From The Pens Of Karl Marx And Friedrich Engels-Their Struggles To Build Communist Organizations-The Early Days- Revolution and Counter-revolution in Germany-The Vienna Insurrection

Click on the headline to link to the Marx-Engels Internet Archives for an online copy of the article mentioned in the headline. Markin comment: The foundation article by Marx or Engels listed in the headline goes along with the propaganda points in the fight for our communist future mentioned in other posts in this space. Just below is a thumbnail sketch of the first tentative proceedings to form a communist organization that would become a way-station on the road to building a Bolshevik-type organization in order fight for the socialist revolution we so desperately need and have since Marx and Engels first put pen to ink. ************* Marx/Engels Internet Archive-The Communist League A congress of the League of the Just opened in London on June 2, 1847. Engels was in attendance as delegate for the League's Paris communities. (Marx couldn't attend for financial reasons.) Engels had a significant impact throughout the congress -- which, as it turned out, was really the "inaugural Congress" of what became known as the Communist League. This organization stands as the first international proletarian organization. With the influence of Marx and Engels anti-utopian socialism, the League's motto changed from "All Men are Brothers" to "Working Men of All Countries, Unite!" Engels: "In the summer of 1847, the first league congress took place in London, at which W. Wolff represented the Brussels and I the Paris communities. At this congress the reorganization of the League was carried through first of all. ...the League now consisted of communities, circles, leading circles, a central committee and a congress, and henceforth called itself the 'Communist League'." The Rules were drawn up with the participation of Marx and Engels, examined at the First Congress of the Communist League, and approved at the League's Second Congress in December 1847. Article 1 of the Rules of the Communist League: "The aim of the league is the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the rule of the proletariat, the abolition of the old bourgeois society which rests on the antagonism of classes, and the foundation of a new society without classes and without private property." The first draft of the Communist League Programme was styled as a catechism -- in the form of questions and answers. Essentially, the draft was authored by Engels. The original manuscript is in Engels's hand. The League's official paper was to be the Kommunistische Zeitschrift, but the only issue produced was in September 1847 by a resolution of the League's First Congress. It was First Congress prepared by the Central Authority of the Communist League based in London. Karl Schapper was its editor. The Second Congress of the Communist League was held at the end of November 1847 at London's Red Lion Hotel. Marx attended as delegate of the Brussels Circle. He went to London in the company of Victor Tedesco, member of the Communist League and also a delegate to the Second Congress. Engels again represented the Paris communities. Schapper was elected chairman of the congress, and Engels its secretary. Friedrich Lessner: "I was working in London then and was a member of the communist Workers' Educational Society at 191 Drury Lane. There, at the end of November and the beginning of December 1847, members of the Central Committee of the Communist League held a congress. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels came there from Brussels to present their views on modern communism and to speak about the Communists' attitude to the political and workers' movement. The meetings, which, naturally, were held in the evenings, were attended by delegates only... Soon we learned that after long debates, the congress had unanimously backed the principles of Marx and Engels..." The Rules were officially adopted December 8, 1847. Engels: "All contradiction and doubt were finally set at rest, the new basic principles were unanimously adopted, and Marx and I were commissioned to draw up the Manifesto." This would, of course, become the Communist Manifesto. ************ Markin comment on this series: No question that today at least the figures of 19th century communist revolutionaries, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, are honored more for their “academic” work than their efforts to build political organizations to fight for democratic and socialist revolutions, respectively, as part of their new worldview. Titles like Communist Manifesto, Das Kapital, The Peasants Wars In Germany, and the like are more likely to be linked to their names than Cologne Communist League or Workingmen’s International (First International). While the theoretical and historical materialist works have their honored place in the pantheon of revolutionary literature it would be wrong to neglect that hard fact that both Marx and Engels for most of their lives were not “arm chair" revolutionaries or, in Engels case, merely smitten by late Victorian fox hunts with the upper crust. These men were revolutionary politicians who worked at revolution in high times and low. Those of us who follow their traditions can, or should, understand that sometimes, a frustratingly long sometimes, the objective circumstances do not allow for fruitful revolutionary work. We push on as we can. Part of that pushing on is to become immersed in the work of our predecessors and in this series specifically the work of Marx and Engels to create a new form of revolutionary organization to fight the fights of their time, the time from about the Revolutions of 1848 to the founding of various socialist parties in Europe in the latter part of the 19th century.
Revolution and Counter-revolution in Germany

V.
The Vienna Insurrection
NOVEMBER 12, 1851.
ON the 24th of February, 1848, Louis Philippe was driven out of Paris, and the French Republic was proclaimed. On the 13th of March following, the people of Vienna broke the power of Prince Metternich, and made him flee shamefully out of the country. On the 18th of March the people of Berlin rose in arms, and, after an obstinate struggle of eighteen hours, had the satisfaction of seeing the King surrender himself into their hands. Simultaneous outbreaks of a more or less violent nature, but all with the same success, occurred in the capitals of the smaller States of Germany. The German people, if they had not accomplished their first revolution, were at least fairly launched into the revolutionary career.

As to the incidents of these various insurrections, we cannot enter here into the details of them: what we have to explain is their character, and the position which the different classes of the population took up with regard to them.

The Revolution of Vienna may be said to have been made by an almost unanimous population. The bourgeoisie (with the exception of the bankers and stock-jobbers), the petty trading class, the working people, one and all arose at once against a Government detested by all, a Government so universally hated, that the small minority of nobles and money lords which had supported it made itself invisible on the very first attack. The middle classes had been kept in such a degree of political ignorance by Metternich that to them the news from Paris about the reign of Anarchy, Socialism, and terror, and about impending struggles between the class of capitalists and the class of laborers, proved quite unintelligible. They, in their political innocence, either could attach no meaning to these news, or they believed them to be fiendish inventions of Metternich, to frighten them into obedience. They, besides, had never seen working men acting as a class, or stand up for their own distinct class interests. They had, from their past experience, no idea of the possibility of any differences springing up between classes that now were so heartily united in upsetting a Government hated by all. They saw the working people agree with themselves upon all points: a Constitution, Trial by Jury, Liberty of the Press, etc. Thus they were, in March, 1848, at least, heart and soul with the movement, and the movement, on the other hand, at once constituted them the (at least in theory) predominant class of the State.

But it is the fate of all revolutions that this union of different classes, which in some degree is always the necessary condition of any revolution, cannot subsist long. No sooner is the victory gained against the common enemy than the victors become divided among themselves into different camps, and turn their weapons against each other. It is this rapid and passionate development of class antagonism which, in old and complicated social organisms, makes a revolution such a powerful agent of social and political progress; it is this incessantly quick upshooting of new parties succeeding each other in power, which, during those violent commotions, makes a nation pass in five years over more ground than it would have done in a century under ordinary circumstances.

The Revolution in Vienna made the middle class the theoretically predominant class; that is to say, the concessions wrung from the Government were such as, once carried out practically and adhered to for a time, would inevitably have secured the supremacy of the middle class. But practically the supremacy of that class was far from being established. It is true that by the establishment of a national guard, which gave arms to the bourgeoisie and petty tradesmen, that class obtained both force and importance; it is true that by the installation of a "Committee of Safety," a sort of revolutionary, irresponsible Government in which the bourgeoisie predominated, it was placed at the head of power. But, at the same time, the workings classes were partially armed too; they and the students had borne the brunt of the fight, as far as fight there had been; and the students, about 4,000 strong, well-armed, and far better disciplined than the national guard, formed the nucleus, the real strength of the revolutionary force, and were no ways willing to act as a mere instrument in the hands of the Committee of Safety. Though they recognized it, and were even its most enthusiastic supporters, they yet formed a sort of independent and rather turbulent body, deliberating for themselves in the "Aula," keeping an intermediate position between the bourgeoisie and the working-classes, preventing by constant agitation things from settling down to the old everyday tranquillity, and very often forcing their resolutions upon the Committee of Safety. The working men, on the other hand, almost entirely thrown out of employment, had to be employed in public works at the expense of the State, and the money for this purpose had, of course, to be taken out of the purse of the taxpayers or out of the chest of the city of Vienna. All this could not but become very unpleasant to the tradesmen of Vienna. The manufactures of the city, calculated for the consumption of the rich and aristocratic courts of a large country, were as a matter of course entirely stopped by the Revolution, by the flight of the aristocracy and Court; trade was at a standstill, and the continuous agitation and excitement kept up by the students and working people was certainly not the means to "restore confidence," as the phrase went. Thus a certain coolness very soon sprung up between the middle classes on the one side and the turbulent students and working people on the other; and if for a long time this coolness was not ripened into open hostility, it was because the Ministry, and particularly the Court, in their impatience to restore the old order of things, constantly justified the suspicions and the turbulent activity of the more revolutionary parties, and constantly made arise, even before the eyes of the middle classes, the spectre of old Metternichian despotism. Thus on the 15th of May, and again on the 16th, there were fresh risings of all classes in Vienna, on account of the Government having tried to attack, or to undermine some of the newly-conquered liberties, and on each occasion the alliance between the national guard or armed middle class, the students, and the workingmen, was again cemented for a time.

As to the other classes of the population, the aristocracy and the money lords had disappeared, and the peasantry were busily engaged everywhere in removing, down to the very last vestiges of feudalism. Thanks to the war in Italy, and the occupation which Vienna and Hungary gave to the Court, they were left at full liberty, and succeeded in their work of liberation in Austria, better than in any other part of Germany. The Austrian Diet had very shortly after only to confirm the steps already practically taken by the peasantry, and whatever else the Government of Prince Schwartzenberg may be enabled to restore, it will never have the power of re-establishing the feudal servitude of the peasantry. And if Austria at the present moment is again comparatively tranquil, and even strong, it is principally because the great majority of the people, the peasants, have been real gainers by the Revolution, and because whatever else has been attacked by the restored Government, those palpable, substantial advantages, conquered by the peasantry, are as yet untouched.

LONDON, October, 1851.

On The Anniversary Of The Execution Of Troy Davis-From The Pages Of "Workers Vanguard"-"Troy Davis Execution: Racist State Murder"-Down With The Barbaric Death Penalty!

Workers Vanguard No. 987
30 September 2011

Troy Davis Execution: Racist State Murder

Troy Davis is dead. At 11:08 p.m. on September 21, Davis, a 42-year-old black man, was murdered by the legal guardians of the capitalist ruling class. For 22 years, Davis fought to prove his innocence of the 1989 killing of off-duty police officer Mark MacPhail in Savannah, Georgia, only to spend the last moments of his life strapped to an execution gurney. For its part, the U.S. Supreme Court went through the charade of reviewing his petition for a last-minute stay of execution. As protests took place around the world, hundreds of Davis’s supporters rallied outside the Jackson, Georgia, prison—officially known as the Diagnostic and Classification Prison—while millions followed the story on TVs, radios and cell phones, hoping for a semblance of justice for this black man caught in the American “justice” system.

The killing of Troy Davis was racist legal lynching! In place of hooded KKK nightriders were pin-striped prosecutors and black-robed judges, along with the Board of Pardons and Paroles, which turned down Davis’s bid for clemency the day before the execution. In place of the lynch rope were needles dispensing the life-ending chemical cocktail. The substantial evidence of Davis’s innocence meant nothing. A white uniformed enforcer of capitalist law and order had been killed, and this black life had to be taken in return. Here is a stark demonstration of the workings of the capitalist state—an instrument of organized violence to protect the class rule and profits of the tiny handful of capitalists against the workers and the oppressed. The death penalty is the ultimate sanction of a “justice” system that is not only stacked against workers and the poor but also, in this society founded on slavery and maintained on a bedrock of black oppression, racist to its core.

The story of Troy Davis’s frame-up is a familiar one for black people in this country. In 1991, he was sentenced to death after a frame-up conviction based on questionable “eyewitness” identifications, dubious accounts that he confessed and testimony coerced by the cops. Not a shred of physical evidence linked him to the killing. Seven of the prosecution’s nine witnesses have since recanted. The only holdouts were a man who may be the actual killer and another who first denied being able to identify the shooter, only to finger Davis at trial two years later.

What sets Davis’s case apart were the worldwide calls to stop his execution, ultimately including even former FBI director William Sessions and former Georgia Congressman Bob Barr—both staunch proponents of capital punishment—as well as the Pope and ex-president Jimmy Carter. Protests were held in cities internationally following the signing of his death warrant on September 6. In the last days of his life over 600,000 people signed petitions on Davis’s behalf. Just as a federal court judge last year dismissed evidence of Davis’s innocence as “smoke and mirrors,” the state authorities answered these calls for mercy with contempt.

Almost a century ago, Socialist leader Eugene V. Debs powerfully condemned the barbarism of the death penalty, writing in a May 1913 letter: “The taking of human life through criminal impulse or in an hour of passion by an individual is not to be compared to the immeasurably greater crime committed by the State when it deliberately puts to death the individual charged with such crime. Society may not consistently condemn murder as long as it is itself red-handed with that crime.”

As Marxists, we oppose the death penalty on principle and everywhere—from the capitalist U.S., Japan, Iran and Russia to the Chinese deformed workers state. This principle applies for the guilty as well as the innocent. We do not accord the state the right to decide who shall live and who shall die. Abolish the racist death penalty!

Legacy of Slavery

Other than the U.S. and Japan, every advanced capitalist country has eliminated capital punishment as part of its criminal code. The European bourgeoisies are brutally repressive. But the continued use of the death penalty in the U.S. speaks to the particular depravity of this country’s capitalist rulers. More fundamentally, capital punishment in the U.S. is rooted in the origins of its capitalist system, which was built on the backs of black slaves. Under the Slave Codes, blacks were killed with impunity for “crimes” ranging from insolence toward whites to rebellion against the slave masters.

This legacy can be seen today in the dungeons of death row. Of the more than 3,200 men and women there, over 40 percent are black, and another 12 percent are Latino. Among the 36 states that maintain the death penalty, California has the largest death row population. But capital punishment remains a largely Southern institution. Over 70 percent of executions since the Supreme Court reinstituted the death penalty in 1976 have taken place in the states of the former Confederacy—and more than half of those in Texas and Virginia. In Davis’s Georgia, black males make up 15 percent of the population but constitute nearly half of those on death row.

Among those speaking out against the racist death penalty is the family of James Anderson, a black auto worker who was brutally murdered by white-supremacists in Jackson, Mississippi, on June 26 (see “Lynch Mob Murder of Black Worker,” WV No. 985, 2 September). In a letter to the Hinds County district attorney, Anderson’s sister Barbara Anderson Young asked that he “not seek the death penalty for anyone involved in James’ murder,” noting the family’s religious opposition to capital punishment. She added, “We also oppose the death penalty because it historically has been used in Mississippi and the South primarily against people of color for killing whites.”

The cheapness of black life to the American ruling class is evident not just in who is sent to death row, but also in whose loss of life constitutes a capital offense. Although blacks and whites are murder victims in roughly the same numbers, 80 percent of those executed have been convicted of killing a white person. Just hours before Troy Davis was put to death, the state of Texas executed Lawrence Brewer, one of three racist thugs convicted for the gruesome 1998 killing of James Byrd, a black man who was decapitated as he was dragged to death from the back of a pickup truck. While Texas has carried out over 470 executions since 1976, Brewer became only the second white person ever executed in the state for the murder of a black person.

The discriminatory application of the death penalty was sanctified by the U.S. Supreme Court 24 years ago in the case of Warren McCleskey, a black prisoner who was executed in Georgia in 1991. McCleskey’s attorneys presented the Court with an authoritative study detailing that black people in Georgia convicted of killing whites were sentenced to death 22 times more frequently than those convicted of killing blacks. In rejecting McCleskey’s appeal, the Supreme Court explicitly acknowledged that to accept this premise would throw “into serious question the principles that underlie our entire criminal justice system.” In its callous pronouncement, the court expressed a basic truth. McCleskey was a victim of the racism that pervades the criminal justice system—who the cops stop on the street, who the prosecutors choose to indict, what charges and sentences are sought, who sits on juries, who gets paroled and who gets executed.

The buildup to Troy Davis’s execution sparked something of a public discussion on capital punishment in the bourgeois press, especially as it intersected the ascendance of Texas governor Rick Perry as a leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination. Earlier this month, Texas authorities had planned to execute four prisoners in the space of a week. Among those was Duane Buck, whose September 15 execution was stayed by the Supreme Court at the last minute. Convicted of killing his former girlfriend and a friend of hers in 1995, Buck was one of seven black men sentenced to death based on the “expert” testimony of a Texas prison psychologist that because they were black they should be expected to engage in violent behavior in the future!

Death Penalty: Bipartisan Policy

At the September 7 Republican candidates’ debate, Perry received a wild ovation for having overseen 234 executions. He further burnished his credentials by assuring moderator Brian Williams that this body count never cost him a wink of sleep. In an editorial titled “Cheering on the Death Machine,” the New York Times (11 September) declared that Perry’s “attitude about death may make sense in the hard-edged Republican primaries, but other voters should have serious doubts about a man who seems to have none.”

There is no question that the sinister Christian fundamentalist Perry is an outright reactionary, one of several in the Republican contest. But the Democrats—the other party of racist capitalist rule—are themselves no slouches in administering the rulers’ assembly line of death. Barack Obama, a supporter of the death penalty, refused to intervene as time ran out for Davis, with press secretary Jay Carney declaring: “It is not appropriate for the president of the United States to weigh in on specific cases like this one, which is a state prosecution.”

Obama was not so shy about “weighing in” on the case of death row political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal, a former Black Panther spokesman and a MOVE supporter who was framed up and sentenced to death on false charges of killing a Philadelphia police officer in 1981. State and federal courts have repeatedly refused to hear the massive evidence of Mumia’s innocence, including another man’s confession to the killing. During the 2008 presidential campaign, Michael Smerconish, a right-wing Philadelphia journalist leading the calls for Mumia’s head, asked Obama about Mumia’s case. According to Smerconish, Obama replied by denying knowing much about the case while assuring him nevertheless that anyone convicted of killing a cop should be executed or imprisoned for life.

What to expect of the Democrats can be seen in the case of Shaka Sankofa, who was executed in June 2000 at the height of the presidential campaign in the face of international opposition similar to that which sought to stop Davis’s execution. As then-governor of Texas George W. Bush and his advisers weighed the political risks of stopping the execution—or not—his Democratic opponent, Al Gore, not only reaffirmed his commitment to the death penalty but gave the go-ahead to execute a likely innocent man, declaring that “mistakes are inevitable.” Eight years earlier, Bill Clinton interrupted his first presidential campaign by flying back to Arkansas, where he was governor, to oversee the execution of Rickey Ray Rector, a brain-damaged black man.

The liberals at the New York Times may be appalled that Rick Perry and the Republican right openly revel in state murder and indifference to the likelihood of killing innocent people. But Perry & Co. are only giving voice to what has been ruling-class policy—implemented by Democrats and Republicans alike—to massively bolster the repressive forces of the capitalist state. It was Clinton’s 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act that cut off the possibilities of presenting new evidence of innocence by eviscerating the right of federal habeas corpus to overturn state death sentences. By 2010, the prison population had reached 2.3 million people, over half of whom were black and Latino, the majority convicted on nonviolent drug charges. In the calculations of the American bourgeoisie, the urban ghettos, which used to provide a reservoir of unskilled labor for the auto plants and steel mills, are simply written off as an expendable population, revealing the racist rulers’ impulse to genocide.

While a widely cited poll shows that nearly two-thirds of the population continues to support the death penalty, there has been a drop in public support over the past several years. The fact that more than 130 people on death row have been proven innocent since 1973, including through DNA testing in recent years, has given sections of the ruling class some pause in the accelerated rush to execution, and juries have become a little more reluctant to issue death sentences. On March 9, Illinois became the fifth state since 2004 to eliminate the death penalty.

In their attempts to fine-tune the system of capitalist repression, liberals often promote the living death of “life without parole” as an alternative to state execution. A New York Times (12 September) editorial upholds life without parole as “a sound option” in capital cases even though it complains that this sentence is otherwise often misused. The Times pointed out that blacks make up 56.4 percent of those serving life without parole in the U.S. but only 37.5 percent of the country’s prison population. This statistic further underscores that there can be no fair or “humane” system of “justice” for minorities or for the working class as a whole in a society based on the exploitation of labor and maintained through the special oppression of black people.

While the face of death row is now primarily black and Latino, fighters for labor’s cause have also been targeted for death by the capitalist state: the Haymarket anarchists, labor organizers who fought for the eight-hour day and were put to death in 1877; IWW organizer Joe Hill, executed in 1915; anarchist workers Sacco and Vanzetti, who died in the electric chair in 1927. This ruling-class venom toward those perceived as challenging their oppressive rule is seen today in the death sentence hanging over the head of Mumia, a prize-winning journalist renowned as a powerful voice for the oppressed.

Following the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti, James P. Cannon, founder and secretary of the International Labor Defense, wrote: “It is the vengeful, cruel and murderous class which the workers must fight and conquer before the regime of imprisonment, torture and murder can be ended. This is the message from the chair of death. This is the lesson of the Sacco-Vanzetti case” (“A Living Monument to Sacco and Vanzetti,” Labor Defender, October 1927). This too must be the lesson of the case of Troy Davis, whose murder at the hands of the state will be avenged when a workers party leads all the exploited and oppressed in a socialist revolution that sweeps away the entire barbaric apparatus of capitalist repression.

On The Anniversary Of The Execution Of Troy Anthony Davis- Never Forget- Down With The Barbaric Death Penalty!

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Troy Anthony Davis and information on his case.

"Oh, but you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears
Bury the rag deep in your face
For now's the time for your tears."

last lines from The Lonseome Death Of Hattie Carroll, another case of an injustice against black people. - Bob Dylan
, 1963

Markin comment (posted September 22, 2011):

Look, after almost half a century of fighting every kind of progressive political struggle I have no Pollyanna-ish notion that in our fight for a “newer world” most of the time we are “tilting at windmills.” Even a cursory look at the history of our struggles brings that hard fact home. However some defeats in the class struggle, particularly the struggle to abolish the barbaric, racist death penalty in the United States, hit home harder than others. For some time now the fight to stop the execution of Troy Davis has galvanized this abolition movement into action. His callous execution by the State of Georgia, despite an international mobilization to stop the execution and grant him freedom, is such a defeat.

On the question of the death penalty, moreover, we do not grant the state the right to judicially murder the innocent or the guilty. But clearly Brother Davis was innocent. We will also not forget that hard fact. And we will not forget Brother Davis’ dignity and demeanor as he faced what he knew was a deck stacked against him. And, most importantly, we will not forgot to honor Brother Davis the best way we can by redoubling our efforts to abolition the racist, barbaric death penalty everywhere, for all time. Forward.

Additional Markin comment posted September 23, 2011:

No question the execution on September 21, 2011 by the State of Georgia of Troy Anthony Davis hit me, and not me alone, hard. For just a brief moment that night, when he was granted a temporary stay pending a last minute appeal before the United States Supreme Court just minutes before his 7:00PM execution, I thought that we might have achieved a thimbleful of justice in this wicked old world. But it was not to be and so we battle on. Troy Davis shall now be honored in our pantheon along with the Haymarket Martyrs, Sacco and Vanzetti, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and others. While Brother Davis may have not been a hard politico like the others just mentioned his fight to abolish the death penalty for himself and for future Troys places him in that company. Honor Troy Davis- Fight To The Finish Against The Barbaric Racist Death Penalty!

OCT 6 ACTION AGAINST WARS ABROAD & POLICE STATE ATTACKS ON CIVIL LIBERTIES, Planning mtg Wed.

OCT 6 ACTION AGAINST WARS ABROAD & POLICE STATE ATTACKS ON CIVIL LIBERTIES, Planning mtg Wed.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From : Marilyn Levin
Subject : OCT 6 ACTION AGAINST WARS ABROAD & POLICE STATE ATTACKS ON CIVIL LIBERTIES, Planning mtg Wed.
To : bostonunac@googlegroups.com, BostonUNAC-announce , UJP Planning , New England United , Bos-pal-discussion , Code Pink Greater Boston , massaction-boston , unac-discussion@googlegroups.com, act-ma , Arab Calendar , UJP Discussion Listserv , Fund Our Communities , stopfbi-boston@googlegroups.com, 'BCPR'
Tue, Sep 18, 2012 09:55 PM




BUILD OCTOBER 6 ACTION AGAINST WARS ABROAD

AND POLICE STATE ATTACKS ON CIVIL LIBERTIES AT HOME



Join us in a march and rally to protest the dangerous escalation in threats of military action

against Syria and Iran and increased racist violence and repression at home.



SATURDAY, OCTOBER 6, 1:30 PM

PARK ST.





Eleven years ago on October 7, the U.S. unleashed a war on Afghanistan, followed by the war on Iraq based on lies. While thousands of troops remain in these countries, U.S. drone missiles rain down on Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. Now the government imposes sanctions and threatens to attack Syria and Iran. The U.S. sends troops and threatens to retaliate against anti-US protesters in the Middle East. These actions will escalate the nightmare of war in the Middle East, not end it.



To wage war abroad, they must wage war at home. The last decade has seen escalating repression and poverty at home. Islamophobia and scapegoating of Muslims leads to manufactured frame-ups and violence against the Muslim community. Civil liberties and the right to dissent are under siege with indefinite detention and extra-judicial assassinations now the law of the land.



Racism is a weapon of war. They use it against Muslims and immigrants. They’ve stepped up the war on Black and Latino youth, with racial profiling, stop and frisk, and harsh sentencing -- resulting in police brutality, mass incarceration, military weapons in the hands of police, and a hugely profitable prison industry.



To pay for wars and to maximize the profits of the haves, they take more and more from the have-nots. We see cuts to the social safety nets, attacks on labor, huge unemployment, privatization of public services, neglect of infrastructure, and poisoning of the environment.



LET’S STAND TOGETHER IN UNITY AND SOLIDARITY. TOGETHER WE ARE POWERFUL!



HANDS OFF SYRIA AND IRAN! NO TO RACISM, RAIDS, AND REPRESSION! NO TO ISLAMOPHOBIA!



* United National Antiwar Coalition * United for Justice with Peace * International Action Center *

* Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, Boston *

* Committee for Peace & Human Rights, Boston * New England United * Rhode Island Mobilization Committee

* Veterans For Peace, Smedley D. Butler Brigade *





**Please add your organizations to list of endorsers by emailing BostonUNAC@gmail.com.

**If you or your organization would like to speak at the rally, contact Marilyn Levin, marilynl@alumni.neu.edu.



THERE WILL BE A PLANNING MEETING FOR THIS ACTION ON WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER, 19, 7:30 PM AT IAC OFFICE, 284 AMORY ST., J.P. (Brewery complex, near Stonybrook on Orange line).

From The Pens Of Karl Marx And Friedrich Engels-Their Struggles To Build Communist Organizations-The Early Days-Revolution and Counter-Revolution In Germany (1852)

Click on the headline to link to the Marx-Engels Internet Archives for an online copy of the article mentioned in the headline.

Markin comment:

The foundation article by Marx or Engels listed in the headline goes along with the propaganda points in the fight for our communist future mentioned in other posts in this space. Just below is a thumbnail sketch of the first tentative proceedings to form a communist organization that would become a way-station on the road to building a Bolshevik-type organization in order fight for the socialist revolution we so desperately need and have since Marx and Engels first put pen to ink.
*************
Marx/Engels Internet Archive-The Communist League

A congress of the League of the Just opened in London on June 2, 1847. Engels was in attendance as delegate for the League's Paris communities. (Marx couldn't attend for financial reasons.)

Engels had a significant impact throughout the congress -- which, as it turned out, was really the "inaugural Congress" of what became known as the Communist League. This organization stands as the first international proletarian organization. With the influence of Marx and Engels anti-utopian socialism, the League's motto changed from "All Men are Brothers" to "Working Men of All Countries, Unite!"

Engels: "In the summer of 1847, the first league congress took place in London, at which W. Wolff represented the Brussels and I the Paris communities. At this congress the reorganization of the League was carried through first of all. ...the League now consisted of communities, circles, leading circles, a central committee and a congress, and henceforth called itself the 'Communist League'."

The Rules were drawn up with the participation of Marx and Engels, examined at the First Congress of the Communist League, and approved at the League's Second Congress in December 1847.

Article 1 of the Rules of the Communist League: "The aim of the league is the overthrow of the bourgeoisie, the rule of the proletariat, the abolition of the old bourgeois society which rests on the antagonism of classes, and the foundation of a new society without classes and without private property."

The first draft of the Communist League Programme was styled as a catechism -- in the form of questions and answers. Essentially, the draft was authored by Engels. The original manuscript is in Engels's hand.

The League's official paper was to be the Kommunistische Zeitschrift, but the only issue produced was in September 1847 by a resolution of the League's First Congress. It was First Congress prepared by the Central Authority of the Communist League based in London. Karl Schapper was its editor.

The Second Congress of the Communist League was held at the end of November 1847 at London's Red Lion Hotel. Marx attended as delegate of the Brussels Circle. He went to London in the company of Victor Tedesco, member of the Communist League and also a delegate to the Second Congress. Engels again represented the Paris communities. Schapper was elected chairman of the congress, and Engels its secretary.

Friedrich Lessner: "I was working in London then and was a member of the communist Workers' Educational Society at 191 Drury Lane. There, at the end of November and the beginning of December 1847, members of the Central Committee of the Communist League held a congress. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels came there from Brussels to present their views on modern communism and to speak about the Communists' attitude to the political and workers' movement. The meetings, which, naturally, were held in the evenings, were attended by delegates only... Soon we learned that after long debates, the congress had unanimously backed the principles of Marx and Engels..."

The Rules were officially adopted December 8, 1847.

Engels: "All contradiction and doubt were finally set at rest, the new basic principles were unanimously adopted, and Marx and I were commissioned to draw up the Manifesto." This would, of course, become the Communist Manifesto.
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Markin comment on this series:

No question that today at least the figures of 19th century communist revolutionaries, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, are honored more for their “academic” work than their efforts to build political organizations to fight for democratic and socialist revolutions, respectively, as part of their new worldview. Titles like Communist Manifesto, Das Kapital, The Peasants Wars In Germany, and the like are more likely to be linked to their names than Cologne Communist League or Workingmen’s International (First International).

While the theoretical and historical materialist works have their honored place in the pantheon of revolutionary literature it would be wrong to neglect that hard fact that both Marx and Engels for most of their lives were not “arm chair" revolutionaries or, in Engels case, merely smitten by late Victorian fox hunts with the upper crust. These men were revolutionary politicians who worked at revolution in high times and low. Those of us who follow their traditions can, or should, understand that sometimes, a frustratingly long sometimes, the objective circumstances do not allow for fruitful revolutionary work. We push on as we can. Part of that pushing on is to become immersed in the work of our predecessors and in this series specifically the work of Marx and Engels to create a new form of revolutionary organization to fight the fights of their time, the time from about the Revolutions of 1848 to the founding of various socialist parties in Europe in the latter part of the 19th century.
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VVVVVVVVVVVVVV

Revolution and Counter-revolution in Germany

IV.
Austria.
NOVEMBER 7th, 1851.
WE have now to consider Austria: that country which, up to March, 1848, was sealed up to the eyes of foreign nations almost as much as China before the late war with England.

As a matter of course, we can here take into consideration nothing but German Austria. The affairs of the Polish, Hungarian, or Italian Austrians do not belong to our subject, and as far as they, since 1848, have influenced the fate of the German Austrians, they will have to be taken into account hereafter.

The Government of Prince Metternich turned upon two hinges; firstly, to keep every one of the different nations subjected to the Austrian rule, in check, by all other nations similarly conditioned; secondly, and this always has been the fundamental principle of absolute monarchies, to rely for support upon two classes, the feudal landlords and the large stockjobbing capitalists; and to balance, at the same time, the influence and power of either of these classes by that of the other, so as to leave full independence of action to the Government. The landed nobility, whose entire income consisted in feudal revenues of all sorts, could not but support a Government which proved their only protection against that down-trodden class of serfs upon whose spoils they lived; and whenever the less wealthy portion of them, as in Galicia, in 1846, rose in opposition against the Government, Metternich in an instant let loose upon them these very serfs, who at any rate profited by the occasion to wreak a terrible vengeance upon their more immediate oppressors. On the other hand, the large capitalists of the Exchange were chained to Metternich's Government by the vast share they had in the public funds of the country. Austria, restored to her full power in 1815 restoring and maintaining in Italy Absolute Monarchy ever since 1820, freed from part of her liabilities by the bankruptcy of 1810, had, after the peace, very soon re-established her credit in the great European money markets; and in proportion as her credit grew, she had drawn against it. Thus all the large European moneydealers had engaged considerable portions of their capital in the Austrian funds; they all of them were interested in upholding the credit of that country, and as Austrian public credit, in order to be upheld, ever required new loans, they were obliged from time to time to advance new capital in order to keep up the credit of the securities for that which they already had advanced. The long peace after 1815, and the apparent impossibility of a thousand years old empire, like Austria, being upset, increased the credit of Metternich's Government in a wonderful ratio, and made it even independent of the good will of the Vienna bankers and stock-jobbers; for as long as Metternich could obtain plenty of money at Frankfort and Amsterdam, he had, of course, the satisfaction of seeing the Austrian capitalists at his feet. They were, besides, in every other respect at his mercy: the large profits which bankers, stock-jobbers, and Government contractors always contrive to draw out of an absolute monarchy, were compensated for by the almost unlimited power which the Government possessed over their persons and fortunes; and not the smallest shadow of an opposition was, therefore, to be expected from this quarter. Thus Metternich was sure of the support of the two most powerful and influential classes of the empire, and he possessed besides an army and a bureaucracy, which for all purposes of absolutism could not be better constituted. The civil and military officers in the Austrian service form a race of their own; their fathers have been in the service of the Kaiser, and so will their sons be; they belong to none of the multifarious nationalities congregated under the wing of the double-headed eagle; they are, and ever have been, removed from one end of the empire to the other, from Poland to Italy, from Germany to Transylvania; Hungarian, Pole, German, Roumanian, Italian, Croat, every individual not stamped with "imperial and royal authority," etc., bearing a separate national character, is equally despised by them; they have no nationality, or rather, they alone make up the really Austrian nation. It is evident what a pliable, and at the same time powerful instrument, in the hands of an intelligent and energetic chief, such a civil and military hierarchy must be.

As to the other classes of the population, Metternich, in the true spirit of a statesman of the ancien regime, cared little for their support. He had, with regard to them, but one policy: to draw as much as possible out of them in the shape of taxation, and at the same time, to keep them quiet. The trading and manufacturing middle class was but of slow growth in Austria. The trade of the Danube was comparatively unimportant; the country possessed but one port, Trieste, and the trade of the port was very limited. As to the manufacturers, they enjoyed considerable protection, amounting even in most cases to the complete exclusion of all foreign competition; but this advantage had been granted to them principally with a view to increase their tax-paying capabilities, and was in a high degree counterpoised by internal restrictions on manufactures, privileges on guilds, and other feudal corporations, which were scrupulously upheld as long as they did not impede the purposes and views of the Government. The petty tradesmen were encased in the narrow bounds of these Mediaeval guilds, which kept the different trades in a perpetual war of privilege against each other, and at the same time, by all but excluding individuals of the working class from the possibility of raising themselves in the social scale, gave a sort of hereditary stability to the members of those involuntary associations. Lastly, the peasant and the working man were treated as mere taxable matter, and the only care that was taken of them was to keep them as much as possible in the same conditions of life in which they then existed, and in which their fathers had existed before them. For this purpose every old, established, hereditary authority was upheld in the same manner as that of the State: the authority of the landlord over the petty tenant farmer, that of the manufacturer over the operative, of the small master over the journeyman and apprentice, of the father over the son, was everywhere rigidly maintained by the Government, and every branch of disobedience punished the same as a transgression of the law, by that universal instrument of Austrian justice—the stick.

Finally, to wind up into one comprehensive system all these attempts at creating an artificial stability, the intellectual food allowed to the nation was selected with the minutest caution, and dealt out as sparingly as possible. Education was everywhere in the hands of the Catholic priesthood, whose chiefs, in the same manner as the large feudal landowners, were deeply interested in the conservation of the existing system. The universities were organized in a manner which allowed them to produce nothing but special men, that might or might not obtain great proficiency in sundry particular branches of knowledge, but which, at all events, excluded that universal liberal education which other universities are expected to impart. There was absolutely no newspaper press, except in Hungary, and the Hungarian papers were prohibited in all other parts of the monarchy. As to general literature, its range had not widened for a century; it had narrowed again after the death of Joseph II. And all around the frontier, where ever the Austrian States touched upon a civilized country, a cordon of literary censors was established in connection with the cordon of customhouse officials, preventing any foreign book or newspaper from passing into Austria before its contents had been twice or three times thoroughly sifted, and found pure of even the slightest contamination of the malignant spirit of the age.

For about thirty years after 1815 this system worked with wonderful success. Austria remained almost unknown to Europe, and Europe was quite as little known in Austria. The social state of every class of the population, and of the population as a whole, appeared not to have undergone the slightest change. Whatever rancour there might exist from class to class—and the existence of this rancour was for Metternich a principal condition of government, which he even fostered by making the higher classes the instruments of all Government exactions, and thus throwing the odium upon them—whatever hatred the people might bear to the inferior officials of the State, there existed, upon the whole, little or no dissatisfaction with the Central Government. The Emperor was adored, and old Francis I. seemed to be borne out by facts when, doubting of the durability of this system, he complacently added: "And yet it will hold while I live, and Metternich."

But there was a slow underground movement going on which baffled all Metternich's efforts. The wealth and influence of the manufacturing and trading middle class increased. The introduction of machinery and steam-power in manufactures upset in Austria, as it had done everywhere else, the old relations and vital conditions of whole classes of society: it changed serfs into free men, small farmers into manufacturing operatives; it undermined the old feudal trades corporations, and destroyed the means of existence of many of them. The new commercial and manufacturing population came everywhere into collision with the old feudal institutions. The middle classes, more and more induced by their business to travel abroad, introduced some mythical knowledge of the civilized countries situated beyond the Imperial line of customs; the introduction of railways finally accelerated both the industrial and intellectual movement. There was, too, a dangerous part in the Austrian State establishment, viz., the Hungarian feudal Constitution, with its parliamentary proceedings, and its struggles of the impoverished and oppositional mass of the nobility against the Government and its allies, the magnates. Presburg, the seat of the Diet, was at the very gates of Vienna. All the elements contributed to create among the middle classes of the towns a spirit, not exactly of opposition, for opposition was as yet impossible, but of discontent; a general wish for reforms, more of an administrative than of a constitutional nature. And in the same manner as in Prussia, a portion of the bureaucracy joined the bourgeoisie. Among this hereditary caste of officials the traditions of Joseph II. were not forgotten: the more educated functionaries of the Government, who themselves sometimes meddled with imaginary possible reforms, by far preferred the progressive and intellectual despotism of that Emperor to the "paternal" despotism of Metternich. A portion of the poorer nobility equally sided with the middle class, and as to the lower classes of the population, who always had found plenty of grounds to complain of their superiors, if not of the Government, they in most cases could not but adhere to the reformatory wishes of the bourgeoisie.

It was about this time, say 1843 or 1844, that a particular branch of literature, agreeable to this change, was established in Germany. A few Austrian writers, novelists, literary critics, bad poets, the whole of them of very indifferent ability, but gifted with that peculiar industrialism proper to the Jewish race, established themselves in Leipsig and other German towns out of Austria, and there, out of the reach of Metternich, published a number of books and pamphlets on Austrian affairs. They and their publishers made "a roaring trade" of it. All Germany was eager to become initiated into the secrets of the policy of European China; and the Austrians themselves, who obtained these publications by the wholesale smuggling carried on upon the Bohemian frontier, were still more curious. Of course, the secrets let out in these publications were of no great importance, and the reform plans schemed out by their well-wishing authors bore the stamp of an innocuousness almost amounting to political virginity. A Constitution and a free press for Austria were things considered unattainable; administrative reforms, extension of the rights of the Provincial Diets, admission of foreign books and newspapers, and a less severe censorship—the loyal and humble desires of these good Austrians did hardly go any farther.

At all events the growing impossibility of preventing the literary intercourse of Austria with the rest of Germany, and through Germany with the rest of the world, contributed much toward the formation of an anti-governmental public opinion, and brought at least some little political information within the reach of part of the Austrian population. Thus, by the end of 1847, Austria was seized, although in an inferior degree, by that political and politico-religious agitation which then prevailed in all Germany; and if its progress in Austria was more silent, it did, nevertheless, find revolutionary elements enough to work upon. There was the peasant, serf, or feudal tenant, ground down into the dust by lordly or Government exactions; then the factory operative, forced by the stick of the policeman to work upon any terms the manufacturer chose to grant; then the journeyman, debarred by the corporative laws from any chance of gaining an independence in his trade; then the merchant, stumbling at every step in business over absurd regulations; then the manufacturer, in uninterrupted conflict with trade-guilds, jealous of their privileges, or with greedy and meddling officials; then the school-master, the savant, the better educated functionary, vainly struggling against an ignorant and presumptuous clergy, or a stupid and dictating superior. In short, there was not a single class satisfied, for the small concessions Government was obliged now and then to make were not made at its own expense, for the treasury could not afford that, but at the expense of the high aristocracy and clergy; and as to the great bankers, and fundholders, the late events in Italy, the increasing opposition of the Hungarian Diet, and the unwonted spirit of discontent and cry for reform, manifesting themselves all over the Empire, were not of a nature to strengthen their faith in the solidity and solvency of the Austrian Empire.

Thus Austria, too, was marching slowly but surely toward a mighty change, when, of a sudden, an event broke out in France, which at once brought down the impending storm, and gave the lie to old Francis's assertion, that the building would hold out both during his and Metternich's lifetime.

LONDON, September, 1851.

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin- Johnny Shea’s Femme Fatale Moment

Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the classic femme fatale film Out Of The Past to set the scene below. Jim Sweeney was a great fan of 1940s and 1950s film noir, especially those that featured enticing femme fatales who knew, without lifting a finger sometimes, how to twist a guy in knots and make him like it without working up a hard breathe. He had been crazy for noir since he was kid growing up in 1950s Nashua, New Hampshire where he would go to the old Strand Theater (long since torn down) on Main Street every Saturday afternoon, sometimes with his boys, sometimes alone, although then he didn’t know femme fatale or film noir words from a hole in the wall. What he did know, and maybe only sub-consciously as he thought about it later when he discussed the issue with those same boys, was that dames, those femmes on the screen anyway, were poison, but what was a guy going to do when he drew that ticket. Take the ride, see what happened, and hope you drew a good femme. Yes, Jim was a dreamer, a weaver of dreams, a sunny side of life guy, and that was why Billy Riley was surprised when he told him this story about Johnny Shea a few years ago, a guy Jim said put him in the shade for being crazy about femme fatales, and a guy who did not by any stretch of the imagination draw a good femme. Funny, Jim said, that back in the neighborhood corner boy young days, the days of hanging out in front of Joyce’s Variety Store over on Third Street in the Irishtown section of town down by the Merrimac River, Johnny would walk away when anybody spoke of what he called those mushy noir films, his thing was the sci-fi thrillers that scared everybody out of their wits thinking the commies or some awful thing from outer space, or both, was headed straight for Nashua, and would leave no survivors. It was only later, sometime in the 1980s when Johnny was down on his luck a little and happened to spend a spare afternoon on 42nd Street in the Bijou Theater where they played revival films, that he got “religion.” The film: Humphrey Bogart Mary Astor in The Maltese Falcon and the rest was history. Billy got to thinking about Jim’s story again recently as he had periodically whenever the subject of noir came to the surface. He was watching a film noir, Impact, a strictly B-noir as far as the story line went, but with a femme worthy of the greats like sultry Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity or coolly calculating Rita Hayworth in The Lady From Shang-hai. This Irene (played by Helen Walker) was nothing but a young gold-digger, strictly from cheap street, but she had a plan to murder her rich husband, some San Francisco swell, and run off with her boyfriend after he did dear hubby in. A scheme many dames have cooked up ever since Adam and Eve, maybe before. Well things didn’t work out as planned, boyfriend (who acted like a hopped up junkie while he was on screen and may explain why things went awry) didn’t finish the job so hubby didn’t die but was just left in some sierra gully to croak, boyfriend carelessly got himself killed in an accident trying to flee the scene, hubby put two and two together finally when he woke up in that ditch and instead of heading back to ‘Frisco then tried to start a new anonymous life. Meanwhile sweet poison Irene was being held for his murder. She was all set to take the fall, to take the big stretch when, prodded by so “good” woman out in Podunk who had entered hubby’s new life, he decided to come clean. Our Irene then in a reverse twist framed, framed hubby big time, for the murder of her boyfriend. Beautiful. That is why Billy always said that he would listen to a femme tale any time one passed his way. He only asked that the teller make it interesting and not too goofy. See goofy in Billy’s book was just like a million guys get with any dame under any circumstances. He only wanted to hear about guys, hard-nosed guys like Johnny Shea who had been around the block with a frail and lived to tell about it, and who got all tied up in knots about and were ready to ask for more. Here is how Billy remembered Jim telling him his Johnny Shea story, maybe a little off after passing though double hearsay as they say in the courts but certainly with the ring of truth around it : “He, Johnny Shea, Johnny Jukes, from the old neighborhood up in Nashua, was on record, maybe not a swear on the bible take it to court under oath type record but on record, as being very much enthralled by the bad femme fatales of film noir [of course now from a safe cinematic distance ]. Funny as a kid he would go off the deep end when I mentioned some such film and walk away while I was telling the “lesson” I learned about women and life from a show I had seen at the Saturday matinee. But back in the1980s when he would show up in the old town every now and then and gather the old corner boys around him he would go on and on about how, let’s say, Jane Greer in Out Of The Past off-handedly shot her kept man, Kirk Douglas (or did he keep her, a matter very much in dispute), then put a bullet or six in some snooping sleuth who crowded her just a little and for lunch, just for kicks, turned the tables on a guy, Robert Mitchum, a stray slightly off-center guy built to handle rough stuff if necessary who thought maybe he could help her out of a jam after he got a look at her and a whiff of that gardenia perfume or whatever she was wearing that made him crazy. Johnny would especially go into detail about how hefty Mitchum would sit around drinking in some dusty desolate cantina down in Mexico, maybe, Tampico, maybe Cuernavaca, he forgot, and who was putty in dear Jane’s hands went she walked through the cantina door. Yes, she was a stone-cold killer, blood simple they call it in some quarters, and Johnny couldn’t get enough of her. On an off day, or when Johnny got tired of telling, and we got tired of listening, about some newly discovered move Jane put on after watching that film for the fifteenth time, he would go on and on about glamorous, 1940s glamorous (although maybe eternal glamorous when you look at her pin-up pictures even today) Rita Hayworth as she framed, framed big time, one Orson Welles in The Lady From Shang-hai just because his was a little smitten with her after smelling that come hither fragrance. She wanted the dough, all of it, from a rich lawyer hubby and she wanted old Orson to work his shoot-out magic for her. Hubby dead and they off to spend the dough in some foreign port, maybe in Asia. Orson bought into the scheme, bought into scheme right up to his neck, and all time she was setting him up for the gallows, soaping the rope as she went along. Old Orson just saved his neck in time, as happens sometimes in these things, but it was a close thing, and he would always wonder, wonder if he had played things a little different that maybe they could have found some island some place. Yes, old Orson had it bad, bad as a man can have it for a woman. Damn that damn scent. On other days Johnny might switch up and talk about good femmes, with kind of soft whisper, a soft forlorn whisper, like when his eyes would light up when he spoke of Lauren Bacall and about how she, rich girl she, with a doped-up, wayward, sex addled sister, tried to work both sides of the street in The Big Sleep. She soldiered for bad guy Eddie Miles for a while but when the deal went down she hungered for old Bogie (playing the classic noir detective Philip Marlowe) and switched up on old Eddie, switched him up bad which tells you even good femmes bear watching your back on. I could go on and on but you get the drift. Johnny was living something out in those films. But here is the clincher, Johnny’s wisdom about the bad femmes, which he never failed to bring up at the end of his spiel. He would say-“Yah, but see these guys had it coming because they went in with their eyes open, took their chances and took the fall, took the fall big time. And maybe in some deep recess of their minds, maybe like John Garfield in The Postman Always Rings Twice, they smiled, and would have done it the same way if they that never to be had second chance to do it over.” Pure sweet Johnny Jukes wisdom. Like I said Johnny, whatever femme film plot line he was thinking of, always came back to that question in the end, the question of questions, the part about a guy taking a beating, taking it hard, and then coming back for more when the femme purred in his ear, or swayed some flash dress into the room or he smelled even a whiff, hell, a half whiff of that damn perfume which let him know she was coming. That part, that doing it again part, always got to Johnny. And this was no academic question, no noir theory, and no clever plotline about the vagaries of human experience, about how low you can go and still breathe. See Johnny had been there, had seen it all, and done it all and so he was haunted forever after about whether if she came in the door again, passed him on some haunted street again, drove by in some flash car again, he would also do it exactly like it was done before. Hell, enough of beating around the bush let Johnny tell it the way he finally spilled one night up in Nashua after we had a few, he was feeling a little low, and had his old time corner boys around him, and then you decide. “I not saying Rosa, Rosa Lebron, was as hot as Jane Greer or Rita Hayworth, no way but she had her moments, her moments with me when she might as well have been one of those dames. I am not going to say exactly where we meet, or exactly under what circumstances, but it all came together down in sunny Mexico, down Sonora way back in the late 1970s when I was doing a little of this and a little of that in the drug trade. That will give you the idea why I want to be vague about my meeting up with Rosa, okay. This, by the way, was before it got real crazy down there a few years back with a murder a minute, some of it gang-related, some just pure batos locos craziness from the drugs and the dough. All hell craziness when some busted gabacho deal winds up exploding some whole dusty, dirty little bracero town, although even back then it was always a tight thing when you dealt with the Mexicans, and when you dealt with dope. Period. Sometime when I don’t want to talk about femmes I will tell you some back road, dusty trail stuff that will curl the hairs on the back of your neck and that was when things were “cooled out.” But back to Rosa. See Rosa ‘s older brother, hey, let’s call him Pedro alright just to be on the safe side and just because it doesn’t matter what his name was as long as you remember this is about Rosa and her ways, was a primo “distributor” down Sonora way, mainly marijuana (or herb, ice, ganga, rope, hemp, or whatever you call it in your neighborhood) but as time went on cocaine (ditto on what you call it in your town, snow, little sister, girl), but a guy on his way up in the cartel, no question. That was when a little smarts, street smarts like a lot of Mexican kids had, and a little English which most didn’t, got you pretty far when the vast bulk of the trade was heading norte. So Pedro was no stinky little bracero always staring at you, staring through you really, looking like he would cut your throat for a dollar and change. I met Pedro through mutual business contacts in a New York City bar one night and that got us started on our business, our “nuestra cosa .” One time Rosa came up with him and at first I thought she was his girlfriend because they seemed very close. Now Pedro wasn’t a bad looking guy but I didn’t figure he could have such a fox for a girlfriend, you know all dark skin, nice shape, black as night hair, dancing black eyes AND some scent some mystic Aztec, mestizo, conquistador, ten thousand year sense that distracted me from the minute she clasped my hand. (I found out later from her that it was made from some Mexican cacti flowers, I forget the name but I will never forget that scent, that first time, never). Let me put it this way and maybe you can look it up and get a photo to see what I mean she looked like that Mexican artist everybody talks about, that Frida Kahlo, the one that was married to Diego Riviera, the dish with the one eyebrow, except Rosa had two. When you see that picture and think what that dame did to big time guys like Riviera and Leon Trotsky, the big Bolshevik revolutionary who went daffy over her, then you get an idea what Rosa was like. So when Pablo introduced me to Rosa as his sister I was relieved. Especially after she threw (there is no other word for it) those laughing Spanish eyes at me. She had me, had me bad from that moment. I didn’t see her for a while, maybe a couple of months, although Pedro and I were doing a regular series of business transactions. Then, maybe it was late 1979 or so, I got a call from him to come down to Sonora for what he called a big deal. I showed up at the designated cantina, La Noche, on the main strip, a dusty old place then, maybe now to for all I know. And there was Rosa, all Rosa-like, dark, Spanish, those eyes, the fragrance, and dressed very elegantly in a very fashionable dress (so she told me later). She was the bait. And I bite. Pedro never showed that night, and it didn’t matter as Rosa and I drank high- shelf tequila (my first time, and like scotch and other whiskies there are gradations of tequila too), danced (even with my two left feet it didn’t seem to matter), and wound up at her casa (room). The rest of the night you can figure out on your own. What matters is the next morning, early; after I took a shower and was lying on her bed she asked me if I couldn’t do Pedro a favor. The favor: go to Columbia and bring back a load (twenty kilos, forty pounds) of little sister. In those days Pedro’s cartel was testing the route and having a friendly Norte Americano do the run, which at the time would have been unusual and would have faked out the cops, was seen as the best way to iron out the wrinkles. And, well, Rosa would go along too. Sold. The first trip, and several after, was actually uneventful. Back and forth, sometimes with Rosa sometimes with another female “mule.” After a few months, maybe six, Rosa came up to my hotel room in Sonora one night crying, crying like crazy. She told me that she was being harassed and beaten by Pedro because he had started to “use” some of the product and would get all crazy and lash out at whoever was around. She also said he wasn’t all that crazy now about have a goddam gringo around now that things were already set up and that maybe it was time to terminate my contract. The clincher though was when she said right then and there she said she had to get out, get out before she was maybe killed by Pedro, or one of his thugs on his orders. Maybe it was the tears, maybe it was that scent that always threw me off or maybe now that I knew the score it was flat- out fear that I would be found face down in some Sonora back alley waiting for some consulate officer to ship my remains back home but I listened to what Rosa proposed. The next shipment was our salvation; the forty of fifty pound of girl would get us a long way from Mexico and far enough away from Pedro that we could start our own lives. It sounded good, real good. The idea was to go to Columbia but instead of heading back to Mexico head to Panama, unload the dope in a new market, then catch a freighter to, to wherever, some island maybe. I was in, in all the way. And it worked, worked beautifully. For Rosa. See here is how the deal really went down. We got the dope in Columbia okay, no problema as usual. And we did head to Panama and made the transaction there. Again no problema. Something like a half a million in cash in the proverbial suitcase. Easy street. We were to catch a freighter, some Liberian-registered tanker, headed for Africa the next morning. That night Rosa insisted that we celebrate our “liberation” with some high-shelf tequila in honor of our success and remembrance of our first night together. We drank and made love like it was our last night on earth. And that was the last I saw of Rosa Lebron. The last of her but not quite of the story. After being drunk as a skunk and worn to a frazzle by our love-making (maybe drugged too, I don’t know) I was practically unconscious. The next morning when I awoke Rosa was gone. I frantically looked for her, checking every place including the tanker that we were supposed to take through the Canal. They had no reservations (under our aliases) for any gringo or senorita. No reservations for passengers at all. That’s when I started to panic (and to put two and two together). I couldn’t go back to (a) Columbia or (b) Mexico so I headed back to New York City on the sly. After a while I finally put the pieces together (or rather they got put together for me). First Rosa was not Pedro’s sister but just part of his organization, his brother Pablo’s ex-girlfriend. It was Pedro who had put Rosa up to setting me up on that last transaction because he was feeling constrained by the cartel he was linked to and wanted to go out on his own. The half million (minus Rosa’s cut) would set him up just fine. The problem was that she ran out on Pedro too. It was Pedro (and you can read about it in the Mexican newspaper of the time when such incidents were fairly rare, unlike now) who wound up face down in that Sonora back alley for his lack of cartel spirit, twelve bullet holes in him. And Rosa? Nowhere to be found. Except here is the funny part, although I am not laughing, Pablo, Pedro’s brother and Rosa’s supposed ex-boyfriend was last seen in Sonora the day Rosa and I left for Columbia on that last easy street transaction. If you see her, her and her dancing eyes and that damn cactus flower fragrance tell her I said hello. ” [Jesus, this is a no-brainer. Of course our boy Johnny would do it over again. Just like that. Take it easy on the tequila next time though that stuff will kill you Johnny. Christ after hearing that story I might take a run at Rosa and that fragrance myself and I only like to watch femmes from the comfort of my living room or local theater-JLB]

“Workers of The World Unite, You Have Nothing To Lose But Your Chains”-The Struggle For Trotsky's Fourth (Communist) International -Joseph Hansen-Trotsky’s Prognosis of Our Epoch (1944)

Markin comment:

Below this general introduction is another addition to the work of creating a new international working class organization-a revolutionary one fit of the the slogan in the headline.

Markin comment (repost from September 2010):

Recently, when the question of an international, a new workers international, a fifth international, was broached by the International Marxist Tendency (IMT), faintly echoing the call by Venezuelan caudillo, Hugo Chavez, I got to thinking a little bit more on the subject. Moreover, it must be something in the air (maybe caused by these global climatic changes) because I have also seen recent commentary on the need to go back to something that looks very much like Karl Marx’s one-size-fits-all First International. Of course, just what the doctor by all means, be my guest, but only if the shades of Proudhon and Bakunin can join. Boys and girls that First International was disbanded in the wake of the demise of the Paris Commune for a reason, okay. Mixing political banners (Marxism and fifty-seven varieties of anarchism) is appropriate to a united front, not a hell-bent revolutionary International fighting, and fighting hard, for our communist future. Forward

The Second International, for those six, no seven, people who might care, is still alive and well (at least for periodic international conferences) as a mail-drop for homeless social democrats who want to maintain a fig leaf of internationalism without having to do much about it. Needless to say, one Joseph Stalin and his cohorts liquidated the Communist (Third) International in 1943, long after it turned from a revolutionary headquarters into an outpost of Soviet foreign policy. By then no revolutionary missed its demise, nor shed a tear goodbye. And of course there are always a million commentaries by groups, cults, leagues, tendencies, etc. claiming to stand in the tradition (although, rarely, the program) of the Leon Trotsky-inspired Fourth International that, logically and programmatically, is the starting point of any discussion of the modern struggle for a new communist international.

With that caveat in mind this month, the September American Labor Day month, but more importantly the month in 1938 that the ill-fated Fourth International was founded I am posting some documents around the history of that formation, and its program, the program known by the shorthand, Transitional Program. If you want to call for a fifth, sixth, seventh, what have you, revolutionary international, and you are serious about it beyond the "mail-drop" potential, then you have to look seriously into that organization's origins, and the world-class Bolshevik revolutionary who inspired it. Forward.
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Joseph Hansen-Trotsky’s Prognosis of Our Epoch (1944)

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Written: 1944 and published in Fourth International Vol.5, No.9, September 1944, pp.270-73.
Transcribed/HTML Markup: David Walters, January 2006.
Edited and proofread: Andrew Pollack & Einde O’Callaghan.
Public Domain: Joseph Hansen Internet Archive, 2006. You can freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit the Marxists Internet Archive as your source, include the url to this work, and note the transcribers & proofreaders above.

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Marx and Engels, the great founders of scientific socialism, died before the unfolding of the modern and final stage of capitalist development. It therefore remained for the continuators of the Marxist movement, on the basis of the method they had inherited, to analyze and formulate the character and laws of this stage, that of imperialism.

At the beginning of our century this work was begun in the Second International, still a genuine revolutionary movement at the time. In 1909 Karl Kautsky, the acknowledged theoretical leader of the Second International, summed up the Marxist position on the new historical epoch in his pamphlet Weg zur Macht. In this pamphlet Kautsky affirmed that the relatively “peaceful” period of capitalist development had terminated with the rise to dominance of monopoly capital. Henceforth the contradictions of the capitalist system could become only more and more aggravated, thus precipitating a revolutionary epoch. He declared that it was no longer possible to speak of proletarian revolutions as “premature.” He directly connected the then impending First World War with the perspectives of the proletarian revolution. Kautsky branded as “outright betrayal of our cause’” the renunciation of all steps leading to the direct revolutionary struggle for power.

This viewpoint was affirmed in the resolutions adopted not only by the German Socialist Party but by the world congresses of the Second International. In particular, on November 24-25, 1912 an Emergency Congress of the Second International was convened at Basle, Switzerland, in connection with the Balkan war which threatened to precipitate the world conflict. The Basle Congress adopted a resolution sharply underscoring the imperialist nature of the impending war, summoned the Socialist movement to a resolute struggle against it, and closed with a warning to the bourgeoisie that the war would inescapably result in the proletarian revolution, which the Second International was presumably pledged to organize and lead to victory.

What happened is a matter of historical record. The First World War broke out. All the contradictions were aggravated to the point of actual explosion. It was precisely at this juncture, however, that the leadership of the Second International, with Kautsky in the forefront, betrayed the world working class. Corroded by opportunism the Second International became transformed into its opposite—from an instrument of the revolution it became the agency of the counterrevolution. Its leaders denied what they had affirmed right up to the actual outbreak of hostilities. Revolution was now declared to be premature. Capitalism was extended unlimited historical credit. “Socialists” undertook the task of salvaging the bankrupt system, and “making it work.” National unity was put in place of internationalism and the class struggle. It was a political debacle no one had foreseen. The world working class was temporarily left leaderless.

The task of reconstituting the revolutionary cadres of the proletariat devolved upon a handful of internationalists, first and foremost, Lenin and his co-thinkers who remained true to the program and banner of Marxism. The Marxist teachings developed within the Second international became the heritage of the new, or more correctly, the reconstituted revolutionary movement. Lenin and his co-thinkers preserved, extended and deepened the analysis of the imperialist epoch.


Lenin’s Analysis

Lenin’s doctrine may be summed up as follows: With the rise of monopoly capitalism, the system as a whole can head only towards decline. The “peaceful” phase of development lies irrevocably in the past; it has been replaced by an epoch characterized by violence, sudden leaps, catastrophic changes and vast conflicts.

In March 1915 Lenin wrote:

“We are unquestionably living on the borderline between two great epochs, and the historical events of the greatest importance which are occurring before our eyes can be understood only through an analysis, first and foremost, of the objective conditions under which the transition from one epoch to the other is occurring. What is here involved are great historical epochs; in every epoch there are and there will be isolated, partial movements, sometimes marking an advance, sometimes marking a retardation; there have been and there will be various deviations from the average type and the average tempo of movements. We cannot tell just how quickly or successfully the various historical movements of the given epoch will unfold. But we can know and we do know which class trends at the center of this or that epoch, determining its main content, the main direction of its development, the main Peculiarities of the historical background of the given epoch, and so on.”

To the question of which class holds the key position in this new epoch, Lenin gave an unequivocal answer—the proletariat. Here we have the touchstone that divides Marxism-Leninism from all varieties of revisionism. The distinguishing trait of the opportunists of the Second International as is the case with their latter-day disciples is their exaggeration of the resources and power of the bourgeoisie; the obverse side of this is of course the underestimation of the role of the working class, and, above all, of its main historical instrument, the proletarian party. The deserters from Marxism invariably crawl out of their skins to paint up the bankrupt ruling class. A classic example of this in the period of the First World War is Kautsky’s invention of a “super-imperialist” capitalism allegedly capable of organizing world peace and of mitigating the contradictions that devour capitalist society. From the Leninist analysis of the imperialist epoch, it followed that the imperialist war could develop in one direction, and one direction only: that of an immediate revolutionary situation which would pose the question of power point-blank. This perspective appeared to be fantastic to the philistines of the Second International.

Events brought their verification. In the very midst of the first imperialist war, the Czarist empire crashed and the first workers’ state was established over one-sixth of the world. As Lenin put it, this world-historic event inaugurated “the epoch of the, dictatorship of the proletariat.”

From the beginning Lenin envisaged the transition from capitalism to socialism ushered in by the October revolution as one of “incredible complexity.” A few months after the seizure of power in Russia, in March 1918, in a speech delivered before the Seventh Party Congress Lenin characterized this epoch as:

“... A whole epoch of the most diversified types of war—imperialist wars, civil wars within the respective countries, the intermeshing of the latter with the former, national wars, liberation struggles of nationalities oppressed by the imperialists, wars between the various combinations of imperialist powers... This epoch is the epoch of gigantic catastrophes, of violent mass military decisions, of crises. It has begun, we see it clearly. This is only the beginning.”


Post-War Developments

Such was the background, as Lenin envisaged it, against which the proletarian struggle for power was destined to occur. All if Lenin’s basic ideas were subsequently incorporated in the program of the Communist International, organized as the instrument for the conquest of power by the world working class.

Reality proved even more complex than correct theoretical forecasts. Capitalism was able to emerge from the revolutionary crisis in Western Europe only thanks to the treachery of the social chauvinists. The lag in revolutionary developments resulting directly from the absence of a revolutionary party enabled the German bourgeoisie to stabilize itself in 1918. The mobilization of the proletarian vanguard which was initiated only in 1919 by the founding of the Communist International could not keep pace with the swift revolutionary developments during the initial post-war years. As a consequence, open capitalist reaction was able to triumph under Mussolini in Italy in 1922. Then followed the most decisive event of the previous phase of development: in 1923 an exceptional revolutionary situation in Germany was missed. This led to the isolation of the workers’ revolution within the borders of the Soviet Union, and brought about a situation that no one could have predicted: a temporary equilibrium between the dictatorship of the proletariat in one country and the rest of the capitalist world. Within the Soviet Union this temporary and extremely unstable condition permitted processes of degeneration to set in which in the end completely destroyed the Third International as a revolutionary organization.

The revolutionary situation kept unfolding, but the false policies of the leadership turned the most favorable situations into a series of catastrophic defeats. In 1926 the British general strike was smashed. In 1927 the Stalinists policies permitted Chiang Kai-shek to drown the Chinese revolution in blood. In 1928 the vanguard of the world working class headed by Trotsky was deprived of all positions of power and influence, slandered, hounded, exiled, thrown into prison, and the state power in the USSR under Stalin began to swing more and more directly into the orbit of one imperialist power or another. The road was cleared for the triumph of the counter-revolution.

1n 1933 Hitler succeeded in taking power without even a defensive struggle on the part of the working class because of the uninterrupted betrayals of the Social Democrats and the Stalinists. Trotsky before the event predicted that such a defeat would set back the proletarian revolution by years, if not decades. To this series of staggering defeats, the traitors of the Second and Third Internationals now added the sidetracking of the French revolutionary movement in 1936-1938. And as the culminating convulsion of this entire period, the Spanish revolution went down, stabbed in the back by Stalin. Thus the events unfolded not along the rising curve of the victorious revolution but along the down: ward sweep of reaction.

This profound wave of reaction made possible the outbreak of the second world war and extended into the first years of the war up to the downfall of Mussolini. This event may be said to mark the beginning of a new proletarian upswing just as Mussolini’s rise twenty-two years previously marked the beginning of worldwide reaction following the First World War.

It was not difficult for superficial thinkers and sophists to draw from the treachery and bankruptcy of the working class leadership the conclusion that the working class itself was incapable of fulfilling its historic mission. This conclusion was invested with a semblance of truth by the way in which the defeats affected the great masses of the proletariat who naturally gave way to profound moods of discouragement, hopelessness, apathy. The masses needed time to recover from the defeats which set back mankind but which have not in the least altered the basic features and the basic forces of our epoch.

We witnessed once again solemn “burials” of Marxism. New classes (”bureaucratic collectivism”) were manufactured as coming to the fore to solve the contradictions of capitalism, etc., etc.

The Leninist analysis of the character of our epoch, the decisive class force in it, and the tasks ahead has been preserved, extended and deepened by only on tendency within the working class movement, the Fourth International founded by Leon Trotsky. In its basic aspects the position of the Fourth International remains that of Lenin during the last war and of the Third International in Lenin’s lifetime. Abrupt and even cataclysmic changes continue to mark our entire epoch. Far from mitigating, the contradictions of capitalism grow more and more acute. Capitalism is in its death agony. There is only one way out of this condition of uninterrupted social crisis and that is through the socialist revolution.

In an article written at the outbreak of the Second World War, On Workers’ Self-Defense, Trotsky formulated the basic conception of our movement in a few words:

“Today, at the beginning of the world war, we take as our point of departure, more than ever before, the inevitability and proximity of the proletarian world revolution. This fundamental idea which differentiates the Fourth International from all other labor organizations determines our entire activity ...”

The fundamental strategic conception upon which is based all the politics of the Fourth International was summed up by Trotsky in the Manifesto of the Fourth International on the Imperialist War and the Proletarian Revolution. In this Manifesto it is once again established that the material Ease of our epoch remains that of imperialism; the only progressive force remains the working class. All the historic conditions for the revolution are rapidly being fulfilled except that of leadership, i.e., the organization of a political party possessing the will and the ability to take power. Trotsky lists as rapidly maturing these key conditions:

“1) The bourgeois impasse and the resulting confusion of the ruling class; 2) the sharp dissatisfaction and the striving towards decisive changes in the ranks of the petty-bourgeoisie without whose support the big bourgeoisie cannot maintain itself; 3) the consciousness of the intolerable situation and the readiness for revolutionary actions in the ranks of the proletariat.”

In answer to the arguments of petty bourgeois cynics that the masses are not ready or willing to move toward revolution, Trotsky had this to say:

“Today almost nothing remains of the democratic and pacifist illusions. The peoples are suffering the present war without any longer believing in it, without expecting anything more from it than new chains. This applies also to the totalitarian states. The older generation of the workers who bore on their backs the burden of the first imperialist war and who have not forgotten its lessons are still far from eliminated from the arena. In the ears of the next to the oldest generation, which went to school during war time, the false slogans of patriotism and pacifism are still ringing. The inestimable experience of these strata who are now crashed by the weight of the war machine will reveal itself in full force when the war compels the toiling masses to come out openly against their governments.”

It is in the light of these facts that Trotsky reached his conclusion that the masses are far more ready for decisive action in the course of this war than they were in 1914-1918. Indeed, he declared specifically in the same Manifesto:

“These great tasks which only yesterday seemed long years, if not decades away, can loom up directly before us in the next two or three years, and even sooner.”

One might expect that Trotsky would accordingly have outlined for his followers a program based on expectations of early or easy rise to power. He does precisely the opposite. He warns:

“It is necessary to prepare for long years, if not decades, of war, uprisings, brief interludes of truce, new wars and new uprisings. A young revolutionary party must base itself on this perspective.”

In Trotsky’s eyes the grave danger in the period which we have already entered was not that the proletariat would fail to take the path of revolution, but that the initial battles for power would occur before a leadership had been consolidated capable of holding power. “This or that uprising may end and surely will end in defeat owing to the immaturity of the revolutionary leadership.” Despite such possible and even probable initial set-backs, Trotsky expected the unfolding events to provide the young revolutionary party “with enough opportunities and possibilities to test itself, to accumulate experience and to mature.” He emphasizes: ”It is not a question of a single uprising. It is a question of an entire revolutionary epoch.”

In connection with the inevitability and proximity of the proletarian revolution Trotsky thus underscores that the central problem facing the working class is the organization of the revolutionary political party:

“The conclusion is a simple one! It is necessary to carry on the work of educating and organizing the proletarian vanguard with tenfold energy.”


The Central Task

The outbreak of the proletarian revolution or more correctly, its extension beyond the boundaries of the Soviet Union has been delayed by more than two decades of reaction, the final link of which is the second world slaughter which has already lasted more than five years. It took slightly longer than Trotsky had originally calculated (two or three years) for the masses to overcome the effects of the previous defeats.

Still another cause for the delay of the revolution is the role of Stalinism. During the period of the Stalin-Hitler pact, which gave Hitler an opportunity to secure his western front while preparing for the colossal invasion eastward Stalin provided political support to the Axis. After the invasion he provided political support to the Allied imperialists. The prestige of the Soviet Union was thus utilized to divert the workers from espousing the historic interests of their own class and to betray them into supporting the cause of their mortal enemy, the bourgeoisie. Under different conditions, the Stalinists have repeated the role played by the Social Democrats in the last war. Today, instead of calling for the socialist revolution Stalinism is doing its utmost to prevent it and is organizing its murder squads to try to crush and stifle it wherever it might flare up. Rather than call upon the German workers to revolt—workers who have been dragooned into Hitler’s armies—rather than offer them a program of uniting to organize the Socialist United States of Europe, Stalinism simply labels them along with the rest of the German people “beasts” and utilizes its entire state power and the prestige of all the military victories of the Red Army to prevent them from finding the path to socialism.

But the final effect of the delay in the proletarian revolution will be to make its outbreak far more profound and sweeping from the very outset.

The entire continent of Europe is now seething. Events in Italy, France and in the Balkans have demonstrated already that the masses, first and foremost, the workers are evincing a growing capacity for self-action.

More than 20 million people in Europe have been torn from their homes, driven over the face of the continent. Nationalities have been thoroughly mixed. Millions have been herded into armies; other millions have been forced into factories. Europe today is a vast melting pot. Into this melting pot the Allies are pouring a steady stream of high explosives. The iron hoops of Nazism are beginning to crack. The pressures generating are enormous. When the explosion finally occurs its violence will be unprecedented in history. Under these conditions the task of creating the revolutionary party can be greatly facilitated and expedited.

We have already entered the first stages of the second revolutionary wave in the epoch of imperialism. This time it will sweep across Europe, shattering everything in its path, state barriers, the monopolistic cliques, the assassin regime of Stalin, the social democratic and liberal fossils—all these will be swept aside. The revolution will reach the Far East with incredible speed, raising to their feet the overwhelming majority of oppressed mankind. Led by the workers of the world they will end forever the monstrous barbarism of capitalism in its death agony.

History will then demonstrate the profundity of Trotsky’s insight and the correctness of his program.