Click on the headline to link to the Marx-Engels Internet Archives.
Markin comment:
This article goes along with the propaganda points in the fight for our communist future mentioned in this day's other posts.
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Articles by Karl Marx in Die Presse 1861
The Civil War in the United States
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Written: Late October, 1861;
Source: Marx/Engels Collected Works, Volume 19;
Publisher: Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1964;
First Published: Die Presse No. 306, November 7, 1861;
Online Version: Marxists.org 1999;
Transcription: Bob Schwarz and Tim Delaney;
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“Let him go, he is not worth thine ire!” Again and again English statesmanship cries - recently through the mouth of Lord John Russell-to the North of the United States this advice of Leporello to Don Juan's deserted love. If the North lets the South go, it then frees itself from any admixture of slavery, from its historical original sin, and creates the basis of a new and higher development.
In reality, if North and South formed two autonomous countries, like, for example, England and Hanover, their separation would be no more difficult than was the separation of England and Hanover. "The South," however, is neither a territory closely sealed off from the North geographically, nor a moral unity. It is not a country at all, but a battle slogan.
The advice of an amicable separation presupposes that the Southern Confederacy, although it assumed the offensive in the Civil War, at least wages it for defensive purposes. It is believed that the issue for the slaveholders' party is merely one of uniting the territories it has hitherto dominated into an autonomous group of states and withdrawing them from the supreme authority of the Union. Nothing could be more false: “The South needs its entire territory. It will and must have it.” With this battle-cry the secessionists fell upon Kentucky. By their “entire territory” they understand in the first place all the so-called border states-Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri and Arkansas. Besides, they lay claim to the entire territory south of the line that runs from the north-west corner of Missouri to the Pacific Ocean. What the slaveholders, therefore, call the South, embraces more than three-quarters of the territory hitherto comprised by the Union. A large part of the territory thus claimed is still in the possession of the Union and would first have to be conquered from it. None of the so-called border states, however, not even those in the possession of the Confederacy, were ever actual slave states. Rather, they constitute the area of the United States in which the system of slavery and the system of free labour exist side by side and contend for mastery, the actual field of battle between South and North, between slavery and freedom. The war of the Southern Confederacy is, therefore, not a war of defence, but a war of conquest, a war of conquest for the spread and perpetuation of slavery.
The chain of mountains that begins in Alabama and stretches northwards to the Hudson River-the spinal column, as it were, of the United States-cuts the so-called South into three parts. The mountainous country formed by the Allegheny Mountains with their two parallel ranges, the Cumberland Range to the west and the Blue Mountains to the east, divides wedge-like the lowlands along the western coast of the Atlantic Ocean from the lowlands in the southern valleys of the Mississippi. The two lowlands separated by the mountainous country, with their vast rice swamps and far-flung cotton plantations, are the actual area of slavery. The long wedge of mountainous country driven into the heart of slavery, with its correspondingly clear atmosphere, an invigorating climate and a soil rich in coal, salt, limestone, iron ore, gold, in short, every raw material necessary for a many-sided industrial development, is already for the most part free country. In accordance with its physical constitution, the soil here can only be cultivated with success by free small farmers. Here the slave system vegetates only sporadically and has never struck root. In the largest part of the so-called border states, the dwellers of these highlands comprise the core of the free population, which sides with the Northern party if only for the sake of self-preservation.
Let us consider the contested territory in detail.
Delaware, the most north-eastern of the border states, is factually and morally in the possession of the Union. All the attempts of the secessionists at forming even one faction favourable to them have since the beginning of the war suffered shipwreck on the unanimity of the population. The slave element of this state has long been in process of dying out. From 1850 to 1860 alone the number of slaves diminished by half, so that with a total population of 112,218 Delaware now numbers only 1,798 slaves. Nevertheless, Delaware is demanded by the Southern Confederacy and would in fact be militarily untenable for the North as soon as the South possessed itself of Maryland.
In Maryland itself the above-mentioned conflict between highlands and lowlands takes place. Out of a total population of 687,034 there are here 87,188 slaves. That the overwhelming majority of the population is on the side of the Union has again been strikingly proved by the recent general elections to the Congress in Washington. The army of 30,000 Union troops, which holds Maryland at the moment, is intended not only to serve the army on the Potomac as a reserve, but, in particular, also to hold in check the rebellious slaveowners in the interior of the country. For here we observe a phenomenon similar to what we see in other border states where the great mass of the people stands for the North and a numerically insignificant slaveholders' party for the South. What it lacks in numbers, the slaveholders' party makes up in the means of power that many years' possession of all state offices, hereditary engagement in political intrigue and concentration of great wealth in few hands have secured for it.
Virginia now forms the great cantonment where the main army of secession and the main army of the Union confront each other. In the north-west highlands of Virginia the number of slaves is 15,000, whilst the twenty times as large free population consists mostly of free farmers. The eastern lowlands of Virginia, on the other hand, count well-nigh half a million slaves. Raising Negroes and the sale of the Negroes to the Southern states form the principal source of income of these lowlands. As soon as the ringleaders of the lowlands had carried through the secession ordinance by intrigues in the state legislature at Richmond and had in all haste opened the gates of Virginia to the Southern army, north-west Virginia seceded from the secession, formed a new state, and under the banner of the Union now defends its territory arms in hand against the Southern invaders.
Tennessee, with 1,109,847 inhabitants, 275,784 of whom are slaves, finds itself in the hands of the Southern Confederacy, which has placed the whole state under martial law and under a system of proscription which recalls the days of the Roman Triumvirates. When in the winter of 1861 the slaveholders proposed a general convention of the people which was to vote for secession or non-secession, the majority of the people rejected any convention, in order to remove any pretext for the secession movement. Later, when Tennessee was already militarily over-run and subjected to a system of terror by the Southern Confederacy, more than a third of the voters at the elections still declared themselves for the Union. Here, as in most of the border states, the mountainous country, east Tennessee, forms the real centre of resistance to the slaveholders' party. On June 17, 1861, a General Convention of the people of east Tennessee assembled in Greenville, declared itself for the Union, deputed the former governor of the state, Andrew Johnson, one of the most ardent Unionists, to the Senate in Washington and published a “declaration of grievances,” which lays bare all the means of deception, intrigue and terror by which Tennessee was “voted out” of the Union. Since then the secessionists have held east Tennessee in check by force of arms.
Similar relationships to those in West Virginia and east Tennessee are found in the north of Alabama, in north-west Georgia and in the north of North Carolina.
Further west, in the border state of Missouri, with 1,173,317 inhabitants and 114,965 slaves-the latter mostly concentrated in the north-west of the state-the people's convention of August 1861 decided for the Union. Jackson, the governor of the state and the tool of the slaveholders' party, rebelled against the legislature of Missouri, was outlawed and took the lead of the armed hordes that fell upon Missouri from Texas, Arkansas and Tennessee, in order to bring it to its knees before the Confederacy and sever its bond with the Union by the sword. Next to Virginia, Missouri is at the present moment the main theatre of the Civil War.
New Mexico-not a state, but merely a Territory, into which twenty-five slaves were imported during Buchanan's presidency in order to send a slave constitution after them from Washington-had no craving for the South, as even the latter concedes. But the South has a craving for New Mexico and accordingly spewed an armed band of adventurers from Texas over the border. New Mexico has implored the protection of the Union government against these liberators.
It will have been observed that we lay particular emphasis on the numerical proportion of slaves to free men in the individual border states. This proportion is in fact decisive. It is the thermometer with which the vital fire of the slave system must be measured. The soul of the whole secession movement is South Carolina. It has 402,541 slaves and 301,271 free men. Mississippi, which has given the Southern Confederacy its dictator, Jefferson Davis, comes second. It has 436,696 slaves and 354,699 free men. Alabama comes third, with 435,132 slaves and 529,164 free men.
The last of the contested border states, which we have still to mention, is Kentucky. Its recent history is particularly characteristic of the policy of the Southern Confederacy. Among its 1,135,713 inhabitants Kentucky has 225,490 slaves. In three successive general elections by the people-in the winter of 1861, when elections to a congress of the border states were held; in June 1861, when elections to the Congress in Washington took place; finally, in August 1861, in elections to the legislature of the State of Kentucky-an ever increasing majority decided for the Union. On the other hand, Magoffin, the Governor of Kentucky, and all the high officials of the state are fanatical supporters of the slaveholders' party, as is Breckinridge, Kentucky's representative in the Senate in Washington, Vice-President of the United States under Buchanan, and candidate of the slaveholders' party in the presidential election of 1860. Too weak to win over Kentucky for secession, the influence of the slaveholders' party was strong enough to make this state amenable to a declaration of neutrality on the outbreak of war. The Confederacy recognised the neutrality as long as it served its purposes, as long as the Confederacy itself was engaged in crushing the resistance in east Tennessee. Hardly was this end attained when it knocked at the gates of Kentucky with the butt of a gun to the cry of: “The South needs its entire territory. It will and must have it!"
From the south-west and south-east its corps of free-booters simultaneously invaded the “neutral” state. Kentucky awoke from its dream of neutrality, its legislature openly took sides with the Union, surrounded the traitorous Governor with a committee of public safety, called the people to arms, outlawed Breckinridge and ordered the secessionists to evacuate the invaded territory immediately. This was the signal for war. An army of the Southern Confederacy is moving on Louisville, while volunteers from Illinois, Indiana and Ohio flock hither to save Kentucky from the armed missionaries of slavery.
The attempts of the Confederacy to annex Missouri and Kentucky, for example, against the will of these states, prove the hollowness of the pretext that it is fighting for the rights of the individual states against the encroachments of the Union. On the individual states that it considers to belong to the “South” it confers, to be sure, the right to separate from the Union, but by no means the right to remain in the Union.
Even the actual slave states, however much external war, internal military dictatorship and slavery give them everywhere for the moment a semblance of harmony, are nevertheless not without oppositional elements. A striking example is Texas, with 180,388 slaves out of 601,039 inhabitants. The law of 1845, by virtue of which Texas became a State of the Union as a slave state, entitled it to form not merely one, but five states out of its territory. The South would thereby have gained ten new votes instead of two in the American Senate, and an increase in the number of its votes in the Senate was a major object of its policy at that time. From 1845 to 1860, however, the slaveholders found it impracticable to cut up Texas, where the German population plays an important part, into even two states without giving the party of free labour the upper hand over the party of slavery in the second state. This furnishes the best proof of the strength of the opposition to the slaveholding oligarchy in Texas itself.
Georgia is the largest and most populous of the slave states. It has 462,230 slaves out of a total of 1,057,327 inhabitants, therefore nearly half the population. Nevertheless, the slaveholders' party has not so far succeeded in getting the Constitution imposed on the South at Montgomery sanctioned by a general vote of the people in Georgia.
In the State Convention of Louisiana, meeting on March 21, 1861, at New Orleans, Roselius, the political veteran of the state, declared:
“The Montgomery Constitution is not a constitution, but a conspiracy. It does not inaugurate a government of the people, but a detestable and unrestricted oligarchy. The people were not permitted to have any say in this matter. The Convention of Montgomery has dug the grave of political liberty, and now we are summoned to attend its burial."
Indeed, the oligarchy of three hundred thousand slaveholders utilised the Congress of Montgomery not only to proclaim the separation of the South from the North. It exploited it at the same time to reshape the internal constitutions of the slave states, to subjugate completely the section of the white population that had still preserved some independence under the protection and the democratic Constitution of the Union. Between 1856 to 1860 the political spokesmen, jurists, moralists and theologians of the slaveholders' party had already sought to prove, not so much that Negro slavery is justified, but rather that colour is a matter of indifference and the working class is everywhere born to slavery.
One sees, therefore, that the war of the Southern Confederacy is in the true sense of the word a war of conquest for the spread and perpetuation of slavery. The greater part of the border states and Territories are still in the possession of the Union, whose side they have taken first through the ballot-box and then with arms. The Confederacy, however, counts them for the "South" and seeks to conquer them from the Union. In the border states which the Confederacy has occupied for the time being, it is holding the relatively free highlands in check by martial law. Within the actual slave states themselves it is supplanting the hitherto existing democracy by the unrestricted oligarchy of three hundred thousand slaveholders.
Were it to relinquish its plans of conquest, the Southern Confederacy would relinquish its capacity to live and the purpose of secession. Secession, indeed, only took place because within the Union the transformation of the border states and Territories into slave states seemed no longer attainable. On the other hand, were it to cede the contested territory peacefully to the Southern Confederacy, the North would surrender to the slave republic more than three-quarters of the entire territory of the United States. The North would lose the whole of the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean, except the narrow strip from Penobscot Bay to Delaware Bay, and would even cut itself off from the Pacific Ocean. Missouri, Kansas, New Mexico, Arkansas and Texas would draw California after them. Incapable of wresting the mouth of the Mississippi from the hands of the strong, hostile slave republic in the South, the great agricultural states in the basin between the Rocky Mountains and the Alleghenies, in the valleys of the Mississippi, the Missouri and the Ohio, would be compelled by their economic interests to secede from the North and enter the Southern Confederacy. These north-western states, in their turn, would draw after them into the same whirlpool of secession all the Northern states lying further east, with perhaps the exception of the states of New England.
What would in fact take place would be not a dissolution of the Union, but a reorganisation of it, a reorganisation on the basis of slavery, under the recognised control of the slaveholding oligarchy. The plan of such a reorganisation has been openly proclaimed by the principal speakers of the South at the Congress of Montgomery and explains the paragraph of the new Constitution which leaves it open to every state of the old Union to join the new Confederacy. The slave system would infect the whole Union. In the Northern states, where Negro slavery is in practice unworkable, the white working class would gradually be forced down to the level of helotry. This would fully accord with the loudly proclaimed principle that only certain races are capable of freedom, and as the actual labour is the lot of the Negro in the South, so in the North it is the lot of the German and the Irishman, or their direct descendants.
The present struggle between the South and North is, therefore, nothing but a struggle between two social systems, the system of slavery and the system of free labour. The struggle has broken out because the two systems can no longer live peacefully side by side on the North American continent. It can only be ended by the victory of one system or the other.
If the border states, the disputed areas in which the two systems have hitherto contended for domination, are a thorn in the flesh of the South, there can, on the other hand, be no mistake that, in the course of the war up to now, they have constituted the chief weakness of the North. One section of the slaveholders in these districts simulated loyalty to the North at the bidding of the conspirators in the South; another section found that in fact it was in accordance with their real interests and traditional ideas to go with the Union. Both sections have equally crippled the North. Anxiety to keep the “loyal” slaveholders of the border states in good humour, fear of throwing them into the arms of secession, in a word, tender regard for the interests, prejudices and sensibilities of these ambiguous allies, has smitten the Union government with incurable weakness since the beginning of the war, driven it to half measures, forced it to dissemble away the principle of the war and to spare the foe's most vulnerable spot, the root of the evil-slavery itself.
When, only recently, Lincoln pusillanimously revoked Frémont's Missouri proclamation on the emancipation of Negroes belonging to the rebels, this was done solely out of regard for the loud protest of the “loyal” slaveholders of Kentucky. However, a turning point has already been reached. With Kentucky, the last border state has been pushed into the series of battlefields between South and North. With the real war for the border states in the border states themselves, the question of winning or losing them is withdrawn from the sphere of diplomatic and parliamentary discussions. One section of slaveholders will throw off the mask of loyalty; the other will content itself with the prospect of a financial compensation such as Great Britain gave the West Indian planters. Events themselves drive to the promulgation of the decisive slogan-emancipation of the slaves.
That even the most hardened Democrats and diplomats of the North feel themselves drawn to this point, is shown by some announcements of very recent date. In an open letter, General Cass, Secretary of State for War under Buchanan and hitherto one of the most ardent allies of the South, declares emancipation of the slaves the conditio sine qua non of the Union's salvation. In his last Review for October, Dr. Brownson, the spokesman of the Catholic party of the North, on his own admission the most energetic adversary of the emancipation movement from 1836 to 1860, publishes an article for Abolition.
“If we have opposed Abolition heretofore,” he says among other things, “because we would preserve the Union, we must a fortiori now oppose slavery whenever, in our judgment, its continuance becomes incompatible with the maintenance of the Union, or of the nation as a free republican state."
Finally, the World, a New York organ of the diplomats of the Washington Cabinet, concludes one of its latest blustering articles against the Abolitionists with the words:
“On the day when it shall be decided that either slavery or the Union must go down, on that day sentence of death is passed on slavery. If the North cannot triumph without emancipation, it will triumph with emancipation."
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
From "The Boston Globe"-Smedley Butler Brigade-Memorial Day For Peace-May 28th 2012
Click on headline to link to story in the title.
Let Us Solemnly Commemorate OWS On September 17th Each Year- And Move On- Radical Writer Joshua Lawrence Breslin Pulls The Hammer Down On The Occupy Movement
Markin comment:
“…The Occupy movement has now declared unequivocally that it is a movement of generals without an army. And likes it that way ”- from an article, "Whither Occupy?”- by Joshua Lawrence Breslin in the East Bay Other, December 22, 2011.
Note that Brother Breslin ( I will explain that bond in a minute) did not say that the Occupy movement was an army without generals. Josh’s finely-tuned sense of which way a movement is heading and why picked that nugget out long before this writer in early spring had to concede the point, a sense he has developed, by the way, over forty years of writing for half the unread ( just kidding , Josh), and in some cases unlamented , radical and progressive journals and newspapers in this country. Brother Breslin always had shape antennae for the ebb and flow of social movements going back to the 1960s when he saw the ebb of those high heaven movements fall apart around the 1969 “Days Of Rage” at a time when I did not see the ebb until the 1971 May Day Tribe attempts in Washington, D.C. to shut the government down over the ever-continuing Vietnam War. So Josh Breslin is somebody I listen to.
Back in December I, as usual, dismissed his remarks as so much bad air as a result of having been burned by some of his experiences on the West Coast (his base for many years, although he resides now mostly near his old home town of Olde Saco up in Maine) and at the Occupy Boston site at Dewey Square. I, in what now seems like a fit of hubris, defended the movement as just about the best thing since sliced bread. Oh sure I had my fair share of criticisms, criticisms from a socialist perspective about the “no demands” demands and the like. However I saw most of the stuff that I disliked as “growing pains” and particularly held out hope for the General Assembly idea as the embryo of an alternative form of government in our new world a-borning .
Josh, if he is honest, will admit that he too shared some of my “generation of ‘68” hopes that this new movement would be the place where we passed on the torch the next generation (really the next next generation, there is a “missing generation (roughly the Occupy kids’ parents). Now those hopes have dissolved in the spring air and that son of a bitch proved right again.
Why have I spilled so much cyberspace “ink” on the august opinions of an old-time radical writer? Simply put because I recently was approached by a “true believer,” a self-described socialist ‘true believer” in the Occupy mission to answer some questions about my take on what socialists contributed (or didn’t ) to the movement and other questions along those lines. Naturally when such questions are raised I turn to my old comrade Josh for his opinions, suggestions, etc. Josh and I have shared many a picket line duty, many a lonely vigil, many a forlorn march for some underpublicized cause, and many a rally for some aspect of the world’s ills so our bonds of brotherhood run deep, even if we seldom agree on political perspectives. I have placed his answers to that true believer’s questions below. To finish up though let me quote his closing remark which has been telegraphed in the headline to this piece. “Let’s solemnly commemorate September 17th each year-and move on.” Pure Josh Breslin. But, damn him, he’s right-again.
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[Markin: I have deleted questions that Josh, for his own reasons, did not answer. My answers will form part of that true believer’s essay so I have not included them here. ]
Socialists in the Occupy Movement (Massachusetts)
I'm trying to keep this Massachusetts specific, but feel free to refer to national events when applicable.
Feel free to send this to other socialists who may be interested in answering questions.
Feel free to skip any questions that are not applicable by writing N/A.
Share links to relevant articles where appropriate.
1. Your name? Or if you prefer to use a pen-name for this interview, please write it down.
Joshua Lawrence Breslin (my by-line name but just Josh in mixed company, mixed being political and non-political)
2. What socialist organization are you a part of? Or if you are an independent socialist, do you have some other affiliation (journal, union, etc.)?
Independent Radical-East Bay Other , Real Paper, The Barb, Boston Phoenix, Rolling Stone, Green Weekly, and too many other papers and journals to mention
3. How would you describe yourself ideologically?
Traced from youth- Catholic Worker etched-liberalism (same as Markin except that his was Irish mine Gallic-derived) , Cold War social democracy, communist fellow traveler radical –League Of California Radicals, now for many years, an independent radical
4. When did either you or your organization get involved in the Occupy Movement (specifically in Massachusetts)?
I attended the pre-encampment meetings before September 30th, had a writing assignment at Occupy Oakland for most of October and early November, came back and worked at Dewey Square from then on.
5. Did you or anyone from organization camp out in an Occupy encampment?
Are you serious? No. Old men do not “camp out” on the highway. And young people shouldn’t either.
8. How would you characterize Occupy's relation/reception to socialists ideas? Good? Bad? Indifferent? –
Indifferent but a studied indifference to any ideas beyond the mush of “ideas” that held the camp together. I once commented that for a political movement that then held the public center of attention there was less political discussion at Occupy than I had run into off-handedly in various pre-Occupy rallies and marches in which I had participated. That observation has only gotten stronger as the movement has fallen apart.
11. Were you a part of any Occupy working groups? Which ones and your assessment?
Socialist Caucus-short-lived, not well-attended and mainly a “mail-drop” and endorsement vehicle for other actions, including those which I supported and sought endorsements for. The caucus I believe pretty accurately reflected the weaknesses of the non-academic socialist movement in Boston (and probably more generally the radical milieu) as far as numbers go, desire for an all-inclusive socialist organization where groups and individuals could fight out their politics while doing the necessary united front work that has to drive the movement in this period, and general post-Soviet demise indifferent and/or hostility to socialism beyond the endlessly prattled passive poll figure that the younger generations now have a more positive attitude toward socialist ideas and do not want to shoot every socialist on sight.
Action for Peace-mainly the same observations as for the Socialist Caucus except that it really was kind of redundant to Veterans for Peace and UNAC organizational efforts reflecting the composition of the members of the group. Most successful action was as part of the February Hands Off Iran rally but that event, a real united front rather than Occupy event, demonstrates the redundant nature of the group. As a general observation about the working groups I would note that pre-Occupy organizations, for a time, found it worthwhile, and rightly so, I think, to work under the Occupy umbrella. Of late I note that most groups now work under their previous individual organizational forms and not under the Occupy umbrella.
General Strike OB- planning for May Day 2012. The best group I worked with, again too small for the task, the general strike task that originally animated its formation. Made up of a core of anarchists who were very hard-working but who also (as I did) kept some distance from OB GA (except for dough). To the extent that it might help you I have placed my May 2012 reflections here.
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May Day 2012
I have noted on several previous occasions that due to the recent absence of serious left-wing political struggle (prior to the events at Occupy Boston in Dewey Square from October to December 2011anyway) that our tasks for May Day 2012 in Boston centered on reviving the international working class tradition beyond the limited observance by revolutionaries, radicals and, in recent years, immigrants. This effort would thus not be a one event, one year but require a number of years and that this year’s efforts was just a start. We have made that start.
The important thing this year was to bring Boston in line with the international movement, to have leftist militants and others see our struggles here as part of an international struggle even if our actions were, for now, more symbolic and educational than powerful blows at the imperial system. I believe, despite the bad weather and consequently smaller than anticipated numbers on May Day 2012, we achieved that aim. Through months of hard outreach, especially over the past several weeks as the day approached, we put out much propaganda and information about the events through the various media with which we have access. The message of this May Day, a day without the 99%, got a full hearing by people from the unions, immigrant communities, student milieu and other sectors like the women’s movement and GLBQT community. The connections and contacts made are valuable for our further efforts.
Some participants that spoke to me on May Day (and others who had expressed the same concerns on earlier occasions) believed that we had “bitten off more than we could chew,” by having an all-day series of events. While I am certainly open to hear criticism on the start time of the day’s events (7:00AM does stretch the imagination for night-owlish militants) the idea of several events starting with that early Financial District Block Party and continuing on with the 11:00 AM Anti-Capitalist March which fed into the noontime rally at Boston City Hall Plaza and then switching over to the immigrant community marches and rally capped off that evening by the sober, solemn and visually impression “Death Of Capitalism” funeral procession still seems right to me. Given our task –introducing (really re-introducing) May Day to a wider Boston audience we needed to provide a number of times and events where people could, consciously, contribute to the day’s celebration. Maybe some year our side will be able to call for a one event May Day mass rally (or better a general strike) but that is music for the future.
Needless to say, as occurs almost any time you have many events and a certain need to have them coordinated, there were some problems from technical stuff like mic set-ups to someone forgetting something important, or not showing at the right time, etc. Growing pains. Nevertheless all the scheduled events happened, we had minimum hassles from the police, and a couple of events really stick out as exemplars for future May Days. The Anti-Capitalist March from Copley Square, mainly in a downpour, led by many young militants and which fed into the noontime City Hall rally was spirited and gave me hope that someday (someday soon, I hope) we are going to bring this imperial monster down. The already mentioned funeral procession was an extremely creative (and oft-forgotten by us) alternative way to get our message across outside the “normal” ham-handed, jack-booted political screed.
Finally, a word or two on organization. The Occupy-May Day Coalition personnel base was too small, way too small even for our limited goals. We need outreach early (early next year) to get enough organizer-type people on board to push forward. More broadly on outreach I believe, and partially this was a function of being too small an organizing center, we spent too much time “preaching to the choir”-going to events, talking to people already politically convinced , talking among ourselves rather than get out into the broader political milieu. For next year (which will not be an election year) we really need union and community people (especially people of color) to “smooth” the way for us. We never got that one (although we want more than one ultimately) respected middle-level still militant union official or community organizer that people, working people, listen to and who would listen to us with his or her nod. Radical or bourgeois politics, down at the base, you still need the people that the people listen to. Forward to May Day 2013.
12. Did you or your organization bring any proposals to a General Assembly? How were those proposals received?
As noted the General Strike proposals, in line with the national and international thrust for May Day were well-received, including for money. I would note that during the post-encampment period GA served as more of a “mail drop” and endorsement vehicle similar to the working groups I was involved with. If couched in the right language and sufficiently genetic (read; noncontroversial) most proposals that I was associated with passed with a minimum of friction. The main point though is to trace the political demise of GA from an October “people’s voice” operation to a “rump” in the post encampment period. Its writ did not run very far (and maybe never did except in the political winds). That was highlighted by May Day where the central Occupy struggle event (the Financial District Block Party) fizzled, fizzled badly. As I said back in December “we are generals without an army.” People, including political genius Markin, thought I was crazy when I first said that, but as usual, my political antennae were very sharp.
13. What do you or your organization perceive as the weaknesses of Occupy? Please elaborate.
See most of above. I will just outline here as a summary. Too attached to the camp idea beyond its usefulness. Too caught up in camp details once it became a “homeless shelter” toward the end of October. A studied lack of serious political discussion beyond platitudes. No demands which ordinary people could organize around and fight for. And desperately need to fight for too. Too wedded to the almost politically infantile ideas that formed the movement (mic check, endless GA prattle, absolute consensus, non-representative assemblies, moral blocks). Too many marches and rallies without purpose other than to proclaim 99%-dom. Too wedded to a purely social media concept of revolution in the U.S. and not taking into consideration the differences between here and let’s say, in Egypt. No links, other than formal and those tenuous, to organized labor, blacks, Latinos, working women, non-radicalized students, ordinary working people, hard-pressed suburban home-owners, etc. Unwillingness, incapacity, or even awareness of political timing of the need to shift perspective as the movement fell apart in winter and spring. Too wedded to the “leaderless” leader concept. In short all the problems that one should have expected of a movement that “had” it for a political minute last fall and essentially squandered it. That is a hard thing to swallow for me. Harder still it is not something that can really be addressed (at least for Boston) at this late date.
14. Any campaigns that you/organization have been involved in? (ex. Occupy the T). In what way?
See above.
15. Where do you see the Occupy movement going from here?
As I said above -… “we are generals without an army.” From all appearances of late that looks like the situation for the future as well. I would note that from the declining number of active working groups, smaller size of those groups, and the rather cult-like actions of the remnant of OB GA it is not good. We should have a solemn commemoration for the OWS movement every September 17th- and move on.
“…The Occupy movement has now declared unequivocally that it is a movement of generals without an army. And likes it that way ”- from an article, "Whither Occupy?”- by Joshua Lawrence Breslin in the East Bay Other, December 22, 2011.
Note that Brother Breslin ( I will explain that bond in a minute) did not say that the Occupy movement was an army without generals. Josh’s finely-tuned sense of which way a movement is heading and why picked that nugget out long before this writer in early spring had to concede the point, a sense he has developed, by the way, over forty years of writing for half the unread ( just kidding , Josh), and in some cases unlamented , radical and progressive journals and newspapers in this country. Brother Breslin always had shape antennae for the ebb and flow of social movements going back to the 1960s when he saw the ebb of those high heaven movements fall apart around the 1969 “Days Of Rage” at a time when I did not see the ebb until the 1971 May Day Tribe attempts in Washington, D.C. to shut the government down over the ever-continuing Vietnam War. So Josh Breslin is somebody I listen to.
Back in December I, as usual, dismissed his remarks as so much bad air as a result of having been burned by some of his experiences on the West Coast (his base for many years, although he resides now mostly near his old home town of Olde Saco up in Maine) and at the Occupy Boston site at Dewey Square. I, in what now seems like a fit of hubris, defended the movement as just about the best thing since sliced bread. Oh sure I had my fair share of criticisms, criticisms from a socialist perspective about the “no demands” demands and the like. However I saw most of the stuff that I disliked as “growing pains” and particularly held out hope for the General Assembly idea as the embryo of an alternative form of government in our new world a-borning .
Josh, if he is honest, will admit that he too shared some of my “generation of ‘68” hopes that this new movement would be the place where we passed on the torch the next generation (really the next next generation, there is a “missing generation (roughly the Occupy kids’ parents). Now those hopes have dissolved in the spring air and that son of a bitch proved right again.
Why have I spilled so much cyberspace “ink” on the august opinions of an old-time radical writer? Simply put because I recently was approached by a “true believer,” a self-described socialist ‘true believer” in the Occupy mission to answer some questions about my take on what socialists contributed (or didn’t ) to the movement and other questions along those lines. Naturally when such questions are raised I turn to my old comrade Josh for his opinions, suggestions, etc. Josh and I have shared many a picket line duty, many a lonely vigil, many a forlorn march for some underpublicized cause, and many a rally for some aspect of the world’s ills so our bonds of brotherhood run deep, even if we seldom agree on political perspectives. I have placed his answers to that true believer’s questions below. To finish up though let me quote his closing remark which has been telegraphed in the headline to this piece. “Let’s solemnly commemorate September 17th each year-and move on.” Pure Josh Breslin. But, damn him, he’s right-again.
***********
[Markin: I have deleted questions that Josh, for his own reasons, did not answer. My answers will form part of that true believer’s essay so I have not included them here. ]
Socialists in the Occupy Movement (Massachusetts)
I'm trying to keep this Massachusetts specific, but feel free to refer to national events when applicable.
Feel free to send this to other socialists who may be interested in answering questions.
Feel free to skip any questions that are not applicable by writing N/A.
Share links to relevant articles where appropriate.
1. Your name? Or if you prefer to use a pen-name for this interview, please write it down.
Joshua Lawrence Breslin (my by-line name but just Josh in mixed company, mixed being political and non-political)
2. What socialist organization are you a part of? Or if you are an independent socialist, do you have some other affiliation (journal, union, etc.)?
Independent Radical-East Bay Other , Real Paper, The Barb, Boston Phoenix, Rolling Stone, Green Weekly, and too many other papers and journals to mention
3. How would you describe yourself ideologically?
Traced from youth- Catholic Worker etched-liberalism (same as Markin except that his was Irish mine Gallic-derived) , Cold War social democracy, communist fellow traveler radical –League Of California Radicals, now for many years, an independent radical
4. When did either you or your organization get involved in the Occupy Movement (specifically in Massachusetts)?
I attended the pre-encampment meetings before September 30th, had a writing assignment at Occupy Oakland for most of October and early November, came back and worked at Dewey Square from then on.
5. Did you or anyone from organization camp out in an Occupy encampment?
Are you serious? No. Old men do not “camp out” on the highway. And young people shouldn’t either.
8. How would you characterize Occupy's relation/reception to socialists ideas? Good? Bad? Indifferent? –
Indifferent but a studied indifference to any ideas beyond the mush of “ideas” that held the camp together. I once commented that for a political movement that then held the public center of attention there was less political discussion at Occupy than I had run into off-handedly in various pre-Occupy rallies and marches in which I had participated. That observation has only gotten stronger as the movement has fallen apart.
11. Were you a part of any Occupy working groups? Which ones and your assessment?
Socialist Caucus-short-lived, not well-attended and mainly a “mail-drop” and endorsement vehicle for other actions, including those which I supported and sought endorsements for. The caucus I believe pretty accurately reflected the weaknesses of the non-academic socialist movement in Boston (and probably more generally the radical milieu) as far as numbers go, desire for an all-inclusive socialist organization where groups and individuals could fight out their politics while doing the necessary united front work that has to drive the movement in this period, and general post-Soviet demise indifferent and/or hostility to socialism beyond the endlessly prattled passive poll figure that the younger generations now have a more positive attitude toward socialist ideas and do not want to shoot every socialist on sight.
Action for Peace-mainly the same observations as for the Socialist Caucus except that it really was kind of redundant to Veterans for Peace and UNAC organizational efforts reflecting the composition of the members of the group. Most successful action was as part of the February Hands Off Iran rally but that event, a real united front rather than Occupy event, demonstrates the redundant nature of the group. As a general observation about the working groups I would note that pre-Occupy organizations, for a time, found it worthwhile, and rightly so, I think, to work under the Occupy umbrella. Of late I note that most groups now work under their previous individual organizational forms and not under the Occupy umbrella.
General Strike OB- planning for May Day 2012. The best group I worked with, again too small for the task, the general strike task that originally animated its formation. Made up of a core of anarchists who were very hard-working but who also (as I did) kept some distance from OB GA (except for dough). To the extent that it might help you I have placed my May 2012 reflections here.
**********
May Day 2012
I have noted on several previous occasions that due to the recent absence of serious left-wing political struggle (prior to the events at Occupy Boston in Dewey Square from October to December 2011anyway) that our tasks for May Day 2012 in Boston centered on reviving the international working class tradition beyond the limited observance by revolutionaries, radicals and, in recent years, immigrants. This effort would thus not be a one event, one year but require a number of years and that this year’s efforts was just a start. We have made that start.
The important thing this year was to bring Boston in line with the international movement, to have leftist militants and others see our struggles here as part of an international struggle even if our actions were, for now, more symbolic and educational than powerful blows at the imperial system. I believe, despite the bad weather and consequently smaller than anticipated numbers on May Day 2012, we achieved that aim. Through months of hard outreach, especially over the past several weeks as the day approached, we put out much propaganda and information about the events through the various media with which we have access. The message of this May Day, a day without the 99%, got a full hearing by people from the unions, immigrant communities, student milieu and other sectors like the women’s movement and GLBQT community. The connections and contacts made are valuable for our further efforts.
Some participants that spoke to me on May Day (and others who had expressed the same concerns on earlier occasions) believed that we had “bitten off more than we could chew,” by having an all-day series of events. While I am certainly open to hear criticism on the start time of the day’s events (7:00AM does stretch the imagination for night-owlish militants) the idea of several events starting with that early Financial District Block Party and continuing on with the 11:00 AM Anti-Capitalist March which fed into the noontime rally at Boston City Hall Plaza and then switching over to the immigrant community marches and rally capped off that evening by the sober, solemn and visually impression “Death Of Capitalism” funeral procession still seems right to me. Given our task –introducing (really re-introducing) May Day to a wider Boston audience we needed to provide a number of times and events where people could, consciously, contribute to the day’s celebration. Maybe some year our side will be able to call for a one event May Day mass rally (or better a general strike) but that is music for the future.
Needless to say, as occurs almost any time you have many events and a certain need to have them coordinated, there were some problems from technical stuff like mic set-ups to someone forgetting something important, or not showing at the right time, etc. Growing pains. Nevertheless all the scheduled events happened, we had minimum hassles from the police, and a couple of events really stick out as exemplars for future May Days. The Anti-Capitalist March from Copley Square, mainly in a downpour, led by many young militants and which fed into the noontime City Hall rally was spirited and gave me hope that someday (someday soon, I hope) we are going to bring this imperial monster down. The already mentioned funeral procession was an extremely creative (and oft-forgotten by us) alternative way to get our message across outside the “normal” ham-handed, jack-booted political screed.
Finally, a word or two on organization. The Occupy-May Day Coalition personnel base was too small, way too small even for our limited goals. We need outreach early (early next year) to get enough organizer-type people on board to push forward. More broadly on outreach I believe, and partially this was a function of being too small an organizing center, we spent too much time “preaching to the choir”-going to events, talking to people already politically convinced , talking among ourselves rather than get out into the broader political milieu. For next year (which will not be an election year) we really need union and community people (especially people of color) to “smooth” the way for us. We never got that one (although we want more than one ultimately) respected middle-level still militant union official or community organizer that people, working people, listen to and who would listen to us with his or her nod. Radical or bourgeois politics, down at the base, you still need the people that the people listen to. Forward to May Day 2013.
12. Did you or your organization bring any proposals to a General Assembly? How were those proposals received?
As noted the General Strike proposals, in line with the national and international thrust for May Day were well-received, including for money. I would note that during the post-encampment period GA served as more of a “mail drop” and endorsement vehicle similar to the working groups I was involved with. If couched in the right language and sufficiently genetic (read; noncontroversial) most proposals that I was associated with passed with a minimum of friction. The main point though is to trace the political demise of GA from an October “people’s voice” operation to a “rump” in the post encampment period. Its writ did not run very far (and maybe never did except in the political winds). That was highlighted by May Day where the central Occupy struggle event (the Financial District Block Party) fizzled, fizzled badly. As I said back in December “we are generals without an army.” People, including political genius Markin, thought I was crazy when I first said that, but as usual, my political antennae were very sharp.
13. What do you or your organization perceive as the weaknesses of Occupy? Please elaborate.
See most of above. I will just outline here as a summary. Too attached to the camp idea beyond its usefulness. Too caught up in camp details once it became a “homeless shelter” toward the end of October. A studied lack of serious political discussion beyond platitudes. No demands which ordinary people could organize around and fight for. And desperately need to fight for too. Too wedded to the almost politically infantile ideas that formed the movement (mic check, endless GA prattle, absolute consensus, non-representative assemblies, moral blocks). Too many marches and rallies without purpose other than to proclaim 99%-dom. Too wedded to a purely social media concept of revolution in the U.S. and not taking into consideration the differences between here and let’s say, in Egypt. No links, other than formal and those tenuous, to organized labor, blacks, Latinos, working women, non-radicalized students, ordinary working people, hard-pressed suburban home-owners, etc. Unwillingness, incapacity, or even awareness of political timing of the need to shift perspective as the movement fell apart in winter and spring. Too wedded to the “leaderless” leader concept. In short all the problems that one should have expected of a movement that “had” it for a political minute last fall and essentially squandered it. That is a hard thing to swallow for me. Harder still it is not something that can really be addressed (at least for Boston) at this late date.
14. Any campaigns that you/organization have been involved in? (ex. Occupy the T). In what way?
See above.
15. Where do you see the Occupy movement going from here?
As I said above -… “we are generals without an army.” From all appearances of late that looks like the situation for the future as well. I would note that from the declining number of active working groups, smaller size of those groups, and the rather cult-like actions of the remnant of OB GA it is not good. We should have a solemn commemoration for the OWS movement every September 17th- and move on.
From The Archives (December 2011)#Un-Occupied Boston (#Un-Tomemonos Boston)-This Is Class War-We Say No More!- Generals Without An Army?
Click on the headline to link to updates from the Occupy Boston website. Occupy Boston started at 6:00 PM, September 30, 2011. I will post important updates as they appear on that site.
*******
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The Occupation Movement And All The Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Occupy Protesters Everywhere!
*******
Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
*******
Peter Paul Markin comment (re-post December, 2011):
Recently my long time friend, Josh Breslin (Joshua Lawrence Breslin for those old enough to recognize that name from half the alterative presses in this country, large and small, over the past forty years or so) sent me an e-mail the contents of which I have commented on in this space under the entry “General Assembly Blues- A Cautionary Tale.” (See post below.)The substance of the piece was that Josh felt that the Occupy idea was ripe for the picking by those bourgeois political forces that were hovering around the movement lately looking like wolves ready to feast on an easy meal. Without going into detail here he also argued that there were some very Potemkin Village-like aspects of the Occupy Boston movement since the police raid on December 10th scattered the tribe. The most remarkable statement though, or at least the one which stuck in my mind after reading his e-mail, was his characterization of Occupy as “generals without an army.’’ That little twist has haunted me not a little since after some thought and some further investigation I find that statement to have some truth in it.
Now some readers of this post will dismiss the whole notion of generals, or at least the free-wheeling use of any military terms when speaking of the movement, out of hand. That would be unfortunate because that expression was merely a short-hand way for Josh to say what many people I have spoke to already sense. This “leaderless” movement has leaders, there is nothing wrong with leaders emerging if based on doing hard political work and winning authority, and that in a very important sense those fairly small numbers whose lives are now entwined with the Occupy movement are de facto leaders and that is just hard political realty. Period
And an equally hard fact is that through the thick and thin of committee meetings, working groups, “rump” General Assemblies (Josh’s word but there is also truth in that characterization as well) and other forms of actions (mainly small, very small) over the past month or so (and thus a mood that pre-dates the demise of Dewey Square) is that the Occupy movement has lost much steam. Some of this was, and should have been, expected. And perhaps with a better political focus here in Boston that may be turned around come spring. But the hard-headed reality is that a lot of possibly very good cadres are spinning their wheels with no forces (or not many) behind them. Others are just doing what comes naturally content to attend endless meetings, discuss endlessly, and let other hostile forces come in and pick those very good cadres clean. Ya, sometime Josh Breslin is clueless on stuff but on this on he is preaching to the converted.
***********
General Assembly Blues- A Cautionary Tale
Peter Paul Markin comment:
I had never seen my old friend Josh Breslin so irate (Joshua Lawrence Breslin for those who know him under that moniker through his various commentary columns in all kind alternative press operations over the past forty years or so). Or rather more correctly I had never read anything of his that practically steamed off the page, the computer screen page that early Monday morning (December 19, 2011, let’s see the time stamp, oh yes, 5:14 AM, Ya early, definitely early for Josh) when I was casually perusing my daily e-mail delete slaughter-house. It seems that he had attended an Occupy Boston General Assembly (GA) meeting the night before over at the hallowed Community Church on Boylston Street (hallowed in leftist circles, I had first gone there long ago to attend a commemoration program for Sacco and Vanzetti). Since the police raid on the Occupy camp at Dewey Square in the early morning hours of December 11th the GAs have been assembling helter-skelter at various locations from the Parkman Bandstand on the Common to various sympathetic indoor as winter sets in locations, mainly churches, in order to keep some continuity during these unsettled times.
At that meeting the main order of business was a simple proposal submitted by the OB Socialist Caucus, a loose group of organizationally-affiliated and unaffiliated people who identify themselves with the socialist cause. The gist of the proposal was to make a forthright statement that Occupy Boston was to be clearly identified, more clearly identified than in any previous document, as independent of the main bourgeois parties, the Democrats in particular, and by implication was not to be a front or voting cattle bloc for any particular organized political operation ready to move in like hungry wolves looking for an easy meal. This proposal never reached a vote, a yea or nay vote, that night because it was “blocked” well before such a vote could be taken by, as Josh called it in his e-mail, the “Rump” assembly (see said e-mail posted below, well the gist of it anyway). The Rump being a minority of those eighty or so brethren in attendance that evening whose maneuver in the consensus-addled GA world stopped the proposal in its tracks. This series of events triggered in Josh some kind of previously well-hidden verbal explosion about the trends that he had witnessed developing in the movement, and that had disturbed him previously. Naturally he had to send his old compadre Peter Paul his bilious e-mail as the first step in his “campaign” to get things off his chest.
A little explanation is in order to gauge the seriousness of Josh’s maddened impulse and, as well, for why I have taken the time to write this little commentary up and pushed it forward. Josh and I go back a long way, back to the summer of love in San Francisco in 1967 when I was on Captain Crunch’s merry prankster magical mystery tour freedom bus and I met Josh, then going under the moniker “Prince Of Love,” on Russian Hill in that town. Ya, I know, we were just a little too self-important on changing the name changed the person thing but that was the way it was. I was, for a while, known as Be-Bop Benny, among other names. He had, after just graduating from high school up in Olde Saco, Maine hitch-hiked across the country to see “what was happening.” We hit it off right away, probably because my being from North Adamsville here in Massachusetts we were the only New Englanders “on the bus,” even though I was a few years older. In any case our friendship survived through thick and thin, even despite his “stealing” my girl, Butterfly Swirl (okay, okay I will stop with the a. k. a’s), from right under my nose during the first few days we knew each other. Part of that thick and thin has been involvement in a long series of left-wing political struggles where we have not always seen eye to eye but have generally been “on the right of the angels.”
And that, roughly, brings us to the present. Along the way, for a number of reason that shall not detain us here, I increasingly came to socialist conclusions abut the nature of American society and the ways to change it. Josh, while always on the cutting edge of those same conclusions, never crossed over and has maintained a studied non-socialist radical position very similar to many that I have run into as the Occupy movement has gathered steam. Although, as a paid political commentator for various publications, he has always kept a certain skeptical distance from going overboard every time there is the slightest left breeze coming in over Boston Harbor. Until now.
As I have written elsewhere Josh, now retired, still likes to keep his hand in the mix and so has been working on a project that may turn into a book about the Occupy Boston experience. When he first he crossed the river from the wilds of Cambridge he held himself pretty aloof from the doings but soon became totally enmeshed in what was going on. I was, and still am, a lot more skeptical about where the winds are heading. Josh though spent some nights at Dewey Square and got involved in the camp life. He marched up and down the streets of Boston in every possible cause. Brought food and other goods to the site when he came over. Donated money and other resources to the efforts. He even told me that he washed dishes (once) to help out in the kitchen one day. And believe me in the old prankster days the Prince of Love was, well, too “important” to bow down and get his hands wet doing anything as lowly as dishes. So this new experiment (or rather a chance to make up for those youthful mistakes) really energized him.
So when Joshua Lawrence Breslin, on a darkened Monday morning, signals that something is wrong, something is politically wrong with the direction of the movement I listen up. And, perhaps, you should too.
*******
Below I have placed the substance of the e-mail that Josh Breslin sent to me that fateful Monday December 19th morning. This is my summarization of the document which was written by him in our usual “code” and with his usual excessive use of expletives to normal ears so that it would be not understandable to “outsiders.” In short I have edited it as best I could while retaining the political direction. If Josh doesn’t like it then he can, well, sue me. Ha ha. Or better, write his own damn translation. Peter Paul Markin.
December 19, 2011, 5:14 AM to PeterPaulMarkin@yahoo.com:
Pee Pee, [The reader is hereby warned no to make anything out of this old-time nickname, old time going back to childhood North Adamsville working-class neighborhood days, or else.] You won’t believe what those arrogant airheads did last night at the so-called GA. I call it, and you can quote me on this, the “Rump” like back in Oliver Cromwell’s time when a bunch of cronies controlled everything, or else. They “blocked” the proposal to have a clear statement of independence from the damn Democrats (and Republicans too) but we know who really wants in on this movement.
What they did was get together enough people to block the thing even though with a simple majority it could have gotten through. So much for democracy. For once you are right on this blocking and consensus b.s. Now when Miss Betty [Elizabeth Warren] comes a-courting she will have a field day. You and I have disagreed on many things but keeping the bourgeois parties the hell away from our movement (except maybe to do “Jimmy Higgins” work putting up chairs or licking envelopes, stuff like that) has always been something that has united us ever since Chicago in 1968.
You should have heard the reasons given. Naturally the old chestnut- “we don’t want to alienate anyone” (anyone to the left of Genghis Khan, I guess). “It’s too negative.” Like the bourgeoisie gives a damn about negativity as long as they keep their moola and their power. “The statement we have already posted about transparency and independence is good enough” Like that flimsy one-size-fits-all statement has any political meaning at all. And it degenerated from there. I was so mad I had to walk out and get some fresh air.
I am far from giving up on this Occupy movement but in a lot of ways it really is like that guy, that homeless camper guy, I interviewed over at Dewey Square in early November when the weather got a little cold said. He said the place was a Potemkin Village. I thought he meant about people not staying there overnight. But now I think he meant the whole experiment. They, we, are generals without any army right now and nothing that is being done lately is calculated to break out from that situation. Were we this ruthlessly obtuse back in the days? I hope not- Josh
*******
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The Occupation Movement And All The Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Occupy Protesters Everywhere!
*******
Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
*******
Peter Paul Markin comment (re-post December, 2011):
Recently my long time friend, Josh Breslin (Joshua Lawrence Breslin for those old enough to recognize that name from half the alterative presses in this country, large and small, over the past forty years or so) sent me an e-mail the contents of which I have commented on in this space under the entry “General Assembly Blues- A Cautionary Tale.” (See post below.)The substance of the piece was that Josh felt that the Occupy idea was ripe for the picking by those bourgeois political forces that were hovering around the movement lately looking like wolves ready to feast on an easy meal. Without going into detail here he also argued that there were some very Potemkin Village-like aspects of the Occupy Boston movement since the police raid on December 10th scattered the tribe. The most remarkable statement though, or at least the one which stuck in my mind after reading his e-mail, was his characterization of Occupy as “generals without an army.’’ That little twist has haunted me not a little since after some thought and some further investigation I find that statement to have some truth in it.
Now some readers of this post will dismiss the whole notion of generals, or at least the free-wheeling use of any military terms when speaking of the movement, out of hand. That would be unfortunate because that expression was merely a short-hand way for Josh to say what many people I have spoke to already sense. This “leaderless” movement has leaders, there is nothing wrong with leaders emerging if based on doing hard political work and winning authority, and that in a very important sense those fairly small numbers whose lives are now entwined with the Occupy movement are de facto leaders and that is just hard political realty. Period
And an equally hard fact is that through the thick and thin of committee meetings, working groups, “rump” General Assemblies (Josh’s word but there is also truth in that characterization as well) and other forms of actions (mainly small, very small) over the past month or so (and thus a mood that pre-dates the demise of Dewey Square) is that the Occupy movement has lost much steam. Some of this was, and should have been, expected. And perhaps with a better political focus here in Boston that may be turned around come spring. But the hard-headed reality is that a lot of possibly very good cadres are spinning their wheels with no forces (or not many) behind them. Others are just doing what comes naturally content to attend endless meetings, discuss endlessly, and let other hostile forces come in and pick those very good cadres clean. Ya, sometime Josh Breslin is clueless on stuff but on this on he is preaching to the converted.
***********
General Assembly Blues- A Cautionary Tale
Peter Paul Markin comment:
I had never seen my old friend Josh Breslin so irate (Joshua Lawrence Breslin for those who know him under that moniker through his various commentary columns in all kind alternative press operations over the past forty years or so). Or rather more correctly I had never read anything of his that practically steamed off the page, the computer screen page that early Monday morning (December 19, 2011, let’s see the time stamp, oh yes, 5:14 AM, Ya early, definitely early for Josh) when I was casually perusing my daily e-mail delete slaughter-house. It seems that he had attended an Occupy Boston General Assembly (GA) meeting the night before over at the hallowed Community Church on Boylston Street (hallowed in leftist circles, I had first gone there long ago to attend a commemoration program for Sacco and Vanzetti). Since the police raid on the Occupy camp at Dewey Square in the early morning hours of December 11th the GAs have been assembling helter-skelter at various locations from the Parkman Bandstand on the Common to various sympathetic indoor as winter sets in locations, mainly churches, in order to keep some continuity during these unsettled times.
At that meeting the main order of business was a simple proposal submitted by the OB Socialist Caucus, a loose group of organizationally-affiliated and unaffiliated people who identify themselves with the socialist cause. The gist of the proposal was to make a forthright statement that Occupy Boston was to be clearly identified, more clearly identified than in any previous document, as independent of the main bourgeois parties, the Democrats in particular, and by implication was not to be a front or voting cattle bloc for any particular organized political operation ready to move in like hungry wolves looking for an easy meal. This proposal never reached a vote, a yea or nay vote, that night because it was “blocked” well before such a vote could be taken by, as Josh called it in his e-mail, the “Rump” assembly (see said e-mail posted below, well the gist of it anyway). The Rump being a minority of those eighty or so brethren in attendance that evening whose maneuver in the consensus-addled GA world stopped the proposal in its tracks. This series of events triggered in Josh some kind of previously well-hidden verbal explosion about the trends that he had witnessed developing in the movement, and that had disturbed him previously. Naturally he had to send his old compadre Peter Paul his bilious e-mail as the first step in his “campaign” to get things off his chest.
A little explanation is in order to gauge the seriousness of Josh’s maddened impulse and, as well, for why I have taken the time to write this little commentary up and pushed it forward. Josh and I go back a long way, back to the summer of love in San Francisco in 1967 when I was on Captain Crunch’s merry prankster magical mystery tour freedom bus and I met Josh, then going under the moniker “Prince Of Love,” on Russian Hill in that town. Ya, I know, we were just a little too self-important on changing the name changed the person thing but that was the way it was. I was, for a while, known as Be-Bop Benny, among other names. He had, after just graduating from high school up in Olde Saco, Maine hitch-hiked across the country to see “what was happening.” We hit it off right away, probably because my being from North Adamsville here in Massachusetts we were the only New Englanders “on the bus,” even though I was a few years older. In any case our friendship survived through thick and thin, even despite his “stealing” my girl, Butterfly Swirl (okay, okay I will stop with the a. k. a’s), from right under my nose during the first few days we knew each other. Part of that thick and thin has been involvement in a long series of left-wing political struggles where we have not always seen eye to eye but have generally been “on the right of the angels.”
And that, roughly, brings us to the present. Along the way, for a number of reason that shall not detain us here, I increasingly came to socialist conclusions abut the nature of American society and the ways to change it. Josh, while always on the cutting edge of those same conclusions, never crossed over and has maintained a studied non-socialist radical position very similar to many that I have run into as the Occupy movement has gathered steam. Although, as a paid political commentator for various publications, he has always kept a certain skeptical distance from going overboard every time there is the slightest left breeze coming in over Boston Harbor. Until now.
As I have written elsewhere Josh, now retired, still likes to keep his hand in the mix and so has been working on a project that may turn into a book about the Occupy Boston experience. When he first he crossed the river from the wilds of Cambridge he held himself pretty aloof from the doings but soon became totally enmeshed in what was going on. I was, and still am, a lot more skeptical about where the winds are heading. Josh though spent some nights at Dewey Square and got involved in the camp life. He marched up and down the streets of Boston in every possible cause. Brought food and other goods to the site when he came over. Donated money and other resources to the efforts. He even told me that he washed dishes (once) to help out in the kitchen one day. And believe me in the old prankster days the Prince of Love was, well, too “important” to bow down and get his hands wet doing anything as lowly as dishes. So this new experiment (or rather a chance to make up for those youthful mistakes) really energized him.
So when Joshua Lawrence Breslin, on a darkened Monday morning, signals that something is wrong, something is politically wrong with the direction of the movement I listen up. And, perhaps, you should too.
*******
Below I have placed the substance of the e-mail that Josh Breslin sent to me that fateful Monday December 19th morning. This is my summarization of the document which was written by him in our usual “code” and with his usual excessive use of expletives to normal ears so that it would be not understandable to “outsiders.” In short I have edited it as best I could while retaining the political direction. If Josh doesn’t like it then he can, well, sue me. Ha ha. Or better, write his own damn translation. Peter Paul Markin.
December 19, 2011, 5:14 AM to PeterPaulMarkin@yahoo.com:
Pee Pee, [The reader is hereby warned no to make anything out of this old-time nickname, old time going back to childhood North Adamsville working-class neighborhood days, or else.] You won’t believe what those arrogant airheads did last night at the so-called GA. I call it, and you can quote me on this, the “Rump” like back in Oliver Cromwell’s time when a bunch of cronies controlled everything, or else. They “blocked” the proposal to have a clear statement of independence from the damn Democrats (and Republicans too) but we know who really wants in on this movement.
What they did was get together enough people to block the thing even though with a simple majority it could have gotten through. So much for democracy. For once you are right on this blocking and consensus b.s. Now when Miss Betty [Elizabeth Warren] comes a-courting she will have a field day. You and I have disagreed on many things but keeping the bourgeois parties the hell away from our movement (except maybe to do “Jimmy Higgins” work putting up chairs or licking envelopes, stuff like that) has always been something that has united us ever since Chicago in 1968.
You should have heard the reasons given. Naturally the old chestnut- “we don’t want to alienate anyone” (anyone to the left of Genghis Khan, I guess). “It’s too negative.” Like the bourgeoisie gives a damn about negativity as long as they keep their moola and their power. “The statement we have already posted about transparency and independence is good enough” Like that flimsy one-size-fits-all statement has any political meaning at all. And it degenerated from there. I was so mad I had to walk out and get some fresh air.
I am far from giving up on this Occupy movement but in a lot of ways it really is like that guy, that homeless camper guy, I interviewed over at Dewey Square in early November when the weather got a little cold said. He said the place was a Potemkin Village. I thought he meant about people not staying there overnight. But now I think he meant the whole experiment. They, we, are generals without any army right now and nothing that is being done lately is calculated to break out from that situation. Were we this ruthlessly obtuse back in the days? I hope not- Josh
Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By- "America, Where Are You Now...."-Stepphenwolf's "Monster" –For The Quebec Student Movement Struggle
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Steppenwolf performing their classic anti-war song (and plaintive plea)Monster.
In this series, presented under the headline Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By, I will post some songs that I think will help us get through the “dog days” of the struggle for our communist future. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here.
********
Markin comment on the lyrics here:
Steppenwolf was one of the most political of the rock groups brought forth by the new musical sensibility of the counter-cultural movement in the mid to late 1960s. The narrative here in Monster reads like a capsule history of the American experience up until the 1960s. And a powerful call, a call that should resonate today, for the older generation (now us) to come and help the young fight against the monster of American (and today Canadian) imperialistic capitalism that is driving us all to the bottom. A theme song for all the struggle movements springing up around this good, green earth.
In this series, presented under the headline Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By, I will post some songs that I think will help us get through the “dog days” of the struggle for our communist future. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here.
********
Markin comment on the lyrics here:
Steppenwolf was one of the most political of the rock groups brought forth by the new musical sensibility of the counter-cultural movement in the mid to late 1960s. The narrative here in Monster reads like a capsule history of the American experience up until the 1960s. And a powerful call, a call that should resonate today, for the older generation (now us) to come and help the young fight against the monster of American (and today Canadian) imperialistic capitalism that is driving us all to the bottom. A theme song for all the struggle movements springing up around this good, green earth.
If The Frame Fits- Susan Hayward’s “I Want To Live!”-A Film Review
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Susan Hayward’s “I Want To Live!"
DVD Review
I Want To Live!, starring Susan Hayward, directed by Robert Wise, 1959
Normally one would not expect an actress like Susan Hayward, whose roles were mostly romantic , demure leading ladies in some mixed- up love affair to shine in the film under review, I Want To Live!, but it is just enough against type to have been Oscar-worthy. Here Ms. Hayward plays Barbara Graham, a party girl (nice, right) who gets mixed up, mixed up big time, in a heist that went wrong, badly wrong, leading to the murder of an elderly woman.
Life had not dealt bout a square hand to Barbara so she wound up, like many another guy or gal from the wrong side of the tracks doing as she said “the best she could.” She got mixed up with some wrong gees and as mentioned above got mixed up with a murder. And as if, once again, to prove that there is no honor among thieves, they set out to place the frame on her.
And with her devil take the hinter post attitude she worms her way into the death penalty, the death penalty in a time when that act was carried out quite frequently including to women.
That is where the acting part of the film really takes off and Ms. Hayward earns her Oscar. From that wayward party girl she turns thoughtful and then terrified at the state-imposed death that stares her right in the face. There is some controversy over the details; the guilt or innocence of Barbara Graham, of the actual case that the film is based on but Ms. Hayward’s performance should make one think twice about the question of the death penalty as state policy.
DVD Review
I Want To Live!, starring Susan Hayward, directed by Robert Wise, 1959
Normally one would not expect an actress like Susan Hayward, whose roles were mostly romantic , demure leading ladies in some mixed- up love affair to shine in the film under review, I Want To Live!, but it is just enough against type to have been Oscar-worthy. Here Ms. Hayward plays Barbara Graham, a party girl (nice, right) who gets mixed up, mixed up big time, in a heist that went wrong, badly wrong, leading to the murder of an elderly woman.
Life had not dealt bout a square hand to Barbara so she wound up, like many another guy or gal from the wrong side of the tracks doing as she said “the best she could.” She got mixed up with some wrong gees and as mentioned above got mixed up with a murder. And as if, once again, to prove that there is no honor among thieves, they set out to place the frame on her.
And with her devil take the hinter post attitude she worms her way into the death penalty, the death penalty in a time when that act was carried out quite frequently including to women.
That is where the acting part of the film really takes off and Ms. Hayward earns her Oscar. From that wayward party girl she turns thoughtful and then terrified at the state-imposed death that stares her right in the face. There is some controversy over the details; the guilt or innocence of Barbara Graham, of the actual case that the film is based on but Ms. Hayward’s performance should make one think twice about the question of the death penalty as state policy.
Out In The 1950s Crime Noir Night-French-Style- Jean Gabin’s Touchez Pas au Grisbi
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Jean Gabin’s Touches Pas au Grisbi
DVD Review
Touchez Pas au Grisbi, starring Jean Gabin, 1954
Hey, I have been touting crime noir films for the past couple of years so why not review, as here with Jean Gabin’s 1954 Touchez Pas au Grisbi, a French crime noir in honor of, well, the name of the genre. And a later generation of French directors who went crazy for Hollywood gangster epics in such films as “Breathless” and Don’t Shoot The Piano Player. Especially when said this crime noir stars Jean Gabin, last reviewed here in a very different film, Children Of Paradise.
Well, let’s cut to the chase (literally, as this plot unfolds). It seems that long- time crime boss Max (Gabin) has pulled a caper (heist, okay) to set himself and his confederate Riton up for a well-deserved retirement from the rackets. And everything was going along just fine until old buddy Riton got a loose tongue over some show girl (played by a very young Jean Moreau) and spilled his guts out to her about how he could keep her in clover. Problem is that young showgirls are as fickle and calculating as any other woman mixed up with bad actuarial table criminals and she has another crime boss on the hook, one Angelo. Naturally she mentions the loot to Angelo and sets off an explosion of maneuvers by him to get the kale, and by Max to keep it.
The cat and mouse of this pair drives the rest of the movie with old Max showing one and all why he was (and is) the king of the hill, even if he may have lost a step or two. Angelo’s big mistake (besides thinking that Max was over the hill and easy pickings) was kidnapping Riton, an act that set Max on a fight to the finish. See the film to get the details of that fight to the finish. What is important though is the use by the director here of the many tough guy moves made by Hollywood gangsters in the heyday 1930s including a few off-hand beatings of opponent gangsters to get information, a few off-hand slaps at show girls (by Gabin of all people but that is part of being a boss and no chump), and a car chase, natch complete with machine guns ta-ta-ta-ing. Ya, the French picked up the genre very nicely. Gabin might be a little too suave (except for those off-hand girl slaps) to be an American 1930s gangster but he fit the more demure 1950s just right.
DVD Review
Touchez Pas au Grisbi, starring Jean Gabin, 1954
Hey, I have been touting crime noir films for the past couple of years so why not review, as here with Jean Gabin’s 1954 Touchez Pas au Grisbi, a French crime noir in honor of, well, the name of the genre. And a later generation of French directors who went crazy for Hollywood gangster epics in such films as “Breathless” and Don’t Shoot The Piano Player. Especially when said this crime noir stars Jean Gabin, last reviewed here in a very different film, Children Of Paradise.
Well, let’s cut to the chase (literally, as this plot unfolds). It seems that long- time crime boss Max (Gabin) has pulled a caper (heist, okay) to set himself and his confederate Riton up for a well-deserved retirement from the rackets. And everything was going along just fine until old buddy Riton got a loose tongue over some show girl (played by a very young Jean Moreau) and spilled his guts out to her about how he could keep her in clover. Problem is that young showgirls are as fickle and calculating as any other woman mixed up with bad actuarial table criminals and she has another crime boss on the hook, one Angelo. Naturally she mentions the loot to Angelo and sets off an explosion of maneuvers by him to get the kale, and by Max to keep it.
The cat and mouse of this pair drives the rest of the movie with old Max showing one and all why he was (and is) the king of the hill, even if he may have lost a step or two. Angelo’s big mistake (besides thinking that Max was over the hill and easy pickings) was kidnapping Riton, an act that set Max on a fight to the finish. See the film to get the details of that fight to the finish. What is important though is the use by the director here of the many tough guy moves made by Hollywood gangsters in the heyday 1930s including a few off-hand beatings of opponent gangsters to get information, a few off-hand slaps at show girls (by Gabin of all people but that is part of being a boss and no chump), and a car chase, natch complete with machine guns ta-ta-ta-ing. Ya, the French picked up the genre very nicely. Gabin might be a little too suave (except for those off-hand girl slaps) to be an American 1930s gangster but he fit the more demure 1950s just right.
Monday, May 28, 2012
A Remembrance Worthy Of The Day- A Memorial Day for Peace-Join The Smedley Butler Brigade-Veterans For Peace In Boston-Today May 28, 2012, 1:00 - 3:00 pm
Click on the headline to link to the Smedley Butler Brigade VFP Facebookpage.
To The Fallen-In Lieu Of A Letter
The mere mention of the name Veterans For Peace evokes images of hard-bitten ex-servicemen and women, many old, ramrod straight holding their beloved black and white peace dove-emblazoned banners flying proudly in all weathers. Of urgent and militant calls for withdrawal of American military personnel from conflicts somewhere in the bewildering number of places that this government has planted its forces. And of relentless exposure of the thousand and one ways that this government (and not just this government) tries to hide its atrocities against overwhelmed opponents and the innocent civilians who get caught up in the juggernaut. Those exercises of our democratic and moral obligations are what drive us most days but I want to put politics aside this day, or put them aside at least long enough to speak of another role that we have taken on over the past several years here in Boston on Memorial Day, a day of remembrance for our fallen.
Others can address, and eloquently, the origins and purposes of the day, a task that usually would come easily to this writer. Others will throw symbolic flowers into our beloved homeland the sea to give somber recognition to the fallen of current conflicts. Still others in other commemorations can, and will, speak of valor, honor, duty and unquestioned obedience to orders accompanied by the far-away tattoo of drums, the echo of the distant roar of cannon, cannon headed to some unmarked destination, and the whish and whirl as an unseen overhead airplane unloads it sacrilegious payload.
Today I choose though to speak of long ago but not forgotten personal remembrance, and to give name to that remembrance. To give name, James Earl Jenkins, old North Quincy rough-house Irish neighborhoods friend and fellow of many boyhood adventures not all fit for public mention, a name now blood-stone etched in black marble down in Washington, D.C. To give name, Kenneth Edward Johnson, my brother and James’ friend also, a name not etched in black stone but a causality of war nevertheless who, despite his fervent desire, “never made it back to the real world” and spent his shortened lonely life reliving the past.
James and Kenneth, what happened to each of them and why, take on special meaning today as I utter their names publicly from the misty past for the first time in a long time because those names link to those we remember today. Not just those, like James, who served under whatever conditions and for whatever personal reasons, those seem beside the point just now, or like my brother, those who do not show up in any official casuality report but all those nevertheless damaged by the close-hand experience of war.
But enough of this, as it only brings another saddened tear. But, as well, enough of war.
****************
Memorial Day for Peace
Monday, May 28, 2012.
1:00pm until 3:00pm.
Christopher Columbus Waterfront Park, Boston
Please join Veterans For Peace, Smedley Butler Brigade, Chapter 9 and Samantha Smith, Chapter 45, Military Families Speak Out, Mass Peace Action, United for Justice with Peace as we commemorate Memorial Day on Monday May 28, 2012, 1-3 p.m.
Location: Christopher Columbus Park, 105 Atlantic Ave., Boston, Massachusetts
(near the Long Wharf Marriott on the waterfront - Aquarium stop on the MBTA Blue Line and a short walk from Haymarket on the Orange Line).
Please join Veterans For Peace, Smedley Butler Brigade, Chapter 9 and There will be no parade, no marching band, no military equipment, no guns and drums, no Air Force fly-overs.
There will be veterans and supporters who have lost friends and loved ones. Veterans who know the horrors of war and the pain and anguish of loss. There will be friends and families of soldiers, remembering their loved ones. There will be Iraqi Refugees who have suffered terrible losses and will join with us as we remember and show respect for their loss.
There will be flowers dropped into the harbor for each fallen U.S. soldier from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Flowers will also be also be dropped into the harbor remembering the loss of Iraqi family and friends.
PROGRAM
Memorial Day for Peace
May 28, 2012 1:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Christopher Columbus Park, 105 Atlantic Ave., Boston, Massachusetts
Program
Brian Quirk, Scottish Bag Pipes
Merrimack Valley People for Peace
Rev. Lara Hoke, Opening
Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Andover
Secretary VFP, Smedley D. Butler Brigade
Pat Scanlon, Welcome
Coordinator, VFP, Smedley D. Butler Brigade
Lee VanderLann, In memory of our friend Capt. Paul Brailsford
Executive Committee VFP, Smedley D. Butler Brigade
VFP Samantha Smith Chapter
Bradford Adams, A short rememberance of my friend Zalmai
VFP, Smedley D. Butler Brigade
Afghanistan Veteran (2002-2003)
Kevin Lucey, Return to Hell
Parent of Cpl. Jeffrey Lucey USMC
Si Kahn, Song – Hunter –(Music from CD)
Bob Funke, What Memorial Day Means to Me
Smedley D. Butler Brigade
Bonnie Gorman, Suicide: The hidden wounds of war
Military Families Speak Out,
Gold Star Families Vietnam
VFP Smedley D. Butler Brigade
Nancy Wrenn, Are we finished with war yet?
Mass Peace Action
Webb Nichols, Poet
Smedley D. Butler Brigade
Ahmad & Leyla AlZubaydi
Babylon Restaurant, Lowell
Iraqi Refugees
Farouq Ali
Arab Spring and Hypocrisy of the West
Iraqi Refugee
Brian Quirk, Scottish Bag Pipes
Flower Ceremony
Rev. Ralph Galen, Closing
Community Church of Lawrence
Jesse Perrier, Taps
Executive Committee Smedley D. Butler Brigade
To The Fallen-In Lieu Of A Letter
The mere mention of the name Veterans For Peace evokes images of hard-bitten ex-servicemen and women, many old, ramrod straight holding their beloved black and white peace dove-emblazoned banners flying proudly in all weathers. Of urgent and militant calls for withdrawal of American military personnel from conflicts somewhere in the bewildering number of places that this government has planted its forces. And of relentless exposure of the thousand and one ways that this government (and not just this government) tries to hide its atrocities against overwhelmed opponents and the innocent civilians who get caught up in the juggernaut. Those exercises of our democratic and moral obligations are what drive us most days but I want to put politics aside this day, or put them aside at least long enough to speak of another role that we have taken on over the past several years here in Boston on Memorial Day, a day of remembrance for our fallen.
Others can address, and eloquently, the origins and purposes of the day, a task that usually would come easily to this writer. Others will throw symbolic flowers into our beloved homeland the sea to give somber recognition to the fallen of current conflicts. Still others in other commemorations can, and will, speak of valor, honor, duty and unquestioned obedience to orders accompanied by the far-away tattoo of drums, the echo of the distant roar of cannon, cannon headed to some unmarked destination, and the whish and whirl as an unseen overhead airplane unloads it sacrilegious payload.
Today I choose though to speak of long ago but not forgotten personal remembrance, and to give name to that remembrance. To give name, James Earl Jenkins, old North Quincy rough-house Irish neighborhoods friend and fellow of many boyhood adventures not all fit for public mention, a name now blood-stone etched in black marble down in Washington, D.C. To give name, Kenneth Edward Johnson, my brother and James’ friend also, a name not etched in black stone but a causality of war nevertheless who, despite his fervent desire, “never made it back to the real world” and spent his shortened lonely life reliving the past.
James and Kenneth, what happened to each of them and why, take on special meaning today as I utter their names publicly from the misty past for the first time in a long time because those names link to those we remember today. Not just those, like James, who served under whatever conditions and for whatever personal reasons, those seem beside the point just now, or like my brother, those who do not show up in any official casuality report but all those nevertheless damaged by the close-hand experience of war.
But enough of this, as it only brings another saddened tear. But, as well, enough of war.
****************
Memorial Day for Peace
Monday, May 28, 2012.
1:00pm until 3:00pm.
Christopher Columbus Waterfront Park, Boston
Please join Veterans For Peace, Smedley Butler Brigade, Chapter 9 and Samantha Smith, Chapter 45, Military Families Speak Out, Mass Peace Action, United for Justice with Peace as we commemorate Memorial Day on Monday May 28, 2012, 1-3 p.m.
Location: Christopher Columbus Park, 105 Atlantic Ave., Boston, Massachusetts
(near the Long Wharf Marriott on the waterfront - Aquarium stop on the MBTA Blue Line and a short walk from Haymarket on the Orange Line).
Please join Veterans For Peace, Smedley Butler Brigade, Chapter 9 and There will be no parade, no marching band, no military equipment, no guns and drums, no Air Force fly-overs.
There will be veterans and supporters who have lost friends and loved ones. Veterans who know the horrors of war and the pain and anguish of loss. There will be friends and families of soldiers, remembering their loved ones. There will be Iraqi Refugees who have suffered terrible losses and will join with us as we remember and show respect for their loss.
There will be flowers dropped into the harbor for each fallen U.S. soldier from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Flowers will also be also be dropped into the harbor remembering the loss of Iraqi family and friends.
PROGRAM
Memorial Day for Peace
May 28, 2012 1:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
Christopher Columbus Park, 105 Atlantic Ave., Boston, Massachusetts
Program
Brian Quirk, Scottish Bag Pipes
Merrimack Valley People for Peace
Rev. Lara Hoke, Opening
Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Andover
Secretary VFP, Smedley D. Butler Brigade
Pat Scanlon, Welcome
Coordinator, VFP, Smedley D. Butler Brigade
Lee VanderLann, In memory of our friend Capt. Paul Brailsford
Executive Committee VFP, Smedley D. Butler Brigade
VFP Samantha Smith Chapter
Bradford Adams, A short rememberance of my friend Zalmai
VFP, Smedley D. Butler Brigade
Afghanistan Veteran (2002-2003)
Kevin Lucey, Return to Hell
Parent of Cpl. Jeffrey Lucey USMC
Si Kahn, Song – Hunter –(Music from CD)
Bob Funke, What Memorial Day Means to Me
Smedley D. Butler Brigade
Bonnie Gorman, Suicide: The hidden wounds of war
Military Families Speak Out,
Gold Star Families Vietnam
VFP Smedley D. Butler Brigade
Nancy Wrenn, Are we finished with war yet?
Mass Peace Action
Webb Nichols, Poet
Smedley D. Butler Brigade
Ahmad & Leyla AlZubaydi
Babylon Restaurant, Lowell
Iraqi Refugees
Farouq Ali
Arab Spring and Hypocrisy of the West
Iraqi Refugee
Brian Quirk, Scottish Bag Pipes
Flower Ceremony
Rev. Ralph Galen, Closing
Community Church of Lawrence
Jesse Perrier, Taps
Executive Committee Smedley D. Butler Brigade
Sunday, May 27, 2012
Trotskyism and Anarchism in the Spanish Civil War -In Honor Of The Spanish-Bolshevik-Leninist
Trotskyism and Anarchism in the Spanish Civil War
Reprinted from Workers Vanguard No. 828, 11 June 2004 and 829, 9 July 2004
The following is a slightly edited presentation by Spartacist speaker Adrian Ortega at a Spartacist League/ Spartacus Youth Club public educational in New York City on April 3.
Part One
Anarchism today has become fashionable among youth and left-liberal intellectual circles. Refracted in a myriad of ways, from "Green radicalism" to "Platformism," these youth seek to oppose a social reality dictated by an economic system based on the production of profits for the handful of capitalists. The emergence of anarchism as a prevalent ideology among radicalized youth today is a reflection of what we Marxists understand as a global retrogression in political consciousness following the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991-92 and the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet degenerated workers state and the deformed workers states of East Europe.
As the title of this forum indicates, this presentation will center on the counterposition between two political worldviews, Marxism and its contemporary continuation, Trotskyism, and anarchism, which played a decisive role in the events of the Spanish Civil War.
The Civil War (which lasted from approximately 1936 to 1939) represented the last opportunity for the proletariat to overthrow capitalism and open the road to socialism in Spain before the rise of the Francoist military dictatorship that would last more than 30 years and kill hundreds of thousands. In the key industrial center of Spain, Catalonia, armed workers organized militias and factory committees that shook the foundations of the capitalist order, private property and the state. But the most radical mass leaders of this movement (the anarchist FAI and the National Confederation of Labor [CNT] it controlled, and the centrist Workers Party of Marxist Unification [POUM]) along with the rest of the left (the Socialist Workers Party [PSOE] and the Stalinist Communist Party [PCE]) showed their political incapacity to lead the working class toward emancipation. It was only small groups (like the Friends of Durruti anarchists and the Trotskyist Bolshevik-Leninists) who sought during the barricades fighting in May 1937 to bring revolutionary leadership to the proletariat. But these groups were not able to overcome their own limitations—centrally the Trotskyists' lack of authority among the proletariat and the Friends of Durruti's incapacity to break with an anarchist worldview—and lead the workers to power. Had there been a successful revolution in Spain, this would have drastically changed the shape of the world in which we live now.
This talk aims to explain why the strategic "mistakes" made by the anarchist leadership in the Spanish Civil War were not only "mistakes" but the logical conclusion of a program that inherently rests on class collaboration—i.e., a political alliance between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, which constrains and subordinates the workers and their struggles to the framework of capitalism. I would like to give a few initial considerations regarding the political foundations of both currents.
Anarchists claim to fight for a classless society, and some of them understand the centrality of the proletariat in such a task, just as we Marxists do. However, they reject any form of "authority" and consequently oppose the existence of any state (meaning the use of organized violence to protect the interests of the class in power). They also renounce concepts like leadership and centralization and counterpose to them "autonomy" or "spontaneity." On the contrary, Marxists explain that "Authority and autonomy are relative things whose spheres vary with the various phases of the development of society" (Friedrich Engels, "On Authority" [1872]). In other words, we don't blindly condemn authority as an abstract concept divorced from a certain social and economic reality. Most of the world today is based on the authority of a property-owning class, the bourgeoisie, exercised over the working masses through the instrumentality of a state, the capitalist state. We oppose and work to destroy that authority and the state that helps preserve it. But we welcome the authority of mass organizations of workers and other oppressed sectors in society, like workers councils (soviets), which would coordinate and centralize the proletariat's efforts to create a society based on workers democracy and prevent the destruction of the gains resulting from a social revolution—a workers state. Through eliminating the irrationality of capitalist production, economic planning under a workers state would allow the free development of productive forces and eliminate the material basis for social inequality. This would have to be a joint enterprise of the world proletariat and is the only way to eliminate the state and create a society based on "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs."
The anarchist abstract condemnation of "authority" has concrete ramifications on the organizational level. Anarchist organizations are decentralized entities that claim to exercise no authority over their members. This in itself is a complete fallacy, which the events in the Civil War completely prove. Marxists, on the contrary, explain the necessity of a centralized, democratic organization of the working class that groups together the proletariat's most conscious elements, works to raise the consciousness of the working class as a whole and exercises leadership, including leading the decisive struggles for workers power; a vanguard party that embraces the highest levels of democracy in its internal life and intervenes in struggle as a unified, conscious political force.
The Spanish Revolution
On 17 July 1936, General Francisco Franco assumed command of the Moors and Legionnaires of Morocco under the banner of the Spanish monarchy and the Catholic church. With the support of the most reactionary forces in Spain, Franco launched a military coup to overthrow the Republican government of president Manuel Azaña, which was a liberal bourgeois government, to replace it with a military dictatorship. This was to enforce through blood the interests of the propertied classes over the workers and peasants, and to put an end to decades of highly militant labor struggles in Spain. Azaña hid the advancement of Franco's army from the working class and made frantic and unsuccessful attempts to contact the military leaders and to come to an agreement with them. The Spanish proletariat, which had just gone through two years of harsh state repression under a right-wing government, distrusted the Azaña government and took matters into their own hands. They independently mobilized to gather weapons and build barricades to fight the bourgeois pro-monarchist reaction.
Some of the most epic battles between the Francoist forces and the armed proletariat started almost concurrently in major cities like Madrid, Valencia and Barcelona. I would like to read excerpts from Abel Paz's book, Durruti: The People Armed (1976), in his chapter "Barcelona in Flames":
"On July 19, 1936, at 5 A.M. a new page in the revolution was beginning to the sound of gunfire, the crackling of machine guns which were mixed with the deafening sound of factory sirens, informing the people that the decisive hour had arrived. The seventh artillery regiment had left San Andres Park, divided, and was trying to reach the center of the capital by two different routes. But at the crossing of the ‘Diagonal' the first detachment ran into a group of workers armed with grenades and pistols, which blocked its advance....
"One part of the Montesa regiment followed by important military units of engineers, managed to slip into Marques del Duero Avenue (Paralelo) but was checked by a strong barricade put up by the workers of the Woodworkers' Union....
"At the same time, near the Plaza de Palacio, the dockworkers of the Barceloneta district had routed the Montana artillery regiment....
"Towards noon after four hours of fighting the uprising appeared to be defeated. One by one, all the areas of resistance fell into the hands of the people....
"From then on the morale of the workers who were fighting, increased. In addition an important collection of weapons (guns and machine guns) fell into their hands. Barcelona began to have a new look."
This period is known as the "July events" in the Spanish Civil War. Heroic actions sprang from the workers' barricades to become class-struggle history. Within a few days, all Catalonia was in the hands of the proletariat. Madrid had seen the Francoist forces defeated by workers armed with scant stores of arms—with cobblestones and kitchen knives in Valencia—in the face of the embargo on arms by the government. Most of these workers were members of the CNT or the POUM.
Asturian miners outfitted a column of 5,000 dynamiters for a march on Madrid, which arrived one day later to guard the streets. Armed workers committees displaced the customs officers at the borders, and a joint committee of the General Workers Union (UGT—affiliated to the PSOE) and the CNT took charge of all transportation in Spain. A union book or membership card from a leftist party was the only requirement to enter the country. The police, the Civil and Assault Guards, which had sided against the workers in the battles, had been replaced by workers militias that patrolled the cities. But how did workers get to this point? Let me back up a few years and make some clarifications.
Anarchism was the predominant ideology among the Spanish proletariat in the 20th century, in great part thanks to the country's slow economic development during the previous three centuries. In the northern and eastern regions of Spain, like Catalonia and Aragon, the principal anarchist trade-union federation, the CNT, organized the most politically advanced workers in those provinces. The leaders of the CNT represented a trend inside anarchism called syndicalism. The syndicalists correctly recognized the industrial proletariat as the central agency for overthrowing capitalism. They believed, though, that trade unions would be the only instrument necessary to bring about a socialist revolution, and opposed, as all anarchists do, the idea of a vanguard party of the working class.
Given their relationship with the working class, anarcho-syndicalists sometimes had very good political impulses. During the First World War, when Spain's neutrality meant that its production increased, a staunch opposition to the war within the Spanish left was found among the anarcho-syndicalists of the CNT, who, in some cases, according to Gerald H. Meaker in his book The Revolutionary Left in Spain, 1914-1923, "went beyond mere pacifism and instinctively favored ending the war by a popular revolution." The revolutionary Marxist V.I. Lenin and the Bolshevik Party in Russia had forthrightly opposed the war from the first day and fought for the defeat of their own bourgeoisie through the seizure of power by the working class.
With the support of important sectors of the Russian proletariat and the oppressed, Lenin had called for a workers revolution in Russia to end the war, collectivize industry, nationalize the land and expropriate the bourgeoisie and the banks. In October 1917 (under the old Russian calendar), the Bolsheviks leading the soviets, organs of proletarian power, led a proletarian insurrection that established the first workers state in history. Workers democracy found its concrete expression in congresses of soviets and councils of workers, peasants and soldiers, which had begun to run the economy of the biggest country in the world.
I.P. Goldenberg, a member of the Mensheviks (a reformist party in Russia) had denounced Lenin as "a candidate for one European throne that has been vacant for thirty years—the throne of Bakunin!" for fighting for workers revolution. However, the truth is that anarcho-syndicalists in Russia and elsewhere, including Spain, like Joaquin MaurÃn and Andrés Nin (future leaders of the POUM), realized from the experience of the Russian workers the need for the dictatorship of the proletariat. Gerald Meaker speaks of one anarchist militant who wrote in the anarchist paper Tierra y Libertad (Land and Freedom):
"The Russian revolution, according to this militant, was not yet an Anarchist society, but it offered the ‘direct means' by which to achieve one. All the Anarchists of the world would have to do as the Russian ‘maximalists' had done: they would have to ‘destroy authoritatively...the present edifice based upon privilege and injustice in order to begin constructing the great city of happiness, Anarchy'." [emphasis added]
The best of this generation of anarchists and syndicalists—like Victor Serge, the Marxist historian and Trotsky biographer; Alfred Rosmer, a leading anarcho-syndicalist in France who later became Trotsky's close collaborator; and James P. Cannon, an anarcho-syndicalist in the American Industrial Workers of the World who became the founder of Trotskyism in the U.S.—were won to revolutionary Marxism by the living example of Lenin and Trotsky's Bolshevik Revolution. Anarchism can't lead to a successful socialist revolution, as the events in Spain show.
The Betrayal of the Popular Front
The 1933 Nazi victory in Germany propelled mass unrest throughout Spain, including a general strike led by the CNT and UGT in October 1934. That same month, miners and other sectors of the proletariat in the northern region of Asturias rose up in arms against the recently formed government of Alejandro Lerroux. The anarchists abstained in the elections won by Lerroux; but not on the basis of any principles (as we will see later). Their main reason was their "apoliticism," an absurd rejection of participation in elections or parliament. But if you are serious about fighting for socialist revolution, would you waste any opportunity to let significant numbers of people know what you stand for? Imagine the effect that a speech in Congress by a Trotskyist denouncing the colonial occupation in Iraq would have on both the American working class and the soldiers in Iraq. To Marxists, the question of whether or not to participate in elections is a tactical question based on concrete circumstances. At the same time, Marxists renounce in principle the taking of any executive ministerial post in any capitalist government because it could not mean anything other than the direct administration of the capitalist state.
Lerroux governed in coalition with the CEDA (Spanish Confederation of Autonomous Rightists) of José Maria Gil Robles, and, given the victory of Hitlerite fascism in Germany, Lerroux's regime was feared as representing the rise of reactionary, right-wing forces in Spain. The bloody defeat of the Asturian uprising at the hands of Franco-led forces (5,000 people killed and 30,000 arrested) paved the way for two years of increased repression against the labor movement.
In January 1936 (six months before Franco's attempted coup) the popular-front coalition led by the Republican Left, the party of the liberal bourgeoisie, had come up with a program for the February elections which basically allowed a nominal restoration of regional autonomy for the Catalan region and offered to free political prisoners imprisoned during the prior two years. The program called also to guarantee respect for private property rights in the countryside and the cities, rejected any nationalization of the land and called to maintain capitalist control over industry and the banks.
The Republicans led an electoral bloc with Manuel Azaña at its head. The coalition included the UGT, the PSOE, the PCE and the POUM. And it was supported by the anarchists. This was a popular-front coalition, where the interests of the proletariat were subordinated to those of the capitalist class.
What was the POUM? The POUM was what we call a centrist party, i.e., a party that is revolutionary in words but reformist in deeds. It had emerged from the fusion between the Trotskyist Spanish Communist Left of Andrés Nin, and the BOC (Workers and Peasants Bloc) of Joaquin MaurÃn, which was a more right-wing centrist party that adapted to Catalan nationalism. Trotsky strenuously denounced the signing of the electoral pact by the POUM as a "betrayal of the proletariat for the sake of an alliance with the bourgeoisie" and broke political relations with them.
Azaña took office as president in May 1936 in the midst of a great wave of strikes. From June 10 to the first days of July, the number of workers striking against the deepening economic crisis had grown from half a million to over a million. Bourgeois democracy was starting to crumble.
Around the same time as Franco's attempted coup and the workers uprising during the "July events" in 1936, big chunks of the bourgeoisie in Catalonia (the region that comprised 70 percent of the industry in Spain) had fled the country, leaving their factories, lands and properties behind. Once the reaction had been defeated, CNT workers began to seize the abandoned factories and create workers committees that organized production on a local level. A similar phenomenon occurred in the countryside. These workers committees, and the workers militias formed to fight against Franco's army, became the basis for what we call a dual power situation, i.e., a temporary state of affairs in which both the proletariat and the bourgeoisie directly contest for power. It is necessary to study these workers cooperatives and militias, since they represent the embodiment of the anarchist economic and military program.
On July 20, with workers celebrating the defeat of Franco, Luis Companys, who was the president of the bourgeois Generalitat government in Catalonia, met with the leadership of the CNT-FAI—with GarcÃa Oliver as the main anarchist spokesman. Companys was an astute bourgeois politician who had been at some point a lawyer for the CNT. Here is what he proposed to GarcÃa Oliver and the rest of those in attendance:
"You have won and the power is in your hands. If you don't need me and if you don't want me as President of Catalonia, tell me now and I will be only one more soldier in the struggle against fascism. But if on the contrary you believe that in this job, where I would have been killed if there had been a fascist victory, I and my men, my name and my prestige can be useful in the struggle which has ended in Barcelona today, but whose outcome is still unknown in the rest of Spain, you can count on me. You can count on my loyalty as a man and a party leader who believes that a shameful past came to an end today, and I sincerely hope that Catalonia will be in the vanguard of the countries who are the most progressive in social matters."
—quoted in Abel Paz, Durruti: The People Armed
And the anarchists went for it. GarcÃa Oliver reports the results of the discussions in the CNT and the FAI as follows: "On July 21, 1936, a Regional Plenum of the Local Federations...took place in Barcelona. The situation was analyzed and it was decided not to speak about Libertarian Communism as long as part of Spain was in the hands of the fascists. The Plenum decided for collaboration opposed by only one delegation from ‘Bajo Llobregat'.... Any extreme position inspired by adventurism or inflexibility could have been a disaster because the revolution would have been exhausted..." [emphasis added]. With this, the anarchist workers were subordinated through their leadership to the will of the Generalitat government. Nine months later, Companys was on the phone calling for an air strike against the CNT-FAI headquarters.
The essence of this pathetic episode and the anarchist betrayal is perfectly described by Felix Morrow in the following quotation from his book, Revolution and Counterrevolution in Spain (1938):
"Class collaboration, indeed, lies concealed in the heart of anarchist philosophy. It is hidden, during periods of reaction, by anarchist hatred of capitalist oppression. But, in a revolutionary period of dual power, it must come to the surface. For then the capitalist smilingly offers to share in building the new world. And the anarchist, being opposed to ‘all dictatorships,' including dictatorship of the proletariat, will require of the capitalist merely that he throw off the capitalist outlook, to which he agrees, naturally, the better to prepare the crushing of the workers."
Even one of the most radical anarchists, Buenaventura Durruti, a prominent military leader, expressed his desire "to accept the agreements only provisionally, that is to say until the freeing of Saragossa." When the plenum ended, the anarchists proposed that Companys create a Central Committee of Militias, which included representatives from the CNT and UGT trade-union federations, the PSOE and the POUM. However, it also included representatives from bourgeois parties like the Catalan Esquerra (Companys' party) and the Republican Union.
The Committee became, then, a tool for class collaboration and ultimate control by the Catalan government over the militias. A Marxist revolutionary party would have fought to expel the bourgeois representatives from the Central Committee of Anti-Fascist Militias and for the centralization of the militias under the command of workers and soldiers committees. Durruti and his anarchist collective "Nosotros," inside the CNT-FAI, were aware of the dangers of class collaboration inside the Anti-Fascist Committee. However, they decided to follow its orders and, as promptly as July 24, a militia column, with Durruti at the head of it, was dispatched to the city of Saragossa to fight against the right-wing forces headed by Franco. In that way, Companys and the CNT bureaucracy got rid of the anarchist elements that could have caused problems for their alliance in Catalonia.
But what about the workers collectives? In Barcelona, workers collectives were created in thousands of enterprises, from key industries like shipping, mines, electric power, transportation, gas and water to others like perfumeries, breweries and small workshops. These workers collectives achieved outstanding economic goals, particularly in the industries that supplied munitions for the militias. But how did these cooperatives work? Gaston Leval, a prominent CNT militant and French anarchist, notes in Collectives in the Spanish Revolution (1975):
"Too often in Barcelona and Valencia workers in each undertaking took over the factory, the works, or the workshop, the machines, raw materials, and taking advantage of the continuation of the money system and normal capitalist commercial relations, organized production on their own account, selling for their own benefit the produce of their labour....
"There was not, therefore, true socialisation, but a workers' neo-capitalism, a self-managment straddling capitalism and socialism, which we maintain would not have occurred had the Revolution been able to extend itself fully under the direction of our Syndicates."
—quoted in "Leninism and Workers Control," WV No. 162, 17 June 1977
In other words, these autonomous committees functioned under the premise of competition for markets and suppliers. Those factories that had inherited advanced technology and abundant raw materials had better opportunities to compete in the market than did others which didn't have those conveniences. Such economic relations ultimately tended to recreate the conditions of a primitive form of market capitalism.
These collectives were also centralized organs on a local level. In each workplace, an assembly of workers elected a committee, which would elect a manager to oversee the day-to-day running of the workplace. Within each industry there was an Industrial Council which had representatives of the two main unions (CNT and UGT) and representatives from the local committees, where the CNT and UGT were also prominent. However, bourgeois representatives from parties like the Esquerra and the Republican Left were part of these councils also. It is important to understand that in the absence of a planned, socialized economy, run by mass workers organizations (i.e., soviets), where left political parties could have full representation, what the CNT and UGT were doing was at best administering the workers collectives on behalf of the bourgeois popular front. Meanwhile, the government got ready to take the factories away from the anarchists and social democrats at the next opportunity.
Moreover, some of these committees depended heavily upon credits from banks and government subsidies. Nonetheless, the anarchists didn't have any plan to take control of the banks and they didn't do it, which meant condemning those collectives dependent on bank credits to their ultimate disappearance. At the beginning of 1937, the government and the banks practically strangled these collectives, resorting to economic sabotage. The supply of raw materials was denied which ultimately stopped production in these factories.
As I said before, the CNT and FAI didn't see the phenomenon of workers management in the factories as a temporary condition, but as the realization of the anarchist economic ideal, autonomous productive units. In contrast, true revolutionaries would have resolutely defended workers management as a kernel of dual power. But they would have also called to oust the bourgeois representatives from the management of the collectives, while explaining that true socialization was only possible through a centralized, planned economy. A small group of Trotskyists called the Bolshevik-Leninist Section of Spain, affiliated to Trotsky's Movement for the Fourth International, issued a leaflet in January 1937 titled "Hail the Workers, Peasants and Combatants' Committees!" in the midst of the economic boycott against the committees. The leaflet read:
"The bourgeois offensive against the committees must be responded to by strengthening them, forming them where they don't exist, extending their influence and coordinating between them in assemblies or congresses that study and resolve, independent of the bourgeois political power, those problems...posed by the necessities of the war and revolution.
"It is fundamentally necessary that the committees resolve the problems of nationalization and centralization of the private banks, unified command and military discipline....
"The committees…will take over leadership of the country, annulling the organs of the capitalist state...and establishing in their place the proletarian state based on the committees and on socialized property; establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie."
—AgustÃn Guillamón, Documentación histórica del trosquismo español (1936-1948) (Ediciones de La Torre, 1996)
The Bolshevik-Leninists propagandized for a perspective to transform the workers committees into mass organs of workers power at a national level, as incipient organs of workers rule—i.e., soviets—where political debate would be open to all left tendencies. The situation of dual power couldn't last indefinitely; it had to be solved on the side of the workers or against them. The Bolshevik-Leninists had the program to solve it on the side of the proletariat. However, in January 1937 they were brand new and by May had only 30 people, without enough authority among the working class as a political tendency, although most of their leaders had fought in the POUM militias.
Part Two
With the armed proletariat in the militias and the workers committees growing at a great rate, the capitalists were afraid of a new workers radicalization like that of July. In September 1936, in order to appease the workers, Azaña appointed a new cabinet in his government with the PSOE [Socialist Workers Party] and UGT [General Workers Union—affiliated to the Socialists], the PCE [the Stalinist Communist Party] and the bourgeoisie. In Catalonia, the anarchists for the first time joined the government; and two months later, they entered the national government. In Catalonia, the popular-front government also included the POUM [the centrist Workers Party of Marxist Reunification] for four months. That is, the Spanish left groups with significant influence in the working class sealed their alliance with the bourgeoisie.
What was the internal functioning of the CNT [the anarchist National Confederation of Labor] and the FAI [the political arm of the CNT] at the time? Miguel Amorós explains in his book La revolución traicionada: La verdadera historia de Balius y Los Amigos de Durruti:
"The plenums didn't take into account the assemblies of the unions and ignored the opinion of the militias. Against every norm of the confederation, it was the committees who called on them and elaborated the agenda, which was not always communicated to the delegates. The delegates attended without a mandate and without knowing what they were going to discuss or the relevance of decisions to be adopted."
The CNT and FAI bureaucracies, sharing power with the bourgeoisie, started going after those anarchists who criticized the corrupt methods of the leadership. Such anarchists included the writer Jaime Balius, a future leader of the Friends of Durruti group who was ousted from Solidaridad Obrera (Workers Solidarity—the CNT's main paper) in December of 1936 along with other members of the editorial staff. How about that for "anti-authoritarian organizations"?
Now I'll read another quote:
"As soon as they were faced with a serious revolutionary situation, the Bakuninists had to throw the whole of their old programme overboard. First they sacrificed their doctrine of absolute abstention from political, and especially electoral, activities. Then anarchy, the abolition of the State, shared the same fate.... They then dropped the principle that the workers must not take part in any revolution that did not have as its aim the immediate and complete emancipation of the proletariat, and they themselves took part in a movement that was notoriously bourgeois. Finally they...sat quite comfortably in the juntas of the various towns, and moreover almost everywhere as an impotent minority outvoted and politically exploited by the bourgeoisie."
Is this Leon Trotsky on 1936? No, it is Friedrich Engels polemicizing against the Spanish anarchists in 1873! Anarchism was, is and will always be class collaborationist at its core.
But not all the anarchists in Spain in 1936-37 shared the class collaborationism of the CNT-FAI bureaucracy. The Friends of Durruti group organized in opposition to that treachery. The CNT-FAI, in an attempt to better consolidate the forces against Franco's right-wing reactionaries, began to acquiesce to, and carry out, the "militarization" of the proletarian militias in September of 1937. This meant putting the militias under the orders of a centralized bourgeois army. The Republicans ordered the militarization of the militias, and the Socialist and anarchist ministers in the popular front voted for it. The majority of the members of the Friends of Durruti came from the thousands of anarchist militants who refused to submit to the militarization. Pablo Ruiz, who had fought with Buenaventura Durruti himself on the front, represented one wing of the group, and the prominent writer Jaime Balius represented another.
The four thousand members of the Friends of Durruti stood against the class collaborationism of the CNT-FAI and counterposed to it the call for revolution. They defended this by pointing out that "all revolutions are totalitarian." They raised the call for a "Revolutionary Junta!" According to Amorós, this was a variant of the concept advocated by the CNT of a "National Committee of Defense" in the face of the failure exhibited by the decentralization of the militias against Franco. The Friends of Durruti were CNT workers and militiamen who faced the prospect of being disarmed under the orders of their anarchist leadership. Their opposition to class collaboration was the empirical conclusion of their direct experience with the forceful "militarization" of the militias. However, this didn't contradict their affiliation to the CNT since the anarchist ideal of libertarian communism, a stateless society based on a decentralized economy run by local workers committees, was something that still looked feasible to them. However, the Friends of Durruti's political positions were in motion, like those of the Spanish anarcho-syndicalists who witnessed and embraced the 1917 Russian Revolution. The Friends of Durruti learned from the negative example of the CNT; but they first had to break with their anarchist prejudices against the Leninist vanguard party and the dictatorship of the proletariat in order to fully embrace a revolutionary program. That opportunity presented itself in May 1937.
The Barcelona May Days
Almost a year had passed after the "July events" in Barcelona when on 3 May 1937 the government decided to take the Telefónica building out of the hands of the CNT workers who ran it. Assault Guards commanded by the Stalinist Rodriguez Salas arrived at the building and, on behalf of the popular front, ordered the workers to abandon it. Workers put up resistance and the exchange of fire began. The word of an attack on the Telefónica spread like wildfire. In four hours a general strike was declared and the city was engulfed in street fighting with barricades being formed, as during the "July events," by workers of the CNT-FAI, the left-POUM and, this time, the Friends of Durruti and the Trotskyist Bolshevik-Leninists.
The CNT-FAI tops and the popular-front government sent GarcÃa Oliver and other CNT bureaucrats from Valencia to order the workers back to their homes. He urged the workers: "Hold your fire; embrace the Assault Guards!" The POUM defended their headquarters at the Hotel Falcon from the Assault Guards but refused to take any step forward. The local leaderships of the CNT and POUM met that night, but the anarchist bureaucracy insisted on no more than the dismissal of Salas and the formation of a new government in order to stop the confrontation. The workers had a different agenda though, pushed by their instinct of class self-defense.
On May 4, Barcelona was under the control of the workers, except for the center of the city, where the battles continued until dusk. One of the first workers detachments in the early hours of that night was 400 Friends of Durruti fighters who occupied the whole of Las Ramblas Avenue and patrolled the surrounding area. The same day, the Bolshevik-Leninists handed leaflets to the workers on the barricades that called for a "General strike in all the industries that don't work for the war" and for the "arming of the working class." Workers desperately needed a leadership!
The Friends of Durruti met with the Executive Committee of the POUM and apparently acquiesced to the POUM's position that the movement was lost given the CNT's capitulatory actions. Both agreed on seeking guarantees against retaliations before the workers began to abandon the barricades. However, the next day the Friends of Durruti issued a leaflet which caused a hue and cry among the CNT-FAI bureaucracy, calling for a revolutionary junta, the disarming of the armed bodies (meaning the Assault and Civil Guards) and the socialization of the economy. The leaflet was received with great enthusiasm on the barricades. Needless to say, the Friends of Durruti had used extremely "authoritarian" measures to get their leaflet printed in the middle of a general strike! Balius describes the scene as follows:
"We banged on the door until the owner [of the print shop] came out, who didn't want to know anything and refused categorically to open the print shop. He promptly backed up in the face of ‘armed violence'.... Just before midnight...we were able to take with us four to five thousand leaflets still wet."
Still on May 5, the local bureaucracy of the FAI in Barcelona, in another despicable act of betrayal of the working class, refused reinforcement by militias ready to leave the front. But even worse than that, the CNT workers committees started to abandon the barricades, obeying the call of the top bureaucracy.
On May 6, various anarchist groups, including the Friends of Durruti, met with the POUM. The POUM held a minority position, which was for the creation of a "revolutionary central committee." This was against the local representatives of the anarchist committees, who, following orders from their national leadership, advocated withdrawal from the barricades.
What was the response of the POUM? Let's have their leader Gorkin tell the story:
"But we couldn't impose our views. It was the representative of the Regional Committee [Nacional] who they [the workers] were listening to.... The Friends of Durruti advocated a CNT-FAI-POUM government. Due to tactical reasons we didn't attack the leadership of the CNT."
—Quoted in Amorós, La revolución traicionada
I want to emphasize some points here. During the May Days, the CNT carried out a contemptible and clear betrayal against the working class in Barcelona, as they had already chosen to collaborate with the bourgeoisie. The centrist POUM knew this, and instead of fighting against it, they buried their heads in the sand like ostriches and waited for the CNT to give the order to disband. The Friends of Durruti, in contrast, called for a local junta centered on the CNT and the POUM. Had there been an authoritative revolutionary leadership then, it would have taken up the Friends of Durruti's call for a junta and transformed it first into a military united front against the bourgeois forces and the Stalinists and then into the core of a workers government to fight the counterrevolution with an internationalist program. It would have called for independence for Morocco in order to undermine Franco's army and appealed to the workers on the other side of the Pyrenees to follow their example.
After the May 6 meeting, Balius proposed that CNT workers advance a column to the town of Tarragona and bring reinforcements to Barcelona. Predictably, the CNT bureaucracy boycotted this proposal. Amorós explains: "The Friends of Durruti couldn't understand why the CNT committees had stopped the fight, when victory was so close." The Friends of Durruti didn't have the understanding that flows from a revolutionary program—the understanding to realize the dead end of anarchism and to politically break with the CNT. That had to be the role of a Marxist vanguard party.
Unfortunately, the Bolshevik-Leninists didn't have the time to generate roots in the proletariat during the few months of their existence and they lacked authority among the working class. However, the power of their Trotskyist program is shown by the fact that despite their small numbers they were one of the first to be targeted by the Stalinists and the bourgeois reactionaries once the proletariat was defeated and the barricades were brought down. Before the May Days, the Friends of Durruti helped to distribute the Trotskyists' press on the streets and made their offices available to the Bolshevik-Leninists to organize their meetings. However, the Bolshevik-Leninists didn't achieve much in a meeting with the Friends of Durruti's leadership on May 5:
"Every time the word Authority was pronounced...Balius got mad. The interview or meeting ended without discussing the real problems at bottom.... As for Balius, Carlini and others—not everybody—to continue the fight only on the barricades was the just position, and that is how we split."
Under the orders of the CNT-FAI, and in the face of the POUM's prostration, the workers were ultimately demobilized and defeated. Five hundred died and over a thousand were wounded during the May events. Following the defeat, the state, with the aid of the Stalinists, launched its persecution, imprisonment and murder of the Trotskyists and POUMists (the latter on charges of "Trotskyism"). The anarchist bureaucracy proceeded to attempt the expulsion of the Friends of Durruti from the CNT ranks; meanwhile, the government censored the CNT's paper Solidaridad Obrera. The POUM's paper, La Batalla, was banned and its main leader, Andrés Nin, as well as anarchist leader Camilo Berneri, died at the hands of the Stalinists.
During the Franco dictatorship, 300,000 workers and peasants were assassinated and many others were locked up in concentration camps. All working-class leaders were exterminated or expelled, political and trade-union groups and associations were dissolved. The popular-front government paved the way for Franco's triumph in 1939. One of the greatest revolutionary opportunities for the international proletariat had been drowned in blood.
Anarchists proclaim that the Friends of Durruti never broke with the principles of anarchism. Unfortunately, they are right. They continued to believe, as their leaders in the CNT did, that a classless society could be created simply through force of will; that such a society could be created without first establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat, a centralized democratic workers state to suppress the forces of counterrevolution. Anarchist historian Vernon Richards, in his book, Lessons of the Spanish Revolution (1936-1939) [second enlarged edition, 1972], expresses the ultimate consequences of such an idealist perspective:
"We believe there is something more real, more positive and more revolutionary in resisting war than in participating in it; that it is more civilised and more revolutionary to defend the right of a fascist to live than to support the Tribunals which have the legal powers to shoot him; that it is more realistic to talk to the people from the gutter than from government benches; that in the long run it is more rewarding to influence minds by discussion than to mould them by coercion."
Marxists, on the other hand, reject the false arguments of anarchists that classless communism is simply the product of a psychological regeneration. We fight to overthrow the capitalist system in order to organize production so as to raise it to such a high level that scarcity will no longer exist. Only then can we lay the material basis for the emancipation of humanity from exploitation, war and poverty. We tell anarchist youth today, as Trotsky said to the international proletariat in Lessons of October (1924): "Without a party, apart from a party, over the head of a party, or with a substitute for a party, the proletarian revolution cannot conquer." This is the main lesson of the Spanish Civil War.
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Reprinted from Workers Vanguard No. 828, 11 June 2004 and 829, 9 July 2004
The following is a slightly edited presentation by Spartacist speaker Adrian Ortega at a Spartacist League/ Spartacus Youth Club public educational in New York City on April 3.
Part One
Anarchism today has become fashionable among youth and left-liberal intellectual circles. Refracted in a myriad of ways, from "Green radicalism" to "Platformism," these youth seek to oppose a social reality dictated by an economic system based on the production of profits for the handful of capitalists. The emergence of anarchism as a prevalent ideology among radicalized youth today is a reflection of what we Marxists understand as a global retrogression in political consciousness following the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991-92 and the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet degenerated workers state and the deformed workers states of East Europe.
As the title of this forum indicates, this presentation will center on the counterposition between two political worldviews, Marxism and its contemporary continuation, Trotskyism, and anarchism, which played a decisive role in the events of the Spanish Civil War.
The Civil War (which lasted from approximately 1936 to 1939) represented the last opportunity for the proletariat to overthrow capitalism and open the road to socialism in Spain before the rise of the Francoist military dictatorship that would last more than 30 years and kill hundreds of thousands. In the key industrial center of Spain, Catalonia, armed workers organized militias and factory committees that shook the foundations of the capitalist order, private property and the state. But the most radical mass leaders of this movement (the anarchist FAI and the National Confederation of Labor [CNT] it controlled, and the centrist Workers Party of Marxist Unification [POUM]) along with the rest of the left (the Socialist Workers Party [PSOE] and the Stalinist Communist Party [PCE]) showed their political incapacity to lead the working class toward emancipation. It was only small groups (like the Friends of Durruti anarchists and the Trotskyist Bolshevik-Leninists) who sought during the barricades fighting in May 1937 to bring revolutionary leadership to the proletariat. But these groups were not able to overcome their own limitations—centrally the Trotskyists' lack of authority among the proletariat and the Friends of Durruti's incapacity to break with an anarchist worldview—and lead the workers to power. Had there been a successful revolution in Spain, this would have drastically changed the shape of the world in which we live now.
This talk aims to explain why the strategic "mistakes" made by the anarchist leadership in the Spanish Civil War were not only "mistakes" but the logical conclusion of a program that inherently rests on class collaboration—i.e., a political alliance between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, which constrains and subordinates the workers and their struggles to the framework of capitalism. I would like to give a few initial considerations regarding the political foundations of both currents.
Anarchists claim to fight for a classless society, and some of them understand the centrality of the proletariat in such a task, just as we Marxists do. However, they reject any form of "authority" and consequently oppose the existence of any state (meaning the use of organized violence to protect the interests of the class in power). They also renounce concepts like leadership and centralization and counterpose to them "autonomy" or "spontaneity." On the contrary, Marxists explain that "Authority and autonomy are relative things whose spheres vary with the various phases of the development of society" (Friedrich Engels, "On Authority" [1872]). In other words, we don't blindly condemn authority as an abstract concept divorced from a certain social and economic reality. Most of the world today is based on the authority of a property-owning class, the bourgeoisie, exercised over the working masses through the instrumentality of a state, the capitalist state. We oppose and work to destroy that authority and the state that helps preserve it. But we welcome the authority of mass organizations of workers and other oppressed sectors in society, like workers councils (soviets), which would coordinate and centralize the proletariat's efforts to create a society based on workers democracy and prevent the destruction of the gains resulting from a social revolution—a workers state. Through eliminating the irrationality of capitalist production, economic planning under a workers state would allow the free development of productive forces and eliminate the material basis for social inequality. This would have to be a joint enterprise of the world proletariat and is the only way to eliminate the state and create a society based on "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs."
The anarchist abstract condemnation of "authority" has concrete ramifications on the organizational level. Anarchist organizations are decentralized entities that claim to exercise no authority over their members. This in itself is a complete fallacy, which the events in the Civil War completely prove. Marxists, on the contrary, explain the necessity of a centralized, democratic organization of the working class that groups together the proletariat's most conscious elements, works to raise the consciousness of the working class as a whole and exercises leadership, including leading the decisive struggles for workers power; a vanguard party that embraces the highest levels of democracy in its internal life and intervenes in struggle as a unified, conscious political force.
The Spanish Revolution
On 17 July 1936, General Francisco Franco assumed command of the Moors and Legionnaires of Morocco under the banner of the Spanish monarchy and the Catholic church. With the support of the most reactionary forces in Spain, Franco launched a military coup to overthrow the Republican government of president Manuel Azaña, which was a liberal bourgeois government, to replace it with a military dictatorship. This was to enforce through blood the interests of the propertied classes over the workers and peasants, and to put an end to decades of highly militant labor struggles in Spain. Azaña hid the advancement of Franco's army from the working class and made frantic and unsuccessful attempts to contact the military leaders and to come to an agreement with them. The Spanish proletariat, which had just gone through two years of harsh state repression under a right-wing government, distrusted the Azaña government and took matters into their own hands. They independently mobilized to gather weapons and build barricades to fight the bourgeois pro-monarchist reaction.
Some of the most epic battles between the Francoist forces and the armed proletariat started almost concurrently in major cities like Madrid, Valencia and Barcelona. I would like to read excerpts from Abel Paz's book, Durruti: The People Armed (1976), in his chapter "Barcelona in Flames":
"On July 19, 1936, at 5 A.M. a new page in the revolution was beginning to the sound of gunfire, the crackling of machine guns which were mixed with the deafening sound of factory sirens, informing the people that the decisive hour had arrived. The seventh artillery regiment had left San Andres Park, divided, and was trying to reach the center of the capital by two different routes. But at the crossing of the ‘Diagonal' the first detachment ran into a group of workers armed with grenades and pistols, which blocked its advance....
"One part of the Montesa regiment followed by important military units of engineers, managed to slip into Marques del Duero Avenue (Paralelo) but was checked by a strong barricade put up by the workers of the Woodworkers' Union....
"At the same time, near the Plaza de Palacio, the dockworkers of the Barceloneta district had routed the Montana artillery regiment....
"Towards noon after four hours of fighting the uprising appeared to be defeated. One by one, all the areas of resistance fell into the hands of the people....
"From then on the morale of the workers who were fighting, increased. In addition an important collection of weapons (guns and machine guns) fell into their hands. Barcelona began to have a new look."
This period is known as the "July events" in the Spanish Civil War. Heroic actions sprang from the workers' barricades to become class-struggle history. Within a few days, all Catalonia was in the hands of the proletariat. Madrid had seen the Francoist forces defeated by workers armed with scant stores of arms—with cobblestones and kitchen knives in Valencia—in the face of the embargo on arms by the government. Most of these workers were members of the CNT or the POUM.
Asturian miners outfitted a column of 5,000 dynamiters for a march on Madrid, which arrived one day later to guard the streets. Armed workers committees displaced the customs officers at the borders, and a joint committee of the General Workers Union (UGT—affiliated to the PSOE) and the CNT took charge of all transportation in Spain. A union book or membership card from a leftist party was the only requirement to enter the country. The police, the Civil and Assault Guards, which had sided against the workers in the battles, had been replaced by workers militias that patrolled the cities. But how did workers get to this point? Let me back up a few years and make some clarifications.
Anarchism was the predominant ideology among the Spanish proletariat in the 20th century, in great part thanks to the country's slow economic development during the previous three centuries. In the northern and eastern regions of Spain, like Catalonia and Aragon, the principal anarchist trade-union federation, the CNT, organized the most politically advanced workers in those provinces. The leaders of the CNT represented a trend inside anarchism called syndicalism. The syndicalists correctly recognized the industrial proletariat as the central agency for overthrowing capitalism. They believed, though, that trade unions would be the only instrument necessary to bring about a socialist revolution, and opposed, as all anarchists do, the idea of a vanguard party of the working class.
Given their relationship with the working class, anarcho-syndicalists sometimes had very good political impulses. During the First World War, when Spain's neutrality meant that its production increased, a staunch opposition to the war within the Spanish left was found among the anarcho-syndicalists of the CNT, who, in some cases, according to Gerald H. Meaker in his book The Revolutionary Left in Spain, 1914-1923, "went beyond mere pacifism and instinctively favored ending the war by a popular revolution." The revolutionary Marxist V.I. Lenin and the Bolshevik Party in Russia had forthrightly opposed the war from the first day and fought for the defeat of their own bourgeoisie through the seizure of power by the working class.
With the support of important sectors of the Russian proletariat and the oppressed, Lenin had called for a workers revolution in Russia to end the war, collectivize industry, nationalize the land and expropriate the bourgeoisie and the banks. In October 1917 (under the old Russian calendar), the Bolsheviks leading the soviets, organs of proletarian power, led a proletarian insurrection that established the first workers state in history. Workers democracy found its concrete expression in congresses of soviets and councils of workers, peasants and soldiers, which had begun to run the economy of the biggest country in the world.
I.P. Goldenberg, a member of the Mensheviks (a reformist party in Russia) had denounced Lenin as "a candidate for one European throne that has been vacant for thirty years—the throne of Bakunin!" for fighting for workers revolution. However, the truth is that anarcho-syndicalists in Russia and elsewhere, including Spain, like Joaquin MaurÃn and Andrés Nin (future leaders of the POUM), realized from the experience of the Russian workers the need for the dictatorship of the proletariat. Gerald Meaker speaks of one anarchist militant who wrote in the anarchist paper Tierra y Libertad (Land and Freedom):
"The Russian revolution, according to this militant, was not yet an Anarchist society, but it offered the ‘direct means' by which to achieve one. All the Anarchists of the world would have to do as the Russian ‘maximalists' had done: they would have to ‘destroy authoritatively...the present edifice based upon privilege and injustice in order to begin constructing the great city of happiness, Anarchy'." [emphasis added]
The best of this generation of anarchists and syndicalists—like Victor Serge, the Marxist historian and Trotsky biographer; Alfred Rosmer, a leading anarcho-syndicalist in France who later became Trotsky's close collaborator; and James P. Cannon, an anarcho-syndicalist in the American Industrial Workers of the World who became the founder of Trotskyism in the U.S.—were won to revolutionary Marxism by the living example of Lenin and Trotsky's Bolshevik Revolution. Anarchism can't lead to a successful socialist revolution, as the events in Spain show.
The Betrayal of the Popular Front
The 1933 Nazi victory in Germany propelled mass unrest throughout Spain, including a general strike led by the CNT and UGT in October 1934. That same month, miners and other sectors of the proletariat in the northern region of Asturias rose up in arms against the recently formed government of Alejandro Lerroux. The anarchists abstained in the elections won by Lerroux; but not on the basis of any principles (as we will see later). Their main reason was their "apoliticism," an absurd rejection of participation in elections or parliament. But if you are serious about fighting for socialist revolution, would you waste any opportunity to let significant numbers of people know what you stand for? Imagine the effect that a speech in Congress by a Trotskyist denouncing the colonial occupation in Iraq would have on both the American working class and the soldiers in Iraq. To Marxists, the question of whether or not to participate in elections is a tactical question based on concrete circumstances. At the same time, Marxists renounce in principle the taking of any executive ministerial post in any capitalist government because it could not mean anything other than the direct administration of the capitalist state.
Lerroux governed in coalition with the CEDA (Spanish Confederation of Autonomous Rightists) of José Maria Gil Robles, and, given the victory of Hitlerite fascism in Germany, Lerroux's regime was feared as representing the rise of reactionary, right-wing forces in Spain. The bloody defeat of the Asturian uprising at the hands of Franco-led forces (5,000 people killed and 30,000 arrested) paved the way for two years of increased repression against the labor movement.
In January 1936 (six months before Franco's attempted coup) the popular-front coalition led by the Republican Left, the party of the liberal bourgeoisie, had come up with a program for the February elections which basically allowed a nominal restoration of regional autonomy for the Catalan region and offered to free political prisoners imprisoned during the prior two years. The program called also to guarantee respect for private property rights in the countryside and the cities, rejected any nationalization of the land and called to maintain capitalist control over industry and the banks.
The Republicans led an electoral bloc with Manuel Azaña at its head. The coalition included the UGT, the PSOE, the PCE and the POUM. And it was supported by the anarchists. This was a popular-front coalition, where the interests of the proletariat were subordinated to those of the capitalist class.
What was the POUM? The POUM was what we call a centrist party, i.e., a party that is revolutionary in words but reformist in deeds. It had emerged from the fusion between the Trotskyist Spanish Communist Left of Andrés Nin, and the BOC (Workers and Peasants Bloc) of Joaquin MaurÃn, which was a more right-wing centrist party that adapted to Catalan nationalism. Trotsky strenuously denounced the signing of the electoral pact by the POUM as a "betrayal of the proletariat for the sake of an alliance with the bourgeoisie" and broke political relations with them.
Azaña took office as president in May 1936 in the midst of a great wave of strikes. From June 10 to the first days of July, the number of workers striking against the deepening economic crisis had grown from half a million to over a million. Bourgeois democracy was starting to crumble.
Around the same time as Franco's attempted coup and the workers uprising during the "July events" in 1936, big chunks of the bourgeoisie in Catalonia (the region that comprised 70 percent of the industry in Spain) had fled the country, leaving their factories, lands and properties behind. Once the reaction had been defeated, CNT workers began to seize the abandoned factories and create workers committees that organized production on a local level. A similar phenomenon occurred in the countryside. These workers committees, and the workers militias formed to fight against Franco's army, became the basis for what we call a dual power situation, i.e., a temporary state of affairs in which both the proletariat and the bourgeoisie directly contest for power. It is necessary to study these workers cooperatives and militias, since they represent the embodiment of the anarchist economic and military program.
On July 20, with workers celebrating the defeat of Franco, Luis Companys, who was the president of the bourgeois Generalitat government in Catalonia, met with the leadership of the CNT-FAI—with GarcÃa Oliver as the main anarchist spokesman. Companys was an astute bourgeois politician who had been at some point a lawyer for the CNT. Here is what he proposed to GarcÃa Oliver and the rest of those in attendance:
"You have won and the power is in your hands. If you don't need me and if you don't want me as President of Catalonia, tell me now and I will be only one more soldier in the struggle against fascism. But if on the contrary you believe that in this job, where I would have been killed if there had been a fascist victory, I and my men, my name and my prestige can be useful in the struggle which has ended in Barcelona today, but whose outcome is still unknown in the rest of Spain, you can count on me. You can count on my loyalty as a man and a party leader who believes that a shameful past came to an end today, and I sincerely hope that Catalonia will be in the vanguard of the countries who are the most progressive in social matters."
—quoted in Abel Paz, Durruti: The People Armed
And the anarchists went for it. GarcÃa Oliver reports the results of the discussions in the CNT and the FAI as follows: "On July 21, 1936, a Regional Plenum of the Local Federations...took place in Barcelona. The situation was analyzed and it was decided not to speak about Libertarian Communism as long as part of Spain was in the hands of the fascists. The Plenum decided for collaboration opposed by only one delegation from ‘Bajo Llobregat'.... Any extreme position inspired by adventurism or inflexibility could have been a disaster because the revolution would have been exhausted..." [emphasis added]. With this, the anarchist workers were subordinated through their leadership to the will of the Generalitat government. Nine months later, Companys was on the phone calling for an air strike against the CNT-FAI headquarters.
The essence of this pathetic episode and the anarchist betrayal is perfectly described by Felix Morrow in the following quotation from his book, Revolution and Counterrevolution in Spain (1938):
"Class collaboration, indeed, lies concealed in the heart of anarchist philosophy. It is hidden, during periods of reaction, by anarchist hatred of capitalist oppression. But, in a revolutionary period of dual power, it must come to the surface. For then the capitalist smilingly offers to share in building the new world. And the anarchist, being opposed to ‘all dictatorships,' including dictatorship of the proletariat, will require of the capitalist merely that he throw off the capitalist outlook, to which he agrees, naturally, the better to prepare the crushing of the workers."
Even one of the most radical anarchists, Buenaventura Durruti, a prominent military leader, expressed his desire "to accept the agreements only provisionally, that is to say until the freeing of Saragossa." When the plenum ended, the anarchists proposed that Companys create a Central Committee of Militias, which included representatives from the CNT and UGT trade-union federations, the PSOE and the POUM. However, it also included representatives from bourgeois parties like the Catalan Esquerra (Companys' party) and the Republican Union.
The Committee became, then, a tool for class collaboration and ultimate control by the Catalan government over the militias. A Marxist revolutionary party would have fought to expel the bourgeois representatives from the Central Committee of Anti-Fascist Militias and for the centralization of the militias under the command of workers and soldiers committees. Durruti and his anarchist collective "Nosotros," inside the CNT-FAI, were aware of the dangers of class collaboration inside the Anti-Fascist Committee. However, they decided to follow its orders and, as promptly as July 24, a militia column, with Durruti at the head of it, was dispatched to the city of Saragossa to fight against the right-wing forces headed by Franco. In that way, Companys and the CNT bureaucracy got rid of the anarchist elements that could have caused problems for their alliance in Catalonia.
But what about the workers collectives? In Barcelona, workers collectives were created in thousands of enterprises, from key industries like shipping, mines, electric power, transportation, gas and water to others like perfumeries, breweries and small workshops. These workers collectives achieved outstanding economic goals, particularly in the industries that supplied munitions for the militias. But how did these cooperatives work? Gaston Leval, a prominent CNT militant and French anarchist, notes in Collectives in the Spanish Revolution (1975):
"Too often in Barcelona and Valencia workers in each undertaking took over the factory, the works, or the workshop, the machines, raw materials, and taking advantage of the continuation of the money system and normal capitalist commercial relations, organized production on their own account, selling for their own benefit the produce of their labour....
"There was not, therefore, true socialisation, but a workers' neo-capitalism, a self-managment straddling capitalism and socialism, which we maintain would not have occurred had the Revolution been able to extend itself fully under the direction of our Syndicates."
—quoted in "Leninism and Workers Control," WV No. 162, 17 June 1977
In other words, these autonomous committees functioned under the premise of competition for markets and suppliers. Those factories that had inherited advanced technology and abundant raw materials had better opportunities to compete in the market than did others which didn't have those conveniences. Such economic relations ultimately tended to recreate the conditions of a primitive form of market capitalism.
These collectives were also centralized organs on a local level. In each workplace, an assembly of workers elected a committee, which would elect a manager to oversee the day-to-day running of the workplace. Within each industry there was an Industrial Council which had representatives of the two main unions (CNT and UGT) and representatives from the local committees, where the CNT and UGT were also prominent. However, bourgeois representatives from parties like the Esquerra and the Republican Left were part of these councils also. It is important to understand that in the absence of a planned, socialized economy, run by mass workers organizations (i.e., soviets), where left political parties could have full representation, what the CNT and UGT were doing was at best administering the workers collectives on behalf of the bourgeois popular front. Meanwhile, the government got ready to take the factories away from the anarchists and social democrats at the next opportunity.
Moreover, some of these committees depended heavily upon credits from banks and government subsidies. Nonetheless, the anarchists didn't have any plan to take control of the banks and they didn't do it, which meant condemning those collectives dependent on bank credits to their ultimate disappearance. At the beginning of 1937, the government and the banks practically strangled these collectives, resorting to economic sabotage. The supply of raw materials was denied which ultimately stopped production in these factories.
As I said before, the CNT and FAI didn't see the phenomenon of workers management in the factories as a temporary condition, but as the realization of the anarchist economic ideal, autonomous productive units. In contrast, true revolutionaries would have resolutely defended workers management as a kernel of dual power. But they would have also called to oust the bourgeois representatives from the management of the collectives, while explaining that true socialization was only possible through a centralized, planned economy. A small group of Trotskyists called the Bolshevik-Leninist Section of Spain, affiliated to Trotsky's Movement for the Fourth International, issued a leaflet in January 1937 titled "Hail the Workers, Peasants and Combatants' Committees!" in the midst of the economic boycott against the committees. The leaflet read:
"The bourgeois offensive against the committees must be responded to by strengthening them, forming them where they don't exist, extending their influence and coordinating between them in assemblies or congresses that study and resolve, independent of the bourgeois political power, those problems...posed by the necessities of the war and revolution.
"It is fundamentally necessary that the committees resolve the problems of nationalization and centralization of the private banks, unified command and military discipline....
"The committees…will take over leadership of the country, annulling the organs of the capitalist state...and establishing in their place the proletarian state based on the committees and on socialized property; establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie."
—AgustÃn Guillamón, Documentación histórica del trosquismo español (1936-1948) (Ediciones de La Torre, 1996)
The Bolshevik-Leninists propagandized for a perspective to transform the workers committees into mass organs of workers power at a national level, as incipient organs of workers rule—i.e., soviets—where political debate would be open to all left tendencies. The situation of dual power couldn't last indefinitely; it had to be solved on the side of the workers or against them. The Bolshevik-Leninists had the program to solve it on the side of the proletariat. However, in January 1937 they were brand new and by May had only 30 people, without enough authority among the working class as a political tendency, although most of their leaders had fought in the POUM militias.
Part Two
With the armed proletariat in the militias and the workers committees growing at a great rate, the capitalists were afraid of a new workers radicalization like that of July. In September 1936, in order to appease the workers, Azaña appointed a new cabinet in his government with the PSOE [Socialist Workers Party] and UGT [General Workers Union—affiliated to the Socialists], the PCE [the Stalinist Communist Party] and the bourgeoisie. In Catalonia, the anarchists for the first time joined the government; and two months later, they entered the national government. In Catalonia, the popular-front government also included the POUM [the centrist Workers Party of Marxist Reunification] for four months. That is, the Spanish left groups with significant influence in the working class sealed their alliance with the bourgeoisie.
What was the internal functioning of the CNT [the anarchist National Confederation of Labor] and the FAI [the political arm of the CNT] at the time? Miguel Amorós explains in his book La revolución traicionada: La verdadera historia de Balius y Los Amigos de Durruti:
"The plenums didn't take into account the assemblies of the unions and ignored the opinion of the militias. Against every norm of the confederation, it was the committees who called on them and elaborated the agenda, which was not always communicated to the delegates. The delegates attended without a mandate and without knowing what they were going to discuss or the relevance of decisions to be adopted."
The CNT and FAI bureaucracies, sharing power with the bourgeoisie, started going after those anarchists who criticized the corrupt methods of the leadership. Such anarchists included the writer Jaime Balius, a future leader of the Friends of Durruti group who was ousted from Solidaridad Obrera (Workers Solidarity—the CNT's main paper) in December of 1936 along with other members of the editorial staff. How about that for "anti-authoritarian organizations"?
Now I'll read another quote:
"As soon as they were faced with a serious revolutionary situation, the Bakuninists had to throw the whole of their old programme overboard. First they sacrificed their doctrine of absolute abstention from political, and especially electoral, activities. Then anarchy, the abolition of the State, shared the same fate.... They then dropped the principle that the workers must not take part in any revolution that did not have as its aim the immediate and complete emancipation of the proletariat, and they themselves took part in a movement that was notoriously bourgeois. Finally they...sat quite comfortably in the juntas of the various towns, and moreover almost everywhere as an impotent minority outvoted and politically exploited by the bourgeoisie."
Is this Leon Trotsky on 1936? No, it is Friedrich Engels polemicizing against the Spanish anarchists in 1873! Anarchism was, is and will always be class collaborationist at its core.
But not all the anarchists in Spain in 1936-37 shared the class collaborationism of the CNT-FAI bureaucracy. The Friends of Durruti group organized in opposition to that treachery. The CNT-FAI, in an attempt to better consolidate the forces against Franco's right-wing reactionaries, began to acquiesce to, and carry out, the "militarization" of the proletarian militias in September of 1937. This meant putting the militias under the orders of a centralized bourgeois army. The Republicans ordered the militarization of the militias, and the Socialist and anarchist ministers in the popular front voted for it. The majority of the members of the Friends of Durruti came from the thousands of anarchist militants who refused to submit to the militarization. Pablo Ruiz, who had fought with Buenaventura Durruti himself on the front, represented one wing of the group, and the prominent writer Jaime Balius represented another.
The four thousand members of the Friends of Durruti stood against the class collaborationism of the CNT-FAI and counterposed to it the call for revolution. They defended this by pointing out that "all revolutions are totalitarian." They raised the call for a "Revolutionary Junta!" According to Amorós, this was a variant of the concept advocated by the CNT of a "National Committee of Defense" in the face of the failure exhibited by the decentralization of the militias against Franco. The Friends of Durruti were CNT workers and militiamen who faced the prospect of being disarmed under the orders of their anarchist leadership. Their opposition to class collaboration was the empirical conclusion of their direct experience with the forceful "militarization" of the militias. However, this didn't contradict their affiliation to the CNT since the anarchist ideal of libertarian communism, a stateless society based on a decentralized economy run by local workers committees, was something that still looked feasible to them. However, the Friends of Durruti's political positions were in motion, like those of the Spanish anarcho-syndicalists who witnessed and embraced the 1917 Russian Revolution. The Friends of Durruti learned from the negative example of the CNT; but they first had to break with their anarchist prejudices against the Leninist vanguard party and the dictatorship of the proletariat in order to fully embrace a revolutionary program. That opportunity presented itself in May 1937.
The Barcelona May Days
Almost a year had passed after the "July events" in Barcelona when on 3 May 1937 the government decided to take the Telefónica building out of the hands of the CNT workers who ran it. Assault Guards commanded by the Stalinist Rodriguez Salas arrived at the building and, on behalf of the popular front, ordered the workers to abandon it. Workers put up resistance and the exchange of fire began. The word of an attack on the Telefónica spread like wildfire. In four hours a general strike was declared and the city was engulfed in street fighting with barricades being formed, as during the "July events," by workers of the CNT-FAI, the left-POUM and, this time, the Friends of Durruti and the Trotskyist Bolshevik-Leninists.
The CNT-FAI tops and the popular-front government sent GarcÃa Oliver and other CNT bureaucrats from Valencia to order the workers back to their homes. He urged the workers: "Hold your fire; embrace the Assault Guards!" The POUM defended their headquarters at the Hotel Falcon from the Assault Guards but refused to take any step forward. The local leaderships of the CNT and POUM met that night, but the anarchist bureaucracy insisted on no more than the dismissal of Salas and the formation of a new government in order to stop the confrontation. The workers had a different agenda though, pushed by their instinct of class self-defense.
On May 4, Barcelona was under the control of the workers, except for the center of the city, where the battles continued until dusk. One of the first workers detachments in the early hours of that night was 400 Friends of Durruti fighters who occupied the whole of Las Ramblas Avenue and patrolled the surrounding area. The same day, the Bolshevik-Leninists handed leaflets to the workers on the barricades that called for a "General strike in all the industries that don't work for the war" and for the "arming of the working class." Workers desperately needed a leadership!
The Friends of Durruti met with the Executive Committee of the POUM and apparently acquiesced to the POUM's position that the movement was lost given the CNT's capitulatory actions. Both agreed on seeking guarantees against retaliations before the workers began to abandon the barricades. However, the next day the Friends of Durruti issued a leaflet which caused a hue and cry among the CNT-FAI bureaucracy, calling for a revolutionary junta, the disarming of the armed bodies (meaning the Assault and Civil Guards) and the socialization of the economy. The leaflet was received with great enthusiasm on the barricades. Needless to say, the Friends of Durruti had used extremely "authoritarian" measures to get their leaflet printed in the middle of a general strike! Balius describes the scene as follows:
"We banged on the door until the owner [of the print shop] came out, who didn't want to know anything and refused categorically to open the print shop. He promptly backed up in the face of ‘armed violence'.... Just before midnight...we were able to take with us four to five thousand leaflets still wet."
Still on May 5, the local bureaucracy of the FAI in Barcelona, in another despicable act of betrayal of the working class, refused reinforcement by militias ready to leave the front. But even worse than that, the CNT workers committees started to abandon the barricades, obeying the call of the top bureaucracy.
On May 6, various anarchist groups, including the Friends of Durruti, met with the POUM. The POUM held a minority position, which was for the creation of a "revolutionary central committee." This was against the local representatives of the anarchist committees, who, following orders from their national leadership, advocated withdrawal from the barricades.
What was the response of the POUM? Let's have their leader Gorkin tell the story:
"But we couldn't impose our views. It was the representative of the Regional Committee [Nacional] who they [the workers] were listening to.... The Friends of Durruti advocated a CNT-FAI-POUM government. Due to tactical reasons we didn't attack the leadership of the CNT."
—Quoted in Amorós, La revolución traicionada
I want to emphasize some points here. During the May Days, the CNT carried out a contemptible and clear betrayal against the working class in Barcelona, as they had already chosen to collaborate with the bourgeoisie. The centrist POUM knew this, and instead of fighting against it, they buried their heads in the sand like ostriches and waited for the CNT to give the order to disband. The Friends of Durruti, in contrast, called for a local junta centered on the CNT and the POUM. Had there been an authoritative revolutionary leadership then, it would have taken up the Friends of Durruti's call for a junta and transformed it first into a military united front against the bourgeois forces and the Stalinists and then into the core of a workers government to fight the counterrevolution with an internationalist program. It would have called for independence for Morocco in order to undermine Franco's army and appealed to the workers on the other side of the Pyrenees to follow their example.
After the May 6 meeting, Balius proposed that CNT workers advance a column to the town of Tarragona and bring reinforcements to Barcelona. Predictably, the CNT bureaucracy boycotted this proposal. Amorós explains: "The Friends of Durruti couldn't understand why the CNT committees had stopped the fight, when victory was so close." The Friends of Durruti didn't have the understanding that flows from a revolutionary program—the understanding to realize the dead end of anarchism and to politically break with the CNT. That had to be the role of a Marxist vanguard party.
Unfortunately, the Bolshevik-Leninists didn't have the time to generate roots in the proletariat during the few months of their existence and they lacked authority among the working class. However, the power of their Trotskyist program is shown by the fact that despite their small numbers they were one of the first to be targeted by the Stalinists and the bourgeois reactionaries once the proletariat was defeated and the barricades were brought down. Before the May Days, the Friends of Durruti helped to distribute the Trotskyists' press on the streets and made their offices available to the Bolshevik-Leninists to organize their meetings. However, the Bolshevik-Leninists didn't achieve much in a meeting with the Friends of Durruti's leadership on May 5:
"Every time the word Authority was pronounced...Balius got mad. The interview or meeting ended without discussing the real problems at bottom.... As for Balius, Carlini and others—not everybody—to continue the fight only on the barricades was the just position, and that is how we split."
Under the orders of the CNT-FAI, and in the face of the POUM's prostration, the workers were ultimately demobilized and defeated. Five hundred died and over a thousand were wounded during the May events. Following the defeat, the state, with the aid of the Stalinists, launched its persecution, imprisonment and murder of the Trotskyists and POUMists (the latter on charges of "Trotskyism"). The anarchist bureaucracy proceeded to attempt the expulsion of the Friends of Durruti from the CNT ranks; meanwhile, the government censored the CNT's paper Solidaridad Obrera. The POUM's paper, La Batalla, was banned and its main leader, Andrés Nin, as well as anarchist leader Camilo Berneri, died at the hands of the Stalinists.
During the Franco dictatorship, 300,000 workers and peasants were assassinated and many others were locked up in concentration camps. All working-class leaders were exterminated or expelled, political and trade-union groups and associations were dissolved. The popular-front government paved the way for Franco's triumph in 1939. One of the greatest revolutionary opportunities for the international proletariat had been drowned in blood.
Anarchists proclaim that the Friends of Durruti never broke with the principles of anarchism. Unfortunately, they are right. They continued to believe, as their leaders in the CNT did, that a classless society could be created simply through force of will; that such a society could be created without first establishing the dictatorship of the proletariat, a centralized democratic workers state to suppress the forces of counterrevolution. Anarchist historian Vernon Richards, in his book, Lessons of the Spanish Revolution (1936-1939) [second enlarged edition, 1972], expresses the ultimate consequences of such an idealist perspective:
"We believe there is something more real, more positive and more revolutionary in resisting war than in participating in it; that it is more civilised and more revolutionary to defend the right of a fascist to live than to support the Tribunals which have the legal powers to shoot him; that it is more realistic to talk to the people from the gutter than from government benches; that in the long run it is more rewarding to influence minds by discussion than to mould them by coercion."
Marxists, on the other hand, reject the false arguments of anarchists that classless communism is simply the product of a psychological regeneration. We fight to overthrow the capitalist system in order to organize production so as to raise it to such a high level that scarcity will no longer exist. Only then can we lay the material basis for the emancipation of humanity from exploitation, war and poverty. We tell anarchist youth today, as Trotsky said to the international proletariat in Lessons of October (1924): "Without a party, apart from a party, over the head of a party, or with a substitute for a party, the proletarian revolution cannot conquer." This is the main lesson of the Spanish Civil War.
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