Click on the headline to link to the Lenin Internet Archives.
Markin comment:
This article goes along with the propaganda points in the fight for our communist future mentioned in other posts.
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With this now-classic work, Lenin aimed to encapsulate the lessons the Bolshevik Party had learned from its involvement in three revolutions in 12 years—in a manner that European Communists could relate to, for it was to them he was speaking. He also further develops the theory of what the "dictatorship of the proletariat" means and stresses that the primary danger for the working-class movement in general is opportunism on the one hand, and anti-Marxist ultra-leftism on the other.
"Left-Wing" Communism: an Infantile Disorder was written in April, and the appendix was written on May 12, 1920. It came out on June 8-10 in Russian and in July was published in German, English and French. Lenin gave personal attention to the book’s type-setting and printing schedule so that it would be published before the opening of the Second Congress of the Communist International, each delegate receiving a copy. Between July and November 1920, the book was re-published in Leipzig, Paris and London, in the German, French and English languages respectively.
"Left-Wing" Communism: an Infantile Disorder is published according to the first edition print, the proofs of which were read by Lenin himself.
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Should we Participate in Bourgeois Parliaments?
It is with the utmost contempt—and the utmost levity—that the German "Left" Communists reply to this question in the negative. Their arguments? In the passage quoted above we read:
"... All reversion to parliamentary forms of struggle, which have become historically and politically obsolete, must be emphatically rejected" [[__ Rjc: Could be incomplete here; check __]]
This is said with ridiculous pretentiousness, and is patently wrong. "Reversion" to parliamentarianism, forsooth! Perhaps there is already a Soviet republic in Germany? It does not look like it! How, then, can one speak of "reversion"? Is this not an empty phrase?
Parliamentarianism has become "historically obsolete". That is true in the propaganda sense. However, everybody knows that this is still a far cry from overcoming it in practice. Capitalism could have been declared—and with full justice—to be "historically obsolete" many decades ago, but that does not at all remove the need for a very long and very persistent struggle on the basis of capitalism. Parliamentarianism is "historically obsolete" from the standpoint of world history, i.e., the era of bourgeois parliamentarianism is over, and the era of the proletarian dictatorship has begun. That is incontestable. But world history is counted in decades. Ten or twenty years earlier or later makes no difference when measured with the yardstick of world history; from the standpoint of world history it is a trifle that cannot be considered even approximately. But for that very reason, it is a glaring theoretical error to apply the yardstick of world history to practical politics.
Is parliamentarianism "politically obsolete"? That is quite a different matter. If that were true, the position of the "Lefts" would be a strong one. But it has to be proved by a most searching analysis, and the "Lefts" do not even know how to approach the matter. In the "Theses on Parliamentarianism", published in the Bulletin of the Provisional Bureau in Amsterdam of the Communist International No. 1, February 1920, and obviously expressing the Dutch-Left or Left-Dutch strivings, the analysis, as we shall see, is also hopelessly poor.
In the first place, contrary to the opinion of such outstanding political leaders as Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, the German "Lefts", as we know, considered parliamentarianism "politically obsolete" even in January 1919. We know that the "Lefts" were mistaken. This fact alone utterly destroys, at a single stroke, the proposition that parliamentarianism is "politically obsolete". It is for the "Lefts" to prove why their error, indisputable at that time, is no longer an error. They do not and cannot produce even a shred of proof. A political party’s attitude towards its own mistakes is one of the most important and surest ways of judging how earnest the party is and how it fulfils in practice its obligations towards its class and the working people. Frankly acknowledging a mistake, ascertaining the reasons for it, analysing the conditions that have led up to it, and thrashing out the means of its rectification -- that is the hallmark of a serious party; that is how it should perform its duties, and how it should educate and train its class, and then the masses. By failing to fulfil this duty and give the utmost attention and consideration to the study of their patent error, the "Lefts" in Germany (and in Holland) have proved that they are not a party of a class, but a circle, not a party of the masses, but a group of intellectualists and of a few workers who ape the worst features of intellectualism.
Second, in the same pamphlet of the Frankfurt group of "Lefts", which we have already cited in detail, we read:
"... The millions of workers who still follow the policy of the Centre [the Catholic "Centre" Party] are counter-revolutionary. The rural proletarians provide the legions of counter-revolutionary troops." (Page 3 of the pamphlet.)
Everything goes to show that this statement is far too sweeping and exaggerated. But the basic fact set forth here is incontrovertible, and its acknowledgment by the "Lefts" is particularly clear evidence of their mistake. How can one say that "parliamentarianism is politically obsolete", when "millions" and "legions" of proletarians are not only still in favour of parliamentarianism in general, but are downright "counter-revolutionary"!? It is obvious that parliamentarianism in Germany is not yet politically obsolete. It is obvious that the "Lefts" in Germany have mistaken their desire, their politico-ideological attitude, for objective reality. That is a most dangerous mistake for revolutionaries to make. In Russia—where, over a particularly long period and in particularly varied forms, the most brutal and savage yoke of tsarism produced revolutionaries of diverse shades, revolutionaries who displayed amazing devotion, enthusiasm, heroism and will power—in Russia we have observed this mistake of the revolutionaries at very close quarters; we have studied it very attentively and have a first-hand knowledge of it; that is why we can also see it especially clearly in others. Parliamentarianism is of course "politically obsolete" to the Communists in Germany; but—and that is the whole point—we must not regard what is obsolete to us as something obsolete to a class, to the masses. Here again we find that the "Lefts" do not know how to reason, do not know how to act as the party of a class, as the party of the masses. You must not sink to the level of the masses, to the level of the backward strata of the class. That is incontestable. You must tell them the bitter truth. You are in duty bound to call their bourgeois-democratic and parliamentary prejudices what they are—prejudices. But at the same time you must soberly follow the actual state of the class-consciousness and preparedness of the entire class (not only of its communist vanguard), and of all the working people (not only of their advanced elements).
Even if only a fairly large minority of the industrial workers, and not "millions" and "legions", follow the lead of the Catholic clergy—and a similar minority of rural workers follow the landowners and kulaks (Grossbauern)—it undoubtedly signifies that parliamentarianism in Germany has not yet politically outlived itself, that participation in parliamentary elections and in the struggle on the parliamentary rostrum is obligatory on the party of the revolutionary proletariat specifically for the purpose of educating the backward strata of its own class, and for the purpose of awakening and enlightening the undeveloped, downtrodden and ignorant rural masses. Whilst you lack the strength to do away with bourgeois parliaments and every other type of reactionary institution, you must work within them because it is there that you will still find workers who are duped by the priests and stultified by the conditions of rural life; otherwise you risk turning into nothing but windbags.
Third, the "Left" Communists have a great deal to say in praise of us Bolsheviks. One sometimes feels like telling them to praise us less and to try to get a better knowledge of the Bolsheviks’ tactics. We took part in the elections to the Constituent Assembly, the Russian bourgeois parliament in September-November 1917. Were our tactics correct or not? If not, then this should be clearly stated and proved, for it is necessary in evolving the correct tactics for international communism. If they were correct, then certain conclusions must be drawn. Of course, there can be no question of placing conditions in Russia on a par with conditions in Western Europe. But as regards the particular question of the meaning of the concept that "parliamentarianism has become politically obsolete", due account should be taken of our experience, for unless concrete experience is taken into account such concepts very easily turn into empty phrases. In September-November 1917, did we, the Russian Bolsheviks, not have more right than any Western Communists to consider that parliamentarianism was politically obsolete in Russia? Of course we did, for the point is not whether bourgeois parliaments have existed for a long time or a short time, but how far the masses of the working people are prepared (ideologically, politically and practically) to accept the Soviet system and to dissolve the bourgeois-democratic parliament (or allow it to be dissolved). It is an absolutely incontestable and fully established historical fact that, in September-November 1917, the urban working class and the soldiers and peasants of Russia were, because of a number of special conditions, exceptionally well prepared to accept the Soviet system and to disband the most democratic of bourgeois parliaments. Nevertheless, the Bolsheviks did not boycott the Constituent Assembly, but took part in the elections both before and after the proletariat conquered political power. That these elections yielded exceedingly valuable (and to the proletariat, highly useful) political results has, I make bold to hope, been proved by me in the above-mentioned article, which analyses in detail the returns of the elections to the Constituent Assembly in Russia.
The conclusion which follows from this is absolutely incontrovertible: it has been proved that, far from causing harm to the revolutionary proletariat, participation in a bourgeois-democratic parliament, even a few weeks before - the victory of a Soviet republic and even after such a victory, actually helps that proletariat to prove to the backward masses why such parliaments deserve to be done away with; it facilitates their successful dissolution, and helps to make bourgeois parliamentarianism "politically obsolete". To ignore this experience, while at the same time claiming affiliation to the Communist International, which must work out its tactics internationally (not as narrow or exclusively national tactics, but as international tactics), means committing a gross error and actually abandoning internationalism in deed, while recognising it in word.
Now let us examine the "Dutch-Left" arguments in favour of non-participation in parliaments. The following is the text of Thesis No. 4, the most important of the above-mentioned "Dutch" theses:
When the capitalist system of production has broken down, and society is in a state of revolution, parliamentary action gradually loses importance as compared with the action of the masses themselves. When, in these conditions, parliament becomes the centre and organ of the counter-revolution, whilst, on the other hand, the labouring class builds up the instruments of its power in the Soviets, it may even prove necessary to abstain from all and any participation in parliamentary action."
The first sentence is obviously wrong, since action by the masses, a big strike, for instance, is more important than parliamentary activity at all times, and not only during a revolution or in a revolutionary situation. This obviously untenable and historically and politically incorrect argument merely shows very clearly that the authors completely ignore both the general European experience (the French experience before the revolutions of 1848 and 1870; the German experience of 1878-90, etc.) and the Russian experience (see above) of the importance of combining legal and illegal struggle. This question is of immense importance both in general and in particular, because in all civilised and advanced countries the time is rapidly approaching when such a combination will more and more become—and has already partly become—mandatory on the party of the revolutionary proletariat, inasmuch as civil war between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie is maturing and is imminent, and because of savage persecution of the Communists by republican governments and bourgeois governments generally, which resort to any violation of legality (the example of America is edifying enough), etc. The Dutch, and the Lefts in general, have utterly failed to understand this highly important question.
The second sentence is, in the first place, historically wrong. We Bolsheviks participated in the most counterrevolutionary parliaments, and experience has shown that this participation was not only useful but indispensable to the party of the revolutionary proletariat, after the first bourgeois revolution in Russia (1905), so as to pave the way for the second bourgeois revolution (February 1917), and then for the socialist revolution (October 1917). In the second place, this sentence is amazingly illogical. If a parliament becomes an organ and a "centre" (in reality it never has been and never can be a "centre", but that is by the way) of counter-revolution, while the workers are building up the instruments of their power in the form of the Soviets, then it follows that the workers must prepare—ideologically, politically and technically—for the struggle of the Soviets against parliament, for the dispersal of parliament by the Soviets. But it does not at all follow that this dispersal is hindered, or is not facilitated, by the presence of a Soviet opposition within the counter-revolutionary parliament. In the course of our victorious struggle against Denikin and Kolchak, we never found that the existence of a Soviet and proletarian opposition in their camp was immaterial to our victories. We know perfectly well that the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly on January 5, 1918 was not hampered but was actually facilitated by the fact that, within the counter-revolutionary Constituent Assembly which was about to be dispersed, there was a consistent Bolshevik, as well as an inconsistent, Left Socialist-Revolutionary Soviet opposition. The authors of the theses are engaged in muddled thinking; they have forgotten the experience of many, if not all, revolutions, which shows the great usefulness, during a revolution, of a combination of mass action outside a reactionary parliament with an opposition sympathetic to (or, better still, directly supporting) the revolution within it. The Dutch, and the "Lefts" in general, argue in this respect like doctrinaires of the revolution, who have never taken part in a real revolution, have never given thought to the history of revolutions, or have naively mistaken subjective "rejection" of a reactionary institution for its actual destruction by the combined operation of a number of objective factors. The surest way of discrediting and damaging a new political (and not only political) idea is to reduce it to absurdity on the plea of defending it. For any truth, if "overdone" (as Dietzgen Senior put it), if exaggerated, or if carried beyond the limits of its actual applicability, can be reduced to an absurdity, and is even bound to become an absurdity under these conditions. That is just the kind of disservice the Dutch and German Lefts are rendering to the new truth of the Soviet form of government being superior to bourgeois-democratic parliaments. Of course, anyone would be in error who voiced the outmoded viewpoint or in general considered it impermissible, in all and any circumstances, to reject participation in bourgeois parliaments. I cannot attempt here to formulate the conditions under which a boycott is useful, since the object of this pamphlet is far more modest, namely, to study Russian experience in connection with certain topical questions of international communist tactics. Russian experience has provided us with one successful and correct instance (1905), and another that was incorrect (1906), of the use of a boycott by the Bolsheviks. Analysing the first case, we, see that we succeeded in preventing a reactionary government from convening a reactionary parliament in a situation in which extra-parliamentary revolutionary mass action (strikes in particular) was developing at great speed, when not a single section of the proletariat and the peasantry could support the reactionary government in any way, and when the revolutionary proletariat was gaining influence over the backward masses through the strike struggle and through the agrarian movement. It is quite obvious that this experience is not applicable to present-day European conditions. It is likewise quite obvious—and the foregoing arguments bear this out -- that the advocacy, even if with reservations, by the Dutch and the other "Lefts" of refusal to participate in parliaments is fundamentally wrong and detrimental to the cause of the revolutionary proletariat.
In Western Europe and America, parliament has become most odious to the revolutionary vanguard of the working class. That cannot be denied. It can readily be understood, for it is difficult to imagine anything more infamous, vile or treacherous than the behaviour of the vast majority of socialist and Social-Democratic parliamentary deputies during and after the war. It would, however, be not only unreasonable but actually criminal to yield to this mood when deciding how this generally recognised evil should be fought. In many countries of Western Europe, the revolutionary mood, we might say, is at present a "novelty", or a "rarity", which has all too long been vainly and impatiently awaited; perhaps that is why people so easily yield to that mood. Certainly, without a revolutionary mood among the masses, and without conditions facilitating the growth of this mood, revolutionary tactics will never develop into action. In Russia, however, lengthy, painful and sanguinary experience has taught us the truth that revolutionary tactics cannot be built on a revolutionary mood alone. Tactics must be based on a sober and strictly objective appraisal of all the class forces in a particular state (and of the states that surround it, and of all states the world over) as well as of the experience of revolutionary movements. It is very easy to show one’s "revolutionary" temper merely by hurling abuse at parliamentary opportunism, or merely by repudiating participation in parliaments; its very ease, however, cannot turn this into a solution of a difficult, a very difficult, problem. It is far more difficult to create a really revolutionary parliamentary group in a European parliament than it was in Russia. That stands to reason. But it is only a particular expression of the general truth that it was easy for Russia, in the specific and historically unique situation of 1917, to start the socialist revolution, but it will be more difficult for Russia than for the European countries to continue the revolution and bring it to its consummation. I had occasion to point this out already at the beginning of 1918, and our experience of the past two years has entirely confirmed the correctness of this view. Certain specific conditions, viz., (1) the possibility of linking up the Soviet revolution with the ending, as a consequence of this revolution, of the imperialist war, which had exhausted the workers and peasants to an incredible degree; (2) the possibility of taking temporary advantage of the mortal conflict between the world’s two most powerful groups of imperialist robbers, who were unable to unite against their Soviet enemy; (3) the possibility of enduring a comparatively lengthy civil war, partly owing to the enormous size of the country and to the poor means of communication; (4) the existence of such a profound bourgeois-democratic revolutionary movement among the peasantry that the party of the proletariat was able to adopt the revolutionary demands of the peasant party (the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, the majority of whose members were definitely hostile to Bolshevism) and realise them at once, thanks to the conquest of political power by the proletariat—all these specific conditions do not at present exist in Western Europe, and a repetition of such or similar conditions will not occur so easily. Incidentally, apart from a number of other causes, that is why it is more difficult for Western Europe to start a socialist revolution than it was for us. To attempt to "circumvent" this difficulty by "skipping" the arduous job of utilising reactionary parliaments for revolutionary purposes is absolutely childish. You want to create a new society, yet you fear the difficulties involved in forming a good parliamentary group made up of convinced, devoted and heroic Communists, in a reactionary parliament! Is that not childish? If Karl Liebknecht in Germany and Z. H?glund in Sweden were able, even without mass support from below, to set examples of the truly revolutionary utilisation of reactionary parliaments, why should a rapidly growing revolutionary mass party, in the midst of the post-war disillusionment and embitterment of the masses, be unable to forge a communist group in the worst of parliaments? It is because, in Western Europe, the backward masses of the workers and—to an even greater degree—of the small peasants are much more imbued with bourgeois-democratic and parliamentary prejudices than they were in Russia because of that, it is only from within such institutions as bourgeois parliaments that Communists can (and must) wage a long and persistent struggle, undaunted by any difficulties, to expose, dispel and overcome these prejudices.
The German "Lefts" complain of bad "leaders" in their party, give way to despair, and even arrive at a ridiculous "negation" of "leaders". But in conditions in which it is often necessary to hide "leaders" underground, the evolution of good "leaders", reliable, tested and authoritative, is a very difficult matter; these difficulties cannot be successfully overcome without combining legal and illegal work, and without testing the "leaders", among other ways, in parliaments. Criticism -- the most keen, ruthless and uncompromising criticism—should be directed, not against parliamentarianism or parliamentary activities, but against those leaders who are unable—and still more against those who are unwilling -- to utilise parliamentary elections and the parliamentary rostrum in a revolutionary and communist manner. Only such criticism—combined, of course, with the dismissal of incapable leaders and their replacement by capable ones—will constitute useful and fruitful revolutionary work that will simultaneously train the "leaders" to be worthy of the working class and of all working people, and train the masses to be able properly to understand the political situation and the often very complicated and intricate tasks that spring from that situation. *5
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Footnotes
[*5] I have had too little opportunity to acquaint myself with ’Leftwing’, communism in Italy. Comrade Bordiga and his faction of Abstentionist Communists (Comunista astensionista) are certainly wrong in advocating non-participation in parliament. But on one point, it seems to me, Comrade Bordiga is right—as far as can be judged from two issues of his paper, Il Soviet (Nos. 3 and 4, January 18 and February 1, 1920), from four issues of Comrade Serrati’s excellent periodical, Comunismo (Nos. 1-4, October l-November 30, 1919), and from separate issues of Italian bourgeois papers which I have seen. Comrade Bordiga and his group are right in attacking Turati and his partisans, who remain in a party which has recognised Soviet power and the dictatorship of the proletariat, and yet continue their former pernicious and opportunist policy as members of parliament. Of course, in tolerating this, Comrade Serrati and the entire Italian Socialist Party [28] are making a mistake which threatens to do as much harm and give rise to the same dangers as it did in Hungary, where the Hungarian Turatis sabotaged both the party and the Soviet government [29] from within. Such a mistaken, inconsistent, or spineless attitude towards the opportunist parliamentarians gives rise to "Leftwing" communism, on the one hand, and to a certain extent justifies its existence, on the other. Comrade Serrati is obviously wrong when he accuses Deputy Turati of being "inconsistent" (Comunismo No. 3), for it is the Italian Socialist Party itself that is inconsistent in tolerating such opportunist parliamentarians as Turati and Co.
[28] From its foundation in 1892, the Italian Socialist Party saw a bitter ideological struggle between the opportunist and the revolutionary trends within it. At the Reggio Emilia Congress of 1912, the most outspoken reformists who supported the war and collaboration with the government and the bourgeoisie (Ivanoe Bonomi, Leonida Bissolati and others) were expelled from the party under pressure from the Left wing. After the outbreak of the First World War and prior to Italy’s entry into it, the I.S.P. came out against the war and advanced the slogan: "Against war, for neutrality!" In December 1914, a group of renegades including Benito Mussolini, who advocated the bourgeoisie’s imperialist policy and supported the war, were expelled from the party. When Italy entered the war on the Entente’s side (May 1915), three distinct trends emerged in the Italian Socialist Party: 1) the Right wing, which aided the bourgeoisie in the conduct of the war; 2) the Centre, which united most of party members and came out under the slogan: "No part in the war, and no sabotage of the war" and 3) the Left wing, which took a firmer anti-war stand, but could not organise a consistent struggle against the war. The Left wing did not realise the necessity of converting the imperialist war into a civil war, and of a decisive break with the reformists.
After the October Socialist Revolution in Russia, the Left wing of the I.S.P. grew stronger, and the 16th Party Congress held on October 5-8, 1919, in Bologna, adopted a resolution on affiliation to the Third International. I.S.P. representatives took part in the work of the Second Congress of the Comintern. After the Congress Centrist Serrati, head of the delegation, declared against a break with the reformists. At the 17th Party Congress in Leghorn in January 1921, the Centrists, who were in the majority, refused to break with the reformists and to accept all the terms of admission into the Comintern. On January 21, 1921, the Left-wing delegates walked out of the Congress and founded the Communist Party of Italy.
[29] Soviet rule was established in Hungary on March 21, 1919. The socialist revolution in Hungary was a peaceful one, the Hungarian bourgeoisie being unable to resist the people. Incapable of overcoming its internal and external difficulties, it decided to hand over power for a while to the Right-wing Social-Democrats so as to prevent the development of the revolution. However, the Hungarian Communist Party’s prestige had grown so great, and the demands of rank-and-file Social-Democrats for unity with the Communists had become so insistent that the leaders of the Social-Democratic Party proposed to the arrested Communist leaders the formation of a joint government. The Social-Democratic leaders were obliged to accept the terms advanced by the Communists during the negotiations, i.e., the formation of a Soviet government, disarmament of the bourgeoisie, the creation of a Red Army and people’s militia, confiscation of the landed estates, the nationalisation of industry, an alliance with Soviet Russia, etc.
An agreement was simultaneously signed on the merging of the two parties to form the Hungarian Socialist Party. While the two parties were being merged, errors were made which later became clear. The merger was carried out mechanically, without isolation of the reformist elements.
At its first meeting, the Revolutionary Governmental Council adopted a resolution on the formation of the Red Army. On March 26, the Soviet Government of Hungary issued decrees on the nationalisation of industrial enterprises, transport, and the banks; on April 2, a decree was published on the monopoly of foreign trade. Workers’ wages were increased by an average of 25 per cent, and an 8-hour working day was introduced. On April 3, land-reform law was issued, by which all estates exceeding 57 hectares in area were confiscated. The confiscated land, however, was not distributed among the land-starved and landless peasants, but was turned over to agricultural producers’ cooperatives and state farms organised after the reform. The poor peasants, who had hoped to get land, were disappointed. This prevented the establishment of a firm alliance between the proletariat and the peasantry, and weakened Soviet power in Hungary.
The Entente imperialists instituted an economic blockade of the Soviet Republic. Armed intervention against the Hungarian Soviet Republic was organised, the advance of interventionist troops stirring up the Hungarian counter-revolutionaries. The treachery of the Right-wing Social-Democrats, who entered into an alliance with international imperialism, was one of the causes of the Hungarian Soviet Republic’s downfall.
The unfavourable international situation in the summer of 1919, when Soviet Russia was encircled by enemies and therefore could not help the Hungarian Soviet Republic, also played a definite role. On August 1, 1919, as a result of joint actions by the foreign imperialist interventionists and the domestic counterrevolutionaries, Soviet power in Hungary was overthrown.
Monday, August 13, 2012
From Occupy Homes MA-Boston-Attention people facing foreclosure or in foreclosure: Don't let the Bank push you out!
From Occupy Homes MA-Boston-Attention people facing foreclosure or in foreclosure: Don't let the Bank push you out!
Important information
If you are the former owner or a tenant in a foreclosed building, you can fight for your home after foreclosure. If you have received an eviction notice from the Bank, DO NOT MOVE! Do not accept "cash for keys" payments without consulting with Occupy Homes MA or an attorney.
To all residents: If you live in a building that has already been foreclosed or where a foreclosure seems likely, call us at Occupy Homes at 617-524-3541 or come to any meeting of the City Life every Tuesday night, 6:15 pm, at 284 Amory St. in JP (near Stonybrook Station on Orange Line). You can fight the eviction.
Don't panic. Don't move. Organize! Join Occupy Homes MA
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Tufts Library - Canoe Room
46 Broad Street, Weymouth
6:00 PM
Mortgage companies have been unwilling to do meaningful loan modifications for homeowners in trouble. To owners: If you financed your home during the real estate bubble, chances are the value of your home is much less than the value of the mortgage. In that case, a "meaningful loan modification" is one that reduces principal owed.
To owners and tenants: After foreclosure, lenders evicted about 2400 households in Boston in 2008. About 77% of these households were tenants. AM these evictions were "no fault," because foreclosing lenders refuse to accept rent. They sit on vacant property after foreclosure and our neighborhoods decline.
Occupy Homes MA is dedicated to uniting tenants and former owners in foreclosed buildings in order to protect our homes and neighborhoods against giant mortgage companies and banks.
For more information, call Occupy Homes MA: 617-249-4359 - Email: SouthShoreOccupy@gmail.com
Important information
If you are the former owner or a tenant in a foreclosed building, you can fight for your home after foreclosure. If you have received an eviction notice from the Bank, DO NOT MOVE! Do not accept "cash for keys" payments without consulting with Occupy Homes MA or an attorney.
To all residents: If you live in a building that has already been foreclosed or where a foreclosure seems likely, call us at Occupy Homes at 617-524-3541 or come to any meeting of the City Life every Tuesday night, 6:15 pm, at 284 Amory St. in JP (near Stonybrook Station on Orange Line). You can fight the eviction.
Don't panic. Don't move. Organize! Join Occupy Homes MA
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Tufts Library - Canoe Room
46 Broad Street, Weymouth
6:00 PM
Mortgage companies have been unwilling to do meaningful loan modifications for homeowners in trouble. To owners: If you financed your home during the real estate bubble, chances are the value of your home is much less than the value of the mortgage. In that case, a "meaningful loan modification" is one that reduces principal owed.
To owners and tenants: After foreclosure, lenders evicted about 2400 households in Boston in 2008. About 77% of these households were tenants. AM these evictions were "no fault," because foreclosing lenders refuse to accept rent. They sit on vacant property after foreclosure and our neighborhoods decline.
Occupy Homes MA is dedicated to uniting tenants and former owners in foreclosed buildings in order to protect our homes and neighborhoods against giant mortgage companies and banks.
For more information, call Occupy Homes MA: 617-249-4359 - Email: SouthShoreOccupy@gmail.com
Sunday, August 12, 2012
Peter Paul Markin’s War- Circa 1969-An Explained Interlude
Shaved-head, close anyway, too close to distinguish that head, mine, or rather private soldier government- issue mine on loan after drafted 1969 drafted purgatories and anguishes, go, not go, go, not go, not go, go, jail, not jail, go, from the ten-thousand, no one hundred-thousand other heads, all shave-headed. No way that close-cropped head, or those ten thousand, no, one hundred thousand others , would survive the Harvard Square (square is right), Village, burned-over Haight-Ashbury night as anything but soldier tourists looking at long-haired freaks smoking dope in some impromptu Kasbah or some vagrant common lawn.
But that wistful thought is so much ancient history, so much bad karma, ghost danced against ancient painted cavern-etched shamanic bad karmic night, as is the certitude, the absolute certitude, after only three, hell, one for truth, but three, on more, half-humid, half ground frozen (and I know, know from close observation just minutes ago after having “done ten” that half frozen) southern winter days (Georgia, hell-bent segregated Georgia places like Albany and Augusta, if not Atlanta) that go, no go, jail, not jail, Canada or wherever, was decided the wrong way and that life from here on in would get quirky (nice way to put it, right, put it just short of facing phantom firing squads).
Start. Four in the morning madness but this time not falling into too much to dream sweet good night but cursing some stoolie “orderlie” who has just kicked off my blanket cover and yelled, yelled if you can believe that, right in my ear that if I was not up before he turned his head to yell at some other shaved- head across from my bunk that I would be “doing ten (or was it one hundred, or one thousand)” in front of the whole company of fellow raw recruits on some sweet red clay Georgia earth, frozen okay, when the sun came up.
Naturally the trap was set for me, yankee abolitionist doughboy me, as he, some confederate of Stonewall Jackson or one of those lost johnnie reb greybeards, could turn his ugly government-issue head bunk away before I could even uncover that frizzy green blanket and so I was to be parlayed, relayed, surveyed and displayed before a motley of bleary eyed raws and done. An example, a horribly example of slovenliness that would get some rolling hills hayseed Ohio farm boy too scared to say yessir or no sir, some Kentucky un-shoed hills and hollows (ya, I know hollas) toothless illiterate dragged from mother womb coal veins, or some jet black ebony angel New York City street corner boy caught up in the court system, some petty larceny count to his credit, and warned, judge-warned, into the service, killed for lack of speed. Yes, that go, no go thing went the wrong way, way wrong, as I sensed those phantom firing squads closing in.
At peek of light, no food in stomach, no eyes, no open eyes, and in bare tee-shirt, white government-issued and two sizes two big just then, I fall down to the earth, spitting mud-flecked red clay, spitting dust, spitting, spitting out the stars over Alabama (oops Georgia, all these southern red clays seem so very much the same, or would on further inspection) that portent no good, no earthy good. Cold, cold cold as only a day time hot winter place can be night cold.
And I do “ten.” And then that ten, or the cold red clay doing of that ten, started a mental civil war between one government-issued private soldier and one warring government. Of such incidents great wars, and great struggles against war, swarm the earth, although the latter less frequently than one would suspect. Or hope.
Then those DNA-etched righteous furies kick-assed with my brain, those old time grandmother Catholic Worker stop the goddam wars and stop them now (exactly quoting Irish “shawlie” grandma wisdom, or else) reared their pug ugly (ur-government-issued ugly) head. And that shave-headed (as if shave-headed-ness had exposed on its surface for all the world to see as if written out longhand all the quaint, if shadow, last night I had the strangest dream, stop the war madness covered up by long-haired no thoughts and no risks ancient thoughts) red clay foam-flecked private soldier dreamed of crusades and leading great crusades, and marching men back into barracks and locking doors against the killing fields.
And arguing with sneer-snickering (remembering only no sir or yes sir) Ohio farm boys, Kentucky rednecks hell-bent on tunnel-rat-dom like some great cosmic chain held them together, and black as night New York City street-wise (well, half-wise)corner boys this-if this is not murder, if this is not to slay, then what is? Come and face the phantom firing squads too, come cry out to high heaven against the madness, the madness of men, and madnesses stopped by men, by little no “no siring” men.
The die is cast, not as usual truthfully cast, not pure warrior in the frozen ground red clay night, not massive warrior-king leading home swords turned into plowshare armies, solitary avenging angel cast, but cast. Dreams of running away to elysian fields (or mudded Woodstock farm mires), dreams of lost love (of girls left behind and of secret betrayals), dreams of not doing this or that youth-desired thing keep rearing back and certain character flaws, certain wise guy, small town corner boy (unknown to black knight New York City corner boys all wide-eyed) know-it-all cut corners character flaws stream in the hot, humid, footsore march.
But in the end the drumbeat tattoo beats his beat, and fate.
Wild dreams, senseless wild dreams follow, follow in succession, day and night. Time has no measure, no measure at all and calendars only form fear for burning red eyes. Angels rage at hell’s door to no avail. Rant, mere rant against the barb wired fix. Sweats, real human sweats, ever present sweats in small airless rooms. Rooms not picked by man, or fit. The days of rage, rage against the light, and then the glimmer of the light. Fame, maybe unearned nickel and dime fame, as poster boy for break-out soldiers crying against the high hellish anguished night and murders, murders called by their right name. Then, that exact moment , those phantom firing squads turn to dust, ashes really, and free.
But that wistful thought is so much ancient history, so much bad karma, ghost danced against ancient painted cavern-etched shamanic bad karmic night, as is the certitude, the absolute certitude, after only three, hell, one for truth, but three, on more, half-humid, half ground frozen (and I know, know from close observation just minutes ago after having “done ten” that half frozen) southern winter days (Georgia, hell-bent segregated Georgia places like Albany and Augusta, if not Atlanta) that go, no go, jail, not jail, Canada or wherever, was decided the wrong way and that life from here on in would get quirky (nice way to put it, right, put it just short of facing phantom firing squads).
Start. Four in the morning madness but this time not falling into too much to dream sweet good night but cursing some stoolie “orderlie” who has just kicked off my blanket cover and yelled, yelled if you can believe that, right in my ear that if I was not up before he turned his head to yell at some other shaved- head across from my bunk that I would be “doing ten (or was it one hundred, or one thousand)” in front of the whole company of fellow raw recruits on some sweet red clay Georgia earth, frozen okay, when the sun came up.
Naturally the trap was set for me, yankee abolitionist doughboy me, as he, some confederate of Stonewall Jackson or one of those lost johnnie reb greybeards, could turn his ugly government-issue head bunk away before I could even uncover that frizzy green blanket and so I was to be parlayed, relayed, surveyed and displayed before a motley of bleary eyed raws and done. An example, a horribly example of slovenliness that would get some rolling hills hayseed Ohio farm boy too scared to say yessir or no sir, some Kentucky un-shoed hills and hollows (ya, I know hollas) toothless illiterate dragged from mother womb coal veins, or some jet black ebony angel New York City street corner boy caught up in the court system, some petty larceny count to his credit, and warned, judge-warned, into the service, killed for lack of speed. Yes, that go, no go thing went the wrong way, way wrong, as I sensed those phantom firing squads closing in.
At peek of light, no food in stomach, no eyes, no open eyes, and in bare tee-shirt, white government-issued and two sizes two big just then, I fall down to the earth, spitting mud-flecked red clay, spitting dust, spitting, spitting out the stars over Alabama (oops Georgia, all these southern red clays seem so very much the same, or would on further inspection) that portent no good, no earthy good. Cold, cold cold as only a day time hot winter place can be night cold.
And I do “ten.” And then that ten, or the cold red clay doing of that ten, started a mental civil war between one government-issued private soldier and one warring government. Of such incidents great wars, and great struggles against war, swarm the earth, although the latter less frequently than one would suspect. Or hope.
Then those DNA-etched righteous furies kick-assed with my brain, those old time grandmother Catholic Worker stop the goddam wars and stop them now (exactly quoting Irish “shawlie” grandma wisdom, or else) reared their pug ugly (ur-government-issued ugly) head. And that shave-headed (as if shave-headed-ness had exposed on its surface for all the world to see as if written out longhand all the quaint, if shadow, last night I had the strangest dream, stop the war madness covered up by long-haired no thoughts and no risks ancient thoughts) red clay foam-flecked private soldier dreamed of crusades and leading great crusades, and marching men back into barracks and locking doors against the killing fields.
And arguing with sneer-snickering (remembering only no sir or yes sir) Ohio farm boys, Kentucky rednecks hell-bent on tunnel-rat-dom like some great cosmic chain held them together, and black as night New York City street-wise (well, half-wise)corner boys this-if this is not murder, if this is not to slay, then what is? Come and face the phantom firing squads too, come cry out to high heaven against the madness, the madness of men, and madnesses stopped by men, by little no “no siring” men.
The die is cast, not as usual truthfully cast, not pure warrior in the frozen ground red clay night, not massive warrior-king leading home swords turned into plowshare armies, solitary avenging angel cast, but cast. Dreams of running away to elysian fields (or mudded Woodstock farm mires), dreams of lost love (of girls left behind and of secret betrayals), dreams of not doing this or that youth-desired thing keep rearing back and certain character flaws, certain wise guy, small town corner boy (unknown to black knight New York City corner boys all wide-eyed) know-it-all cut corners character flaws stream in the hot, humid, footsore march.
But in the end the drumbeat tattoo beats his beat, and fate.
Wild dreams, senseless wild dreams follow, follow in succession, day and night. Time has no measure, no measure at all and calendars only form fear for burning red eyes. Angels rage at hell’s door to no avail. Rant, mere rant against the barb wired fix. Sweats, real human sweats, ever present sweats in small airless rooms. Rooms not picked by man, or fit. The days of rage, rage against the light, and then the glimmer of the light. Fame, maybe unearned nickel and dime fame, as poster boy for break-out soldiers crying against the high hellish anguished night and murders, murders called by their right name. Then, that exact moment , those phantom firing squads turn to dust, ashes really, and free.
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!"
The Latest From The Partisan Defense Committee-Free The Class-War Prisoners-Support The Striking Greek Steelworkers!-Victory to he Hellenic Halyvourgia strikers!
Click on the headline to link to the Partisan Defense Committee website.
Reposted from the American Left History blog, dated December 1, 2010.
Markin comment:
I like to think of myself as a fervent supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, an organization committed to social and political defense cases and causes in the interests of the working class and, at this time of the year, to raising funds to support the class-war prisoners’ stipend program. Normally I do not need any prompting in the matter. This year, however, in light of the addition of Attorney Lynne Stewart (yes, I know, she has been disbarred but that does not make her less of a people’s attorney in my eyes) to the stipend program, I read the 25th Anniversary Appeal article in Workers Vanguard No. 969 where I was startled to note how many of the names, organizations, and political philosophies mentioned there hark back to my own radical coming of age, and the need for class-struggle defense of all our political prisoners in the late 1960s (although I may not have used that exact term at the time).
That recognition included names like black liberation fighter George Jackson, present class-war prisoner Hugo Pinell’s San Quentin Six comrade; the Black Panthers, as represented here by two of the Omaha Three (Poindexter and wa Langa), in their better days and in the days when we needed, desperately needed, to fight for their defense in places from Oakland to New Haven; the struggle, the fierce struggle, against the death penalty as represented in Mumia’s case today; the Ohio 7 and the Weather Underground who, rightly or wrongly, were committed to building a second front against American imperialism, and who most of the left, the respectable left, abandoned; and, of course, Leonard Peltier and the Native American struggles from Pine Ridge to the Southwest. It has been a long time and victories few. I could go on but you get the point.
That point also includes the hard fact that we have paid a high price, a very high price, for not winning back in the late 1960s and early 1970s when we last had this capitalist imperialist society on the ropes. Maybe it was political immaturity, maybe it was cranky theory, maybe it was elitism, hell, maybe it was just old-fashioned hubris but we let them off the hook. And have had to fight forty years of rear-guard “culture wars” since just to keep from falling further behind.
And the class-war prisoners, our class-war prisoners, have had to face their “justice” and their prisons. That lesson should be etched in the memory of every pro-working class militant today. And this, as well, as a quick glance at the news these days should make every liberation fighter realize; the difference between being on one side of that prison wall and the other is a very close thing when the bourgeoisie decides to pull the hammer down. The support of class-war prisoners is thus not charity, as International Labor Defense founder James P. Cannon noted back in the 1920s, but a duty of those fighters outside the walls. Today I do my duty, and gladly.
**********
Support The Striking Greek Steelworkers!-Victory to he Hellenic Halyvourgia strikers!
Workers at the Greek steel plant Elliniki Halyvourgia have been on strike for nearly nine months, in struggle against layoffs and cuts in wages and hours. On June 20, the PDC sent a letter of support stating, "We join pith workers internationally who have expressed solidarity with you. Your strike is in the forefront of the (Struggle against the austerity being imposed on not only the working people of Greece but also the working 'class of all Europe. The European Union and the capitalist rulers of each country seek to make the workers 'sacrifice' in order to maintain their profits during the years-long economic crisis." We concluded, "Victory to he Hellenic Halyvourgia strikers! No wage cuts, hour reductions, or layoffs! Immediate reinstatement of all the workers! Down with capitalist austerity! Workers of the world unite!"
The address for solidarity letters is:
17thKmNEOAK
Elleniki Halyvourgia
Asproprygos 19300, Greece
Fax number: 011-30-210-557-8360
Telephone: 011-30-210-557-0829
Donations in support of the steel strikers should be sent to: National Bank of Greece IBAN:GR40011020000000 2006 2330152 BIC/Swift Code: ETHNGRAA Account holder: Dimitris Liakos
Reposted from the American Left History blog, dated December 1, 2010.
Markin comment:
I like to think of myself as a fervent supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, an organization committed to social and political defense cases and causes in the interests of the working class and, at this time of the year, to raising funds to support the class-war prisoners’ stipend program. Normally I do not need any prompting in the matter. This year, however, in light of the addition of Attorney Lynne Stewart (yes, I know, she has been disbarred but that does not make her less of a people’s attorney in my eyes) to the stipend program, I read the 25th Anniversary Appeal article in Workers Vanguard No. 969 where I was startled to note how many of the names, organizations, and political philosophies mentioned there hark back to my own radical coming of age, and the need for class-struggle defense of all our political prisoners in the late 1960s (although I may not have used that exact term at the time).
That recognition included names like black liberation fighter George Jackson, present class-war prisoner Hugo Pinell’s San Quentin Six comrade; the Black Panthers, as represented here by two of the Omaha Three (Poindexter and wa Langa), in their better days and in the days when we needed, desperately needed, to fight for their defense in places from Oakland to New Haven; the struggle, the fierce struggle, against the death penalty as represented in Mumia’s case today; the Ohio 7 and the Weather Underground who, rightly or wrongly, were committed to building a second front against American imperialism, and who most of the left, the respectable left, abandoned; and, of course, Leonard Peltier and the Native American struggles from Pine Ridge to the Southwest. It has been a long time and victories few. I could go on but you get the point.
That point also includes the hard fact that we have paid a high price, a very high price, for not winning back in the late 1960s and early 1970s when we last had this capitalist imperialist society on the ropes. Maybe it was political immaturity, maybe it was cranky theory, maybe it was elitism, hell, maybe it was just old-fashioned hubris but we let them off the hook. And have had to fight forty years of rear-guard “culture wars” since just to keep from falling further behind.
And the class-war prisoners, our class-war prisoners, have had to face their “justice” and their prisons. That lesson should be etched in the memory of every pro-working class militant today. And this, as well, as a quick glance at the news these days should make every liberation fighter realize; the difference between being on one side of that prison wall and the other is a very close thing when the bourgeoisie decides to pull the hammer down. The support of class-war prisoners is thus not charity, as International Labor Defense founder James P. Cannon noted back in the 1920s, but a duty of those fighters outside the walls. Today I do my duty, and gladly.
**********
Support The Striking Greek Steelworkers!-Victory to he Hellenic Halyvourgia strikers!
Workers at the Greek steel plant Elliniki Halyvourgia have been on strike for nearly nine months, in struggle against layoffs and cuts in wages and hours. On June 20, the PDC sent a letter of support stating, "We join pith workers internationally who have expressed solidarity with you. Your strike is in the forefront of the (Struggle against the austerity being imposed on not only the working people of Greece but also the working 'class of all Europe. The European Union and the capitalist rulers of each country seek to make the workers 'sacrifice' in order to maintain their profits during the years-long economic crisis." We concluded, "Victory to he Hellenic Halyvourgia strikers! No wage cuts, hour reductions, or layoffs! Immediate reinstatement of all the workers! Down with capitalist austerity! Workers of the world unite!"
The address for solidarity letters is:
17thKmNEOAK
Elleniki Halyvourgia
Asproprygos 19300, Greece
Fax number: 011-30-210-557-8360
Telephone: 011-30-210-557-0829
Donations in support of the steel strikers should be sent to: National Bank of Greece IBAN:GR40011020000000 2006 2330152 BIC/Swift Code: ETHNGRAA Account holder: Dimitris Liakos
The Latest From The Partisan Defense Committee-Free The Class-War Prisoners-The Latest In The Lynne Stewart Case-Free Lynne Stewart!
Click on the headline to link to the Partisan Defense Committee website.
Reposted from the American Left History blog, dated December 1, 2010.
Markin comment:
I like to think of myself as a fervent supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, an organization committed to social and political defense cases and causes in the interests of the working class and, at this time of the year, to raising funds to support the class-war prisoners’ stipend program. Normally I do not need any prompting in the matter. This year, however, in light of the addition of Attorney Lynne Stewart (yes, I know, she has been disbarred but that does not make her less of a people’s attorney in my eyes) to the stipend program, I read the 25th Anniversary Appeal article in Workers Vanguard No. 969 where I was startled to note how many of the names, organizations, and political philosophies mentioned there hark back to my own radical coming of age, and the need for class-struggle defense of all our political prisoners in the late 1960s (although I may not have used that exact term at the time).
That recognition included names like black liberation fighter George Jackson, present class-war prisoner Hugo Pinell’s San Quentin Six comrade; the Black Panthers, as represented here by two of the Omaha Three (Poindexter and wa Langa), in their better days and in the days when we needed, desperately needed, to fight for their defense in places from Oakland to New Haven; the struggle, the fierce struggle, against the death penalty as represented in Mumia’s case today; the Ohio 7 and the Weather Underground who, rightly or wrongly, were committed to building a second front against American imperialism, and who most of the left, the respectable left, abandoned; and, of course, Leonard Peltier and the Native American struggles from Pine Ridge to the Southwest. It has been a long time and victories few. I could go on but you get the point.
That point also includes the hard fact that we have paid a high price, a very high price, for not winning back in the late 1960s and early 1970s when we last had this capitalist imperialist society on the ropes. Maybe it was political immaturity, maybe it was cranky theory, maybe it was elitism, hell, maybe it was just old-fashioned hubris but we let them off the hook. And have had to fight forty years of rear-guard “culture wars” since just to keep from falling further behind.
And the class-war prisoners, our class-war prisoners, have had to face their “justice” and their prisons. That lesson should be etched in the memory of every pro-working class militant today. And this, as well, as a quick glance at the news these days should make every liberation fighter realize; the difference between being on one side of that prison wall and the other is a very close thing when the bourgeoisie decides to pull the hammer down. The support of class-war prisoners is thus not charity, as International Labor Defense founder James P. Cannon noted back in the 1920s, but a duty of those fighters outside the walls. Today I do my duty, and gladly.
*************
Free Lynne Stewart
On June 28, the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the vindictive 10-year prison sentence against Lynne Stewart. As Workers Vanguard wrote at the time of her conviction: "The verdict gives the government a green light to prosecute lawyers for the alleged crimes of their clients, thereby shooting the basic right to counsel to hell" (Workers Vanguard No. 842, 18 February 2005). Opponents of the "war on terror" assault on democratic rights must demand: Free Lynne Stewart now! In its ruling the Second Circuit repeatedly cited Stewart's "lack of remorse" as a key motivation for upholding the sentence. Stewart's husband Ralph Poynter told Workers Vanguard: "They're angry because she's not bent or bowed." The Partisan Defense Committee has contributed to Stewart's defense and encourages others to do the same. Donations can be sent to: Lynne Stewart Organization, 1070 Dean Street, Brooklyn, New York 11216. Letters can be mailed to: Lynne Stewart, #53504-054, FMC Carswell, Federal Medical Center, P.O. Box 27137, Fort Worth, TX 76127.
Reposted from the American Left History blog, dated December 1, 2010.
Markin comment:
I like to think of myself as a fervent supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, an organization committed to social and political defense cases and causes in the interests of the working class and, at this time of the year, to raising funds to support the class-war prisoners’ stipend program. Normally I do not need any prompting in the matter. This year, however, in light of the addition of Attorney Lynne Stewart (yes, I know, she has been disbarred but that does not make her less of a people’s attorney in my eyes) to the stipend program, I read the 25th Anniversary Appeal article in Workers Vanguard No. 969 where I was startled to note how many of the names, organizations, and political philosophies mentioned there hark back to my own radical coming of age, and the need for class-struggle defense of all our political prisoners in the late 1960s (although I may not have used that exact term at the time).
That recognition included names like black liberation fighter George Jackson, present class-war prisoner Hugo Pinell’s San Quentin Six comrade; the Black Panthers, as represented here by two of the Omaha Three (Poindexter and wa Langa), in their better days and in the days when we needed, desperately needed, to fight for their defense in places from Oakland to New Haven; the struggle, the fierce struggle, against the death penalty as represented in Mumia’s case today; the Ohio 7 and the Weather Underground who, rightly or wrongly, were committed to building a second front against American imperialism, and who most of the left, the respectable left, abandoned; and, of course, Leonard Peltier and the Native American struggles from Pine Ridge to the Southwest. It has been a long time and victories few. I could go on but you get the point.
That point also includes the hard fact that we have paid a high price, a very high price, for not winning back in the late 1960s and early 1970s when we last had this capitalist imperialist society on the ropes. Maybe it was political immaturity, maybe it was cranky theory, maybe it was elitism, hell, maybe it was just old-fashioned hubris but we let them off the hook. And have had to fight forty years of rear-guard “culture wars” since just to keep from falling further behind.
And the class-war prisoners, our class-war prisoners, have had to face their “justice” and their prisons. That lesson should be etched in the memory of every pro-working class militant today. And this, as well, as a quick glance at the news these days should make every liberation fighter realize; the difference between being on one side of that prison wall and the other is a very close thing when the bourgeoisie decides to pull the hammer down. The support of class-war prisoners is thus not charity, as International Labor Defense founder James P. Cannon noted back in the 1920s, but a duty of those fighters outside the walls. Today I do my duty, and gladly.
*************
Free Lynne Stewart
On June 28, the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the vindictive 10-year prison sentence against Lynne Stewart. As Workers Vanguard wrote at the time of her conviction: "The verdict gives the government a green light to prosecute lawyers for the alleged crimes of their clients, thereby shooting the basic right to counsel to hell" (Workers Vanguard No. 842, 18 February 2005). Opponents of the "war on terror" assault on democratic rights must demand: Free Lynne Stewart now! In its ruling the Second Circuit repeatedly cited Stewart's "lack of remorse" as a key motivation for upholding the sentence. Stewart's husband Ralph Poynter told Workers Vanguard: "They're angry because she's not bent or bowed." The Partisan Defense Committee has contributed to Stewart's defense and encourages others to do the same. Donations can be sent to: Lynne Stewart Organization, 1070 Dean Street, Brooklyn, New York 11216. Letters can be mailed to: Lynne Stewart, #53504-054, FMC Carswell, Federal Medical Center, P.O. Box 27137, Fort Worth, TX 76127.
The Latest From The Partisan Defense Committee-Free The Class-War Prisoners-The Latest In The Mumia Case-Free Mumia Now!
Click on the headline to link to the Partisan Defense Committee website.
Reposted from the American Left History blog, dated December 1, 2010.
Markin comment:
I like to think of myself as a fervent supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, an organization committed to social and political defense cases and causes in the interests of the working class and, at this time of the year, to raising funds to support the class-war prisoners’ stipend program. Normally I do not need any prompting in the matter. This year, however, in light of the addition of Attorney Lynne Stewart (yes, I know, she has been disbarred but that does not make her less of a people’s attorney in my eyes) to the stipend program, I read the 25th Anniversary Appeal article in Workers Vanguard No. 969 where I was startled to note how many of the names, organizations, and political philosophies mentioned there hark back to my own radical coming of age, and the need for class-struggle defense of all our political prisoners in the late 1960s (although I may not have used that exact term at the time).
That recognition included names like black liberation fighter George Jackson, present class-war prisoner Hugo Pinell’s San Quentin Six comrade; the Black Panthers, as represented here by two of the Omaha Three (Poindexter and wa Langa), in their better days and in the days when we needed, desperately needed, to fight for their defense in places from Oakland to New Haven; the struggle, the fierce struggle, against the death penalty as represented in Mumia’s case today; the Ohio 7 and the Weather Underground who, rightly or wrongly, were committed to building a second front against American imperialism, and who most of the left, the respectable left, abandoned; and, of course, Leonard Peltier and the Native American struggles from Pine Ridge to the Southwest. It has been a long time and victories few. I could go on but you get the point.
That point also includes the hard fact that we have paid a high price, a very high price, for not winning back in the late 1960s and early 1970s when we last had this capitalist imperialist society on the ropes. Maybe it was political immaturity, maybe it was cranky theory, maybe it was elitism, hell, maybe it was just old-fashioned hubris but we let them off the hook. And have had to fight forty years of rear-guard “culture wars” since just to keep from falling further behind.
And the class-war prisoners, our class-war prisoners, have had to face their “justice” and their prisons. That lesson should be etched in the memory of every pro-working class militant today. And this, as well, as a quick glance at the news these days should make every liberation fighter realize; the difference between being on one side of that prison wall and the other is a very close thing when the bourgeoisie decides to pull the hammer down. The support of class-war prisoners is thus not charity, as International Labor Defense founder James P. Cannon noted back in the 1920s, but a duty of those fighters outside the walls. Today I do my duty, and gladly.
********
Free Mumia
July 2 marked 30 years since a nearly all-white jury declared former Black Panther spokesman and MOVE supporter Mumia Abu-Jamal guilty in the killing of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner on 9 December 1981. One day later, on the eve of the 4l of July, the jurors sentenced Mumia to death, based explicitly on his political views and activities as a champion of black freedom and eloquent voice for the oppressed. Finally removed from death row, Mumia was transferred to Mahanoy prison in Frackville, Pennsylvania, where he was vindictively thrown into solitary for seven weeks before finally being released into the general prison population on January 27. On July 9, PDC representatives visited Mumia. With the restraints of death row finally lifted, Mumia is allowed six hours a day outdoors and is getting all the exercise that he can. For the first time since we started visiting Mumia in 1987, Mumia and our representatives could embrace and sit side by side. Compared with the death row conditions under which Mumia lived for 30 years, the more ordinary hell of America's prison is an improvement. But it is a crime that this innocent man has spent even a day behind bars. We remain dedicated to searing the cause of Mumia's fight for freedom into the consciousness of the working class, radical youth and opponents of black oppression. Free Mumia now!
Reposted from the American Left History blog, dated December 1, 2010.
Markin comment:
I like to think of myself as a fervent supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, an organization committed to social and political defense cases and causes in the interests of the working class and, at this time of the year, to raising funds to support the class-war prisoners’ stipend program. Normally I do not need any prompting in the matter. This year, however, in light of the addition of Attorney Lynne Stewart (yes, I know, she has been disbarred but that does not make her less of a people’s attorney in my eyes) to the stipend program, I read the 25th Anniversary Appeal article in Workers Vanguard No. 969 where I was startled to note how many of the names, organizations, and political philosophies mentioned there hark back to my own radical coming of age, and the need for class-struggle defense of all our political prisoners in the late 1960s (although I may not have used that exact term at the time).
That recognition included names like black liberation fighter George Jackson, present class-war prisoner Hugo Pinell’s San Quentin Six comrade; the Black Panthers, as represented here by two of the Omaha Three (Poindexter and wa Langa), in their better days and in the days when we needed, desperately needed, to fight for their defense in places from Oakland to New Haven; the struggle, the fierce struggle, against the death penalty as represented in Mumia’s case today; the Ohio 7 and the Weather Underground who, rightly or wrongly, were committed to building a second front against American imperialism, and who most of the left, the respectable left, abandoned; and, of course, Leonard Peltier and the Native American struggles from Pine Ridge to the Southwest. It has been a long time and victories few. I could go on but you get the point.
That point also includes the hard fact that we have paid a high price, a very high price, for not winning back in the late 1960s and early 1970s when we last had this capitalist imperialist society on the ropes. Maybe it was political immaturity, maybe it was cranky theory, maybe it was elitism, hell, maybe it was just old-fashioned hubris but we let them off the hook. And have had to fight forty years of rear-guard “culture wars” since just to keep from falling further behind.
And the class-war prisoners, our class-war prisoners, have had to face their “justice” and their prisons. That lesson should be etched in the memory of every pro-working class militant today. And this, as well, as a quick glance at the news these days should make every liberation fighter realize; the difference between being on one side of that prison wall and the other is a very close thing when the bourgeoisie decides to pull the hammer down. The support of class-war prisoners is thus not charity, as International Labor Defense founder James P. Cannon noted back in the 1920s, but a duty of those fighters outside the walls. Today I do my duty, and gladly.
********
Free Mumia
July 2 marked 30 years since a nearly all-white jury declared former Black Panther spokesman and MOVE supporter Mumia Abu-Jamal guilty in the killing of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner on 9 December 1981. One day later, on the eve of the 4l of July, the jurors sentenced Mumia to death, based explicitly on his political views and activities as a champion of black freedom and eloquent voice for the oppressed. Finally removed from death row, Mumia was transferred to Mahanoy prison in Frackville, Pennsylvania, where he was vindictively thrown into solitary for seven weeks before finally being released into the general prison population on January 27. On July 9, PDC representatives visited Mumia. With the restraints of death row finally lifted, Mumia is allowed six hours a day outdoors and is getting all the exercise that he can. For the first time since we started visiting Mumia in 1987, Mumia and our representatives could embrace and sit side by side. Compared with the death row conditions under which Mumia lived for 30 years, the more ordinary hell of America's prison is an improvement. But it is a crime that this innocent man has spent even a day behind bars. We remain dedicated to searing the cause of Mumia's fight for freedom into the consciousness of the working class, radical youth and opponents of black oppression. Free Mumia now!
From #Un-Occupied Boston (#Un-Tomemonos Boston)-What Happens When We Do Not Learn The Lessons Of History- The Pre-1848 Socialist Movement-Auguste Blanqui 1848-Parisians!
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.
****
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The Occupy Movement And All Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Occupy Protesters Everywhere!
********
Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
********
A Five-Point Program As Talking Points
*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay to spread the available work around. Organize the unorganized- Organize the South- Organize Wal-Mart- Defend the right for public and private workers to unionize.
* Defend the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. Spent the dough instead on organizing the unorganized and on other labor-specific causes (good example, the November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio, bad example the Wisconsin gubernatorial recall race in June 2012).
*End the endless wars!- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan! Hands Off Iran! U.S. Hands Off The World!
*Fight for a social agenda for working people!. Quality Healthcare For All! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! Forgive student debt! Stop housing foreclosures!
*We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Build a workers party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed.
Emblazon on our red banner-Labor and the oppressed must rule!
***********
Auguste Blanqui 1848-Parisians!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Translated: for marxists.org by Mitch Abidor;
CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2004.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If there is still time, open your eyes at the polling booth to the peril that threatens you: Paris is condemned and its sentence is being carried out by the hands of a reaction that was able to everywhere recruit accomplices in and instruments of its vengeance.
Under the pretext of disencumberment, of public order and even of humanity, every day the capital is being emptied of the working class. A fatal measure! A death measure!
With the exception of a small handful of rich idlers the entire city only lives only thanks to the workers: without workers there is no more consumption, and thus no more business! The mass of retailers would fall into ruin, big business and industry would follow them into the abyss, and the faction that represents the victorious past would applaud the ruin of this Paris that it abhors because it has changed the face of the world.
Merchants, landlords, don’t second these evil designs; leave behind your terrors and fears. What do the people ask for? To live in happiness through their labor, and interest orders you to support this just demand, for your profits come from the people, you earn them as a result of their consumption. Don’t let appearances fool you! In the ocean of affairs, spending on luxury items is but a drop of water. For every person who lives off the gold of the rich nine live on the centimes of the poor. Between you and the workers there is solidarity.
But be just! The people have suffered for too long! They no longer can nor will suffer under the harsh conditions made for them by the rapacity of the moneyed. They ask for a more equitable ones, and it is this demand that is rejected with violence, with fury...They persist, they claim to drive them to ask for mercy, they are hunted down through famine...But they don’t surrender! They will advance, shaking the dust from their feet. Their property doesn’t tie them down them, and they are already leaving. And Paris, without any people, will enter its agony.
When the grass grows green between the cobblestones it will be too late for you merchants without business and landlords without rent to cry in the doorways of your closed up shops and your deserted houses! You will have order just as in Milan or Warsaw, and you will perhaps find that the rolling of cannons on the streets is not worth as much as that of trucks and carts.
There remains one chance for salvation: that you freely join the people in order to ensure that they receive what they ask for, i.e., well-paid work and, above all else, the choice of representatives who will want to accomplish these tasks without any delay and at whatever cost, carry out this task.
It isn’t enormous; it suffices to not remain prostrated before capital and to render them that good will they showed for an instant after the events of February. Above all, don’t forget that your mortal enemy is provincial reaction. You know where to find it, for it doesn’t hide itself.
With its saber high it is leading the charge on Paris. Remember the sinister phrase of Isnard, a representative of one of the small towns: “If Paris dares attack national sovereignty travelers will soon search the banks of the Seine in an attempt to find the place on which Paris stood.”
This phrase is the key to the situation. Isnard and his ilk wanted to suffocate the great city in the hothouse of the army, and history is there to show us that their triumph would have ended with the carving up of France. They failed, and the holy city made of us the first people in the world.
Paris, the capital of intelligence and labor, is the true national representative body, the gigantic and majestic congress where the whole country, through the elite of its united children – writers, artists, workers, scientists, industrialists – is ceaselessly occupied in making shine the labor of its grandeur and prosperity.
Reaction aims to paralyze the nation by cutting off its brain. Parisians! It’s up to you, rich and poor, to prevent France from being decapitated and to hold back the hand that the parricides raise against their mothers!
Think of this at the polling booth.
Auguste Blanqui
Dungeon of Vincennes
September 15, 1848
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!
***********
Auguste Blanqui 1848-Parisians!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Translated: for marxists.org by Mitch Abidor;
CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2004.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If there is still time, open your eyes at the polling booth to the peril that threatens you: Paris is condemned and its sentence is being carried out by the hands of a reaction that was able to everywhere recruit accomplices in and instruments of its vengeance.
Under the pretext of disencumberment, of public order and even of humanity, every day the capital is being emptied of the working class. A fatal measure! A death measure!
With the exception of a small handful of rich idlers the entire city only lives only thanks to the workers: without workers there is no more consumption, and thus no more business! The mass of retailers would fall into ruin, big business and industry would follow them into the abyss, and the faction that represents the victorious past would applaud the ruin of this Paris that it abhors because it has changed the face of the world.
Merchants, landlords, don’t second these evil designs; leave behind your terrors and fears. What do the people ask for? To live in happiness through their labor, and interest orders you to support this just demand, for your profits come from the people, you earn them as a result of their consumption. Don’t let appearances fool you! In the ocean of affairs, spending on luxury items is but a drop of water. For every person who lives off the gold of the rich nine live on the centimes of the poor. Between you and the workers there is solidarity.
But be just! The people have suffered for too long! They no longer can nor will suffer under the harsh conditions made for them by the rapacity of the moneyed. They ask for a more equitable ones, and it is this demand that is rejected with violence, with fury...They persist, they claim to drive them to ask for mercy, they are hunted down through famine...But they don’t surrender! They will advance, shaking the dust from their feet. Their property doesn’t tie them down them, and they are already leaving. And Paris, without any people, will enter its agony.
When the grass grows green between the cobblestones it will be too late for you merchants without business and landlords without rent to cry in the doorways of your closed up shops and your deserted houses! You will have order just as in Milan or Warsaw, and you will perhaps find that the rolling of cannons on the streets is not worth as much as that of trucks and carts.
There remains one chance for salvation: that you freely join the people in order to ensure that they receive what they ask for, i.e., well-paid work and, above all else, the choice of representatives who will want to accomplish these tasks without any delay and at whatever cost, carry out this task.
It isn’t enormous; it suffices to not remain prostrated before capital and to render them that good will they showed for an instant after the events of February. Above all, don’t forget that your mortal enemy is provincial reaction. You know where to find it, for it doesn’t hide itself.
With its saber high it is leading the charge on Paris. Remember the sinister phrase of Isnard, a representative of one of the small towns: “If Paris dares attack national sovereignty travelers will soon search the banks of the Seine in an attempt to find the place on which Paris stood.”
This phrase is the key to the situation. Isnard and his ilk wanted to suffocate the great city in the hothouse of the army, and history is there to show us that their triumph would have ended with the carving up of France. They failed, and the holy city made of us the first people in the world.
Paris, the capital of intelligence and labor, is the true national representative body, the gigantic and majestic congress where the whole country, through the elite of its united children – writers, artists, workers, scientists, industrialists – is ceaselessly occupied in making shine the labor of its grandeur and prosperity.
Reaction aims to paralyze the nation by cutting off its brain. Parisians! It’s up to you, rich and poor, to prevent France from being decapitated and to hold back the hand that the parricides raise against their mothers!
Think of this at the polling booth.
Auguste Blanqui
Dungeon of Vincennes
September 15, 1848
The Latest From The Partisan Defense Committee-Free The Class-War Prisoners-The Latest In The Radical Activist Carlos Montes Case
Click on the headline to link to the Partisan Defense Committee website.
Reposted from the American Left History blog, dated December 1, 2010.
Markin comment:
I like to think of myself as a fervent supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, an organization committed to social and political defense cases and causes in the interests of the working class and, at this time of the year, to raising funds to support the class-war prisoners’ stipend program. Normally I do not need any prompting in the matter. This year, however, in light of the addition of Attorney Lynne Stewart (yes, I know, she has been disbarred but that does not make her less of a people’s attorney in my eyes) to the stipend program, I read the 25th Anniversary Appeal article in Workers Vanguard No. 969 where I was startled to note how many of the names, organizations, and political philosophies mentioned there hark back to my own radical coming of age, and the need for class-struggle defense of all our political prisoners in the late 1960s (although I may not have used that exact term at the time).
That recognition included names like black liberation fighter George Jackson, present class-war prisoner Hugo Pinell’s San Quentin Six comrade; the Black Panthers, as represented here by two of the Omaha Three (Poindexter and wa Langa), in their better days and in the days when we needed, desperately needed, to fight for their defense in places from Oakland to New Haven; the struggle, the fierce struggle, against the death penalty as represented in Mumia’s case today; the Ohio 7 and the Weather Underground who, rightly or wrongly, were committed to building a second front against American imperialism, and who most of the left, the respectable left, abandoned; and, of course, Leonard Peltier and the Native American struggles from Pine Ridge to the Southwest. It has been a long time and victories few. I could go on but you get the point.
That point also includes the hard fact that we have paid a high price, a very high price, for not winning back in the late 1960s and early 1970s when we last had this capitalist imperialist society on the ropes. Maybe it was political immaturity, maybe it was cranky theory, maybe it was elitism, hell, maybe it was just old-fashioned hubris but we let them off the hook. And have had to fight forty years of rear-guard “culture wars” since just to keep from falling further behind.
And the class-war prisoners, our class-war prisoners, have had to face their “justice” and their prisons. That lesson should be etched in the memory of every pro-working class militant today. And this, as well, as a quick glance at the news these days should make every liberation fighter realize; the difference between being on one side of that prison wall and the other is a very close thing when the bourgeoisie decides to pull the hammer down. The support of class-war prisoners is thus not charity, as International Labor Defense founder James P. Cannon noted back in the 1920s, but a duty of those fighters outside the walls. Today I do my duty, and gladly.
***********
The Carlos Montes Case
We have previously written in our newsletters about Carlos Montes, targeted by the FBI for his long history of leftist political activism. Montes had recently worked with the committee to Stop FBI Repression, which was formed to defend 23 Midwestern leftists, antiwar organizers and union activists targeted by the FBI since September 2010 for the "crime" of solidarity with the oppressed in Latin American and the Near East. On May 17, 2011, Montes' Alhambra home was invaded by the FBI and the Los Angeles Sheriffs SWAT team who ransacked the house, taking his computer, computer files and cell phone. Montes was arrested on a pretext of violating a firearms code and charged with six felonies. In vastly expanding the state's repressive powers in the name of the "war on terror" over the last decade, the capitalist government has slashed fundamental rights of association and speech. On September 28, 2011, the PDC wrote a letter to the County of Los Angeles District Attorney demanding all of his belongs be returned immediately and that all charges be dropped.
The court case against Montes ended on June 5 when Montes pleaded "no contest" to one count of perjury in exchange for the local District Attorney dropping the three remaining felonies against him. Although Montes will receive no prison time, he now must serve three years of formal probation, which will keep him under the thumb of the capitalist state, and 180 hours of community service. He is also prohibited from possessing any weapons. Montes had faced up to 18 years in jail. While we welcome the fact that Montes will not be imprisoned, the onerous penalties that he has been saddled with are not a "victory against repression" as his supporters have trumpeted. In fact, what transpired there is nothing but the regular workings of the American criminal justice system. Cops and prosecutors routinely level bogus serious felony charges threatening decades in prison to compel plea agreements to lesser charges.
Reposted from the American Left History blog, dated December 1, 2010.
Markin comment:
I like to think of myself as a fervent supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, an organization committed to social and political defense cases and causes in the interests of the working class and, at this time of the year, to raising funds to support the class-war prisoners’ stipend program. Normally I do not need any prompting in the matter. This year, however, in light of the addition of Attorney Lynne Stewart (yes, I know, she has been disbarred but that does not make her less of a people’s attorney in my eyes) to the stipend program, I read the 25th Anniversary Appeal article in Workers Vanguard No. 969 where I was startled to note how many of the names, organizations, and political philosophies mentioned there hark back to my own radical coming of age, and the need for class-struggle defense of all our political prisoners in the late 1960s (although I may not have used that exact term at the time).
That recognition included names like black liberation fighter George Jackson, present class-war prisoner Hugo Pinell’s San Quentin Six comrade; the Black Panthers, as represented here by two of the Omaha Three (Poindexter and wa Langa), in their better days and in the days when we needed, desperately needed, to fight for their defense in places from Oakland to New Haven; the struggle, the fierce struggle, against the death penalty as represented in Mumia’s case today; the Ohio 7 and the Weather Underground who, rightly or wrongly, were committed to building a second front against American imperialism, and who most of the left, the respectable left, abandoned; and, of course, Leonard Peltier and the Native American struggles from Pine Ridge to the Southwest. It has been a long time and victories few. I could go on but you get the point.
That point also includes the hard fact that we have paid a high price, a very high price, for not winning back in the late 1960s and early 1970s when we last had this capitalist imperialist society on the ropes. Maybe it was political immaturity, maybe it was cranky theory, maybe it was elitism, hell, maybe it was just old-fashioned hubris but we let them off the hook. And have had to fight forty years of rear-guard “culture wars” since just to keep from falling further behind.
And the class-war prisoners, our class-war prisoners, have had to face their “justice” and their prisons. That lesson should be etched in the memory of every pro-working class militant today. And this, as well, as a quick glance at the news these days should make every liberation fighter realize; the difference between being on one side of that prison wall and the other is a very close thing when the bourgeoisie decides to pull the hammer down. The support of class-war prisoners is thus not charity, as International Labor Defense founder James P. Cannon noted back in the 1920s, but a duty of those fighters outside the walls. Today I do my duty, and gladly.
***********
The Carlos Montes Case
We have previously written in our newsletters about Carlos Montes, targeted by the FBI for his long history of leftist political activism. Montes had recently worked with the committee to Stop FBI Repression, which was formed to defend 23 Midwestern leftists, antiwar organizers and union activists targeted by the FBI since September 2010 for the "crime" of solidarity with the oppressed in Latin American and the Near East. On May 17, 2011, Montes' Alhambra home was invaded by the FBI and the Los Angeles Sheriffs SWAT team who ransacked the house, taking his computer, computer files and cell phone. Montes was arrested on a pretext of violating a firearms code and charged with six felonies. In vastly expanding the state's repressive powers in the name of the "war on terror" over the last decade, the capitalist government has slashed fundamental rights of association and speech. On September 28, 2011, the PDC wrote a letter to the County of Los Angeles District Attorney demanding all of his belongs be returned immediately and that all charges be dropped.
The court case against Montes ended on June 5 when Montes pleaded "no contest" to one count of perjury in exchange for the local District Attorney dropping the three remaining felonies against him. Although Montes will receive no prison time, he now must serve three years of formal probation, which will keep him under the thumb of the capitalist state, and 180 hours of community service. He is also prohibited from possessing any weapons. Montes had faced up to 18 years in jail. While we welcome the fact that Montes will not be imprisoned, the onerous penalties that he has been saddled with are not a "victory against repression" as his supporters have trumpeted. In fact, what transpired there is nothing but the regular workings of the American criminal justice system. Cops and prosecutors routinely level bogus serious felony charges threatening decades in prison to compel plea agreements to lesser charges.
The Latest From The Partisan Defense Committee-Free The Class-War Prisoners-Hand Off OccupyLA Ghost Dance Sidewalk Chalkers!-Hands Off All Occupy Protesters!
Click on the headline to link to the Partisan Defense Committee website.
Reposted from the American Left History blog, dated December 1, 2010.
Markin comment:
I like to think of myself as a fervent supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, an organization committed to social and political defense cases and causes in the interests of the working class and, at this time of the year, to raising funds to support the class-war prisoners’ stipend program. Normally I do not need any prompting in the matter. This year, however, in light of the addition of Attorney Lynne Stewart (yes, I know, she has been disbarred but that does not make her less of a people’s attorney in my eyes) to the stipend program, I read the 25th Anniversary Appeal article in Workers Vanguard No. 969 where I was startled to note how many of the names, organizations, and political philosophies mentioned there hark back to my own radical coming of age, and the need for class-struggle defense of all our political prisoners in the late 1960s (although I may not have used that exact term at the time).
That recognition included names like black liberation fighter George Jackson, present class-war prisoner Hugo Pinell’s San Quentin Six comrade; the Black Panthers, as represented here by two of the Omaha Three (Poindexter and wa Langa), in their better days and in the days when we needed, desperately needed, to fight for their defense in places from Oakland to New Haven; the struggle, the fierce struggle, against the death penalty as represented in Mumia’s case today; the Ohio 7 and the Weather Underground who, rightly or wrongly, were committed to building a second front against American imperialism, and who most of the left, the respectable left, abandoned; and, of course, Leonard Peltier and the Native American struggles from Pine Ridge to the Southwest. It has been a long time and victories few. I could go on but you get the point.
That point also includes the hard fact that we have paid a high price, a very high price, for not winning back in the late 1960s and early 1970s when we last had this capitalist imperialist society on the ropes. Maybe it was political immaturity, maybe it was cranky theory, maybe it was elitism, hell, maybe it was just old-fashioned hubris but we let them off the hook. And have had to fight forty years of rear-guard “culture wars” since just to keep from falling further behind.
And the class-war prisoners, our class-war prisoners, have had to face their “justice” and their prisons. That lesson should be etched in the memory of every pro-working class militant today. And this, as well, as a quick glance at the news these days should make every liberation fighter realize; the difference between being on one side of that prison wall and the other is a very close thing when the bourgeoisie decides to pull the hammer down. The support of class-war prisoners is thus not charity, as International Labor Defense founder James P. Cannon noted back in the 1920s, but a duty of those fighters outside the walls. Today I do my duty, and gladly.
*********
July 31- Hands Off OccupyLA and All Occupy Protesters!
During the last two months OccupyLA has protested the ongoing harassment of the homeless in increasingly gentrified downtown Los Angeles by demonstrating and writing slogans on the sidewalk in water-soluble chalk. On July 12, the police attacked OccupyLA and the Downtown Los Angeles Art Walk in response to this non-crime of writing on the sidewalk with chalk. Hundreds of officers in riot gear clubbed art patrons with batons, fired on the crowd with rubber bullets, bean bags and tear gas and arrested 17 on charges ranging from vandalism to assault with a deadly weapon. On July 20, the PDC wrote a letter to the County of Los Angeles District Attorney demanding that the charges be dropped. We concluded our letter, "These latest vindictive arrests by the LAPD are intended to silence and intimidate all those who would protest the economic desperation of the masses. Drop all the Charges!"
Reposted from the American Left History blog, dated December 1, 2010.
Markin comment:
I like to think of myself as a fervent supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, an organization committed to social and political defense cases and causes in the interests of the working class and, at this time of the year, to raising funds to support the class-war prisoners’ stipend program. Normally I do not need any prompting in the matter. This year, however, in light of the addition of Attorney Lynne Stewart (yes, I know, she has been disbarred but that does not make her less of a people’s attorney in my eyes) to the stipend program, I read the 25th Anniversary Appeal article in Workers Vanguard No. 969 where I was startled to note how many of the names, organizations, and political philosophies mentioned there hark back to my own radical coming of age, and the need for class-struggle defense of all our political prisoners in the late 1960s (although I may not have used that exact term at the time).
That recognition included names like black liberation fighter George Jackson, present class-war prisoner Hugo Pinell’s San Quentin Six comrade; the Black Panthers, as represented here by two of the Omaha Three (Poindexter and wa Langa), in their better days and in the days when we needed, desperately needed, to fight for their defense in places from Oakland to New Haven; the struggle, the fierce struggle, against the death penalty as represented in Mumia’s case today; the Ohio 7 and the Weather Underground who, rightly or wrongly, were committed to building a second front against American imperialism, and who most of the left, the respectable left, abandoned; and, of course, Leonard Peltier and the Native American struggles from Pine Ridge to the Southwest. It has been a long time and victories few. I could go on but you get the point.
That point also includes the hard fact that we have paid a high price, a very high price, for not winning back in the late 1960s and early 1970s when we last had this capitalist imperialist society on the ropes. Maybe it was political immaturity, maybe it was cranky theory, maybe it was elitism, hell, maybe it was just old-fashioned hubris but we let them off the hook. And have had to fight forty years of rear-guard “culture wars” since just to keep from falling further behind.
And the class-war prisoners, our class-war prisoners, have had to face their “justice” and their prisons. That lesson should be etched in the memory of every pro-working class militant today. And this, as well, as a quick glance at the news these days should make every liberation fighter realize; the difference between being on one side of that prison wall and the other is a very close thing when the bourgeoisie decides to pull the hammer down. The support of class-war prisoners is thus not charity, as International Labor Defense founder James P. Cannon noted back in the 1920s, but a duty of those fighters outside the walls. Today I do my duty, and gladly.
*********
July 31- Hands Off OccupyLA and All Occupy Protesters!
During the last two months OccupyLA has protested the ongoing harassment of the homeless in increasingly gentrified downtown Los Angeles by demonstrating and writing slogans on the sidewalk in water-soluble chalk. On July 12, the police attacked OccupyLA and the Downtown Los Angeles Art Walk in response to this non-crime of writing on the sidewalk with chalk. Hundreds of officers in riot gear clubbed art patrons with batons, fired on the crowd with rubber bullets, bean bags and tear gas and arrested 17 on charges ranging from vandalism to assault with a deadly weapon. On July 20, the PDC wrote a letter to the County of Los Angeles District Attorney demanding that the charges be dropped. We concluded our letter, "These latest vindictive arrests by the LAPD are intended to silence and intimidate all those who would protest the economic desperation of the masses. Drop all the Charges!"
The Latest From The Partisan Defense Committee-Free The Class-War Prisoners-Free Leonard Peltier
Click on the headline to link to the Partisan Defense Committee website.
Reposted from the American Left History blog, dated December 1, 2010.
Markin comment:
I like to think of myself as a fervent supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, an organization committed to social and political defense cases and causes in the interests of the working class and, at this time of the year, to raising funds to support the class-war prisoners’ stipend program. Normally I do not need any prompting in the matter. This year, however, in light of the addition of Attorney Lynne Stewart (yes, I know, she has been disbarred but that does not make her less of a people’s attorney in my eyes) to the stipend program, I read the 25th Anniversary Appeal article in Workers Vanguard No. 969 where I was startled to note how many of the names, organizations, and political philosophies mentioned there hark back to my own radical coming of age, and the need for class-struggle defense of all our political prisoners in the late 1960s (although I may not have used that exact term at the time).
That recognition included names like black liberation fighter George Jackson, present class-war prisoner Hugo Pinell’s San Quentin Six comrade; the Black Panthers, as represented here by two of the Omaha Three (Poindexter and wa Langa), in their better days and in the days when we needed, desperately needed, to fight for their defense in places from Oakland to New Haven; the struggle, the fierce struggle, against the death penalty as represented in Mumia’s case today; the Ohio 7 and the Weather Underground who, rightly or wrongly, were committed to building a second front against American imperialism, and who most of the left, the respectable left, abandoned; and, of course, Leonard Peltier and the Native American struggles from Pine Ridge to the Southwest. It has been a long time and victories few. I could go on but you get the point.
That point also includes the hard fact that we have paid a high price, a very high price, for not winning back in the late 1960s and early 1970s when we last had this capitalist imperialist society on the ropes. Maybe it was political immaturity, maybe it was cranky theory, maybe it was elitism, hell, maybe it was just old-fashioned hubris but we let them off the hook. And have had to fight forty years of rear-guard “culture wars” since just to keep from falling further behind.
And the class-war prisoners, our class-war prisoners, have had to face their “justice” and their prisons. That lesson should be etched in the memory of every pro-working class militant today. And this, as well, as a quick glance at the news these days should make every liberation fighter realize; the difference between being on one side of that prison wall and the other is a very close thing when the bourgeoisie decides to pull the hammer down. The support of class-war prisoners is thus not charity, as International Labor Defense founder James P. Cannon noted back in the 1920s, but a duty of those fighters outside the walls. Today I do my duty, and gladly.
*********
On July 25, U.S. Magistrate Judge Jeremiah J. McCarthy rejected yet another attempt by class-war prisoner Leonard Peltier to access FBI files pertaining to probable FBI infiltration of the American Indian Movement and the efforts to frame this courageous fighter for Native American rights. This is the latest in a decades-long cover-up on the part of the capitalist rulers. In 2001, in response to requests under the Freedom of Information Act and lawsuits, the U.S. government admitted it had withheld a staggering 142,579 pages of evidence of its secret COINTELPRO efforts to persecute and convict Leonard. In 1986, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a trial jury could have acquitted Mr. Peltier if records improperly withheld from the defense had been made available. We continue to demand the freedom of Leonard Peltier, now unjustly incarcerated for more than 36 years.
Reposted from the American Left History blog, dated December 1, 2010.
Markin comment:
I like to think of myself as a fervent supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, an organization committed to social and political defense cases and causes in the interests of the working class and, at this time of the year, to raising funds to support the class-war prisoners’ stipend program. Normally I do not need any prompting in the matter. This year, however, in light of the addition of Attorney Lynne Stewart (yes, I know, she has been disbarred but that does not make her less of a people’s attorney in my eyes) to the stipend program, I read the 25th Anniversary Appeal article in Workers Vanguard No. 969 where I was startled to note how many of the names, organizations, and political philosophies mentioned there hark back to my own radical coming of age, and the need for class-struggle defense of all our political prisoners in the late 1960s (although I may not have used that exact term at the time).
That recognition included names like black liberation fighter George Jackson, present class-war prisoner Hugo Pinell’s San Quentin Six comrade; the Black Panthers, as represented here by two of the Omaha Three (Poindexter and wa Langa), in their better days and in the days when we needed, desperately needed, to fight for their defense in places from Oakland to New Haven; the struggle, the fierce struggle, against the death penalty as represented in Mumia’s case today; the Ohio 7 and the Weather Underground who, rightly or wrongly, were committed to building a second front against American imperialism, and who most of the left, the respectable left, abandoned; and, of course, Leonard Peltier and the Native American struggles from Pine Ridge to the Southwest. It has been a long time and victories few. I could go on but you get the point.
That point also includes the hard fact that we have paid a high price, a very high price, for not winning back in the late 1960s and early 1970s when we last had this capitalist imperialist society on the ropes. Maybe it was political immaturity, maybe it was cranky theory, maybe it was elitism, hell, maybe it was just old-fashioned hubris but we let them off the hook. And have had to fight forty years of rear-guard “culture wars” since just to keep from falling further behind.
And the class-war prisoners, our class-war prisoners, have had to face their “justice” and their prisons. That lesson should be etched in the memory of every pro-working class militant today. And this, as well, as a quick glance at the news these days should make every liberation fighter realize; the difference between being on one side of that prison wall and the other is a very close thing when the bourgeoisie decides to pull the hammer down. The support of class-war prisoners is thus not charity, as International Labor Defense founder James P. Cannon noted back in the 1920s, but a duty of those fighters outside the walls. Today I do my duty, and gladly.
*********
On July 25, U.S. Magistrate Judge Jeremiah J. McCarthy rejected yet another attempt by class-war prisoner Leonard Peltier to access FBI files pertaining to probable FBI infiltration of the American Indian Movement and the efforts to frame this courageous fighter for Native American rights. This is the latest in a decades-long cover-up on the part of the capitalist rulers. In 2001, in response to requests under the Freedom of Information Act and lawsuits, the U.S. government admitted it had withheld a staggering 142,579 pages of evidence of its secret COINTELPRO efforts to persecute and convict Leonard. In 1986, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a trial jury could have acquitted Mr. Peltier if records improperly withheld from the defense had been made available. We continue to demand the freedom of Leonard Peltier, now unjustly incarcerated for more than 36 years.
The Latest From The Partisan Defense Committee-Free The Class-War Prisoners-Free Sundiata Acoli!
Click on the headline to link to the Partisan Defense Committee website.
Reposted from the American Left History blog, dated December 1, 2010.
Markin comment:
I like to think of myself as a fervent supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, an organization committed to social and political defense cases and causes in the interests of the working class and, at this time of the year, to raising funds to support the class-war prisoners’ stipend program. Normally I do not need any prompting in the matter. This year, however, in light of the addition of Attorney Lynne Stewart (yes, I know, she has been disbarred but that does not make her less of a people’s attorney in my eyes) to the stipend program, I read the 25th Anniversary Appeal article in Workers Vanguard No. 969 where I was startled to note how many of the names, organizations, and political philosophies mentioned there hark back to my own radical coming of age, and the need for class-struggle defense of all our political prisoners in the late 1960s (although I may not have used that exact term at the time).
That recognition included names like black liberation fighter George Jackson, present class-war prisoner Hugo Pinell’s San Quentin Six comrade; the Black Panthers, as represented here by two of the Omaha Three (Poindexter and wa Langa), in their better days and in the days when we needed, desperately needed, to fight for their defense in places from Oakland to New Haven; the struggle, the fierce struggle, against the death penalty as represented in Mumia’s case today; the Ohio 7 and the Weather Underground who, rightly or wrongly, were committed to building a second front against American imperialism, and who most of the left, the respectable left, abandoned; and, of course, Leonard Peltier and the Native American struggles from Pine Ridge to the Southwest. It has been a long time and victories few. I could go on but you get the point.
That point also includes the hard fact that we have paid a high price, a very high price, for not winning back in the late 1960s and early 1970s when we last had this capitalist imperialist society on the ropes. Maybe it was political immaturity, maybe it was cranky theory, maybe it was elitism, hell, maybe it was just old-fashioned hubris but we let them off the hook. And have had to fight forty years of rear-guard “culture wars” since just to keep from falling further behind.
And the class-war prisoners, our class-war prisoners, have had to face their “justice” and their prisons. That lesson should be etched in the memory of every pro-working class militant today. And this, as well, as a quick glance at the news these days should make every liberation fighter realize; the difference between being on one side of that prison wall and the other is a very close thing when the bourgeoisie decides to pull the hammer down. The support of class-war prisoners is thus not charity, as International Labor Defense founder James P. Cannon noted back in the 1920s, but a duty of those fighters outside the walls. Today I do my duty, and gladly.
********
22 May 2012
Partisan Defense Committee P.O. Box 99, Canal Street Station, New York, NY 10013
email: partisandefense@earthlink.net www.partisandefense.org
Contact: Kevin Gilroy (212) 406-4252
Free Sundiata Acoli!
The following letter was sent on 22 May to the Chairman of the New Jersey State Parole Board:
Dear Sir:
The Partisan Defense Committee once again joins with those supporting the release of the political prisoner Sundiata Acoli. Given that Mr. Acoli is innocent of the crime for which he was convicted, is now a 75-year-old having survived 39 years of incarceration with no disciplinary reports for many years, there is absolutely no reason that he should be denied parole.
We are well aware that a common ploy used to deny parole to political prisoners is that they are said to "lack remorse" for their alleged crimes. But Mr. Accoli is an innocent man who, along with two of his companions, was a victim of a New Jersey state trooper attack in May 1973. As a former Black Panther, Mr. Acoli had long been targeted by the FBI's notorious COINTELPRO program.
We feel it is an injustice that Sundiata Acoli was incarcerated at all much less for 39 years. We call for his release.
**********
July 31, 2012
We have just received a copy of a post sent out by Sundiata Acoli informing his supporters that he was denied parole again. Sundiata's case was referred to a three-member panel to determine the size of his "hit" (the amount of time before becoming eligible for a parole hearing again). On May 22, the PDC sent a letter to the New Jersey State Parole Board on behalf of Sundiata stating, "We feel it is an injustice that Sundiata Acoli was incarcerated at all much less for 39 years. We call for his release."
Reposted from the American Left History blog, dated December 1, 2010.
Markin comment:
I like to think of myself as a fervent supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, an organization committed to social and political defense cases and causes in the interests of the working class and, at this time of the year, to raising funds to support the class-war prisoners’ stipend program. Normally I do not need any prompting in the matter. This year, however, in light of the addition of Attorney Lynne Stewart (yes, I know, she has been disbarred but that does not make her less of a people’s attorney in my eyes) to the stipend program, I read the 25th Anniversary Appeal article in Workers Vanguard No. 969 where I was startled to note how many of the names, organizations, and political philosophies mentioned there hark back to my own radical coming of age, and the need for class-struggle defense of all our political prisoners in the late 1960s (although I may not have used that exact term at the time).
That recognition included names like black liberation fighter George Jackson, present class-war prisoner Hugo Pinell’s San Quentin Six comrade; the Black Panthers, as represented here by two of the Omaha Three (Poindexter and wa Langa), in their better days and in the days when we needed, desperately needed, to fight for their defense in places from Oakland to New Haven; the struggle, the fierce struggle, against the death penalty as represented in Mumia’s case today; the Ohio 7 and the Weather Underground who, rightly or wrongly, were committed to building a second front against American imperialism, and who most of the left, the respectable left, abandoned; and, of course, Leonard Peltier and the Native American struggles from Pine Ridge to the Southwest. It has been a long time and victories few. I could go on but you get the point.
That point also includes the hard fact that we have paid a high price, a very high price, for not winning back in the late 1960s and early 1970s when we last had this capitalist imperialist society on the ropes. Maybe it was political immaturity, maybe it was cranky theory, maybe it was elitism, hell, maybe it was just old-fashioned hubris but we let them off the hook. And have had to fight forty years of rear-guard “culture wars” since just to keep from falling further behind.
And the class-war prisoners, our class-war prisoners, have had to face their “justice” and their prisons. That lesson should be etched in the memory of every pro-working class militant today. And this, as well, as a quick glance at the news these days should make every liberation fighter realize; the difference between being on one side of that prison wall and the other is a very close thing when the bourgeoisie decides to pull the hammer down. The support of class-war prisoners is thus not charity, as International Labor Defense founder James P. Cannon noted back in the 1920s, but a duty of those fighters outside the walls. Today I do my duty, and gladly.
********
22 May 2012
Partisan Defense Committee P.O. Box 99, Canal Street Station, New York, NY 10013
email: partisandefense@earthlink.net www.partisandefense.org
Contact: Kevin Gilroy (212) 406-4252
Free Sundiata Acoli!
The following letter was sent on 22 May to the Chairman of the New Jersey State Parole Board:
Dear Sir:
The Partisan Defense Committee once again joins with those supporting the release of the political prisoner Sundiata Acoli. Given that Mr. Acoli is innocent of the crime for which he was convicted, is now a 75-year-old having survived 39 years of incarceration with no disciplinary reports for many years, there is absolutely no reason that he should be denied parole.
We are well aware that a common ploy used to deny parole to political prisoners is that they are said to "lack remorse" for their alleged crimes. But Mr. Accoli is an innocent man who, along with two of his companions, was a victim of a New Jersey state trooper attack in May 1973. As a former Black Panther, Mr. Acoli had long been targeted by the FBI's notorious COINTELPRO program.
We feel it is an injustice that Sundiata Acoli was incarcerated at all much less for 39 years. We call for his release.
**********
July 31, 2012
We have just received a copy of a post sent out by Sundiata Acoli informing his supporters that he was denied parole again. Sundiata's case was referred to a three-member panel to determine the size of his "hit" (the amount of time before becoming eligible for a parole hearing again). On May 22, the PDC sent a letter to the New Jersey State Parole Board on behalf of Sundiata stating, "We feel it is an injustice that Sundiata Acoli was incarcerated at all much less for 39 years. We call for his release."
From The Pen Of Vladimir Lenin- From “Left-Wing Communism: an Infantile Disorder (1920)-Should Revolutionaries Work in Reactionary Trade Unions?
Click on the headline to link to the Lenin Internet Archives.
Markin comment:
This article goes along with the propaganda points in the fight for our communist future mentioned in other posts.
*******
With this now-classic work, Lenin aimed to encapsulate the lessons the Bolshevik Party had learned from its involvement in three revolutions in 12 years—in a manner that European Communists could relate to, for it was to them he was speaking. He also further develops the theory of what the "dictatorship of the proletariat" means and stresses that the primary danger for the working-class movement in general is opportunism on the one hand, and anti-Marxist ultra-leftism on the other.
"Left-Wing" Communism: an Infantile Disorder was written in April, and the appendix was written on May 12, 1920. It came out on June 8-10 in Russian and in July was published in German, English and French. Lenin gave personal attention to the book’s type-setting and printing schedule so that it would be published before the opening of the Second Congress of the Communist International, each delegate receiving a copy. Between July and November 1920, the book was re-published in Leipzig, Paris and London, in the German, French and English languages respectively.
"Left-Wing" Communism: an Infantile Disorder is published according to the first edition print, the proofs of which were read by Lenin himself.
***********
Should Revolutionaries Work in Reactionary Trade Unions?
The German "Lefts" consider that, as far as they are concerned, the reply to this question is an unqualified negative. In their opinion, declamations and angry outcries (such as uttered by K. Homer in a particularly "solid" and particularly stupid manner) against "reactionary" and "counter-revolutionary" trade unions are sufficient "proof" that it is unnecessary and even inexcusable for revolutionaries and Communists to work in yellow, social-chauvinist, compromising and counter-revolutionary trade unions of the Legien type.
However firmly the German "Lefts" may be convinced of the revolutionism of such tactics, the latter are in fact fundamentally wrong, and contain nothing but empty phrases.
To make this clear, I shall begin with our own experience, in keeping with the general plan of the present pamphlet, which is aimed at applying to Western Europe whatever is universally practicable, significant and relevant in the history and the present-day tactics of Bolshevism.
In Russia today, the connection between leaders, party, class and masses, as well as the attitude of the dictatorship of the proletariat and its party to the trade unions, are concretely as follows: the dictatorship is exercised by the proletariat organised in the Soviets; the proletariat is guided by the Communist Party of Bolsheviks, which, according to the figures of the latest Party Congress (April 1920), has a membership of 611,000. The membership varied greatly both before and after the October Revolution, and used to be much smaller, even in 1918 and 1919. [22] We are apprehensive of an excessive growth of the Party, because careerists and charlatans, who deserve only to be shot, inevitably do all they can to insinuate themselves into the ranks of the ruling party. The last time we opened wide the doors of the Party—to workers and peasants only -- was when (in the winter of 1919) Yudenich was within a few versts of Petrograd, and Denikin was in Orel (about 350 versts from Moscow), i.e., when the Soviet Republic was in mortal danger, and when adventurers, careerists, charlatans and unreliable persons generally could not possibly count on making a profitable career (and had more reason to expect the gallows and torture) by joining the Communists. [23] The Party, which holds annual congresses (the most recent on the basis of one delegate per 1,000 members), is directed by a Central Committee of nineteen elected at the Congress, while the current work in Moscow has to be carried on by still smaller bodies, known as the Organising Bureau and the Political Bureau, which are elected at plenary meetings of the Central Committee, five members of the Central Committee to each bureau. This, it would appear, is a full-fledged "oligarchy". No important political or organisational question is decided by any state institution in our republic without the guidance of the Party’s Central Committee.
In its work, the Party relies directly on the trade unions, which, according to the data of the last congress (April 1920), now have a membership of over four million and are formally non-Party. Actually, all the directing bodies of the vast majority of the unions, and primarily, of course, of the all-Russia general trade union centre or bureau (the All-Russia Central Council of Trade Unions), are made up of Communists and carry out all the directives of the Party. Thus, on the whole, we have a formally non-communist, flexible and relatively wide and very powerful proletarian apparatus, by means of which the Party is closely linked up with the class and the masses, and by means of which, under the leadership of the Party, the class dictatorship is exercised. Without close contacts with the trade unions, and without their energetic support and devoted efforts, not only in economic, but also in military affairs, it would of course have been impossible for us to govern the country and to maintain the dictatorship for two and a half months, let alone two and a half years. In practice, these very close contacts naturally call for highly complex and diversified work in the form of propaganda, agitation, timely and frequent conferences, not only with the leading trade union workers, but with influential trade union workers generally; they call for a determined struggle against the Mensheviks, who still have a certain though very small following to whom they teach all kinds of counter-revolutionary machinations, ranging from an ideological defence of (bourgeois) democracy and the preaching that the trade unions should be "independent" (independent of proletarian state power!) to sabotage of proletarian discipline, etc., etc.
We consider that contacts with the "masses" through the trade unions are not enough. In the course of our revolution, practical activities have given rise to such institutions as non-Party workers’ and peasants’ conferences, and we strive by every means to support, develop and extend this institution in order to be able to observe the temper of the masses, come closer to them, meet their requirements, promote the best among them to state posts, etc. Under a recent decree on the transformation of the People’s Commissariat of State Control into the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection, non-Party conferences of this kind have been empowered to select members of the State Control to carry out various kinds of investigations, etc.
Then, of course, all the work of the Party is carried on through the Soviets, which embrace the working masses irrespective of occupation. The district congresses of Soviets are democratic institutions, the like of which even the best of the democratic republics of the bourgeois world have never known; through these congresses (whose proceedings the Party endeavours to follow with the closest attention), as well as by continually appointing class-conscious workers to various posts in the rural districts, the proletariat exercises its role of leader of the peasantry, gives effect to the dictatorship of the urban proletariat wages a systematic struggle against the rich, bourgeois, exploiting and profiteering peasantry, etc.
Such is the general mechanism of the proletarian state power viewed "from above", from the standpoint of the practical implementation of the dictatorship. We hope that the reader will understand why the Russian Bolshevik who has known this mechanism for twenty-five years and has seen it develop out of small, illegal and underground circles, cannot help regarding all this talk about "from above" or "from below", about the dictatorship of leaders or the dictatorship of the masses, etc., as ridiculous and childish nonsense, something like discussing whether a man’s left leg or right arm is of greater use to him.
We cannot but regard as equally ridiculous and childish nonsense the pompous, very learned, and frightfully revolutionary disquisitions of the German Lefts to the effect that Communists cannot and should not work in reactionary trade unions, that it is permissible to turn down such work, that it is necessary to withdraw from the trade unions and create a brand-new and immaculate "Workers’ Union" invented by very pleasant (and, probably, for the most part very youthful) Communists, etc., etc.
Capitalism inevitably leaves socialism the legacy, on the one hand, of the old trade and craft distinctions among the workers, distinctions evolved in the course of centuries; on the other hand, trade unions, which only very slowly, in the course of years and years, can and will develop into broader industrial unions with less of the craft union about them (embracing entire industries, and not only crafts, trades and occupations), and later proceed, through these industrial unions, to eliminate the division of labour among people, to educate and school people, give them all-round development and an all-round training, so that they are able to do everything. Communism is advancing and must advance towards that goal, and will reach it, but only after very many years. To attempt in practice, today, to anticipate this future result of a fully developed, fully stabilised and constituted, fully comprehensive and mature communism would be like trying to teach higher mathematics to a child of four.
We can (and must) begin to build socialism, not with abstract human material, or with human material specially prepared by us, but with the human material bequeathed to us by capitalism. True, that is no easy matter, but no other approach to this task is serious enough to warrant discussion.
The trade unions were a tremendous step forward for the working class in the early days of capitalist development, inasmuch as they marked a transition from the workers’ disunity and helplessness to the rudiments of class organisation. When the revolutionary party of the proletariat, the highest form of proletarian class organisation, began to take shape (and the Party will not merit the name until it learns to weld the leaders into one indivisible whole with the class and the masses) the trade unions inevitably began to reveal certain reactionary features, a certain craft narrow-mindedness, a certain tendency to be non-political, a certain inertness, etc. However, the development of the proletariat did not, and could not, proceed anywhere in the world otherwise than through the trade unions, through reciprocal action between them and the party of the working class. The proletariat’s conquest of political power is a gigantic step forward for the proletariat as a class, and the Party must more than ever and in a new way, not only in the old, educate and guide the trade unions, at the same time bearing in mind that they are and will long remain an indispensable "school of communism" and a preparatory school that trains proletarians to exercise their dictatorship, an indispensable organisation of the workers for the gradual transfer of the management of the whole economic life of the country to the working class (and not to the separate trades), and later to all the working people.
In the sense mentioned above, a certain "reactionism" in the trade unions is inevitable under the dictatorship of the proletariat. Not to understand this means a complete failure to understand the fundamental conditions of the transition from capitalism to socialism. It would be egregious folly to fear this "reactionism" or to try to evade or leap over it, for it would mean fearing that function of the proletarian vanguard which consists in training, educating, enlightening and drawing into the new life the most backward strata and masses of the working class and the peasantry. On the other hand, it would be a still graver error to postpone the achievement of the dictatorship of the proletariat until a time when there will not be a single worker with a narrow-minded craft outlook, or with craft and craft-union prejudices. The art of politics (and the Communist’s correct understanding of his tasks) consists in correctly gauging the conditions and the moment when the vanguard of the proletariat can successfully assume power, when it is able—during and after the seizure of power—to win adequate support from sufficiently broad strata of the working class and of the non-proletarian working masses, and when it is able thereafter to maintain, consolidate and extend its rule by educating, training and attracting ever broader masses of the working people.
Further. In countries more advanced than Russia, a certain reactionism in the trade unions has been and was bound to be manifested in a far greater measure than in our country. Our Mensheviks found support in the trade unions (and to some extent still do so in a small number of unions), as a result of the latter’s craft narrow-mindedness, craft selfishness and opportunism. The Mensheviks of the West have acquired a much firmer footing in the trade unions; there the craft-union, narrow-minded, selfish, case-hardened, covetous, and petty-bourgeois "labour aristocracy", imperialist-minded, and imperialist-corrupted, has developed into a much stronger section than in our country. That is incontestable. The struggle against the Gomperses, and against the Jouhaux, Hendersons, Merrheims, Legiens and Co. in Western Europe is much more difficult than the struggle against our Mensheviks, who are an absolutely homogeneous social and political type. This struggle must be waged ruthlessly, and it must unfailingly be brought—as we brought it—to a point when all the incorrigible leaders of opportunism and social-chauvinism are completely discredited and driven out of the trade unions. Political power cannot be captured (and the attempt to capture it should not be made) until the struggle has reached a certain stage. This "certain stage" will be different in different countries and in different circumstances; it can be correctly gauged only by thoughtful, experienced and knowledgeable political leaders of the proletariat in each particular country. (In Russia the elections to the Constituent Assembly in November 1917, a few days after the proletarian revolution of October 25, 1917, were one of the criteria of the success of this struggle. In these elections the Mensheviks were utterly defeated; they received 700,000 votes—1,400,000 if the vote in Transcaucasia is added—as against 9,000,000 votes polled by the Bolsheviks. See my article, "The Constituent Assembly Elections and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat", [24] in the Communist International [25] No. 7-8.)
We are waging a struggle against the "labour aristocracy" in the name of the masses of the workers and in order to win them over to our side; we are waging the struggle against the opportunist and social-chauvinist leaders in order to win the working class over to our side. It would be absurd to forget this most elementary and most self-evident truth. Yet it is this very absurdity that the German "Left" Communists perpetrate when, because of the reactionary and counter-revolutionary character of the trade union top leadership, they jump to the conclusion that ... we must withdraw from the trade unions, refuse to work in them, and create new and artificial forms of labour organisation! This is so unpardonable a blunder that it is tantamount to the greatest service Communists could render the bourgeoisie. Like all the opportunist, social-chauvinist, and Kautskyite trade union leaders, our Mensheviks are nothing but "agents of the bourgeoisie in the working-class movement" (as we have always said the Mensheviks are), or "labour lieutenants of the capitalist class", to use the splendid and profoundly true expression of the followers of Daniel De Leon in America. To refuse to work in the reactionary trade unions means leaving the insufficiently developed or backward masses of workers under the influence of the reactionary leaders, the agents of the bourgeoisie, the labour aristocrats, or "workers who have become completely bourgeois" (cf. Engels’s letter to Marx in 1858 about the British workers [26]).
This ridiculous "theory" that Communists should not work in reactionary trade unions reveals with the utmost clarity the frivolous attitude of the "Left" Communists towards the question of influencing the "masses", and their misuse of clamour about the "masses". If you want to help the "masses" and win the sympathy and support of the "masses", you should not fear difficulties, or pinpricks, chicanery, insults and persecution from the "leaders" (who, being opportunists and social-chauvinists, are in most cases directly or indirectly connected with the bourgeoisie and the police), but must absolutely work wherever the masses are to be found. You must be capable of any sacrifice, of overcoming the greatest obstacles, in order to carry on agitation and propaganda systematically, perseveringly, persistently and patiently in those institutions, societies and associations -- even the most reactionary—in which proletarian or semi-proletarian masses are to be found. The trade unions and the workers’ co-operatives (the latter sometimes, at least) are the very organisations in which the masses are to be found. According to figures quoted in the Swedish paper Folkets Dagblad Politiken of March 10, 1920, the trade union membership in Great Britain increased from 5,500,000 at the end of 1917 to 6,600,000 at the end of 1918, an increase of 19 per cent. Towards the close of 1919, the membership was estimated at 7,500,000. I have not got the corresponding figures for France and Germany to hand, but absolutely incontestable and generally known facts testify to a rapid rise in the trade union membership in these countries too.
These facts make crystal clear something that is confirmed by thousands of other symptoms, namely, that class-consciousness and the desire for organisation are growing among the proletarian masses, among the rank and file, among the backward elements. Millions of workers in Great Britain, France and Germany are for the first time passing from a complete lack of organisation to the elementary, lowest, simplest, and (to those still thoroughly imbued with bourgeois-democratic prejudices) most easily comprehensible form of organisation, namely, the trade unions; yet the revolutionary but imprudent Left Communists stand by, crying out "the masses", "the masses!" but refusing to work within the trade unions, on the pretext that they are "reactionary", and invent a brand-new, immaculate little "Workers’ Union", which is guiltless of bourgeois-democratic prejudices and innocent of craft or narrow-minded craft-union sins, a union which, they claim, will be (!) a broad organisation. "Recognition of the Soviet system and the dictatorship" will be the only (!) condition of membership. (See the passage quoted above.)
It would be hard to imagine any greater ineptitude or greater harm to the revolution than that caused by the "Left" revolutionaries! Why, if we in Russia today, after two and a half years of unprecedented victories over the bourgeoisie of Russia and the Entente, were to make "recognition of the dictatorship" a condition of trade union membership, we would be doing a very foolish thing, damaging our influence among the masses, and helping the Mensheviks. The task devolving on Communists is to convince the backward elements, to work among them, and not to fence themselves off from them with artificial and childishly "Left" slogans.
There can be no doubt that the Gomperses, the Hendersons, the Jonhaux and the Legiens are very grateful to those "Left" revolutionaries who, like the German opposition "on principle" (heaven preserve us from such "principles"!), or like some of the revolutionaries in the American Industrial Workers of the World [27] advocate quitting the reactionary trade unions and refusing to work in them. These men, the "leaders" of opportunism, will no doubt resort to every device of bourgeois diplomacy and to the aid of bourgeois governments, the clergy, the police and the courts, to keep Communists out of the trade unions, oust them by every means, make their work in the trade unions as unpleasant as possible, and insult, bait and persecute them. We must be able to stand up to all this, agree to make any sacrifice, and even -- if need be—to resort to various stratagems, artifices and illegal methods, to evasions and subterfuges, as long as we get into the trade unions, remain in them, and carry on communist work within them at all costs. Under tsarism we had no "legal opportunities" whatsoever until 1905. However, when Zubatov, agent of the secret police, organised Black-Hundred workers’ assemblies and workingmen’s societies for the purpose of trapping revolutionaries and combating them, we sent members of our Party to these assemblies and into these societies (I personally remember one of them, Comrade Babushkin, a leading St. Petersburg factory worker, shot by order of the tsar’s generals in 1906). They established contacts with the masses, were able to carry on their agitation, and succeeded in wresting workers from the influence of Zubatov’s agents. *4 Of course, in Western Europe, which is imbued with most deep-rooted legalistic, constitutionalist and bourgeois-democratic prejudices, this is more difficult of achievement. However, it can and must be carried out, and systematically at that.
The Executive Committee of the Third International must, in my opinion, positively condemn, and call upon the next congress of the Communist International to condemn both the policy of refusing to work in reactionary trade unions in general (explaining in detail why such refusal is unwise, and what extreme harm it does to the cause of the proletarian revolution) and, in particular, the line of conduct of some members of the Communist Party of Holland, who—whether directly or indirectly, overtly or covertly, wholly or partly, it does not matter—have supported this erroneous policy. The Third International must break with the tactics of the Second International, it must not evade or play down points at issue, but must pose them in a straightforward fashion. The whole truth has been put squarely to the "Independents" (the ); the whole truth must likewise be put squarely to the "Left" Communists.
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Footnotes
[22] Between the February 1917 Revolution and 1919 inclusively, the Party’s membership changed as follows: by the Seventh All-Russia Conference of the R.S.D.L.P.(B.) (April 1917) the Party numbered 80,000 members, by the Sixth R.S.D.L.P.(B.) Congress in July-August 1917—about 240,000, by the Seventh Congress of the R.C.P.(B.) in March 1918—not less than 270,000; by the Eighth Congress of the R.C.P.(B.) in March 1919—313,766 members.
[23] The reference is to Party Week, which was held in accordance with the resolution of the Eighth Congress of the R.C.P.(B.) on building up the Party’s membership. The Party Week was conducted in conditions of the bitter struggle waged by the Soviet state against the foreign intervention and domestic counterrevolution. Party Week was first held in the Petrograd organisation of the R.C.P.(B.), August 10-17, 1919 (the second Party Week was held in Petrograd in October-November 1919); between September 20 and 28 a Party Week was held in the Moscow Gubernia organisation. Summarising the experience of the first Party Weeks, the Plenum of the Central Committee of the R.C.P.(B.), held on September 26, 1919, resolved that Party Weeks should be held in cities, the countryside and the army. At the end of September, the Central Committee addressed a circular to all Party organisations pointing out that, as the re-registration and purge of the membership had been accomplished in almost all Party organisations, new members might be enrolled. The Central Committee stressed that during Party Weeks only industrial workers, peasants, and Red Army and Navy men should be admitted into the Party. As a result of Party Weeks, over 200,000 joined the Party in 38 gubernias of the European part of the R.S.F.S.R., more than a half of them being industrial workers. Over 25 per cent of the armed forces’ strength joined the Party at the fronts.
[24] See LCW, Vol. 30, pp. 253-75.
[25] The Communist International -- a journal, organ of the Executive Committee of the Communist International. It was published in Russian, German, French, English, Spanish and Chinese, the first issue appearing on May 1, 1919.
The journal published theoretical articles and documents of the Comintern, including a number of articles by Lenin. It elucidated the fundamental questions of Marxist-Leninist theory in connection with problems confronting the international working-class and communist movement and the experience of socialist construction in the Soviet Union. It also waged a struggle against various anti-Leninist tendencies.
Publication of the journal ceased in June 1943 in connection with the resolution adopted by the Presidium of the Comintern’s Executive Committee on May 15, 1943, on the dissolution of the Communist International.
[26] See Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Correspondence, Moscow, 1965, p. 110.
[27] The Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W.)—a workers’ trade union organisation, founded in the U.S.A. in 1905, and in the main organising unskilled and low-paid workers of various trades. Among its founders were such working-class leaders as Daniel De Leon, Eugene Debs and William Haywood. I.W.W. organisations were also set up in Canada, Australia, Britain, Latin America and South Africa. In conditions of the mass strike movement in the U.S.A., which developed under the influence of the Russian revolution of 1905-07, the I.W.W. organised a number of successful mass strikes, waged a struggle against the policy of class collaboration conducted by reformist leaders of the American Federation of Labor and Right-wing socialists. During the First World War of 1914-18, the organisation led a number of mass anti-war actions by the American working class Some I.W.W. Leaders, among them William Haywood, welcomed the Great October Socialist Revolution and joined the Communist Party of the U.S.A. At the same time, anarcho-syndicalist features showed up in I.W.W. activities: it did not recognise the proletariat’s political struggle, denied the Party’s leading role and the necessity of the proletarian dictatorship, and refused to carry on work among the membership of the American Federation of Labor. In 1920 the organisation’s anarcho-syndicalist leaders took advantage of the imprisonment of many revolutionaries and against the will of the trade union masses, rejected appeal by the Comintern’s Executive Committee that they join the Communist International. As a result of the leaders’ opportunist policy, the I.W.W. degenerated into a sectarian organisation, which soon lost all influence on the working-class movement.
[*4] The Gomperses, Hendersons, Jouhaux and Eegiens are nothing but Zubatovs, differing from our Zubatov only in their European garb and polish, and the civilised, refined and democratically suave manner of conducting their despicable policy.
Markin comment:
This article goes along with the propaganda points in the fight for our communist future mentioned in other posts.
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With this now-classic work, Lenin aimed to encapsulate the lessons the Bolshevik Party had learned from its involvement in three revolutions in 12 years—in a manner that European Communists could relate to, for it was to them he was speaking. He also further develops the theory of what the "dictatorship of the proletariat" means and stresses that the primary danger for the working-class movement in general is opportunism on the one hand, and anti-Marxist ultra-leftism on the other.
"Left-Wing" Communism: an Infantile Disorder was written in April, and the appendix was written on May 12, 1920. It came out on June 8-10 in Russian and in July was published in German, English and French. Lenin gave personal attention to the book’s type-setting and printing schedule so that it would be published before the opening of the Second Congress of the Communist International, each delegate receiving a copy. Between July and November 1920, the book was re-published in Leipzig, Paris and London, in the German, French and English languages respectively.
"Left-Wing" Communism: an Infantile Disorder is published according to the first edition print, the proofs of which were read by Lenin himself.
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Should Revolutionaries Work in Reactionary Trade Unions?
The German "Lefts" consider that, as far as they are concerned, the reply to this question is an unqualified negative. In their opinion, declamations and angry outcries (such as uttered by K. Homer in a particularly "solid" and particularly stupid manner) against "reactionary" and "counter-revolutionary" trade unions are sufficient "proof" that it is unnecessary and even inexcusable for revolutionaries and Communists to work in yellow, social-chauvinist, compromising and counter-revolutionary trade unions of the Legien type.
However firmly the German "Lefts" may be convinced of the revolutionism of such tactics, the latter are in fact fundamentally wrong, and contain nothing but empty phrases.
To make this clear, I shall begin with our own experience, in keeping with the general plan of the present pamphlet, which is aimed at applying to Western Europe whatever is universally practicable, significant and relevant in the history and the present-day tactics of Bolshevism.
In Russia today, the connection between leaders, party, class and masses, as well as the attitude of the dictatorship of the proletariat and its party to the trade unions, are concretely as follows: the dictatorship is exercised by the proletariat organised in the Soviets; the proletariat is guided by the Communist Party of Bolsheviks, which, according to the figures of the latest Party Congress (April 1920), has a membership of 611,000. The membership varied greatly both before and after the October Revolution, and used to be much smaller, even in 1918 and 1919. [22] We are apprehensive of an excessive growth of the Party, because careerists and charlatans, who deserve only to be shot, inevitably do all they can to insinuate themselves into the ranks of the ruling party. The last time we opened wide the doors of the Party—to workers and peasants only -- was when (in the winter of 1919) Yudenich was within a few versts of Petrograd, and Denikin was in Orel (about 350 versts from Moscow), i.e., when the Soviet Republic was in mortal danger, and when adventurers, careerists, charlatans and unreliable persons generally could not possibly count on making a profitable career (and had more reason to expect the gallows and torture) by joining the Communists. [23] The Party, which holds annual congresses (the most recent on the basis of one delegate per 1,000 members), is directed by a Central Committee of nineteen elected at the Congress, while the current work in Moscow has to be carried on by still smaller bodies, known as the Organising Bureau and the Political Bureau, which are elected at plenary meetings of the Central Committee, five members of the Central Committee to each bureau. This, it would appear, is a full-fledged "oligarchy". No important political or organisational question is decided by any state institution in our republic without the guidance of the Party’s Central Committee.
In its work, the Party relies directly on the trade unions, which, according to the data of the last congress (April 1920), now have a membership of over four million and are formally non-Party. Actually, all the directing bodies of the vast majority of the unions, and primarily, of course, of the all-Russia general trade union centre or bureau (the All-Russia Central Council of Trade Unions), are made up of Communists and carry out all the directives of the Party. Thus, on the whole, we have a formally non-communist, flexible and relatively wide and very powerful proletarian apparatus, by means of which the Party is closely linked up with the class and the masses, and by means of which, under the leadership of the Party, the class dictatorship is exercised. Without close contacts with the trade unions, and without their energetic support and devoted efforts, not only in economic, but also in military affairs, it would of course have been impossible for us to govern the country and to maintain the dictatorship for two and a half months, let alone two and a half years. In practice, these very close contacts naturally call for highly complex and diversified work in the form of propaganda, agitation, timely and frequent conferences, not only with the leading trade union workers, but with influential trade union workers generally; they call for a determined struggle against the Mensheviks, who still have a certain though very small following to whom they teach all kinds of counter-revolutionary machinations, ranging from an ideological defence of (bourgeois) democracy and the preaching that the trade unions should be "independent" (independent of proletarian state power!) to sabotage of proletarian discipline, etc., etc.
We consider that contacts with the "masses" through the trade unions are not enough. In the course of our revolution, practical activities have given rise to such institutions as non-Party workers’ and peasants’ conferences, and we strive by every means to support, develop and extend this institution in order to be able to observe the temper of the masses, come closer to them, meet their requirements, promote the best among them to state posts, etc. Under a recent decree on the transformation of the People’s Commissariat of State Control into the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection, non-Party conferences of this kind have been empowered to select members of the State Control to carry out various kinds of investigations, etc.
Then, of course, all the work of the Party is carried on through the Soviets, which embrace the working masses irrespective of occupation. The district congresses of Soviets are democratic institutions, the like of which even the best of the democratic republics of the bourgeois world have never known; through these congresses (whose proceedings the Party endeavours to follow with the closest attention), as well as by continually appointing class-conscious workers to various posts in the rural districts, the proletariat exercises its role of leader of the peasantry, gives effect to the dictatorship of the urban proletariat wages a systematic struggle against the rich, bourgeois, exploiting and profiteering peasantry, etc.
Such is the general mechanism of the proletarian state power viewed "from above", from the standpoint of the practical implementation of the dictatorship. We hope that the reader will understand why the Russian Bolshevik who has known this mechanism for twenty-five years and has seen it develop out of small, illegal and underground circles, cannot help regarding all this talk about "from above" or "from below", about the dictatorship of leaders or the dictatorship of the masses, etc., as ridiculous and childish nonsense, something like discussing whether a man’s left leg or right arm is of greater use to him.
We cannot but regard as equally ridiculous and childish nonsense the pompous, very learned, and frightfully revolutionary disquisitions of the German Lefts to the effect that Communists cannot and should not work in reactionary trade unions, that it is permissible to turn down such work, that it is necessary to withdraw from the trade unions and create a brand-new and immaculate "Workers’ Union" invented by very pleasant (and, probably, for the most part very youthful) Communists, etc., etc.
Capitalism inevitably leaves socialism the legacy, on the one hand, of the old trade and craft distinctions among the workers, distinctions evolved in the course of centuries; on the other hand, trade unions, which only very slowly, in the course of years and years, can and will develop into broader industrial unions with less of the craft union about them (embracing entire industries, and not only crafts, trades and occupations), and later proceed, through these industrial unions, to eliminate the division of labour among people, to educate and school people, give them all-round development and an all-round training, so that they are able to do everything. Communism is advancing and must advance towards that goal, and will reach it, but only after very many years. To attempt in practice, today, to anticipate this future result of a fully developed, fully stabilised and constituted, fully comprehensive and mature communism would be like trying to teach higher mathematics to a child of four.
We can (and must) begin to build socialism, not with abstract human material, or with human material specially prepared by us, but with the human material bequeathed to us by capitalism. True, that is no easy matter, but no other approach to this task is serious enough to warrant discussion.
The trade unions were a tremendous step forward for the working class in the early days of capitalist development, inasmuch as they marked a transition from the workers’ disunity and helplessness to the rudiments of class organisation. When the revolutionary party of the proletariat, the highest form of proletarian class organisation, began to take shape (and the Party will not merit the name until it learns to weld the leaders into one indivisible whole with the class and the masses) the trade unions inevitably began to reveal certain reactionary features, a certain craft narrow-mindedness, a certain tendency to be non-political, a certain inertness, etc. However, the development of the proletariat did not, and could not, proceed anywhere in the world otherwise than through the trade unions, through reciprocal action between them and the party of the working class. The proletariat’s conquest of political power is a gigantic step forward for the proletariat as a class, and the Party must more than ever and in a new way, not only in the old, educate and guide the trade unions, at the same time bearing in mind that they are and will long remain an indispensable "school of communism" and a preparatory school that trains proletarians to exercise their dictatorship, an indispensable organisation of the workers for the gradual transfer of the management of the whole economic life of the country to the working class (and not to the separate trades), and later to all the working people.
In the sense mentioned above, a certain "reactionism" in the trade unions is inevitable under the dictatorship of the proletariat. Not to understand this means a complete failure to understand the fundamental conditions of the transition from capitalism to socialism. It would be egregious folly to fear this "reactionism" or to try to evade or leap over it, for it would mean fearing that function of the proletarian vanguard which consists in training, educating, enlightening and drawing into the new life the most backward strata and masses of the working class and the peasantry. On the other hand, it would be a still graver error to postpone the achievement of the dictatorship of the proletariat until a time when there will not be a single worker with a narrow-minded craft outlook, or with craft and craft-union prejudices. The art of politics (and the Communist’s correct understanding of his tasks) consists in correctly gauging the conditions and the moment when the vanguard of the proletariat can successfully assume power, when it is able—during and after the seizure of power—to win adequate support from sufficiently broad strata of the working class and of the non-proletarian working masses, and when it is able thereafter to maintain, consolidate and extend its rule by educating, training and attracting ever broader masses of the working people.
Further. In countries more advanced than Russia, a certain reactionism in the trade unions has been and was bound to be manifested in a far greater measure than in our country. Our Mensheviks found support in the trade unions (and to some extent still do so in a small number of unions), as a result of the latter’s craft narrow-mindedness, craft selfishness and opportunism. The Mensheviks of the West have acquired a much firmer footing in the trade unions; there the craft-union, narrow-minded, selfish, case-hardened, covetous, and petty-bourgeois "labour aristocracy", imperialist-minded, and imperialist-corrupted, has developed into a much stronger section than in our country. That is incontestable. The struggle against the Gomperses, and against the Jouhaux, Hendersons, Merrheims, Legiens and Co. in Western Europe is much more difficult than the struggle against our Mensheviks, who are an absolutely homogeneous social and political type. This struggle must be waged ruthlessly, and it must unfailingly be brought—as we brought it—to a point when all the incorrigible leaders of opportunism and social-chauvinism are completely discredited and driven out of the trade unions. Political power cannot be captured (and the attempt to capture it should not be made) until the struggle has reached a certain stage. This "certain stage" will be different in different countries and in different circumstances; it can be correctly gauged only by thoughtful, experienced and knowledgeable political leaders of the proletariat in each particular country. (In Russia the elections to the Constituent Assembly in November 1917, a few days after the proletarian revolution of October 25, 1917, were one of the criteria of the success of this struggle. In these elections the Mensheviks were utterly defeated; they received 700,000 votes—1,400,000 if the vote in Transcaucasia is added—as against 9,000,000 votes polled by the Bolsheviks. See my article, "The Constituent Assembly Elections and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat", [24] in the Communist International [25] No. 7-8.)
We are waging a struggle against the "labour aristocracy" in the name of the masses of the workers and in order to win them over to our side; we are waging the struggle against the opportunist and social-chauvinist leaders in order to win the working class over to our side. It would be absurd to forget this most elementary and most self-evident truth. Yet it is this very absurdity that the German "Left" Communists perpetrate when, because of the reactionary and counter-revolutionary character of the trade union top leadership, they jump to the conclusion that ... we must withdraw from the trade unions, refuse to work in them, and create new and artificial forms of labour organisation! This is so unpardonable a blunder that it is tantamount to the greatest service Communists could render the bourgeoisie. Like all the opportunist, social-chauvinist, and Kautskyite trade union leaders, our Mensheviks are nothing but "agents of the bourgeoisie in the working-class movement" (as we have always said the Mensheviks are), or "labour lieutenants of the capitalist class", to use the splendid and profoundly true expression of the followers of Daniel De Leon in America. To refuse to work in the reactionary trade unions means leaving the insufficiently developed or backward masses of workers under the influence of the reactionary leaders, the agents of the bourgeoisie, the labour aristocrats, or "workers who have become completely bourgeois" (cf. Engels’s letter to Marx in 1858 about the British workers [26]).
This ridiculous "theory" that Communists should not work in reactionary trade unions reveals with the utmost clarity the frivolous attitude of the "Left" Communists towards the question of influencing the "masses", and their misuse of clamour about the "masses". If you want to help the "masses" and win the sympathy and support of the "masses", you should not fear difficulties, or pinpricks, chicanery, insults and persecution from the "leaders" (who, being opportunists and social-chauvinists, are in most cases directly or indirectly connected with the bourgeoisie and the police), but must absolutely work wherever the masses are to be found. You must be capable of any sacrifice, of overcoming the greatest obstacles, in order to carry on agitation and propaganda systematically, perseveringly, persistently and patiently in those institutions, societies and associations -- even the most reactionary—in which proletarian or semi-proletarian masses are to be found. The trade unions and the workers’ co-operatives (the latter sometimes, at least) are the very organisations in which the masses are to be found. According to figures quoted in the Swedish paper Folkets Dagblad Politiken of March 10, 1920, the trade union membership in Great Britain increased from 5,500,000 at the end of 1917 to 6,600,000 at the end of 1918, an increase of 19 per cent. Towards the close of 1919, the membership was estimated at 7,500,000. I have not got the corresponding figures for France and Germany to hand, but absolutely incontestable and generally known facts testify to a rapid rise in the trade union membership in these countries too.
These facts make crystal clear something that is confirmed by thousands of other symptoms, namely, that class-consciousness and the desire for organisation are growing among the proletarian masses, among the rank and file, among the backward elements. Millions of workers in Great Britain, France and Germany are for the first time passing from a complete lack of organisation to the elementary, lowest, simplest, and (to those still thoroughly imbued with bourgeois-democratic prejudices) most easily comprehensible form of organisation, namely, the trade unions; yet the revolutionary but imprudent Left Communists stand by, crying out "the masses", "the masses!" but refusing to work within the trade unions, on the pretext that they are "reactionary", and invent a brand-new, immaculate little "Workers’ Union", which is guiltless of bourgeois-democratic prejudices and innocent of craft or narrow-minded craft-union sins, a union which, they claim, will be (!) a broad organisation. "Recognition of the Soviet system and the dictatorship" will be the only (!) condition of membership. (See the passage quoted above.)
It would be hard to imagine any greater ineptitude or greater harm to the revolution than that caused by the "Left" revolutionaries! Why, if we in Russia today, after two and a half years of unprecedented victories over the bourgeoisie of Russia and the Entente, were to make "recognition of the dictatorship" a condition of trade union membership, we would be doing a very foolish thing, damaging our influence among the masses, and helping the Mensheviks. The task devolving on Communists is to convince the backward elements, to work among them, and not to fence themselves off from them with artificial and childishly "Left" slogans.
There can be no doubt that the Gomperses, the Hendersons, the Jonhaux and the Legiens are very grateful to those "Left" revolutionaries who, like the German opposition "on principle" (heaven preserve us from such "principles"!), or like some of the revolutionaries in the American Industrial Workers of the World [27] advocate quitting the reactionary trade unions and refusing to work in them. These men, the "leaders" of opportunism, will no doubt resort to every device of bourgeois diplomacy and to the aid of bourgeois governments, the clergy, the police and the courts, to keep Communists out of the trade unions, oust them by every means, make their work in the trade unions as unpleasant as possible, and insult, bait and persecute them. We must be able to stand up to all this, agree to make any sacrifice, and even -- if need be—to resort to various stratagems, artifices and illegal methods, to evasions and subterfuges, as long as we get into the trade unions, remain in them, and carry on communist work within them at all costs. Under tsarism we had no "legal opportunities" whatsoever until 1905. However, when Zubatov, agent of the secret police, organised Black-Hundred workers’ assemblies and workingmen’s societies for the purpose of trapping revolutionaries and combating them, we sent members of our Party to these assemblies and into these societies (I personally remember one of them, Comrade Babushkin, a leading St. Petersburg factory worker, shot by order of the tsar’s generals in 1906). They established contacts with the masses, were able to carry on their agitation, and succeeded in wresting workers from the influence of Zubatov’s agents. *4 Of course, in Western Europe, which is imbued with most deep-rooted legalistic, constitutionalist and bourgeois-democratic prejudices, this is more difficult of achievement. However, it can and must be carried out, and systematically at that.
The Executive Committee of the Third International must, in my opinion, positively condemn, and call upon the next congress of the Communist International to condemn both the policy of refusing to work in reactionary trade unions in general (explaining in detail why such refusal is unwise, and what extreme harm it does to the cause of the proletarian revolution) and, in particular, the line of conduct of some members of the Communist Party of Holland, who—whether directly or indirectly, overtly or covertly, wholly or partly, it does not matter—have supported this erroneous policy. The Third International must break with the tactics of the Second International, it must not evade or play down points at issue, but must pose them in a straightforward fashion. The whole truth has been put squarely to the "Independents" (the ); the whole truth must likewise be put squarely to the "Left" Communists.
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Footnotes
[22] Between the February 1917 Revolution and 1919 inclusively, the Party’s membership changed as follows: by the Seventh All-Russia Conference of the R.S.D.L.P.(B.) (April 1917) the Party numbered 80,000 members, by the Sixth R.S.D.L.P.(B.) Congress in July-August 1917—about 240,000, by the Seventh Congress of the R.C.P.(B.) in March 1918—not less than 270,000; by the Eighth Congress of the R.C.P.(B.) in March 1919—313,766 members.
[23] The reference is to Party Week, which was held in accordance with the resolution of the Eighth Congress of the R.C.P.(B.) on building up the Party’s membership. The Party Week was conducted in conditions of the bitter struggle waged by the Soviet state against the foreign intervention and domestic counterrevolution. Party Week was first held in the Petrograd organisation of the R.C.P.(B.), August 10-17, 1919 (the second Party Week was held in Petrograd in October-November 1919); between September 20 and 28 a Party Week was held in the Moscow Gubernia organisation. Summarising the experience of the first Party Weeks, the Plenum of the Central Committee of the R.C.P.(B.), held on September 26, 1919, resolved that Party Weeks should be held in cities, the countryside and the army. At the end of September, the Central Committee addressed a circular to all Party organisations pointing out that, as the re-registration and purge of the membership had been accomplished in almost all Party organisations, new members might be enrolled. The Central Committee stressed that during Party Weeks only industrial workers, peasants, and Red Army and Navy men should be admitted into the Party. As a result of Party Weeks, over 200,000 joined the Party in 38 gubernias of the European part of the R.S.F.S.R., more than a half of them being industrial workers. Over 25 per cent of the armed forces’ strength joined the Party at the fronts.
[24] See LCW, Vol. 30, pp. 253-75.
[25] The Communist International -- a journal, organ of the Executive Committee of the Communist International. It was published in Russian, German, French, English, Spanish and Chinese, the first issue appearing on May 1, 1919.
The journal published theoretical articles and documents of the Comintern, including a number of articles by Lenin. It elucidated the fundamental questions of Marxist-Leninist theory in connection with problems confronting the international working-class and communist movement and the experience of socialist construction in the Soviet Union. It also waged a struggle against various anti-Leninist tendencies.
Publication of the journal ceased in June 1943 in connection with the resolution adopted by the Presidium of the Comintern’s Executive Committee on May 15, 1943, on the dissolution of the Communist International.
[26] See Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Correspondence, Moscow, 1965, p. 110.
[27] The Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W.)—a workers’ trade union organisation, founded in the U.S.A. in 1905, and in the main organising unskilled and low-paid workers of various trades. Among its founders were such working-class leaders as Daniel De Leon, Eugene Debs and William Haywood. I.W.W. organisations were also set up in Canada, Australia, Britain, Latin America and South Africa. In conditions of the mass strike movement in the U.S.A., which developed under the influence of the Russian revolution of 1905-07, the I.W.W. organised a number of successful mass strikes, waged a struggle against the policy of class collaboration conducted by reformist leaders of the American Federation of Labor and Right-wing socialists. During the First World War of 1914-18, the organisation led a number of mass anti-war actions by the American working class Some I.W.W. Leaders, among them William Haywood, welcomed the Great October Socialist Revolution and joined the Communist Party of the U.S.A. At the same time, anarcho-syndicalist features showed up in I.W.W. activities: it did not recognise the proletariat’s political struggle, denied the Party’s leading role and the necessity of the proletarian dictatorship, and refused to carry on work among the membership of the American Federation of Labor. In 1920 the organisation’s anarcho-syndicalist leaders took advantage of the imprisonment of many revolutionaries and against the will of the trade union masses, rejected appeal by the Comintern’s Executive Committee that they join the Communist International. As a result of the leaders’ opportunist policy, the I.W.W. degenerated into a sectarian organisation, which soon lost all influence on the working-class movement.
[*4] The Gomperses, Hendersons, Jouhaux and Eegiens are nothing but Zubatovs, differing from our Zubatov only in their European garb and polish, and the civilised, refined and democratically suave manner of conducting their despicable policy.
From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- It Ain’t About The Pool, Fast Eddie- Paul Newman’s “The Hustler”- A Film Review
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Paul Newman’s The Hustler.
DVD Review
The Hustler, starring Paul Newman, Piper Laurie, George C. Scott, Jackie Gleason, 20th Century-Fox, 1961
Shoot pool, Fast Eddie, shoot pool. Yes, Fast Eddie shoot pool like your life depended on it, and it probably will in the end. Fast Eddie, coming like hellfire out of the west, out of the wild boy, okie, arkie dust shaking be-bop west night looking, looking for something in the go-go post- World War II night. Some cureless thing to take the curse off of not having made that okie trek with everything you owned in the Great Depression or not having gotten your fill of blood, action and danger in the “big one.” Something to take the pain, the angst, the alienation or whatever the sociologists and psychologists wanted to call it, away.
Put it plain. Some Neal Cassady/Jack Kerouac/Allen Ginsberg howl against the fates moment all gassed up to run the tables on the red scare cold war night. And like those sainted brothers, beat down, beat around, beatitude beat, beat six ways to Sunday beat looking for the hook to show the world your wares, your blue-eyed , if you had blue-eyes and okie look said you did, Adonis wares ready to take on six kings before supper. Hell it was easy, wasn’t it. Just ask king Neal riding the clutch, and nothing but the clutch around some dead man’s curve, riding easy, like some Spanish dancer, or matador flaying the cape gently before the kill. Ask million word king Jack, writing those log roll be-bop words for a hungry world to hear in the deadened go-go night, no hero he, but some Frankish Adonis kindred flaying at typewriters, and taking notes on small Woolworth pads. Ask king Allen who proclaimed the empty night, who heralded the empty night, who sang Kaddish to the empty night to those who sought fame instead of truth. And, in the end, ask Fast Eddie, ask Fast Eddie what he proclaimed, what he heralded, what empty night he raised his sword against.
For Fast Eddie it was, or it started out as, just creeping out from under that old East Oakland, Haywood, Richmond, you name the town they were all the same, all filled with restless boys wishing to break out from that corner boy existence. Hanging out in white tee shirt, cigarette pack rolled up one sleeve, wide bucket belt, whipsaw ready, holding up blue denims, black engineer boots hitched up against some drugstore , mom and pop variety store , some bowling alley, hell, some glass-fronted pool hall wall to break- out, jail-break out but just then waiting , yeh, waiting.
So it was hell’s angels big hog cycles and whipsaw chains beating down terrified citizens (or each other) for pocket change and a three to five stretch courtesy of the California penal system, or break of dawn at some smoke-filled factory making widgets with after dinner corner boy nights holding up storefront walls, or going on the hustle. And it started early. Maybe it was hunger started stealing milky way candy bars at mom and pop’s, or maybe just a soft touch from some mislaid mother’s purse. Easy pickings.
But hunger, gnawed hunger, festering hunger is a tyrant, a hard and cruel tyrant, when you have Fast Eddie appetites. So maybe a round of jewelry store “clips” for some teenage tart with visions of femme fatale and you are the practice. Later, older later, some midnight auto takedown for whiskey shots. Easy stuff but with tight margins and guys, cops, hoods, and hard boys ready, willing and able to cramp your style. Yes, Fast Eddie, join the drifters, grifters, and midnight sifters and make a name, a small name for yourself, in the fifteen minutes of fame world and then fade. Small dreams fade.
Not our boy Fast Eddie though he wanted more, he wanted way more, he was hungry, really too hungry. He wanted to be the king hell king of the pool hall night, small dream in a big dream world but it was his dream and he was sticking to it, come hell or high water. Jesus was he going to stick to it. See Fast Eddie besides his dream (and enough intelligence to see clips, stolen hubcaps and armed robberies would eventually put a crimp, a very big crimp, in his Adonis wares), had something else, he had some talent.
After dismissing from his mind those big hog wild boys from across the Sonny Barger street as nowhere and after wiping up the poolroom floor with half the half-smart blond, blue-eyed faux hard guy surfer boys in California he wanted a chance to beat down pharaoh like a lot of okie, arkie guys had been trying to do since Egypt time (although their names were different then that is what they were and Fast Eddie had the eternal DNA connection genes to prove it). And, mainly, they had gotten busted up by pharaoh’s boys for their troubles. Still Fast Eddie had talent and that is worth something in this wicked old world, something okay.
To watch Fast Eddie when he was fast and loose was a sight to behold, shifting those hips just this way and that, a wayward shoulder here or there, eyeing, careful eyeing the best angle for the shot like he and the balls were one, and maybe they were, beating up angels to get at the chalk to fatten up his cue stick, and then go on those runs. Hell some nights he would run the table just to show some punk that he should get back to hanging off that wall at the mom and pop variety store corner that he crawled out from under. Rich guys too, rich guys looking for cocaine kicks, maybe some off-hand roughhouse sex with some hard-pressed corner boy in some back alley, and getting kicks out of smelling the sweat, the special criminal metallic sweat of guys who had done time while they were at Saint Mark’s, or someplace like that, hanging around reading Nelson Algren or Jean Genet, with their boyfriends. Hell, Fast Eddie would relentlessly faggot tease them (even if they weren’t) and they would lap it up. Jesus. Still he wanted pharaoh.
And he got Pharaoh, got pharaoh in spades. Got more of Pharaoh that most men, even hard corner boys, would ever want. Got Pharaoh with his blood up, with his king hell king no prisoners blood up. Jesus Fast Eddie looked good for about ten rounds though all loose and Fast Eddie-like, making juke moves like some fancy dan pro football player, cocky, hell, cocky, calling strange shot combinations and drinking high-bench bourbon to steady his nerves. Beautiful.
Pharaoh about that time, about round ten, took his measure though, writing him off as a fly-by-night seven- day wonder boy, making some fast and Fast Eddie –like moves of his own and some ballet-like combinations that had Fast Eddie reeling. Pharaoh- by a knock-out. The boys who watched most of the play, and they had watched Pharaoh up against some pretty good corner boys, all agreed that Fast Eddie was good, but that his talent could only get him so far and that his dreams maybe should be played out in Hoboken, or Jersey City not in the bigs. One guy, who didn’t want to be quoted just in case, called Fast Eddie just another okie sodbuster loser.
But that guy, that no quote nine to five guy, had never nursed a dream, never was haunted by being there at the end hearing the other guy, the pharaoh, cry to the high heavens “uncle.” Yeh, he had never heard that sweet music, and never would. And so Fast Eddie nursed his wounds, nursed his dream along too. He still had that too much hunger that comes from a rationed world, his world, his okie world, to carry. Fast Eddie was dumped back on cheap street, on the street of broken dreams.
And then she showed up, showed up to pick up the pieces, the Fast Eddie too much hunger pieces. To curb his hunger a little, maybe, and also to disturb his sleep. Some called her a tramp, an easy lay, a place to hang your hat while you were nursing your fresh wounds but Fast Eddie never, even from minute one, at the bus station diner saw her that way. And even wild corner boy sullen guys like Eddie who couldn’t say the right words knew she was no whore, no dish rag to dirty and move on.
She wasn’t beautiful, not that way beautiful, not Fast Eddie blue-eyed Greek Adonis beautiful with flashy moves, more like our lady of the lord Madonna drink her in like fine wine beautiful. More like those women you see, hear or read about that make you say to yourself that you had better hold on to her Mr. Blue-eyed Adonis man searching for that elusive fame.
Funny how it all started, all started like with most Fast Eddie girls, with a few drinks, a few words, and some animal, not wild but not gentle either, connection that drove them to her bed. Polite society had called her a tramp, hanging on to a succession of beat down corner boys for dear life, maybe for her life. What could they know about a girl who wrote be-bop beat stuff, read a million books, and drank an ocean of whiskey before noon to chase away her own demons. She was Fast Eddie’s girl from the minute he sat down next to her, he knew it, she knew it, and that thought got her through some stuff. And Fast Eddie too.
Some dreams though are monstrous and Fast Eddie’s was just that way. And she, Sarah to give her a name now that he had shared her bed, could do nothing, nothing at all to slay that monster. It gnawed at him. And like most dreams, most modern dreams, there was a need for money, serious money to run at pharaoh again. Now if the world was just made up of mad dream men and clinging women it would not be such a hard place at that. But there are in this wicked old world, especially down in the darkened lamp-less corners, down in the alleys, down in the gutters when even dreaming is against the law, outlawed no questions asked, guys, ten percent guys let’s call them, hang out. Hang out waiting for broken dream cheap street has beens with talent (those without just keep moving, moving down) to come to their door. And with nothing to lose (or so Fast Eddie thought) he bought in, bought into the bargain with the devil, and with no looking back.
Sarah, Fast Eddie’s lifeline Sarah out of some biblical prophecy, out of those million books read, out of her own dark street past, knew the ten percent men, knew their clawing and scratching away at a man’s soul, at a woman’s soul too when they got their blood up. She knew, back streets knowledge knew at a heavy price, and a couple of off-hand bought drinks, that their price was too much to pay for fifteen minute fame dreams. Knew from her own much abused bed they had no pure Fast Eddie dreams, no Fast Eddie soul, just clawing away at more than their ten-percent cut. But would Fast Eddie listen, hell, not our boy, and so the dice were cast.
But see too some women (maybe some men too but I am thinking about a woman just now), no, forget some formless woman, let’s call her Sarah Packard, Fast Eddie’s lifeline, can’t live in the real world. Can’t live in the world of dirt and dust, and blood and still take breathe. And can’t live in the world of big dreams. Big monstrous dreams. So Sarah could not save Fast Eddie from his too much hunger, or in the end save herself from her own hungers. Fast Eddie not knowing what he had lost, or only half-knowing, had to nevertheless even the score, even the score the only way he knew how. Take on the Pharaoh or die.
As it turned out Fast Eddie danced that night of the re-match, all loose and fast like old Fast Eddie when I first saw him work his magic against some scrub surfer guy down in some southern California pool hall way out of his element in the 1950s be-bop night. The pockets were like manholes that night and I thought Fast Eddie was going to run the table on old tired Pharaoh. He didn’t but old pharaoh, wise enough to know his play, cried “uncle” to the high heavens. That “victory,” that Sarah Packard –paid for victory however only tasted like ashes in Fast Eddie’s mouth. Still shoot pool, Fast Eddie, shoot pool like your life depended on it.
DVD Review
The Hustler, starring Paul Newman, Piper Laurie, George C. Scott, Jackie Gleason, 20th Century-Fox, 1961
Shoot pool, Fast Eddie, shoot pool. Yes, Fast Eddie shoot pool like your life depended on it, and it probably will in the end. Fast Eddie, coming like hellfire out of the west, out of the wild boy, okie, arkie dust shaking be-bop west night looking, looking for something in the go-go post- World War II night. Some cureless thing to take the curse off of not having made that okie trek with everything you owned in the Great Depression or not having gotten your fill of blood, action and danger in the “big one.” Something to take the pain, the angst, the alienation or whatever the sociologists and psychologists wanted to call it, away.
Put it plain. Some Neal Cassady/Jack Kerouac/Allen Ginsberg howl against the fates moment all gassed up to run the tables on the red scare cold war night. And like those sainted brothers, beat down, beat around, beatitude beat, beat six ways to Sunday beat looking for the hook to show the world your wares, your blue-eyed , if you had blue-eyes and okie look said you did, Adonis wares ready to take on six kings before supper. Hell it was easy, wasn’t it. Just ask king Neal riding the clutch, and nothing but the clutch around some dead man’s curve, riding easy, like some Spanish dancer, or matador flaying the cape gently before the kill. Ask million word king Jack, writing those log roll be-bop words for a hungry world to hear in the deadened go-go night, no hero he, but some Frankish Adonis kindred flaying at typewriters, and taking notes on small Woolworth pads. Ask king Allen who proclaimed the empty night, who heralded the empty night, who sang Kaddish to the empty night to those who sought fame instead of truth. And, in the end, ask Fast Eddie, ask Fast Eddie what he proclaimed, what he heralded, what empty night he raised his sword against.
For Fast Eddie it was, or it started out as, just creeping out from under that old East Oakland, Haywood, Richmond, you name the town they were all the same, all filled with restless boys wishing to break out from that corner boy existence. Hanging out in white tee shirt, cigarette pack rolled up one sleeve, wide bucket belt, whipsaw ready, holding up blue denims, black engineer boots hitched up against some drugstore , mom and pop variety store , some bowling alley, hell, some glass-fronted pool hall wall to break- out, jail-break out but just then waiting , yeh, waiting.
So it was hell’s angels big hog cycles and whipsaw chains beating down terrified citizens (or each other) for pocket change and a three to five stretch courtesy of the California penal system, or break of dawn at some smoke-filled factory making widgets with after dinner corner boy nights holding up storefront walls, or going on the hustle. And it started early. Maybe it was hunger started stealing milky way candy bars at mom and pop’s, or maybe just a soft touch from some mislaid mother’s purse. Easy pickings.
But hunger, gnawed hunger, festering hunger is a tyrant, a hard and cruel tyrant, when you have Fast Eddie appetites. So maybe a round of jewelry store “clips” for some teenage tart with visions of femme fatale and you are the practice. Later, older later, some midnight auto takedown for whiskey shots. Easy stuff but with tight margins and guys, cops, hoods, and hard boys ready, willing and able to cramp your style. Yes, Fast Eddie, join the drifters, grifters, and midnight sifters and make a name, a small name for yourself, in the fifteen minutes of fame world and then fade. Small dreams fade.
Not our boy Fast Eddie though he wanted more, he wanted way more, he was hungry, really too hungry. He wanted to be the king hell king of the pool hall night, small dream in a big dream world but it was his dream and he was sticking to it, come hell or high water. Jesus was he going to stick to it. See Fast Eddie besides his dream (and enough intelligence to see clips, stolen hubcaps and armed robberies would eventually put a crimp, a very big crimp, in his Adonis wares), had something else, he had some talent.
After dismissing from his mind those big hog wild boys from across the Sonny Barger street as nowhere and after wiping up the poolroom floor with half the half-smart blond, blue-eyed faux hard guy surfer boys in California he wanted a chance to beat down pharaoh like a lot of okie, arkie guys had been trying to do since Egypt time (although their names were different then that is what they were and Fast Eddie had the eternal DNA connection genes to prove it). And, mainly, they had gotten busted up by pharaoh’s boys for their troubles. Still Fast Eddie had talent and that is worth something in this wicked old world, something okay.
To watch Fast Eddie when he was fast and loose was a sight to behold, shifting those hips just this way and that, a wayward shoulder here or there, eyeing, careful eyeing the best angle for the shot like he and the balls were one, and maybe they were, beating up angels to get at the chalk to fatten up his cue stick, and then go on those runs. Hell some nights he would run the table just to show some punk that he should get back to hanging off that wall at the mom and pop variety store corner that he crawled out from under. Rich guys too, rich guys looking for cocaine kicks, maybe some off-hand roughhouse sex with some hard-pressed corner boy in some back alley, and getting kicks out of smelling the sweat, the special criminal metallic sweat of guys who had done time while they were at Saint Mark’s, or someplace like that, hanging around reading Nelson Algren or Jean Genet, with their boyfriends. Hell, Fast Eddie would relentlessly faggot tease them (even if they weren’t) and they would lap it up. Jesus. Still he wanted pharaoh.
And he got Pharaoh, got pharaoh in spades. Got more of Pharaoh that most men, even hard corner boys, would ever want. Got Pharaoh with his blood up, with his king hell king no prisoners blood up. Jesus Fast Eddie looked good for about ten rounds though all loose and Fast Eddie-like, making juke moves like some fancy dan pro football player, cocky, hell, cocky, calling strange shot combinations and drinking high-bench bourbon to steady his nerves. Beautiful.
Pharaoh about that time, about round ten, took his measure though, writing him off as a fly-by-night seven- day wonder boy, making some fast and Fast Eddie –like moves of his own and some ballet-like combinations that had Fast Eddie reeling. Pharaoh- by a knock-out. The boys who watched most of the play, and they had watched Pharaoh up against some pretty good corner boys, all agreed that Fast Eddie was good, but that his talent could only get him so far and that his dreams maybe should be played out in Hoboken, or Jersey City not in the bigs. One guy, who didn’t want to be quoted just in case, called Fast Eddie just another okie sodbuster loser.
But that guy, that no quote nine to five guy, had never nursed a dream, never was haunted by being there at the end hearing the other guy, the pharaoh, cry to the high heavens “uncle.” Yeh, he had never heard that sweet music, and never would. And so Fast Eddie nursed his wounds, nursed his dream along too. He still had that too much hunger that comes from a rationed world, his world, his okie world, to carry. Fast Eddie was dumped back on cheap street, on the street of broken dreams.
And then she showed up, showed up to pick up the pieces, the Fast Eddie too much hunger pieces. To curb his hunger a little, maybe, and also to disturb his sleep. Some called her a tramp, an easy lay, a place to hang your hat while you were nursing your fresh wounds but Fast Eddie never, even from minute one, at the bus station diner saw her that way. And even wild corner boy sullen guys like Eddie who couldn’t say the right words knew she was no whore, no dish rag to dirty and move on.
She wasn’t beautiful, not that way beautiful, not Fast Eddie blue-eyed Greek Adonis beautiful with flashy moves, more like our lady of the lord Madonna drink her in like fine wine beautiful. More like those women you see, hear or read about that make you say to yourself that you had better hold on to her Mr. Blue-eyed Adonis man searching for that elusive fame.
Funny how it all started, all started like with most Fast Eddie girls, with a few drinks, a few words, and some animal, not wild but not gentle either, connection that drove them to her bed. Polite society had called her a tramp, hanging on to a succession of beat down corner boys for dear life, maybe for her life. What could they know about a girl who wrote be-bop beat stuff, read a million books, and drank an ocean of whiskey before noon to chase away her own demons. She was Fast Eddie’s girl from the minute he sat down next to her, he knew it, she knew it, and that thought got her through some stuff. And Fast Eddie too.
Some dreams though are monstrous and Fast Eddie’s was just that way. And she, Sarah to give her a name now that he had shared her bed, could do nothing, nothing at all to slay that monster. It gnawed at him. And like most dreams, most modern dreams, there was a need for money, serious money to run at pharaoh again. Now if the world was just made up of mad dream men and clinging women it would not be such a hard place at that. But there are in this wicked old world, especially down in the darkened lamp-less corners, down in the alleys, down in the gutters when even dreaming is against the law, outlawed no questions asked, guys, ten percent guys let’s call them, hang out. Hang out waiting for broken dream cheap street has beens with talent (those without just keep moving, moving down) to come to their door. And with nothing to lose (or so Fast Eddie thought) he bought in, bought into the bargain with the devil, and with no looking back.
Sarah, Fast Eddie’s lifeline Sarah out of some biblical prophecy, out of those million books read, out of her own dark street past, knew the ten percent men, knew their clawing and scratching away at a man’s soul, at a woman’s soul too when they got their blood up. She knew, back streets knowledge knew at a heavy price, and a couple of off-hand bought drinks, that their price was too much to pay for fifteen minute fame dreams. Knew from her own much abused bed they had no pure Fast Eddie dreams, no Fast Eddie soul, just clawing away at more than their ten-percent cut. But would Fast Eddie listen, hell, not our boy, and so the dice were cast.
But see too some women (maybe some men too but I am thinking about a woman just now), no, forget some formless woman, let’s call her Sarah Packard, Fast Eddie’s lifeline, can’t live in the real world. Can’t live in the world of dirt and dust, and blood and still take breathe. And can’t live in the world of big dreams. Big monstrous dreams. So Sarah could not save Fast Eddie from his too much hunger, or in the end save herself from her own hungers. Fast Eddie not knowing what he had lost, or only half-knowing, had to nevertheless even the score, even the score the only way he knew how. Take on the Pharaoh or die.
As it turned out Fast Eddie danced that night of the re-match, all loose and fast like old Fast Eddie when I first saw him work his magic against some scrub surfer guy down in some southern California pool hall way out of his element in the 1950s be-bop night. The pockets were like manholes that night and I thought Fast Eddie was going to run the table on old tired Pharaoh. He didn’t but old pharaoh, wise enough to know his play, cried “uncle” to the high heavens. That “victory,” that Sarah Packard –paid for victory however only tasted like ashes in Fast Eddie’s mouth. Still shoot pool, Fast Eddie, shoot pool like your life depended on it.
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