Leon Trotsky-On the Labor Party Question in the United States
Three Discussions in Mexico City with
James P. Cannon, Vincent R. Dunne and Max Shachtman
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Discussed: April 23 through July 20, 1938.
Source: Leon Trotsky on the Labor Party in the United States An uncopyrighted pamplet published by Merrit Publisers [New York] in 1969.
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Discussion on April, 1938
Cannon: The subject today is the labor party in three aspects:
1. our general principled position;
2. the development of Labor’s Non-Partisan League, 10 that is, the CIO political movement in the trade unions, which shows in some respects tendencies to independent political action, toward the constitution of a party; in other places like New York, half such tendencies: labor candidates locally, support of Republican–Fusion and support of Roosevelt nationally; in other parts they endorse all capitalist candidates, mainly through the Democratic Party.
3. The question arises should our comrades in the trade unions we control join the LNPL; what should we do in unions where we have a small minority; should we become the champions of the LNPL or shall we stand aside in a critical attitude? We do not have a final policy. In New Jersey, for example, we are experimenting—we had the unions join the LNPL and there support a motion for the formation of a party. In other parts of the country we haven’t done so. How should we conduct ourselves in a more or less developed labor party as in Minneapolis?
In principle it appears that we should condemn the whole movement and stand aside, but that is not a very fruitful policy. In Minneapolis there is a fully constituted independent organization, the Farmer-Labor Party. It runs its own candidates in the state and nationally it supports Roosevelt.
The Stalinists who have been driven out of the trade unions have penetrated deeply into the Farmer-Labor Association—this constitutes a weapon against us in the unions. The policy there now is the policy of a bloc of the Trotskyist unions with what they call the “real farmer-laborites,” that is, reformists who believe in the FLP and don’t wish the Stalinists to control it. How far can we carry such a bloc—how far can we fight for just organizational control? But if our people stand aside, the Stalinists get control. On the other hand, if we fight really energetically, as we do in the unions, we become champions of the FLP. It is not a simple question—it’s very easy for people to get lost in the reformist policy.
Dunne: First, I would say that the Stalinists, in controlling the apparatus of the FLP, control more than just the apparatus—they make it difficult for us in the unions. By our not participating in this party through our trade union connections, it allows the Stalinists and the more reactionary elements in the FLP to have a weapon against us in the labor movement. We have a definite policy insofar as our work in the trade unions is concerned. Our comrades speaking in favor of the FLP have done so very critically, advising the unions that they can use it only to a certain extent. We have succeeded in keeping our policy clear from the reformists but, as Comrade Cannon says, it’s difficult to say how far we should go in this direction; we cannot take the responsibility for the labor party and yet we would have that responsibility thrust on us by the workers who believe we can as efficiently fight there for their members as we do in the trade unions. Thus far, even the Stalinists’ drive against us has not been able to to shake them yet. The Stalinists, together with a wide section of the progressives, intellectuals, are at one in turning the labor party more and more into a bloc with the Democratic and liberal candidates. Inside the FLP, the Stalinists are trying to keep control by setting up a formal discipline in the FLP, mainly against us. We have fought that, demanding democracy in the labor party, and we have been successful. We haven’t been at all successful in preventing a closer bloc with the Democratic Party. We can’t yet ask the unions to support the SWP as against the FLP.
Cannon: In St. Paul, where the FLP made a deal to support a capitalist candidate for mayor, we put up our own candidate.
Trotsky: Can you explain to me how was it possible that though the Stalinists control an important section of this party they passed a resolution against fascists and communists?
Dunne: That was done in one region. In certain sections we have farmer-laborites who work with us—they were in control of this district as against the Stalinists—we have some comrades there—we tried to shape this resolution in a different way but we were not on the resolutions committee—late at night the resolution was j ammed through.
Trotsky: The resolution can be used also against us. How is the party constructed? It is based not only upon trade unions but also upon other organizations because they are progressives, intellectuals, etc. Do they admit every individual, or only collectively?
Dunne: The FLP is based upon workers’ economic organizations—trade unions, cooperatives, etc., farmers’ cooperative organizations; also upon territorial units—township clubs, etc. It also allows for the affiliation of cultural organizations, sick-and-death-benefit organizations, etc., also through ward clubs. The Stalinists and intellectuals join through these clubs; they have more control than the drivers’ local of 4,000 members. We are fighting against that—we are demanding that the trade unions be given their real representation—we have the support of the trade unions on this.
Trotsky: Can you tell me what are the nuances of opinion among our leading comrades on this question—approximately?
Cannon: There are nuances of opinion not only among the leadership but also in the ranks. Problems arise in the trade unions especially. Amotion is proposed in the unions to join the LNPL. The sentiment, especially in the CIO unions, for this is overwhelming. I think that our policy in New Jersey, that at least in this union we must not oppose joining the LNPL will have to be adopted. There is also a tendency in the party that in this LNPL we shall press for the formation of the labor party. I venture to say that the trade union comrades would be most satisfied if they could have that decision. But they haven’t yet faced the difficulties. The dilemma is that you become the champions of the FLP by having an aggressive policy. We even have one comrade on the State Executive Committee of the FLP in New Jersey. The bureaucrats are putting off the date for formation of the FLP. The policy of Lewis and Hillman [12] is to leave that aside till 1940. If our comrade would make an energetic fight, if he could be sincere in advocating the FLP, he could muster quite an opposition against the bureaucrats. But then the dilemma is that we are championing the creation of an FLP, which we oppose.
In our plenum[13] there will be differences of opinion—there will be a tendency to become energetic fighters for the constitution of a labor party. My opinion is that this is the prevailing sentiment of the party—to join the LNPL and become aggressive fighters for the constitution of a labor party as against the policy of endorsing capitalist candidates; if we can do that without compromising our principled position, that would be best in the sense of gaining influence. We don’t say anything practical to the workers who are ready to take one step forward. The CP now is not championing the labor party; they are a Roosevelt party. The bureaucrats in the trade unions are also blocking the strong movement within the workers for a Labor Party.
Shachtman: I wouldn’t say that the labor-party sentiment is so strong among the workers today. Most of the labor-party sentiment that might have arisen has been canalized toward the channel of Roosevelt. We had a formidable crisis, and yet the only thing that came out of it is the hybrid form of labor party in New York.[14] In any case, if you compare 1930 with 1924, you can say there is barely a labor-party movement now; then there was more real sentiment in the trade unions. I think that if we don’t have a clear idea for the prospects of a labor party, that we will make some big political mistakes. I believe a big change is taking place—a breaking-up of the old parties. The biggest political party, the Democratic Party, which has a support of 90 per cent of the workers and farmers, is going through a split almost before our eyes. In Congress the fight is not between Republicans and Democrats, but between one section of the Democrats and another. There is very good reason to believe that in the 1940 election we will have a new political setup with the old-line Republicans fused with the Democrats of the South; and the other, the New Deal Democrats, Roosevelt-followers plus the CIO, Lewis; that will be powerful enough even to take the bulk of the AFL along. It is precisely this prospect that keeps Lewis and Hillman from championing a labor party—they are looking for the split jn the Democratic Party in which they will be able to play a considerable role. That is why I don’t think there will be a real, serious, substantial progress in the LNPL movement toward an independent labor party.
It is true that our position is rather a difficult one but we have had a considerable amount of experience with labor-party movements—a generalization may be helped by reference to our Minneapolis situation—I don’t think our growth is due to participation in the FLP movement but through our activities in the trade unions. Nevertheless, as we grow, we necessarily must participate in FLP politics, and I can’t say I’m entirely satisfied with the situation there. I can’t say we have proposed any other line of conduct. In effect, in Minneapolis we are in a bloc with so-called honest reformists—who are scoundrels on their own account—who are in a bloc with the Democrats. This bloc is directed almost exclusively against the Stalinists and against a mechanical control the Stalinists have of the FLP. In action we are indistinguishable from the so-called honest reformists. We are distinguished from the Stalinists, but only insofar as we are in a bloc with real reformists who vote for the FLP ticket in the state and for the Democrats nationally.
If we are to follow out such a policy of being against endorsing capitalist candidates in favor of FLP candidates seriously, systematically, effectively, I can’t see how we can avoid becoming the champions of a labor party, of taking the initiative, wherever a labor party does not exist, to form one. Unless all signs prove untrue, these labor parties will be a working appendage of Roosevelt just as was the case in the New York American Labor Party supporting Roosevelt nationally and, on a local scale, supporting Republican-Fusion. Once that’s begun I don’t see clearly how we will avoid the consequences of a policy that was followed in 1924, when we were in the CP, with the added complication that the Stalinist party is in the unions; and while it’s true that they are a Roosevelt party, still, in the unions, they advocate formation of a labor party.
Cannon: Not much. I would say that the Stalinists in the first period of the people’s front[15] had the slogan, “Organize the Labor Party as the American People’s Front,” but now it’s only a ceremonial action. At this point they are even against a premature splitting of the Democratic Party. It is not true that the sentiment now is less than in 1924 for a labor party. Then it had no basis in the unions; it was mostly a farmers’ movement. Now the movement is dominated by the CIO unions. It is not the old Gompers[16] politics. The unions are regimented politically; the sentiment in the ranks for their own party is quite strong. The LNPL is not going out to meet the sentiment of the workers. The policy of Lewis and the bureaucrats is experimental; if the workers will clamor more, they will make concessions to that sentiment. It is a step higher than the Gompers’ policy.
(Stenographer’s note : More argument about the relative strength of labor-party sentiment in 1922-1924 now took place between Comrades Cannon and Dunne on one side and Shachtman on the other.)
Trotsky: This question is very important and very complicated. When for the first time the League[17] considered this question, some seven or eight years ago—whether we should favor a labor party or not, whether we should develop initiative on this score—then the prevailing sentiment was not to do it, and that was absolutely correct. The perspective for development was not clear. I believed that the majority of us hoped that the development of our own organization will [would] be more speedy. On the other hand I believe no one in our ranks foresaw during that period the appearance of the CIO with this rapidity and this power. In our perspective we overestimated the possibility of the development of our party at the expense of the Stalinists on one hand, and on the other hand we don’t [didn’t] see this powerful trade union movement, and the rapid decline of American capitalism. These are two facts which we must reckon with.
I can’t speak from my own observation, but theoretically. The period of 1924 I know only through the experience of our common friend Pepper.[18] He came to me and said that the American proletariat is not a revolutionary class, that the revolutionary class are the farmers and we must turn toward the farmers, not toward the workers. That was the conception of the time. It was a farmers’ movement—the farmers who are inclined by their social nature to look for panaceas: populism, FLFism, in every crisis. Now we have a movement of tremendous importance—the CIO; some 3,000,000 or more are organized in a new, more militant organization. This organization which began with strikes, big strikes, and also involved the AFL partially in these strikes for a raise in wages, this organization at the first step of its activity runs into the biggest crisis in the U.S. The perspective for economic strikes is, for the next period, excluded, given the situation of the growing unemployed ranks, etc. We can look for the possibility that it will put all its weight in the political balance.
The whole objective situation imposed it upon the workers as upon the leaders—upon the leaders in a double sense. On one hand they exploit this tendency for their own authority and on the other they try to break it and not permit it to go ahead of its leaders. The LNPL has this double function. I believe that our policy need not be theoretically revised but it needs to be concretized. In what sense? Are we in favor of the creation of a reformist labor party? No. Are we in favor of a policy which can give to the trade unions the possibility to put its weight upon the balance of the forces? Yes.
It can become a reformist party—it depends upon the development. Here comes in the question of program. I mentioned yesterday and I will underline it today—we must have a program of transitional demands, the most complete of them is a workers’ and farmers’ government. We are for a party, for an independent party of the toiling masses who will take power in the state. We must concretize it—we are for the creation of factory committees, for workers’ control of industry through the factory committees. All these questions are now pending in the air. They speak of technocracy,[19] and put forward the slogan of “production for use.” We oppose this charlatan formula and advance the workers’ control of production through the factory committees.
Lundberg writes a book, [America’s] Sixty Families.[20] The Annalist[21] claims that his figures are false. We say, the factory committees should see the books. This program we must develop parallel with the idea of a labor party in the unions, and workers’ militia. Otherwise it is an abstraction and an abstraction is a weapon in the hands of the opposing class. The criticism of the Minneapolis comrades is that they have not concretized a program. In this fight we must underline that we are for the bloc of workers and farmers, but not such farmers as Roosevelt. (I do not know whether you noted that in the official ticket he gave his profession as farmer.) We are for a bloc only with the exploited farmers, not exploiter farmers—exploited farmers and agricultural workers. We can become the champions of this movement but on the basis of a concrete program of demands. In Minneapolis the first task should be devoted to statistically show that 10,000 workers have no more vote than ten intellectuals, or fifty people organized by the Stalinists. Then we have to introduce five or six demands, very concrete, adapted to the mind of the workers and farmers and inculcated into the brain of every comrade, workers’ factory committees, and then workers’ and farmers’ government. That’s the genuine sense of the movement.
Cannon: Would we propose now that the unions join the LNPL?
Trotsky: Yes, I believe so. Naturally we must make our first step in such a way as to accumulate experience for practical work, not to engage in abstract formulas, but develop a concrete program of action and demands in the sense that this transitional program issues from the conditions of capitalist society today, but immediately leads over the limits of capitalism. It is not the reformist minimum program, which never included workers’ militia, workers’ control of production. These demands are transitory because they lead from the capitalist society to the proletarian revolution, a consequence insofar as they become the demands of the masses as the proletarian government. We can’t stop only with the day-to-day demands of the proletariat. We must give to the most backward workers some concrete slogan that corresponds to their needs and that leads dialectically to the conquest of power.
Shachtman: How would you motivate the slogan for workers’ militia?
Trotsky: By the fascist movement in Europe—all the situation shows that the blocs of the members of liberals, radicals and the workers* bureaucracy is nothing in comparison with the militarized fascist gang; only workers with military experience can oppose the fascist danger. I believe that in America you have enough scabs, gunmen, that you connect the slogan with the local experience; for example by showing the attitude of the police, the state of affairs in Jersey.[22] In this situation immediately say that this gangster-mayor with his gangster policemen should be ousted by the workers’ militia. “We wish here the organization of the CIO, but in violation of the constitution we are forbidden this right to organize. If the federal power cannot control the mayor, then we, the workers, must organize for our protection the workers’ militia and fight for our rights.” Or in clashes between the AFL and the CIO, we can put forward the slogan for a workers’ militia as a necessity to protect our workers’ meetings. Especially as opposed to the Stalinist idea of a popular front, and we can point to the result of this popular front—the fate of Spain and the situation in France. Then you can point to the movement of Germany, to the Nazi camps. We must say: You workers, in this city, will be the first victims of this fascist gang. You must organize, you must be prepared.
Cannon: What name would you call such groups?
Trotsky: You can give it a modest name, workers’ militia.
Cannon: Defense committees.
Trotsky: Yes. It must be discussed with the workers.
Cannon: The name is very important. Workers’ defense committees can be popularized. Workers’ militia is too foreign sounding.
Shachtman: There is not yet in the U. S. the danger of fascism which would bring about the sentiment for such an organization as the workers’ militia. The organization of a workers’ militia presupposes preparation for the seizure of power. This is not yet on the order of the day in the U.S.
Trotsky: Naturally we can conquer power only when we have the majority of the working class, but even in that case the workers’ militia would be a small minority. Even in the October Revolution the militia was a small minority. But the question is how to get this small minority which must be organized and armed with the sympathy of the masses. How can we do it? By preparing the mind of the masses, by propaganda. The crisis, the sharpening of class relations, the creation of a workers’ party, a labor party, signifies immediately, immediately, a terrible sharpening of forces. The reaction will be immediately a fascist movement. That is why we must now connect the idea of the labor party with the consequences—otherwise we will appear only as pacifists with democratic illusions. Then we also have the possibility of spreading the slogans of our transitional program and see the reaction of the masses. We will see what slogans should be selected, what slogans abandoned, but if we give up our slogans before the experience, before seeing the reaction of the masses, then we can never advance.
Dunne; I wanted to ask one question about the slogan of workers’ access to the secrets of industry. It seems to me that needs to be well thought out and carefully applied or it may lead to difficulties which we have already experienced. As a matter of fact one of the ways of reducing the militancy of the workers is for employers—we had one such case—to offer to show us the books and prove that they are standing a loss, whether honestly or not is not the question. We have fought against that, saying it is up to you to organize your business; we demand decent working conditions. I wonder what then would be the effect of our slogan of workers’ access to the secrets of industry.
Trotsky: Yes, the capitalists do [open their books] in two instances: when the situation of the factory is really bad, or if they can deceive the workers. But the question must be put from a more general point of view. In the first place, you have millions of unemployed and the government claims it cannot pay more and the capitalists say that they cannot make more contributions—we want to have access to the bookkeeping of this society. The control of income should be organized through factory committees. Workers will say: We want our own statisticians who are devoted to the working class. If a branch of industry shows that it is really ruined, then we answer: We propose to expropriate you. We will direct better than you. Why have you no profit? Because of the chaotic condition of capitalist society. We say: Commercial secrets are a conspiracy of the exploiters against the exploited, of the producers against the toilers. In the free era, in the era of competition, they claimed they needed secrecy for protection. But now they do not have secrets among themselves but only from society. This transitional demand is also a step for the workers’ control of production as the preparatory plan for the direction of industry. Everything must be controlled by the workers who will be the masters of society tomorrow. But to call for conquest of power—that seems to the American workers illegal, fantastic. But if you say: The capitalists refuse to pay for the unemployed and hide their real profits from the state and from the workers by dishonest bookkeeping, the workers will understand that formula. If we say to the farmer: The bank fools you. They have very big profits. And we propose to you that you create farmers’ committees to look into the bookkeeping of the bank, every farmer will understand that. We will say: The farmer can trust only himself; let him create committees to control agricultural credits—they will understand that. It presupposes a turbulent mood among the farmers; it cannot be accomplished every day. But to introduce this idea into the masses and into our own comrades, that’s absolutely necessary immediately.
Shachtman: I believe it is not correct as you say to put forth the slogan of workers’ control of production nor the other transitional slogan of workers’ militia—the slogan for the examination of the books of the capitalist class is more appropriate for the present period and can be made popular. As for the other two slogans, it is true that they are transitional slogans, but for that end of the road which is close to the preparation for the seizure of power. Transition implies a road either long or short. Each stage of the road requires its own slogans. For today we could use that of examination of the books of the capitalist class, for tomorrow we would use those of workers’ control of production and workers’ militia.
Trotsky: How can we in such a critical situation as now exists in the whole world, in the U.S. measure the stage of development of the workers’ movement? You say, it’s the beginning and not the end. What’s the distance—100, 10, 4, how can you say approximately? In the good old times the social-democrats would say: Now we have only 10,000 workers, later we’11 have 100,000, then a million, and then we’ll get to the power. World development to them was only an accumulation of quantities: 10,000, 100,000, etc., etc. Now we have an absolutely different situation. We are in a period of declining capitalism, of crises that become more turbulent and terrible, and approaching war. During a war the workers learn very quickly. If you say, we’ll wait and see and then propagate, then we’ll be not the vanguard, but the rearguard. If you ask me: Is it possible that the American workers will conquer power in ten years? I will say yes, absolutely possible. The explosion of the CIO shows that the basis of the capitalist society is undermined. Workers’ militia and workers’ control of production are only two sides of the same question. The worker is not a bookkeeper. When he asks for the books, he wants to change the situation, by control and then by direction. Naturally, our advancing slogans depends upon the reaction we meet in the masses. When we see the reaction of the masses, we [will] know what side of the question to emphasize. We will say, Roosevelt will help the unemployed by the war industry; but if we workers ran production, we would find another industry, not one for the dead but for the living. This question can become understandable even for an average worker who never participated in a political movement. We underestimate the revolutionary movement in the working masses. We are a small organization, propagandists, and in such situations are more skeptical than the masses who develop very quickly. At the beginning of 1917 Lenin said that the party is 10 times more revolutionary than its Central Committee, and the masses 100 times more revolutionary than the ranks of the party. There is not in the U.S. a revolutionary situation now. But comrades with very revolutionary ideas in quiet times can become a real brake upon the movement in revolutionary situations—it happens often. A revolutionary party waits so often and so long for a revolution that it gets used to postpone [postponing] it.
Cannon: You see that phenomenon in strikes—they sweep the country and take the revolutionary party by surprise. Do we put forward this transitional program in the trade unions?
Trotsky: Yes, we propagandize this program in the trade unions, propose it as the basic program for the labor party. For us, it is a transitional program; but for them, it is the program. Now it’s a question of workers’ control of production, but you can realize this program only through a workers’ and farmers’ government. We must make this slogan popular.
Cannon: Is this also to be put forward as a transitional program or is this a pseudonym for the dictatorship of the proletariat?
Trotsky: In our mind it leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat. We say to the workers and farmers: You want Lewis as president—well that depends upon his program. Lewis plus Green plus La Follette[23] as representative of the farmers? That, too, depends upon the program. We try to concretize, to make more precise the program, then the workers’ and farmers’ government signifies a government of the proletariat which leads the farmers.
Shachtman: How do you reconcile this with the original statement that we cannot advocate the organization of a reformist labor party? I would like to get clear in my mind what concretely does our comrade do when his trade union is affiliated to the LNPL and he is sent as a delegate to the labor party. There the question comes up of what to do in the elections and it is proposed: “Let us support La Guardia.” [24] Concretely, how does the matter present itself to our comrades?
Trotsky: Here we are in a trade union meeting to discuss the affiliation to the LNPL. I will say in the trade union: First, the unification of the unions on a political plan is a progressive step. There is a danger that it will fall into the It is a question of the relationship of forces. Comrade Dunne says we cannot yet advocate in the unions support for the SWP. Why? Because we are too weak. And we can’t say to the workers: Wait till we become more authoritative, more powerful. We must intervene in the movement as it is… .
Shachtman: If there were no movement for a labor party and we would be opposed to the creation of one, how does that affect the program itself—it would still be our transition program. I don’t understand when you say we can’t advocate a reformist party but we do advocate and become champions of labor-party movements for the purpose of imposing the workers’ will politically.
Trotsky: It would be absurd to say that we advocate a reformist party. We can say to the leaders of the LNPL: “You’re making of this movement a purely opportunistic appendage to the Democrats.” It’s a question of a pedagogical approach. How can we say that we advocate the creation of a reformist party? We say, you cannot impose your will through a reformist party but only through a revolutionary party. The Stalinists and liberals wish to make of this movement a reformist party but we have our program, we make of this a revolutionary…
Cannon: How can you explain a revolutionary labor party? We say: The SWP is the only revolutionary party, has the only revolutionary program. How then can you explain to the workers that also the labor party is a revolutionary party?
Trotsky: I will not say that the labor party is a revolutionary party, but that we will do everything to make it possible. At every meeting I will say: I am a representative of the SWP. I consider it the only revolutionary party. But I am not a sectarian. You are trying now to create a big workers’ party. I will help you but I propose that you consider a program for this party. I make such and such propositions. I begin with this. Under these conditions it would be a big step forward. Why not say openly what is? Without any camouflage, without any diplomacy.
Cannon: Up until now the question has always been put abstractly. The question of the program has never been outlined as you have outlined it. The Lovestoneites have always been for a labor party; but they have no program, it’s combinations from the top. It seems to me that if we have a program and always point to it …
Trotsky: First there is the program, and then the statutes that assure the domination of the trade unions as against the individual liberals, petty bourgeois, etc. Otherwise it can become a labor party by social composition, a capitalist party in policy.
Cannon: It seems to me that in Minneapolis it’s too much an organizational struggle, a struggle for the control of the organization between the Stalinists and us. We have to develop in Minneapolis a program- hands of our enemies. I therefore propose two measures: 1) That we have only workers and farmers as our representatives; that we do not depend on so-called parliamentary friends; 2) That our representatives follow out our program, this program. We then map out concrete plans concerning unemployment, military budget, etc. Then I say, if you propose me as a candidate, you know my program. If you send me as your representative, I will fight for this program in the LNPL, in the labor party. When the LNPL makes a decision to vote for La Guardia, I either resign with protest, or protest and remain: “I can’t vote for La Guardia. I have my mandate.” We get large new possibilities for propaganda.
The dissolution of our organization is absolutely excluded. We make absolutely clear that we have our organization, our press, etc., etc. matic fight against the Stalinists in the FLP, as we yesterday utilized the vote about the Ludlow Amendment.[25]
Shachtman: Now with the imminence of the outbreak of war, the labor party can become a trap. And I still can’t understand how the labor party can be different from a reformist, purely parliamentary party.
Trotsky: You put the question too abstractly; naturally it can crystalize into a reformist party, and one that will exclude us. But we must be part of the movement. We must say to the Stalinists, Love-stoneites, etc.: “We are in favor of a revolutionary party. You are doing everything to make it reformist.” But we always point to our program. And we propose our program of transitional demands. As to the war question and the Ludlow Amendment, we’ll discuss that tomorrow and I will again show the use of our transitional program in that situation.
Discussion in Mexico City, May 31, 1938
>Question: In the ranks of our party the question which seems most disputed in relation to accepting the program of transitional demands is that dealing with the labor party in the United States. Some comrades maintain that it is incorrect to advocate the formation of a labor party, holding that there is no evidence to indicate any widespread sentiment for such a party, that if there were such a party in process of formation, or even widespread sentiment, then we would meet it with a program that would give to this movement a revolutionary content—but in view of the lack of such objective factors this part of the thesis is opportunistic. Could you clarify this point further?
Trotsky: I believe that it is necessary to remind ourselves of the most elementary facts from the history of the development of the workers’ movement in general and the trade unions in particular. In this respect we find different types of development of the working class in different countries. Every country has a specific type of development but we classify them in general.
In Austria and in Russia especially, the workers’ movement began as a political movement, as a party movement. That was the first step. The social-democracy in its first stage hoped that the socialist reconstruction of society was near, but it happened that capitalism was strong enough to last for a time. A long period of prosperity passed and the social-democracy was forced to organize trade unions. In such countries as Germany, Austria, and especially in Russia where trade unions were unknown, they were initiated, constructed, and guided by a political party, the social-democracy.
Another type of development is that disclosed in the Latin countries, in France, and especially in Spain. Here the party movement and the trade union movement are almost independent of one another and under different banners, even to a certain degree antagonistic to one another. The party is a parliamentary machine. The trade unions are to a certain degree in France—more in Spain—under the leadership of anarchists.
The third type is provided by Great Britain, the United States, and more or less by the dominions. England is the classic country of trade unions. They began to build trade unions at the end of the eighteenth century, before the French Revolution, and during the so-called industrial revolution. (In the United States, during the rise of the manufacturing system.) In England the working class didn’t have its independent party. The trade unions were the organizations of the working class, in reality the organization of the labor aristocrats, the higher strata. In England there was an aristocratic proletariat, at least in its upper strata, because the British bourgeoisie, enjoying almost monopoly control of the world market, could give a small part of the wealth to the working class and so absorb part of the national income. The trade unions were adequate to abstract that from the bourgeoisie. Only after a hundred years did the trade unions begin to build up a political party. This is absolutely contrary to Germany or Austria. There the party awakened the working class and built up the trade unions. In England the trade unions, after centuries of existence and struggle, were forced to build up a political party.
What were the reasons for this change? It was due to the complete decline of English capitalism which began very sharply. The English party is only a couple of decades old, coming into prominence especially after the World War. What is the reason for this change? It is well known that it was due to the abolishing of England’s monopoly control of the world market. It began in the eighties of the nineteenth century with the competition of Germany and of the United States. The bourgeoisie lost its ability to give the leading strata of the proletariat a privileged position. The trade unions lost the possibility to improve the situation of the workers and they were pushed onto the road of political action because political action is the generalization of economic action. Political action generalizes the needs of the workers and addresses them not to the parts of the bourgeoisie but to the bourgeoisie as a whole organized in the state.
Now in the United States we can say that the characteristic features of English development are presented in even more concentrated form in a shorter period because the whole history of the United States is shorter. Practically, the development of the trade unions in the United States began after the Civil War, but these trade unions were very backward even compared with the trade unions of Great Britain. To a great degree they were mixed trade unions of employers and employees, not fighting, militant trade unions. They were sectional and tiny. They were based on the craft system, not according to industry, and we see that it is only during the last two or three years that the genuine trade unions developed in the United States. This new movement is the CIO.
What is the reason for the appearance of the CIO? It is the decay of American capitalism. In Great Britain the beginning of the decay of the capitalist system forced the existing trade unions to unite into a political party. In the United States the same phenomenon—the beginning of the decline—produced only the industrial trade unions, but these trade unions appeared on the scene only in time to meet the new chapter of the decline of capitalism, or—more correct—we can say that the first crisis of 1929-1933 gave the push and ended in the organization of the CIO. But scarcely organized, the CIO meets the second crisis, 1937-1938, which continues and deepens.
What does this fact signify? That it was a long time in the United States before the organization of trade unions but now that genuine trade unions exist, they must make the same evolution as the English trade unions. That is, on the basis of declining capitalism, they are forced to turn to political action. I believe that this is the most important fact of the whole matter.
The question reads, “There is no evidence to indicate any widespread sentiment for such a party.” You will remember that when we discussed this question with other comrades there were some divergences on this question. I cannot judge whether sentiment for a labor party exists or not because I have no personal observations or impressions, but I do not find it decisive as to what degree the leaders of the trade unions or the rank and file are ready or inclined to build a political party. It is very difficult to establish objective information. We have no machine to take a referendum. We can measure the mood only by action if the slogan is put on the agenda. But what we can say is that the objective situation is absolutely decisive. The trade unions as trade unions can have only a defensive activity, losing members and becoming more and more weak as the crisis deepens, creating more and more unemployed. The treasury becomes poorer and poorer, the tasks, bigger and bigger, while their means, smaller and smaller. It is a fact; we cannot change it. The trade union bureaucracy becomes more and more disoriented, the rank and file more and more dissatisfied and this dissatisfaction becomes greater and greater the higher were their hopes in the CIO, and especially in view of the unprecedented growth of the CIO—in two or three years 4,000,000 fresh people on the field facing objective handicaps which cannot be eliminated by the trade unions. In this situation we must give an answer. If the trade union leaders are not ready for political action, we must ask them to develop a new political orientation. If they refuse we denounce them. That is the objective situation.
I say here what I said about the whole program of transitional demands. The problem is not the mood ofthe masses but the objective situation, and our job is to confront the backward material of the masses with the tasks which are determined by objective facts and not by psychology. The same is absolutely correct for this specific question on the labor party. If the class struggle is not to be crushed, replaced by demoralization, then the movement must find a new channel and this channel is political. That is the fundamental argument in favor of this slogan.
We claim to have Marxism or scientific socialism. What does “scientific socialism” signify in reality. It signifies that the party which represents this social science, departs, as every science, not from subjective wishes, tendencies, or moods but from objective facts, from the material situation of the different classes and their relationships. Only by this method can we establish demands adequate to the objective situation and only after this can we adapt these demands and slogans to the given mentality of the masses. But to begin with this mentality as the fundamental fact would signify not a scientific but a conjunctural, demagogic, or adventuristic policy.
One can ask why we didn’t foresee this development five, six, seven years ago? Why did we declare during the past period that we were not willing to fight for this slogan of the labor party? The explanation is very simple. We were absolutely sure, we Marxists, the initiators of the American movement for the Fourth International, that world capitalism had entered into a period of decline. That is the period when the working class is objectively educated and moves subjectively, preparing for the social revolution. The direction was the same in the United States, but the question of direction is not sufficient. The other question is the speed of its development; and in this respect, in view of the strength of American capitalism, some of us, and myself among them, imagined that the ability of American capitalism to resist against the destructive inner contradictions would be greater and that for a certain period American capitalism might use the decline of European capital to cover a period of prosperity before its own decline. How long a period? Ten to thirty years one could say? Anyway I, personally, didn’t see that this sharp crisis or series of crises would begin in the next period and become deeper and deeper.
That is why eight years ago when I discussed this question with American comrades I was very cautious. I was very cautious in my prognosis. My opinion was that we couldn’t foresee when the American trade unions would come into a period where they would be forced into political action. If this critical period started in ten to fifteen years, then we, the revolutionary organization, could become a great power directly influencing the trade unions and becoming the leading force. That is why it would be absolutely pedantic, abstract, artificial to proclaim the necessity for the labor party in 1930 and this abstract slogan would be a handicap to our own party. That was at the beginning of the preceding crisis. Then, that this period would be followed by a new crisis even more deep with an influence five to ten times more profound because it is a repetition!
Now we must not reckon by our prognosis of yesterday but by the situation of today. American capitalism is very strong but its contradictions are stronger than capitalism itself. The speed of decline came at American speed and this created a new situation for the new trade unions, the CIO even more than the AFL. In this situation it is worse for the CIO than the AFL because the AFL is more capable of resistance due to its aristocratic base. We must change our program because the objective situation is totally different from our former prognosis.
What does this signify? That we are sure the working class, the trade unions, will adhere to the slogan of the labor party? No, we are not sure that the workers will adhere to the slogan of the labor party. When we begin the fight we cannot be sure of being victorious. We can only say that our slogan corresponds to the objective situation and the best elements will understand and the most backward elements who don’t understand will be compromised.
In Minneapolis we cannot say to the trade unions you should adhere to the Socialist Workers Party. It would be a joke even in Minneapolis. Why? Because the decline of capitalism develops ten—a hundred times faster than the speed of our party. It is a new discrepancy. The necessity of a political party for the workers is given by the objective conditions, but our party is too small, with too little authority in order to organize the workers into its own ranks. That is why we must say to the workers, the masses, you must have a party. But we cannot say immediately to these masses, you must join our party.
In a mass meeting 500 would agree on the need for a labor party, only five agree to join our party, which shows that the slogan of a labor party is an agitational slogan. The second slogan is for the more advanced.
Should we use both slogans or one? I say both. The first, independent labor party, prepares the arena for our party. The first slogan prepares and helps the workers to advance and prepares the path for our party. That is the sense of our slogan. We say that we will not be satisfied with this abstract slogan which even today is not so abstract as ten years ago because the objective situation is different. It is not concrete enough. We must show to the workers what this party should be: an independent party, not for Roosevelt or La Follette, a machine for the workers themselves. That is why on the field of election it must have its own candidates. Then we must introduce our transitional slogans, not all at once, but as occasion arises, first one and then the other. That is why I see absolutely no justification for not accepting this slogan. I see only a psychological reason. Our comrades, in fighting against Lovestoneites, wanted our own party and not this abstract party. Now it is disagreeable. Naturally the Stalinists will say we are fascists, etc. But it is not a principled question; it is a tactical question. To Lovestone it will seem that we lose face before the Lovestoneites, but this is nothing. We orient not according to Lovestone but according to the needs of the working class. I believe that even from the point of view of our competition with the Lovestoneites it is a plus and not a minus. In a meeting against a Lovestoneite I would explain what our position was and why we changed. “At that time, you Lovestoneites attacked us. Good. Now in this question, which was so important to you, we have changed our mind. Now, what do you have against the Fourth International?” I am sure we will prepare a split in this manner among the Lovestoneites. In this sense I see no obstacles.
Before finishing—a correction in the formulation of the question: The labor party proposal is not a part of the program of transitional demands but is a special motion.
Question: In a trade union does one advocate a labor party, vote for it?
Trotsky: Why not? In the case of a trade union where the question comes up, I will get up and say that the need for a labor party is absolutely proved by all the events. It is proved that economic action is not enough. We need political action. In a union I will say what counts is the content of the labor party, that is why I reserve something to say about the program, but I will vote for it.
Question:The workers seem absolutely apathetic toward a labor party; their leaders are doing nothing, and the Stalinists are for Roosevelt.
Trotsky: But this is characteristic of a certain period where there is no program. Where they don’t see the new road. It is absolutely necessary to overcome this apathy. It is absolutely necessary to give a new slogan.
Question: Some comrades have even collected figures tending to prove that the labor-party movement is actually declining among the workers.
Trotsky: There is a major line and then minor oscillations, as for example the moods in the CIO. First aggressiveness. Now in the crisis the CIO appears a thousand times more dangerous than before to the capitalists, but the leaders are afraid to break with Roosevelt. The masses wait. They are disoriented, unemployment is increasing. It is possible to prove that the sentiment has decreased since a year ago. Possibly the Stalinist influence adds to this, but this is only a secondary oscillation, and it is very dangerous to base ourselves upon the secondary oscillations since in a short time the major movement becomes more imperative and this objective necessity will find its subjective expression in the heads of the workers, especially if we help them. The party is a historic instrument to help the workers.
Question: Some of the members who came from the Socialist Party complain that at that time they were for a labor party and were convinced in arguing with the Trotskyists that they were wrong. Now they must switch back.
Trotsky: Yes, it is a pedagogical question, but it is a good school for the comrades. Now they can see dialectical development better than before.
Discussion in Mexico City, July 20, 1938
Question: What influence can “prosperity,” an economic rise of American capitalism in the next period, have upon our activity as based on the transitional program?
Trotsky: It is very difficult to answer because it is an equation with many unknown elements, magnitudes. The first question is if a conjunctural improvement is probable in the near future. It is very difficult to answer, especially for a person who does not follow the charts from day to day. As I see from the New York Times, the specialists are very uncertain about the question. In last Sunday’s issue of the New York Times, the business index showed a very confused tendency. During the last week there was a loss, two weeks before a rise, and so on.
If you consider the general picture we see that a new crisis has begun, showing an almost vertical line of decline up until January of this year, then the line becomes hesitant—a zigzag line, but with general declining tendency. But the decline during this year is undoubtedly slower than the decline during the nine months of the preceding year.
If we consider the preceding period beginning with the slump of 1929, we see that the crisis lasted almost 3-1/2 years before the upturn began, with some smaller ups and downs, lasting 4-1/2 years—it was Roosevelt “prosperity.” In this way the last cycle was of 8 years, 3-1/2 years of crisis and 4-1/2 years of relative “prosperity,” 8 years being considered as a normal time for a capitalist cycle.
Now the new crisis began in August 1937, and in nine months has reached the point which was reached in the preceding crisis in 2-1/2 years. It is very difficult to make a prognosis now concerning the time, the point of a new rise. If we consider the new slump from the point of view of its deepness, I repeat, the work of 2-1/2 years is completed by the crisis, yet it has not reached the lowest point of the preceding crisis. If we consider the new crisis from the point of view of time—nine years, or seven, eight years, it would be too early for a new up-movement. That is why I repeat that prognosis is difficult. Is it necessary that the new crisis should reach the same point—the lowest point—as the preceding crisis? It is probable, but it is not absolutely sure. What is characteristic of the new cycle is that “prosperity” did not reach the high point of preceding prosperity, but from that we cannot make in an abstract manner a conclusion about the nadir. What characterizes the Roosevelt prosperity is the fact that it was a movement mainly of the light industries, not of the building trades, the heavy industries. This made this movement develop in a very limited fashion. That is precisely the reason why the breakdown came so catastrophically, because the new cycle did not have a solid basis of heavy industries, especially of the building-trades industries which are characterized by new investments with a long-term perspective and so on.
Now we can theoretically suppose that the new up-movement will include more than building industries—the heavy industries in general—in view of the fact that despite consumption during the last period the machinery was not renewed sufficiently and now the demand for it will be greater than during the last conjuncture. It is possible it can give a greater, a more solid up-movement than the preceding. It is absolutely not contradictory to our general analysis of a sick, declining capitalism causing greater and greater misery.
This theoretical possibility is to a certain degree supported by the military investment in public relief works. It signifies from a large historical point of view that the nation becomes poorer in order to permit better conjunctures today and tomorrow. We can compare such a conjuncture with a tremendous expense to the general organism. It can be considered as possibly a new pre-war conjuncture, but when will it begin? Will the down-movement continue? It is possible—probable. In that sense we will have in the next period not 13 or 14 millions, but 15 millions of unemployed. In this sense all we said about the transitional program will be reinforced in every respect, but we are adopting a hypothesis of a new up-movement in the next few months, in half a year or a year. Such a movement may be inevitable.
To the first question, if such an up-movement can be more favorable to the general perspective before our party, I believe we can answer with a categorical yes, that it would be more favorable for us. There cannot be any reason to believe that American capitalism can of itself in the next period become a sound, healthy capitalism, that it can absorb the 13 millions of unemployed. But the question is, if we formulate it in a very simple and arithmetical form—if in the next year or two years the industries absorb 4 millions of workers from the 13 millions unemployed, that will leave 9 million. Would that be favorable from the point of view of the revolutionary movement? I believe we can answer with a categorical yes.
We have a situation in a country—a very revolutionary situation in a very conservative country—with a subjective backwardness on the part of the mentality of the working class. In such a situation, economic pickups—sharp economic pickups, ups and downs—from a historical point of view have a secondary character but in the immediate sense have a profound effect on the lives of millions of workers. Today they have a very great importance. Such shake-ups are of a very great revolutionary importance. They shake off their conserva-tiveness; they force them to seek an account of what is happening, what is the perspective. And every such shake-up pushes some stratum of the workers onto the revolutionary road.
More concretely, now the American workers are in an impasse—a blind alley. The big movement, the CIO, has no immediate perspective because it is not guided by a revolutionary party and the difficulties of the CIO are very great. From the other side, the revolutionary elements are too weak in order to give to the movement a sharp turn to the political road.
Imagine that during the next period 4 millions of workers enter the industries. It will not soften the social antagonisms—on the contrary. It will sharpen them. If the industries were capable of absorbing the 13 million or 11 million of unemployed, then it would signify for a long period a softening of the class struggle, but it can only absorb a part, and the majority will remain unemployed. Every unemployed person sees that the employed have work. He will look for work and, not finding any, will enter into the unemployed movement. I believe in this period our slogan of the sliding scale can receive very great popularity; that is, that we ask for work for everybody under decent conditions in a popular form: “We must find work for all, under decent conditions with decent salaries.”
The first period of a rise—economic rise—would be very favorable, especially for this slogan. I believe also that the other very important slogan of defense, workers’ militia, etc., would also find favorable soil, a base, because through such a limited and uncertain rise—the capitalists become very anxious to have immediate profits and they look with great hostility on the unions which disturb the possibility of new rise in profits. In such conditions I believe that Hague[26] would be imitated on a large scale.
The question of the labor party before the trade unions. Of course the CIO through a new prosperity would have a new possibility of development. In that sense we can suppose that the improvement of the conjuncture would postpone the question of the labor party. Not that it will lose its whole propagandists importance, but it will lose its acuteness. We can then prepare the progressive elements to accept this idea and be ready when the new crisis approaches, which will not be long in coming.
I believe that this question of Hagueism has a tremendous importance, and that a new prosperity, a new upturn, would give us greater possibilities. A new upturn will signify that the definite crisis, the definite conflicts are postponed for some years in spite of the sharp conflicts during the rise itself. And we have the greatest interest in winning more time because we are weak and the workers are not prepared in the United States. But even a new upturn will give us a very short time—the disproportion between the mentality and the methods of American workers in the social crisis, this disproportion is terrific. However, I have the impression that we must give some concrete examples of success and not limit ourselves only to giving good theoretical advice. If you take the New Jersey situation, it is a tremendous blow not only to social-democracy but to the working class. Hague is just beginning. We also are just beginning, but Hague is a thousand times more powerful… .
Of course the question of the labor party cannot be considered independent from the general development in the next period. If a new prosperity comes for some time and postpones the question of a labor party, then the question will for some time become more or less academic, but we will continue to prepare the party in order not to lose time when the question again becomes acute, but such a tremendous prosperity is not very probable now and if the economic situation remains as now, then the party can change in a short time. The most important fact we must underline is the total difference in America in connection [comparison] with a working class from Europe. In Europe, let us say in Germany before Hitler, in Austria, France now, Great Britain, the question of a party for the workers was looked upon as a necessity; it was a commonplace for the vanguard of the working class and for a large stratum of the masses themselves.
In the United States the situation is absolutely different. In France political agitation consists in the attempts of the CP to win the workers, of the SP to win the workers, and every conscious or semi-conscious worker stands before a choice. Should he adhere to the SP or the CP or Radical SP? For the Radical Socialist Party[27] it is not such a problem, since that is mostly for the foremen, but the workers have to choose between the SP and the CP.
In the United States the situation is that the working class needs a party—its own party. It is the first step in political education. We can say that this first step was due five or ten years ago. Yes, theoretically that is so, but insofar as the workers were more or less satisfied by the trade union machinery, and even lived without this machinery, the propaganda in favor of a working class party was more or less theoretical, abstract and coincided with the propaganda of certain centrist and communist groups and so on.
Now the situation has changed. It is an objective fact in the sense that the new trade unions created by the workers came to an impasse—a blind alley—and the only way for workers already organized in trade unions is to join their forces in order to influence legislation, to influence the class struggle. The working class stands before an alternative. Either the trade unions will be dissolved or they will join for political action. That is the objective situation, not created by us, and in this sense the agitation for a working class party becomes now not an abstract but a totally concrete step in progress for the workers organized in the trade unions in the first instance and for those not organized at all. In the second place it is an absolutely concrete task determined by economic and social conditions.
It would be absurd for us to say that because the new party issues from the political amalgamation of the trade unions it will of necessity be opportunistic. We will not invite the workers to make this same step in the same way as abroad. Of course if we had any real choice between a reformist party or a revolutionary party, we would say this is your address (meaning the revolutionary party). But a party is absolutely necessary. It is the only road for us in this situation. To say that we will fight against opportunism, as of course we will fight today and tomorrow, especially if the working-class party had been organized, by blocking a progressive step which can produce opportunism, is a very reactionary policy, and sectarianism is often reactionary because it opposes the necessary action of the working class…
I believe that the most fighting elements in the trade unions should be our youth, who should not oppose our movement to the labor party but go inside the labor party, even a very opportunist labor party. They must be inside. That is their duty. That our young comrades separate the transitional program from the labor party is understandable because the transitional program is an international question, but for the United States they are connected—both questions—and I believe that some of our young comrades accept the transitional program without good understanding of its meaning, for otherwise the formal separation of it would lose for them all importance.
Notes
12. Lewis and Hillman. John L. Lewis (1880-1969), president of the United Mine Workers from 1920 to I960; principal founder and leader of the CIO from its beginning in 1935 till his resignation in 1 940.
Sidney Hillman (1887-1946), president of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers. At the time of this conversation, he was the second most important figure in the CIO.
13. Plenum. A plenary (full) session of the National Committee of the Socialist Workers Party. This committee is the SWP’s highest body between conventions.
14. Labor Party in New York. In July 1936, in preparation for the fall presidential elections, the American Labor Party was formed in New York State. Its policy was to nominate on its ticket the principal candidates of the Roosevelt wing of the Democratic Party and of the local Republican-Fusion coalition headed by Mayor La Guardia. The ALP was created, mainly by the leaders of the garment workers’ unions, as a device for channeling to Roosevelt and La Guardia the votes of the socialist-minded garment workers who traditionally refused to vote for a capitalist party.
15. People’s Front or Popular Front. Following the catastrophe in Germany, where its ultraleft line permitted the Nazis to come to power without any fight being put up against them, the Communist International in 1935 zigzagged far to the right and imposed on all its parties throughout the world the line of the People’s Front, i.e., building coalition governments of the workers’ parties and the liberal capitalist parties.
16. Gompers, Samuel (1850-1924). President of the American Federation of Labor from 1886 to 1924, save for a two-year interval in the eighteen-nineties; a conservative, antisocialist, craft unionist; his political policy for the AFL was to endorse neither capitalist party but to support specific candidates in a given election, i.e., “to reward your friends and punish your enemies."
17. League. The Communist League of America, the name of the Trotskyist organization at that time.
18. Pepper, John. Pseudonym in the U.S. for Josef Pogany, a Hungarian who had played an undistinguished role in the short-lived revolutionary government in Hungary in 1919. He came to the U.S. in 1922 in the company of a Comintern delegation and remained. Was put on the CPUSA’s top committee. Formed faction with Ruthenberg; was Lovestone’s mentor. Pepper masterminded the CP’s intervention in the Farmer-Labor Party movement and the flirtation with La Follette’s third party in 1 924. He was recalled to Moscow in 1924.
Since Trotsky had polemicized against Pepper’s line inthe Comintern and since Cannon, Dunne, and Shachtman, who later became Trotskyists, had opposed Pepper’s policies and faction in the American CP, the reference to him as “our common friend” is ironical.
19. Technocracy. A program and movement which achieved a great vogue, particularly in the middle class, in the early years of the depression. It proposed to overcome the depression and bring about full employment by rationalizing the U.S. economy and monetary system under the control of engineers and technical experts-all this without class struggle or revolution. The movement eventually split into a left and right wing, with the latter developing fascist tendencies.
20. America’s Sixty Families, by Ferdinand Lundberg, New York: Vanguard Press, 1937. The book, a sensation when it appeared, documented the existence of an economic dligarchy in the U. S. headed by sixty families of immense wealth. The author brought the work up to date in 1968 under the title, The Rich and the Super-Rich.
21. The Annalist, “a magazine of finance, commerce and economics.” It began in 1913 and ceased publication in 1940.
22. State of affairs in New Jersey. The reference is to the situation in Jersey City where the corrupt administration of Democratic Party Mayor Frank P. Hague used governmental power and police violence, in cooperation with company hired thugs, to prevent the CIO from organizing. Picketing was forbidden, and distributors of union leaflets were jailed or run out of town. To charges that he was denying the unionists their elementary civil rights guaranteed by law, Hague made the celebrated statement: “I am the law."
23. Lewis plus Green plus Follette. For John L. Lewis, see note 1 2.
William Green (1873-1952), president of the American Federation of Labor; a conservative craft unionist.
Robert M. La Follette, Jr. (1895-1953), of the famous Progressive Republican dynasty in Wisconsin; son of the Robert M. La Follette who had run as the Progressive candidate for President in 1924; at the time, the younger Robert La Follette was U.S. Senator. At the end of April 1938, his brother Philip La Follette, then governor of Wisconsin, had issued a call for a new Progressive Party.
24. La Cuardia, Fiorello H. (1882-1947). Republican congressman from New York 1917-33, save for one term in early nineteen-twenties; mayor of New York City 1934-45. See notes 11 and 14.
25. Ludlow Amendment. A proposed amendment to the U.S. Constitution which would require a direct popular referendum by the people for a declaration of war. It took its name from Indiana Representative Louis Ludlow who first introduced the resolution in Congress. He reintroduced it in the House in 1937, and Senator La Follette introduced a similar resolution in the Senate. On January 10,1938, the House voted down the Ludlow resolution. Earlier in the same week, a Gallup public opinion poll showed that 72 percent of the American people favored the bill. The Socialist Workers Party seized upon the Ludlow proposal as fitting in with its program of transitional demands and, utilizing the slogan “Let the people vote on war,” carried on an agitational campaign in favor of such a popular referendum.
26. Hague, Frank P. See note 22. The spring and summer of 1938 (including the interval between this and the previous discussion with Trotsky) had been marked by a series of unsuccessful attempts to hold rallies in Jersey City protesting Mayor Hague’s dictatorship. Attempting to address a rally in Journal Square on May Day eve, Socialist Party leader Norman Thomas had been assaulted, kidnapped, and deported by Jersey City police. Later in May, a similar protest rally, at which two U.S. congressmen were scheduled to speak, was called off at the last minute in the face of Hague’s countermobilization in Journal Square of masses of police, city employees, American legionnaires and company thugs. At the end of the month an attempt to hold a rally, this time at Pershing Field, was smashed by a similar mobilization of Hague forces and the police deportation of speakers including Congressman Jerry O’Connell, the officers of the Hudson County Labor Defense Committee, and the CIO regional director. Finally, a rally scheduled to be addressed by Norman Thomas in Newark, which was outside Hague’s bailiwick and had a liberal city administration, was disrupted by an invasion of Hague’s forces.
27. Radical Socialist Party. The principal capitalist party in France during the period between World Wars I and II. It was neither radical nor socialist, but a liberal capitalist party, roughly comparable to the Democratic Party in the U.S., with, however, the difference that it had an anticlerical tradition and was a stronghold of freemasonry.
Wednesday, August 01, 2012
From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- The Moment
My old friend, Peter Paul Markin, my old merry prankster yellow brick road “on the bus” 1960s summer of love, 1967 version, friend came over to Cambridge to visit me a few weeks back. We had lost touch for a while, although we never really lost contact for any extended period, but now we have time and the inclination to “cut up torches” more often about the old times. He told me that he had recently gone up to my old home town in Maine, Olde Saco, to take “the waters.” He had been going to Maine periodically ever since I introduced him to Perkin’s Cove down near York way back when so that was no surprise.
Of course any reference to Olde Saco automatically brings back memories for me of Olde Saco Beach, and of Jimmy Jakes’ Diner where I and my corner boys hung out looking, well what else do corner boys do, looking for girls. Especially girls who had a little loose change to play Jimmy Jakes be all to end all jukebox. But that is not what I wanted to talk to Peter Paul about just then, although I said we might get back to it some other time. What I wanted to discuss with Peter Paul, why I had asked him over, was how he had, happily, stayed with Laura, his soul mate, all these years.
Now this was no abstract question for I had just completed the final proceedings on my third divorce. (I won’t even list the number of other non-marital arrangements that I have been part of over the years. I only count the official ones, the ones that cost me dough.) So I was frankly jealous/perplexed that Peter Paul and Laura had survived through thick and thin. And here is what he had to say to the best of my recollection:
“Josh, you know as well as I do that in the old days, the old California care-free days that we were nothing but skirt-chasers. Yah, we might have been “on the bus” with Captain Crunch and the “new age” and all that stuff but I don’t remember a time when a good-looking woman passed by, young or old (old then being maybe thirty, right), that we didn’t do a double-take on. And wish we had been fast enough to come up with a line to entrance, enchant, or whatever it was we thought we had in those days. I don’t know about you but I still do those double-takes and I bet you, you old geezer, do too. [Josh laughs] Jesus, remember Butterfly Swirl when you and I first met and how you “stole” her right from under my nose. You just never got over the rolling stone thing. And before Laura I was strictly a rolling stone too.”
“I already told you a few times about how Laura and I met, met in high civilization Harvard Square, when I was in my lonesome cowboy minute and we connected from the start. From the Ms. Right start I called it. And about that first handshake that sealed, sealed maybe for eternity, that we were going to stick. Stick like glue. You know that part, that ancient history part , so unless you want me to repeat it I want to talk about sometime more recent that will give you a better I idea of what I mean. You’ll like this one too because it involves that last trip to Olde Saco”
“As you damn well know every once in a while I have to journey to the ocean, back to our homeland the sea. It’s just part of my DNA, just like yours. It’s in the blood since childhood. Usually, over the last several years, I have headed up to Olde Saco for a couple of days at a time alone as a change of pace. When I announce that I am going Laura usually asks, “Is it a retreat or a vacation (probably meaning from her, and the cats)?” We usually laugh about it. This time I was going an extra day since we were not going to take a week’s vacation this summer.”
“You know Laura just retired so I figured that she would appreciate the time to collect her thoughts (in between playing housemaid to the cats). A couple of days before I was set to go she said she wanted to come up for a day. I don’t remember whether she said it sheepishly or not, this Maine thing being “my time” but I said, straight up, “come on up.” And she did. No big deal; we walked Olde Saco Beach(new to her since we usually went to Wells together in Maine), went to dinner and then had our traditional ocean ice cream.”
“That last stop, that ice cream parlor stop, was at Dubois’ on Route One. Was that there when you were a kid? [Josh: no]. And do you know what the place had. It had an old jukebox that played all the old tunes. So naturally we had to, or rather Laura had to, play a few memory lane tunes. I don’t remember them all, except some dreary Rickey Nelson thing, she insisted on playing to rekindle some school girl crush she had on the guy.”
“And that experience, or rather one moment in that experience, explains why we have stuck, stuck like glue, all these years. There we were sitting in some plastic chairs eating our ice cream (frozen pudding, good frozen pudding) Laura, looking like a school girl, swaying to the music and with a smile on her face, a relaxed smile that said it all. What guy in his right mind would give up that smile, or the possibility of that smile, short of eternity”
Of course any reference to Olde Saco automatically brings back memories for me of Olde Saco Beach, and of Jimmy Jakes’ Diner where I and my corner boys hung out looking, well what else do corner boys do, looking for girls. Especially girls who had a little loose change to play Jimmy Jakes be all to end all jukebox. But that is not what I wanted to talk to Peter Paul about just then, although I said we might get back to it some other time. What I wanted to discuss with Peter Paul, why I had asked him over, was how he had, happily, stayed with Laura, his soul mate, all these years.
Now this was no abstract question for I had just completed the final proceedings on my third divorce. (I won’t even list the number of other non-marital arrangements that I have been part of over the years. I only count the official ones, the ones that cost me dough.) So I was frankly jealous/perplexed that Peter Paul and Laura had survived through thick and thin. And here is what he had to say to the best of my recollection:
“Josh, you know as well as I do that in the old days, the old California care-free days that we were nothing but skirt-chasers. Yah, we might have been “on the bus” with Captain Crunch and the “new age” and all that stuff but I don’t remember a time when a good-looking woman passed by, young or old (old then being maybe thirty, right), that we didn’t do a double-take on. And wish we had been fast enough to come up with a line to entrance, enchant, or whatever it was we thought we had in those days. I don’t know about you but I still do those double-takes and I bet you, you old geezer, do too. [Josh laughs] Jesus, remember Butterfly Swirl when you and I first met and how you “stole” her right from under my nose. You just never got over the rolling stone thing. And before Laura I was strictly a rolling stone too.”
“I already told you a few times about how Laura and I met, met in high civilization Harvard Square, when I was in my lonesome cowboy minute and we connected from the start. From the Ms. Right start I called it. And about that first handshake that sealed, sealed maybe for eternity, that we were going to stick. Stick like glue. You know that part, that ancient history part , so unless you want me to repeat it I want to talk about sometime more recent that will give you a better I idea of what I mean. You’ll like this one too because it involves that last trip to Olde Saco”
“As you damn well know every once in a while I have to journey to the ocean, back to our homeland the sea. It’s just part of my DNA, just like yours. It’s in the blood since childhood. Usually, over the last several years, I have headed up to Olde Saco for a couple of days at a time alone as a change of pace. When I announce that I am going Laura usually asks, “Is it a retreat or a vacation (probably meaning from her, and the cats)?” We usually laugh about it. This time I was going an extra day since we were not going to take a week’s vacation this summer.”
“You know Laura just retired so I figured that she would appreciate the time to collect her thoughts (in between playing housemaid to the cats). A couple of days before I was set to go she said she wanted to come up for a day. I don’t remember whether she said it sheepishly or not, this Maine thing being “my time” but I said, straight up, “come on up.” And she did. No big deal; we walked Olde Saco Beach(new to her since we usually went to Wells together in Maine), went to dinner and then had our traditional ocean ice cream.”
“That last stop, that ice cream parlor stop, was at Dubois’ on Route One. Was that there when you were a kid? [Josh: no]. And do you know what the place had. It had an old jukebox that played all the old tunes. So naturally we had to, or rather Laura had to, play a few memory lane tunes. I don’t remember them all, except some dreary Rickey Nelson thing, she insisted on playing to rekindle some school girl crush she had on the guy.”
“And that experience, or rather one moment in that experience, explains why we have stuck, stuck like glue, all these years. There we were sitting in some plastic chairs eating our ice cream (frozen pudding, good frozen pudding) Laura, looking like a school girl, swaying to the music and with a smile on her face, a relaxed smile that said it all. What guy in his right mind would give up that smile, or the possibility of that smile, short of eternity”
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Out In The Be-Bop Night- Scenes From Search For The Blue-Pink Great American West Night-The Ballad Of Captain Cob And The S.S. Blue-Pink Night
Markin comment:
I already told you the story one time about the Moline Meltdown that was part of the search in the old days for the great blue-pink American West night so I don’t have to repeat that here but I did start to think that the story of Captain Cob and the S.S. Blue-Pink Night that was part of it would be easier to tell and I would not get myself so balled up in the telling if it was done as a ballad. Make it shorter and more to the point, if nothing else. Also an important source for this story, or model for the story if you will, was Red Sovine’s Big Joe and Phantom 309 as translated by Tom Waits. And Big Joe was nothing but a “talking” ballad in the old Hank Williams or Woody Guthrie style. So I am in good company. Here goes:
The Ballad Of Captain Cob And The S.S. Blue-Pink Night
Okay, let me tell this thing straight through even though I know it will sound off-kilter to you anyway I say it, hell, it will sound half off-kilter to me and I lived through it:
See, back a few years ago, yah, it was back a few years ago when I was nothing but a summer-sweltered sixteen year old high school kid, a city boy high school kid, with no dough, no way to get dough, and nobody I knew who had dough to put a touch on, I went off the deep end.
Plus, plus I had about thirty-six beefs with Ma, around par for the course for a whole summer but way too many for a couple of weeks in, and not even Fourth of July yet.
Worst, worst, if you can believe this, I had a few, two maybe, beefs with the old man, and having a beef with him with Ma the official flak-catcher meant things were tough, too tough to stay around.
Sure, I know, how tough can it be at sixteen to stay put waiting for the summer heat to break and maybe have some clean clear wind bring in a change of fortune. But don’t forget, don’t ever forget when I’m telling you this story that we are talking about a sixteen year old guy, with no dough and plenty of dreams, always plenty of dreams, whatever color they turned out to be.
I threw a few things together in an old green, beaten to hell, knapsack you know enough to get by until things break, that stuff and about three dollars, and I headed out the door like a lot of guys headed out that same kind of door before me in search of fame and fortune.
I hit the main street with a swagger and immediately start thumbing as if my life depended on it. Right away a car, I didn’t see where it had come from before it came into my view, a late model car, looked like a 1961 Ford, slowed down, the driver rolled down his passenger side window and asked where was I heading.
I said “west, I guess,” he said “I’m heading up to Maine to work. Too bad I can’t help you.” As he readied to make tracks I say, “Hey, wait a minute, I‘ll take that ride, North or West it’s all the same to me.” Whoever said that my fortune could not be made in Maine just as easily as in California.
This guy, if you are thinking otherwise, turned out to be pretty interesting, he wasn’t any fruit like a lot of guys who stop when they see a young guy with a dour, carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders pan like mind, and are ready to pounce on that fact.
Seems that Kenny, Kenny of a thousand ships, his name was, worked the boats, the ferries out of Portland and Bar Harbor over to Nova Scotia and filled the time we traveled with stories about different funny things that happened on the trips back and forth.
And this one story that I didn’t think anything about when he told it. He is going on a bit about how one time out in the misty mist his uncle, Captain Cob, Captain Caleb Cob, some old swamp Yankee, whom he served under in some boat saved a bunch of people off an island ferry, off of Portland Light, got them to shore, and went back out looking for more.
Well, he was telling his stories, and I was telling mine about this and that, but mainly about my love of the sea, and about going west to see the Pacific when I get tired of the Atlantic.
Suddenly, Kenny said out of the blue, “Hey, if you’re gonna bum around I’ll leave you off at Old Orchard Beach, right at the beach, there’s plenty of places to sleep there without being bothered.
See, though this guy, Kenny, was so good, such a good guy, that when we get there he doesn’t just let me off on Route One and so I have to thumb another ride into town like most guys would do but takes me right down to the pier, the amusement park pier.
Then he said you know it is probably better to get away from this crowded area, let me take you down Route 9 to the Saco jetty where you can set yourself up in an empty boat. Okay, that sounds right and besides it’s won’t be dark for hours yet and it’s not dark enough for me to make my big teenage city boy moves.
I could see right away that Kenny was right, this place was quiet and there were many row boats just waiting to be used for housekeeping purposes. But, what got my attention was, maybe fifty yards away, was the start of the longest jetty in the world, or so I thought.
Hey, I had walked a few jetties and while you have to be careful for the ill-placed boulders when you get to the end you are feeling like the king of the sea, and old Neptune better step aside. I started walking out,
Christ this was tough going I must be a little tired from all the travel. Nah it’s more than that, the granite slaps are placed helter-skelter so you can’t bound from one to another and you practically have to scale them. After about a hundred yards of scraping my hands silly, and raw, I say the heck with this and head back.
But put sixteen, hunger for adventure, and hunger to beat old fellaheen king Neptune down together and you know this is not the end. I go around looking at my boat selection just exactly like I am going to rent an apartment. Except before I set up housekeeping I am going to take an old skiff out along the jetty to the end. So I pushed one off the sand, jump in and started rowing.
Now I am an ocean guy, no question. And I know my way around boats, a little, so I don’t think much of anything except that I will go kind of slow as I work my way out. Of course a skiff ain’t nothing but a glorified rowboat, if that. It’s all heavy lifting and no “hi tech” like navigation stuff or stuff that tells you how far the end of jetty is. Or even that there is a heavy afternoon fog starting to roll in on the horizon. Yah, but intrepid that’s me.
Hey, I’m not going to England just to the end of the jetty. I said that as the fog, the heavy dark fog as it turned out, enveloped the boat and its new-found captain. I started rowing a little harder and a little more, I ain’t afraid to say it, panic-stricken.
See I thought I was rowing back to shore but I knew, knew deep somewhere in my nautical brain that I was drifting out to sea. I’m still rowing though, as the winds pick up and rain starts slashing away at the boat. Or course, the seas have started swelling, water cresting over the sides. Christ, so this is the way it is going to finish up for me.
What seemed like a couple more hours and I just plain stopped rowing, maybe I will drift to shore but I sure as hell am not going to keep pushing out to sea. Tired, yah, tired as hell but with a little giddy feeling that old Neptune was going be seeing me soon so I decided to put my head down and rest.
Suddenly I was awoken by the distinct sound of a diesel engine, no about six diesels, and a big, flashing light coming around my bow. I yell out, “over here.” A voice answers, “I know.”
Next thing I know an old geezer, a real old geezer decked out in his captain’s gear is putting a rope around the bow of my boat and telling me to get ready to come aboard.
After getting me a blanket, some water and asking if I wanted a nip of something (I said yes) he said I was lucky, lucky as hell that he came by. Then he asked what I was doing out here in the open sea with such a rig, and wasn’t I some kind of fool boy.
Well, I told my story, although he seemed to know it already like he made a daily habit of saving sixteen year old city boys from the sea, or themselves. So we swapped stories for a while as we headed in, and I had a nip or two more.
As we got close to Saco pier though he blurted out that he had to let me off before the dock because he had some other business on the Biddeford side.
Here is where it gets really weird though. He asked me, as we parted, did I know the name of his boat (a trawler, really). I said I couldn’t see it in all the fog and swirling sea. He told me she was the “S.S. Blue-Pink Night”.
I blurted out, “Strange name for a boat, what is it a symbol or something?”
Then he told me about how he started out long ago on land, as a kid just like me, maybe a little older, heading to California, and the warm weather and the strange blue-pink night skies and the dreams that come with them. I said how come you’re still here but he said he was pressed for time.
Here is the thing that really threw me off. He gave me a small dried sea shell, a clam shell really, that was painted on its inner surface and what was painted on it was a very intricate, subliminally beautiful scene of what could only be that blue-pink California sky.
I said, “Thanks; I’ll always remember you for this and the rescue.” He said, “Hell lad that ain’t nothing but an old clam shell." When you get over to that Saco café at the dock just show it to them and you can get a meal on it. That meal is what you’ll remember me by.”
Hungry, no famished, I stumbled into the Saco café, although that was not its name but some sea name, and it was nothing but a diner if you thought about it, a diner that served liquor to boot so there were plenty of guys, sea guys, nursing beers until the storm blew over, or whatever guys spend half the day in a gin mill waiting to blow over.
I stepped to the counter and told the waitress, no, I asked politely just in case this was a joke, whether this old clam shell from the captain of the “Blue-Pink Night” got me a meal, or just a call to take the air.
All of a sudden the whole place, small as it was, went quiet as guys put their heads down and pretended that they didn’t hear or else though the joint doubled up as a church.
I asked my question again and the waitress answered , “What’ll you have?”
Then she asked me did I know anything about the captain, and how did he look, and where did he meet me, and a whole bunch of questions like this was some mystery, and I guess maybe there was at that.
Then the waitress told me this (and I think every other guy in the room by the loudness of her voice),
“A few years back, yes, about six or seven years ago, there was a big storm that came through Portland Light, some say a perfect storm, I don’t know, but it was a howler.”
“Well, one of the small ferries capsized out there and somehow someone radioed that there were survivors clinging to the boat. Well, the old captain and his nephew, I think, started up the old “Blue-Pink Night” and headed out, headed out hard, headed out full of whiskey nips, and one way or another, got to the capsized boat and brought the survivors into shore and then headed out again.”
“And we never saw them again.”
“Here is the funny part; when he was unloading his passengers he kept talking, talking up a perfect storm about seeing the blue-pink night when he was out there before and maybe it was still there.”
“I guess the booze had got the best of him. But hear me son, old captain was square with everyone in this place, he used to own it then, and some of his kin are sitting right here now. He was square with them too. So, eat up kid, eat up on the house, ‘cause I want you to save that old clam shell and any time you’re on your uppers you can always get a meal here. Just remember how you got it.”
“Thanks, ma’am,” I said.
Then I slowly, like my soul depended on it, asked, “Oh, by the way what was that old captain’s nephew’s name?” and I said it in such a way that she knew, knew just as well as I did, that I knew the answer.
“Kenny, Kenny Cob, bless his soul.”
I already told you the story one time about the Moline Meltdown that was part of the search in the old days for the great blue-pink American West night so I don’t have to repeat that here but I did start to think that the story of Captain Cob and the S.S. Blue-Pink Night that was part of it would be easier to tell and I would not get myself so balled up in the telling if it was done as a ballad. Make it shorter and more to the point, if nothing else. Also an important source for this story, or model for the story if you will, was Red Sovine’s Big Joe and Phantom 309 as translated by Tom Waits. And Big Joe was nothing but a “talking” ballad in the old Hank Williams or Woody Guthrie style. So I am in good company. Here goes:
The Ballad Of Captain Cob And The S.S. Blue-Pink Night
Okay, let me tell this thing straight through even though I know it will sound off-kilter to you anyway I say it, hell, it will sound half off-kilter to me and I lived through it:
See, back a few years ago, yah, it was back a few years ago when I was nothing but a summer-sweltered sixteen year old high school kid, a city boy high school kid, with no dough, no way to get dough, and nobody I knew who had dough to put a touch on, I went off the deep end.
Plus, plus I had about thirty-six beefs with Ma, around par for the course for a whole summer but way too many for a couple of weeks in, and not even Fourth of July yet.
Worst, worst, if you can believe this, I had a few, two maybe, beefs with the old man, and having a beef with him with Ma the official flak-catcher meant things were tough, too tough to stay around.
Sure, I know, how tough can it be at sixteen to stay put waiting for the summer heat to break and maybe have some clean clear wind bring in a change of fortune. But don’t forget, don’t ever forget when I’m telling you this story that we are talking about a sixteen year old guy, with no dough and plenty of dreams, always plenty of dreams, whatever color they turned out to be.
I threw a few things together in an old green, beaten to hell, knapsack you know enough to get by until things break, that stuff and about three dollars, and I headed out the door like a lot of guys headed out that same kind of door before me in search of fame and fortune.
I hit the main street with a swagger and immediately start thumbing as if my life depended on it. Right away a car, I didn’t see where it had come from before it came into my view, a late model car, looked like a 1961 Ford, slowed down, the driver rolled down his passenger side window and asked where was I heading.
I said “west, I guess,” he said “I’m heading up to Maine to work. Too bad I can’t help you.” As he readied to make tracks I say, “Hey, wait a minute, I‘ll take that ride, North or West it’s all the same to me.” Whoever said that my fortune could not be made in Maine just as easily as in California.
This guy, if you are thinking otherwise, turned out to be pretty interesting, he wasn’t any fruit like a lot of guys who stop when they see a young guy with a dour, carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders pan like mind, and are ready to pounce on that fact.
Seems that Kenny, Kenny of a thousand ships, his name was, worked the boats, the ferries out of Portland and Bar Harbor over to Nova Scotia and filled the time we traveled with stories about different funny things that happened on the trips back and forth.
And this one story that I didn’t think anything about when he told it. He is going on a bit about how one time out in the misty mist his uncle, Captain Cob, Captain Caleb Cob, some old swamp Yankee, whom he served under in some boat saved a bunch of people off an island ferry, off of Portland Light, got them to shore, and went back out looking for more.
Well, he was telling his stories, and I was telling mine about this and that, but mainly about my love of the sea, and about going west to see the Pacific when I get tired of the Atlantic.
Suddenly, Kenny said out of the blue, “Hey, if you’re gonna bum around I’ll leave you off at Old Orchard Beach, right at the beach, there’s plenty of places to sleep there without being bothered.
See, though this guy, Kenny, was so good, such a good guy, that when we get there he doesn’t just let me off on Route One and so I have to thumb another ride into town like most guys would do but takes me right down to the pier, the amusement park pier.
Then he said you know it is probably better to get away from this crowded area, let me take you down Route 9 to the Saco jetty where you can set yourself up in an empty boat. Okay, that sounds right and besides it’s won’t be dark for hours yet and it’s not dark enough for me to make my big teenage city boy moves.
I could see right away that Kenny was right, this place was quiet and there were many row boats just waiting to be used for housekeeping purposes. But, what got my attention was, maybe fifty yards away, was the start of the longest jetty in the world, or so I thought.
Hey, I had walked a few jetties and while you have to be careful for the ill-placed boulders when you get to the end you are feeling like the king of the sea, and old Neptune better step aside. I started walking out,
Christ this was tough going I must be a little tired from all the travel. Nah it’s more than that, the granite slaps are placed helter-skelter so you can’t bound from one to another and you practically have to scale them. After about a hundred yards of scraping my hands silly, and raw, I say the heck with this and head back.
But put sixteen, hunger for adventure, and hunger to beat old fellaheen king Neptune down together and you know this is not the end. I go around looking at my boat selection just exactly like I am going to rent an apartment. Except before I set up housekeeping I am going to take an old skiff out along the jetty to the end. So I pushed one off the sand, jump in and started rowing.
Now I am an ocean guy, no question. And I know my way around boats, a little, so I don’t think much of anything except that I will go kind of slow as I work my way out. Of course a skiff ain’t nothing but a glorified rowboat, if that. It’s all heavy lifting and no “hi tech” like navigation stuff or stuff that tells you how far the end of jetty is. Or even that there is a heavy afternoon fog starting to roll in on the horizon. Yah, but intrepid that’s me.
Hey, I’m not going to England just to the end of the jetty. I said that as the fog, the heavy dark fog as it turned out, enveloped the boat and its new-found captain. I started rowing a little harder and a little more, I ain’t afraid to say it, panic-stricken.
See I thought I was rowing back to shore but I knew, knew deep somewhere in my nautical brain that I was drifting out to sea. I’m still rowing though, as the winds pick up and rain starts slashing away at the boat. Or course, the seas have started swelling, water cresting over the sides. Christ, so this is the way it is going to finish up for me.
What seemed like a couple more hours and I just plain stopped rowing, maybe I will drift to shore but I sure as hell am not going to keep pushing out to sea. Tired, yah, tired as hell but with a little giddy feeling that old Neptune was going be seeing me soon so I decided to put my head down and rest.
Suddenly I was awoken by the distinct sound of a diesel engine, no about six diesels, and a big, flashing light coming around my bow. I yell out, “over here.” A voice answers, “I know.”
Next thing I know an old geezer, a real old geezer decked out in his captain’s gear is putting a rope around the bow of my boat and telling me to get ready to come aboard.
After getting me a blanket, some water and asking if I wanted a nip of something (I said yes) he said I was lucky, lucky as hell that he came by. Then he asked what I was doing out here in the open sea with such a rig, and wasn’t I some kind of fool boy.
Well, I told my story, although he seemed to know it already like he made a daily habit of saving sixteen year old city boys from the sea, or themselves. So we swapped stories for a while as we headed in, and I had a nip or two more.
As we got close to Saco pier though he blurted out that he had to let me off before the dock because he had some other business on the Biddeford side.
Here is where it gets really weird though. He asked me, as we parted, did I know the name of his boat (a trawler, really). I said I couldn’t see it in all the fog and swirling sea. He told me she was the “S.S. Blue-Pink Night”.
I blurted out, “Strange name for a boat, what is it a symbol or something?”
Then he told me about how he started out long ago on land, as a kid just like me, maybe a little older, heading to California, and the warm weather and the strange blue-pink night skies and the dreams that come with them. I said how come you’re still here but he said he was pressed for time.
Here is the thing that really threw me off. He gave me a small dried sea shell, a clam shell really, that was painted on its inner surface and what was painted on it was a very intricate, subliminally beautiful scene of what could only be that blue-pink California sky.
I said, “Thanks; I’ll always remember you for this and the rescue.” He said, “Hell lad that ain’t nothing but an old clam shell." When you get over to that Saco café at the dock just show it to them and you can get a meal on it. That meal is what you’ll remember me by.”
Hungry, no famished, I stumbled into the Saco café, although that was not its name but some sea name, and it was nothing but a diner if you thought about it, a diner that served liquor to boot so there were plenty of guys, sea guys, nursing beers until the storm blew over, or whatever guys spend half the day in a gin mill waiting to blow over.
I stepped to the counter and told the waitress, no, I asked politely just in case this was a joke, whether this old clam shell from the captain of the “Blue-Pink Night” got me a meal, or just a call to take the air.
All of a sudden the whole place, small as it was, went quiet as guys put their heads down and pretended that they didn’t hear or else though the joint doubled up as a church.
I asked my question again and the waitress answered , “What’ll you have?”
Then she asked me did I know anything about the captain, and how did he look, and where did he meet me, and a whole bunch of questions like this was some mystery, and I guess maybe there was at that.
Then the waitress told me this (and I think every other guy in the room by the loudness of her voice),
“A few years back, yes, about six or seven years ago, there was a big storm that came through Portland Light, some say a perfect storm, I don’t know, but it was a howler.”
“Well, one of the small ferries capsized out there and somehow someone radioed that there were survivors clinging to the boat. Well, the old captain and his nephew, I think, started up the old “Blue-Pink Night” and headed out, headed out hard, headed out full of whiskey nips, and one way or another, got to the capsized boat and brought the survivors into shore and then headed out again.”
“And we never saw them again.”
“Here is the funny part; when he was unloading his passengers he kept talking, talking up a perfect storm about seeing the blue-pink night when he was out there before and maybe it was still there.”
“I guess the booze had got the best of him. But hear me son, old captain was square with everyone in this place, he used to own it then, and some of his kin are sitting right here now. He was square with them too. So, eat up kid, eat up on the house, ‘cause I want you to save that old clam shell and any time you’re on your uppers you can always get a meal here. Just remember how you got it.”
“Thanks, ma’am,” I said.
Then I slowly, like my soul depended on it, asked, “Oh, by the way what was that old captain’s nephew’s name?” and I said it in such a way that she knew, knew just as well as I did, that I knew the answer.
“Kenny, Kenny Cob, bless his soul.”
The Labor Party Question In The United States- An Historical Overview-Fight For A Worker Party That Fights For A Workers Government
Click on the headline to link to the James P. Cannon Internet Archives for an online copy of his 1940s documents on the labor party question in the United States in his time.
These notes (expanded) were originally intended to be presented as The Labor Question in the United States at a forum on the question on Saturday August 4, 2012. As a number of radicals have noted, most particularly organized socialist radicals, after the dust from the fall bourgeois election settles, regardless of who wins, the working class will lose. Pressure for an independent labor expression, as we head into 2013, may likely to move from its current propaganda point as part of the revolutionary program to agitation and action so learning about the past experiences in the revolutionary and radical labor movements is timely.
I had originally expected to spend most of the speech at the forum delving into the historical experiences, particularly the work of the American Communist Party and the American Socialist Workers Party with a couple of minutes “tip of the hat” to the work of radical around the Labor Party experiences of the late 1990s. However, the scope of the early work and that of those radical in the latter work could not, I felt, be done justice in one forum. Thus these notes are centered on the early historical experiences. If I get a chance, and gather enough information to do the subject justice, I will place notes for the 1990s Labor party work in this space as well.
*********
The subject today is the Labor Party Question in the United States. For starters I want to reconfigure this concept and place it in the context of the Transitional Program first promulgated by Leon Trotsky and his fellows in the Fourth International in 1938. There the labor party concept was expressed as “a workers’ party that fights for a workers government.” [The actual expression for advanced capitalist countries like the U.S. was for a workers and farmers government but that is hardly applicable here now, at least in the United States. Some wag at the time, some Shachtmanite wag from what I understand, noted that there were then more dentists than farmers in the United States. Wag aside that remark is a good point since today we would call for a workers and X (oppressed communities, women, etc.) to make our programmatic point more inclusive.]
For revolutionaries these two algebraically -expressed political ideas are organically joined together. What we mean, what we translate this as, in our propaganda is a mass revolutionary labor party (think Bolsheviks first and foremost) based on the trade unions (the only serious currently organized part of the working class) fighting for soviets (workers councils, factory committees, etc.) as an expression of state power. In short, the dictatorship of the proletariat, a term we do not yet use in “polite” society these days in order not to scare of the masses. And that is the nut. Those of us who stand on those intertwined revolutionary premises are few and far between today and so we need, desperately need, to have a bridge expression, and a bridge organization, the workers party, to do the day to day work of bringing masses of working people to see the need for to have an independent organized expression fighting programmatically for their class interests. And we, they, need it pronto. [That program, the program that we as revolutionaries would fight for, would, as it evolved, center on demands, yes, demands, that would go from day to day needs to the struggle for state power.]
Now there have historically been many efforts to create a mass workers party in the United States going all the way back to the 1830s with the Workingmen’s Party based in New York City. Later efforts, after the Civil War, mainly, when capitalism began to become the driving norm, included the famous Terence Powderly-led Knights of Labor, including (segregated black locals), a National Negro Union, and various European social-democratic off -shoots (including pro-Marxist formations). All those had flaws, some serious like being pro-capitalist, merely reformist, and the like (sound familiar?) and reflected the birth pangs of the organized labor movement rather than serious predecessors.
Things got serious around the turn of the century (oops, turn of the 20th century) when the “age of the robber barons” declared unequivocally that class warfare between labor and capital was the norm in American society (if not expressed that way in “polite” society). This was the period of the rise the Debsian-inspired party of the whole class, the American Socialist Party. More importantly, if contradictorily, emerging from a segment of that organization, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, Wobblies) was, to my mind the first serious revolutionary labor organization (party/union?) that we could look to as fighting a class struggle fight for working class interests. Everyone should read the Preamble to the IWW Constitution of 1905 (look it up on Wikipedia or the IWW website) to see what I mean. It still retains its stirring revolutionary fervor today.
The real unambiguous work of creating a mass labor party that we could recognize though really comes with the fight of the American Communist Party (which had been formed by the sections, the revolutionary-inclined sections, of the American Socialist Party that split off in the great revolutionary/reformist division after the success of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917) in the 1920s to form one based on the trade unions (mainly in the Midwest, and mainly in Chicago with the John Fitzgerald –led AFL). That effort was stillborn, stillborn because the non-communist labor leaders who had the numbers, the locals, and, ah, the dough wanted a farmer-labor party, a two class party to cushion them against radical solutions (breaking from the bourgeois parties and electoralism). Only the timely intervention of the Communist International saved the day from a major blunder (Go to the James P. Cannon Internet Archives for more, much more on this movement, He, and his factional allies including one William Z. Foster, later the titular head of the Communist Party, were in the thick of things to his later red-faced chagrin).
Moving forward, the American Communist Party at the height of the Great Depression (the one in the 1930s, that one, not the one we are in now) created the American Labor Party (along with the American Socialist party and other pro-Democratic Party labor skates) which had a mass base in places like New York and the Midwest. The problem though was this organization was, mainly, a left-handed way to get votes for Roosevelt from class conscious socialist-minded workers who balked at a direct vote for Roosevelt. (Sound familiar, again?) And that, before the Labor Party movement of the 1990s, is pretty much, except a few odd local attempts here and there by leftist groups, some sincere, some not, was probably the last major effort to form any kind of independent labor political organization. (The American Communist Party after 1936, excepting 1940, and even that is up for questioning, would thereafter not dream of seriously organizing such a party. For them the Democratic Party was more than adequate, thank you. Later the Socialist Workers Party essentially took the same stance.)
So much then for the historical aspect of the workers party labor question. The real question, the real lessons, for revolutionaries posed by all of this is really something that was pointed out by James P. Cannon in the late 1930s and early 1940s (and before him Leon Trotsky). Can revolutionaries in the United States recruit masses of working people to a revolutionary labor party today (again think Bolshevik)? To pose the question is to give the answer (an old lawyer’s trick, by the way).
America today, no. Russia in 1917, yes. Germany in 1921, yes. Same place 1923, yes. Spain in 1936 (really from 1934 on), yes. America in the 1930s, probably not (even with no Stalinist ALP siphoning). France 1968, yes. Greece (or Spain) today, yes. So it is all a question of concrete circumstances. That is what Cannon (and before him Trotsky) was arguing for. If you can recruit to the revolutionary labor party that is the ticket. We, even in America are not historically pre-determined to go the old time British Labor Party route as an exclusive way to create a mass based political labor organization. If we are not able to recruit directly then you have to look at some way station effort. That is why in his 1940 documents (which can also be found at the Cannon Internet Archives as well) he stressed that the SWP should where possible (mainly New York) work in the Stalinist-controlled (heaven forbid, cried the Shachtmanites) American Labor Party. That was where masses of organized trade union workers were.
Now I don’t know, and probably nobody else does either, if and when, the American working class is going to come out of its slumber. Some of us thought that Occupy might be a catalyst for that. That has turned out to be patently false as far as the working class goes. So we have to expect that maybe some middle level labor organizers or local union officials feeling pressure from the ranks may begin to call for a labor party. That, as the 1990s Socialist Alternative Labor Party archives indicates, is about what happened when those efforts started.
Earlier this year AFL-CIO President Trumka made noises about labor “going its own way.” I guess he had had too much to drink at the Democratic National Committee meeting the night before, or something. So we should be cautious, but we should be ready. While at the moment tactics like a great regroupment of left forces, a united front with labor militants, or entry in other labor organizations for the purpose of pushing the workers party are premature we should be ready.
And that last sentence brings up my final point, another point courtesy of Jim Cannon. He made a big point in the 1940s documents about the various kinds of political activities that small revolutionary propaganda groups or individuals can participate in (and actually large socialist organizations too before taking state power). He lumped propaganda, agitation, and action together. For us today we have our propaganda points “a workers’ party that fights for a workers (and X, okay) government.” In the future, if things head our way, we will “united front” the labor skates to death agitating for the need for an independent labor expression. But we will really be speaking over their heads to their memberships (and other working class formations, if any, as well). Then we will take action to create that damn party, fighting to make it a revolutionary instrument. Enough said.
These notes (expanded) were originally intended to be presented as The Labor Question in the United States at a forum on the question on Saturday August 4, 2012. As a number of radicals have noted, most particularly organized socialist radicals, after the dust from the fall bourgeois election settles, regardless of who wins, the working class will lose. Pressure for an independent labor expression, as we head into 2013, may likely to move from its current propaganda point as part of the revolutionary program to agitation and action so learning about the past experiences in the revolutionary and radical labor movements is timely.
I had originally expected to spend most of the speech at the forum delving into the historical experiences, particularly the work of the American Communist Party and the American Socialist Workers Party with a couple of minutes “tip of the hat” to the work of radical around the Labor Party experiences of the late 1990s. However, the scope of the early work and that of those radical in the latter work could not, I felt, be done justice in one forum. Thus these notes are centered on the early historical experiences. If I get a chance, and gather enough information to do the subject justice, I will place notes for the 1990s Labor party work in this space as well.
*********
The subject today is the Labor Party Question in the United States. For starters I want to reconfigure this concept and place it in the context of the Transitional Program first promulgated by Leon Trotsky and his fellows in the Fourth International in 1938. There the labor party concept was expressed as “a workers’ party that fights for a workers government.” [The actual expression for advanced capitalist countries like the U.S. was for a workers and farmers government but that is hardly applicable here now, at least in the United States. Some wag at the time, some Shachtmanite wag from what I understand, noted that there were then more dentists than farmers in the United States. Wag aside that remark is a good point since today we would call for a workers and X (oppressed communities, women, etc.) to make our programmatic point more inclusive.]
For revolutionaries these two algebraically -expressed political ideas are organically joined together. What we mean, what we translate this as, in our propaganda is a mass revolutionary labor party (think Bolsheviks first and foremost) based on the trade unions (the only serious currently organized part of the working class) fighting for soviets (workers councils, factory committees, etc.) as an expression of state power. In short, the dictatorship of the proletariat, a term we do not yet use in “polite” society these days in order not to scare of the masses. And that is the nut. Those of us who stand on those intertwined revolutionary premises are few and far between today and so we need, desperately need, to have a bridge expression, and a bridge organization, the workers party, to do the day to day work of bringing masses of working people to see the need for to have an independent organized expression fighting programmatically for their class interests. And we, they, need it pronto. [That program, the program that we as revolutionaries would fight for, would, as it evolved, center on demands, yes, demands, that would go from day to day needs to the struggle for state power.]
Now there have historically been many efforts to create a mass workers party in the United States going all the way back to the 1830s with the Workingmen’s Party based in New York City. Later efforts, after the Civil War, mainly, when capitalism began to become the driving norm, included the famous Terence Powderly-led Knights of Labor, including (segregated black locals), a National Negro Union, and various European social-democratic off -shoots (including pro-Marxist formations). All those had flaws, some serious like being pro-capitalist, merely reformist, and the like (sound familiar?) and reflected the birth pangs of the organized labor movement rather than serious predecessors.
Things got serious around the turn of the century (oops, turn of the 20th century) when the “age of the robber barons” declared unequivocally that class warfare between labor and capital was the norm in American society (if not expressed that way in “polite” society). This was the period of the rise the Debsian-inspired party of the whole class, the American Socialist Party. More importantly, if contradictorily, emerging from a segment of that organization, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, Wobblies) was, to my mind the first serious revolutionary labor organization (party/union?) that we could look to as fighting a class struggle fight for working class interests. Everyone should read the Preamble to the IWW Constitution of 1905 (look it up on Wikipedia or the IWW website) to see what I mean. It still retains its stirring revolutionary fervor today.
The real unambiguous work of creating a mass labor party that we could recognize though really comes with the fight of the American Communist Party (which had been formed by the sections, the revolutionary-inclined sections, of the American Socialist Party that split off in the great revolutionary/reformist division after the success of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917) in the 1920s to form one based on the trade unions (mainly in the Midwest, and mainly in Chicago with the John Fitzgerald –led AFL). That effort was stillborn, stillborn because the non-communist labor leaders who had the numbers, the locals, and, ah, the dough wanted a farmer-labor party, a two class party to cushion them against radical solutions (breaking from the bourgeois parties and electoralism). Only the timely intervention of the Communist International saved the day from a major blunder (Go to the James P. Cannon Internet Archives for more, much more on this movement, He, and his factional allies including one William Z. Foster, later the titular head of the Communist Party, were in the thick of things to his later red-faced chagrin).
Moving forward, the American Communist Party at the height of the Great Depression (the one in the 1930s, that one, not the one we are in now) created the American Labor Party (along with the American Socialist party and other pro-Democratic Party labor skates) which had a mass base in places like New York and the Midwest. The problem though was this organization was, mainly, a left-handed way to get votes for Roosevelt from class conscious socialist-minded workers who balked at a direct vote for Roosevelt. (Sound familiar, again?) And that, before the Labor Party movement of the 1990s, is pretty much, except a few odd local attempts here and there by leftist groups, some sincere, some not, was probably the last major effort to form any kind of independent labor political organization. (The American Communist Party after 1936, excepting 1940, and even that is up for questioning, would thereafter not dream of seriously organizing such a party. For them the Democratic Party was more than adequate, thank you. Later the Socialist Workers Party essentially took the same stance.)
So much then for the historical aspect of the workers party labor question. The real question, the real lessons, for revolutionaries posed by all of this is really something that was pointed out by James P. Cannon in the late 1930s and early 1940s (and before him Leon Trotsky). Can revolutionaries in the United States recruit masses of working people to a revolutionary labor party today (again think Bolshevik)? To pose the question is to give the answer (an old lawyer’s trick, by the way).
America today, no. Russia in 1917, yes. Germany in 1921, yes. Same place 1923, yes. Spain in 1936 (really from 1934 on), yes. America in the 1930s, probably not (even with no Stalinist ALP siphoning). France 1968, yes. Greece (or Spain) today, yes. So it is all a question of concrete circumstances. That is what Cannon (and before him Trotsky) was arguing for. If you can recruit to the revolutionary labor party that is the ticket. We, even in America are not historically pre-determined to go the old time British Labor Party route as an exclusive way to create a mass based political labor organization. If we are not able to recruit directly then you have to look at some way station effort. That is why in his 1940 documents (which can also be found at the Cannon Internet Archives as well) he stressed that the SWP should where possible (mainly New York) work in the Stalinist-controlled (heaven forbid, cried the Shachtmanites) American Labor Party. That was where masses of organized trade union workers were.
Now I don’t know, and probably nobody else does either, if and when, the American working class is going to come out of its slumber. Some of us thought that Occupy might be a catalyst for that. That has turned out to be patently false as far as the working class goes. So we have to expect that maybe some middle level labor organizers or local union officials feeling pressure from the ranks may begin to call for a labor party. That, as the 1990s Socialist Alternative Labor Party archives indicates, is about what happened when those efforts started.
Earlier this year AFL-CIO President Trumka made noises about labor “going its own way.” I guess he had had too much to drink at the Democratic National Committee meeting the night before, or something. So we should be cautious, but we should be ready. While at the moment tactics like a great regroupment of left forces, a united front with labor militants, or entry in other labor organizations for the purpose of pushing the workers party are premature we should be ready.
And that last sentence brings up my final point, another point courtesy of Jim Cannon. He made a big point in the 1940s documents about the various kinds of political activities that small revolutionary propaganda groups or individuals can participate in (and actually large socialist organizations too before taking state power). He lumped propaganda, agitation, and action together. For us today we have our propaganda points “a workers’ party that fights for a workers (and X, okay) government.” In the future, if things head our way, we will “united front” the labor skates to death agitating for the need for an independent labor expression. But we will really be speaking over their heads to their memberships (and other working class formations, if any, as well). Then we will take action to create that damn party, fighting to make it a revolutionary instrument. Enough said.
***From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin-Just Like Farley Granger- Strangers On A Train- A Film Review
Click on the headline to link to Wikipedia entry for Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers On A Train.
DVD Review
Strangers On A Train, starring Farley Granger, Robert Walker, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, Warner Brothers, 1951
Hey, I always used to like to ride trains, passenger trains, the scenic way to travel through the hills and dale of the great American landscape. I even used to like to ride a freight car once in a while back in those old time hitchhike day when the feet got weary and a railroad track beckoned to put some miles between me and, whatever, in the search for the great American West night. But after watching the film under review, Alfred Hitchcock’s classic thriller, Strangers On A Train, I am re-thinking that position. Maybe the private passenger car, or those weary feet are a better bet.
Here is why. Guy (played by one Farley Granger), a tennis star with marital problems is, well, accosted on an East Coast train (not by chance), by Bruno (played by Robert Walker), a rich kid with a little problem. He is psycho (before Psycho); the kind of guy who would pull the wings off a butterfly as a kid just for kicks. Beyond that, surprise, surprise our Bruno has a bigger problem, he hates his father, murderously hates his father. To cut to the chase Bruno has an idea. Criss-Cross- murders. See Bruno will take care of Guy’s marital problems quickly, and finally. Guy, as a return favor will do away with Bruno’s father. No problem.
The plot revolves around the central problem here though. Bruno did his part, no problem. But Guy, see Guy has some scruples, and has no intention in hell of doing Bruno’s bidding. The problem is that Bruno does not, how to put it kindly, know how to take no for an answer. Guy definitely did the wrong thing- he tried to welsh on the deal. Bruno is not one to be crossed. No way. That little tic, and a fateful cigarette lighter get us through this classic Hitchcock thriller. So you see where I am a little wary of making reservations on Amtrak right this minute. And also am cautious about lighting somebody’s cigarette, just in case. Or riding merry-go-rounds for that matter.
DVD Review
Strangers On A Train, starring Farley Granger, Robert Walker, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, Warner Brothers, 1951
Hey, I always used to like to ride trains, passenger trains, the scenic way to travel through the hills and dale of the great American landscape. I even used to like to ride a freight car once in a while back in those old time hitchhike day when the feet got weary and a railroad track beckoned to put some miles between me and, whatever, in the search for the great American West night. But after watching the film under review, Alfred Hitchcock’s classic thriller, Strangers On A Train, I am re-thinking that position. Maybe the private passenger car, or those weary feet are a better bet.
Here is why. Guy (played by one Farley Granger), a tennis star with marital problems is, well, accosted on an East Coast train (not by chance), by Bruno (played by Robert Walker), a rich kid with a little problem. He is psycho (before Psycho); the kind of guy who would pull the wings off a butterfly as a kid just for kicks. Beyond that, surprise, surprise our Bruno has a bigger problem, he hates his father, murderously hates his father. To cut to the chase Bruno has an idea. Criss-Cross- murders. See Bruno will take care of Guy’s marital problems quickly, and finally. Guy, as a return favor will do away with Bruno’s father. No problem.
The plot revolves around the central problem here though. Bruno did his part, no problem. But Guy, see Guy has some scruples, and has no intention in hell of doing Bruno’s bidding. The problem is that Bruno does not, how to put it kindly, know how to take no for an answer. Guy definitely did the wrong thing- he tried to welsh on the deal. Bruno is not one to be crossed. No way. That little tic, and a fateful cigarette lighter get us through this classic Hitchcock thriller. So you see where I am a little wary of making reservations on Amtrak right this minute. And also am cautious about lighting somebody’s cigarette, just in case. Or riding merry-go-rounds for that matter.
From "COURAGE TO RESIST"-Justice for Bradley Manning!
COURAGE TO RESIST
www.couragetoresist.org 484 Lake Park Ave #4 1 , Oakland C A 94610 510-488-3559
August 20 1 2 National Newsletter facebook.com/couragetoresist
Justice for Bradley Manning!
Support builds for accused WikiLeaks whistle-blower as Fort Meade hearings advance towards court martial
By Courage to Resist. July 14,2012 Army PFC Bradley Manning is accused of releasing to the public tens of thousands of documents containing proof of war crimes, government corruption, and corporate influence on foreign policy, via the WikiLeaks website. For his courage, he is facing life plus 150 years in prison.
Bradley's next public pre-trial hearings at Fort Meade, Maryland, are scheduled for July 16-20th and August 27-31st. Yet as Bradley's court martial approaches, it has become apparent to observers that he will not get a fair trial by the US military court These are the reasons why justice demands that the charges be dropped, and Bradley be released now:
• After his arrest in May 2010, Bradley was held in solitary confinement for ten months, which UN Chief Investigator on Torture Juan Mendez condemned as "cruel and inhuman" treatment.
Bradley was singled out for torturous treatment for nearly a year like no other prisoner at the Quantico Marine Brig. Yet, the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) (Article 13) outlaws pre-trial punishment "any more rigorous" than that required to ensure the accused appears at court hearings. Bradley's illegal treatment is scheduled to be the subject of the August 27-31 st hearing at Fort Meade.
Both President Barack Obama and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff General Martin Dempsey have publicly declared that Bradley "broke
the law," which means that subsequent trial proceedings have been swayed by
"Unlawful Command Influence". These comments from members of Bradley's
"Chain of Command" are clearly forbidden under the UCMJ (Article 37).
Military law promises thedefendant a speedy trial (UCMJ: Article
10).
Yet Bradley was imprisoned for nearly two years before his trial proceedings
Medical Center), right across the street and I'd tell them,'I'm having suicidal thoughts,'" began, at which point Judge Lind—who will be overseeing the court martial—told his defense to choose either a speedy trial or access to hundreds of thousands of pages of important evidence.
For two years now, the government has fought against providing access to evidence and witnesses requested by the defense. Thanks to the thorough legal representation of Bradley's attorney David Coombs, the defense has won important small victories. At a June 25th hearing, for example, the military judge ordered the prosecution to explain delays in giving evidence to the defense by requiring them to create a detailed record of their efforts. Yet, there has been no indication the government will be held accountable for violation after violation of Bradley's rights as outlined under military law.
• There has been no evidence presented that Bradley's alleged actions damaged US national security or caused any person to be physically harmed. But the US military says that regardless of patriotic motivations or lack of harm caused, Bradley should be convicted of "Aiding the bnemy and sentenced to lite in prison for making secret government actions public. This would make any kind of whistle-blower defense impossible.
In fact, the prosecution's interpretation of "Aiding the Enemy" is so
broad that convicting Bradley will threaten the rights of all American soldiers. The American Civil Liberties Union explains:"If the government is right that a soldier 'indirectly' aids the enemy when he posts
information to which the enemy might have access, then the threat of criminal prosecution hangs over any service member who gives an interview to a reporter, writes a letter to the editor, or posts a blog to the internet."
• Bradley's alleged actions helped spark the revolution in Tunisia, which in turn inspired the Occupy Movement. And by shedding light on unpunished war crimes in Iraq, he helped end negotiations
over extending the unpopular troop occupation there.
Both Bradley and his lawyer have expressed appreciation for the supporter presence at these hearings. We always hold vigils outside the main gate of Fort Meade before proceeding to the courtroom. We make our courtroom presence known by wearing "truth" t-shirts, which have been shown in courtroom sketches and mentioned numerous timesin the news. During
the hearings, hundreds of solidarity actions have been staged nationwide and internationally. Last month, hundreds participated in Bradley Manning contingents in gay pride marches in DC, NYC, Chicago, SF, LA and San Diego. UK supporters organized theater productions and pushed parliamentary representatives to endorse Bradley's Nobel Peace Prize nomination. Here in the US, we're ramping up pressure on President Obama to do the right thing by cooperating with anti-war veterans groups on creative actions at Obama campaign offices. Occupy LA will camp outside their federal building from July 13-16th in protest of the way Bradley has been treated, and Occupy DC has been inspired to do the same.
Please join us at Fort Meade for the August 27-31 st public hearings that may or may not hold the government accountable for torturing Bradley at Quantico. If you can't make it, hold an event or fund-raiser in your community!
Bradley Manning is simply not guilty of "Aiding the Enemy" or violating the Espionage Act. If Bradley did heroically share the truth with us, the government could argue that various "information handling protocols" were bypassed. Yet, Bradley's two years (and counting) in pre-trial imprisonment should be punishment enough for such minor violations of regulations that were routinely ignored by other intelligence analysts serving alongside Bradley while in Iraq. For all of these reasons, we call on Judge Lind to dismiss the charges against Bradley, and for President Obama to pardon him in the event of a conviction.
www.bradleymanning.org
www.couragetoresist.org 484 Lake Park Ave #4 1 , Oakland C A 94610 510-488-3559
August 20 1 2 National Newsletter facebook.com/couragetoresist
Justice for Bradley Manning!
Support builds for accused WikiLeaks whistle-blower as Fort Meade hearings advance towards court martial
By Courage to Resist. July 14,2012 Army PFC Bradley Manning is accused of releasing to the public tens of thousands of documents containing proof of war crimes, government corruption, and corporate influence on foreign policy, via the WikiLeaks website. For his courage, he is facing life plus 150 years in prison.
Bradley's next public pre-trial hearings at Fort Meade, Maryland, are scheduled for July 16-20th and August 27-31st. Yet as Bradley's court martial approaches, it has become apparent to observers that he will not get a fair trial by the US military court These are the reasons why justice demands that the charges be dropped, and Bradley be released now:
• After his arrest in May 2010, Bradley was held in solitary confinement for ten months, which UN Chief Investigator on Torture Juan Mendez condemned as "cruel and inhuman" treatment.
Bradley was singled out for torturous treatment for nearly a year like no other prisoner at the Quantico Marine Brig. Yet, the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) (Article 13) outlaws pre-trial punishment "any more rigorous" than that required to ensure the accused appears at court hearings. Bradley's illegal treatment is scheduled to be the subject of the August 27-31 st hearing at Fort Meade.
Both President Barack Obama and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff General Martin Dempsey have publicly declared that Bradley "broke
the law," which means that subsequent trial proceedings have been swayed by
"Unlawful Command Influence". These comments from members of Bradley's
"Chain of Command" are clearly forbidden under the UCMJ (Article 37).
Military law promises thedefendant a speedy trial (UCMJ: Article
10).
Yet Bradley was imprisoned for nearly two years before his trial proceedings
Medical Center), right across the street and I'd tell them,'I'm having suicidal thoughts,'" began, at which point Judge Lind—who will be overseeing the court martial—told his defense to choose either a speedy trial or access to hundreds of thousands of pages of important evidence.
For two years now, the government has fought against providing access to evidence and witnesses requested by the defense. Thanks to the thorough legal representation of Bradley's attorney David Coombs, the defense has won important small victories. At a June 25th hearing, for example, the military judge ordered the prosecution to explain delays in giving evidence to the defense by requiring them to create a detailed record of their efforts. Yet, there has been no indication the government will be held accountable for violation after violation of Bradley's rights as outlined under military law.
• There has been no evidence presented that Bradley's alleged actions damaged US national security or caused any person to be physically harmed. But the US military says that regardless of patriotic motivations or lack of harm caused, Bradley should be convicted of "Aiding the bnemy and sentenced to lite in prison for making secret government actions public. This would make any kind of whistle-blower defense impossible.
In fact, the prosecution's interpretation of "Aiding the Enemy" is so
broad that convicting Bradley will threaten the rights of all American soldiers. The American Civil Liberties Union explains:"If the government is right that a soldier 'indirectly' aids the enemy when he posts
information to which the enemy might have access, then the threat of criminal prosecution hangs over any service member who gives an interview to a reporter, writes a letter to the editor, or posts a blog to the internet."
• Bradley's alleged actions helped spark the revolution in Tunisia, which in turn inspired the Occupy Movement. And by shedding light on unpunished war crimes in Iraq, he helped end negotiations
over extending the unpopular troop occupation there.
Both Bradley and his lawyer have expressed appreciation for the supporter presence at these hearings. We always hold vigils outside the main gate of Fort Meade before proceeding to the courtroom. We make our courtroom presence known by wearing "truth" t-shirts, which have been shown in courtroom sketches and mentioned numerous timesin the news. During
the hearings, hundreds of solidarity actions have been staged nationwide and internationally. Last month, hundreds participated in Bradley Manning contingents in gay pride marches in DC, NYC, Chicago, SF, LA and San Diego. UK supporters organized theater productions and pushed parliamentary representatives to endorse Bradley's Nobel Peace Prize nomination. Here in the US, we're ramping up pressure on President Obama to do the right thing by cooperating with anti-war veterans groups on creative actions at Obama campaign offices. Occupy LA will camp outside their federal building from July 13-16th in protest of the way Bradley has been treated, and Occupy DC has been inspired to do the same.
Please join us at Fort Meade for the August 27-31 st public hearings that may or may not hold the government accountable for torturing Bradley at Quantico. If you can't make it, hold an event or fund-raiser in your community!
Bradley Manning is simply not guilty of "Aiding the Enemy" or violating the Espionage Act. If Bradley did heroically share the truth with us, the government could argue that various "information handling protocols" were bypassed. Yet, Bradley's two years (and counting) in pre-trial imprisonment should be punishment enough for such minor violations of regulations that were routinely ignored by other intelligence analysts serving alongside Bradley while in Iraq. For all of these reasons, we call on Judge Lind to dismiss the charges against Bradley, and for President Obama to pardon him in the event of a conviction.
www.bradleymanning.org
Monday, July 30, 2012
The Labor Party Question In The United States- An Historical Overview-Fight For A Worker Party That Fights For A Workers Government
The Labor Party Question In The United States- An Historical Overview-Fight For A Worker Party That Fights For A Workers Government
These notes (expanded) were originally intended to be presented as The Labor Question in the United States at a forum on the question on Saturday August 4, 2012. As a number of radicals have noted, most particularly organized socialist radicals, after the dust from the fall bourgeois election settles, regardless of who wins, the working class will lose. Pressure for an independent labor expression, as we head into 2013, may likely to move from its current propaganda point as part of the revolutionary program to agitation and action so learning about the past experiences in the revolutionary and radical labor movements is timely.
I had originally expected to spend most of the speech at the forum delving into the historical experiences, particularly the work of the American Communist Party and the American Socialist Workers Party with a couple of minutes “tip of the hat” to the work of radical around the Labor Party experiences of the late 1990s. However, the scope of the early work and that of those radical in the latter work could not, I felt, be done justice in one forum. Thus these notes are centered on the early historical experiences. If I get a chance, and gather enough information to do the subject justice, I will place notes for the 1990s Labor party work in this space as well.
*********
The Labor Party Question in the United States. For starters I want to reconfigure this concept and place it in the context of the Transitional Program first promulgated by Leon Trotsky and his fellows in the Fourth International in 1938. There the labor party concept was expressed as “a workers’ party that fights for a workers government.” [The actual expression for advanced capitalist countries like the U.S. was for a workers and farmers government but that hardly is applicable now, at least in the United States. Some wag at the time, some Shachtmanite wag from what I understand, noted that there were then more dentists than farmers in the United States. Wag aside that is a good point since today we would call for a workers and X (oppressed communities, women, etc.) to make our programmatic point more inclusive]
For revolutionaries these two algebraically -expressed political ideas are organically joined together. What we mean, what we translate this as, in our propaganda is a mass revolutionary labor party (think Bolsheviks first and foremost) based on the trade unions (the only serious currently organized part of the working class) fighting for soviets as an expression of state power(workers councils, factory committees, etc.). In short, the dictatorship of the proletariat, a term we do not yet use in “polite” society these days in order not to scare of the masses. And that is the nut. Those who stand on those intertwined revolutionary premises are few and far between today and so we need, desperately need, to have a bridge expression, and a bridge organization, the workers party, to do the day to day work of bringing masses of working people to see the need for to have a fighting independent organized expression of their class interest. And we, they, need it pronto.
Now there have historically been efforts to create a mass workers party in the United States going all the way back to the 1830s with the Workingmen’s Party based in New York City. Later efforts, after the Civil War, mainly when capitalism began to became the driving norm, included the famous Terence Powderly-led Knights of Labor, including (segregated black locals), a National Negro Union, and various European social-democratic off -shoots (including pro-Marxist formations). All those had flaws, some serious like being pro-capitalist, reformist, (sound familiar?) and reflected the birth pangs of the organized labor movement rather than serious predecessors.
Things got serious around the turn of the century (oops, turn of the 20th century) when the “age of the robber barons” declared unequivocally that class warfare between labor and capital was the norm in American society (if not expressed that way in “polite” society). This was the period of the rise the Debsian-inspired party of the whole class, the American Socialist Party. More importantly, if contradictorily, emerging from a segment of that organization, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, Wobblies) was, to my mind the first serious revolutionary labor organization (party/union?) that we could look to as fighting a class struggle fight for working class interests. Everyone should read the Preamble to the IWW Constitution of 1905 (look it up on Wikipedia or the IWW website) to see what I mean. It still retains its stirring revolutionary fervor today.
The real unambiguous work of creating a mass labor party that we would recognize though really comes with the fight of the American Communist Party (which had been formed by the sections, the revolutionary-inclined sections, of the American Socialist Party that split off in the great revolutionary/reform division after the success of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917) in the 1920s to form one based on the trade unions (mainly in the Midwest, and mainly in Chicago with the John Fitzgerald –led AFL). That effort was stillborn, stillborn because the non-communist labor leaders who had the numbers, the locals (and dough) wanted a farmer-labor party, a two class party to cushion them. Only the timely intervention of the Communist International saved the day from a major blunder (Go to the James P. Cannon Internet Archives for more, much more on the movement, He, and his factional allies including one William Z. Foster , were in the thick of things to his later red-faced chagrin).
Moving forward, the American Communist Party at the height of the Great Depression (the one in the 1930s, that one, not the one we are in now) created the American Labor Party (along with the American Socialist party and other pro-Democratic Party labor skates) which had a mass base in places like New York and the Midwest. The problem though was this organization was, mainly, a left-handed way to get votes for Roosevelt from adamantly class conscious socialist-minded workers who balked at a direct vote for Roosevelt. (Sound familiar, again?) And that, before the Labor Party movement of the 1990s, is pretty much, except a few odd local attempts here and there by leftist groups, some sincere, some not, was probably the last major effort to form any kind of independent labor political organization. (The American Communist Party after 1936, excepting 1940, and even that is up for questioning, would thereafter not dream of seriously organizing such a party. For them the Democratic Party was more than adequate, thank you.)
So much for the historical aspect of the question. The real question for revolutionaries posed by all of this is really something that was pointed out by James P. Cannon in the late 1930s and early 1940s (and before him Leon Trotsky). Can revolutionaries in the United States recruit masses of working people to a revolutionary labor party today (again think Bolshevik)? To pose the question is to give the answer (an old lawyer’s trick, by the way).
America today, no. Russia in 1917, yes. Germany in 1921, yes. Same place 1923, yes. Spain in 1936 (really from 1934 on), yes. America in the 1930s probably not even with no Stalinist siphoning). France 1968, yes. Greece (or Spain) today, yes. So it is all a question of concrete circumstances. That is what Cannon (and before him Trotsky) was arguing for. If you can recruit to the revolutionary labor party that is the ticket. We, even in America are not historically pre-determined to go the British Labor Party route as an exclusive way to create a mass based political labor organization. If we are not able to recruit directly then you have to look at some way station effort. That is why in his 1940 documents (which can also be found at the Cannon Internet Archives as well) he stressed that the SWP should where possible (mainly New York) work in the Stalinist-controlled (heaven forbid, cried the Shachtmanites) American Labor Party. That was where masses of organized trade union workers were.
Now I don’t know, and probably nobody else does either, if and when, the American working class is going to come out of its slumber. Some of us thought that Occupy might be a catalyst for that. That has turned out to be patently false as far as the working class goes. So we have to expect that maybe some middle level labor organizers or local union officials feeling pressure from the ranks may begin to call for a labor party. That, as the 1990s SA archives indicates, is about what happened when those efforts started. Earlier this year AFL-CIO President Trumka made noises about labor “going its own way.” I guess he had had too much to drink at the Democratic National Committee meeting the night before, or something. So we should be cautious, but we should be ready.
And that last sentence brings up my final point, another point courtesy of Jim Cannon. He made a big point about the various kinds of political activities that small revolutionary propaganda groups or individuals can participate in (and actually large socialist organizations too before taking state power). He lumped propaganda, agitation, and action together. For us today we have our propaganda points “a workers’ party that fights for a workers (and X, okay) government.” In the future, if things head our way, we will united front the labor skates to death agitating for the need for an independent labor expression. But we will really be speaking over their heads to their memberships (and other working class formations, if any, as well). Then we will take action to create that damn party, fighting to make it a revolutionary instrument. Enough said.
These notes (expanded) were originally intended to be presented as The Labor Question in the United States at a forum on the question on Saturday August 4, 2012. As a number of radicals have noted, most particularly organized socialist radicals, after the dust from the fall bourgeois election settles, regardless of who wins, the working class will lose. Pressure for an independent labor expression, as we head into 2013, may likely to move from its current propaganda point as part of the revolutionary program to agitation and action so learning about the past experiences in the revolutionary and radical labor movements is timely.
I had originally expected to spend most of the speech at the forum delving into the historical experiences, particularly the work of the American Communist Party and the American Socialist Workers Party with a couple of minutes “tip of the hat” to the work of radical around the Labor Party experiences of the late 1990s. However, the scope of the early work and that of those radical in the latter work could not, I felt, be done justice in one forum. Thus these notes are centered on the early historical experiences. If I get a chance, and gather enough information to do the subject justice, I will place notes for the 1990s Labor party work in this space as well.
*********
The Labor Party Question in the United States. For starters I want to reconfigure this concept and place it in the context of the Transitional Program first promulgated by Leon Trotsky and his fellows in the Fourth International in 1938. There the labor party concept was expressed as “a workers’ party that fights for a workers government.” [The actual expression for advanced capitalist countries like the U.S. was for a workers and farmers government but that hardly is applicable now, at least in the United States. Some wag at the time, some Shachtmanite wag from what I understand, noted that there were then more dentists than farmers in the United States. Wag aside that is a good point since today we would call for a workers and X (oppressed communities, women, etc.) to make our programmatic point more inclusive]
For revolutionaries these two algebraically -expressed political ideas are organically joined together. What we mean, what we translate this as, in our propaganda is a mass revolutionary labor party (think Bolsheviks first and foremost) based on the trade unions (the only serious currently organized part of the working class) fighting for soviets as an expression of state power(workers councils, factory committees, etc.). In short, the dictatorship of the proletariat, a term we do not yet use in “polite” society these days in order not to scare of the masses. And that is the nut. Those who stand on those intertwined revolutionary premises are few and far between today and so we need, desperately need, to have a bridge expression, and a bridge organization, the workers party, to do the day to day work of bringing masses of working people to see the need for to have a fighting independent organized expression of their class interest. And we, they, need it pronto.
Now there have historically been efforts to create a mass workers party in the United States going all the way back to the 1830s with the Workingmen’s Party based in New York City. Later efforts, after the Civil War, mainly when capitalism began to became the driving norm, included the famous Terence Powderly-led Knights of Labor, including (segregated black locals), a National Negro Union, and various European social-democratic off -shoots (including pro-Marxist formations). All those had flaws, some serious like being pro-capitalist, reformist, (sound familiar?) and reflected the birth pangs of the organized labor movement rather than serious predecessors.
Things got serious around the turn of the century (oops, turn of the 20th century) when the “age of the robber barons” declared unequivocally that class warfare between labor and capital was the norm in American society (if not expressed that way in “polite” society). This was the period of the rise the Debsian-inspired party of the whole class, the American Socialist Party. More importantly, if contradictorily, emerging from a segment of that organization, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, Wobblies) was, to my mind the first serious revolutionary labor organization (party/union?) that we could look to as fighting a class struggle fight for working class interests. Everyone should read the Preamble to the IWW Constitution of 1905 (look it up on Wikipedia or the IWW website) to see what I mean. It still retains its stirring revolutionary fervor today.
The real unambiguous work of creating a mass labor party that we would recognize though really comes with the fight of the American Communist Party (which had been formed by the sections, the revolutionary-inclined sections, of the American Socialist Party that split off in the great revolutionary/reform division after the success of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917) in the 1920s to form one based on the trade unions (mainly in the Midwest, and mainly in Chicago with the John Fitzgerald –led AFL). That effort was stillborn, stillborn because the non-communist labor leaders who had the numbers, the locals (and dough) wanted a farmer-labor party, a two class party to cushion them. Only the timely intervention of the Communist International saved the day from a major blunder (Go to the James P. Cannon Internet Archives for more, much more on the movement, He, and his factional allies including one William Z. Foster , were in the thick of things to his later red-faced chagrin).
Moving forward, the American Communist Party at the height of the Great Depression (the one in the 1930s, that one, not the one we are in now) created the American Labor Party (along with the American Socialist party and other pro-Democratic Party labor skates) which had a mass base in places like New York and the Midwest. The problem though was this organization was, mainly, a left-handed way to get votes for Roosevelt from adamantly class conscious socialist-minded workers who balked at a direct vote for Roosevelt. (Sound familiar, again?) And that, before the Labor Party movement of the 1990s, is pretty much, except a few odd local attempts here and there by leftist groups, some sincere, some not, was probably the last major effort to form any kind of independent labor political organization. (The American Communist Party after 1936, excepting 1940, and even that is up for questioning, would thereafter not dream of seriously organizing such a party. For them the Democratic Party was more than adequate, thank you.)
So much for the historical aspect of the question. The real question for revolutionaries posed by all of this is really something that was pointed out by James P. Cannon in the late 1930s and early 1940s (and before him Leon Trotsky). Can revolutionaries in the United States recruit masses of working people to a revolutionary labor party today (again think Bolshevik)? To pose the question is to give the answer (an old lawyer’s trick, by the way).
America today, no. Russia in 1917, yes. Germany in 1921, yes. Same place 1923, yes. Spain in 1936 (really from 1934 on), yes. America in the 1930s probably not even with no Stalinist siphoning). France 1968, yes. Greece (or Spain) today, yes. So it is all a question of concrete circumstances. That is what Cannon (and before him Trotsky) was arguing for. If you can recruit to the revolutionary labor party that is the ticket. We, even in America are not historically pre-determined to go the British Labor Party route as an exclusive way to create a mass based political labor organization. If we are not able to recruit directly then you have to look at some way station effort. That is why in his 1940 documents (which can also be found at the Cannon Internet Archives as well) he stressed that the SWP should where possible (mainly New York) work in the Stalinist-controlled (heaven forbid, cried the Shachtmanites) American Labor Party. That was where masses of organized trade union workers were.
Now I don’t know, and probably nobody else does either, if and when, the American working class is going to come out of its slumber. Some of us thought that Occupy might be a catalyst for that. That has turned out to be patently false as far as the working class goes. So we have to expect that maybe some middle level labor organizers or local union officials feeling pressure from the ranks may begin to call for a labor party. That, as the 1990s SA archives indicates, is about what happened when those efforts started. Earlier this year AFL-CIO President Trumka made noises about labor “going its own way.” I guess he had had too much to drink at the Democratic National Committee meeting the night before, or something. So we should be cautious, but we should be ready.
And that last sentence brings up my final point, another point courtesy of Jim Cannon. He made a big point about the various kinds of political activities that small revolutionary propaganda groups or individuals can participate in (and actually large socialist organizations too before taking state power). He lumped propaganda, agitation, and action together. For us today we have our propaganda points “a workers’ party that fights for a workers (and X, okay) government.” In the future, if things head our way, we will united front the labor skates to death agitating for the need for an independent labor expression. But we will really be speaking over their heads to their memberships (and other working class formations, if any, as well). Then we will take action to create that damn party, fighting to make it a revolutionary instrument. Enough said.
From #Un-Occupied Boston (#Un-Tomemonos Boston)-General Assembly-An Embryo Of An Alternate Government Gone Wrong-What Happens When We Do Not Learn The Lessons Of History- The Pre-1848 Socialist Movement-Auguste Blanqui 1839-Appeal of the Committee of the Society of the Seasons
Click on the headline to link to the Occupy Boston General Assembly Minutes website. Occupy Boston started at 6:00 PM, September 30, 2011.
Markin comment:
I will post any updates from that site if there are any serious discussions of the way forward for the Occupy movement or, more importantly, any analysis of the now atrophied and dysfunctional General Assembly concept. In the meantime I will continue with the “Lessons From History “ series started in the Fall of 2011 with Karl Marx’s The Civil War In France-1871 (The defense of the Paris Commune). Right now this series is focused on the European socialist movement before the Revolutions of 1848.
****
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The Occupy Movement And All 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!
********
A Five-Point Program As Talking Points
*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay to spread the available work around. Organize the unorganized- Organize the South- Organize Wal-Mart- Defend the right for public and private workers to unionize.
* Defend the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. Spent the dough instead on organizing the unorganized and on other labor-specific causes (good example, the November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio, bad example the Wisconsin gubernatorial recall race in June 2012).
*End the endless wars!- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan! Hands Off Iran! U.S. Hands Off The World!
*Fight for a social agenda for working people!. Quality Healthcare For All! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! Forgive student debt! Stop housing foreclosures!
*We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Build a workers party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed.
Emblazon on our red banner-Labor and the oppressed must rule!
*************
Auguste Blanqui 1839-Appeal of the Committee of the Society of the Seasons
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: Auguste Blanqui, Textes Choisis, avec preface et notes par V.P. Volguine, Editions Sociales, Paris, 1971;
Translated: for marxists.org by Mitchell Abidor;
CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2004.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
May 12, 1839
To arms, Citizens!
The fatal hour has rung for the oppressors.
The cowardly tyrant of the Tuileries laughs at the hunger that tears at the guts of the people. But the measure of his crimes is full. They are finally going to receive their punishment.
Betrayed France, the blood of our murdered brothers cry out to you and demand vengeance. Let it be terrible, for it has delayed too long. Let exploitation perish, and may equality triumphantly assume its seat on the intermingled debris of royalty and aristocracy.
The provisional government has chosen military chiefs for the guiding of the combat. These chiefs come from your ranks. Follow them! They will lead you to victory.
Their names are:
Auguste Blanqui, Commander-in-Chief; Barbés, Martin-Bernard, Quignot, Meillard, Nétré, Divisional Commanders of the Republican Army.
Arise, People, and your enemies will disappear like dust before a hurricane! Strike, exterminate without pity the vile henchmen, tyranny’s voluntary accomplices. But extend your hand to those soldiers who come from your midst and who will never turn their parricidal arms against you.
Forward! Vive la République!
The members of the Provisional Government:
Barbés, Voyer d’Argenson, Auguste Blanqui, Lamennais, Martin-Bernard, Dubosc, Laponeraye.
Paris, May 12, 1839
Markin comment:
I will post any updates from that site if there are any serious discussions of the way forward for the Occupy movement or, more importantly, any analysis of the now atrophied and dysfunctional General Assembly concept. In the meantime I will continue with the “Lessons From History “ series started in the Fall of 2011 with Karl Marx’s The Civil War In France-1871 (The defense of the Paris Commune). Right now this series is focused on the European socialist movement before the Revolutions of 1848.
****
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The Occupy Movement And All 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!
********
A Five-Point Program As Talking Points
*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay to spread the available work around. Organize the unorganized- Organize the South- Organize Wal-Mart- Defend the right for public and private workers to unionize.
* Defend the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. Spent the dough instead on organizing the unorganized and on other labor-specific causes (good example, the November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio, bad example the Wisconsin gubernatorial recall race in June 2012).
*End the endless wars!- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan! Hands Off Iran! U.S. Hands Off The World!
*Fight for a social agenda for working people!. Quality Healthcare For All! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! Forgive student debt! Stop housing foreclosures!
*We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Build a workers party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed.
Emblazon on our red banner-Labor and the oppressed must rule!
*************
Auguste Blanqui 1839-Appeal of the Committee of the Society of the Seasons
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: Auguste Blanqui, Textes Choisis, avec preface et notes par V.P. Volguine, Editions Sociales, Paris, 1971;
Translated: for marxists.org by Mitchell Abidor;
CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2004.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
May 12, 1839
To arms, Citizens!
The fatal hour has rung for the oppressors.
The cowardly tyrant of the Tuileries laughs at the hunger that tears at the guts of the people. But the measure of his crimes is full. They are finally going to receive their punishment.
Betrayed France, the blood of our murdered brothers cry out to you and demand vengeance. Let it be terrible, for it has delayed too long. Let exploitation perish, and may equality triumphantly assume its seat on the intermingled debris of royalty and aristocracy.
The provisional government has chosen military chiefs for the guiding of the combat. These chiefs come from your ranks. Follow them! They will lead you to victory.
Their names are:
Auguste Blanqui, Commander-in-Chief; Barbés, Martin-Bernard, Quignot, Meillard, Nétré, Divisional Commanders of the Republican Army.
Arise, People, and your enemies will disappear like dust before a hurricane! Strike, exterminate without pity the vile henchmen, tyranny’s voluntary accomplices. But extend your hand to those soldiers who come from your midst and who will never turn their parricidal arms against you.
Forward! Vive la République!
The members of the Provisional Government:
Barbés, Voyer d’Argenson, Auguste Blanqui, Lamennais, Martin-Bernard, Dubosc, Laponeraye.
Paris, May 12, 1839
Sunday, July 29, 2012
From The Pen Of American Communist Leader James P. Cannon - In The Red Sacre Night-The Fight For A Revolutionary Perspective In Hard Times
THE FIGHT FOR A REVOLUTIONARY PERSPECTIVE IN HARD TIMES
BOOK REVIEW
SPEECHES TO THE PARTY; JAMES P. CANNON, WRITINGS AND SPEECHES, 1952-54, PATHFINDER PRESS, NEW YORK, 1973
If you are interested in the history of the American Left or are a militant trying to understand some of the past lessons of our history concerning the socialist response to various social and labor questions this book is for you. This book is part of a continuing series of volumes of the writings of James P. Cannon that were published by the organization he founded, the Socialist Workers Party, in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Cannon died in 1974. Look in this space for other related reviews of this series of documents on and by an important American Communist.
In their introduction the editors motivate the purpose for the publication of the book by stating the Cannon was the finest Communist leader that America had ever produced. This an intriguing question that has underscored my previous reviews which detail earlier periods in Cannon’s political career and does so here as well. The editors trace their political lineage back to Cannon’s leadership of the early Communist Party and later after his expulsion to the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party so their perspective is obvious.
What does the documentation provided here show? The period under discussion- the early 1950’s- is essentially the swan song of his role as the central leader of the organization. Fortunately, Cannon had one last fight in him and went out swinging. However, unlike previous fights in the party he was slow to pick up the gravity of the implications of the opposition’s positions, in the party and internationally in the Fourth International, for the future revolutionary perspective. That said, Cannon did fight, if partially and belatedly, and that accrues to his merit as a revolutionary. Revolutionaries too get old and tired and do not always live in revolutionary times so they can show what they are made of. I will repeat here what I have mentioned in earlier reviews. One thing is sure- in his prime- Cannon had the instincts to want to lead a revolution and had the evident capacity to do so. That he never had an opportunity to lead a revolution is his personal tragedy and ours as well.
Let’s face it, the post-World War II period, after an initial outburst of class struggle, was not a good time for revolutionaries in America. As a victor America became the dominate economic and military power in the world. That coupled with an out and out ‘red scare’ witch hunt backed by most elements of the ruling class forced revolutionaries to duck their heads and hope for better days. This is the background to the fight which Cannon led against those who wanted to negate the role of the revolutionary party or to liquidate its public tasks.
No political person wants to be isolated from the arena of their work and that applies to revolutionaries as well. Feeling irrelevant has the same effect. Those conditions inevitably lead a revolutionary party inward. Cannon, having experienced about every trial and tribulation a revolutionary could face in a bourgeois democracy, actually felt the fight coming. Cannon stated he had put a question mark over the party’s existence as a revolutionary organization in 1952. He believed him might have to start over with the youth out in Los Angeles (where he was living at the time). Given that prospect, Cannon, as they say, got his Irish up.
As to the particulars of the fight, known in radical history as the Cochran-Clark fight, there were two trends. The main one represented by Cochran, a leading party trade unionist in the automobile industry, under the pressure of the witch hunt essentially wanted to reduce the organization to a propaganda circle and liquidate any revolutionary perspective. The other represented by Clark ,which also was reflected internationally in the Fourth International, was to orient to the Stalinist milieu essentially refurbishing the credentials of the American Communist Party in light of Stalin’s death and developments in Eastern Europe. This was a different form of liquidation of the revolutionary perspective which the Socialist Workers Party had developed over the, at that time, 25 year history of its fight against Stalinism.
An interesting note about this faction fight is that unlike most such fights in leftist organizations the key elements of the opposition here are the party trade unionists. Usually it is the volatile petty bourgeois elements that develop political differences when times get tough or when the petty bourgeois milieu turns hostile, for example, in 1939 with the Hitler-Stalin Pact which was the immediate prelude to World War II.
Party trade unionists, reflecting immediate practical pressures historically tend to be the right-wing of revolutionary parties-but they stay in the party.
For revolutionaries, this trend is sometimes frustratingly so, as occurred in the American Communist Party in the wake of the Hitler-Stalin Pact mentioned above. Thus, mark it down that a revolutionary party is in trouble when the trade unionists begin to balk. In any case, Cannon was able to pull the majority of the trade unionists back. While the future developments of the party in the 1960’s and 1970’s, after Cannon left the day to day operations, might make one wish that he did take those youth and start over this writer is glad that he fought this fight. Thanks- James P. Cannon.
BOOK REVIEW
SPEECHES TO THE PARTY; JAMES P. CANNON, WRITINGS AND SPEECHES, 1952-54, PATHFINDER PRESS, NEW YORK, 1973
If you are interested in the history of the American Left or are a militant trying to understand some of the past lessons of our history concerning the socialist response to various social and labor questions this book is for you. This book is part of a continuing series of volumes of the writings of James P. Cannon that were published by the organization he founded, the Socialist Workers Party, in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Cannon died in 1974. Look in this space for other related reviews of this series of documents on and by an important American Communist.
In their introduction the editors motivate the purpose for the publication of the book by stating the Cannon was the finest Communist leader that America had ever produced. This an intriguing question that has underscored my previous reviews which detail earlier periods in Cannon’s political career and does so here as well. The editors trace their political lineage back to Cannon’s leadership of the early Communist Party and later after his expulsion to the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party so their perspective is obvious.
What does the documentation provided here show? The period under discussion- the early 1950’s- is essentially the swan song of his role as the central leader of the organization. Fortunately, Cannon had one last fight in him and went out swinging. However, unlike previous fights in the party he was slow to pick up the gravity of the implications of the opposition’s positions, in the party and internationally in the Fourth International, for the future revolutionary perspective. That said, Cannon did fight, if partially and belatedly, and that accrues to his merit as a revolutionary. Revolutionaries too get old and tired and do not always live in revolutionary times so they can show what they are made of. I will repeat here what I have mentioned in earlier reviews. One thing is sure- in his prime- Cannon had the instincts to want to lead a revolution and had the evident capacity to do so. That he never had an opportunity to lead a revolution is his personal tragedy and ours as well.
Let’s face it, the post-World War II period, after an initial outburst of class struggle, was not a good time for revolutionaries in America. As a victor America became the dominate economic and military power in the world. That coupled with an out and out ‘red scare’ witch hunt backed by most elements of the ruling class forced revolutionaries to duck their heads and hope for better days. This is the background to the fight which Cannon led against those who wanted to negate the role of the revolutionary party or to liquidate its public tasks.
No political person wants to be isolated from the arena of their work and that applies to revolutionaries as well. Feeling irrelevant has the same effect. Those conditions inevitably lead a revolutionary party inward. Cannon, having experienced about every trial and tribulation a revolutionary could face in a bourgeois democracy, actually felt the fight coming. Cannon stated he had put a question mark over the party’s existence as a revolutionary organization in 1952. He believed him might have to start over with the youth out in Los Angeles (where he was living at the time). Given that prospect, Cannon, as they say, got his Irish up.
As to the particulars of the fight, known in radical history as the Cochran-Clark fight, there were two trends. The main one represented by Cochran, a leading party trade unionist in the automobile industry, under the pressure of the witch hunt essentially wanted to reduce the organization to a propaganda circle and liquidate any revolutionary perspective. The other represented by Clark ,which also was reflected internationally in the Fourth International, was to orient to the Stalinist milieu essentially refurbishing the credentials of the American Communist Party in light of Stalin’s death and developments in Eastern Europe. This was a different form of liquidation of the revolutionary perspective which the Socialist Workers Party had developed over the, at that time, 25 year history of its fight against Stalinism.
An interesting note about this faction fight is that unlike most such fights in leftist organizations the key elements of the opposition here are the party trade unionists. Usually it is the volatile petty bourgeois elements that develop political differences when times get tough or when the petty bourgeois milieu turns hostile, for example, in 1939 with the Hitler-Stalin Pact which was the immediate prelude to World War II.
Party trade unionists, reflecting immediate practical pressures historically tend to be the right-wing of revolutionary parties-but they stay in the party.
For revolutionaries, this trend is sometimes frustratingly so, as occurred in the American Communist Party in the wake of the Hitler-Stalin Pact mentioned above. Thus, mark it down that a revolutionary party is in trouble when the trade unionists begin to balk. In any case, Cannon was able to pull the majority of the trade unionists back. While the future developments of the party in the 1960’s and 1970’s, after Cannon left the day to day operations, might make one wish that he did take those youth and start over this writer is glad that he fought this fight. Thanks- James P. Cannon.
From "COURAGE TO RESIST"-Poor PTSD help forced Sgt. Brook Lindsey AWOL
News
Poor PTSD help forced Sgt. Brook Lindsey AWOL
By Keegan Hamilton, Seattle Weekly. June 27, 2012
Courage to Resist is currently working with Seattle area supporters of Sgt. Lindsey in order to best channel support. More information forthcoming.
An Iraq War veteran stationed at Ft. Lewis says struggles with PTSD and a lack of responsiveness to his condition by Army doctors forced him to go AWOL.
The soldier, 26-year-old Sgt. Brook Thomas Lindsey, met with members of the media on Friday at Coffee Strong, a non-profit organization, headquartered across the street from Joint Base Lewis-McChord, that advocates for military mental health treatment reform. Lindsey recounted why he decided to leave the base without permission on March 26.
"I'd go over to Madigan (Army Medical Center), right across the street and I'd tell them, 'I'm having suicidal thoughts,"' Lindsey says. "They would just tell me to breathe. They'd talk me down. The next day I'm still feeling the same way, but they'd return me to duty, tell my leaders everything was fine."
Wearing a baseball cap and a grey shirt with the sleeves rolled up to reveal several skeletal, military-themed tattoos on his forearms, Lindsey says he enlisted at age 19 because he felt it was his patriotic duty. He says he was deployed in Iraq for 22 months, and that he was an exemplary soldier prior to his return to the military base just south of Tacoma. Greg Wilson, a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, says he served in Iraq with Lindsey in 4th Battalion, 9th Infantry, 4th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, and was always impressed with his fellow soldier's resolve.
"He literally was one of those guys that loved what he was doing," Wilson says. "Sometimes it drove me nuts he was so motivated. He was trying to go to Ranger school. He loved his job as an infantryman."
But over the past year, Lindsey says he struggled with anxiety, sleeplessness, depression, and other conditions that stem from his combat experiences. He says the gung-ho Army culture initially discouraged him from seeking help, and when he finally did, "it was only a topical, it wasn't a deep solution."
Lindsey says in one instance he told doctors that he was having "homicidal thoughts against the chain of command," but the concerns were ignored. "They said I was fit for duty after that," Lindsey says. "What was so crazy, my unit was in YTC (Yakima Training Center), training with live ammunition. I'm like 'I don't think that's a good idea.'"
Lindsey describes a situation that was compounded by a divorce and heavy drinking, and admits he lost his rank for reasons he refused to divulge. He was eventually prescribed drugs that provided temporary relief, he says, but his requests for counseling fell on deaf ears.
"They put me on medication and that did help, but I still needed to talk about some issues," Lindsey says. "I just needed to vent out all the things I'd witnessed and they didn't allow me to do that...I'd been a great soldier. But when I started to break down, I noticed the army started to turn its back on me."
Feeling he had nowhere to turn, Lindsey fled Ft. Lewis for upstate New York. He says he worked odd jobs and sought spiritual guidance before electing to turn himself in to military police last Tuesday, June 19. Since then, he joined up with the activist organization March Forward!, which organized the Friday press conference.
March Forward! co-founder Kevin Baker, also an Iraq war veteran, says the record number of suicides last year at JBLM suggest Lindsey isn't the only soldier crying out for help. "The longest war in American history is the occupation of Afghanistan," Baker says. "And the rate of suicide has passed that of people killed in combat. It's a crisis." Baker says March Forward! is starting a campaign encouraging soldiers to refuse orders to deploy to Afghanistan. The group is also providing legal aid for Lindsey.
Lindsey says he was moved to speak out about his situation after learning he faced pre-trial confinement for going AWOL. He also claims his confessions of "homicidal thoughts" to Madigan doctors are now being used against him in the military court system, as he faces additional charges of threatening a senior officer.
An Army spokesman confirms that Lindsey left the base without permission in March and returned voluntarily in late June. The spokesman, Lt. Col. Gary Dangerfield, writes in an email that, "it is never justifiable to be absent without leave, even in the case of a medical emergency," and says Lindsey now faces loss of rank, forfeiture of pay, up to a year in prison, and dishonorable discharge from the service. Dangerfield declined to comment on Lindsey's claims about PTSD treatment at JBLM, citing medical privacy laws.
Lindsey says he's willing to own up to going AWOL, but he wants the world to know that the Army's mental health system needs a serious overhaul.
"I just want to get help," Lindsey says. "I just want light applied to this system. I want nothing monetary from the Army. I just want help."
Poor PTSD help forced Sgt. Brook Lindsey AWOL
By Keegan Hamilton, Seattle Weekly. June 27, 2012
Courage to Resist is currently working with Seattle area supporters of Sgt. Lindsey in order to best channel support. More information forthcoming.
An Iraq War veteran stationed at Ft. Lewis says struggles with PTSD and a lack of responsiveness to his condition by Army doctors forced him to go AWOL.
The soldier, 26-year-old Sgt. Brook Thomas Lindsey, met with members of the media on Friday at Coffee Strong, a non-profit organization, headquartered across the street from Joint Base Lewis-McChord, that advocates for military mental health treatment reform. Lindsey recounted why he decided to leave the base without permission on March 26.
"I'd go over to Madigan (Army Medical Center), right across the street and I'd tell them, 'I'm having suicidal thoughts,"' Lindsey says. "They would just tell me to breathe. They'd talk me down. The next day I'm still feeling the same way, but they'd return me to duty, tell my leaders everything was fine."
Wearing a baseball cap and a grey shirt with the sleeves rolled up to reveal several skeletal, military-themed tattoos on his forearms, Lindsey says he enlisted at age 19 because he felt it was his patriotic duty. He says he was deployed in Iraq for 22 months, and that he was an exemplary soldier prior to his return to the military base just south of Tacoma. Greg Wilson, a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, says he served in Iraq with Lindsey in 4th Battalion, 9th Infantry, 4th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, and was always impressed with his fellow soldier's resolve.
"He literally was one of those guys that loved what he was doing," Wilson says. "Sometimes it drove me nuts he was so motivated. He was trying to go to Ranger school. He loved his job as an infantryman."
But over the past year, Lindsey says he struggled with anxiety, sleeplessness, depression, and other conditions that stem from his combat experiences. He says the gung-ho Army culture initially discouraged him from seeking help, and when he finally did, "it was only a topical, it wasn't a deep solution."
Lindsey says in one instance he told doctors that he was having "homicidal thoughts against the chain of command," but the concerns were ignored. "They said I was fit for duty after that," Lindsey says. "What was so crazy, my unit was in YTC (Yakima Training Center), training with live ammunition. I'm like 'I don't think that's a good idea.'"
Lindsey describes a situation that was compounded by a divorce and heavy drinking, and admits he lost his rank for reasons he refused to divulge. He was eventually prescribed drugs that provided temporary relief, he says, but his requests for counseling fell on deaf ears.
"They put me on medication and that did help, but I still needed to talk about some issues," Lindsey says. "I just needed to vent out all the things I'd witnessed and they didn't allow me to do that...I'd been a great soldier. But when I started to break down, I noticed the army started to turn its back on me."
Feeling he had nowhere to turn, Lindsey fled Ft. Lewis for upstate New York. He says he worked odd jobs and sought spiritual guidance before electing to turn himself in to military police last Tuesday, June 19. Since then, he joined up with the activist organization March Forward!, which organized the Friday press conference.
March Forward! co-founder Kevin Baker, also an Iraq war veteran, says the record number of suicides last year at JBLM suggest Lindsey isn't the only soldier crying out for help. "The longest war in American history is the occupation of Afghanistan," Baker says. "And the rate of suicide has passed that of people killed in combat. It's a crisis." Baker says March Forward! is starting a campaign encouraging soldiers to refuse orders to deploy to Afghanistan. The group is also providing legal aid for Lindsey.
Lindsey says he was moved to speak out about his situation after learning he faced pre-trial confinement for going AWOL. He also claims his confessions of "homicidal thoughts" to Madigan doctors are now being used against him in the military court system, as he faces additional charges of threatening a senior officer.
An Army spokesman confirms that Lindsey left the base without permission in March and returned voluntarily in late June. The spokesman, Lt. Col. Gary Dangerfield, writes in an email that, "it is never justifiable to be absent without leave, even in the case of a medical emergency," and says Lindsey now faces loss of rank, forfeiture of pay, up to a year in prison, and dishonorable discharge from the service. Dangerfield declined to comment on Lindsey's claims about PTSD treatment at JBLM, citing medical privacy laws.
Lindsey says he's willing to own up to going AWOL, but he wants the world to know that the Army's mental health system needs a serious overhaul.
"I just want to get help," Lindsey says. "I just want light applied to this system. I want nothing monetary from the Army. I just want help."
From "COURAGE TO RESIST"-US war resister in sanctuary of Canadian church
News
US war resister in sanctuary of Canadian church
By Bob Meola, Courage to Resist. July 8, 2012
Join us in helping Rodney with his monthly food and phone expenses. Please donate via our friends at vancouverwarresisters.org with a one-time or monthly PayPal contribution.
War Resister Rodney Watson wishes he could be with his parents and other family and friends in his home town of Kansas City, Missouri. He’d like to see his wife and four year old son more than just on weekends in Vancouver, B.C. too. He’d also like to take his young family home to the United States and have his wife and his son meet his parents. But he can’t. Rodney has been living in the sanctuary of United Church in Vancouver since September 18, 2009. He eats and sleeps there and still cannot leave the Church without the risk of being deported back to the United States and to a military brig. After a tour of Iraq, in which he witnessed the senseless brutality of the war and the same racism toward the Iraqi people by U.S. enlisted soldiers and American contractors that he knew so well from experiencing it as an African-American, growing up in the United States, Rodney was stop-lossed.
Army Spc. Rodney Watson joined the Army in 2004 under a three year contract. In 2005, he was deployed to Iraq. He signed up to be a cook and instead was made to search vehicles and Iraqi civilians for explosives, contraband and weapons before they entered the base. In 2006, when his tour of duty there was over, he was informed that his contractual obligation to serve in the Army was being extended , without his consent, and he would not be discharged from military service at the agreed upon time. Rodney was a victim of the Army Stop Loss program. Rather than continue to serve in the Army and face re-deployment to Iraq in a war he knew was illegal and immoral, Rodney deserted and took refuge in Canada.
Presently, Rodney finds himself in a legal limbo that has meant no change in his case for quite a while. His lawyer will soon be re-submitting an application for him to be granted asylum on Humanitarian and Compassionate Grounds so that he can stay in Canada and be able to resume being a father to his four year old son and a husband on a daily basis. Because Rodney is confined to the church, he only sees his wife and his son on weekends.
Rodney recently told me, “Any conscientious objector to the Iraq war should not be punished because our leader, George Bush, himself went AWOL. No Iraq war Veteran should be punished for waking up and going AWOL after George W. Bush went AWOL from the National Guard and then later led us into a war based on lies about weapons of mass destruction. He should be locked up and not any of us awakened veterans from that Iraq war. The war criminals are free while I’m sitting in sanctuary in a church not able to go out in public. Thousands more [war resisters] are underground in the states who had disagreement with that war. It doesn’t make any sense to be punished for your conscience. I’m not a pacifist but the Iraq war was an unnecessary aggression and it was for natural resources and based on lies.
“If there is anything I can say to my fellow troops who are waking up to the lies and corporate greed and corruption, it is that I salute you and real change is not made by silence. I salute you for standing up and speaking out.
“I still love America. It’s my home. I miss my home. We’re in a state of endless war. I would like to be able to cross any border freely as a free man. There should be amnesty for Iraq war veterans. There are soldiers, here in Canada, who have come with their families from the states and soldiers who have made families here. There should be amnesty for those who have woken up to the lies and the corruption of the Iraq War.
Join us in helping Rodney with his monthly food and phone expenses. Please donate via our friends at vancouverwarresisters.org with a one-time or monthly PayPal contribution.
“I’m treated like a dangerous criminal because I decided that war wasn’t worth killing over. Why are we punished for saying we don’ t want to risk our lives for it anymore? I have a very deep feeling that there is going to be some kind of atonement for this. This is not right. This war was evil. Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Bush are running around free. If that’s not an axis of evil, I don’t know what is. “I thought I’d be protecting my country when I joined the Army. It was a lie.
“Being a deserter and a refugee has put a strain on my marriage and family. My wife is presently going to school to become a nurse’s aide. I risked my life for a stupid war that was wrong. I have no fear of risking my freedom and my life again for what is right—for truth.
“I just feel in my heart that I have every right to speak my mind against this war that I was involved in because I was actually there and I lost my friend there and I risked my own life for a war that was based on lies.”
Rodney appreciates the support he has received from Courage to Resist, the War Resisters’ Support Campaign, and donations from individual Quakers. It is fundraising for him that has sustained him. Rodney welcomes anyone who wants to connect with him to do so at his Facebook page, War Resister in Sanctuary.
Bob Meola is a member of the Courage to Resist Organizing Collective, the War Resisters League National Committee and the Bradley Manning Support Network Steering Committee. As a City of Berkeley Peace and Justice Commissioner, he authored the city's resolutions honoring Conscientious Objectors and War Resisters, making Berkeley a sanctuary city for war resisters and urging Universal Unconditional Amnesty for war resisters.
US war resister in sanctuary of Canadian church
By Bob Meola, Courage to Resist. July 8, 2012
Join us in helping Rodney with his monthly food and phone expenses. Please donate via our friends at vancouverwarresisters.org with a one-time or monthly PayPal contribution.
War Resister Rodney Watson wishes he could be with his parents and other family and friends in his home town of Kansas City, Missouri. He’d like to see his wife and four year old son more than just on weekends in Vancouver, B.C. too. He’d also like to take his young family home to the United States and have his wife and his son meet his parents. But he can’t. Rodney has been living in the sanctuary of United Church in Vancouver since September 18, 2009. He eats and sleeps there and still cannot leave the Church without the risk of being deported back to the United States and to a military brig. After a tour of Iraq, in which he witnessed the senseless brutality of the war and the same racism toward the Iraqi people by U.S. enlisted soldiers and American contractors that he knew so well from experiencing it as an African-American, growing up in the United States, Rodney was stop-lossed.
Army Spc. Rodney Watson joined the Army in 2004 under a three year contract. In 2005, he was deployed to Iraq. He signed up to be a cook and instead was made to search vehicles and Iraqi civilians for explosives, contraband and weapons before they entered the base. In 2006, when his tour of duty there was over, he was informed that his contractual obligation to serve in the Army was being extended , without his consent, and he would not be discharged from military service at the agreed upon time. Rodney was a victim of the Army Stop Loss program. Rather than continue to serve in the Army and face re-deployment to Iraq in a war he knew was illegal and immoral, Rodney deserted and took refuge in Canada.
Presently, Rodney finds himself in a legal limbo that has meant no change in his case for quite a while. His lawyer will soon be re-submitting an application for him to be granted asylum on Humanitarian and Compassionate Grounds so that he can stay in Canada and be able to resume being a father to his four year old son and a husband on a daily basis. Because Rodney is confined to the church, he only sees his wife and his son on weekends.
Rodney recently told me, “Any conscientious objector to the Iraq war should not be punished because our leader, George Bush, himself went AWOL. No Iraq war Veteran should be punished for waking up and going AWOL after George W. Bush went AWOL from the National Guard and then later led us into a war based on lies about weapons of mass destruction. He should be locked up and not any of us awakened veterans from that Iraq war. The war criminals are free while I’m sitting in sanctuary in a church not able to go out in public. Thousands more [war resisters] are underground in the states who had disagreement with that war. It doesn’t make any sense to be punished for your conscience. I’m not a pacifist but the Iraq war was an unnecessary aggression and it was for natural resources and based on lies.
“If there is anything I can say to my fellow troops who are waking up to the lies and corporate greed and corruption, it is that I salute you and real change is not made by silence. I salute you for standing up and speaking out.
“I still love America. It’s my home. I miss my home. We’re in a state of endless war. I would like to be able to cross any border freely as a free man. There should be amnesty for Iraq war veterans. There are soldiers, here in Canada, who have come with their families from the states and soldiers who have made families here. There should be amnesty for those who have woken up to the lies and the corruption of the Iraq War.
Join us in helping Rodney with his monthly food and phone expenses. Please donate via our friends at vancouverwarresisters.org with a one-time or monthly PayPal contribution.
“I’m treated like a dangerous criminal because I decided that war wasn’t worth killing over. Why are we punished for saying we don’ t want to risk our lives for it anymore? I have a very deep feeling that there is going to be some kind of atonement for this. This is not right. This war was evil. Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Bush are running around free. If that’s not an axis of evil, I don’t know what is. “I thought I’d be protecting my country when I joined the Army. It was a lie.
“Being a deserter and a refugee has put a strain on my marriage and family. My wife is presently going to school to become a nurse’s aide. I risked my life for a stupid war that was wrong. I have no fear of risking my freedom and my life again for what is right—for truth.
“I just feel in my heart that I have every right to speak my mind against this war that I was involved in because I was actually there and I lost my friend there and I risked my own life for a war that was based on lies.”
Rodney appreciates the support he has received from Courage to Resist, the War Resisters’ Support Campaign, and donations from individual Quakers. It is fundraising for him that has sustained him. Rodney welcomes anyone who wants to connect with him to do so at his Facebook page, War Resister in Sanctuary.
Bob Meola is a member of the Courage to Resist Organizing Collective, the War Resisters League National Committee and the Bradley Manning Support Network Steering Committee. As a City of Berkeley Peace and Justice Commissioner, he authored the city's resolutions honoring Conscientious Objectors and War Resisters, making Berkeley a sanctuary city for war resisters and urging Universal Unconditional Amnesty for war resisters.
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