlined for the communist future then are still before us today.
P.S. I always have to comment on Chapter III. Socialist and Communist Literature of the polemic with this note. Before coming over to Marxism many years ago I probably held just about every political position that they (Marx and Engels) polemicized against, except maybe feudalistic socialism. And I am so not sure that I might not have held that position at some point. Read on-and fight, fight for our communist future.
********
Markin comment on this document:
Old comrade Engels lays out, in 1847 mind you, the communist program, communist perspective, and frankly, communist optimism for the future pretty well here. Forward!
Markin comment:
Every once in a while, sometimes when things are going well for our movement which is not the case today, or when they are going badly which is closer to today's truth, I have to re-read this document. Although it is no magic elixir and contains no easy fixes it certainly, in its main parts, reads as a very modern document. Perhaps because the tasks outlined for the communist future then are still before us today.
P.S. I always have to comment on Chapter III. Socialist and Communist Literature of the polemic with this note. Before coming over to Marxism many years ago I probably held just about every political position that they (Marx and Engels) polemicized against, except maybe feudalistic socialism. And I am so not sure that I might not have held that position at some point. Read on-and fight, fight for our communist future.
********
Markin comment on this document:
Old comrade Engels lays out, in 1847 mind you, the communist program, communist perspective, and frankly, communist optimism for the future pretty well here. Forward!
Karl Marx's "Communist Manifesto" Of 1848- A Quaint Curiosity?-Hell, No, A Document For Our Times-Additional Material- Karl Marx and Frederick Engels 1848-Demands of the Communist Party in Germany
Click on the headline to link to a Marxist Internet Archive online copy of the Manifesto Of The Communist Party- the foundational document of the modern international communist movement.
Markin comment:
Every once in a while, sometimes when things are going well for our movement which is not the case today, or when they are going badly which is closer to today's truth, I have to re-read this document. Although it is no magic elixir and contains no easy fixes it certainly, in its main parts, reads as a very modern document. Perhaps because the tasks outlined for the communist future then are still before us today.
P.S. I always have to comment on Chapter III. Socialist and Communist Literature of the polemic with this note. Before coming over to Marxism many years ago I probably held just about every political position that they (Marx and Engels) polemicized against, except maybe feudalistic socialism. And I am so not sure that I might not have held that position at some point. Read on-and fight, fight for our communist future.
*******
Markin comment on this document:
Hey, wait a minute, this document, with the exception of the demands for a bourgeois democratic republic which were very appropriate in Germany (or rather in order to unify the then various German statelets) in 1848, reads like the Transitional Program. We had better "crib" some of this stuff and walk, no run, right out into the streets now and start yelling these demands from Boston to Berlin to Bombay.
Markin comment:
Every once in a while, sometimes when things are going well for our movement which is not the case today, or when they are going badly which is closer to today's truth, I have to re-read this document. Although it is no magic elixir and contains no easy fixes it certainly, in its main parts, reads as a very modern document. Perhaps because the tasks outlined for the communist future then are still before us today.
P.S. I always have to comment on Chapter III. Socialist and Communist Literature of the polemic with this note. Before coming over to Marxism many years ago I probably held just about every political position that they (Marx and Engels) polemicized against, except maybe feudalistic socialism. And I am so not sure that I might not have held that position at some point. Read on-and fight, fight for our communist future.
*******
Markin comment on this document:
Hey, wait a minute, this document, with the exception of the demands for a bourgeois democratic republic which were very appropriate in Germany (or rather in order to unify the then various German statelets) in 1848, reads like the Transitional Program. We had better "crib" some of this stuff and walk, no run, right out into the streets now and start yelling these demands from Boston to Berlin to Bombay.
Labor's Untold Story-From The Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels Archives-The Struggle For Working Class Organization-On Trade Unions and the International 1871
Markin comment:
Every Month Is Labor History MonthThis post is part of an on-going series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!
Other Septembers in this series I have concentrated on various sometimes now obscure leaders and rank and file militants in the international working class movement, especially those who made contributions here in America like "Big Bill" Haywood and Eugene V. Debs. This year, given the pressing need for clarity around the labor party question in America(algebraically expressed in our movement as the struggle for a workers party that fights for a workers government) I have gone back to the sources-Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and their correspondence on working class organization with various associates and opponents. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely given the state of working class organization here these days, many of their comments, taken in due regard for changed times and circumstances, are germane today. This correspondence is only a start and should just whet the reader's appetite to research further.
*****
International Workingmen’s Association 1871
On Trade Unions and the International
Abstract
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: Marx and Engels on the Trade Unions, Edited by Kenneth Lapides;
Written: Engels, from minutes of General Council, October 31 1871;
First Published: in The General Council of the First International 1864-72: Minutes, Progress Publishers, 1962-;
Transcribed: by Andy Blunden.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Citizen Engels said it [could] not be maintained for an instant that the Trades Unions were branches; the branches had to submit their rules to the General Council for approval, while the Unions framed their own rules without any control being exercised over them; besides, they took action when they pleased without consulting the Association. Another thing, they had not paid so much per member, but had contributed in lump sums.
Every Month Is Labor History MonthThis post is part of an on-going series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!
Other Septembers in this series I have concentrated on various sometimes now obscure leaders and rank and file militants in the international working class movement, especially those who made contributions here in America like "Big Bill" Haywood and Eugene V. Debs. This year, given the pressing need for clarity around the labor party question in America(algebraically expressed in our movement as the struggle for a workers party that fights for a workers government) I have gone back to the sources-Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and their correspondence on working class organization with various associates and opponents. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely given the state of working class organization here these days, many of their comments, taken in due regard for changed times and circumstances, are germane today. This correspondence is only a start and should just whet the reader's appetite to research further.
*****
International Workingmen’s Association 1871
On Trade Unions and the International
Abstract
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: Marx and Engels on the Trade Unions, Edited by Kenneth Lapides;
Written: Engels, from minutes of General Council, October 31 1871;
First Published: in The General Council of the First International 1864-72: Minutes, Progress Publishers, 1962-;
Transcribed: by Andy Blunden.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Citizen Engels said it [could] not be maintained for an instant that the Trades Unions were branches; the branches had to submit their rules to the General Council for approval, while the Unions framed their own rules without any control being exercised over them; besides, they took action when they pleased without consulting the Association. Another thing, they had not paid so much per member, but had contributed in lump sums.
The Latest From The “Further Left Forum” Blog
Markin comment:
I am not that familiar with this blog but it always has many videos from important events on the left so I like to check it out every once in a while. And you should too.
I am not that familiar with this blog but it always has many videos from important events on the left so I like to check it out every once in a while. And you should too.
“Workers of The World Unite, You Have Nothing To Lose But Your Chains”-The Struggle For Trotsky's Fourth (Communist) International-From The Archives-The Founding Conference Of The Fourth International (1938)-"Resolution On The Tasks Of The French Section"
Click on the headline to link to the Toward A History Of The Fourth International website for the article listed above.
Markin comment (repost from September 2010):
Recently, when the question of an international, a new workers international, a fifth international, was broached by the International Marxist Tendency (IMT), faintly echoing the call by Venezuelan caudillo, Hugo Chavez, I got to thinking a little bit more on the subject. Moreover, it must be something in the air (maybe caused by these global climatic changes) because I have also seen recent commentary on the need to go back to something that looks very much like Karl Marx’s one-size-fits-all First International. Of course, just what the doctor by all means, be my guest, but only if the shades of Proudhon and Bakunin can join. Boys and girls that First International was disbanded in the wake of the demise of the Paris Commune for a reason, okay. Mixing political banners (Marxism and fifty-seven varieties of anarchism) is appropriate to a united front, not a hell-bent revolutionary International fighting, and fighting hard, for our communist future. Forward
The Second International, for those six, no seven, people who might care, is still alive and well (at least for periodic international conferences) as a mail-drop for homeless social democrats who want to maintain a fig leaf of internationalism without having to do much about it. Needless to say, one Joseph Stalin and his cohorts liquidated the Communist (Third) International in 1943, long after it turned from a revolutionary headquarters into an outpost of Soviet foreign policy. By then no revolutionary missed its demise, nor shed a tear goodbye. And of course there are always a million commentaries by groups, cults, leagues, tendencies, etc. claiming to stand in the tradition (although, rarely, the program) of the Leon Trotsky-inspired Fourth International that, logically and programmatically, is the starting point of any discussion of the modern struggle for a new communist international.
With that caveat in mind this month, the September American Labor Day month, but more importantly the month in 1938 that the ill-fated Fourth International was founded I am posting some documents around the history of that formation, and its program, the program known by the shorthand, Transitional Program. If you want to call for a fifth, sixth, seventh, what have you, revolutionary international, and you are serious about it beyond the "mail-drop" potential, then you have to look seriously into that organization's origins, and the world-class Bolshevik revolutionary who inspired it. Forward.
*****
Markin comment on this document
Everybody, and that most notably included Leon Trotsky, knew something was going awry with the Bolshevik Revolution by 1923 for many reasons, some of them beyond correction outside of an international extension of the revolution, especially to Germany that would provide the vital industrial infrastructure to aid the struggling Soviet Union. Nevertheless, and this is important to note about serious revolutionary politics and politicians in general, the fight in 1923 still needed to aimed at winning the party cadre over. That was the failing point of many oppositionists, inside and outside the party, then.
By 1933, with the rise of the virtually unopposed rise and consolidation of Nazism in Germany clearly putting paid to the Communist International’s (read: Stalin’s) erroneous strategy, working inside the party, or acting as an expelled fraction of the party, was no longer tenable. Like earlier with the First and Second Internationals the Communist International was now dead as a revolutionary organizational center. Time now to gather, by fits and starts, the cadre for a new international- the Fourth International
Needless to say in trying to organize a new international in tough times, with not enough seasoned cadre, not enough not-Leon Trotsky leadership, not enough money, and not enough, well, of anything internal bickering
and personality disputes are going to slow down any efforts. The "star" system in the French movement which was at the heart of this dispute is still with us today by the way. And not just in France.
Markin comment (repost from September 2010):
Recently, when the question of an international, a new workers international, a fifth international, was broached by the International Marxist Tendency (IMT), faintly echoing the call by Venezuelan caudillo, Hugo Chavez, I got to thinking a little bit more on the subject. Moreover, it must be something in the air (maybe caused by these global climatic changes) because I have also seen recent commentary on the need to go back to something that looks very much like Karl Marx’s one-size-fits-all First International. Of course, just what the doctor by all means, be my guest, but only if the shades of Proudhon and Bakunin can join. Boys and girls that First International was disbanded in the wake of the demise of the Paris Commune for a reason, okay. Mixing political banners (Marxism and fifty-seven varieties of anarchism) is appropriate to a united front, not a hell-bent revolutionary International fighting, and fighting hard, for our communist future. Forward
The Second International, for those six, no seven, people who might care, is still alive and well (at least for periodic international conferences) as a mail-drop for homeless social democrats who want to maintain a fig leaf of internationalism without having to do much about it. Needless to say, one Joseph Stalin and his cohorts liquidated the Communist (Third) International in 1943, long after it turned from a revolutionary headquarters into an outpost of Soviet foreign policy. By then no revolutionary missed its demise, nor shed a tear goodbye. And of course there are always a million commentaries by groups, cults, leagues, tendencies, etc. claiming to stand in the tradition (although, rarely, the program) of the Leon Trotsky-inspired Fourth International that, logically and programmatically, is the starting point of any discussion of the modern struggle for a new communist international.
With that caveat in mind this month, the September American Labor Day month, but more importantly the month in 1938 that the ill-fated Fourth International was founded I am posting some documents around the history of that formation, and its program, the program known by the shorthand, Transitional Program. If you want to call for a fifth, sixth, seventh, what have you, revolutionary international, and you are serious about it beyond the "mail-drop" potential, then you have to look seriously into that organization's origins, and the world-class Bolshevik revolutionary who inspired it. Forward.
*****
Markin comment on this document
Everybody, and that most notably included Leon Trotsky, knew something was going awry with the Bolshevik Revolution by 1923 for many reasons, some of them beyond correction outside of an international extension of the revolution, especially to Germany that would provide the vital industrial infrastructure to aid the struggling Soviet Union. Nevertheless, and this is important to note about serious revolutionary politics and politicians in general, the fight in 1923 still needed to aimed at winning the party cadre over. That was the failing point of many oppositionists, inside and outside the party, then.
By 1933, with the rise of the virtually unopposed rise and consolidation of Nazism in Germany clearly putting paid to the Communist International’s (read: Stalin’s) erroneous strategy, working inside the party, or acting as an expelled fraction of the party, was no longer tenable. Like earlier with the First and Second Internationals the Communist International was now dead as a revolutionary organizational center. Time now to gather, by fits and starts, the cadre for a new international- the Fourth International
Needless to say in trying to organize a new international in tough times, with not enough seasoned cadre, not enough not-Leon Trotsky leadership, not enough money, and not enough, well, of anything internal bickering
and personality disputes are going to slow down any efforts. The "star" system in the French movement which was at the heart of this dispute is still with us today by the way. And not just in France.
Saturday, September 17, 2011
Labor's Untold Story-From The Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels Archives-The Struggle For Working Class Organization-The International Workingmen's Association, 1868
Markin comment:
Every Month Is Labor History MonthThis post is part of an on-going series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!
Other Septembers in this series I have concentrated on various sometimes now obscure leaders and rank and file militants in the international working class movement, especially those who made contributions here in America like "Big Bill" Haywood and Eugene V. Debs. This year, given the pressing need for clarity around the labor party question in America(algebraically expressed in our movement as the struggle for a workers party that fights for a workers government) I have gone back to the sources-Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and their correspondence on working class organization with various associates and opponents. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely given the state of working class organization here these days, many of their comments, taken in due regard for changed times and circumstances, are germane today. This correspondence is only a start and should just whet the reader's appetite to research further.
*****
The International Workingmen's Association, 1868
The Fourth Annual Report of the General Council
Adopted by the General Council on September 1, 1868
Written: by Karl Marx on September 1, 1868;
First published: in French in a special supplement to Le Peuple Belge, September 8, 1868: "Troisième congrès de l'Association Internationale des Travailleurs. Compte rendu official", Bruxelles, 1868; in English in The Times, No. 26225, September 9, 1868 Reproduced from The Times, and checked with the copy of the German manuscript made by Marx's wife, Jenny Marx.
The year 1867-68 will mark an epoch in the history of the Association. After a period of peaceable development it has assumed dimensions powerful enough to provoke the bitter denunciations of the ruling classes and the hostile demonstrations of governments. [1] It has entered upon the phases of strife.
The French Government took, of course, the lead in the reactionary proceedings against the working classes. Already last year we had to signalise some of its underhand manoeuvres. It meddled with our correspondence, seized our Statutes, and the Congress documents. [2] After many fruitless steps to get them back, they were at last given up only under the official pressure of Lord Stanley, the English Minister of Foreign Affairs.
But the Empire has this year thrown off the mask and tried to directly annihilate the International Association by coups de police and judiciary prosecution. Begot by the struggle of classes, of which the days of June, 1848, are the grandest expression, it could not but assume alternately the attitudes of the official saviour of the Bourgeoisie and of the paternal protector of the Proletariat. The growing power of the International having manifested itself in the strikes of Roubaix, Amiens, Paris, Geneva, &c., reduced our would-be patron to the necessity of turning our Society to his own account or of destroying it. In the beginning he was ready enough to strike a bargain on very moderate terms. [3] The manifesto of the Parisians read at the Congress of Geneva [4] having been seized at the French frontier, our Paris Executive demanded of the Minister of the Interior the reasons of this Seizure. [5] M. Rouher then invited one of the members of the Committee [6] to an interview, in the course of which he declared himself ready to authorise the entry of the manifesto on the condition of some modifications being inserted. [7] On the refusal of the delegate of the Paris Executive, he added,
"Still, if you would introduce some words of gratitude to the Emperor, who has done so much for the working classes, one might see what could be done." [8]
M. Rouher's, the sub-Emperor's, insinuation was met by a blank rebuff. From that moment the Imperial Government looked out for a pretext to suppress the Association. Its anger was heightened by the anti-chauvinist agitation on the part of our French members after the German war. Soon after, when the Fenian panic had reached its climax, the General Council addressed to the English Government a petition [9] demanding the commutation of the sentence of the three victims of Manchester, and qualifying their hanging as an act of political revenge. [10] At the same time it held public meetings in London for the defence of the rights of Ireland. The Empire, always anxious to deserve the good graces of the British Government, thought the moment propitious for laying hands upon the International. [11] It caused nocturnal perquisitions to be made, eagerly rummaged the private correspondence, and announced with much noise [12] that it had discovered the centre of the Fenian conspiracy, of which the International was denounced as one of the principal organs. All its laborious researches, however, ended in nothing. [13] The public prosecutor himself threw down his brief in disgust. [14] The attempt at converting the International Association into a secret society of conspirators having miserably broken down, the next best thing was to prosecute our Paris branch as a non-authorised society of more than 20 members. The French judges, trained by the Imperialist discipline, hastened, of course, to order the dissolution of the Association and the imprisonment of its Paris Executive. [15] The tribunal had the naiveté to declare in the preamble of its judgment that the existence of the French Empire was incompatible with [16] a working men's association that dared to proclaim truth, justice, and morality as its leading principles. [17] The consequences of these prosecutions made themselves felt in the departments, where paltry vexations on the part of the Prefects succeeded to the condemnations of Paris. This Governmental chicanery, however, so far from annihilating the Association, has given it a fresh impulse [18] by forcing the Empire to drop its patronising airs to the working classes.
In Belgium, the International Association has made immense strides. The coal lords of the basin of Charleroi, having driven their miners to riots by incessant exactions, let loose upon those unarmed men the armed force which massacred many of them. [19] It was in [the] midst of the panic thus created that our Belgian branch took up the cause of the miners, disclosed their miserable economical condition, [20] rushed to the rescue of the families of the dead and wounded, and procured legal counsel for the prisoners, who were finally all of them acquitted by the jury. After the affair of Charleroi the success of the International in Belgium was assured. The Belgian Minister of Justice, Jules Bara, denounced the International Association in the Chamber of Deputies and made of its existence the principal pretext for the renewal of the law against foreigners. He even dared to threaten he should prevent the Brussels Congress from being held. [21] The Belgian Government ought at last to understand that petty States have no longer any raison d'être in Europe except they be the asylums of liberty.
In Italy, the progress of the Association has been impeded by the reaction following close upon the ambuscade of Mentana; one of the first consequences was the restriction put upon the right of association and public meeting. But the numerous letters which have come to our hands fully prove that the Italian working class is more and more asserting its individuality quite independently of the old parties.
In Prussia, the International cannot exist legally, on account of a law which forbids all relations with foreign societies. Moreover in regard to the General Union of the German Working Men, the Prussian Government has imitated Bonapartism on a shabby scale. Always ready to fall foul of each other, the military Governments are cheek by jowl when entering upon a crusade against their common enemy, the working classes. In spite, however, of all these petty tribulations, small groups spread over the whole surface of Germany had long since rallied round our Geneva centre. The General Union of the German Working Men, whose branches are mostly confined to Northern Germany, have in their recent Congress held at Hamburg decided to act in concert with the International Working Men's Association 23 although debarred from joining it officially. [22] In the programme of the Nuremberg Congress, representing upwards of 100 working men's societies which mostly belong to Middle and Southern Germany, the direct adhesion to the International has been put on the order of the day. [23] At the request of their leading committee we have sent a delegate to Nuremberg.
In Austria, the working-class movement assumes a more and more revolutionary aspect. [24] In the beginning of September a congress was to meet at Vienna, aiming at the fraternisation of the working men of the different races of the Empire. They had also sent an address to the English and French working men, in which they declared for the principles of the International. [25] Your General Council had already appointed a delegate ~ to Vienna [26] when the Liberal Government of Austria, on the very point of succumbing to the blows of the feudal reaction, had the shrewdness to stir the anger of the working men by prohibiting their congress.
In the struggle maintained by the building trades of Geneva the very existence of the International in Switzerland was put on its trial. The employers made it a preliminary condition of coming to any terms with their workmen that the latter should forsake the International. The working men indignantly refused to comply with this dictate. Thanks to the aid received [27] from France, England, Germany, &c., through the medium of the International, they have finally obtained a diminution of one hour [28] of labour and 10 per cent [29] increase of wages. Already deeply rooted in Switzerland, the International has witnessed since that event a rapid increase in the number of its members. In the month of August last the German working men residing in Switzerland (about 50 societies) passed at their Congress in Neuenburg a unanimous vote of adhesion to the International.
In England, the unsettled state of politics, [30] the dissolution of the old parties, and the preparations for the coming electoral campaign have absorbed many of our most active members, and, to some degree, retarded our propaganda. Nevertheless, we have entered into correspondence with numerous provincial trades' unions, many of which have sent in their adhesion. Among the more recent London affiliations those of the Curriers' Society and the City Men's Shoemakers are the most considerable as regards numbers.
Your General Council is in constant communication with the National Labour Union of the United States. On its last Congress of August, 1867, the American Union had resolved to send a delegate to the Brussels congress, [31] but, pressed for time, was unable to take the special measures necessary for carrying out the vote.
The latent power of the working classes of the United States has recently manifested itself in the legal establishment of a working day of eight hours in all the workshops of the Federal Government, and in the passing [of] laws to the same effect by many State Legislatures. However, at this very moment the working men of New York, for example, are engaged in a fierce struggle for enforcing the eight hours' law, against the resistance of rebellious capital. This fact proves that even under the most favourable political conditions all serious success of the proletariat depends upon an organisation that unites and concentrates its forces; and even its national organisation is still exposed to split on the disorganisation of the working classes in other countries, which one and all compete in the market of the world, acting and reacting the one upon the other. Nothing but an international bond of the working classes can ever ensure their definitive triumph. This want has given birth to the International Working Men's Association. That Association has not been hatched by a sect or a theory. It is the spontaneous growth of the proletarian movement, which itself is the offspring of the natural and irrepressible tendencies of modern society. Profoundly convinced of the greatness of its mission, the International Working Men's Association will allow itself neither to be intimidated nor misled. Its destiny, henceforward, coalesces with the historical progress of the class that bear in their hands the regeneration of mankind. [32]
London, September 1
Notes
All Ed. notes from Marx Engels Collected Works.
1 The German text has "and persecutions by governments".
2 The German text has "and the Geneva Congress documents on the French frontier".
3 The German text has: "In the beginning not much was demanded."
4 The German text further has: "(1866) and published in Brussels in the following year".
5 "A M. le ministre de l'intérieur. Vendredi. 9 mars 1867". In Le Courrier français, No. 112, May 1, 1868.
6 Antoine Marie Bourdon, the section's archivist.
7 Instead of "to an interview ... being inserted" the German has: "to an interview. In the course of the meeting that followed he first demanded that certain passages in the Manifesto should be moderated and altered".
8 Le Courrier français, No. 112, May 1, 1868. The quotation gives the general meaning of Rouher's speech.
9 See
10 After the word "petition" the German has the following text: "in which the forthcoming execution of the three Manchester martyrs was described as a judicial murder (the reference is to William Philip Allen, Michael Larkin and Michael O'Brien).
11 The German further has "on both sides of the Channel".
12 The German has "in the English press".
13 In the German text this sentence reads: "Much ado about nothing."
14 In the German text this sentence reads: "The legal investigation found not a shadow of a corpus delicti despite its zeal."
15 Instead of "and the imprisonment of its Paris Executive" the German text has "and fined the Committee members and sentenced them to imprisonment".
16 In the German text the beginning of this sentence reads as follows: "Yet the tribunal had the naïvete to state two things, in the preamble of its judgement: on the one hand that the power of the I.W.A. was growing and, on the other, that the December Empire was incompatible with...."
17 See the tribunal's sentences of March 20 and May 22, 1868 in Procès de l'Association Internationale des Travailleurs. Bureau de Paris, Paris, 1868, pp. 59-40 and 128.
18 In the German text then follows a separate sentence: "Nothing has enhanced its influence in France more strongly than the fact that it finally forced the December government to break clearly with the working class."
19 In the German text the words "which massacred many of them" are omitted.
20 The German text has "in the press and at public meetings".
21 Marx refers to Jules Bara's speech in the Chamber of Deputies on May 16 1868, published in La Liberté, No. 47, May 17, 1868.
22 In the German text the end of the sentence reads: "although by law it is unable to join the I.W.A. officially".
23 See Demokratisches Wochenblatt, No. 35, August 29, 1868, pp. 275-76.
24 The German text has "distinct character".
25 "Die Arbeiter Wien's an die französischen und englischen Arbeiter", Der Vorbote, No. 8, August 1868, pp. 120-22.
26 Peter Fox.
27 The German text has "by them in Switzerland itself as well as".
28 The words "one hour" are omitted in the German text.
29 "10 per cent" omitted in the German text.
30 The German text has "the political movement" instead of "the unsettled state of politics".
31 Richard Trevellick.
32 In the manuscript there follows: "For the General Council: Robert Shaw, Chairman J. George Eccarius, General Secretary."
Every Month Is Labor History MonthThis post is part of an on-going series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!
Other Septembers in this series I have concentrated on various sometimes now obscure leaders and rank and file militants in the international working class movement, especially those who made contributions here in America like "Big Bill" Haywood and Eugene V. Debs. This year, given the pressing need for clarity around the labor party question in America(algebraically expressed in our movement as the struggle for a workers party that fights for a workers government) I have gone back to the sources-Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and their correspondence on working class organization with various associates and opponents. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely given the state of working class organization here these days, many of their comments, taken in due regard for changed times and circumstances, are germane today. This correspondence is only a start and should just whet the reader's appetite to research further.
*****
The International Workingmen's Association, 1868
The Fourth Annual Report of the General Council
Adopted by the General Council on September 1, 1868
Written: by Karl Marx on September 1, 1868;
First published: in French in a special supplement to Le Peuple Belge, September 8, 1868: "Troisième congrès de l'Association Internationale des Travailleurs. Compte rendu official", Bruxelles, 1868; in English in The Times, No. 26225, September 9, 1868 Reproduced from The Times, and checked with the copy of the German manuscript made by Marx's wife, Jenny Marx.
The year 1867-68 will mark an epoch in the history of the Association. After a period of peaceable development it has assumed dimensions powerful enough to provoke the bitter denunciations of the ruling classes and the hostile demonstrations of governments. [1] It has entered upon the phases of strife.
The French Government took, of course, the lead in the reactionary proceedings against the working classes. Already last year we had to signalise some of its underhand manoeuvres. It meddled with our correspondence, seized our Statutes, and the Congress documents. [2] After many fruitless steps to get them back, they were at last given up only under the official pressure of Lord Stanley, the English Minister of Foreign Affairs.
But the Empire has this year thrown off the mask and tried to directly annihilate the International Association by coups de police and judiciary prosecution. Begot by the struggle of classes, of which the days of June, 1848, are the grandest expression, it could not but assume alternately the attitudes of the official saviour of the Bourgeoisie and of the paternal protector of the Proletariat. The growing power of the International having manifested itself in the strikes of Roubaix, Amiens, Paris, Geneva, &c., reduced our would-be patron to the necessity of turning our Society to his own account or of destroying it. In the beginning he was ready enough to strike a bargain on very moderate terms. [3] The manifesto of the Parisians read at the Congress of Geneva [4] having been seized at the French frontier, our Paris Executive demanded of the Minister of the Interior the reasons of this Seizure. [5] M. Rouher then invited one of the members of the Committee [6] to an interview, in the course of which he declared himself ready to authorise the entry of the manifesto on the condition of some modifications being inserted. [7] On the refusal of the delegate of the Paris Executive, he added,
"Still, if you would introduce some words of gratitude to the Emperor, who has done so much for the working classes, one might see what could be done." [8]
M. Rouher's, the sub-Emperor's, insinuation was met by a blank rebuff. From that moment the Imperial Government looked out for a pretext to suppress the Association. Its anger was heightened by the anti-chauvinist agitation on the part of our French members after the German war. Soon after, when the Fenian panic had reached its climax, the General Council addressed to the English Government a petition [9] demanding the commutation of the sentence of the three victims of Manchester, and qualifying their hanging as an act of political revenge. [10] At the same time it held public meetings in London for the defence of the rights of Ireland. The Empire, always anxious to deserve the good graces of the British Government, thought the moment propitious for laying hands upon the International. [11] It caused nocturnal perquisitions to be made, eagerly rummaged the private correspondence, and announced with much noise [12] that it had discovered the centre of the Fenian conspiracy, of which the International was denounced as one of the principal organs. All its laborious researches, however, ended in nothing. [13] The public prosecutor himself threw down his brief in disgust. [14] The attempt at converting the International Association into a secret society of conspirators having miserably broken down, the next best thing was to prosecute our Paris branch as a non-authorised society of more than 20 members. The French judges, trained by the Imperialist discipline, hastened, of course, to order the dissolution of the Association and the imprisonment of its Paris Executive. [15] The tribunal had the naiveté to declare in the preamble of its judgment that the existence of the French Empire was incompatible with [16] a working men's association that dared to proclaim truth, justice, and morality as its leading principles. [17] The consequences of these prosecutions made themselves felt in the departments, where paltry vexations on the part of the Prefects succeeded to the condemnations of Paris. This Governmental chicanery, however, so far from annihilating the Association, has given it a fresh impulse [18] by forcing the Empire to drop its patronising airs to the working classes.
In Belgium, the International Association has made immense strides. The coal lords of the basin of Charleroi, having driven their miners to riots by incessant exactions, let loose upon those unarmed men the armed force which massacred many of them. [19] It was in [the] midst of the panic thus created that our Belgian branch took up the cause of the miners, disclosed their miserable economical condition, [20] rushed to the rescue of the families of the dead and wounded, and procured legal counsel for the prisoners, who were finally all of them acquitted by the jury. After the affair of Charleroi the success of the International in Belgium was assured. The Belgian Minister of Justice, Jules Bara, denounced the International Association in the Chamber of Deputies and made of its existence the principal pretext for the renewal of the law against foreigners. He even dared to threaten he should prevent the Brussels Congress from being held. [21] The Belgian Government ought at last to understand that petty States have no longer any raison d'être in Europe except they be the asylums of liberty.
In Italy, the progress of the Association has been impeded by the reaction following close upon the ambuscade of Mentana; one of the first consequences was the restriction put upon the right of association and public meeting. But the numerous letters which have come to our hands fully prove that the Italian working class is more and more asserting its individuality quite independently of the old parties.
In Prussia, the International cannot exist legally, on account of a law which forbids all relations with foreign societies. Moreover in regard to the General Union of the German Working Men, the Prussian Government has imitated Bonapartism on a shabby scale. Always ready to fall foul of each other, the military Governments are cheek by jowl when entering upon a crusade against their common enemy, the working classes. In spite, however, of all these petty tribulations, small groups spread over the whole surface of Germany had long since rallied round our Geneva centre. The General Union of the German Working Men, whose branches are mostly confined to Northern Germany, have in their recent Congress held at Hamburg decided to act in concert with the International Working Men's Association 23 although debarred from joining it officially. [22] In the programme of the Nuremberg Congress, representing upwards of 100 working men's societies which mostly belong to Middle and Southern Germany, the direct adhesion to the International has been put on the order of the day. [23] At the request of their leading committee we have sent a delegate to Nuremberg.
In Austria, the working-class movement assumes a more and more revolutionary aspect. [24] In the beginning of September a congress was to meet at Vienna, aiming at the fraternisation of the working men of the different races of the Empire. They had also sent an address to the English and French working men, in which they declared for the principles of the International. [25] Your General Council had already appointed a delegate ~ to Vienna [26] when the Liberal Government of Austria, on the very point of succumbing to the blows of the feudal reaction, had the shrewdness to stir the anger of the working men by prohibiting their congress.
In the struggle maintained by the building trades of Geneva the very existence of the International in Switzerland was put on its trial. The employers made it a preliminary condition of coming to any terms with their workmen that the latter should forsake the International. The working men indignantly refused to comply with this dictate. Thanks to the aid received [27] from France, England, Germany, &c., through the medium of the International, they have finally obtained a diminution of one hour [28] of labour and 10 per cent [29] increase of wages. Already deeply rooted in Switzerland, the International has witnessed since that event a rapid increase in the number of its members. In the month of August last the German working men residing in Switzerland (about 50 societies) passed at their Congress in Neuenburg a unanimous vote of adhesion to the International.
In England, the unsettled state of politics, [30] the dissolution of the old parties, and the preparations for the coming electoral campaign have absorbed many of our most active members, and, to some degree, retarded our propaganda. Nevertheless, we have entered into correspondence with numerous provincial trades' unions, many of which have sent in their adhesion. Among the more recent London affiliations those of the Curriers' Society and the City Men's Shoemakers are the most considerable as regards numbers.
Your General Council is in constant communication with the National Labour Union of the United States. On its last Congress of August, 1867, the American Union had resolved to send a delegate to the Brussels congress, [31] but, pressed for time, was unable to take the special measures necessary for carrying out the vote.
The latent power of the working classes of the United States has recently manifested itself in the legal establishment of a working day of eight hours in all the workshops of the Federal Government, and in the passing [of] laws to the same effect by many State Legislatures. However, at this very moment the working men of New York, for example, are engaged in a fierce struggle for enforcing the eight hours' law, against the resistance of rebellious capital. This fact proves that even under the most favourable political conditions all serious success of the proletariat depends upon an organisation that unites and concentrates its forces; and even its national organisation is still exposed to split on the disorganisation of the working classes in other countries, which one and all compete in the market of the world, acting and reacting the one upon the other. Nothing but an international bond of the working classes can ever ensure their definitive triumph. This want has given birth to the International Working Men's Association. That Association has not been hatched by a sect or a theory. It is the spontaneous growth of the proletarian movement, which itself is the offspring of the natural and irrepressible tendencies of modern society. Profoundly convinced of the greatness of its mission, the International Working Men's Association will allow itself neither to be intimidated nor misled. Its destiny, henceforward, coalesces with the historical progress of the class that bear in their hands the regeneration of mankind. [32]
London, September 1
Notes
All Ed. notes from Marx Engels Collected Works.
1 The German text has "and persecutions by governments".
2 The German text has "and the Geneva Congress documents on the French frontier".
3 The German text has: "In the beginning not much was demanded."
4 The German text further has: "(1866) and published in Brussels in the following year".
5 "A M. le ministre de l'intérieur. Vendredi. 9 mars 1867". In Le Courrier français, No. 112, May 1, 1868.
6 Antoine Marie Bourdon, the section's archivist.
7 Instead of "to an interview ... being inserted" the German has: "to an interview. In the course of the meeting that followed he first demanded that certain passages in the Manifesto should be moderated and altered".
8 Le Courrier français, No. 112, May 1, 1868. The quotation gives the general meaning of Rouher's speech.
9 See
10 After the word "petition" the German has the following text: "in which the forthcoming execution of the three Manchester martyrs was described as a judicial murder (the reference is to William Philip Allen, Michael Larkin and Michael O'Brien).
11 The German further has "on both sides of the Channel".
12 The German has "in the English press".
13 In the German text this sentence reads: "Much ado about nothing."
14 In the German text this sentence reads: "The legal investigation found not a shadow of a corpus delicti despite its zeal."
15 Instead of "and the imprisonment of its Paris Executive" the German text has "and fined the Committee members and sentenced them to imprisonment".
16 In the German text the beginning of this sentence reads as follows: "Yet the tribunal had the naïvete to state two things, in the preamble of its judgement: on the one hand that the power of the I.W.A. was growing and, on the other, that the December Empire was incompatible with...."
17 See the tribunal's sentences of March 20 and May 22, 1868 in Procès de l'Association Internationale des Travailleurs. Bureau de Paris, Paris, 1868, pp. 59-40 and 128.
18 In the German text then follows a separate sentence: "Nothing has enhanced its influence in France more strongly than the fact that it finally forced the December government to break clearly with the working class."
19 In the German text the words "which massacred many of them" are omitted.
20 The German text has "in the press and at public meetings".
21 Marx refers to Jules Bara's speech in the Chamber of Deputies on May 16 1868, published in La Liberté, No. 47, May 17, 1868.
22 In the German text the end of the sentence reads: "although by law it is unable to join the I.W.A. officially".
23 See Demokratisches Wochenblatt, No. 35, August 29, 1868, pp. 275-76.
24 The German text has "distinct character".
25 "Die Arbeiter Wien's an die französischen und englischen Arbeiter", Der Vorbote, No. 8, August 1868, pp. 120-22.
26 Peter Fox.
27 The German text has "by them in Switzerland itself as well as".
28 The words "one hour" are omitted in the German text.
29 "10 per cent" omitted in the German text.
30 The German text has "the political movement" instead of "the unsettled state of politics".
31 Richard Trevellick.
32 In the manuscript there follows: "For the General Council: Robert Shaw, Chairman J. George Eccarius, General Secretary."
“Workers of The World Unite, You Have Nothing To Lose But Your Chains”-The Struggle For Trotsky's Fourth (Communist) International-From The Archives-The Founding Conference Of The Fourth International (1938)-"Thesis On the World Role of American Imperialism"
Click on the headline to link to the Toward A History Of The Fourth International website for the article listed above.
Markin comment (repost from September 2010):
Recently, when the question of an international, a new workers international, a fifth international, was broached by the International Marxist Tendency (IMT), faintly echoing the call by Venezuelan caudillo, Hugo Chavez, I got to thinking a little bit more on the subject. Moreover, it must be something in the air (maybe caused by these global climatic changes) because I have also seen recent commentary on the need to go back to something that looks very much like Karl Marx’s one-size-fits-all First International. Of course, just what the doctor by all means, be my guest, but only if the shades of Proudhon and Bakunin can join. Boys and girls that First International was disbanded in the wake of the demise of the Paris Commune for a reason, okay. Mixing political banners (Marxism and fifty-seven varieties of anarchism) is appropriate to a united front, not a hell-bent revolutionary International fighting, and fighting hard, for our communist future. Forward
The Second International, for those six, no seven, people who might care, is still alive and well (at least for periodic international conferences) as a mail-drop for homeless social democrats who want to maintain a fig leaf of internationalism without having to do much about it. Needless to say, one Joseph Stalin and his cohorts liquidated the Communist (Third) International in 1943, long after it turned from a revolutionary headquarters into an outpost of Soviet foreign policy. By then no revolutionary missed its demise, nor shed a tear goodbye. And of course there are always a million commentaries by groups, cults, leagues, tendencies, etc. claiming to stand in the tradition (although, rarely, the program) of the Leon Trotsky-inspired Fourth International that, logically and programmatically, is the starting point of any discussion of the modern struggle for a new communist international.
With that caveat in mind this month, the September American Labor Day month, but more importantly the month in 1938 that the ill-fated Fourth International was founded I am posting some documents around the history of that formation, and its program, the program known by the shorthand, Transitional Program. If you want to call for a fifth, sixth, seventh, what have you, revolutionary international, and you are serious about it beyond the "mail-drop" potential, then you have to look seriously into that organization's origins, and the world-class Bolshevik revolutionary who inspired it. Forward.
**********
Markin comment on this document
Everybody, and that most notably included Leon Trotsky, knew something was going awry with the Bolshevik Revolution by 1923 for many reasons, some of them beyond correction outside of an international extension of the revolution, especially to Germany that would provide the vital industrial infrastructure to aid the struggling Soviet Union. Nevertheless, and this is important to note about serious revolutionary politics and politicians in general, the fight in 1923 still needed to aimed at winning the party cadre over. That was the failing point of many oppositionists, inside and outside the party, then.
By 1933, with the rise of the virtually unopposed rise and consolidation of Nazism in Germany clearly putting paid to the Communist International’s (read: Stalin’s) erroneous strategy, working inside the party, or acting as an expelled fraction of the party, was no longer tenable. Like earlier with the First and Second Internationals the Communist International was now dead as a revolutionary organizational center. Time now to gather, by fits and starts, the cadre for a new international- the Fourth International
Again, with due respect for changes in time and circumstances, the spirit of this document reads very today-ish (ouch!).
Markin comment (repost from September 2010):
Recently, when the question of an international, a new workers international, a fifth international, was broached by the International Marxist Tendency (IMT), faintly echoing the call by Venezuelan caudillo, Hugo Chavez, I got to thinking a little bit more on the subject. Moreover, it must be something in the air (maybe caused by these global climatic changes) because I have also seen recent commentary on the need to go back to something that looks very much like Karl Marx’s one-size-fits-all First International. Of course, just what the doctor by all means, be my guest, but only if the shades of Proudhon and Bakunin can join. Boys and girls that First International was disbanded in the wake of the demise of the Paris Commune for a reason, okay. Mixing political banners (Marxism and fifty-seven varieties of anarchism) is appropriate to a united front, not a hell-bent revolutionary International fighting, and fighting hard, for our communist future. Forward
The Second International, for those six, no seven, people who might care, is still alive and well (at least for periodic international conferences) as a mail-drop for homeless social democrats who want to maintain a fig leaf of internationalism without having to do much about it. Needless to say, one Joseph Stalin and his cohorts liquidated the Communist (Third) International in 1943, long after it turned from a revolutionary headquarters into an outpost of Soviet foreign policy. By then no revolutionary missed its demise, nor shed a tear goodbye. And of course there are always a million commentaries by groups, cults, leagues, tendencies, etc. claiming to stand in the tradition (although, rarely, the program) of the Leon Trotsky-inspired Fourth International that, logically and programmatically, is the starting point of any discussion of the modern struggle for a new communist international.
With that caveat in mind this month, the September American Labor Day month, but more importantly the month in 1938 that the ill-fated Fourth International was founded I am posting some documents around the history of that formation, and its program, the program known by the shorthand, Transitional Program. If you want to call for a fifth, sixth, seventh, what have you, revolutionary international, and you are serious about it beyond the "mail-drop" potential, then you have to look seriously into that organization's origins, and the world-class Bolshevik revolutionary who inspired it. Forward.
**********
Markin comment on this document
Everybody, and that most notably included Leon Trotsky, knew something was going awry with the Bolshevik Revolution by 1923 for many reasons, some of them beyond correction outside of an international extension of the revolution, especially to Germany that would provide the vital industrial infrastructure to aid the struggling Soviet Union. Nevertheless, and this is important to note about serious revolutionary politics and politicians in general, the fight in 1923 still needed to aimed at winning the party cadre over. That was the failing point of many oppositionists, inside and outside the party, then.
By 1933, with the rise of the virtually unopposed rise and consolidation of Nazism in Germany clearly putting paid to the Communist International’s (read: Stalin’s) erroneous strategy, working inside the party, or acting as an expelled fraction of the party, was no longer tenable. Like earlier with the First and Second Internationals the Communist International was now dead as a revolutionary organizational center. Time now to gather, by fits and starts, the cadre for a new international- the Fourth International
Again, with due respect for changes in time and circumstances, the spirit of this document reads very today-ish (ouch!).
Friday, September 16, 2011
***Out In The Be-Bop Be-Bop 1960s Night- The Heart Of Rock ‘n’ Rock: 1960-61, Take Two- In The Time Of Donna Blanchard’s Time- With Elvis Presley In Mind
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Mark Dinning performing his 1960s teen angst classic, Teen Angel
CD Review
The Heart Of Rock ‘n’ Roll: 1960-61-Take Two, various artists, Time-Life Music, 1997
Scene: Brought to mind by one of the snapshot photos that grace each CD in this series.
Doc’s Drugstore and Soda Fountain(not shown), located in the heart of the North Adamsville shopping streets, and most importantly, just a few minutes walk from North Adamsville High School. The soda fountain counter area is complete with a dozen single stools, a speckled faux-marble formica countertop with assorted pastry trays, candy boxes, pie cabinets and various condiment combinations for Doc’s ‘greasy spoon” hamburgers and hot dogs. Said single stools are strictly for losers, girl friend-less guys (or once in a great while a girl just trying catch a quick soda on the way home) or old people waiting for Doc to fill their ancient medicines prescriptions. They are no factor, no factor at all in this teen-worthy world. No, less than no factor. Every once in a while, however, one of Fritz Cullen’s corner boys takes his foot off the wall in front of Doc’s and enters to get a take out Cherry Coke, the de riguer drink of Fritz’s boyos.
But the fountain is strictly for food and drink, food and drink that is also strictly secondary to why Doc’s is a teen-worthy heaven. The real draw is the quiet booths that line both corner walls and are only for after school boy-girl couples, four-some girls looking for guys to dance with, and at night, mainly school year weekend and summer every nights, Fritz’s Cullen’s corner boys when they tire of holding up Doc’s wall out front (or more realistically when the hour is late and the girl prospects have dimmed). But the booths mean nothing by themselves except as “resting” areas after some fast dance coming from Doc’s super-charged juke box, complete with the very latest records straight from Pete’ Platters Record Shop so you know the are hot.
Right now, just this very teen ear minute, one can hear the sassy sound of The Drifters This Magic Moment in the background as we fix on a boy and girl taking a break from deep conversation (deep conversation related in teen world to either sex, setting up dates, analyzing the state of their eternal relationship, or some combination of all three) and taking a straw sip from their shared Cherry Coke. The Cherry Coke automatically means that rank and file Doc’s corner boy Harry “Red” Radley is present on one of the straws. On the other Donna Blanchard, one of the hottest sixteen year old sophomore girls at North Adamsville High, with a nice shape, a sweet smile, and a “come hither” look that has had more than one boy moony-eyed for her affections. But no dice, no dice at all. In this autumn of the year of our lord nineteen hundred and sixty Miss Donna Blanchard only has eyes, and whatever else she has to give, for one Red Radley. Let’s listen in as the eminently forgettable Booby Vee is droning on in the background about some lost love (and rightfully so, if the truth be known) on Take Good Care Of My Baby.
*********
“What the matter, honey, don’t you want me like that, “ murmered Donna Blanchard after being told for the fifth or sixth time by our corner boy Red Radley that, if you can believe this, no he was not ready for heavy sex (meaning of course, in the language of the young, some variety of “going all the way”). It seems that last Saturday night down at Adamsville Beach, the local “parking” heaven where one and all went to see the ”submarine races” in the local teen code parlance Donna, making no bones that she was ready, more than ready, to go all the way with Red got turned down. Turned down flat. Fortunately for Red Donna, embarrassed by such a fool for a boy friend, had “neglected” to mention this hard fact of life when the obligatory Monday morning Girls’ “Lav” talk got around to the subject of the weekend scorecard. In short, who did, and didn’t do it. Right now Red and Donna are trying to sort things out as a strangely ironic song by Cathy Jean and the Roommates, Please Love Me Forever, spins on the juke box.
What? A member in good standing of Fritz Cullen’s corner boys, corner boys who have, publicly anyway, notched up (went all they way with) more North Adamsville girls than maybe there were girls in North Adamsville turned down a chance at paradise. And turned down a certified fox like Donna Blanchard. No way. Moreover, Red, displaying he not uncommon teen male bravado had lied to his fellow corner boys and said that he had had already “gone all the way” with Donna. Jesus. Did our Red have a medical problem? No. Did he have some religious scruples about pre-martial sex? Hell, no. Our Red, as it turns out was a virgin and was terrified when Donna, a virgin herself but ready for the time of her time, came on so strong. Especially when she went wild on Saturday night when the local 24/7 rock and roll station, WMEX, played a medley of Elvis tunes including his latest, Surrender.
Some times things end right in the teen universe, sometimes they don’t. This time they didn’t. Well, at least for Red. After their little conversation at Doc’s Red and Donna agreed, but mostly Donna agreed, that they should see other people. That’s teen code, and maybe universal code, for “breaking up.” So now one sees the fetching Donna Blanchard riding around in Jimmy Jakes '59 cherry Chevy, and sitting very close indeed. Moreover she has that look, that certain look like she now knows a thing or two about ways of the world. Well, after all it was the time of her time, wasn’t it? As for Red, well, Red is seen more and more occupying one of those single stools at Doc’s counter sipping a Cherry Coke and endlessly throwing nickels, dimes and quarters in the juke box playing Elvis’ It’s Now or Never. Enough said.
CD Review
The Heart Of Rock ‘n’ Roll: 1960-61-Take Two, various artists, Time-Life Music, 1997
Scene: Brought to mind by one of the snapshot photos that grace each CD in this series.
Doc’s Drugstore and Soda Fountain(not shown), located in the heart of the North Adamsville shopping streets, and most importantly, just a few minutes walk from North Adamsville High School. The soda fountain counter area is complete with a dozen single stools, a speckled faux-marble formica countertop with assorted pastry trays, candy boxes, pie cabinets and various condiment combinations for Doc’s ‘greasy spoon” hamburgers and hot dogs. Said single stools are strictly for losers, girl friend-less guys (or once in a great while a girl just trying catch a quick soda on the way home) or old people waiting for Doc to fill their ancient medicines prescriptions. They are no factor, no factor at all in this teen-worthy world. No, less than no factor. Every once in a while, however, one of Fritz Cullen’s corner boys takes his foot off the wall in front of Doc’s and enters to get a take out Cherry Coke, the de riguer drink of Fritz’s boyos.
But the fountain is strictly for food and drink, food and drink that is also strictly secondary to why Doc’s is a teen-worthy heaven. The real draw is the quiet booths that line both corner walls and are only for after school boy-girl couples, four-some girls looking for guys to dance with, and at night, mainly school year weekend and summer every nights, Fritz’s Cullen’s corner boys when they tire of holding up Doc’s wall out front (or more realistically when the hour is late and the girl prospects have dimmed). But the booths mean nothing by themselves except as “resting” areas after some fast dance coming from Doc’s super-charged juke box, complete with the very latest records straight from Pete’ Platters Record Shop so you know the are hot.
Right now, just this very teen ear minute, one can hear the sassy sound of The Drifters This Magic Moment in the background as we fix on a boy and girl taking a break from deep conversation (deep conversation related in teen world to either sex, setting up dates, analyzing the state of their eternal relationship, or some combination of all three) and taking a straw sip from their shared Cherry Coke. The Cherry Coke automatically means that rank and file Doc’s corner boy Harry “Red” Radley is present on one of the straws. On the other Donna Blanchard, one of the hottest sixteen year old sophomore girls at North Adamsville High, with a nice shape, a sweet smile, and a “come hither” look that has had more than one boy moony-eyed for her affections. But no dice, no dice at all. In this autumn of the year of our lord nineteen hundred and sixty Miss Donna Blanchard only has eyes, and whatever else she has to give, for one Red Radley. Let’s listen in as the eminently forgettable Booby Vee is droning on in the background about some lost love (and rightfully so, if the truth be known) on Take Good Care Of My Baby.
*********
“What the matter, honey, don’t you want me like that, “ murmered Donna Blanchard after being told for the fifth or sixth time by our corner boy Red Radley that, if you can believe this, no he was not ready for heavy sex (meaning of course, in the language of the young, some variety of “going all the way”). It seems that last Saturday night down at Adamsville Beach, the local “parking” heaven where one and all went to see the ”submarine races” in the local teen code parlance Donna, making no bones that she was ready, more than ready, to go all the way with Red got turned down. Turned down flat. Fortunately for Red Donna, embarrassed by such a fool for a boy friend, had “neglected” to mention this hard fact of life when the obligatory Monday morning Girls’ “Lav” talk got around to the subject of the weekend scorecard. In short, who did, and didn’t do it. Right now Red and Donna are trying to sort things out as a strangely ironic song by Cathy Jean and the Roommates, Please Love Me Forever, spins on the juke box.
What? A member in good standing of Fritz Cullen’s corner boys, corner boys who have, publicly anyway, notched up (went all they way with) more North Adamsville girls than maybe there were girls in North Adamsville turned down a chance at paradise. And turned down a certified fox like Donna Blanchard. No way. Moreover, Red, displaying he not uncommon teen male bravado had lied to his fellow corner boys and said that he had had already “gone all the way” with Donna. Jesus. Did our Red have a medical problem? No. Did he have some religious scruples about pre-martial sex? Hell, no. Our Red, as it turns out was a virgin and was terrified when Donna, a virgin herself but ready for the time of her time, came on so strong. Especially when she went wild on Saturday night when the local 24/7 rock and roll station, WMEX, played a medley of Elvis tunes including his latest, Surrender.
Some times things end right in the teen universe, sometimes they don’t. This time they didn’t. Well, at least for Red. After their little conversation at Doc’s Red and Donna agreed, but mostly Donna agreed, that they should see other people. That’s teen code, and maybe universal code, for “breaking up.” So now one sees the fetching Donna Blanchard riding around in Jimmy Jakes '59 cherry Chevy, and sitting very close indeed. Moreover she has that look, that certain look like she now knows a thing or two about ways of the world. Well, after all it was the time of her time, wasn’t it? As for Red, well, Red is seen more and more occupying one of those single stools at Doc’s counter sipping a Cherry Coke and endlessly throwing nickels, dimes and quarters in the juke box playing Elvis’ It’s Now or Never. Enough said.
Labor's Untold Story-From The Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels Archives-The Struggle For Working Class Organization-The International Workingmen's Association, 1866
Markin comment:
Every Month Is Labor History MonthThis post is part of an on-going series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!
Other Septembers in this series I have concentrated on various sometimes now obscure leaders and rank and file militants in the international working class movement, especially those who made contributions here in America like "Big Bill" Haywood and Eugene V. Debs. This year, given the pressing need for clarity around the labor party question in America(algebraically expressed in our movement as the struggle for a workers party that fights for a workers government) I have gone back to the sources-Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and their correspondence on working class organization with various associates and opponents. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely given the state of working class organization here these days, many of their comments, taken in due regard for changed times and circumstances, are germane today. This correspondence is only a start and should just whet the reader's appetite to research further.
*****
The International Workingmen's Association, 1866
Instructions for the Delegates of the Provisional General Council
The Different Questions
Written: by Marx at the end of August 1866;
First published: in Der Vorbote Nos. 10 and 11, October and November 1866 and The International Courier Nos. 6/7, February 20, and Nos. 8/10, March 13, 1867;
Translated: by Barrie Selman;
Transcribed: by director@marx.org, April 1996.
Table of Contents
Organisation of the International Association
International combination of efforts, by the agency of the association, in the struggle between labour and capital
Limitation of the working day
Juvenile and children's labour (both sexes)
Co-operative labour
Trades' unions. Their past, present and future
Direct and indirect taxation
International credit
Polish question
Armies
Religious question
1.
Organisation of the International Association
Upon the whole, the Provisional Central Council recommend the plan of organisation as traced in the Provisional Statutes. Its soundness and facilities of adaptation to different countries without prejudice to unity of action have been proved by two years' experience. For the next year we recommend London as the seat of the Central Council, the Continental situation looking unfavourable for change.
The members of the Central Council will of course be elected by Congress (5 of the Provisional Statutes) with power to add to their number.
The General Secretary to be chosen by Congress for one year and to be the only paid officer of the Association. We propose £2 for his weekly salary. [The French and German texts add: "The Standing Committee, which is in fact an executive of the Central Council, to be chosen by Congress, the function of any of its member to be defined by the Central Council."]
The uniform annual contribution of each individual member of the Association to be one half penny (perhaps one penny). The cost price of cards of membership (carpets) to be charged extra.
While calling upon the members of the Association to form benefit societies and connect them by an international link, we leave the initiation of this question (etablissement des societes de secours mutuels. Appoi moral et materiel accorde aux orphelins de l'association [foundation of benefit societies; moral and material assistance to the Association's orphans. -- Ed.]) to the Swiss who originally proposed it at the conference of September last.
2.
International combination of efforts, by the agency of the association, in the struggle between labour and capital
(a) From a general point of view, this question embraces the whole activity of the International Association which aims at combining and generalising the till now disconnected efforts for emancipation by the working classes in different countries.
(b) To counteract the intrigues of capitalists always ready, in cases of strikes and lockouts, to misuse the foreign workman as a tool against the native workman, is one of the particular functions which our Society has hitherto performed with success. It is one of the great purposes of the Association to make the workmen of different countries not only feel but act as brethren and comrades in the army of emancipation.
(c) One great "International combination of efforts" which we suggest is a statistical inquiry into the situation of the working classes of all countries to be instituted by the working classes themselves. To act with any success, the materials to be acted upon must be known. By initiating so great a work, the workmen will prove their ability to take their own fate into their own hands. We propose therefore:
That in each locality, where branches of our Association exist, the work be immediately commenced, and evidence collected on the different points specified in the subjoined scheme of inquiry.
That the Congress invite all workmen of Europe and the United States of America to collaborate in gathering the elements of the statistics of the working class; that reports and evidence be forwarded to the Central Council. That the Central Council elaborate them into a general report, adding the evidence as an appendix.
That this report together with its appendix be laid before the next annual Congress, and after having received its sanction, be printed at the expense of the Association.
General Scheme of Inquiry, which may of course be modified by each Locality
Industry, name of.
Age and sex of the employed.
Number of the employed.
Salaries and wages: (a) apprentices; (b) wages by the day or piece work; scale paid by middlemen. Weekly, yearly average.
(a) Hours of work in factories. (b) The hours of work with small employers and in home work, if the business be carried on in those different modes. (c) Nightwork and daywork.
Meal times and treatment.
Sort of workshop and work: overcrowding, defective ventilation, want of sunlight, use of gaslight. Cleanliness, etc.
Nature of occupation.
Effect of employment upon the physical condition.
Moral condition. Education.
State of trade: whether season trade, or more or less uniformly distributed over year, whether greatly fluctuating, whether exposed to foreign competition, whether destined principally for home or foreign competition, etc. [The Minute Book of the General Council has the word "consumption" instead of "competition." -- Ed.]
3.
Limitation of the working day
A preliminary condition, without which all further attempts at improvement and emancipation must prove abortive, is the limitation of the working day.
It is needed to restore the health and physical energies of the working class, that is, the great body of every nation, as well as to secure them the possibility of intellectual development, sociable intercourse, social and political action.
We propose 8 hours work as the legal limit of the working day. This limitation being generally claimed by the workmen of the United States of America,'40 the vote of the Congress will raise it to the common platform of the working classes all over the world.
For the information of continental members, whose experience of factory law is comparatively short-dated, we add that all legal restrictions will fail and be broken through by Capital if the period of the day during which the 8 working hours must be taken, be not fixed. The length of that period ought to be determined by the 8 working hours and the additional pauses for meals. For instance, if the different interruptions for meals amount to one hour, the legal period of the day ought to embrace 9 hours, say from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m., or from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., etc. Nightwork to be but exceptionally permitted, in trades or branches of trades specified by law. The tendency must be to suppress all nightwork.
This paragraph refers only to adult persons, male or female, the latter, however, to be rigorously excluded from all nightwork whatever, and all sort of work hurtful to the delicacy of the sex, or exposing their bodies to poisonous and otherwise deleterious agencies. By adult persons we understand all persons having reached or passed the age of 18 years.
4.
Juvenile and children's labour (both sexes)
We consider the tendency of modern industry to make children and juvenile persons of both sexes co-operate in the great work of social production, as a progressive, sound and legitimate tendency, although under capital it was distorted into an abomination. In a rational state of society every child whatever, from the age of 9 years, ought to become a productive labourer in the same way that no able-bodied adult person ought to be exempted from the general law of nature, viz.: to work in order to be able to eat, and work not only with the brain but with the hands too.
However, for the present, we have only to deal with the children and young persons of both sexes divided into three classes, to be treated differently [a]; the first class to range from 9 to 12; the second, from 13 to 15 years; and the third, to comprise the ages of 16 and 17 years. We propose that the employment of the first class in any workshop or housework be legally restricted to two; that of the second, to four; and that of the third, to six hours. For the third class, there must be a break of at least one hour for meals or relaxation.
It may be desirable to begin elementary school instruction before the age of 9 years; but we deal here only with the most indispensable antidotes against the tendencies of a social system which degrades the working man into a mere instrument for the accumulation of capital, and transforms parents by their necessities into slave-holders, sellers of their own children. The right of children and juvenile persons must be vindicated. They are unable to act for themselves. It is, therefore, the duty of society to act on their behalf.
If the middle and higher classes neglect their duties toward their offspring, it is their own fault. Sharing the privileges of these classes, the child is condemned to suffer from their prejudices.
The case of the working class stands quite different. The working man is no free agent. In too many cases, he is even too ignorant to understand the true interest of his child, or the normal conditions of human development. However, the more enlightened part of the working class fully understands that the future of its class, and, therefore, of mankind, altogether depends upon the formation of the rising working generation. They know that, before everything else, the children and juvenile workers must be saved from the crushing effects of the present system. This can only be effected by converting social reason into social force, and, under given circumstances, there exists no other method of doing so, than through general laws, enforced by the power of the state. In enforcing such laws, the working class do not fortify governmental power. On the contrary, they transform that power, now used against them, into their own agency. They effect by a general act what they would vainly attempt by a multitude of isolated individual efforts.
Proceeding from this standpoint, we say that no parent and no employer ought to be allowed to use juvenile labour, except when combined with education.
By education we understand three things.
Firstly: Mental education.
Secondly: Bodily education, such as is given in schools of gymnastics, and by military exercise.
Thirdly: Technological training, which imparts the general principles of all processes of production, and, simultaneously initiates the child and young person in the practical use and handling of the elementary instruments of all trades. [The German text calls this "polytechnical training." -- Ed]
A gradual and progressive course of mental, gymnastic, and technological training ought to correspond to the classification of the juvenile labourers. The costs of the technological a schools ought to be partly met by the sale of their products.
The combination of paid productive labour, mental education bodily exercise and polytechnic training, will raise the working class far above the level of the higher and middle classes.
It is self-understood that the employment of all persons from 9 and to 17 years (inclusively) in nightwork and all health-injuring trades must be strictly prohibited by law.
5.
Co-operative labour
It is the business of the International Working Men's Association to combine and generalise the spontaneous movements of the working classes, but not to dictate or impose any doctrinary system whatever. The Congress should, therefore, proclaim no special system of co-operation, but limit itself to the enunciation of a few general principles.
(a) We acknowledge the co-operative movement as one of the transforming forces of the present society based upon class antagonism. Its great merit is to practically show, that the present pauperising, and despotic system of the subordination of labour to capital can be superseded by the republican and beneficent system of the association of free and equal producers.
(b) Restricted, however, to the dwarfish forms into which individual wages slaves can elaborate it by their private efforts, the co-operative system will never transform capitalist society. to convert social production into one large and harmonious system of free and co-operative labour, general social changes are wanted, changes of the general conditions of society, never to be realised save by the transfer of the organised forces of society, viz., the state power, from capitalists and landlords to the producers themselves.
(c) We recommend to the working men to embark in co-operative production rather than in co-operative stores. The latter touch but the surface of the present economical system, the former attacks its groundwork.
(d) We recommend to all co-operative societies to convert one part of their joint income into a fund for propagating their principles by example as well as by precept, in other words, by promoting the establishment by teaching and preaching.
(e) In order to prevent co-operative societies from degenerating into ordinary middle-class joint stock companies (societes par actions), all workmen employed, whether shareholders or not, ought to share alike. As a mere temporary expedient, we are willing to allow shareholders a low rate of interest.
6.
Trades' unions. Their past, present and future
(a) Their past.
Capital is concentrated social force, while the workman has only to dispose of his working force. The contract between capital and labour can therefore never be struck on equitable terms, equitable even in the sense of a society which places the ownership of the material means of life and labour on one side and the vital productive energies on the opposite side. The only social power of the workmen is their number. The force of numbers, however is broken by disunion. The disunion of the workmen is created and perpetuated by their unavoidable competition among themselves.
Trades' Unions originally sprang up from the spontaneous attempts of workmen at removing or at least checking that competition, in order to conquer such terms of contract as might raise them at least above the condition of mere slaves. The immediate object of Trades' Unions was therefore confined to everyday necessities, to expediences for the obstruction of the incessant encroachments of capital, in one word, to questions of wages and time of labour. This activity of the Trades' Unions is not only legitimate, it is necessary. It cannot be dispensed with so long as the present system of production lasts. On the contrary, it must be generalised by the formation and the combination of Trades' Unions throughout all countries. On the other hand, unconsciously to themselves, the Trades' Unions were forming centres of organisation of the working class, as the mediaeval municipalities and communes did for the middle class. If the Trades' Unions are required for the guerilla fights between capital and labour, they are still more important as organised agencies for superseding the very system of wages labour and capital rule.
(b) Their present.
Too exclusively bent upon the local and immediate struggles with capital, the Trades' Unions have not yet fully understood their power of acting against the system of wages slavery itself. They therefore kept too much aloof from general social and political movements. Of late, however, they seem to awaken to some sense of their great historical mission, as appears, for instance, from their participation, in England, in the recent political movement, from the enlarged views taken of their function in the United States, and from the following resolution passed at the recent great conference of Trades' delegates at Sheffield:
"That this Conference, fully appreciating the efforts made by the International Association to unite in one common bond of brotherhood the working men of all countries, most earnestly recommend to the various societies here represented, the advisability of becoming affiliated to that hody, believing that it is essential to the progress and prosperity of the entire working community."
(c) Their future.
Apart from their original purposes, they must now learn to act deliberately as organising centres of the working class in the broad interest of its complete emancipation. They must aid every social and political movement tending in that direction. Considering themselves and acting as the champions and representatives of the whole working class, they cannot fail to enlist the non-society men into their ranks. They must look carefully after the interests of the worst paid trades, such as the agricultural labourers, rendered powerless [French text has: "incapable of organised resistance"] by exceptional circumstances. They must convince the world at large [French and German texts read: "convince the broad masses of workers"] that their efforts, far from being narrow -- and selfish, aim at the emancipation of the downtrodden millions.
7.
Direct and indirect taxation
(a) No modification of the form of taxation can produce any important change in the relations of labour and capital.
(b) Nevertheless, having to choose between two systems of taxation, we recommend the total abolition of indirect taxes, and the general substitution of direct taxes. [In Marx's rough manuscript, French and German texts are: "because direct taxes are cheaper to collect and do not interfere with production".]
Because indirect taxes enhance the prices of commodities, the tradesmen adding to those prices not only the amount of the indirect taxes, but the interest and profit upon the capital advanced in their payment
Because indirect taxes conceal from an individual what he is paying to the state, whereas a direct tax is undisguised, unsophisticated, and not to be misunderstood by the meanest capacity. Direct taxation prompts therefore every individual to control the governing powers while indirect taxation destroys all tendency to self-government.
8.
International credit
Initiative to be left to the French.
9.
Polish question
[The French subtitle reads: "Necessity of annihilating Russian influence in Europe by implementing the right of nations to self-determination and restoring Poland on a democratic and social basis." German subtitle reads similarly.]
(a) Why do the workmen of Europe take up this question? In the first instance, because the middle-class writers and agitators conspire to suppress it, although they patronise all sorts of nationalities, on the Continent, even Ireland. Whence this reticence? Because both, aristocrats and bourgeois, look upon the dark Asiatic power in the background as a last resource against the advancing tide of working class ascendancy; That power can only be effectually put down by the restoration of Poland upon a democratic basis.
(b) In the present changed state of central Europe, and especially Germany, it is more than ever necessary to have a democratic Poland. Without it, Germany will become the outwork of the Holy Alliance, with it, the co-operator with republican France. The working-class movement will continuously be interrupted, checked, and retarded, until this great European question be set at rest.
(c) It is especially the duty of the German working class to take the initiative in this matter, because Germany is one of the partitioners of Poland.
10.
Armies
[French and German subtitle reads: "Standing armies; their relation to production."]
(a) The deleterious influence of large standing armies upon production, has been sufficiently exposed at middle-class congresses of all denominations, at peace congresses, economical congresses, statistical congresses, philanthropical congresses, sociological congresses. We think it, therefore, quite superfluous to expatiate upon this point.
(b) We propose the general armament of the people and their general instruction in the use of arms.
(c) We accept as a transitory necessity small standing armies to form schools for the officers of the militia; every male citizen to serve for a very limited time in those armies.
11.
Religious question
[French and German subtitle reads: "Religious ideas; their influence on the social, political and intellectual movement".]
To be left to the initiative of the French.
Notes
a Note from International Publishers: Instead of this sentence the French and German texts have two sentences ending the preceding paragraph and beginning a new one: "However, for the present, we have only to deal with the children and young persons belonging to the working class.
"We deem it necessary, basing on physiology, to divide children and young persons of both sexes" and then as in the English text.
Every Month Is Labor History MonthThis post is part of an on-going series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!
Other Septembers in this series I have concentrated on various sometimes now obscure leaders and rank and file militants in the international working class movement, especially those who made contributions here in America like "Big Bill" Haywood and Eugene V. Debs. This year, given the pressing need for clarity around the labor party question in America(algebraically expressed in our movement as the struggle for a workers party that fights for a workers government) I have gone back to the sources-Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and their correspondence on working class organization with various associates and opponents. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely given the state of working class organization here these days, many of their comments, taken in due regard for changed times and circumstances, are germane today. This correspondence is only a start and should just whet the reader's appetite to research further.
*****
The International Workingmen's Association, 1866
Instructions for the Delegates of the Provisional General Council
The Different Questions
Written: by Marx at the end of August 1866;
First published: in Der Vorbote Nos. 10 and 11, October and November 1866 and The International Courier Nos. 6/7, February 20, and Nos. 8/10, March 13, 1867;
Translated: by Barrie Selman;
Transcribed: by director@marx.org, April 1996.
Table of Contents
Organisation of the International Association
International combination of efforts, by the agency of the association, in the struggle between labour and capital
Limitation of the working day
Juvenile and children's labour (both sexes)
Co-operative labour
Trades' unions. Their past, present and future
Direct and indirect taxation
International credit
Polish question
Armies
Religious question
1.
Organisation of the International Association
Upon the whole, the Provisional Central Council recommend the plan of organisation as traced in the Provisional Statutes. Its soundness and facilities of adaptation to different countries without prejudice to unity of action have been proved by two years' experience. For the next year we recommend London as the seat of the Central Council, the Continental situation looking unfavourable for change.
The members of the Central Council will of course be elected by Congress (5 of the Provisional Statutes) with power to add to their number.
The General Secretary to be chosen by Congress for one year and to be the only paid officer of the Association. We propose £2 for his weekly salary. [The French and German texts add: "The Standing Committee, which is in fact an executive of the Central Council, to be chosen by Congress, the function of any of its member to be defined by the Central Council."]
The uniform annual contribution of each individual member of the Association to be one half penny (perhaps one penny). The cost price of cards of membership (carpets) to be charged extra.
While calling upon the members of the Association to form benefit societies and connect them by an international link, we leave the initiation of this question (etablissement des societes de secours mutuels. Appoi moral et materiel accorde aux orphelins de l'association [foundation of benefit societies; moral and material assistance to the Association's orphans. -- Ed.]) to the Swiss who originally proposed it at the conference of September last.
2.
International combination of efforts, by the agency of the association, in the struggle between labour and capital
(a) From a general point of view, this question embraces the whole activity of the International Association which aims at combining and generalising the till now disconnected efforts for emancipation by the working classes in different countries.
(b) To counteract the intrigues of capitalists always ready, in cases of strikes and lockouts, to misuse the foreign workman as a tool against the native workman, is one of the particular functions which our Society has hitherto performed with success. It is one of the great purposes of the Association to make the workmen of different countries not only feel but act as brethren and comrades in the army of emancipation.
(c) One great "International combination of efforts" which we suggest is a statistical inquiry into the situation of the working classes of all countries to be instituted by the working classes themselves. To act with any success, the materials to be acted upon must be known. By initiating so great a work, the workmen will prove their ability to take their own fate into their own hands. We propose therefore:
That in each locality, where branches of our Association exist, the work be immediately commenced, and evidence collected on the different points specified in the subjoined scheme of inquiry.
That the Congress invite all workmen of Europe and the United States of America to collaborate in gathering the elements of the statistics of the working class; that reports and evidence be forwarded to the Central Council. That the Central Council elaborate them into a general report, adding the evidence as an appendix.
That this report together with its appendix be laid before the next annual Congress, and after having received its sanction, be printed at the expense of the Association.
General Scheme of Inquiry, which may of course be modified by each Locality
Industry, name of.
Age and sex of the employed.
Number of the employed.
Salaries and wages: (a) apprentices; (b) wages by the day or piece work; scale paid by middlemen. Weekly, yearly average.
(a) Hours of work in factories. (b) The hours of work with small employers and in home work, if the business be carried on in those different modes. (c) Nightwork and daywork.
Meal times and treatment.
Sort of workshop and work: overcrowding, defective ventilation, want of sunlight, use of gaslight. Cleanliness, etc.
Nature of occupation.
Effect of employment upon the physical condition.
Moral condition. Education.
State of trade: whether season trade, or more or less uniformly distributed over year, whether greatly fluctuating, whether exposed to foreign competition, whether destined principally for home or foreign competition, etc. [The Minute Book of the General Council has the word "consumption" instead of "competition." -- Ed.]
3.
Limitation of the working day
A preliminary condition, without which all further attempts at improvement and emancipation must prove abortive, is the limitation of the working day.
It is needed to restore the health and physical energies of the working class, that is, the great body of every nation, as well as to secure them the possibility of intellectual development, sociable intercourse, social and political action.
We propose 8 hours work as the legal limit of the working day. This limitation being generally claimed by the workmen of the United States of America,'40 the vote of the Congress will raise it to the common platform of the working classes all over the world.
For the information of continental members, whose experience of factory law is comparatively short-dated, we add that all legal restrictions will fail and be broken through by Capital if the period of the day during which the 8 working hours must be taken, be not fixed. The length of that period ought to be determined by the 8 working hours and the additional pauses for meals. For instance, if the different interruptions for meals amount to one hour, the legal period of the day ought to embrace 9 hours, say from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m., or from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., etc. Nightwork to be but exceptionally permitted, in trades or branches of trades specified by law. The tendency must be to suppress all nightwork.
This paragraph refers only to adult persons, male or female, the latter, however, to be rigorously excluded from all nightwork whatever, and all sort of work hurtful to the delicacy of the sex, or exposing their bodies to poisonous and otherwise deleterious agencies. By adult persons we understand all persons having reached or passed the age of 18 years.
4.
Juvenile and children's labour (both sexes)
We consider the tendency of modern industry to make children and juvenile persons of both sexes co-operate in the great work of social production, as a progressive, sound and legitimate tendency, although under capital it was distorted into an abomination. In a rational state of society every child whatever, from the age of 9 years, ought to become a productive labourer in the same way that no able-bodied adult person ought to be exempted from the general law of nature, viz.: to work in order to be able to eat, and work not only with the brain but with the hands too.
However, for the present, we have only to deal with the children and young persons of both sexes divided into three classes, to be treated differently [a]; the first class to range from 9 to 12; the second, from 13 to 15 years; and the third, to comprise the ages of 16 and 17 years. We propose that the employment of the first class in any workshop or housework be legally restricted to two; that of the second, to four; and that of the third, to six hours. For the third class, there must be a break of at least one hour for meals or relaxation.
It may be desirable to begin elementary school instruction before the age of 9 years; but we deal here only with the most indispensable antidotes against the tendencies of a social system which degrades the working man into a mere instrument for the accumulation of capital, and transforms parents by their necessities into slave-holders, sellers of their own children. The right of children and juvenile persons must be vindicated. They are unable to act for themselves. It is, therefore, the duty of society to act on their behalf.
If the middle and higher classes neglect their duties toward their offspring, it is their own fault. Sharing the privileges of these classes, the child is condemned to suffer from their prejudices.
The case of the working class stands quite different. The working man is no free agent. In too many cases, he is even too ignorant to understand the true interest of his child, or the normal conditions of human development. However, the more enlightened part of the working class fully understands that the future of its class, and, therefore, of mankind, altogether depends upon the formation of the rising working generation. They know that, before everything else, the children and juvenile workers must be saved from the crushing effects of the present system. This can only be effected by converting social reason into social force, and, under given circumstances, there exists no other method of doing so, than through general laws, enforced by the power of the state. In enforcing such laws, the working class do not fortify governmental power. On the contrary, they transform that power, now used against them, into their own agency. They effect by a general act what they would vainly attempt by a multitude of isolated individual efforts.
Proceeding from this standpoint, we say that no parent and no employer ought to be allowed to use juvenile labour, except when combined with education.
By education we understand three things.
Firstly: Mental education.
Secondly: Bodily education, such as is given in schools of gymnastics, and by military exercise.
Thirdly: Technological training, which imparts the general principles of all processes of production, and, simultaneously initiates the child and young person in the practical use and handling of the elementary instruments of all trades. [The German text calls this "polytechnical training." -- Ed]
A gradual and progressive course of mental, gymnastic, and technological training ought to correspond to the classification of the juvenile labourers. The costs of the technological a schools ought to be partly met by the sale of their products.
The combination of paid productive labour, mental education bodily exercise and polytechnic training, will raise the working class far above the level of the higher and middle classes.
It is self-understood that the employment of all persons from 9 and to 17 years (inclusively) in nightwork and all health-injuring trades must be strictly prohibited by law.
5.
Co-operative labour
It is the business of the International Working Men's Association to combine and generalise the spontaneous movements of the working classes, but not to dictate or impose any doctrinary system whatever. The Congress should, therefore, proclaim no special system of co-operation, but limit itself to the enunciation of a few general principles.
(a) We acknowledge the co-operative movement as one of the transforming forces of the present society based upon class antagonism. Its great merit is to practically show, that the present pauperising, and despotic system of the subordination of labour to capital can be superseded by the republican and beneficent system of the association of free and equal producers.
(b) Restricted, however, to the dwarfish forms into which individual wages slaves can elaborate it by their private efforts, the co-operative system will never transform capitalist society. to convert social production into one large and harmonious system of free and co-operative labour, general social changes are wanted, changes of the general conditions of society, never to be realised save by the transfer of the organised forces of society, viz., the state power, from capitalists and landlords to the producers themselves.
(c) We recommend to the working men to embark in co-operative production rather than in co-operative stores. The latter touch but the surface of the present economical system, the former attacks its groundwork.
(d) We recommend to all co-operative societies to convert one part of their joint income into a fund for propagating their principles by example as well as by precept, in other words, by promoting the establishment by teaching and preaching.
(e) In order to prevent co-operative societies from degenerating into ordinary middle-class joint stock companies (societes par actions), all workmen employed, whether shareholders or not, ought to share alike. As a mere temporary expedient, we are willing to allow shareholders a low rate of interest.
6.
Trades' unions. Their past, present and future
(a) Their past.
Capital is concentrated social force, while the workman has only to dispose of his working force. The contract between capital and labour can therefore never be struck on equitable terms, equitable even in the sense of a society which places the ownership of the material means of life and labour on one side and the vital productive energies on the opposite side. The only social power of the workmen is their number. The force of numbers, however is broken by disunion. The disunion of the workmen is created and perpetuated by their unavoidable competition among themselves.
Trades' Unions originally sprang up from the spontaneous attempts of workmen at removing or at least checking that competition, in order to conquer such terms of contract as might raise them at least above the condition of mere slaves. The immediate object of Trades' Unions was therefore confined to everyday necessities, to expediences for the obstruction of the incessant encroachments of capital, in one word, to questions of wages and time of labour. This activity of the Trades' Unions is not only legitimate, it is necessary. It cannot be dispensed with so long as the present system of production lasts. On the contrary, it must be generalised by the formation and the combination of Trades' Unions throughout all countries. On the other hand, unconsciously to themselves, the Trades' Unions were forming centres of organisation of the working class, as the mediaeval municipalities and communes did for the middle class. If the Trades' Unions are required for the guerilla fights between capital and labour, they are still more important as organised agencies for superseding the very system of wages labour and capital rule.
(b) Their present.
Too exclusively bent upon the local and immediate struggles with capital, the Trades' Unions have not yet fully understood their power of acting against the system of wages slavery itself. They therefore kept too much aloof from general social and political movements. Of late, however, they seem to awaken to some sense of their great historical mission, as appears, for instance, from their participation, in England, in the recent political movement, from the enlarged views taken of their function in the United States, and from the following resolution passed at the recent great conference of Trades' delegates at Sheffield:
"That this Conference, fully appreciating the efforts made by the International Association to unite in one common bond of brotherhood the working men of all countries, most earnestly recommend to the various societies here represented, the advisability of becoming affiliated to that hody, believing that it is essential to the progress and prosperity of the entire working community."
(c) Their future.
Apart from their original purposes, they must now learn to act deliberately as organising centres of the working class in the broad interest of its complete emancipation. They must aid every social and political movement tending in that direction. Considering themselves and acting as the champions and representatives of the whole working class, they cannot fail to enlist the non-society men into their ranks. They must look carefully after the interests of the worst paid trades, such as the agricultural labourers, rendered powerless [French text has: "incapable of organised resistance"] by exceptional circumstances. They must convince the world at large [French and German texts read: "convince the broad masses of workers"] that their efforts, far from being narrow -- and selfish, aim at the emancipation of the downtrodden millions.
7.
Direct and indirect taxation
(a) No modification of the form of taxation can produce any important change in the relations of labour and capital.
(b) Nevertheless, having to choose between two systems of taxation, we recommend the total abolition of indirect taxes, and the general substitution of direct taxes. [In Marx's rough manuscript, French and German texts are: "because direct taxes are cheaper to collect and do not interfere with production".]
Because indirect taxes enhance the prices of commodities, the tradesmen adding to those prices not only the amount of the indirect taxes, but the interest and profit upon the capital advanced in their payment
Because indirect taxes conceal from an individual what he is paying to the state, whereas a direct tax is undisguised, unsophisticated, and not to be misunderstood by the meanest capacity. Direct taxation prompts therefore every individual to control the governing powers while indirect taxation destroys all tendency to self-government.
8.
International credit
Initiative to be left to the French.
9.
Polish question
[The French subtitle reads: "Necessity of annihilating Russian influence in Europe by implementing the right of nations to self-determination and restoring Poland on a democratic and social basis." German subtitle reads similarly.]
(a) Why do the workmen of Europe take up this question? In the first instance, because the middle-class writers and agitators conspire to suppress it, although they patronise all sorts of nationalities, on the Continent, even Ireland. Whence this reticence? Because both, aristocrats and bourgeois, look upon the dark Asiatic power in the background as a last resource against the advancing tide of working class ascendancy; That power can only be effectually put down by the restoration of Poland upon a democratic basis.
(b) In the present changed state of central Europe, and especially Germany, it is more than ever necessary to have a democratic Poland. Without it, Germany will become the outwork of the Holy Alliance, with it, the co-operator with republican France. The working-class movement will continuously be interrupted, checked, and retarded, until this great European question be set at rest.
(c) It is especially the duty of the German working class to take the initiative in this matter, because Germany is one of the partitioners of Poland.
10.
Armies
[French and German subtitle reads: "Standing armies; their relation to production."]
(a) The deleterious influence of large standing armies upon production, has been sufficiently exposed at middle-class congresses of all denominations, at peace congresses, economical congresses, statistical congresses, philanthropical congresses, sociological congresses. We think it, therefore, quite superfluous to expatiate upon this point.
(b) We propose the general armament of the people and their general instruction in the use of arms.
(c) We accept as a transitory necessity small standing armies to form schools for the officers of the militia; every male citizen to serve for a very limited time in those armies.
11.
Religious question
[French and German subtitle reads: "Religious ideas; their influence on the social, political and intellectual movement".]
To be left to the initiative of the French.
Notes
a Note from International Publishers: Instead of this sentence the French and German texts have two sentences ending the preceding paragraph and beginning a new one: "However, for the present, we have only to deal with the children and young persons belonging to the working class.
"We deem it necessary, basing on physiology, to divide children and young persons of both sexes" and then as in the English text.
The Latest From “The Rag Blog”
Click on the headline to link to The Rag Blog website.
Markin comment:
I find this The Rag Blog very useful to monitor for the latest in what is happening with past tense radical activists and activities. Anybody, with some kind of name, who is still around from the 1960s has found a home here. So the remembrances and recollections are helpful for today’s activists. Strangely the politics are almost non-existent, as least ones that would help today, except to kind of retroactively “bless” those old-time left politics that did nothing (well, almost nothing) but get us on the losing end of the class (and cultural) wars of the last forty plus years. Still this is a must read blog for today’s left militants.
Markin comment:
I find this The Rag Blog very useful to monitor for the latest in what is happening with past tense radical activists and activities. Anybody, with some kind of name, who is still around from the 1960s has found a home here. So the remembrances and recollections are helpful for today’s activists. Strangely the politics are almost non-existent, as least ones that would help today, except to kind of retroactively “bless” those old-time left politics that did nothing (well, almost nothing) but get us on the losing end of the class (and cultural) wars of the last forty plus years. Still this is a must read blog for today’s left militants.
“Workers of The World Unite, You Have Nothing To Lose But Your Chains”-The Struggle For Trotsky's Fourth (Communist) International-From The Archives-The Founding Conference Of The Fourth International (1938)-"The War In the Far East and The Revolutionary Perspectives "
Click on the headline to link to the Toward A History Of The Fourth International website for the article listed above.
Markin comment (repost from September 2010):
Recently, when the question of an international, a new workers international, a fifth international, was broached by the International Marxist Tendency (IMT), faintly echoing the call by Venezuelan caudillo, Hugo Chavez, I got to thinking a little bit more on the subject. Moreover, it must be something in the air (maybe caused by these global climatic changes) because I have also seen recent commentary on the need to go back to something that looks very much like Karl Marx’s one-size-fits-all First International. Of course, just what the doctor by all means, be my guest, but only if the shades of Proudhon and Bakunin can join. Boys and girls that First International was disbanded in the wake of the demise of the Paris Commune for a reason, okay. Mixing political banners (Marxism and fifty-seven varieties of anarchism) is appropriate to a united front, not a hell-bent revolutionary International fighting, and fighting hard, for our communist future. Forward
The Second International, for those six, no seven, people who might care, is still alive and well (at least for periodic international conferences) as a mail-drop for homeless social democrats who want to maintain a fig leaf of internationalism without having to do much about it. Needless to say, one Joseph Stalin and his cohorts liquidated the Communist (Third) International in 1943, long after it turned from a revolutionary headquarters into an outpost of Soviet foreign policy. By then no revolutionary missed its demise, nor shed a tear goodbye. And of course there are always a million commentaries by groups, cults, leagues, tendencies, etc. claiming to stand in the tradition (although, rarely, the program) of the Leon Trotsky-inspired Fourth International that, logically and programmatically, is the starting point of any discussion of the modern struggle for a new communist international.
With that caveat in mind this month, the September American Labor Day month, but more importantly the month in 1938 that the ill-fated Fourth International was founded I am posting some documents around the history of that formation, and its program, the program known by the shorthand, Transitional Program. If you want to call for a fifth, sixth, seventh, what have you, revolutionary international, and you are serious about it beyond the "mail-drop" potential, then you have to look seriously into that organization's origins, and the world-class Bolshevik revolutionary who inspired it. Forward.
******
Markin comment on this document
Everybody, and that most notably included Leon Trotsky, knew something was going awry with the Bolshevik Revolution by 1923 for many reasons, some of them beyond correction outside of an international extension of the revolution, especially to Germany that would provide the vital industrial infrastructure to aid the struggling Soviet Union. Nevertheless, and this is important to note about serious revolutionary politics and politicians in general, the fight in 1923 still needed to aimed at winning the party cadre over. That was the failing point of many oppositionists, inside and outside the party, then.
By 1933, with the rise of the virtually unopposed rise and consolidation of Nazism in Germany clearly putting paid to the Communist International’s (read: Stalin’s) erroneous strategy, working inside the party, or acting as an expelled fraction of the party, was no longer tenable. Like earlier with the First and Second Internationals the Communist International was now dead as a revolutionary organizational center. Time now to gather, by fits and starts, the cadre for a new international- the Fourth International
******
Markin comment on this document
Everybody, and that most notably included Leon Trotsky, knew something was going awry with the Bolshevik Revolution by 1923 for many reasons, some of them beyond correction outside of an international extension of the revolution, especially to Germany that would provide the vital industrial infrastructure to aid the struggling Soviet Union. Nevertheless, and this is important to note about serious revolutionary politics and politicians in general, the fight in 1923 still needed to aimed at winning the party cadre over. That was the failing point of many oppositionists, inside and outside the party, then.
By 1933, with the rise of the virtually unopposed rise and consolidation of Nazism in Germany clearly putting paid to the Communist International’s (read: Stalin’s) erroneous strategy, working inside the party, or acting as an expelled fraction of the party, was no longer tenable. Like earlier with the First and Second Internationals the Communist International was now dead as a revolutionary organizational center. Time now to gather, by fits and starts, the cadre for a new international- the Fourth International
Markin comment (repost from September 2010):
Recently, when the question of an international, a new workers international, a fifth international, was broached by the International Marxist Tendency (IMT), faintly echoing the call by Venezuelan caudillo, Hugo Chavez, I got to thinking a little bit more on the subject. Moreover, it must be something in the air (maybe caused by these global climatic changes) because I have also seen recent commentary on the need to go back to something that looks very much like Karl Marx’s one-size-fits-all First International. Of course, just what the doctor by all means, be my guest, but only if the shades of Proudhon and Bakunin can join. Boys and girls that First International was disbanded in the wake of the demise of the Paris Commune for a reason, okay. Mixing political banners (Marxism and fifty-seven varieties of anarchism) is appropriate to a united front, not a hell-bent revolutionary International fighting, and fighting hard, for our communist future. Forward
The Second International, for those six, no seven, people who might care, is still alive and well (at least for periodic international conferences) as a mail-drop for homeless social democrats who want to maintain a fig leaf of internationalism without having to do much about it. Needless to say, one Joseph Stalin and his cohorts liquidated the Communist (Third) International in 1943, long after it turned from a revolutionary headquarters into an outpost of Soviet foreign policy. By then no revolutionary missed its demise, nor shed a tear goodbye. And of course there are always a million commentaries by groups, cults, leagues, tendencies, etc. claiming to stand in the tradition (although, rarely, the program) of the Leon Trotsky-inspired Fourth International that, logically and programmatically, is the starting point of any discussion of the modern struggle for a new communist international.
With that caveat in mind this month, the September American Labor Day month, but more importantly the month in 1938 that the ill-fated Fourth International was founded I am posting some documents around the history of that formation, and its program, the program known by the shorthand, Transitional Program. If you want to call for a fifth, sixth, seventh, what have you, revolutionary international, and you are serious about it beyond the "mail-drop" potential, then you have to look seriously into that organization's origins, and the world-class Bolshevik revolutionary who inspired it. Forward.
******
Markin comment on this document
Everybody, and that most notably included Leon Trotsky, knew something was going awry with the Bolshevik Revolution by 1923 for many reasons, some of them beyond correction outside of an international extension of the revolution, especially to Germany that would provide the vital industrial infrastructure to aid the struggling Soviet Union. Nevertheless, and this is important to note about serious revolutionary politics and politicians in general, the fight in 1923 still needed to aimed at winning the party cadre over. That was the failing point of many oppositionists, inside and outside the party, then.
By 1933, with the rise of the virtually unopposed rise and consolidation of Nazism in Germany clearly putting paid to the Communist International’s (read: Stalin’s) erroneous strategy, working inside the party, or acting as an expelled fraction of the party, was no longer tenable. Like earlier with the First and Second Internationals the Communist International was now dead as a revolutionary organizational center. Time now to gather, by fits and starts, the cadre for a new international- the Fourth International
******
Markin comment on this document
Everybody, and that most notably included Leon Trotsky, knew something was going awry with the Bolshevik Revolution by 1923 for many reasons, some of them beyond correction outside of an international extension of the revolution, especially to Germany that would provide the vital industrial infrastructure to aid the struggling Soviet Union. Nevertheless, and this is important to note about serious revolutionary politics and politicians in general, the fight in 1923 still needed to aimed at winning the party cadre over. That was the failing point of many oppositionists, inside and outside the party, then.
By 1933, with the rise of the virtually unopposed rise and consolidation of Nazism in Germany clearly putting paid to the Communist International’s (read: Stalin’s) erroneous strategy, working inside the party, or acting as an expelled fraction of the party, was no longer tenable. Like earlier with the First and Second Internationals the Communist International was now dead as a revolutionary organizational center. Time now to gather, by fits and starts, the cadre for a new international- the Fourth International
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Karl Marx's "Communist Manifesto" Of 1848- A Quaint Curiosity?-Hell, No, A Document For Our Times
Click on the headline to link to a Marxist Internet Archive online copy of the Manifesto Of The Communist Party- the foundational document of the modern international communist movement.
Markin comment:
Every once in a while, sometimes when things are going well for our movement which is not the case today, or when they are going badly which is closer to today's truth, I have to re-read this document. Although it is no magic elixir and contains no easy fixes it certainly, in its main parts, reads as a very modern document. Perhaps because the tasks outlined for the communist future then are still before us today.
P.S. I always have to comment on Chapter III. Socialist and Communist Literature of the polemic with this note. Before coming over to Marxism many years ago I probably held just about every political position that they (Marx and Engels) polemicized against, except maybe feudalistic socialism. And I am so not sure that I might not have held that position at some point. Read on-and fight, fight for our communist future.
Markin comment:
Every once in a while, sometimes when things are going well for our movement which is not the case today, or when they are going badly which is closer to today's truth, I have to re-read this document. Although it is no magic elixir and contains no easy fixes it certainly, in its main parts, reads as a very modern document. Perhaps because the tasks outlined for the communist future then are still before us today.
P.S. I always have to comment on Chapter III. Socialist and Communist Literature of the polemic with this note. Before coming over to Marxism many years ago I probably held just about every political position that they (Marx and Engels) polemicized against, except maybe feudalistic socialism. And I am so not sure that I might not have held that position at some point. Read on-and fight, fight for our communist future.
The Latest From The Private Bradley Manning Support Network- Free Bradley Manning Now!
Click on the headline to link to a Private Bradley Manning Support Network entry, dated September 14, 2011.
Waiting For That One High White Note Moment- “As It Is In Heaven”-A Film Review
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the Swedish film, As It Is In Heaven.
DVD Review
As It Is In Heaven, Michael Nyqvist, Frida Hallgren, in Swedish, English subtitles,2004
The overwhelming number of film reviews in this space in the recent past has been about film noir classics, especially crime noir classics from the 1940s and 1950s. The exception has been a couple of the films in the Swedish crime novelist Steig Larrson’s trilogy and now this Swedish film (with English subtitles) film, As It Is In Heaven, starring the same male performer who was a lynchpin for those other films, Michale Nyqvist. Here he plays the same understated role, with plenty of studied bewilderment which seems to be his specialty (and coolness under duress as well). Although his trials and tribulations are central to the plot this is more of an ensemble cinematic operation.
A little plot summary is required to motivate that last statement. A hard-driven, world-renowned symphonic conductor is on his last legs physically after pushing his career envelope in search of that perfect musical sound. What is called in jazz reaching for that high white note. In order to get back to his old self (or just live his life out) he needs rest and no more world-historic reaching. So naturally, naturally for a Swedish audience I assume, he goes go back to his boyhood township to get back to his roots, or to find some peace since this place is definitely off the main road, the mainly snowy main road. Of course, as described via flashbacks, his roots were rather attenuated with the town since he left originally under duress, his and his mother’s, at an early age in order to become something in the musical world.
Here comes the ensemble part. His old home town is nothing but a hell’s broth of broken people, thwarted love, unkindness and the like. I thought immediately of something out of Peyton Place or the now dwindling day-time American television soap operas. But this town also had a church-based chorus, as many towns in this world do. So put together one world-renowned conductor trying to find his roots, love and that high white note that has eluded him in earlier days and one motley group of choral wannabes with every social and physical pathology an isolated small town can produce and of course you will in the end uncover that high white note, literally. A nice film, a nice foreign film, a nice change of pace vehicle for Nyqvist (although I don’t have to see his studied whatever for a while which means holding off on watching that third part of the Larrson trilogy that has just come out).
DVD Review
As It Is In Heaven, Michael Nyqvist, Frida Hallgren, in Swedish, English subtitles,2004
The overwhelming number of film reviews in this space in the recent past has been about film noir classics, especially crime noir classics from the 1940s and 1950s. The exception has been a couple of the films in the Swedish crime novelist Steig Larrson’s trilogy and now this Swedish film (with English subtitles) film, As It Is In Heaven, starring the same male performer who was a lynchpin for those other films, Michale Nyqvist. Here he plays the same understated role, with plenty of studied bewilderment which seems to be his specialty (and coolness under duress as well). Although his trials and tribulations are central to the plot this is more of an ensemble cinematic operation.
A little plot summary is required to motivate that last statement. A hard-driven, world-renowned symphonic conductor is on his last legs physically after pushing his career envelope in search of that perfect musical sound. What is called in jazz reaching for that high white note. In order to get back to his old self (or just live his life out) he needs rest and no more world-historic reaching. So naturally, naturally for a Swedish audience I assume, he goes go back to his boyhood township to get back to his roots, or to find some peace since this place is definitely off the main road, the mainly snowy main road. Of course, as described via flashbacks, his roots were rather attenuated with the town since he left originally under duress, his and his mother’s, at an early age in order to become something in the musical world.
Here comes the ensemble part. His old home town is nothing but a hell’s broth of broken people, thwarted love, unkindness and the like. I thought immediately of something out of Peyton Place or the now dwindling day-time American television soap operas. But this town also had a church-based chorus, as many towns in this world do. So put together one world-renowned conductor trying to find his roots, love and that high white note that has eluded him in earlier days and one motley group of choral wannabes with every social and physical pathology an isolated small town can produce and of course you will in the end uncover that high white note, literally. A nice film, a nice foreign film, a nice change of pace vehicle for Nyqvist (although I don’t have to see his studied whatever for a while which means holding off on watching that third part of the Larrson trilogy that has just come out).
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