Click on the headline to link to the Communist International Internet Archives.
Markin comment:
This article goes along with the propaganda points in the fight for our communist future mentioned in other posts in this space.
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Fourth Congress of the Communist International-Appendix to the Theses on Comintern Tactics;Theses On The United Front
Adopted by the EC, December 1921
1 The international workers’ movement is currently going through a particular transitional stage, which presents both the Communist International as a whole and its separate sections with new and important tactical problems.
Basically, this stage can be characterised as follows: the world economic crisis is worsening; unemployment is growing; in almost every country international capital has gone over to a systematic offensive against the workers, the main evidence of which is the capitalists’ cynical and open attempts to reduce wages and lower the workers’ general standard of living; and the bankruptcy of the Versailles peace is steadily becoming more apparent to the vast majority of workers. It is obvious that unless the international proletariat overthrows the bourgeois system a new imperialist war, or even several such wars, is inevitable. Th e Washington conference is eloquent confirmation of this.
2 A certain revival of reformist illusions which, due to a whole series of circumstances, had begun among fairly wide sections of workers is now, under the pressure of reality, beginning to give way to a different mood. The democratic and reformist illusions that re-emerged, after the imperialist carnage had ended, among some workers (on the one hand the more privileged workers and on the other the more backward, less politically experienced workers) are fading, having failed to flower. The future course and outcome of the ‘work’ of the Washington conference will upset these illusions even more. If six months ago it was possible to speak with some justification of a general move to the right among the working masses of Europe and America, then today it is possible to state with certainty that an opposite move to the left has begun.
3 On the other hand, under the influence of the mounting capitalist attack, there is anew mood among the workers – a spontaneous striving towards unity, which literally cannot be restrained, and which is a development paralleled by the gradual growth in the confidence felt by the broad mass of workers in the Communists.
A steadily growing number of workers are only now beginning to appreciate the courage shown by the Communist vanguard in throwing itself into the fight for the interests of the working class, even when the vast majority of workers were still indifferent or even hostile to Communism. A steadily growing number of workers are now becoming convinced that it was only the Communists who defended their economic and political interests, and that they did so in the most difficult circumstances, at times making the greatest sacrifices. This is why there is once more growing respect for and confidence in the uncompromising Communist vanguard of the working class, now that even the more backward layers of the workers have seen through the empty reformist hopes and have understood that without struggle there will be no escape from the onslaught of the capitalist gangsters.
4 The Communist Parties can and should now gather the fruits of the struggle they waged earlier on, in the wholly unfavourable circumstances of mass apathy. But as confidence steadily grows in those who are most uncompromising and militant, in the Communist elements of the working class, the working masses as a whole are experiencing an unprecedented longing for unity. The new layers of politically inexperienced workers just coming into activity long to achieve the unification of all the workers’ parties and even of all the workers’ organisations in general, hoping in this way to strengthen opposition to the capitalist offensive. These new layers of workers, who have often not previously taken an active part in political struggle, are now finding a new way to test the practical plans of reformism in the light of their own experience. Like these new layers, considerable sections of workers belonging to the old social-democratic parties are even now unwilling to accept the attacks of the social democrats and the centrists on the Communist vanguard. They are even beginning to demand an agreement with the Communists, but at the same time they have not outgrown their belief in the reformists and large numbers of them still support the parties of the Second and the Amsterdam Internationals. They do not formulate their plans and aspirations all that clearly, but in general the new mood of these masses comes down to a wish to set up a united front and make the parties and unions of the Second and the Amsterdam Internationals fight alongside the Communists against the capitalist attack. To that extent, this mood is progressive. The most important point is that their faith in reformism has been broken. Given the general situation of the workers’ movement today, any serious mass action, even if it starts with only partial slogans, will inevitably bring to the forefront the more general and fundamental questions of revolution. The Communist vanguard can only gain if new layers of workers are convinced by their own experience that reformism is an illusion and that compromise is fatal.
5 When the birth of a conscious and organised protest against the treachery of the leaders of the Second International was still in its early stages, these leaders kept control of the entire apparatus of the workers’ organisations. They ruthlessly manipulated the principle of unity and proletarian discipline in order to stifle revolutionary proletarian protest and, without opposition, to place the entire power of the workers’ organisations at the service of national imperialism. Faced with these circumstances, the revolutionary wing had at any cost to win freedom of agitation and propaganda, i.e., the freedom to explain to the working masses that this is an unprecedented historical betrayal, and that it has been committed – is still being committed – by the parties and unions they themselves created.
6 The Communist Parties of the world, having secured complete organisational freedom to extend their ideological influence among the working masses, are now trying at every opportunity to achieve the broadest and fullest possible unity of these masses in practical activity. The heroes of the Second and the Amsterdam Internationals preach unity in words, but deny it in action. Now that the reformist compromisers of Amsterdam have failed in their organisational attempt to suppress the voice of protest, criticism, and revolutionary aspirations, they are looking for a way out of their own impasse and are bringing splits, confusion and organised sabotage to the struggle of the working masses. One of the most important tasks facing Communists is to expose publicly these new forms of the old treachery.
7 However, the diplomats and leaders of the Second and Two-and-a-Half Internationals have lately been forced in their turn, by profound internal processes that stem from the general economic position of the working class in Europe and America, to push the question of unity into the foreground. Though, for the inexperienced sections of workers just becoming politically aware, the slogan of the united front is a genuine expression of their very real desire to rally the forces of the oppressed class against the capitalist attack, for the leaders and diplomats of the Second, Two-and-a-Half and Amsterdam Internationals the adoption of the slogan of unity represents a new attempt to deceive the workers and a new way of drawing them onto the old path of class collaboration. The approaching danger of a new imperialist war (Washington), the growth of armaments, the new imperialist treaties agreed on behind the scenes – all this not only fails to make the leaders of the Second, Two-and-a-Half and Amsterdam Internationals sound the alarm and uphold in deeds rather than words the international unification of the working class, but, on the contrary, is bound to provoke inside the Second and Amsterdam Internationals the same kind of friction and division that can be observed in the camp of the international bourgeoisie itself. This process is inevitable in as much as the cornerstone of reformism is the solidarity of the ‘reformist-socialists’ with the bourgeoisies of their ‘own’ countries.
These are the general conditions which the Communist International as a whole and its separate sections must consider in formulating their attitude to the slogan of the united socialist front.
8 Weighing up the situation, the Executive Committee of the Communist International finds that the slogan of the Third World Congress of the Communist International, -"To the masses!”, and the overall interests of the Communist movement require that the Communist Parties and the Communist International as a whole support the slogan of a united workers’ front and take the initiative on this question into their own hands. In this, the tactics of each Communist Party must of course be concretised with regard to the conditions and circumstances of each particular country.
9 In Germany the Communist Party at its last national conference supported the slogan of a united workers’ front and recognised the possibility of supporting a “united workers’ government”, provided it was willing to mount a serious challenge to capitalist power. The Executive Committee of the Communist International considers this decision entirely correct and is sure that the German Communist Party will be able, while fully maintaining its independent political position, to reach all sections of workers and strengthen Communist influence among the masses. In Germany, more than anywhere else, the broad masses will daily grow more convinced that the Communist vanguard was absolutely right in not wanting to lay down its arms at the most difficult time and in persistently exposing the hollowness of the reformist stratagems put forward to overcome a crisis that can be resolved only by proletarian revolution. By following this tactic, the Party can group around itself all the anarchist and syndicalist elements standing aside from the mass struggle.
10 In France the majority of politically organised workers support the Communist Party. This means that the question of the united front is posed rather differently in France than in other countries. However, it is essential that here, too, the entire responsibility for any split in the united workers’ camp should lie with our opponents. The revolutionary section of the French syndicalists is entirely correct to wage its fight against a split in the trade unions, i.e., for the unity of the working class in its economic struggle against the bourgeoisie. But the workers’ struggle does not end in the industrial sphere. Unity is also essential in view of the growing wave of reaction, of imperialist policies, etc. The policies of the reformists and centrists have led to a split in the Party and now threaten even the unity of the trade-union movement, which is objective proof that both Jouhaux and Longuet are playing into the hands of the bourgeoisie. The slogan of proletarian unity in the economic and political struggle against the bourgeoisie is the best means of defeating these plans for a split.
Even though the reformist Confederation of Labour led by Jouhaux, Merrheim and Co. will not fail to sell out the interest of the French working class, the French Communists and the revolutionary elements of the French working class must still approach the reformists before the start of every mass strike, revolutionary demonstration or any other spontaneous mass action, asking them to support the workers'
initiative, and must systematically expose the reformists when they refuse to support the revolutionary struggle of the workers. This will prove the easiest way to win the masses of workers who are outside the Party. Of course, it must in no circumstances induce the French Communist Party to give up any of its independence, by, for example, giving even a modicum of support to a “left-bloc” during election campaigns, or taking a lenient attitude to those shaky ‘Communists’ who still regret the split with the social-patriots.
11 In Britain the reformist Labour Party has refused to allow the Communist Party to affiliate on the same basis as other workers’ organisations. Influenced by the growing mood among the workers in favour of unity, the London workers’ organisations recently passed a resolution supporting the affiliation of the British Communist Party to the Labour Party.
Britain, of course, is an exception in this respect, since unusual conditions have made the Labour Party in Britain a kind of general workers’ association for the whole country. The British Communists must launch a vigorous campaign for their admittance to the Labour Party. The recent sell-outs by the trade-union leaders during the miners’ strike etc., the steady capitalist pressure on the workers’ wages etc., all this has roused a deep discontent among the masses of the British proletariat, which is becoming more revolutionary. The British Communists must do their utmost, whatever the cost, to extend their influence to the rank-and-file of the working masses, using the slogan of a united revolutionary front against the capitalists.
12 In Italy the young Communist Party is bitterly opposed to the reformist Italian Socialist Party and the social-traitors of the Confederation of Labour who have just sold the cause of proletarian revolution down the river; nevertheless it is beginning to conduct its agitational work around the slogan of a militant united proletarian front against the capitalist offensive. The Executive Committee of the Communist International considers that this agitational work is entirely correct and insists only that it be intensified in the same direction. The Executive Committee of the Communist International is sure that the Italian Communist Party, with sufficient far-sightedness, will be able to give the whole International an example of combative Marxism, by ruthlessly exposing at every step the half-hearted treachery of the reformists and the centrists (who have adopted the guise of Communists) and simultaneously by conducting a tireless campaign for the unity of the workers’ front against the bourgeoisie – a campaign that must steadily grow and involve larger and larger sections of the masses.
In this context the Party must naturally do its utmost to ensure the participation of revolutionary syndicalist elements in the common struggle.
13 In Czechoslovakia, where the Communist Party has the support of a significant section of the politically organised workers, the tasks of the Communists are in some respects analogous to those of the Communists in France. While strengthening its independence and weeding out the last traces of centrism, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia must also be able to popularise within the country the slogan of the united workers’ front against the bourgeoisie and must use it once and for all to expose the leaders of social democracy and the centrists as agents of capital in the eyes of the most backward workers. At the same time the Czechoslovak Communists must strengthen their efforts to win the trade unions, which are still to a significant extent in the hands of the scab leaders.
14 In Sweden the recent parliamentary elections have created a situation which will allow the small Communist fraction of deputies to play a major role. Mr. Branting, one of the most prominent leaders of the Second International and simultaneously prime minister for the Swedish bourgeoisie, is at present in such a position that, if he wishes to secure a parliamentary majority, he cannot remain indifferent to the actions of the Communist fraction in the Swedish parliament. The Executive Committee of the Communist International believes that the Communist fraction in the Swedish parliament may, in certain circumstances, agree to support the Menshevik ministry of Branting, as was correctly done by the German Communists in some of the provincial governments of Germany (for example, Thuringia). However, this certainly does not imply that the Swedish Communists should limit their independence in the slightest, or avoid exposing the character of the Menshevik government. On the contrary, the more power the Mensheviks have, the more they will betray the working class and all the greater must be the Communists’ efforts to expose these Mensheviks in the eyes of the broadest sections of workers. The Communist Party must also set about involving syndicalist workers in the common struggle.
15 In America the unification of all the Left elements in the trade-union and political movement is underway, and if the Communists occupy a central place in this Left unification, it will give them the opportunity to implant themselves in the broad masses of the American proletariat. The American Communists must form Communist groups wherever there are even a few Communists, must be able to stand at the head of this movement for the unification of all revolutionary forces and should particularly now raise the slogan of a united workers’ front, for example to defend the unemployed etc. The chief accusation levelled against the Gompers trade unions should be their unwillingness to participate in the setting up of a united workers’ front against the capitalists and in defence of the unemployed, etc. However, attracting the best elements from the IWW still remains the main task of the Communist Party.
16 In Switzerland our Party has been able to score a few successes by following the path we indicated. As a result of the Communists’ agitation for a united revolutionary front, the trade-union bureaucracy has been forced to call a special trade-union congress. At the congress, which is due to take place soon, our friends will be able to expose to all the Swiss workers the lie of reformism and so help boost the revolutionary solidarity of the proletariat.
17 In a number of other countries the question presents itself differently, in accordance with a whole series of different local conditions. Having made the general line clear, the Executive Committee of the Communist International is confident that individual Communist Parties will know how to apply it in accordance with the conditions prevailing in each country.
18 The Executive Committee of the Communist International considers that the chief and categorical condition, the same for all Communist Parties, is: the absolute autonomy and complete independence of every Communist Party entering into any agreement with the parties of the Second and Two-and-a-Half Internationals, and its freedom to present its own views and its criticisms of those who oppose the Communists. While accepting the need for discipline in action, Communists must at the same time retain both the right and the opportunity to voice, not only before and after but if necessary during actions, their opinion on the politics of all the organisations of the working class without exception. The waiving of this condition is not permissible in any circumstances. Whilst supporting the slogan of maximum unity of all workers’ organisations in every practical action against the capitalist front, Communists cannot in any circumstances refrain from putting forward their views, which are the only consistent expression of the interests of the working class as a whole.
19 The Executive Committee of the Communist International considers it useful to remind all fraternal parties of the experience of the Russian Bolsheviks – the only party so far to succeed in defeating the bourgeoisie and taking power into its own hands. During the fifteen years that elapsed from the birth of Bolshevism to its victory over the bourgeoisie (1903-1917), Bolshevism never ceased to wage a tireless fight against reformism or, to use another name, Menshevism. Nevertheless, during these fifteen years the Russian Bolsheviks often made agreements with the Mensheviks. The formal split with the Mensheviks took place in the spring of 1905, but at the end of that year, influenced by the stormy development of the workers’ movement, the Bolsheviks temporarily formed a common front with the Mensheviks. The second formal split with the Mensheviks finally took place in January 1912, but between 1905 and 1912 separation gave way to unifications and semi-unifications in 1906-7 and also in 1910. These unifications and semi-unifications were caused not just by fluctuations in the factional struggle, but by the direct pressure of broad sections of workers who were beginning to be politically active and were in fact demanding the opportunity to test by their own experience whether the Menshevik path really did fundamentally diverge from the path of revolution. Before the new revolutionary upsurge that followed the Lena strikes, [the Lena is a Siberian river. The strikes which occurred in the Lena area in early 1912 gave rise to a vast movement of solidarity on 1 May of that year, which marked the beginning of the revival of the revolutionary movement.] not long before the start of the imperialist war, the working masses of Russia were particularly eager for unity and the diplomat – leaders of Russian Menshevism tried at the time to use this for their own ends, in much the same way as the leaders of the Second, Two-and-a-Half and Amsterdam Internationals are trying at present. The Russian Bolsheviks did not respond to the workers’ eagerness for unity by rejecting any and every united front. On the contrary, to counter the diplomatic game of the Menshevik leaders, the Russian Bolsheviks put forward the slogan “unity from below – , i.e., unity of the working masses themselves in the practical struggle for the revolutionary demands of the workers against the capitalists. Events showed that this was the only correct response. As a result of this tactic, which was modified to suit the circumstances of time and place, a large number of the best Menshevik workers were gradually won over to the side of Communism.
20 Since the Communist International is putting forward the slogan of the united workers’ front and permitting agreements between individual sections of the Communist International and the parties and unions of the Second and Two-and-a-Half Internationals, it obviously cannot reject similar agreements at an international level. The Executive Committee of the Communist International made a proposal to the Amsterdam International in connection with famine relief to Russia. It repeated this proposal in connection with the White Terror and persecution of workers in Spain and Yugoslavia. The Executive Committee of the Communist International is currently making new proposals to the Amsterdam and Second Internationals, and also the Two-and-a-Half International, in connection with the initial work of the Washington conference, which has shown that a new imperialist slaughter threatens the international working class. The leaders of the Second, Two-and-a-Half and Amsterdam Internationals have shown by their behaviour so far that when it comes to practical activity they in practice ignore their slogan of unity. In all such situations the task of the Communist International as a whole and of each of its sections separately will be to explain to the broadest circles of workers the hypocrisy of the leaders of the Second, Two-and-a-Half and Amsterdam Internationals, who put unity with the bourgeoisie before unity with the revolutionary workers, by staying, for example, in the International Labour Organisation of the League of Nations and by being party to the Washington imperialist conference instead of organising the struggle against imperialist Washington etc. However, the rejection by the leaders of the Second, Two-and-a-Half and Amsterdam Internationals of this or that practical proposal from the Communist international will not make us give up this tactic, which has deep roots in the masses and which we systematically and steadily must develop. Whenever our opponents reject proposals for joint struggle, the masses must be informed so that they can learn who the real destroyers of the united workers’ front are. Whenever our opponents accept a proposal, we must aim gradually to intensify the struggle and raise it to a higher level. In either case it is essential to draw the attention of the broad masses to the talks between the Communists and the other organisations and to interest them in all the fluctuations of the struggle for the united revolutionary workers’ front.
21 In putting forward this plan, the Executive Committee of the Communist International directs the attention of all fraternal parties to the dangers that in certain circumstances could be involved. Not all Communist Parties are sufficiently developed and consolidated; not all have finally broken with centrist and semi-centrist ideology. There may be cases of bending the stick too far the other way; there may be tendencies which amount to the dissolution of the Communist Parties and groups into a formless united bloc. If the use of this tactic is to advance the cause of Communism, the actual Communist Parties carrying it out must be strong, united and under an ideologically clear leadership.
22 The groupings within the Communist International itself which, with greater or lesser justification, are considered Right or even semi-centrist, are clearly made up of two different tendencies. Some elements have not really broken with the ideology and methods of the Second International, have not freed themselves from reverence for its former organisational strength and, half-consciously or unconsciously, are still seeking ideological agreement with the Second International and, accordingly, with bourgeois society. Other elements, opposed to formal radicalism and the mistakes of so-called Leftism, etc., are anxious that the newly-formed Communist Parties should be more subtle and flexible in their tactics, so that they can more rapidly strengthen their influence among the rank-and-file of the working masses. The rapid pace of development of the Communist Parties has always appeared to push both these tendencies into the same camp, even into the same grouping. The use of the methods suggested by us, which are designed to give Communist agitation a base in the unified mass activity of the proletariat, is the most effective way of uncovering the truly reformist tendencies within the Communist Parties and, if applied correctly, these methods will greatly help the internal revolutionary consolidation of the Communist Parties, both by re-educating through experience impatient or sectarian Left elements and by ridding the Parties of reformist ballast.
23 The united workers’ front must mean the unity of all workers willing to fight against capitalism – including those workers who still follow the anarchists, syndicalists, etc. In the Latin countries there are still many such workers, and in other countries, too, they can contribute to the revolutionary struggle. From the start of its existence the Communist International has adopted a friendly line in its relations with those elements among the workers who have gradually overcome their prejudices and are moving towards Communism. Communists must be all the more attentive towards them now that the united workers’ front against the capitalists is becoming a reality.
24 In order finally to concretize this work along the lines indicated, the Executive Committee of the Communist International resolves to call in the near future an extended session of the Executive Committee of the Communist International with twice the usual number of delegates representing each Party.
25 The Executive Committee of the Communist International will closely follow every practical step taken in this sector of work and asks all the Parties to inform it of every attempt made and every gain won in this direction, giving full factual details.
Monday, August 06, 2012
From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- When Artie Shaw Rocked The Joint- A CD Review
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Artie Shaw and the gang performing, well, performing be-bop big band ballroom music.
CD Review
the only big band cd you’ll ever need, various big bands, BMG Music, 2000
He, spiffed up to the nines after a hard day at the garage, a hard day working on the very plush automobiles of the Mayfair swells who had encamped in old Bar Harbor for the summer, was in the mood. In the mood for love, in the mood for adventure, hell, what he was really in the mood for was some break-out be-bop big band music down at the Wanderlust Ballroom just before the Ellsworth line. Yes, Harry Hatton, was keyed up like a lot of guys that year, guys just getting their first or second pay checks after years of hard-scrabble on the road, on the bum, on the, well, on whatever was wrong about America in that good year, 1940. And Harry, like that ton of other guys in Bar Harbor, was keyed up because somehow, some way through some Mayfair swell connection the management of that stardust ballroom had obtained the big band musical services of Artie Shaw and his gang AND Mr. Benny Goodman and his quartet of the hour for two nights only to be-bop the night away. Yes, Harry Hatton was keyed up.
Ah, forget that eye-wash about being keyed about that mad hatter music, although that was a definite plus because Harry was not spiffed up to the nines for some abstract principle but to win the favors of his date, Miss Delores LeBlanc. And Miss LeBlanc was well worth getting spilled up to the nines about. She was this foxy little transplanted French-Canadian brunette frail that he had run into a few weeks back down at the Olde Saco Ballroom when Benny Goodman and some quintet AND Tommy Dorsey and his huge band had held forth. They had talked and agreed to have another date whenever he/she had the time and some big name band was in the area.
Agree to meet or not, Harry had had a hard time convincing Delores to make the journey to Bar Harbor because, and this will tell you all you need to know about dames, and maybe dames and big bands too, she had already heard Benny Goodman at Olde Saco and was, I quote, sick of him and his two-bit clarinet. But the draw of Artie Shaw was too much and Miss Delores LeBlanc was now on the arm of Mr. Harry Hatton, late of Bar Harbor, as they entered the foyer of the Wanderlust Ballroom. They both agreed that this place looked nice, nice lights, nice tables, nice bar, nice waiters, nice bandstand, nice and looked a lot better than that two- bit place where two- bit (Delores’ term not Harry’s) Benny Goodman blasted the seawall night.
That last remark of Delores’, that totally uncalled for remark about the reigning king of swing (in his book anyway with Sing, Sing, Sing and Buddha Swings blowing him away every time he heard them) had him nervous. Although she was a fox, no question, as the eyes of guys, of every guy with eyes (and maybe a few without them), single, or tabled up with a she, confirmed, she was, well, touchy. The ride up along the coast from Olde Saco on bloody traffic light on every block it seemed Route One has mussed things up. It was only after that first settling down drink and some nice music playing from the jukebox via the PA system before the main events that calmed her down.
Harry remembered latter that Duke’s It Don’t Mean A Thing and a slinky version of Cherokee settled her down a bit. Or maybe it was the drinks. When Benny came on with a hot version of Benny’s Stompin’ At The Savoy she started swaying, swaying gently with the rhythm. And Harry had swaying thoughts too. She made Harry laugh when she said maybe he was a four-bit band leader with that sultry smile of hers learned, well, learned from a hundred generations, learned. By the time Artie Shaw and the boys came on to the sound of Begin The Beguine she was ready to dance, and dance close. She then whispered in his ear this little tidbit-“We are going to your place after this, right?" Right. Yes, indeed, all you ever need in this wicked old world is a big band.
CD Review
the only big band cd you’ll ever need, various big bands, BMG Music, 2000
He, spiffed up to the nines after a hard day at the garage, a hard day working on the very plush automobiles of the Mayfair swells who had encamped in old Bar Harbor for the summer, was in the mood. In the mood for love, in the mood for adventure, hell, what he was really in the mood for was some break-out be-bop big band music down at the Wanderlust Ballroom just before the Ellsworth line. Yes, Harry Hatton, was keyed up like a lot of guys that year, guys just getting their first or second pay checks after years of hard-scrabble on the road, on the bum, on the, well, on whatever was wrong about America in that good year, 1940. And Harry, like that ton of other guys in Bar Harbor, was keyed up because somehow, some way through some Mayfair swell connection the management of that stardust ballroom had obtained the big band musical services of Artie Shaw and his gang AND Mr. Benny Goodman and his quartet of the hour for two nights only to be-bop the night away. Yes, Harry Hatton was keyed up.
Ah, forget that eye-wash about being keyed about that mad hatter music, although that was a definite plus because Harry was not spiffed up to the nines for some abstract principle but to win the favors of his date, Miss Delores LeBlanc. And Miss LeBlanc was well worth getting spilled up to the nines about. She was this foxy little transplanted French-Canadian brunette frail that he had run into a few weeks back down at the Olde Saco Ballroom when Benny Goodman and some quintet AND Tommy Dorsey and his huge band had held forth. They had talked and agreed to have another date whenever he/she had the time and some big name band was in the area.
Agree to meet or not, Harry had had a hard time convincing Delores to make the journey to Bar Harbor because, and this will tell you all you need to know about dames, and maybe dames and big bands too, she had already heard Benny Goodman at Olde Saco and was, I quote, sick of him and his two-bit clarinet. But the draw of Artie Shaw was too much and Miss Delores LeBlanc was now on the arm of Mr. Harry Hatton, late of Bar Harbor, as they entered the foyer of the Wanderlust Ballroom. They both agreed that this place looked nice, nice lights, nice tables, nice bar, nice waiters, nice bandstand, nice and looked a lot better than that two- bit place where two- bit (Delores’ term not Harry’s) Benny Goodman blasted the seawall night.
That last remark of Delores’, that totally uncalled for remark about the reigning king of swing (in his book anyway with Sing, Sing, Sing and Buddha Swings blowing him away every time he heard them) had him nervous. Although she was a fox, no question, as the eyes of guys, of every guy with eyes (and maybe a few without them), single, or tabled up with a she, confirmed, she was, well, touchy. The ride up along the coast from Olde Saco on bloody traffic light on every block it seemed Route One has mussed things up. It was only after that first settling down drink and some nice music playing from the jukebox via the PA system before the main events that calmed her down.
Harry remembered latter that Duke’s It Don’t Mean A Thing and a slinky version of Cherokee settled her down a bit. Or maybe it was the drinks. When Benny came on with a hot version of Benny’s Stompin’ At The Savoy she started swaying, swaying gently with the rhythm. And Harry had swaying thoughts too. She made Harry laugh when she said maybe he was a four-bit band leader with that sultry smile of hers learned, well, learned from a hundred generations, learned. By the time Artie Shaw and the boys came on to the sound of Begin The Beguine she was ready to dance, and dance close. She then whispered in his ear this little tidbit-“We are going to your place after this, right?" Right. Yes, indeed, all you ever need in this wicked old world is a big band.
From #Un-Occupied Boston (#Un-Tomemonos Boston)-What Happens When We Do Not Learn The Lessons Of History- The Pre-1848 Socialist Movement-August Blanqui 1848-The Central Republican Society
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 Occupy Boston 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.
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An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The Occupy Movement And All Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Occupy Protesters Everywhere!
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Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
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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!
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August Blanqui 1848-The Central Republican Society
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Translated: from the original for marxists.org by Mitchell Abidor;
CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2007.
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To the Provisional Government
Citizens:
The counter-revolution has just bathed in the blood of the people. Judgment, immediate judgment of the assassins!
For the past two months the royalist bourgeoisie of Rouen has plotted in the shadows a St Bartholomew’s massacre of the workers. It had stocked up on cartridges. The authorities knew of this.
Calls for death had broken out here and there, the premonitory symptoms of the catastrophe. We have to have done with these scoundrels! Scoundrels who in February, after three days of resistance, forced the bourgeois guard to submit to the Republic.
Citizens of the Provisional Government, how is it that in two months the working class population of Rouen and the surrounding valleys were not organized into National Guard units?
How is it that only the aristocracy possessed organization and arms?
How is it that at the moment of the execution of its horrible plot it only met unarmed breasts?
How is it that the 28th Regiment of the line, this sinister hero of the faubourg de Vaise, was in Rouen?
How is it that the garrison obeyed the orders of generals who were declared enemies of the Republic, of a General Gerard, creature and henchman of Louis-Philippe?
They were thirsty for a bloody revenge, these hired killers of a fallen dynasty. They needed an April massacre as consolation for a second July. They didn’t have to wait long.
April days barely two months after the revolution!
And nothing was missing from these new April scenes! Neither guns, nor bullets nor destroyed houses, nor state of siege nor the ferocity of the soldiers, nor the insulting of the dead, nor the unanimous insults from the newspapers, these cowardly adorers or might. The rue Transnonain[1] has been surpassed. Upon reading the wretched story of the exploits of these brigands we again find ourselves in the aftermath of the horrible days that once covered France in mourning and shame.
These are exactly the same executioners and the same victims! On one side frenzied bourgeois pushing to carnage imbecilic soldiers that they have filled with wine and hatred. On the other unfortunate workers defenselessly falling under the bullets and bayonets of the assassins.
And as a final sign of resemblance, here comes the royal court, Louis-Philippe’s judges, falling like hyenas on the debris of the massacre and filling the prisons with 250 republicans. At the head of these inquisitors is Frank-Carré, the execrable procureur-general of the court of peers, this Laubardemont who asked with rage for the heads of the insurgents of May 1839. The arrest warrants followed those patriots to Paris who fled the royalist proscription.
For it is a royalist terror that reigns in Rouen: do you not know this citizens of the Provisional Government? The bourgeois guard of Rouen furiously rejected the Republic in February. It is the Republic that it blasphemes and that it wants to overthrow.
All that was Republican yesterday has been put in irons. Your very own agents have been threatened with death, removed from office, arrested. The municipal magistrates Lemason and Durand have been dragged through the streets, bayonets at their chests, their clothing in rags. They are being held in secret by authority of the rebels. It is a royalist insurrection that has triumphed in the ancient capital of Normandy, and it is you, republican government, that supports these rebel assassins! Is this treason or is this cowardice? Are you weaklings or accomplices?
You know full well that there was no battle: it was a slaughter! And you let the slaughterers recount their feats of prowess! Is it that in your eyes, like in those of kings, the blood of the people is nothing but water, good for washing down the over-encumbered streets from time to time? If so, then erase from your buildings that detestable lie in three words that you have just inscribed on them: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity!
If your wives, if your daughters, those brilliant and frail creatures who promenade their idleness in gold and silk in sumptuous equipages, had been thrown at your feet, their breast opened by the fire of pitiless enemies, what cries of pain and vengeance you’d make heard to the ends of the earth!
So go, go see stretched out on the slabs of your hospitals, on cots in mansards these cadavers of slaughtered women, their breasts perforated by bourgeois bullets; the very breast that bore and nourished the workers whose sweat fattens the bourgeois!
The women of the people are worth as much as yours, and their blood should not, cannot remain unavenged!
Justice, then, justice for the assassins!
We demand:
The dissolution and disarmament of the bourgeois guard of Rouen
The arrest and trial of the generals and officers of the Bourgeois Guard and the troops of the line who ordered and led the massacre
The arrest and trial of the so-called members of the court of appeals, henchmen named by Louis-Philippe who, acting in the name and for the account of the victorious royalist faction, imprisoned the legitimate magistrates of the city and filled the prisons with republicans
Sending far from Paris the troops of the line who at this very moment, at fratricidal banquets, the reactionaries are readying for a St Bartholomew’s massacre of Parisian workers.
For the Central Republican Society, the members of the Bureau:
L-Auguste Blanqui, chairman
C.Lacambre,DMO – Vice-Chair
Flotte, treasurer
Pierre Beraud, Loroue secretaries, members of the Bureau
G. Robert
Lachambeaude
Crousse
Pujol
Javelot jeune
Brucker
Fomberteaux
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Site of a massacre of republicans on April 15, 1834 by the forces of the July Monarchy
Markin comment:
I will post any updates from that Occupy Boston 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!
***********
August Blanqui 1848-The Central Republican Society
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Translated: from the original for marxists.org by Mitchell Abidor;
CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2007.
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To the Provisional Government
Citizens:
The counter-revolution has just bathed in the blood of the people. Judgment, immediate judgment of the assassins!
For the past two months the royalist bourgeoisie of Rouen has plotted in the shadows a St Bartholomew’s massacre of the workers. It had stocked up on cartridges. The authorities knew of this.
Calls for death had broken out here and there, the premonitory symptoms of the catastrophe. We have to have done with these scoundrels! Scoundrels who in February, after three days of resistance, forced the bourgeois guard to submit to the Republic.
Citizens of the Provisional Government, how is it that in two months the working class population of Rouen and the surrounding valleys were not organized into National Guard units?
How is it that only the aristocracy possessed organization and arms?
How is it that at the moment of the execution of its horrible plot it only met unarmed breasts?
How is it that the 28th Regiment of the line, this sinister hero of the faubourg de Vaise, was in Rouen?
How is it that the garrison obeyed the orders of generals who were declared enemies of the Republic, of a General Gerard, creature and henchman of Louis-Philippe?
They were thirsty for a bloody revenge, these hired killers of a fallen dynasty. They needed an April massacre as consolation for a second July. They didn’t have to wait long.
April days barely two months after the revolution!
And nothing was missing from these new April scenes! Neither guns, nor bullets nor destroyed houses, nor state of siege nor the ferocity of the soldiers, nor the insulting of the dead, nor the unanimous insults from the newspapers, these cowardly adorers or might. The rue Transnonain[1] has been surpassed. Upon reading the wretched story of the exploits of these brigands we again find ourselves in the aftermath of the horrible days that once covered France in mourning and shame.
These are exactly the same executioners and the same victims! On one side frenzied bourgeois pushing to carnage imbecilic soldiers that they have filled with wine and hatred. On the other unfortunate workers defenselessly falling under the bullets and bayonets of the assassins.
And as a final sign of resemblance, here comes the royal court, Louis-Philippe’s judges, falling like hyenas on the debris of the massacre and filling the prisons with 250 republicans. At the head of these inquisitors is Frank-Carré, the execrable procureur-general of the court of peers, this Laubardemont who asked with rage for the heads of the insurgents of May 1839. The arrest warrants followed those patriots to Paris who fled the royalist proscription.
For it is a royalist terror that reigns in Rouen: do you not know this citizens of the Provisional Government? The bourgeois guard of Rouen furiously rejected the Republic in February. It is the Republic that it blasphemes and that it wants to overthrow.
All that was Republican yesterday has been put in irons. Your very own agents have been threatened with death, removed from office, arrested. The municipal magistrates Lemason and Durand have been dragged through the streets, bayonets at their chests, their clothing in rags. They are being held in secret by authority of the rebels. It is a royalist insurrection that has triumphed in the ancient capital of Normandy, and it is you, republican government, that supports these rebel assassins! Is this treason or is this cowardice? Are you weaklings or accomplices?
You know full well that there was no battle: it was a slaughter! And you let the slaughterers recount their feats of prowess! Is it that in your eyes, like in those of kings, the blood of the people is nothing but water, good for washing down the over-encumbered streets from time to time? If so, then erase from your buildings that detestable lie in three words that you have just inscribed on them: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity!
If your wives, if your daughters, those brilliant and frail creatures who promenade their idleness in gold and silk in sumptuous equipages, had been thrown at your feet, their breast opened by the fire of pitiless enemies, what cries of pain and vengeance you’d make heard to the ends of the earth!
So go, go see stretched out on the slabs of your hospitals, on cots in mansards these cadavers of slaughtered women, their breasts perforated by bourgeois bullets; the very breast that bore and nourished the workers whose sweat fattens the bourgeois!
The women of the people are worth as much as yours, and their blood should not, cannot remain unavenged!
Justice, then, justice for the assassins!
We demand:
The dissolution and disarmament of the bourgeois guard of Rouen
The arrest and trial of the generals and officers of the Bourgeois Guard and the troops of the line who ordered and led the massacre
The arrest and trial of the so-called members of the court of appeals, henchmen named by Louis-Philippe who, acting in the name and for the account of the victorious royalist faction, imprisoned the legitimate magistrates of the city and filled the prisons with republicans
Sending far from Paris the troops of the line who at this very moment, at fratricidal banquets, the reactionaries are readying for a St Bartholomew’s massacre of Parisian workers.
For the Central Republican Society, the members of the Bureau:
L-Auguste Blanqui, chairman
C.Lacambre,DMO – Vice-Chair
Flotte, treasurer
Pierre Beraud, Loroue secretaries, members of the Bureau
G. Robert
Lachambeaude
Crousse
Pujol
Javelot jeune
Brucker
Fomberteaux
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Site of a massacre of republicans on April 15, 1834 by the forces of the July Monarchy
From The Archives Of The “Revolutionary History” Journal-Alan Wald, The New York Intellectuals
Click on the headline to link to the Revolutionary History Journal index.
Markin comment:
This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discovery” the work of our forebears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.
**********
Reviews
Alan Wald, The New York Intellectuals, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1987, pp 440, £12.95
We present two reviews of this book. Sam Levy investigates the political issues, and Sheila Lahr looks at the literary aspects.
The New York Intellectuals deals with a unique phenomenon, the emergence and development of an anti-Stalinist, mainly Trotskyist-influenced, left amongst the intellectuals. Fellow travelling as a major phenomenon arose as a consequence of the major slump of 1929 and the emergence of Fascism in all its brutal reality. Though fellow travelling existed before this period, it is after this time that it really flourished. David Caute’s The Fellow Travellers deals with the main beneficiary – Stalinism. Wald’s book, however, deals with that group of intellectuals who broke from Stalinism and went beyond it.
I have personal memories of this period, when, as a youngster, I first became involved in active politics and became a Trotskyist. The Moscow Trials and the Spanish Civil War acted as both a detonator and educator of my political development. I remember from 1937 going weekly to the Independent Labour Party bookshop at 35 St Bride Street, because only there could one get material that wasn’t Stalinist or Stalinist approved. Whilst one could buy cheap books and pamphlets in the Stalinist bookshops, particularly the Marxian classics, anything else was verboten. It was at 35 St Bride Street that one could buy material beyond the Stalinist hack work.
The most important material I acquired was Trotskyist, mainly from the USA. It was there that I first learnt about some of the many intellectuals dealt with by Wald, particularly those linked with the Socialist Workers Party, such as Max Shachtman, Felix Morrow, Albert Goldman and George Novack. They had a strong influence on me.
This book, however, goes beyond my recollections or even knowledge, as to the important roles played by the intellectuals. It gives an historical picture as well as biographical sketches of the leftward moving, though in many cases still young and unknown, intellectuals, whose geographical area was New York, the main centre of American intellectual life. Here was the start of a relatively large-scale movement of intellectuals to the left of Stalinism, whereas elsewhere those moving towards Trotskyism were few and far between, unstable and of often short-lived allegiance.
The rise of the US anti-Stalinist left was linked to the general rise of the left, the growth of industrial unionism and the rise of the CIO. Unlike in western Europe, the Stalinists could not dominate this rise. They grew, but segments of the struggles were not under their control, such as the Minneapolis Teamsters and the auto workers in Flint.
Whereas in Europe, where the class struggles were dominated by the Stalinists, the Trotskyists being marginalised, in the USA a different pattern emerged. Due to historic and certain economic factors, Stalinism was not all-powerful, and the Trotskyists had a small but creditable organisation with some working class base, which was involved in some of the biggest struggles of the time. They could therefore be a pole of attraction to the politicised intellectuals. The rô1e of Stalinism in Germany, the Moscow Trials, the Popular Front and the Spanish Civil War had left their mark on the young intellectuals who were coming out of the colleges after the Great Depression, and they passed by Stalinism to the left beyond it.
The book reveals the active and dynamic role played by these intellectuals in the advance of the left, particularly Trotskyists. Two examples convey the picture. Sidney Hook played a major rôle in the creation of the Muste group, in its fusion with the Trotskyists, and in pushing James Burnham along the same road. The intellectuals also took a key part in the fight against the Moscow Trials. Whilst the Stalinists’ cover-up was powerful, it was not as strong as in Europe. Likewise, the Committee for the Defence of Leon Trotsky was strong enough in the USA to have some influence: sufficient to convince John Dewey to play an active investigatory part on it, whereas Bertrand Russell, with his personal and philosophical affinity with Dewey, was almost silent on this issue.
However, with war clouds growing and the slowing down of working class struggle, the first cracks started to appear. There’s always a ’reason’ for political moves. If it’s a serious move away from Marxism, it starts with philosophy, the two front runners being dialectics and the labour theory of value. It’s amazing that whenever one looks at those who start with ’marginal’ revisions, they tend to move to the far right of the political spectrum. Burnham admitted as much in his resignation letter to the Workers Party. Though not all travel that far, the trend is there.
Trotsky knew the signs from years of experience. After all, a major feature of European revisionism at the beginning of the century was preferring Kant to Marx, the categorical imperative to the class struggle. The trend was so powerful so early that an article by Burnham and Shachtman, Intellectuals in Retreat (New International, January 1939), was vindicated by its authors travelling that very road – first Burnham, then Shachtman.
That is why Trotsky realised, particularly after Dewey’s response to his Their Morals and Ours, that this movement away from Marxism was not just the idiosyncracies of Max Eastman, but a trend of a stratum of intellectuals. The raising by Trotsky in the faction fight in the SWP in 1939-40 of the question of dialectics was to attack the central core of this movement. He tried to educate his comrades, not in abstractions as is so often presented, but as a method of reasoning and as a method of application to the problems of society. He tried to counter the move away from Marxism, both personally (it seems that he was writing a major article on dialectical materialism when he was struck down), as well as delegating Novack and Jean van Heijenoort, whom he hoped would carry on the struggle against the revisionists. Both proved totally incapable. Van Heijenoort ended up rejecting the working class on the grounds that it was incapable of carrying out its historic tasks. Novack turned out an intelligent hack and nothing else; today’s SWP proves this, a politically bankrupt bunch chasing after the golden mirages of Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and Daniel Ortega.
For the anti-Stalinist intellectuals it was downhill all the way in the post-war period, although their individual progressions went at an uneven rate and in an uneven pattern. Their strengths became their weaknesses. Their ability to go beyond Stalinism and expose its rottenness itself became the instrument for them to move towards the most reactionary elements of capitalism. Unable to understand the relationship between Stalinism and the working class, and with their lack of confidence in the working class, they had only one direction in which to go – towards supporting US capitalism.
As these intellectuals moved further to the right, they had to jump a series of hurdles, their attitude to which gave a stamp both to their character and how far they were moving. First was the McCarthy era. They came out very badly, the overwhelming majority endorsing elements of McCarthyism or keeping quiet. The Stalinists have used this as an indictment of Trotskyism. Wald points out that McCarthyism penetrated all left wing and fellow travelling movements. Wald also points out that, ironically, McCarthyism rescued the Stalinists’ reputations:
Ignorance on the part of the 1960s New Leftists was not the sole reason that apologists for Stalinism such as Lillian Hellman, Paul Robeson, and the Hollywood Ten were resurrected as moral beacons; their rehabilitation was the logical by-product of the dismal record of all but a few of the founders of the intellectual anti-Stalinist left.
Robeson was one of the most vociferous denunciators of Trotskyism, supporting the imprisonment during the Second World War of the Trotskyists under the Smith Act. Only when he was himself being done under it did he fight against it. Hellman’s anti-Fascist credentials were glorified in the supposedly autobiographical film Julia, which was exposed by Mary McCarthy as a tissue of lies. The McCarthy period was not only a false indictment of Trotsky – through the rôle of the New York intellectuals – but it also permitted the glorification of some of the nastiest Stalinist hacks.
The next major hurdle they faced was the Vietnam War. Many more fell. This war was unique in American history, not in its objectives, but in its result. The heavy casualties and powerful opposition at home altered the outlook of large sections of American society. This war was a further marker in the rightward evolution of the old anti-Stalinist intellectuals. Some held back. Others, like Shachtman, whilst slow off the mark, rapidly overtook them, and went beyond them, defending the reactionary actions of an imperialist government.
This is dealt with by Wald, particularly the differences that emerged amongst the intellectuals, but one feels he does not deal adequately with it in the fundamental sense. The New Left was a major new force arising amongst the younger intellectuals, and whilst on the whole they were as confused a bunch as one could expect to see, they nevertheless correctly saw America’s rôle in that war. Wald, naturally, only touches slightly on them. They aren’t the main topic of his book, nevertheless the inter-relation between them and the older generation is missing. For my part, these New Leftists were the bastard children of the New York Intellectuals, whose disowning of their parentage is linked with the Vietnam war.
The main criticism I have of this book is that it does not give an adequate picture of the material and other conditions, such as the economy, the consciousness of the working class, the struggle of social systems, etc, from which flowed the ideological drift of the anti-Stalinist intellectuals, and the central ideological justification for the movement. Wald deals extensively with the intellectuals’ philosophical polemics, ending with what I feel is a correct observation:
The dialectical transcendence or sublation (in the Hegelian sense of Aufhebung) of this debate is the sine qua non for the revival of Marxist theory and practice in the United States.
This gives an historical slant to the debate, not arguing how it affects present-day thinking in both the USA and Europe. I think a part of this is due to the lack of intertwining the two aspects.
Each period has a basic material and ideological foundation which consciously or unconsciously intertwine. No dominant ideas or philosophy arise out of a vacuum. The ideological movement from Marxism, in the first instance away from Marxist philosophy, reflected the period precisely in the new guru, not Kant (old hat), but pragmatism, and John Dewey in particular. The liberalism of exposition and outlook hid the deeper basic concept from which the philosophy flowed. Being developed in a period of developing US capitalism, with the concept of wide open spaces, intelligent activism became the core, drawing ideas from that core, using developing US capitalism and wide open spaces as the scale, all things became possible – many roads lead to socialism. The difference in this sense between Kant and Dewey is but a reflection of the different material roots.
The essence of Dewey’s thoughts is shown in his short but concrete reply to Trotsky’s Their Morals and Ours in the New International (August 1938) He concludes:
Orthodox Marxism shares with orthodox religionism and with traditional idealism the belief that human ends are interwoven into the very texture and structure of existence – a concept inherited presumably from its Hegelian origin.
If that is the core of his criticism of Marxism extant, the real flavour of it is this:
Since the class struggle is regarded as the only means that will reach the end, and since the view that it is the only means is reached deductively and not by an inductive examination of means-consequence in their interdependence, the means, the class struggle, does not need to be critically examined with respect to its actual objective consequence.
What is posed here is an abstract argument, a universalist argument independent of reality, though liberal in form. This is counterposed to the narrow, therefore ‘religious’ concept of the class struggle. Whereas Trotsky tried to put a period scale on historical development in Their Morals and Ours, from capitalism to a new economic and social structure in which man would truly be free – Socialism – Dewey, on the contrary, tried to establish an absolute principle applicable to all periods under all conditions. He downgrades the class struggle in comparison to his many roads, under the banner of scientific thought and liberal content.
The accusation that the class struggle being the only means has been reached deductively, without scientific basis, is totally wrong. Most scientific discovery is based on deduction flowing from known facts. Again, the argument that class struggle as the only road is reached without critical examination, says more for the lack of knowledge of Marxism on the part of Dewey. Marx and Engels spent their lifetime analysing the economic and social structure of capitalism, from which arise the class struggle, examining the historical, social and economic developments. They made errors, but the structure on which they based their conclusions has stood the test of time.
The dominant characteristics of man are determined by the way he lives, his environment, and the social relations which arise from that. It is precisely the development of the various modes of production – economic and social relationships – that is the dominant (but not the only) characteristic of human development, and which determines the major relationships of classes, sub-classes and even groups. The emergence of capitalism – economically unconsciously and politically semi-consciously – reflected the various struggles of the lower classes – capitalists and workers, serfs and peasants – against the dominant class, which established both the political and the economic foundations of capitalism. The emergence of capitalism established the dominance of a new mode of production – production for the market.
This mode of production rests on certain fundamentals – the relationships to the production and distribution of commodities of those owning the capital, and those without capital but who produce the goods. It is a conflict of interests, based not on what Marx, the industrial proletariat, etc, wants or not, but on a permanent division at the point of production, independent of human consciousness. The class struggle exists, regardless of whether the workers are storming the barricades or believing that they have a common interest with their employers. Marxism arises in the consciousness, not in the class struggle itself.
Because modern human existence rest on the capitalist mode of production, other factors and relationships follow The class struggle becomes the key anc dominant force in social change. Fundamental social change means the destruction of capitalism by the elimination of the capitalists’ rôle in production transferring capitalist property to common ownership. Only the working class has a relationship with capital that enable this to be done. No other class can carry out this radical and necessary transformation.
To argue that the class struggle is central to modern society, does not, however, mean that there are not other forms of conflict, many predating capitalism, such as over the rô1e of women, and racial and religious prejudices, etc, or that many will not be a source of conflict, albeit declining, after the establishment of Socialism.
Dewey, on the contrary, blames the messenger, not the message. Dialectics does not create the class struggle, it is the method of showing and explaining the process. The scientific nature of the explanation is that, on the basis of the examination of capitalism, it cuts across the illusory desires of utopian Socialism. Its strength lies in showing – not postulating – that there is only one road to Socialism. It is Dewey who desires many roads and therefore becomes involved in abstract philosophical arguments independent of reality.
The post-war decline in working class consciousness, and the growing illusions in capitalism on the part of some workers, have been the material foundation of the adoption of a Deweyist outlook by some intellectuals and working class activists. That it first took shape amongst the anti-Stalinist left was no accident. They were brighter and more politically conscious. Nevertheless, today it permeates through the movement, from Euro-stalinists to trade union bureaucrats. The New Left, the bastard children of the New York intellectuals, revolted against their rightward-moving parents as a consequence of the Vietnam War, but took on as their basic creed that there are other means for radical social change, and thus downgraded the working class. With the student, black and women’s movements, struggles were diverted down blind alleys. And whilst many leading lights of the New Left of the 1960s have joined their elders in enjoying the fruits of capitalism, the philosophical basis remains. Many of the latest generation operate along the same lines, just adding new issues with corresponding movements, such as gays and the environment.
I think that Wald has illusions in the movement in Europe. The reality, however, is that Europeans merely imitate what’s happening in the USA, or develop similar themes. The flourishing of new movements at the expense of working class collective activity has become an impediment to developing conscious working class policies and struggle. The tendency to imitate the USA is ironic when one considers political developments there, with the fragmentation of the movement into small groups, some of which have so lost their basic class outlook that they support a black populist of the Democratic Party.
The growth of US capitalism has been a major factor in this development, but for Marxists these are factors to be fought. Whether they like it or not on the New Left, US capitalism is in decline, and to pick on aspects of the social problems in the USA instead of opposing US capitalism as a whole is a blind alley. The need for a total struggle, and in this perspective the re-emergence of the working class and its parties, is not only logical, but necessary.
To criticise the student, black or women’s movements, etc., is not to condemn the justifiable reaction of the disadvantaged, but to criticise their sectionalised outlook, as blacks, as women, independently of the class structure. One should fight for equal rights for women, blacks and gays, and take up ecological issues, but all this should be part of the central class struggle, under the working class and its parties.
I do not think that this has little to do with the New York intellectuals. It is the result of an historical development, of a process that started before the Second World War, the end result of the movement away from Marxism.
After about 55 years, the generation of New York intellectuals has nearly run its course. Such a book is necessary for a knowledge of the past, the rôle the intellectuals played, the weaknesses inherent in their situation, ideology, etc. As an historical documentation of the development of the New York intellectuals, the book is impressive. The hard work gone into it is clear for everyone to see. In that rôle it fulfills a first class function. It is in drawing the strands together and giving it a clear direction where the weaknesses arise, because it fails to draw the full implications of the effects of Deweyism on the working class, through its influence on the intellectuals. Nevertheless, I recommend without doubt this book to anyone who can afford it, because it advocates the need:
‘... to integrate the sort of theoretical consciousness about political strategy with careful empirical research into the experience of the previous generation of Marxists [i.e., Trotsky, Bukharin, etc.]. In that way we will be able to advance the recovery of our radical heritage, to correct the political amnesia that has marred our legacy.
And that is a job worth doing.
Sam Levy
To the general reader who regards books as providing entertainment or information, the arguments between the various literary schools of the early and mid twentieth century may hold no interest. However, it should be remembered that Trotsky regarded the question of such importance that in 1923 he published Literature and Revolution, in which his concern was with the development of literature following the Russian Revolution. To this end, he gave consideration to the possibility of the unfolding of a proletarian culture following the Revolution, coming to the conclusion that while every ruling class creates its own culture, it also takes several hundred years for this to flower. Therefore, as the dictatorship of the proletariat was expected to last a comparatively short time only before giving way to the abolition of classes and the establishment of socialism, no far-reaching proletarian culture would develop.
Certainly Trotsky did not consider that proletarian culture could flourish within capitalist society. However, from the beginning of the 1930s the Stalinists propounded against all other literary schools proletarian literature or, as it was also called, ‘realism’, and this was supported by clubs named after John Reed. One of the foremost proponents of proletarian literature in America was the Stalinist Mike Gold, who set forth a number of stipulations for its practice, among which he demanded that the world of work be described with technical precision; it must provide a useful social function; be presented in as few words as possible in a simple vocabulary; that action should be swift, and that there should be no melodrama. (M. Gold, A Literary Anthology [Ed. M. Folsom], International Publishers, 1972).
As may be understood, those literary intellectuals of the 1930s who were to become the anti-Stalinist left of Wald’s book found this formula over-prescriptive, which led to two of their number, William Phillips and Philip Rahv, both members of the Communist Party and the John Reed Clubs, to advocate that proletarian literature be leavened by ‘modernism’. At that time, the best known writers in the modernist style were Joyce, Pound, Eliot and Stein, and it was their style of writing which came under fire from the Stalinist proletarian literature school. To provide an example of the type of polemic between modernists and ‘realists’ I can do no better than quote Brecht, who wrote to Lukács in 1956 in defence of James Joyce. Brecht writes that an interior monologue of a woman lying in bed in Ulysses had been rejected by ‘Marxists’ as ‘formalistic’ (formalist – the reduction of writing to etymology and syntax: See Trotsky’s Literature and Revolution). But the criticism had been made in such terms, that it left the impression that the monologue would have been acceptable had it been set in a session with a psychoanalyst. (Aesthetics and Politics – Debates between Bloch, Lukacs, Brecht, Benjamin and Adorno, Verso, 1980).
However, to return to Phillips and Rahv. With the support and assistance of established Communist cultural leaders, including Mike Gold, and financial support raised through a lecture by John Strachey, they launched the Partisan Review to concentrate primarily on cultural and literary questions, while leaving the New Masses to confine itself to the political and industrial. By 1937, when both Rahv and Phillips broke openly with the Stalinists, the Partisan Review had gathered around it most of the anti-Stalinist left and Trotskyists who are the subject of Wald’s book, and provided a central point of literary and cultural polemics.
However, Wald writes, although both Phillips and Rahv warned against the right wing dangers to writers “who seek to assimilate the Joyce-Eliot sensibility without a clear revolutionary purpose”, Rahv and Phillips held to elements of Elitism and a belief in High Culture. But they saw modernism as an avant-garde in literary protest against twentieth century commercialism. It is not pertinent that the modernist writers referred to above were not on the left in their politics, for their criticism of bourgeois culture in their works was seen as transcending their political views – an approach, Wald remarks, which recalls Marx and Engels’s treatment of Balzac and Lenin’s of Tolstoy. It must also be remembered that while Trotsky focused on the social aspects of literature in his criticism, he rigorously differentiated between his assessments of the political views of an author and his judgements of the artistic quality of the work.
Ironically, while these editors were gathering about them anti-Stalinist left intellectuals who accepted that “an error of leftism occurs from zeal to steep literature overnight in the programme of Communism, as this leads to sloganised and inorganic writing”, the Stalinists were abandoning their proletarian culture tactics in favour of the Popular Front and were closing down the John Reed Clubs!
Trotsky was now writing about the Moscow Trials, and, as he held a special appeal for radicalised literati which stemmed from his literary, historical and polemical achievements, left wing intellectuals increasingly became associated with the Partisan Review. As it happens, during the 1930s Trotsky had devoted extensive correspondence to the question of the significance of the American intellectuals for a small revolutionary workers’ party, for he saw the leftist intelligentsia, following the Russian revolution, as “binding its lot to the proletariat for the victorious revolution, but at the same time raising itself on the shoulders of the revolution”. He therefore urged that his followers exercise special precautionary measures when assimilating former Communist intellectuals who had gained an education in a Stalinist Party, and pressed that radical intellectuals and writers should strive for theoretical clarity. To what extent some, or all, of these left intellectuals sought the political clarity referred to by Trotsky at that time cannot be stated, but certainly a number of them had reservations with regard to Marxism and Leninism – Max Eastman, for instance, wanted to replace ‘mechanical Marxism’ with ‘social engineering’, and Sidney Hook with pragmatism. Perhaps one of the best known writers attracted to the group around the New Partisan Review was the novelist James T. Farrell (who was also a member of the Trotsky Defence Committee). Farrell’s novels presented Irish working class life in the first half of the twentieth century, and can be said to be written in the realist-naturalist school (examples of which are Zola and Dreiser) but Wald, possibly determined to find a modernist connection, states that he can be considered modernist because he allowed dreams and subconscious longings into his novels. He quotes as proof of this a vision seen by Studs Lonigan as he lies dying from the effects of bootleg liquor, to which he had turned to drown his frustrations and sorrows, instead of developing a class conscious response. As he lies on his sick-bed Studs dreams of a Communist led demonstration against unemployment in which are visible banners bearing slogans calling for revolutionary political action. Against Studs is posed Danny O’Neill “who breaks with the false consciousness perpetrated by (capitalist) society” to work his way through college. Not that this itself is a revolutionary act – in fact it can be quite the opposite!
However, by 1937 when a revamped Partisan Review was launched by Rahv and Phillips, the Moscow Trials, the Trotsky Defence Committee and the Dewey Commission had politicised a further group of young anti-Stalinist left-wing writers, and so Mary McCarthy who was a member of the Trotsky Defence Committee, and whose best known novel is probably The Group, and Dwight Macdonald, became members of the editorial board. Rahv and Phillips had remained intent upon the journal continuing its search for a Marxist aesthetic, and Phillips once again wrote that Trotsky was outstanding in that “he not only saw in literature a mirror of society, but was acutely conscious of those qualities which taken together make up the social vision of a work of art”. In fact, Wald writes that this revamped Partisan Review “was the most important cultural event following the Moscow Trials”.
Nevertheless, it did not last very long as a literary revolutionary catalyst, for within a few short years, as a response to the enthusiastic support of the Second World War by the Stalinists and the absence of a mass revolutionary movement, Rahv had come to the conclusion that the only way in which a writer could protest against the dominant values of ‘our time’ was by maintaining ‘intellectual integrity’. In this Rahv reflected the attitudes of an increasing number of anti-Stalinist left wing writers and intellectuals who had also become disappointed in, and disillusioned by, the failure of the working class to make a revolution. Of course, this process of disintegration was accelerated by Trotsky’s murder. Disillusionment with revolutionary politics brought forth a plethora of anti-socialist novels and stories from former left wing writers and Trotskyists who previously had included little of their revolutionary experience in their fiction. Saul Bellow, Isaac Rosenfeld, Edmund Wilson, Lionel Trilling, Mary McCarthy and Joseph Howe all produced novels and stories, the purport of which was to illustrate the fallacy of attempting to change society by social theory and action. Wald writes that the fiction of the New York intellectuals in the 1940s must be read with a sense of irony, for the consistent theme of virtually every one of their important works published during and immediately after the Second World War proclaims the need for liberation from the ideologies of the radical movement. One might almost call this the school of anti-proletarian culture!
Insofar as ideology is concerned, Wald quotes the British Marxist Terry Eagleton, whose view of ideology is materialist as against that of the New York intellectuals’ philosophical pragmatism. Eagleton sees reality as “ideology’s homeland”. Therefore a work of art “has the potential of liberating us from ideological illusion. Inasmuch as a work of literature seizes upon, reshuffles and depicts experience it, too, resides in the realm of ideology”. (Criticism and Ideology, New Left Books, 1976)
As may well be understood, the opposition of many of these intellectuals to ‘radical ideology’ was to lead them during the ensuing years to support for American foreign policy, McCarthyism, Nixon and Reaganism.
With regard to ‘modernism’, it has become increasingly academic and the elite culture of an intellectual establishment “in which some of the New York intellectuals played a part”. Wald writes that the Marxist criticism of modernism of these intellectuals had never been more than a few penetrating insights “unlike the brilliant work of their European contemporaries such as Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno and Georg Lukacs”. It should therefore come as no surprise that today students of Critical Theory largely study the essays written by these Europeans.
Perhaps in the West the political discussion has changed from a debate of literary schools to that of the effects of mass culture, or the ‘commercialisation of culture’ which Farrell perceived as “creating a struggle between the desire of the artist to present an authentic vision of the world and the desire of the film-makers and publishers to make art marketable, which they achieve by standardisation, repetition and by promoting established authors”. (J.T. Farrell, The Fate of Writing in America, quoted by Wald, p.223).
However, in the East, the debate with regard to ‘proletarian culture’ continues and, in fact, has become part of the fabric of daily life, as witness a recent Channel 4 programme on the dissident Czech writer Vaclav Havel, who has served several terms in prison and whose plays are banned because they satirise the bureaucracy, the plays being presented in a modernist style. In this programme a Stalinist Director of Arts stated that “art has the duty to serve the health of society”, which recalls one of the prescriptions set out by Mike Gold.
In conclusion, I would add that this is a book which poses many questions to all those interested in the connection between politics and the development of a Marxist aesthetic.
What I found especially interesting was the contemplation of why, in America during the 1930s, there was such an active anti-Stalinist and Trotskyist intellectual left, while in Britain our own radicalised intellectuals for the most part continued to support Stalinism or moved directly to the right.
The book itself is written clearly and comprehensively, and apart from detailing the debates and polemics involved, provides potted biographies of a star-studded cast.
Sheila Lahr
Markin comment:
This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discovery” the work of our forebears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.
**********
Reviews
Alan Wald, The New York Intellectuals, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1987, pp 440, £12.95
We present two reviews of this book. Sam Levy investigates the political issues, and Sheila Lahr looks at the literary aspects.
The New York Intellectuals deals with a unique phenomenon, the emergence and development of an anti-Stalinist, mainly Trotskyist-influenced, left amongst the intellectuals. Fellow travelling as a major phenomenon arose as a consequence of the major slump of 1929 and the emergence of Fascism in all its brutal reality. Though fellow travelling existed before this period, it is after this time that it really flourished. David Caute’s The Fellow Travellers deals with the main beneficiary – Stalinism. Wald’s book, however, deals with that group of intellectuals who broke from Stalinism and went beyond it.
I have personal memories of this period, when, as a youngster, I first became involved in active politics and became a Trotskyist. The Moscow Trials and the Spanish Civil War acted as both a detonator and educator of my political development. I remember from 1937 going weekly to the Independent Labour Party bookshop at 35 St Bride Street, because only there could one get material that wasn’t Stalinist or Stalinist approved. Whilst one could buy cheap books and pamphlets in the Stalinist bookshops, particularly the Marxian classics, anything else was verboten. It was at 35 St Bride Street that one could buy material beyond the Stalinist hack work.
The most important material I acquired was Trotskyist, mainly from the USA. It was there that I first learnt about some of the many intellectuals dealt with by Wald, particularly those linked with the Socialist Workers Party, such as Max Shachtman, Felix Morrow, Albert Goldman and George Novack. They had a strong influence on me.
This book, however, goes beyond my recollections or even knowledge, as to the important roles played by the intellectuals. It gives an historical picture as well as biographical sketches of the leftward moving, though in many cases still young and unknown, intellectuals, whose geographical area was New York, the main centre of American intellectual life. Here was the start of a relatively large-scale movement of intellectuals to the left of Stalinism, whereas elsewhere those moving towards Trotskyism were few and far between, unstable and of often short-lived allegiance.
The rise of the US anti-Stalinist left was linked to the general rise of the left, the growth of industrial unionism and the rise of the CIO. Unlike in western Europe, the Stalinists could not dominate this rise. They grew, but segments of the struggles were not under their control, such as the Minneapolis Teamsters and the auto workers in Flint.
Whereas in Europe, where the class struggles were dominated by the Stalinists, the Trotskyists being marginalised, in the USA a different pattern emerged. Due to historic and certain economic factors, Stalinism was not all-powerful, and the Trotskyists had a small but creditable organisation with some working class base, which was involved in some of the biggest struggles of the time. They could therefore be a pole of attraction to the politicised intellectuals. The rô1e of Stalinism in Germany, the Moscow Trials, the Popular Front and the Spanish Civil War had left their mark on the young intellectuals who were coming out of the colleges after the Great Depression, and they passed by Stalinism to the left beyond it.
The book reveals the active and dynamic role played by these intellectuals in the advance of the left, particularly Trotskyists. Two examples convey the picture. Sidney Hook played a major rôle in the creation of the Muste group, in its fusion with the Trotskyists, and in pushing James Burnham along the same road. The intellectuals also took a key part in the fight against the Moscow Trials. Whilst the Stalinists’ cover-up was powerful, it was not as strong as in Europe. Likewise, the Committee for the Defence of Leon Trotsky was strong enough in the USA to have some influence: sufficient to convince John Dewey to play an active investigatory part on it, whereas Bertrand Russell, with his personal and philosophical affinity with Dewey, was almost silent on this issue.
However, with war clouds growing and the slowing down of working class struggle, the first cracks started to appear. There’s always a ’reason’ for political moves. If it’s a serious move away from Marxism, it starts with philosophy, the two front runners being dialectics and the labour theory of value. It’s amazing that whenever one looks at those who start with ’marginal’ revisions, they tend to move to the far right of the political spectrum. Burnham admitted as much in his resignation letter to the Workers Party. Though not all travel that far, the trend is there.
Trotsky knew the signs from years of experience. After all, a major feature of European revisionism at the beginning of the century was preferring Kant to Marx, the categorical imperative to the class struggle. The trend was so powerful so early that an article by Burnham and Shachtman, Intellectuals in Retreat (New International, January 1939), was vindicated by its authors travelling that very road – first Burnham, then Shachtman.
That is why Trotsky realised, particularly after Dewey’s response to his Their Morals and Ours, that this movement away from Marxism was not just the idiosyncracies of Max Eastman, but a trend of a stratum of intellectuals. The raising by Trotsky in the faction fight in the SWP in 1939-40 of the question of dialectics was to attack the central core of this movement. He tried to educate his comrades, not in abstractions as is so often presented, but as a method of reasoning and as a method of application to the problems of society. He tried to counter the move away from Marxism, both personally (it seems that he was writing a major article on dialectical materialism when he was struck down), as well as delegating Novack and Jean van Heijenoort, whom he hoped would carry on the struggle against the revisionists. Both proved totally incapable. Van Heijenoort ended up rejecting the working class on the grounds that it was incapable of carrying out its historic tasks. Novack turned out an intelligent hack and nothing else; today’s SWP proves this, a politically bankrupt bunch chasing after the golden mirages of Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and Daniel Ortega.
For the anti-Stalinist intellectuals it was downhill all the way in the post-war period, although their individual progressions went at an uneven rate and in an uneven pattern. Their strengths became their weaknesses. Their ability to go beyond Stalinism and expose its rottenness itself became the instrument for them to move towards the most reactionary elements of capitalism. Unable to understand the relationship between Stalinism and the working class, and with their lack of confidence in the working class, they had only one direction in which to go – towards supporting US capitalism.
As these intellectuals moved further to the right, they had to jump a series of hurdles, their attitude to which gave a stamp both to their character and how far they were moving. First was the McCarthy era. They came out very badly, the overwhelming majority endorsing elements of McCarthyism or keeping quiet. The Stalinists have used this as an indictment of Trotskyism. Wald points out that McCarthyism penetrated all left wing and fellow travelling movements. Wald also points out that, ironically, McCarthyism rescued the Stalinists’ reputations:
Ignorance on the part of the 1960s New Leftists was not the sole reason that apologists for Stalinism such as Lillian Hellman, Paul Robeson, and the Hollywood Ten were resurrected as moral beacons; their rehabilitation was the logical by-product of the dismal record of all but a few of the founders of the intellectual anti-Stalinist left.
Robeson was one of the most vociferous denunciators of Trotskyism, supporting the imprisonment during the Second World War of the Trotskyists under the Smith Act. Only when he was himself being done under it did he fight against it. Hellman’s anti-Fascist credentials were glorified in the supposedly autobiographical film Julia, which was exposed by Mary McCarthy as a tissue of lies. The McCarthy period was not only a false indictment of Trotsky – through the rôle of the New York intellectuals – but it also permitted the glorification of some of the nastiest Stalinist hacks.
The next major hurdle they faced was the Vietnam War. Many more fell. This war was unique in American history, not in its objectives, but in its result. The heavy casualties and powerful opposition at home altered the outlook of large sections of American society. This war was a further marker in the rightward evolution of the old anti-Stalinist intellectuals. Some held back. Others, like Shachtman, whilst slow off the mark, rapidly overtook them, and went beyond them, defending the reactionary actions of an imperialist government.
This is dealt with by Wald, particularly the differences that emerged amongst the intellectuals, but one feels he does not deal adequately with it in the fundamental sense. The New Left was a major new force arising amongst the younger intellectuals, and whilst on the whole they were as confused a bunch as one could expect to see, they nevertheless correctly saw America’s rôle in that war. Wald, naturally, only touches slightly on them. They aren’t the main topic of his book, nevertheless the inter-relation between them and the older generation is missing. For my part, these New Leftists were the bastard children of the New York Intellectuals, whose disowning of their parentage is linked with the Vietnam war.
The main criticism I have of this book is that it does not give an adequate picture of the material and other conditions, such as the economy, the consciousness of the working class, the struggle of social systems, etc, from which flowed the ideological drift of the anti-Stalinist intellectuals, and the central ideological justification for the movement. Wald deals extensively with the intellectuals’ philosophical polemics, ending with what I feel is a correct observation:
The dialectical transcendence or sublation (in the Hegelian sense of Aufhebung) of this debate is the sine qua non for the revival of Marxist theory and practice in the United States.
This gives an historical slant to the debate, not arguing how it affects present-day thinking in both the USA and Europe. I think a part of this is due to the lack of intertwining the two aspects.
Each period has a basic material and ideological foundation which consciously or unconsciously intertwine. No dominant ideas or philosophy arise out of a vacuum. The ideological movement from Marxism, in the first instance away from Marxist philosophy, reflected the period precisely in the new guru, not Kant (old hat), but pragmatism, and John Dewey in particular. The liberalism of exposition and outlook hid the deeper basic concept from which the philosophy flowed. Being developed in a period of developing US capitalism, with the concept of wide open spaces, intelligent activism became the core, drawing ideas from that core, using developing US capitalism and wide open spaces as the scale, all things became possible – many roads lead to socialism. The difference in this sense between Kant and Dewey is but a reflection of the different material roots.
The essence of Dewey’s thoughts is shown in his short but concrete reply to Trotsky’s Their Morals and Ours in the New International (August 1938) He concludes:
Orthodox Marxism shares with orthodox religionism and with traditional idealism the belief that human ends are interwoven into the very texture and structure of existence – a concept inherited presumably from its Hegelian origin.
If that is the core of his criticism of Marxism extant, the real flavour of it is this:
Since the class struggle is regarded as the only means that will reach the end, and since the view that it is the only means is reached deductively and not by an inductive examination of means-consequence in their interdependence, the means, the class struggle, does not need to be critically examined with respect to its actual objective consequence.
What is posed here is an abstract argument, a universalist argument independent of reality, though liberal in form. This is counterposed to the narrow, therefore ‘religious’ concept of the class struggle. Whereas Trotsky tried to put a period scale on historical development in Their Morals and Ours, from capitalism to a new economic and social structure in which man would truly be free – Socialism – Dewey, on the contrary, tried to establish an absolute principle applicable to all periods under all conditions. He downgrades the class struggle in comparison to his many roads, under the banner of scientific thought and liberal content.
The accusation that the class struggle being the only means has been reached deductively, without scientific basis, is totally wrong. Most scientific discovery is based on deduction flowing from known facts. Again, the argument that class struggle as the only road is reached without critical examination, says more for the lack of knowledge of Marxism on the part of Dewey. Marx and Engels spent their lifetime analysing the economic and social structure of capitalism, from which arise the class struggle, examining the historical, social and economic developments. They made errors, but the structure on which they based their conclusions has stood the test of time.
The dominant characteristics of man are determined by the way he lives, his environment, and the social relations which arise from that. It is precisely the development of the various modes of production – economic and social relationships – that is the dominant (but not the only) characteristic of human development, and which determines the major relationships of classes, sub-classes and even groups. The emergence of capitalism – economically unconsciously and politically semi-consciously – reflected the various struggles of the lower classes – capitalists and workers, serfs and peasants – against the dominant class, which established both the political and the economic foundations of capitalism. The emergence of capitalism established the dominance of a new mode of production – production for the market.
This mode of production rests on certain fundamentals – the relationships to the production and distribution of commodities of those owning the capital, and those without capital but who produce the goods. It is a conflict of interests, based not on what Marx, the industrial proletariat, etc, wants or not, but on a permanent division at the point of production, independent of human consciousness. The class struggle exists, regardless of whether the workers are storming the barricades or believing that they have a common interest with their employers. Marxism arises in the consciousness, not in the class struggle itself.
Because modern human existence rest on the capitalist mode of production, other factors and relationships follow The class struggle becomes the key anc dominant force in social change. Fundamental social change means the destruction of capitalism by the elimination of the capitalists’ rôle in production transferring capitalist property to common ownership. Only the working class has a relationship with capital that enable this to be done. No other class can carry out this radical and necessary transformation.
To argue that the class struggle is central to modern society, does not, however, mean that there are not other forms of conflict, many predating capitalism, such as over the rô1e of women, and racial and religious prejudices, etc, or that many will not be a source of conflict, albeit declining, after the establishment of Socialism.
Dewey, on the contrary, blames the messenger, not the message. Dialectics does not create the class struggle, it is the method of showing and explaining the process. The scientific nature of the explanation is that, on the basis of the examination of capitalism, it cuts across the illusory desires of utopian Socialism. Its strength lies in showing – not postulating – that there is only one road to Socialism. It is Dewey who desires many roads and therefore becomes involved in abstract philosophical arguments independent of reality.
The post-war decline in working class consciousness, and the growing illusions in capitalism on the part of some workers, have been the material foundation of the adoption of a Deweyist outlook by some intellectuals and working class activists. That it first took shape amongst the anti-Stalinist left was no accident. They were brighter and more politically conscious. Nevertheless, today it permeates through the movement, from Euro-stalinists to trade union bureaucrats. The New Left, the bastard children of the New York intellectuals, revolted against their rightward-moving parents as a consequence of the Vietnam War, but took on as their basic creed that there are other means for radical social change, and thus downgraded the working class. With the student, black and women’s movements, struggles were diverted down blind alleys. And whilst many leading lights of the New Left of the 1960s have joined their elders in enjoying the fruits of capitalism, the philosophical basis remains. Many of the latest generation operate along the same lines, just adding new issues with corresponding movements, such as gays and the environment.
I think that Wald has illusions in the movement in Europe. The reality, however, is that Europeans merely imitate what’s happening in the USA, or develop similar themes. The flourishing of new movements at the expense of working class collective activity has become an impediment to developing conscious working class policies and struggle. The tendency to imitate the USA is ironic when one considers political developments there, with the fragmentation of the movement into small groups, some of which have so lost their basic class outlook that they support a black populist of the Democratic Party.
The growth of US capitalism has been a major factor in this development, but for Marxists these are factors to be fought. Whether they like it or not on the New Left, US capitalism is in decline, and to pick on aspects of the social problems in the USA instead of opposing US capitalism as a whole is a blind alley. The need for a total struggle, and in this perspective the re-emergence of the working class and its parties, is not only logical, but necessary.
To criticise the student, black or women’s movements, etc., is not to condemn the justifiable reaction of the disadvantaged, but to criticise their sectionalised outlook, as blacks, as women, independently of the class structure. One should fight for equal rights for women, blacks and gays, and take up ecological issues, but all this should be part of the central class struggle, under the working class and its parties.
I do not think that this has little to do with the New York intellectuals. It is the result of an historical development, of a process that started before the Second World War, the end result of the movement away from Marxism.
After about 55 years, the generation of New York intellectuals has nearly run its course. Such a book is necessary for a knowledge of the past, the rôle the intellectuals played, the weaknesses inherent in their situation, ideology, etc. As an historical documentation of the development of the New York intellectuals, the book is impressive. The hard work gone into it is clear for everyone to see. In that rôle it fulfills a first class function. It is in drawing the strands together and giving it a clear direction where the weaknesses arise, because it fails to draw the full implications of the effects of Deweyism on the working class, through its influence on the intellectuals. Nevertheless, I recommend without doubt this book to anyone who can afford it, because it advocates the need:
‘... to integrate the sort of theoretical consciousness about political strategy with careful empirical research into the experience of the previous generation of Marxists [i.e., Trotsky, Bukharin, etc.]. In that way we will be able to advance the recovery of our radical heritage, to correct the political amnesia that has marred our legacy.
And that is a job worth doing.
Sam Levy
To the general reader who regards books as providing entertainment or information, the arguments between the various literary schools of the early and mid twentieth century may hold no interest. However, it should be remembered that Trotsky regarded the question of such importance that in 1923 he published Literature and Revolution, in which his concern was with the development of literature following the Russian Revolution. To this end, he gave consideration to the possibility of the unfolding of a proletarian culture following the Revolution, coming to the conclusion that while every ruling class creates its own culture, it also takes several hundred years for this to flower. Therefore, as the dictatorship of the proletariat was expected to last a comparatively short time only before giving way to the abolition of classes and the establishment of socialism, no far-reaching proletarian culture would develop.
Certainly Trotsky did not consider that proletarian culture could flourish within capitalist society. However, from the beginning of the 1930s the Stalinists propounded against all other literary schools proletarian literature or, as it was also called, ‘realism’, and this was supported by clubs named after John Reed. One of the foremost proponents of proletarian literature in America was the Stalinist Mike Gold, who set forth a number of stipulations for its practice, among which he demanded that the world of work be described with technical precision; it must provide a useful social function; be presented in as few words as possible in a simple vocabulary; that action should be swift, and that there should be no melodrama. (M. Gold, A Literary Anthology [Ed. M. Folsom], International Publishers, 1972).
As may be understood, those literary intellectuals of the 1930s who were to become the anti-Stalinist left of Wald’s book found this formula over-prescriptive, which led to two of their number, William Phillips and Philip Rahv, both members of the Communist Party and the John Reed Clubs, to advocate that proletarian literature be leavened by ‘modernism’. At that time, the best known writers in the modernist style were Joyce, Pound, Eliot and Stein, and it was their style of writing which came under fire from the Stalinist proletarian literature school. To provide an example of the type of polemic between modernists and ‘realists’ I can do no better than quote Brecht, who wrote to Lukács in 1956 in defence of James Joyce. Brecht writes that an interior monologue of a woman lying in bed in Ulysses had been rejected by ‘Marxists’ as ‘formalistic’ (formalist – the reduction of writing to etymology and syntax: See Trotsky’s Literature and Revolution). But the criticism had been made in such terms, that it left the impression that the monologue would have been acceptable had it been set in a session with a psychoanalyst. (Aesthetics and Politics – Debates between Bloch, Lukacs, Brecht, Benjamin and Adorno, Verso, 1980).
However, to return to Phillips and Rahv. With the support and assistance of established Communist cultural leaders, including Mike Gold, and financial support raised through a lecture by John Strachey, they launched the Partisan Review to concentrate primarily on cultural and literary questions, while leaving the New Masses to confine itself to the political and industrial. By 1937, when both Rahv and Phillips broke openly with the Stalinists, the Partisan Review had gathered around it most of the anti-Stalinist left and Trotskyists who are the subject of Wald’s book, and provided a central point of literary and cultural polemics.
However, Wald writes, although both Phillips and Rahv warned against the right wing dangers to writers “who seek to assimilate the Joyce-Eliot sensibility without a clear revolutionary purpose”, Rahv and Phillips held to elements of Elitism and a belief in High Culture. But they saw modernism as an avant-garde in literary protest against twentieth century commercialism. It is not pertinent that the modernist writers referred to above were not on the left in their politics, for their criticism of bourgeois culture in their works was seen as transcending their political views – an approach, Wald remarks, which recalls Marx and Engels’s treatment of Balzac and Lenin’s of Tolstoy. It must also be remembered that while Trotsky focused on the social aspects of literature in his criticism, he rigorously differentiated between his assessments of the political views of an author and his judgements of the artistic quality of the work.
Ironically, while these editors were gathering about them anti-Stalinist left intellectuals who accepted that “an error of leftism occurs from zeal to steep literature overnight in the programme of Communism, as this leads to sloganised and inorganic writing”, the Stalinists were abandoning their proletarian culture tactics in favour of the Popular Front and were closing down the John Reed Clubs!
Trotsky was now writing about the Moscow Trials, and, as he held a special appeal for radicalised literati which stemmed from his literary, historical and polemical achievements, left wing intellectuals increasingly became associated with the Partisan Review. As it happens, during the 1930s Trotsky had devoted extensive correspondence to the question of the significance of the American intellectuals for a small revolutionary workers’ party, for he saw the leftist intelligentsia, following the Russian revolution, as “binding its lot to the proletariat for the victorious revolution, but at the same time raising itself on the shoulders of the revolution”. He therefore urged that his followers exercise special precautionary measures when assimilating former Communist intellectuals who had gained an education in a Stalinist Party, and pressed that radical intellectuals and writers should strive for theoretical clarity. To what extent some, or all, of these left intellectuals sought the political clarity referred to by Trotsky at that time cannot be stated, but certainly a number of them had reservations with regard to Marxism and Leninism – Max Eastman, for instance, wanted to replace ‘mechanical Marxism’ with ‘social engineering’, and Sidney Hook with pragmatism. Perhaps one of the best known writers attracted to the group around the New Partisan Review was the novelist James T. Farrell (who was also a member of the Trotsky Defence Committee). Farrell’s novels presented Irish working class life in the first half of the twentieth century, and can be said to be written in the realist-naturalist school (examples of which are Zola and Dreiser) but Wald, possibly determined to find a modernist connection, states that he can be considered modernist because he allowed dreams and subconscious longings into his novels. He quotes as proof of this a vision seen by Studs Lonigan as he lies dying from the effects of bootleg liquor, to which he had turned to drown his frustrations and sorrows, instead of developing a class conscious response. As he lies on his sick-bed Studs dreams of a Communist led demonstration against unemployment in which are visible banners bearing slogans calling for revolutionary political action. Against Studs is posed Danny O’Neill “who breaks with the false consciousness perpetrated by (capitalist) society” to work his way through college. Not that this itself is a revolutionary act – in fact it can be quite the opposite!
However, by 1937 when a revamped Partisan Review was launched by Rahv and Phillips, the Moscow Trials, the Trotsky Defence Committee and the Dewey Commission had politicised a further group of young anti-Stalinist left-wing writers, and so Mary McCarthy who was a member of the Trotsky Defence Committee, and whose best known novel is probably The Group, and Dwight Macdonald, became members of the editorial board. Rahv and Phillips had remained intent upon the journal continuing its search for a Marxist aesthetic, and Phillips once again wrote that Trotsky was outstanding in that “he not only saw in literature a mirror of society, but was acutely conscious of those qualities which taken together make up the social vision of a work of art”. In fact, Wald writes that this revamped Partisan Review “was the most important cultural event following the Moscow Trials”.
Nevertheless, it did not last very long as a literary revolutionary catalyst, for within a few short years, as a response to the enthusiastic support of the Second World War by the Stalinists and the absence of a mass revolutionary movement, Rahv had come to the conclusion that the only way in which a writer could protest against the dominant values of ‘our time’ was by maintaining ‘intellectual integrity’. In this Rahv reflected the attitudes of an increasing number of anti-Stalinist left wing writers and intellectuals who had also become disappointed in, and disillusioned by, the failure of the working class to make a revolution. Of course, this process of disintegration was accelerated by Trotsky’s murder. Disillusionment with revolutionary politics brought forth a plethora of anti-socialist novels and stories from former left wing writers and Trotskyists who previously had included little of their revolutionary experience in their fiction. Saul Bellow, Isaac Rosenfeld, Edmund Wilson, Lionel Trilling, Mary McCarthy and Joseph Howe all produced novels and stories, the purport of which was to illustrate the fallacy of attempting to change society by social theory and action. Wald writes that the fiction of the New York intellectuals in the 1940s must be read with a sense of irony, for the consistent theme of virtually every one of their important works published during and immediately after the Second World War proclaims the need for liberation from the ideologies of the radical movement. One might almost call this the school of anti-proletarian culture!
Insofar as ideology is concerned, Wald quotes the British Marxist Terry Eagleton, whose view of ideology is materialist as against that of the New York intellectuals’ philosophical pragmatism. Eagleton sees reality as “ideology’s homeland”. Therefore a work of art “has the potential of liberating us from ideological illusion. Inasmuch as a work of literature seizes upon, reshuffles and depicts experience it, too, resides in the realm of ideology”. (Criticism and Ideology, New Left Books, 1976)
As may well be understood, the opposition of many of these intellectuals to ‘radical ideology’ was to lead them during the ensuing years to support for American foreign policy, McCarthyism, Nixon and Reaganism.
With regard to ‘modernism’, it has become increasingly academic and the elite culture of an intellectual establishment “in which some of the New York intellectuals played a part”. Wald writes that the Marxist criticism of modernism of these intellectuals had never been more than a few penetrating insights “unlike the brilliant work of their European contemporaries such as Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno and Georg Lukacs”. It should therefore come as no surprise that today students of Critical Theory largely study the essays written by these Europeans.
Perhaps in the West the political discussion has changed from a debate of literary schools to that of the effects of mass culture, or the ‘commercialisation of culture’ which Farrell perceived as “creating a struggle between the desire of the artist to present an authentic vision of the world and the desire of the film-makers and publishers to make art marketable, which they achieve by standardisation, repetition and by promoting established authors”. (J.T. Farrell, The Fate of Writing in America, quoted by Wald, p.223).
However, in the East, the debate with regard to ‘proletarian culture’ continues and, in fact, has become part of the fabric of daily life, as witness a recent Channel 4 programme on the dissident Czech writer Vaclav Havel, who has served several terms in prison and whose plays are banned because they satirise the bureaucracy, the plays being presented in a modernist style. In this programme a Stalinist Director of Arts stated that “art has the duty to serve the health of society”, which recalls one of the prescriptions set out by Mike Gold.
In conclusion, I would add that this is a book which poses many questions to all those interested in the connection between politics and the development of a Marxist aesthetic.
What I found especially interesting was the contemplation of why, in America during the 1930s, there was such an active anti-Stalinist and Trotskyist intellectual left, while in Britain our own radicalised intellectuals for the most part continued to support Stalinism or moved directly to the right.
The book itself is written clearly and comprehensively, and apart from detailing the debates and polemics involved, provides potted biographies of a star-studded cast.
Sheila Lahr
From The Archives Of The “Revolutionary History” Journal-Vera Broido, Lenin and the Mensheviks
Click on the headline to link to the Revolutionary History Journal index.
Markin comment:
This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discovery” the work of our forebears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.
*******
Reviews
Vera Broido, Lenin and the Mensheviks, Gower, Aldershot 1987, pp.216, £17.50
The Mensheviks, Russia’s moderate Marxists, were completely marginalised in the summer of 1917, when the course of history found itself at odds with their strategy of building a parliamentary Socialist opposition within a capitalist society. Faced with the choice of a military coup or the transfer of power to the workers’ councils, the Bolsheviks led a successful bid for state power.
What could have been a useful study of reformism in a revolutionary period is spoiled by Broido’s preoccupation with the trials and tribulations suffered by the Mensheviks during the first few years of the Soviet republic. Half the book is a depressing catalogue of arrests, jailings and exiles. Things aren't helped by Broido blaming the stern features of the young Soviet republic, not on the prevailing objective conditions, but on the original sin of Bolshevik authoritarianism.
The Russian masses rallied to the Bolsheviks during a period of dramatic upsurge. In the retreat that followed with the deprivation and destruction of the civil war of 1918-20, the old parties, the Mensheviks and the populist Social Revolutionaries, regained some support. This strained the relationship between the Bolsheviks and the workers and peasantry. Knowing that they were the only alternative to capitalist restoration and imperialist intervention, the Bolsheviks held on, awaiting the European revolutions upon which all depended, and refused to countenance any challenge to their rule.
The treatment meted out to the Mensheviks was often gratuitously harsh, but the Bolsheviks’ mistrust of them was understandable. Hadn’t they supported the bourgeois Provisional Government in 1917, hadn’t some leading Mensheviks colluded in the vile slandering of Lenin as an agent of the Kaiser? Had not the Menshevik government in Georgia persecuted the revolutionaries and openly stated that they preferred the imperialists of the west to the ‘fanatics’ of the east? None of this could have endeared the Mensheviks to those who had led the revolution and were intent on defending it.
The Mensheviks were finally suppressed in the early 1920s as the Soviet government reintroduced limited capitalist measures under the New Economic Policy. Despite, or rather because of, the similarities between the NEP and the Mensheviks’ economic programme, the Bolsheviks could no longer chance any political opposition. Yet this final clampdown had a cruelly ironic sequel. The European revolutions failed, the gulf between the masses and the Bolsheviks continued to deepen, arid conservative and bureaucratic trends emerged within the ruling party. Within a few years the degeneration was such that the party’s revolutionary wing, the Left Opposition, was itself marginalised, harassed, jailed and exiled like the Mensheviks, only on a far worse scale.
The Mensheviks were not consigned to the dustbin of history (to use Trotsky’s apt term) because of Bolshevik mendacity. Slaves to a dogmatic Marxism which held that the revolution of February 1917 heralded a long period of capitalist development with all the trappings of bourgeois democracy, they foundered in the storms of that year. They had been rendered obsolete. As we know, Bolshevism, beleaguered and isolated, succumbed soon after. But Bolshevism remains of great significance to this day whereas Menshevism is but of historical interest. However, Broido’s book is of little value for those who wish to learn about the Mensheviks and their place in history.
Paul Flewers
Markin comment:
This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discovery” the work of our forebears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.
*******
Reviews
Vera Broido, Lenin and the Mensheviks, Gower, Aldershot 1987, pp.216, £17.50
The Mensheviks, Russia’s moderate Marxists, were completely marginalised in the summer of 1917, when the course of history found itself at odds with their strategy of building a parliamentary Socialist opposition within a capitalist society. Faced with the choice of a military coup or the transfer of power to the workers’ councils, the Bolsheviks led a successful bid for state power.
What could have been a useful study of reformism in a revolutionary period is spoiled by Broido’s preoccupation with the trials and tribulations suffered by the Mensheviks during the first few years of the Soviet republic. Half the book is a depressing catalogue of arrests, jailings and exiles. Things aren't helped by Broido blaming the stern features of the young Soviet republic, not on the prevailing objective conditions, but on the original sin of Bolshevik authoritarianism.
The Russian masses rallied to the Bolsheviks during a period of dramatic upsurge. In the retreat that followed with the deprivation and destruction of the civil war of 1918-20, the old parties, the Mensheviks and the populist Social Revolutionaries, regained some support. This strained the relationship between the Bolsheviks and the workers and peasantry. Knowing that they were the only alternative to capitalist restoration and imperialist intervention, the Bolsheviks held on, awaiting the European revolutions upon which all depended, and refused to countenance any challenge to their rule.
The treatment meted out to the Mensheviks was often gratuitously harsh, but the Bolsheviks’ mistrust of them was understandable. Hadn’t they supported the bourgeois Provisional Government in 1917, hadn’t some leading Mensheviks colluded in the vile slandering of Lenin as an agent of the Kaiser? Had not the Menshevik government in Georgia persecuted the revolutionaries and openly stated that they preferred the imperialists of the west to the ‘fanatics’ of the east? None of this could have endeared the Mensheviks to those who had led the revolution and were intent on defending it.
The Mensheviks were finally suppressed in the early 1920s as the Soviet government reintroduced limited capitalist measures under the New Economic Policy. Despite, or rather because of, the similarities between the NEP and the Mensheviks’ economic programme, the Bolsheviks could no longer chance any political opposition. Yet this final clampdown had a cruelly ironic sequel. The European revolutions failed, the gulf between the masses and the Bolsheviks continued to deepen, arid conservative and bureaucratic trends emerged within the ruling party. Within a few years the degeneration was such that the party’s revolutionary wing, the Left Opposition, was itself marginalised, harassed, jailed and exiled like the Mensheviks, only on a far worse scale.
The Mensheviks were not consigned to the dustbin of history (to use Trotsky’s apt term) because of Bolshevik mendacity. Slaves to a dogmatic Marxism which held that the revolution of February 1917 heralded a long period of capitalist development with all the trappings of bourgeois democracy, they foundered in the storms of that year. They had been rendered obsolete. As we know, Bolshevism, beleaguered and isolated, succumbed soon after. But Bolshevism remains of great significance to this day whereas Menshevism is but of historical interest. However, Broido’s book is of little value for those who wish to learn about the Mensheviks and their place in history.
Paul Flewers
From The Archives Of The “Revolutionary History” Journal-John Taylor Caldwell, Come Dungeons Dark: The Life and Times of Guy Aldred, Glasgow Anarchist
Click on the headline to link to the Revolutionary History Journal index.
Markin comment:
This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discovery” the work of our forebears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.
*********
Reviews
John Taylor Caldwell, Come Dungeons Dark: The Life and Times of Guy Aldred, Glasgow Anarchist, Luath Press, Barr, 1988, pp290, £6.95
Guy Aldred was born in 1886 and, having been brought up by a radical liberal grandfather, his heroes were, and remained, the libertarians of the early nineteenth century who had struggled for free speech and organisation. In fact, Aldred emulated those, such as Carlisle and Paine, by suffering imprisonment for the principle of free speech and free publication. In 1909 he was sentenced to one year’s hard labour for publishing a banned Indian nationalist paper, The Indian Sociologist, and in 1922 he was given a sentence of one year for referring in a pamphlet to his support for the “Sinn Fein tactic”. By this Aldred, an anti-parliamentarian, meant making use of elections as a Socialist platform, but refusing to take a seat if elected (a tactic still operated by Sinn Fein insofar as the British parliament is concerned). Later, in 1931, Aldred was prosecuted for speaking to a meeting on Glasgow Green, a campaign for free speech in which John McGovern, then of the Independent Labour Party, and Harry McShane, at that time a Stalinist, were involved. This prosecution resulted in a fine.
From the first Aldred had seen his task as a proselytiser and pamphleteer, at 17 as a boy preacher with his own brand of Christianity, then at 19 years as an atheist conducting a Freethought ‘Mission’ – all his life Aldred was to adapt the terminology of Christianity to his own uses – and it was as an atheist that he was to break with Hyndman’s Social Democratic Federation. This was because the elders of the SDF were opposed to Aldred preaching atheism from their platform, seeing it as confusing the argument for Socialism. Aldred, on the other hand, at that time a materialist, considered atheism to be an integral part of revolutionary Socialism.
The differences between Socialists during this period related largely to syndicalism as against parliamentarianism. As readers will be aware, the ILP had been formed in 1893 and the Labour Representation Committee in 1900 (to become the Labour Party in 1906, and to admit individual members in 1918) for the express purpose of sending working class representatives into parliament. The syndicalists, on the other hand (not all of whom were Anarchists), regarded parliament as incapable of representing working class interests, and advocated the formation of communes, or soviets. Of course, it must be remembered that the Paris Commune was within living memory and the Labour Party had little representation in parliament. However, this argument must have become increasingly academic, for the extension of the franchise during the 19th and 20th centuries, and the struggle for female suffrage, obviously resulted in working class support for ‘parliamentary socialism’.
As it happened, Aldred from the first saw the Labour Party as an organisation for careerists and opportunists intent upon joining the establishment, and by the end of the First World War he was confirmed in this view for he, together with a great many young Socialists, had suffered as Conscientious Objectors, a number dying or becoming permanent invalids due to ill-treatment at the hands of the authorities. The Labour Party and trade unions, on the other hand, had supported the war and had been rewarded in 1915 by three ministries in the Coalition Government.
At the time of the Russian Revolution Aldred was confined to prison as a CO, but on his release in 1919 he welcomed the Revolution with enthusiasm, becoming an organiser of the newly formed Communist League, and editor of its paper, The Communist. This League gained 17 federated groups, including the Glasgow Anarchist Group, and had intentions of becoming the British Section of the Third International. However, Sylvia Pankhurst’s Workers Socialist Federation declared itself as the British Section, and the matter was eventually settled by Lenin, who, at the Second Congress, appealed to William Gallacher and Ramsay to found a British Communist Party, and the CPGB came into being in January 1921 with the resultant withering of these groups remaining outside. Apart from disagreeing with the Communist Party’s pro-parliamentary policy, Aldred regarded it from the outset as over-centralised and over-disciplined. Stalinism, of course, confirmed his worst fears. Henry Sara, a former colleague of Aldred’s, had found his way from Stalinism to Trotskyism, but Aldred remained outside these struggles and became increasingly isolated.
Therefore, for the rest of his life until he died in 1963, Aldred remained on the periphery of working class politics, bringing out his various broadsheets, taking up various causes, and at times having strange ‘bedfellows’, such as the non-Socialist pacifist Duke of Bedford, who was to write a column in Aldred’s last paper, The Word, for several years.
In his later years Aldred, who had been born in Islington, London, won a kind of fame as a well-known Glasgow eccentric, but his ideas became increasingly inconsistent, swinging from left to right and back again, often at the same time. Caldwell has obviously such a regard and affection for Aldred that the book, including that part which deals with Aldred’s personal life, presents itself through Aldred’s eyes only. The two women, Jenny Patrick and Ethel Macdonald, who served him politically for so many years, sharing his poverty, and Rose Witcop, an interesting person in her own right, with whom for some years Aldred had a ‘free union’, never came alive for me, and appeared to be regarded as no more than Aldred’s appendages.
However, this book is an easy read, and I would recommend it to young comrades looking for a not-too-difficult introduction to the period, and to old comrades whose Socialism has become a reading and quoting of the ‘Holy Writ’, for at least it does place the struggle for Socialism within a human context.
Sheila Lahr
Markin comment:
This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discovery” the work of our forebears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.
*********
Reviews
John Taylor Caldwell, Come Dungeons Dark: The Life and Times of Guy Aldred, Glasgow Anarchist, Luath Press, Barr, 1988, pp290, £6.95
Guy Aldred was born in 1886 and, having been brought up by a radical liberal grandfather, his heroes were, and remained, the libertarians of the early nineteenth century who had struggled for free speech and organisation. In fact, Aldred emulated those, such as Carlisle and Paine, by suffering imprisonment for the principle of free speech and free publication. In 1909 he was sentenced to one year’s hard labour for publishing a banned Indian nationalist paper, The Indian Sociologist, and in 1922 he was given a sentence of one year for referring in a pamphlet to his support for the “Sinn Fein tactic”. By this Aldred, an anti-parliamentarian, meant making use of elections as a Socialist platform, but refusing to take a seat if elected (a tactic still operated by Sinn Fein insofar as the British parliament is concerned). Later, in 1931, Aldred was prosecuted for speaking to a meeting on Glasgow Green, a campaign for free speech in which John McGovern, then of the Independent Labour Party, and Harry McShane, at that time a Stalinist, were involved. This prosecution resulted in a fine.
From the first Aldred had seen his task as a proselytiser and pamphleteer, at 17 as a boy preacher with his own brand of Christianity, then at 19 years as an atheist conducting a Freethought ‘Mission’ – all his life Aldred was to adapt the terminology of Christianity to his own uses – and it was as an atheist that he was to break with Hyndman’s Social Democratic Federation. This was because the elders of the SDF were opposed to Aldred preaching atheism from their platform, seeing it as confusing the argument for Socialism. Aldred, on the other hand, at that time a materialist, considered atheism to be an integral part of revolutionary Socialism.
The differences between Socialists during this period related largely to syndicalism as against parliamentarianism. As readers will be aware, the ILP had been formed in 1893 and the Labour Representation Committee in 1900 (to become the Labour Party in 1906, and to admit individual members in 1918) for the express purpose of sending working class representatives into parliament. The syndicalists, on the other hand (not all of whom were Anarchists), regarded parliament as incapable of representing working class interests, and advocated the formation of communes, or soviets. Of course, it must be remembered that the Paris Commune was within living memory and the Labour Party had little representation in parliament. However, this argument must have become increasingly academic, for the extension of the franchise during the 19th and 20th centuries, and the struggle for female suffrage, obviously resulted in working class support for ‘parliamentary socialism’.
As it happened, Aldred from the first saw the Labour Party as an organisation for careerists and opportunists intent upon joining the establishment, and by the end of the First World War he was confirmed in this view for he, together with a great many young Socialists, had suffered as Conscientious Objectors, a number dying or becoming permanent invalids due to ill-treatment at the hands of the authorities. The Labour Party and trade unions, on the other hand, had supported the war and had been rewarded in 1915 by three ministries in the Coalition Government.
At the time of the Russian Revolution Aldred was confined to prison as a CO, but on his release in 1919 he welcomed the Revolution with enthusiasm, becoming an organiser of the newly formed Communist League, and editor of its paper, The Communist. This League gained 17 federated groups, including the Glasgow Anarchist Group, and had intentions of becoming the British Section of the Third International. However, Sylvia Pankhurst’s Workers Socialist Federation declared itself as the British Section, and the matter was eventually settled by Lenin, who, at the Second Congress, appealed to William Gallacher and Ramsay to found a British Communist Party, and the CPGB came into being in January 1921 with the resultant withering of these groups remaining outside. Apart from disagreeing with the Communist Party’s pro-parliamentary policy, Aldred regarded it from the outset as over-centralised and over-disciplined. Stalinism, of course, confirmed his worst fears. Henry Sara, a former colleague of Aldred’s, had found his way from Stalinism to Trotskyism, but Aldred remained outside these struggles and became increasingly isolated.
Therefore, for the rest of his life until he died in 1963, Aldred remained on the periphery of working class politics, bringing out his various broadsheets, taking up various causes, and at times having strange ‘bedfellows’, such as the non-Socialist pacifist Duke of Bedford, who was to write a column in Aldred’s last paper, The Word, for several years.
In his later years Aldred, who had been born in Islington, London, won a kind of fame as a well-known Glasgow eccentric, but his ideas became increasingly inconsistent, swinging from left to right and back again, often at the same time. Caldwell has obviously such a regard and affection for Aldred that the book, including that part which deals with Aldred’s personal life, presents itself through Aldred’s eyes only. The two women, Jenny Patrick and Ethel Macdonald, who served him politically for so many years, sharing his poverty, and Rose Witcop, an interesting person in her own right, with whom for some years Aldred had a ‘free union’, never came alive for me, and appeared to be regarded as no more than Aldred’s appendages.
However, this book is an easy read, and I would recommend it to young comrades looking for a not-too-difficult introduction to the period, and to old comrades whose Socialism has become a reading and quoting of the ‘Holy Writ’, for at least it does place the struggle for Socialism within a human context.
Sheila Lahr
Sunday, August 05, 2012
From "OCCUPY HOMES MASSACHUSETTS"- No Homeowner Need Stand Alone!-Organize Now!
Click on the headline to link to the Occupy Quincy website for more information about Occupy Homes MA.
Stand Together-Occupy Homes Ma-Stop 'the banksters' Foreclosures and Evictions
OCCUPY HOMES MA
Next Meeting Scheduled For Tufts Library, Broad Street, Weymouth, August 21 2012-6:00 PM- Check out directions and details on our Facebook page-Occupy Homes MA.
WANT ASSISTANCE OR MORE INFORMATION?
OccupyHomesMA@gmail.com
617-249-4359
*********
Are you facing FORECLOSURE?- YOU ARE NOT ALONE!
Stand up with other homeowners who are fighting with us.
Want more information?
Contact us by email at OccupyHomesMA@gmail.com
or call us at 617-249-4359
The homeowner's meeting is intended to be a support group
specifically for those in the foreclosure process.
ATTEND A HOMEOWNERS MEETING TO
Develop Solidarity and Support:
We urge people to leave their shame at the door. We work to end the stigma and isolation of individual foreclosure and eviction cases by uniting homeowners.
Learn Your Rights:
You don't have to move just because the bank says so. We empower people to know their rights and advocate for themselves.
Organize with Occupy Homes MA:
Community members and activists are ready to stand with you. Let’s build mass resistance to defend your home and break the stranglehold the big banks have on our neighborhoods.
************
Want to get involved?
Participate!
Fight back! A movement working for the 99% must be shaped and formed by all those who participate. All decisions on the direction and scope of the struggle are democratic.
Organize!
Build powerful communities! Identify issues affecting our neighborhoods, and work together on solutions.
Mobilize!
The best tool of the 99% is our numbers, and our ability to work together. Plan public actions, protests, and home defense.
Educate!
Become educated and teach others about the nature of the foreclosure crisis, and ways empowered communities can begin to solve it.
************
Excerpt from...
Keeping House: Local Organizations Collaborate to Help Boston Residents Stay in Their Home Post-Foreclosure
Noelle Swan Spare Change News
When Jeril Richardson checked out of the hospital after he was hit by a car in 2009, he returned home to find that his landlord had not been keeping up with mortgage payments and the bank was foreclosing on his Hyde Park home.
Canvassers knocking on his door told him about City Life Vida Urbana, a community organization that would help him to fight to stay in his home. Nearly three years later, Richardson still lives in the house, pays rent to the bank, and is saving to purchase the property.
Every weekend, students and community volunteers from Project No One Leaves hit the streets in an effort to reach tenants and homeowners facing foreclosure to inform them of their rights during and after the foreclosure.
"We try to get there before eviction agents come knocking and telling them to leave immediately," said Chris Larson, senior at Tufts University who helped to coordinate a chapter of No One Leaves at Tufts.
In recent years, keeping up with new foreclosures has become a daunting task, said Chas Hamilton, a third-year law student and current president of the board for Project No One Leaves at Harvard Law School. "In a given week, there might be 30 new foreclosures listed in Boston proper."
"Then there are properties that they did not get to in weeks past because canvassers ran out of time, people weren't home, or their just weren't enough cars to get to all of the neighborhoods." Volunteers for No One Leaves chart foreclosure postings listed in local newspapers and real estate publications.
Listings are grouped into geographic zones of the city and mapped out. Each week, a dozen or so volunteers gather at the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau in Cambridge, split up into groups of two to five depending on the number of cars available, and try to get out to as many properties as they can in three hours.
"The real message that we try to deliver is that foreclosure is not the end. It's the beginning of this very long battle," Larson said.
http://sparechangenews.net/news/keeping-house-
local-organizations-collaborate-help-boston-residents-
stay-their-home-post-forecl
********
WHY Occupy Homes MA?
OCCUPY OUR HOMES
Far too many homeowners are facing foreclosure. The need is greater than the capacity to help. City Life along with a team from Harvard Law is mentoring Occupy Homes MA as we create this new chapter to help homeowners on the South Shore. We are here to:
STOP FORECLOSURES
This is a people's movement that is building across Massachusetts. Homeowners did not create the crisis we are in, and homeowners are no longer going to face the shame of foreclosure and eviction alone. We are here to:
STOP EVICTIONS
The police should serve and protect the 99%, not assist the big banks with eviction. We will organize the community and resist eviction. Knowledge is power; they cannot easily put you out on the street - we want to help you, we won't let them!
HOUSING IS A HUMAN
There are 18 million empty homes in the U.S.
Help us, to help you by saying: "NOT MY HOME!"
Stand Together-Occupy Homes Ma-Stop 'the banksters' Foreclosures and Evictions
OCCUPY HOMES MA
Next Meeting Scheduled For Tufts Library, Broad Street, Weymouth, August 21 2012-6:00 PM- Check out directions and details on our Facebook page-Occupy Homes MA.
WANT ASSISTANCE OR MORE INFORMATION?
OccupyHomesMA@gmail.com
617-249-4359
*********
Are you facing FORECLOSURE?- YOU ARE NOT ALONE!
Stand up with other homeowners who are fighting with us.
Want more information?
Contact us by email at OccupyHomesMA@gmail.com
or call us at 617-249-4359
The homeowner's meeting is intended to be a support group
specifically for those in the foreclosure process.
ATTEND A HOMEOWNERS MEETING TO
Develop Solidarity and Support:
We urge people to leave their shame at the door. We work to end the stigma and isolation of individual foreclosure and eviction cases by uniting homeowners.
Learn Your Rights:
You don't have to move just because the bank says so. We empower people to know their rights and advocate for themselves.
Organize with Occupy Homes MA:
Community members and activists are ready to stand with you. Let’s build mass resistance to defend your home and break the stranglehold the big banks have on our neighborhoods.
************
Want to get involved?
Participate!
Fight back! A movement working for the 99% must be shaped and formed by all those who participate. All decisions on the direction and scope of the struggle are democratic.
Organize!
Build powerful communities! Identify issues affecting our neighborhoods, and work together on solutions.
Mobilize!
The best tool of the 99% is our numbers, and our ability to work together. Plan public actions, protests, and home defense.
Educate!
Become educated and teach others about the nature of the foreclosure crisis, and ways empowered communities can begin to solve it.
************
Excerpt from...
Keeping House: Local Organizations Collaborate to Help Boston Residents Stay in Their Home Post-Foreclosure
Noelle Swan Spare Change News
When Jeril Richardson checked out of the hospital after he was hit by a car in 2009, he returned home to find that his landlord had not been keeping up with mortgage payments and the bank was foreclosing on his Hyde Park home.
Canvassers knocking on his door told him about City Life Vida Urbana, a community organization that would help him to fight to stay in his home. Nearly three years later, Richardson still lives in the house, pays rent to the bank, and is saving to purchase the property.
Every weekend, students and community volunteers from Project No One Leaves hit the streets in an effort to reach tenants and homeowners facing foreclosure to inform them of their rights during and after the foreclosure.
"We try to get there before eviction agents come knocking and telling them to leave immediately," said Chris Larson, senior at Tufts University who helped to coordinate a chapter of No One Leaves at Tufts.
In recent years, keeping up with new foreclosures has become a daunting task, said Chas Hamilton, a third-year law student and current president of the board for Project No One Leaves at Harvard Law School. "In a given week, there might be 30 new foreclosures listed in Boston proper."
"Then there are properties that they did not get to in weeks past because canvassers ran out of time, people weren't home, or their just weren't enough cars to get to all of the neighborhoods." Volunteers for No One Leaves chart foreclosure postings listed in local newspapers and real estate publications.
Listings are grouped into geographic zones of the city and mapped out. Each week, a dozen or so volunteers gather at the Harvard Legal Aid Bureau in Cambridge, split up into groups of two to five depending on the number of cars available, and try to get out to as many properties as they can in three hours.
"The real message that we try to deliver is that foreclosure is not the end. It's the beginning of this very long battle," Larson said.
http://sparechangenews.net/news/keeping-house-
local-organizations-collaborate-help-boston-residents-
stay-their-home-post-forecl
********
WHY Occupy Homes MA?
OCCUPY OUR HOMES
Far too many homeowners are facing foreclosure. The need is greater than the capacity to help. City Life along with a team from Harvard Law is mentoring Occupy Homes MA as we create this new chapter to help homeowners on the South Shore. We are here to:
STOP FORECLOSURES
This is a people's movement that is building across Massachusetts. Homeowners did not create the crisis we are in, and homeowners are no longer going to face the shame of foreclosure and eviction alone. We are here to:
STOP EVICTIONS
The police should serve and protect the 99%, not assist the big banks with eviction. We will organize the community and resist eviction. Knowledge is power; they cannot easily put you out on the street - we want to help you, we won't let them!
HOUSING IS A HUMAN
There are 18 million empty homes in the U.S.
Help us, to help you by saying: "NOT MY HOME!"
Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By-In Honor Of The Frontline Defenders Of The Working Class!-Bob Marley’s “Get Up, Stand Up!”
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Bob Marley performing his classic song of struggle, Get Up, Stand Up.
*******
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The International Working Class 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.
*********
As Isaac Deutscher said in his speech “On Socialist Man” (1966):
“We do not maintain that socialism is going to solve all predicaments of the human race. We are struggling in the first instance with the predicaments that are of man’s making and that man can resolve. May I remind you that Trotsky, for instance, speaks of three basic tragedies—hunger, sex and death—besetting man. Hunger is the enemy that Marxism and the modern labour movement have taken on.... Yes, socialist man will still be pursued by sex and death; but we are convinced that he will be better equipped than we are to cope even with these.”
Emblazon on our red banner-Labor and the oppressed must rule!
***********
Markin comment:
In this series, presented under the headline Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By, I will post some songs that I think will help us get through the “dog days” of the struggle for our communist future. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here.
*********
Bob Marley Get Up, Stand Up Lyrics
Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!
Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!
Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!
Get up, stand up: don't give up the fight!
Preacher man, don't tell me,
Heaven is under the earth.
I know you don't know
What life is really worth.
It's not all that glitters is gold;
'Alf the story has never been told:
So now you see the light, eh!
Stand up for your rights. come on!
Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!
Get up, stand up: don't give up the fight!
Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!
Get up, stand up: don't give up the fight!
Most people think,
Great god will come from the skies,
Take away everything
And make everybody feel high.
But if you know what life is worth,
You will look for yours on earth:
And now you see the light,
You stand up for your rights. jah!
Get up, stand up! (jah, jah! )
Stand up for your rights! (oh-hoo! )
Get up, stand up! (get up, stand up! )
Don't give up the fight! (life is your right! )
Get up, stand up! (so we can't give up the fight! )
Stand up for your rights! (lord, lord! )
Get up, stand up! (keep on struggling on! )
Don't give up the fight! (yeah! )
We sick an' tired of-a your ism-skism game -
Dyin' 'n' goin' to heaven in-a Jesus' name, lord.
We know when we understand:
Almighty god is a living man.
You can fool some people sometimes,
But you can't fool all the people all the time.
So now we see the light (what you gonna do?),
We gonna stand up for our rights! (yeah, yeah, yeah! )
So you better:
Get up, stand up! (in the morning! git it up! )
Stand up for your rights! (stand up for our rights! )
Get up, stand up!
Don't give up the fight! (don't give it up, don't give it up! )
Get up, stand up! (get up, stand up! )
Stand up for your rights! (get up, stand up! )
Get up, stand up! (... )
Don't give up the fight! (get up, stand up! )
Get up, stand up! (... )
Stand up for your rights!
Get up, stand up!
Don't give up the fight! /fadeout/
*******
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The International Working Class 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.
*********
As Isaac Deutscher said in his speech “On Socialist Man” (1966):
“We do not maintain that socialism is going to solve all predicaments of the human race. We are struggling in the first instance with the predicaments that are of man’s making and that man can resolve. May I remind you that Trotsky, for instance, speaks of three basic tragedies—hunger, sex and death—besetting man. Hunger is the enemy that Marxism and the modern labour movement have taken on.... Yes, socialist man will still be pursued by sex and death; but we are convinced that he will be better equipped than we are to cope even with these.”
Emblazon on our red banner-Labor and the oppressed must rule!
***********
Markin comment:
In this series, presented under the headline Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By, I will post some songs that I think will help us get through the “dog days” of the struggle for our communist future. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here.
*********
Bob Marley Get Up, Stand Up Lyrics
Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!
Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!
Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!
Get up, stand up: don't give up the fight!
Preacher man, don't tell me,
Heaven is under the earth.
I know you don't know
What life is really worth.
It's not all that glitters is gold;
'Alf the story has never been told:
So now you see the light, eh!
Stand up for your rights. come on!
Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!
Get up, stand up: don't give up the fight!
Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!
Get up, stand up: don't give up the fight!
Most people think,
Great god will come from the skies,
Take away everything
And make everybody feel high.
But if you know what life is worth,
You will look for yours on earth:
And now you see the light,
You stand up for your rights. jah!
Get up, stand up! (jah, jah! )
Stand up for your rights! (oh-hoo! )
Get up, stand up! (get up, stand up! )
Don't give up the fight! (life is your right! )
Get up, stand up! (so we can't give up the fight! )
Stand up for your rights! (lord, lord! )
Get up, stand up! (keep on struggling on! )
Don't give up the fight! (yeah! )
We sick an' tired of-a your ism-skism game -
Dyin' 'n' goin' to heaven in-a Jesus' name, lord.
We know when we understand:
Almighty god is a living man.
You can fool some people sometimes,
But you can't fool all the people all the time.
So now we see the light (what you gonna do?),
We gonna stand up for our rights! (yeah, yeah, yeah! )
So you better:
Get up, stand up! (in the morning! git it up! )
Stand up for your rights! (stand up for our rights! )
Get up, stand up!
Don't give up the fight! (don't give it up, don't give it up! )
Get up, stand up! (get up, stand up! )
Stand up for your rights! (get up, stand up! )
Get up, stand up! (... )
Don't give up the fight! (get up, stand up! )
Get up, stand up! (... )
Stand up for your rights!
Get up, stand up!
Don't give up the fight! /fadeout/
Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By-In Honor Of The Frontline Fighters Of The International Working Class Today-The International Working Class Anthem “The Internationale”
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of a performance of the classic international working class song of struggle, The Internationale.
Markin comment:
In this series, presented under the headline Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By, I will post some songs that I think will help us get through the “dog days” of the struggle for our communist future. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here.
*****
As Isaac Deutscher said in his speech “On Socialist Man” (1966):
“We do not maintain that socialism is going to solve all predicaments of the human race. We are struggling in the first instance with the predicaments that are of man’s making and that man can resolve. May I remind you that Trotsky, for instance, speaks of three basic tragedies—hunger, sex and death—besetting man. Hunger is the enemy that Marxism and the modern labour movement have taken on.... Yes, socialist man will still be pursued by sex and death; but we are convinced that he will be better equipped than we are to cope even with these.”
***********
The Internationale [variant words in square brackets]
Arise ye workers [starvelings] from your slumbers
Arise ye prisoners of want
For reason in revolt now thunders
And at last ends the age of cant.
Away with all your superstitions
Servile masses arise, arise
We'll change henceforth [forthwith] the old tradition [conditions]
And spurn the dust to win the prize.
So comrades, come rally
And the last fight let us face
The Internationale unites the human race.
So comrades, come rally
And the last fight let us face
The Internationale unites the human race.
No more deluded by reaction
On tyrants only we'll make war
The soldiers too will take strike action
They'll break ranks and fight no more
And if those cannibals keep trying
To sacrifice us to their pride
They soon shall hear the bullets flying
We'll shoot the generals on our own side.
No saviour from on high delivers
No faith have we in prince or peer
Our own right hand the chains must shiver
Chains of hatred, greed and fear
E'er the thieves will out with their booty [give up their booty]
And give to all a happier lot.
Each [those] at the forge must do their duty
And we'll strike while the iron is hot.
________________________________________
L'Internationale
Debout les damnés de la terre
Debout les forçats de la faim
La raison tonne en son cratère
C'est l'éruption de la fin
Du passe faisons table rase
Foules, esclaves, debout, debout
Le monde va changer de base
Nous ne sommes rien, soyons tout
C'est la lutte finale
Groupons-nous, et demain (bis)
L'Internationale
Sera le genre humain
Il n'est pas de sauveurs suprêmes
Ni Dieu, ni César, ni tribun
Producteurs, sauvons-nous nous-mêmes
Décrétons le salut commun
Pour que le voleur rende gorge
Pour tirer l'esprit du cachot
Soufflons nous-mêmes notre forge
Battons le fer quand il est chaud
L'état comprime et la loi triche
L'impôt saigne le malheureux
Nul devoir ne s'impose au riche
Le droit du pauvre est un mot creux
C'est assez, languir en tutelle
L'égalité veut d'autres lois
Pas de droits sans devoirs dit-elle
Egaux, pas de devoirs sans droits
Hideux dans leur apothéose
Les rois de la mine et du rail
Ont-ils jamais fait autre chose
Que dévaliser le travail
Dans les coffres-forts de la bande
Ce qu'il a crée s'est fondu
En décrétant qu'on le lui rende
Le peuple ne veut que son dû.
Les rois nous saoulaient de fumées
Markin comment:
In this series, presented under the headline Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By, I will post some songs that I think will help us get through the “dog days” of the struggle for our communist future. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here.
*****
As Isaac Deutscher said in his speech “On Socialist Man” (1966):
“We do not maintain that socialism is going to solve all predicaments of the human race. We are struggling in the first instance with the predicaments that are of man’s making and that man can resolve. May I remind you that Trotsky, for instance, speaks of three basic tragedies—hunger, sex and death—besetting man. Hunger is the enemy that Marxism and the modern labour movement have taken on.... Yes, socialist man will still be pursued by sex and death; but we are convinced that he will be better equipped than we are to cope even with these.”
***********
The Internationale [variant words in square brackets]
Arise ye workers [starvelings] from your slumbers
Arise ye prisoners of want
For reason in revolt now thunders
And at last ends the age of cant.
Away with all your superstitions
Servile masses arise, arise
We'll change henceforth [forthwith] the old tradition [conditions]
And spurn the dust to win the prize.
So comrades, come rally
And the last fight let us face
The Internationale unites the human race.
So comrades, come rally
And the last fight let us face
The Internationale unites the human race.
No more deluded by reaction
On tyrants only we'll make war
The soldiers too will take strike action
They'll break ranks and fight no more
And if those cannibals keep trying
To sacrifice us to their pride
They soon shall hear the bullets flying
We'll shoot the generals on our own side.
No saviour from on high delivers
No faith have we in prince or peer
Our own right hand the chains must shiver
Chains of hatred, greed and fear
E'er the thieves will out with their booty [give up their booty]
And give to all a happier lot.
Each [those] at the forge must do their duty
And we'll strike while the iron is hot.
________________________________________
L'Internationale
Debout les damnés de la terre
Debout les forçats de la faim
La raison tonne en son cratère
C'est l'éruption de la fin
Du passe faisons table rase
Foules, esclaves, debout, debout
Le monde va changer de base
Nous ne sommes rien, soyons tout
C'est la lutte finale
Groupons-nous, et demain (bis)
L'Internationale
Sera le genre humain
Il n'est pas de sauveurs suprêmes
Ni Dieu, ni César, ni tribun
Producteurs, sauvons-nous nous-mêmes
Décrétons le salut commun
Pour que le voleur rende gorge
Pour tirer l'esprit du cachot
Soufflons nous-mêmes notre forge
Battons le fer quand il est chaud
L'état comprime et la loi triche
L'impôt saigne le malheureux
Nul devoir ne s'impose au riche
Le droit du pauvre est un mot creux
C'est assez, languir en tutelle
L'égalité veut d'autres lois
Pas de droits sans devoirs dit-elle
Egaux, pas de devoirs sans droits
Hideux dans leur apothéose
Les rois de la mine et du rail
Ont-ils jamais fait autre chose
Que dévaliser le travail
Dans les coffres-forts de la bande
Ce qu'il a crée s'est fondu
En décrétant qu'on le lui rende
Le peuple ne veut que son dû.
Les rois nous saoulaient de fumées
Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By- "America, Where Are You Now...."-Stepphenwolf's "Monster" –For The Fighters Of The International Working Class
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Steppenwolf performing their classic anti-war song (and plaintive plea)Monster.
In this series, presented under the headline Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By, I will post some songs that I think will help us get through the “dog days” of the struggle for our communist future. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here.
********
Markin comment on the lyrics here:
Steppenwolf was one of the most political of the rock groups brought forth by the new musical sensibility of the counter-cultural movement in the mid to late 1960s. The narrative here in Monster reads like a capsule history of the American experience up until the 1960s. And a powerful call, a call that should resonate today, for the older generation (now us) to come and help the young fight against the monster of American imperialistic capitalism that is driving us all to the bottom. A theme song for all the movements springing up around this wicked old world.
************
Monster/Suicide/America Lyrics
Steppenwolf
Words and music by John Kay, Jerry Edmonton, Nick St. Nicholas and Larry Byrom
(Monster)
Once the religious, the hunted and weary
Chasing the promise of freedom and hope
Came to this country to build a new vision
Far from the reaches of kingdom and pope
Like good Christians, some would burn the witches
Later some got slaves to gather riches
But from near and far to seek America
They came by thousands to court the wild
But she just patiently smiled and bore a child
To be their spirit and guiding light
Then once the ties with the crown had been broken
Westward in saddle and wagon it went
And 'til the railroad linked ocean to ocean
Many the lives which had come to an end
While we bullied, stole and bought our a homeland
We began the slaughter of the red man
But still from near and far to seek America
They came by thousands to court the wild
And she just patiently smiled and bore a child
To be their spirit and guiding light
The blue and grey they stomped it
They kicked it just like a dog
And when the war over
They stuffed it just like a hog
And though the past has it's share of injustice
Kind was the spirit in many a way
But it's protectors and friends have been sleeping
Now it's a monster and will not obey
(Suicide)
The spirit was freedom and justice
And it's keepers seem "friendly" and kind
It's leaders were supposed to serve the country
But now they were paying no mind
'Cause the people "got" fat and "grew" lazy
now their vote "is like a" meaningless "Tune"
"You know they talk about law "about" order
But it's all just an echo of what they've been told
Yeah, there's a monster on the loose
It's got our heads into a noose
And it just sits there watchin'
Our cities have turned into jungles
And corruption is stranglin' the land
The police force is watching the people
And the people just can't understand
We don't know how to mind our own business
'Cause the whole worlds got to be just like us
Now we are fighting a war over there
No matter who's the winner
We can't pay the cost
'Cause there's a monster on the loose
It's got our heads into a noose
And it just sits there watching
(America)
America where are you now?
Don't you care about your sons and daughters?
Don't you know we need you now
We can't fight alone against the monster
© Copyright MCA Music (BMI)
All rights for the USA controlled and administered by
MCA Corporation of America, INC
In this series, presented under the headline Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By, I will post some songs that I think will help us get through the “dog days” of the struggle for our communist future. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here.
********
Markin comment on the lyrics here:
Steppenwolf was one of the most political of the rock groups brought forth by the new musical sensibility of the counter-cultural movement in the mid to late 1960s. The narrative here in Monster reads like a capsule history of the American experience up until the 1960s. And a powerful call, a call that should resonate today, for the older generation (now us) to come and help the young fight against the monster of American imperialistic capitalism that is driving us all to the bottom. A theme song for all the movements springing up around this wicked old world.
************
Monster/Suicide/America Lyrics
Steppenwolf
Words and music by John Kay, Jerry Edmonton, Nick St. Nicholas and Larry Byrom
(Monster)
Once the religious, the hunted and weary
Chasing the promise of freedom and hope
Came to this country to build a new vision
Far from the reaches of kingdom and pope
Like good Christians, some would burn the witches
Later some got slaves to gather riches
But from near and far to seek America
They came by thousands to court the wild
But she just patiently smiled and bore a child
To be their spirit and guiding light
Then once the ties with the crown had been broken
Westward in saddle and wagon it went
And 'til the railroad linked ocean to ocean
Many the lives which had come to an end
While we bullied, stole and bought our a homeland
We began the slaughter of the red man
But still from near and far to seek America
They came by thousands to court the wild
And she just patiently smiled and bore a child
To be their spirit and guiding light
The blue and grey they stomped it
They kicked it just like a dog
And when the war over
They stuffed it just like a hog
And though the past has it's share of injustice
Kind was the spirit in many a way
But it's protectors and friends have been sleeping
Now it's a monster and will not obey
(Suicide)
The spirit was freedom and justice
And it's keepers seem "friendly" and kind
It's leaders were supposed to serve the country
But now they were paying no mind
'Cause the people "got" fat and "grew" lazy
now their vote "is like a" meaningless "Tune"
"You know they talk about law "about" order
But it's all just an echo of what they've been told
Yeah, there's a monster on the loose
It's got our heads into a noose
And it just sits there watchin'
Our cities have turned into jungles
And corruption is stranglin' the land
The police force is watching the people
And the people just can't understand
We don't know how to mind our own business
'Cause the whole worlds got to be just like us
Now we are fighting a war over there
No matter who's the winner
We can't pay the cost
'Cause there's a monster on the loose
It's got our heads into a noose
And it just sits there watching
(America)
America where are you now?
Don't you care about your sons and daughters?
Don't you know we need you now
We can't fight alone against the monster
© Copyright MCA Music (BMI)
All rights for the USA controlled and administered by
MCA Corporation of America, INC
Honor Manning soldado Hoy-Vamos a redoblar nuestros esfuerzos para salvar soldado Manning-Que todas las Plaza de la Ciudad en América (y el mundo) Un Bradley Manning Square De Boston a Berkeley para nosotros BerlÃn-Ingreso en Davis Square, Somerville-A partir del 04 de julio del stand-out se realizará todos los miércoles de 4:00-5:00 pm
Haga clic en el titular para enlazar a una página privada de la página web de Bradley Manning Petición.
Markin comentar sobre nuestro nuevo dÃa y hora de inicio de este Cuatro de Julio:
Veteranos por la Paz siempre está orgulloso de estar junto a aquellos que están contra las guerras imperiales de Estados Unidos. Me siento orgulloso de haber pasado parte de la Cuarta de julio en solidaridad con Manning invierno soldado raso Bradley Manning en nuestra Plaza de la ubicación (también conocido como Davis Square en otras ocasiones) en Somerville. La multitud era bastante receptiva, tenemos discursos y canciones, como siempre, y hemos recogido algunas firmas. Todo esto se acumula a la prestación del soldado Manning a medida que avanzamos con el nuevo dÃa y hora. Otros veteranos por la paz marcharon este dÃa en el Rockport, MA Cuatro de Julio Desfile y me uniré a ellos el domingo 8 de julio en Portsmouth, New Hampshire para un "Bienvenido a casa" desfile para el Iraq de New Hampshire y el veterano de la guerra afgana. Hoy, sin embargo, yo estaba muy contento de estar junto a Winter Soldier Bradley Manning. Únase a nosotros en esta lucha! Manning gratis! El presidente Obama Manning Perdón PRIVADAS ahora mismo!
Markin un comentario:
El caso de Bradley Manning privada se dirige hacia un otoño / invierno temprano ensayo. Aquellos de nosotros que apoyan su causa, debemos redoblar nuestros esfuerzos para asegurar su libertad. Para los últimos meses ha habido una semana de espera en el área metropolitana de Boston frente a la Plaza de Davis Redline MBTA parada (rebautizada Plaza de Bradley Manning para la duración de la vigilia) en Somerville viernes por la tarde, pero ahora hemos cambiado el tiempo de 4:00 5:00 pm los miércoles. Esta posición de salida tiene, por decir lo menos, ha sido muy poca asistencia. Tenemos que construir con más seguidores presentes. Por favor, únase a nosotros cuando pueda. O mejor aún si usted no puede unirse a nosotros iniciar una vigilia de apoyo Bradley Manning la semana en algún lugar en su ciudad ya sea en el área de Boston, Berkeley o BerlÃn. Y por favor, firmen la petición para su liberación. He puesto enlaces a la red de Manning y Manning sitio web de la plaza de abajo.
Bradley Manning Support Network
http://www.bradleymanning.org/~~V
Manning Plaza de página web
http://freemanz.com/2012/01/20/somerville_paper_photo-bradmanningsquare/bradleymanningsquare-2011_01_13/
Los siguientes son comentarios que se han centrado en los últimos tiempos para conseguir apoyo para la causa Bradley Manning.
Veteranos por la Paz se yergue en la solidaridad y la defensa de los soldado Bradley Manning.
Nosotros, los del movimiento anti-guerra no pudieron hacer mucho para afectar el gobierno de Bush-Obama Irak calendario guerra, pero podemos salvar uno de los héroes de esa guerra, Bradley Manning.
Estoy en solidaridad con las supuestas acciones de soldado Bradley Manning en sacar a la luz, sólo un poco de luz, algunos de los nefastos hechos relacionados con la guerra de este gobierno, el gobierno de Bush y Obama. Si lo hiciera tales actos no son delito. Ningún crimen en absoluto en mis ojos o en los ojos de la gran mayorÃa de la gente que conoce del caso y de su importancia como un acto individual de resistencia a las injustas y bárbaras encabezadas por Estados Unidos las guerras en Irak y Afganistán. Duermo un poco de sombra más fácil en estos dÃas a sabiendas de que Manning podrÃa haber expuesto lo que todos sabÃan, o debÃan haber sabido, la guerra de Irak y de las justificaciones de la guerra afgana se basaba en un castillo de naipes. El imperialismo estadounidense pistolero castillo de naipes, pero las tarjetas, sin embargo.
Estoy de pie en solidaridad con el soldado Bradley Manning, porque estoy indignado por el trato dado a Manning, presumiblemente un hombre inocente, por un gobierno que afirma a sà misma como un "faro" del mundo civilizado. Bradley Manning se habÃa celebrado en la solidaridad en Quantico y otras localidades de más de dos años, y ha sido detenido sin juicio durante más tiempo, ya que el gobierno y sus fuerzas armadas tratan de pegar un caso juntos. Los militares y sus secuaces en el Departamento de Justicia, se han vuelto más tortuosa, aunque no más inteligente desde que era un soldado en la mira más de cuarenta años.
Estas son razones más que suficientes para estar en solidaridad con el soldado Manning y lo será hasta el dÃa en que es liberado por sus carceleros. Y voy a seguir para estar en solidaridad con el soldado Manning orgullosos hasta ese gran dÃa.
La retirada inmediata e incondicional de todas las tropas estadounidenses / Allied y mercenarios de Afganistán! Manos Fuera de Irán! Manning gratis PRIVADAS ahora mismo!
Markin comentar sobre nuestro nuevo dÃa y hora de inicio de este Cuatro de Julio:
Veteranos por la Paz siempre está orgulloso de estar junto a aquellos que están contra las guerras imperiales de Estados Unidos. Me siento orgulloso de haber pasado parte de la Cuarta de julio en solidaridad con Manning invierno soldado raso Bradley Manning en nuestra Plaza de la ubicación (también conocido como Davis Square en otras ocasiones) en Somerville. La multitud era bastante receptiva, tenemos discursos y canciones, como siempre, y hemos recogido algunas firmas. Todo esto se acumula a la prestación del soldado Manning a medida que avanzamos con el nuevo dÃa y hora. Otros veteranos por la paz marcharon este dÃa en el Rockport, MA Cuatro de Julio Desfile y me uniré a ellos el domingo 8 de julio en Portsmouth, New Hampshire para un "Bienvenido a casa" desfile para el Iraq de New Hampshire y el veterano de la guerra afgana. Hoy, sin embargo, yo estaba muy contento de estar junto a Winter Soldier Bradley Manning. Únase a nosotros en esta lucha! Manning gratis! El presidente Obama Manning Perdón PRIVADAS ahora mismo!
Markin un comentario:
El caso de Bradley Manning privada se dirige hacia un otoño / invierno temprano ensayo. Aquellos de nosotros que apoyan su causa, debemos redoblar nuestros esfuerzos para asegurar su libertad. Para los últimos meses ha habido una semana de espera en el área metropolitana de Boston frente a la Plaza de Davis Redline MBTA parada (rebautizada Plaza de Bradley Manning para la duración de la vigilia) en Somerville viernes por la tarde, pero ahora hemos cambiado el tiempo de 4:00 5:00 pm los miércoles. Esta posición de salida tiene, por decir lo menos, ha sido muy poca asistencia. Tenemos que construir con más seguidores presentes. Por favor, únase a nosotros cuando pueda. O mejor aún si usted no puede unirse a nosotros iniciar una vigilia de apoyo Bradley Manning la semana en algún lugar en su ciudad ya sea en el área de Boston, Berkeley o BerlÃn. Y por favor, firmen la petición para su liberación. He puesto enlaces a la red de Manning y Manning sitio web de la plaza de abajo.
Bradley Manning Support Network
http://www.bradleymanning.org/~~V
Manning Plaza de página web
http://freemanz.com/2012/01/20/somerville_paper_photo-bradmanningsquare/bradleymanningsquare-2011_01_13/
Los siguientes son comentarios que se han centrado en los últimos tiempos para conseguir apoyo para la causa Bradley Manning.
Veteranos por la Paz se yergue en la solidaridad y la defensa de los soldado Bradley Manning.
Nosotros, los del movimiento anti-guerra no pudieron hacer mucho para afectar el gobierno de Bush-Obama Irak calendario guerra, pero podemos salvar uno de los héroes de esa guerra, Bradley Manning.
Estoy en solidaridad con las supuestas acciones de soldado Bradley Manning en sacar a la luz, sólo un poco de luz, algunos de los nefastos hechos relacionados con la guerra de este gobierno, el gobierno de Bush y Obama. Si lo hiciera tales actos no son delito. Ningún crimen en absoluto en mis ojos o en los ojos de la gran mayorÃa de la gente que conoce del caso y de su importancia como un acto individual de resistencia a las injustas y bárbaras encabezadas por Estados Unidos las guerras en Irak y Afganistán. Duermo un poco de sombra más fácil en estos dÃas a sabiendas de que Manning podrÃa haber expuesto lo que todos sabÃan, o debÃan haber sabido, la guerra de Irak y de las justificaciones de la guerra afgana se basaba en un castillo de naipes. El imperialismo estadounidense pistolero castillo de naipes, pero las tarjetas, sin embargo.
Estoy de pie en solidaridad con el soldado Bradley Manning, porque estoy indignado por el trato dado a Manning, presumiblemente un hombre inocente, por un gobierno que afirma a sà misma como un "faro" del mundo civilizado. Bradley Manning se habÃa celebrado en la solidaridad en Quantico y otras localidades de más de dos años, y ha sido detenido sin juicio durante más tiempo, ya que el gobierno y sus fuerzas armadas tratan de pegar un caso juntos. Los militares y sus secuaces en el Departamento de Justicia, se han vuelto más tortuosa, aunque no más inteligente desde que era un soldado en la mira más de cuarenta años.
Estas son razones más que suficientes para estar en solidaridad con el soldado Manning y lo será hasta el dÃa en que es liberado por sus carceleros. Y voy a seguir para estar en solidaridad con el soldado Manning orgullosos hasta ese gran dÃa.
La retirada inmediata e incondicional de todas las tropas estadounidenses / Allied y mercenarios de Afganistán! Manos Fuera de Irán! Manning gratis PRIVADAS ahora mismo!
Honor Manning Winter Soldier Privado Hoje-Vamos redobrar nossos esforços para salvar Privado Manning-Faça Praça cada cidade da América (eo mundo) Um Bradley Manning Praça De Boston a Berkeley para Berlim-se a nós em Davis Square, Somerville-A partir 04 de julho A Stand Out-Will Be Toda quarta-feira De 16:00 - 17:00
Clique no tÃtulo para vincular a um privado Bradley página do site Manning Petição.
Markin comentar sobre o nosso novo dia e hora de inÃcio nesta Quarta de Julho:
Veteranos pela Paz é sempre o orgulho de estar com aqueles que estão contra as guerras imperiais dos Estados Unidos. Tenho orgulho de ter passado parte do Quatro de Julho em permanente solidariedade com Manning Inverno soldado Bradley Manning na nossa Praça de localização (aka Davis Square em outros momentos), em Somerville. A multidão foi bastante receptivo, temos discursos e canções como sempre, e coletou algumas assinaturas. Tudo isso reverte para benefÃcio Manning Privado à medida que avançamos com o novo dia e hora. Outros veteranos da Paz marchou neste dia, na Rockport, Ma Quatro de Julho Parade e vou juntar a eles no domingo 08 de julho, em Portsmouth, New Hampshire para um "Welcome Home" desfile para o Iraque New Hampshire e veterano da guerra do Afeganistão. Hoje, porém, eu estava muito feliz por estar ao lado de Inverno soldado Bradley Manning. Junte-se a nós nesta luta! Manning gratuito e privado! Presidente Manning Pardon Obama Privado Now!
Markin comentar:
The Private Bradley Manning caso é dirigido para um fim de outono / inverno julgamento antecipado. Aqueles de nós que apóiam sua causa deve redobrar os nossos esforços para assegurar sua liberdade. Para os últimos meses tem havido uma semana destacam-se na Grande Boston em frente à Praça Davis Redline MBTA stop (renomeado Bradley Manning Praça de duração da vigÃlia) em Somerville nas tardes de sexta-feira mas já mudou o tempo de 04:00 -5:00 PM à s quartas-feiras. Este stand-out tem, para dizer o mÃnimo, foi muito pouco frequentado. Nós precisamos construÃ-la com mais adeptos presentes. Por favor, se juntar a nós quando puder. Ou melhor ainda se você não pode se juntar a nós iniciar uma vigÃlia de apoio Bradley Manning semanal em algum local em sua cidade se é na área de Boston, Berkeley ou Berlim. E, por favor assine a petição para sua liberação. Eu coloquei as ligações à rede e Manning Manning website quadrado abaixo.
Bradley Manning Rede de Apoio
http://www.bradleymanning.org/~~V
Manning website Praça
http://freemanz.com/2012/01/20/somerville_paper_photo-bradmanningsquare/bradleymanningsquare-2011_01_13/
A seguir, são observações que venho focando de tarde para construir o apoio para a causa Bradley Manning.
Veteranos pela Paz orgulhosamente se solidariza com, e defesa dos privados Bradley Manning.
Nós do movimento anti-guerra não foram capazes de fazer muito para afetar o Bush-Obama Iraque calendário Guerra, mas nós podemos salvar o herói de um de que a guerra, Bradley Manning.
Eu estou em solidariedade com as ações de alegada Privado Bradley Manning em trazer à luz, apenas um pouco de luz, alguns dos nefastos relacionados à guerra feitos deste governo, sob Bush e Obama. Se ele fez tais atos não são crime. No crime em todos os meus olhos ou aos olhos da grande maioria de pessoas que sabem do caso e da sua importância como um ato individual de resistência à s injustas e bárbaras guerras lideradas pelos norte-americanos no Iraque e no Afeganistão. Durmo um pouco de sombra mais fácil nos dias de hoje, sabendo que Manning privada pode ter exposto o que todos sabÃamos, ou deveria saber, a guerra do Iraque e as justificações de guerra afegãos repousava sobre um castelo de cartas. Casa imperialismo norte-americano de arma em punho de cartões, mas os cartões, no entanto.
Estou em permanente solidariedade com Privado Bradley Manning, porque estou indignado com o tratamento dado ao soldado Manning, presumivelmente um homem inocente, por um governo que alega-se a ser uma "farol" do mundo civilizado. Bradley Manning tinha sido realizado em solidariedade às localidades Quantico e outros por mais de dois anos, e foi detido sem julgamento por mais tempo, como o governo e os militares tentam colar um caso juntos. O militar, e seus capangas no Departamento de Justiça, se tornaram mais desonesto, embora não mais inteligente desde que eu era um soldado em sua mira mais de quarenta anos atrás.
Estas são razões mais do que suficientes para se solidarizar com Manning e privado e será até o dia em que ele é libertado por seus carcereiros. E vou continuar a se solidarizar com orgulho Manning privada até o grande dia.
Retirada incondicional imediata das tropas dos EUA / aliados e mercenários Afeganistão! Mãos fora de Irã! Manning gratuito e privado Now!
Markin comentar sobre o nosso novo dia e hora de inÃcio nesta Quarta de Julho:
Veteranos pela Paz é sempre o orgulho de estar com aqueles que estão contra as guerras imperiais dos Estados Unidos. Tenho orgulho de ter passado parte do Quatro de Julho em permanente solidariedade com Manning Inverno soldado Bradley Manning na nossa Praça de localização (aka Davis Square em outros momentos), em Somerville. A multidão foi bastante receptivo, temos discursos e canções como sempre, e coletou algumas assinaturas. Tudo isso reverte para benefÃcio Manning Privado à medida que avançamos com o novo dia e hora. Outros veteranos da Paz marchou neste dia, na Rockport, Ma Quatro de Julho Parade e vou juntar a eles no domingo 08 de julho, em Portsmouth, New Hampshire para um "Welcome Home" desfile para o Iraque New Hampshire e veterano da guerra do Afeganistão. Hoje, porém, eu estava muito feliz por estar ao lado de Inverno soldado Bradley Manning. Junte-se a nós nesta luta! Manning gratuito e privado! Presidente Manning Pardon Obama Privado Now!
Markin comentar:
The Private Bradley Manning caso é dirigido para um fim de outono / inverno julgamento antecipado. Aqueles de nós que apóiam sua causa deve redobrar os nossos esforços para assegurar sua liberdade. Para os últimos meses tem havido uma semana destacam-se na Grande Boston em frente à Praça Davis Redline MBTA stop (renomeado Bradley Manning Praça de duração da vigÃlia) em Somerville nas tardes de sexta-feira mas já mudou o tempo de 04:00 -5:00 PM à s quartas-feiras. Este stand-out tem, para dizer o mÃnimo, foi muito pouco frequentado. Nós precisamos construÃ-la com mais adeptos presentes. Por favor, se juntar a nós quando puder. Ou melhor ainda se você não pode se juntar a nós iniciar uma vigÃlia de apoio Bradley Manning semanal em algum local em sua cidade se é na área de Boston, Berkeley ou Berlim. E, por favor assine a petição para sua liberação. Eu coloquei as ligações à rede e Manning Manning website quadrado abaixo.
Bradley Manning Rede de Apoio
http://www.bradleymanning.org/~~V
Manning website Praça
http://freemanz.com/2012/01/20/somerville_paper_photo-bradmanningsquare/bradleymanningsquare-2011_01_13/
A seguir, são observações que venho focando de tarde para construir o apoio para a causa Bradley Manning.
Veteranos pela Paz orgulhosamente se solidariza com, e defesa dos privados Bradley Manning.
Nós do movimento anti-guerra não foram capazes de fazer muito para afetar o Bush-Obama Iraque calendário Guerra, mas nós podemos salvar o herói de um de que a guerra, Bradley Manning.
Eu estou em solidariedade com as ações de alegada Privado Bradley Manning em trazer à luz, apenas um pouco de luz, alguns dos nefastos relacionados à guerra feitos deste governo, sob Bush e Obama. Se ele fez tais atos não são crime. No crime em todos os meus olhos ou aos olhos da grande maioria de pessoas que sabem do caso e da sua importância como um ato individual de resistência à s injustas e bárbaras guerras lideradas pelos norte-americanos no Iraque e no Afeganistão. Durmo um pouco de sombra mais fácil nos dias de hoje, sabendo que Manning privada pode ter exposto o que todos sabÃamos, ou deveria saber, a guerra do Iraque e as justificações de guerra afegãos repousava sobre um castelo de cartas. Casa imperialismo norte-americano de arma em punho de cartões, mas os cartões, no entanto.
Estou em permanente solidariedade com Privado Bradley Manning, porque estou indignado com o tratamento dado ao soldado Manning, presumivelmente um homem inocente, por um governo que alega-se a ser uma "farol" do mundo civilizado. Bradley Manning tinha sido realizado em solidariedade às localidades Quantico e outros por mais de dois anos, e foi detido sem julgamento por mais tempo, como o governo e os militares tentam colar um caso juntos. O militar, e seus capangas no Departamento de Justiça, se tornaram mais desonesto, embora não mais inteligente desde que eu era um soldado em sua mira mais de quarenta anos atrás.
Estas são razões mais do que suficientes para se solidarizar com Manning e privado e será até o dia em que ele é libertado por seus carcereiros. E vou continuar a se solidarizar com orgulho Manning privada até o grande dia.
Retirada incondicional imediata das tropas dos EUA / aliados e mercenários Afeganistão! Mãos fora de Irã! Manning gratuito e privado Now!
Manning soldat Honor hiver Privé Aujourd'hui-Voyons redoubler d'efforts pour sauver le soldat Manning-faire de chaque place de la ville en Amérique (et Le Monde) Un Bradley Manning Place De Boston à Berkeley pour nous de Berlin-Join In Davis Square, Somerville-Début Juillet 4 ° La Stand-Out Will Be Tous les mercredis de 16:00-17:00
Manning soldat Honor hiver Privé Aujourd'hui-Voyons redoubler d'efforts pour sauver le soldat Manning-faire de chaque place de la ville en Amérique (et Le Monde) Un Bradley Manning Place De Boston à Berkeley pour nous de Berlin-Join In Davis Square, Somerville-Début Juillet 4 ° La Stand-Out Will Be Tous les mercredis de 16:00-17:00
Cliquez sur le titre pour un lien vers une page du site web privé Bradley Manning pétition.
Markin commentaires sur notre nouveau jour et l'heure de départ sur cette quatrième de Juillet:
Combattants pour la Paix est toujours fier d'être avec ceux qui se dressent contre les guerres impériales de l'Amérique. Je suis fier d'avoir passé une partie de la quatrième de Juillet en solidarité avec Manning Winter Soldier privé à notre Bradley Manning emplacement Square (aka Davis Square à d'autres moments) à Somerville. La foule était assez réceptif, nous avons des discours et des chants comme toujours, et nous avons recueilli quelques signatures. Tout cela revient à profit soldat Manning en tant que nous avançons dans le nouveau jour et l'heure. D'autres anciens combattants pour la paix ont défilé ce jour dans le Rockport, Ma quatrième de Juillet Parade et je vais les rejoindre le dimanche Juillet 8ème Portsmouth, New Hampshire pour un "Welcome Home" parade pour l'Irak du New Hampshire et vétéran de la guerre afghane. Aujourd'hui cependant, j'ai été très heureux de se tenir avec d'hiver soldat Bradley Manning. Rejoignez nous dans cette lutte! Gratuit soldat Manning! Manning Président Obama Pardon privé maintenant!
Markin commenter:
Le Soldat Bradley Manning cas est dirigé vers une fin de l'automne / début de l'hiver procès. Ceux d'entre nous qui soutiennent sa cause doit redoubler d'efforts pour obtenir sa liberté. Pour les derniers mois, il ya eu un hebdomadaire stand-out dans le Grand Boston en face de l'arrêt Davis Square Redline MBTA (rebaptisé Bradley Manning place pour la durée de la veillée de) Somerville vendredi après-midi, mais nous avons changé le temps de 4:00 -5:00 PM le mercredi. Ce stand-out a, pour dire le moins, été très peu fréquentée. Nous avons besoin de le construire avec plus de supporters présents. S'il vous plaît joindre à nous quand vous le pouvez. Ou mieux encore, si vous ne pouvez pas vous joindre à nous lancer un soutien Bradley Manning vigile hebdomadaire dans un certain endroit dans votre ville si elle est dans la région de Boston, Berkeley ou Berlin. Et s'il vous plaît signer la pétition pour sa libération. J'ai placé des liens vers le réseau
Manning et Manning site web de Square-dessous.
Réseau de soutien Bradley Manning
http://www.bradleymanning.org/~~V
Manning Place site
http://freemanz.com/2012/01/20/somerville_paper_photo-bradmanningsquare/bradleymanningsquare-2011_01_13/
Ce qui suit sont des remarques que j'ai été axées sur de la fin de construire soutien à la cause Bradley Manning.
Combattants pour la Paix se dresse fièrement en signe de solidarité avec, et la défense des soldat Manning Bradley.
Nous du mouvement anti-guerre n'étaient pas en mesure de faire beaucoup d'affecter l'administration Bush-Obama la guerre en Irak calendrier, mais nous pouvons sauver le seul héros de cette guerre, Bradley Manning.
Je me tiens en solidarité avec les agissements présumés de Bradley Manning privé dans la mise à la lumière, juste un peu de lumière, certains des infâmes liées à la guerre faits et gestes de ce gouvernement, sous l'administration Bush et Obama. Si il l'a fait de tels actes, ils sont pas un crime. Aucun crime du tout à mes yeux ou aux yeux de la grande majorité des gens qui savent de l'affaire et de son importance comme un acte individuel de résistance aux injustes et barbares menées par les Américains des guerres en Irak et en Afghanistan. Je dors un peu l'ombre plus facile ces jours-ci en sachant que soldat Manning a peut-être exposée ce que nous savions tous, ou aurait dû savoir-la guerre en Irak et les justifications de guerre afghans reposait sur un château de cartes. Pistolet-toting de l'impérialisme américain château de cartes, mais les cartes malgré tout.
Je suis debout dans la solidarité avec le soldat Bradley Manning, parce que je suis outré par le traitement infligé à Manning privé, sans doute un homme innocent, par un gouvernement qui prétend lui-même y avoir une certaine «phare» du monde civilisé. Bradley Manning a eu lieu à la solidarité à Quantico et d'autres lieux pour plus de deux ans, et a été détenu sans procès pendant plus longtemps, que le gouvernement et son armée essayer de coller une affaire ensemble. Le militaire, et ses sbires dans le département de la Justice, ont obtenu plus sournois mais pas plus intelligent depuis que je suis un soldat dans leur ligne de mire il ya quarante ans.
Ce sont des raisons plus que suffisantes pour rester debout dans la solidarité avec Manning privé et sera jusqu'au jour où il est libéré par ses geôliers. Et je vais continuer à manifester leur solidarité avec les fiers soldat Manning jusqu'à ce grand jour.
Immédiate le retrait inconditionnel de toutes les troupes des États-Unis / Allied et des mercenaires en Afghanistan! Hands Off Iran! Gratuit soldat Manning maintenant!
Cliquez sur le titre pour un lien vers une page du site web privé Bradley Manning pétition.
Markin commentaires sur notre nouveau jour et l'heure de départ sur cette quatrième de Juillet:
Combattants pour la Paix est toujours fier d'être avec ceux qui se dressent contre les guerres impériales de l'Amérique. Je suis fier d'avoir passé une partie de la quatrième de Juillet en solidarité avec Manning Winter Soldier privé à notre Bradley Manning emplacement Square (aka Davis Square à d'autres moments) à Somerville. La foule était assez réceptif, nous avons des discours et des chants comme toujours, et nous avons recueilli quelques signatures. Tout cela revient à profit soldat Manning en tant que nous avançons dans le nouveau jour et l'heure. D'autres anciens combattants pour la paix ont défilé ce jour dans le Rockport, Ma quatrième de Juillet Parade et je vais les rejoindre le dimanche Juillet 8ème Portsmouth, New Hampshire pour un "Welcome Home" parade pour l'Irak du New Hampshire et vétéran de la guerre afghane. Aujourd'hui cependant, j'ai été très heureux de se tenir avec d'hiver soldat Bradley Manning. Rejoignez nous dans cette lutte! Gratuit soldat Manning! Manning Président Obama Pardon privé maintenant!
Markin commenter:
Le Soldat Bradley Manning cas est dirigé vers une fin de l'automne / début de l'hiver procès. Ceux d'entre nous qui soutiennent sa cause doit redoubler d'efforts pour obtenir sa liberté. Pour les derniers mois, il ya eu un hebdomadaire stand-out dans le Grand Boston en face de l'arrêt Davis Square Redline MBTA (rebaptisé Bradley Manning place pour la durée de la veillée de) Somerville vendredi après-midi, mais nous avons changé le temps de 4:00 -5:00 PM le mercredi. Ce stand-out a, pour dire le moins, été très peu fréquentée. Nous avons besoin de le construire avec plus de supporters présents. S'il vous plaît joindre à nous quand vous le pouvez. Ou mieux encore, si vous ne pouvez pas vous joindre à nous lancer un soutien Bradley Manning vigile hebdomadaire dans un certain endroit dans votre ville si elle est dans la région de Boston, Berkeley ou Berlin. Et s'il vous plaît signer la pétition pour sa libération. J'ai placé des liens vers le réseau
Manning et Manning site web de Square-dessous.
Réseau de soutien Bradley Manning
http://www.bradleymanning.org/~~V
Manning Place site
http://freemanz.com/2012/01/20/somerville_paper_photo-bradmanningsquare/bradleymanningsquare-2011_01_13/
Ce qui suit sont des remarques que j'ai été axées sur de la fin de construire soutien à la cause Bradley Manning.
Combattants pour la Paix se dresse fièrement en signe de solidarité avec, et la défense des soldat Manning Bradley.
Nous du mouvement anti-guerre n'étaient pas en mesure de faire beaucoup d'affecter l'administration Bush-Obama la guerre en Irak calendrier, mais nous pouvons sauver le seul héros de cette guerre, Bradley Manning.
Je me tiens en solidarité avec les agissements présumés de Bradley Manning privé dans la mise à la lumière, juste un peu de lumière, certains des infâmes liées à la guerre faits et gestes de ce gouvernement, sous l'administration Bush et Obama. Si il l'a fait de tels actes, ils sont pas un crime. Aucun crime du tout à mes yeux ou aux yeux de la grande majorité des gens qui savent de l'affaire et de son importance comme un acte individuel de résistance aux injustes et barbares menées par les Américains des guerres en Irak et en Afghanistan. Je dors un peu l'ombre plus facile ces jours-ci en sachant que soldat Manning a peut-être exposée ce que nous savions tous, ou aurait dû savoir-la guerre en Irak et les justifications de guerre afghans reposait sur un château de cartes. Pistolet-toting de l'impérialisme américain château de cartes, mais les cartes malgré tout.
Je suis debout dans la solidarité avec le soldat Bradley Manning, parce que je suis outré par le traitement infligé à Manning privé, sans doute un homme innocent, par un gouvernement qui prétend lui-même y avoir une certaine «phare» du monde civilisé. Bradley Manning a eu lieu à la solidarité à Quantico et d'autres lieux pour plus de deux ans, et a été détenu sans procès pendant plus longtemps, que le gouvernement et son armée essayer de coller une affaire ensemble. Le militaire, et ses sbires dans le département de la Justice, ont obtenu plus sournois mais pas plus intelligent depuis que je suis un soldat dans leur ligne de mire il ya quarante ans.
Ce sont des raisons plus que suffisantes pour rester debout dans la solidarité avec Manning privé et sera jusqu'au jour où il est libéré par ses geôliers. Et je vais continuer à manifester leur solidarité avec les fiers soldat Manning jusqu'à ce grand jour.
Immédiate le retrait inconditionnel de toutes les troupes des États-Unis / Allied et des mercenaires en Afghanistan! Hands Off Iran! Gratuit soldat Manning maintenant!
The Latest From The Private Bradley Manning Support Network-Free Bradley Manning Now! -Petition for Bradley, 800 days in jail, pretrial abuse, and FOIA requests
Click on the headline to link to the Private Bradley Manning Support Network for the latest information on his case and activities on his behalf .
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We of the anti-war movement were not able to do much to affect the Bush- Obama Iraq war timetable but we can save the one hero of that war, Private Bradley Manning. The entry below can serve as a continuing rationale for my (and your) support to this honorable whistleblower.
From the American Left History Blog, March 28, 2012
Why I Am Standing In Solidarity With Private Bradley Manning- A Personal Note From An Ex-Soldier Political Prisoner
Markin comment:
Last year I wrote a little entry in this space in order to motivate my reasons for standing in solidarity with a March 20th rally in support of Private Manning at the Quantico Marine Base in Virginia where he was then being held. I have subsequently repeatedly used that entry, Why I Will Be Standing In Solidarity With Private Bradley Manning At Quantico, Virginia On Sunday March 20th At 2:00 PM- A Personal Note From An Ex-Soldier Political Prisoner, as a I have tried to publicize his case in blogs and other Internet sources, at various rallies, and at marches, most recently at the Veterans For Peace Saint Patrick’s Day Peace Parade in South Boston on March 18th.
In that spirit I have updated, a little, that earlier entry to reflect the changed circumstances over the past year or so. As one would expect when the cause is still the same, Private Bradley Manning's freedom, unfortunately most of the entry is still in the same key. And will be until the day he is freed by his jailers. And I will continue to stand in proud solidarity with Private Manning until that great day.
*****
Of course I will be standing at the front gate to the Fort Meade , Maryland on April 25th because I stand in solidarity with the actions of Private Bradley Manning in bringing to light, just a little light, some of the nefarious doings of this government, Bush-like or Obamian. If he did such acts they are no crime. No crime at all in my eyes or in the eyes of the vast majority of people who know of the case and of its importance as an individual act of resistance to the unjust and barbaric American-led war in Iraq. I sleep just a shade bit easier these days knowing that Private Manning (or someone) exposed what we all knew, or should have known- the Iraq war and the Afghan war justification rested on a house of cards. American imperialism’s gun-toting house of cards, but cards nevertheless.
Of course I will also be standing at the front gate of Fort Meade, Maryland on April 25th because I am outraged by the treatment meted out to Private Manning, presumably an innocent man, by a government who alleges itself to be some “beacon” of the civilized world. Bradley Manning had been held in solidarity at Quantico and other locales for over 500 days, and has been held without trial for much longer, as the government and its military try to glue a case together. The military, and its henchmen in the Justice Department, have gotten more devious although not smarter since I was a soldier in their crosshairs over forty years ago.
Now the two reasons above are more than sufficient for my standing at the front gate at Fort Meade on April 25th although they, in themselves, are only the appropriate reasons that any progressive thinking person would need to show up and shout to the high heavens for Private Manning’s freedom. I have an additional reason though, a very pressing personal reason. As mentioned above I too was in the military’s crosshairs as a citizen-soldier during the height of the Vietnam War. I will not go into the details of that episode, this comment after all is about brother soldier Manning, other than that I spent my own time in an Army stockade for, let’s put it this way, working on the principle of “what if they gave a war and nobody came”.
Forty years later I am still working off that principle, and gladly. But here is the real point. During that time I had outside support, outside civilian support, that rallied on several occasions outside the military base where I was confined. Believe me that knowledge helped me get through the tough days inside. So on April 25th I will be just, once again, as I have been able to on too few other occasions over years, paying my dues for that long ago support. You, Brother Manning, are a true winter soldier. We were not able to do much about the course of the Iraq War (and little thus far on Afghanistan) but we can move might and main to save the one real hero of that whole mess.
Private Manning I hope that you will hear us and hear about our rally in your defense outside the gates. Better yet, everybody who reads this piece join us and make sure that he can hear us loud and clear. And let us shout to high heaven against this gross injustice-Free Private Manning Now!
*********
We of the anti-war movement were not able to do much to affect the Bush- Obama Iraq war timetable but we can save the one hero of that war, Private Bradley Manning. The entry below can serve as a continuing rationale for my (and your) support to this honorable whistleblower.
From the American Left History Blog, March 28, 2012
Why I Am Standing In Solidarity With Private Bradley Manning- A Personal Note From An Ex-Soldier Political Prisoner
Markin comment:
Last year I wrote a little entry in this space in order to motivate my reasons for standing in solidarity with a March 20th rally in support of Private Manning at the Quantico Marine Base in Virginia where he was then being held. I have subsequently repeatedly used that entry, Why I Will Be Standing In Solidarity With Private Bradley Manning At Quantico, Virginia On Sunday March 20th At 2:00 PM- A Personal Note From An Ex-Soldier Political Prisoner, as a I have tried to publicize his case in blogs and other Internet sources, at various rallies, and at marches, most recently at the Veterans For Peace Saint Patrick’s Day Peace Parade in South Boston on March 18th.
In that spirit I have updated, a little, that earlier entry to reflect the changed circumstances over the past year or so. As one would expect when the cause is still the same, Private Bradley Manning's freedom, unfortunately most of the entry is still in the same key. And will be until the day he is freed by his jailers. And I will continue to stand in proud solidarity with Private Manning until that great day.
*****
Of course I will be standing at the front gate to the Fort Meade , Maryland on April 25th because I stand in solidarity with the actions of Private Bradley Manning in bringing to light, just a little light, some of the nefarious doings of this government, Bush-like or Obamian. If he did such acts they are no crime. No crime at all in my eyes or in the eyes of the vast majority of people who know of the case and of its importance as an individual act of resistance to the unjust and barbaric American-led war in Iraq. I sleep just a shade bit easier these days knowing that Private Manning (or someone) exposed what we all knew, or should have known- the Iraq war and the Afghan war justification rested on a house of cards. American imperialism’s gun-toting house of cards, but cards nevertheless.
Of course I will also be standing at the front gate of Fort Meade, Maryland on April 25th because I am outraged by the treatment meted out to Private Manning, presumably an innocent man, by a government who alleges itself to be some “beacon” of the civilized world. Bradley Manning had been held in solidarity at Quantico and other locales for over 500 days, and has been held without trial for much longer, as the government and its military try to glue a case together. The military, and its henchmen in the Justice Department, have gotten more devious although not smarter since I was a soldier in their crosshairs over forty years ago.
Now the two reasons above are more than sufficient for my standing at the front gate at Fort Meade on April 25th although they, in themselves, are only the appropriate reasons that any progressive thinking person would need to show up and shout to the high heavens for Private Manning’s freedom. I have an additional reason though, a very pressing personal reason. As mentioned above I too was in the military’s crosshairs as a citizen-soldier during the height of the Vietnam War. I will not go into the details of that episode, this comment after all is about brother soldier Manning, other than that I spent my own time in an Army stockade for, let’s put it this way, working on the principle of “what if they gave a war and nobody came”.
Forty years later I am still working off that principle, and gladly. But here is the real point. During that time I had outside support, outside civilian support, that rallied on several occasions outside the military base where I was confined. Believe me that knowledge helped me get through the tough days inside. So on April 25th I will be just, once again, as I have been able to on too few other occasions over years, paying my dues for that long ago support. You, Brother Manning, are a true winter soldier. We were not able to do much about the course of the Iraq War (and little thus far on Afghanistan) but we can move might and main to save the one real hero of that whole mess.
Private Manning I hope that you will hear us and hear about our rally in your defense outside the gates. Better yet, everybody who reads this piece join us and make sure that he can hear us loud and clear. And let us shout to high heaven against this gross injustice-Free Private Manning Now!
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