Click on the headline to link to the Occupy Boston General Assembly Minutes website. Occupy Boston started at 6:00 PM, September 30, 2011.
Markin comment:
I will post any updates from that Occupy Boston site if there are any serious discussions of the way forward for the Occupy movement or, more importantly, any analysis of the now atrophied and dysfunctional General Assembly concept. In the meantime I will continue with the “Lessons From History ’’series started in the fall of 2011 with Karl Marx’s The Civil War In France-1871 (The defense of the Paris Commune). Right now this series is focused on the European socialist movement before the Revolutions of 1848.
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An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The Occupy Movement And All Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Occupy Protesters Everywhere!
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Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
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A Five-Point Program As Talking Points
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Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay to spread the available work around. Organize the unorganized- Organize the South- Organize Wal-Mart- Defend the right for public and private workers to unionize.
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Defend the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. Spent the dough instead on organizing the unorganized and on other labor-specific causes (good example, the November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio, bad example the Wisconsin gubernatorial recall race in June 2012).
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End the endless wars!- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan! Hands Off Iran! U.S. Hands Off The World!
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Fight for a social agenda for working people!. Quality Healthcare For All! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! Forgive student debt! Stop housing foreclosures!
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We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Build a workers party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed.
Emblazon on our red banner-Labor and the oppressed must rule!
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Marxism and the Jacobin Communist Tradition-Part One- Buonarroti and Babouvist Heritage (“Young Spartacus”-February 1976)
By Joseph Seymour
EDITOR'S NOTE: Over the weekend of 17-19 January in Berkeley more than 100 supporters of the Spartacus Youth League and the Spartacist League participated in a SYL West Coast educational conference. The program featured presentations on the Soviet economy, the Right Opposition in the Bolshevik Party during the 1920's, and the heritage of Jacobin communism. Beginning with this issue Young Spartacus is publishing the contribution "Marxism and the Jacobin Communist Tradition" by Joseph Seymour, a member of the Central Committee of the Spartacist League. To preserve the character of the verbal presentation we have introduced only stylistic alterations and deletions.
I am in the process of giving a seven-part [SYL class] series, titled "Marxism and the Jacobin Communist Tradition." This talk constitutes a compression of the first three parts: it is an attempt to analyze the main European revolutionary movement from the French Revolution until the time that Marx as a left-of-center bourgeois democrat arrived in France and Engels as a Utopian socialist, bohemian hell rake from the University of Berlin arrived in England, where they were transformed into communists.
In the general conception of the origins and background of Marxism there is the tendency toward idealization and individualization which sees Marx as a genius who assimilated Hegel, Ricardo and Adam Smith and who read history and then synthesized these intellectual traditions into Marxism. Now, this is simply not true. In 1847 Marx joined an organization which had a twelve year revolutionary history. He did not join as a member; he joined at the top after he had come to agreement with the leadership. But it was not his organization, and he was a leader not because these people were followers of Marx but because his own ideas were in congruence with theirs.
Objectively, there has been the suppression of the influence of the Jacobin communist tradition and the living organizational links, not simply the ideological and intellectual effects, of the French Revolution through two generations of revolutionary communists who, in the broad sense, educated Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. There are, I think, several reasons as to why there is this false view.
First, since World War II, particularly, in the Anglo-Saxon countries, virtually all of the literature on Marxist historiography has been done by academics who have no knowledge of or interest in revolutionary organization, so that there has been a systematic idealization of Marx. Second, the Stalinists, who have done much of the historical study of the pre-1848 left, are very much aware of the revolutionary movement, but introduce another kind of falsification, namely, the cult of personality projected back- wards. When Marx walks on the historic stage of 1843 in the Stalinist writings, he is presented as standing head and shoulders above the people who taught him things which he did not know and could not have figured out for himself. Within the Stalinist historiography of this period there is a strong tendency to deny Marx's assertion that the educator too must be educated. Finally, there is what could be called the obscurity of the obvious. Marx's debt to German philosophical traditions was in many ways unique. But Marx shared with almost all of his contemporaries a profound debt to the Jacobin communist tradition. In 1861 Marx wrote, in effect, "Well, of course, before 1848 everybody was a Babouvist." At that time all communists basically identified with the left wing of the French Revolution.
So, a main purpose of this series, of which the talk is a part, is to restore to the consciousness of our comrades our real debt to Babeuf, Buonarroti, Blanqui, Julian Harney and Karl Schapper. Without them, both as individuals and as tendencies', Marx would have been nothing other than a German academic, just another version of Bruno Bauer.
Shaping impact of Great French Revolution
The great British historian, William Maitland, said that the most difficult thing about history is to remember that events which happened long ago were once in the future. Indeed, one of the most difficult things is to be able to put yourself into the political context of the 1820's and the 1830's. But there are two things that stand out, and they are interrelated.
First, one cannot overestimate the degree to which the consciousness of the revolutionaries and communists of those days was shaped by the French Revolution. The Jacobin dictatorship which lasted one year represented for any revolutionary democrat or communist—and the line between them was very thin—the only thing that they had to look back on, the only historic experience that they could build on. The period from the overthrow of Robespierre at least to the revolution of 1830 in France and the Reform Act of 1832 in Britain, but really to the revolution of 1848, was a period of deep reaction, in which the possibility of a radical bourgeois-democratic republic seemed almost Utopian. The historic experiences on which to build a communist theory were very meager and were concentrated in one great event— the French Revolution, specifically, the Jacobin dictatorship.
Second, on the basis of the French Revolution and the attitudes of the ruling class, communism was generally identified with democracy. As Metternich remarked, "There is no difference between a liberal and a communist.” For Metternich there was no difference: if you had universal suffrage, if you overthrew the government and instituted a bourgeois democracy, then the collectivization of property—the expropriation of the bourgeoisie—was relatively easy. Only the experience of the revolution, of 1848 allowed for a general re-evaluation of that premise. But before 1848, from Metternich through Marx, it was assumed that universal suffrage, at least in a country like England, would be associated with the massive economic reorganization in the interests of the proletariat—the proletariat then
being not the industrial working class, but basically the plebeian masses, those who own nothing but their labor or who did not employ labor.
The French Revolution shares with the Bolshevik Revolution the fact that the revolutionaries had a strong doctrinal pre-history. Robespierre, Saint-Just, Babeuf and Marat were no less committed to carrying out the doctrines of Rousseau, Diderot and the other French philosophes than Lenin and Trotsky were to Marx. Therefore, one cannot understand the French Revolution, particularly Jacobin communism, without some knowledge of the left wing of the French Enlightenment.
The dominant philosopher who shaped the French revolutionary movement was Jean Jacques Rousseau. I will simply make the following point about Rousseau: unlike the other philosophers of the bourgeois-democratic movement, such as the Englishman Locke, Rousseau did not regard property as a natural right but as a social convention. He believed that as a social convention, property was serviceable in the interests of democracy and individual freedom. While having as an ideal a society of small property owners, Rousseau never regarded property as a natural right; therefore, one could indeed be a follower of Rousseau and be a communist, simply by differing with Rousseau not on the question of principle, but rather on the question of his empirical evaluation of property as the best convention to guarantee individual liberty.
There were also contemporaries of Rousseau, notably a Catholic priest named Mably and an atheist named Morelly, who disagreed with Rousseau. They contended that only under a collectivist system, only when there is equality of consumption and some kind of general collective organization of labor, can there arise a genuinely democratic society. There existed, therefore, in a doctrinal form, concepts of communism which arose out of the ideological preparation for the greatest of bourgeois-democratic revolutions.
Jacobin dictatorship
The Jacobin dictatorship, the reign of terror, the rule of Robespierre, represented an episode in which the revolutionary bourgeoisie, facing overwhelming international reaction and not yet having established its own strong state apparatus, had to make certain concessions to the masses, particularly the masses of Paris, which tended to be the seat of social power in France. In particular, the need to finance a revolutionary war could be done through either unrestrained inflationary finance, in which the living standards of the population would decline, or some kind of economic controls. Furthermore, the revolutionary bourgeoisie also faced the question of the expropriation of the reactionaries and disposition of their property. Thus, the Robespierre dictatorship, under the direct military pressure of the so-called sans-culottes of Paris, instituted elements of economic control in conflict with the basic bourgeois ideology of laissez faire, the unlimited expansion of incomes and the historic interests of the bourgeoisie.
However, Robespierre genuinely believed that his policies represented a trans-class national interest. In 1793 Robespierre rewrote the Declaration of the Rights of Man, since the original Declaration, representing an earlier phase, was too liberal. Incidentally, the rewritten Declaration of the Rights of Man is substantially • to the left of [Socialist Workers Party candidate] Peter Camejo's electoral campaign. The 1793 Declaration demanded that every able-bodied Frenchman be guaranteed a job or that the
state provide support; that the state provide free education; that every foreign citizen resident in France for more than six months and not a counterrevolutionary be automatically granted French citizenship; and that when the government violates the rights of the people the people have the sacred right and duty to insurrect.
Now, when the French Revolution had beaten back the external military threat, the conservative bourgeoisie, whose social base was mainly the peasantry, overthrew Robespierre; the conservative bourgeoisie formed a
parliamentary majority which had an element of a right-left bloc, because Robespierre had also tended to suppress elements of the Paris proletariat who were going too far. And that was Thermidor, the ninth of Thermidor. So the Robespierre heritage was therefore ambiguous. But, nonetheless, it was extremely important that the Jacobin dictatorship was assimilated in the communist tradition even by a certain kind of distortion of history—which saw Robespierre as really a communist—a distortion which certainly did not represent any malice, but rather a kind of false consciousness.
The Thermidorian reaction did not lead to a stable regime; only the overthrow of all elements of representative civilian government by Napoleon Bonaparte five years later stabilized that regime. So in the interim, the Jacobins, although suppressed and dispersed, continued to be a politically organized force and a potential contender for power.
Conspiracy of Equals
In 1796 there was a regroupment of the left-wing revolutionaries headed by Babeuf which on the basis of their experience had gone over to communism. Now, in some aspects, the Babeuf Conspiracy of Equals represented a genuine, fundamental programmatic shift toward communism. But around the Babeuf Conspiracy of Equals, which was not a small group of fanatics by any means, there were also followers of Robespierre, so they constituted basically a unified left opposition subscribing to two programs which were not really consistent with one another. One was a program simply calling for a return to the democratic constitution of 1793, which was acceptable to the Jacobins and had the historical authority of Robespierre. The other was the doctrine of Babouvists proper, which was that of a communistic regime.
The Conspiracy of Equals suffered from over-confidence; they simply passed out bills saying, "We are the secret committee of insurrection and we're going to insurrect." This agitation actually intersected considerable discontent. Thus, the army mutinied before they got around to organizing it, so that the rebellion was suppressed and the soldiers shipped out, and
the Conspiracy was infiltrated and suppressed. But it is worth noting that simply as an insurrection the Conspiracy of Equals could have succeeded. But the Conspiracy could not have carried out its program, and Babeuf personally would have been displaced by the right wing of his own movement. Nevertheless, one could have had a second reign of terror in 1796.
There was another important duality in Babouvism. On the one hand, it had its popular program for return to universal suffrage. On the other hand, the experience of the reign of terror, in which a conservative majority had ousted Robespierre, combined with the recognition that Robespierre had only stayed in power by calling upon the Paris population every once and awhile to invade the Convention and silence the representatives who had been elected by the peasants, convinced the Babouvists that they would need in the initial stages a dictatorship of revolutionaries. Filippo Buonarroti, who carried this tradition forward, described their ideas,
"To found a Republic belongs only to such disinterested friends of humanity and of their country whose reason and courage have shot above the reason and courage of their contemporaries. The spirit of the Republic when established forms that of the citizens and of the magistrates, but at the commencement it is only the wisest and most ardent instigators of reform who can create the popular republican spirit. It was therefore a point resolutely agreed upon by committee [the Babouvist committee] that the magistrates, imposed at first and exclusively of the best revolutionaries, should not be subsequently renewed by the full application of the constitutional laws at once, but only generally and partially as the proportion of progress of national regeneration."
One has here the germs of the concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat, albeit deformed through a certain objectively determined false
consciousness. The Babouvists empirically recognized that, had there been a free election in 1796, the communist Jacobins or even the radical Jacobins would not have been a majority; they were a majority in Paris but not in the country. This was not transformed into an understanding of the class differences between the peasantry, which had already gotten what they wanted, namely the land and the abolition of feudal taxes and obligations, and a pre-industrial working class; rather, this recognition was translated into the notion of the difference between the enlightened revolutionists and the backward masses.
So the revolutionary regime was seen as the dictatorship of a revolutionary party, selected on-the basis of individual political morality. In this sense, the Babouvists did not and could not transcend the ideological premises of the bourgeois-democratic revolution. Babeuf and Darthe were executed; but before his death, Babeuf wrote to one of his collaborators—he said, "Here are my notes, here are my ideas. Save these for posterity."
That collaborator for the next forty years worked to realize the Babouvist program. He was an Italian by the name of Filippo Michele Buonarroti. The most important work of his life, I would argue, was in the last five years, when the man was in his seventies. Because, he was an Italian, he did not participate as a politician during the Jacobin dictatorship but rather as a revolutionary administrator. He was a troubleshooter and a terrorist. So he began his career as the Jacobin equivalent of the Cheka. Then he was imprisoned for a while, but following Thermidor he was released, in this regroupment he joined the Babouvists. He was an orthodox follower of Robespierre; he convinced Babeuf for tactical reasons to claim the traditions of Robespierre rather than Hebert, who had less historical prestige with the masses.
Thinking about Buonarroti's career, the parallels with Trotsky are so great as to be overwhelming. They simply force themselves upon one's consciousness, although there is a difference, and it is a difference which appears superficial but is in fact fundamental, the difference between the bourgeois-democratic and the proletarian revolution.
Buonarroti was the only one of his revolutionary generation to carry on against overwhelming historical odds, and in greater isolation than Trotsky faced, the traditions of the French Revolution and its most radical expression. He did this in two forms. In the year 1828, as an old man, he published a book [History of Babeuf s Conspiracy of Equals], which both in effect and in purpose was The Revolution Betrayed of its day. In fact, the main theme was the original Thermidor, the one in 1794, not the one in 1924. In its day the book actually had a greater mass impact than The Revolution Betrayed, and was known as the Bible of revolutionaries. It was the book that educated the generation that educated Karl Marx. However, Buonarroti was not content, being a man of action, to limit himself simply to the literary expression of doctrine as important as that was. He also attempted to establish international revolutionary organizations.
Reaction and conspiratorial strategy
Yet there is a difference with Trotsky which is fundamental. In a certain sense it encapsulates the whole purpose of this class series. The French counterrevolution, and French Bonapartism, was forced by overwhelming historical objective circumstances. Thus, the entire generation of Jacobins, including many Babouvists, capitulated to Bonapartism, so that throughout the Napoleonic era the bureaucracy and the army contained ex-Jacobins, ex-Hebertists, ex-Babouvists and ex-partisans of Robespierre. Even Napoleon himself could declare, "I was never a dictator; I was never an oppressor. I was a true son of the French Revolution. I'm here because I fought to liberate the people against the tyrants." Read some of Napoleon's last letters; he sounds very radical.
Buonarroti's ex-Jacobin comrades tended to abound within the interstices of the French bureaucracy. In fact, one of the reasons Buonarroti survived was that he skillfully exploited the Jacobin "old boys club." This fact conditioned his conception of strategy, which was not the organization of a revolution from the ground up but rather from the top of society, from communist sympathizers within the state bureaucracy, within the army, within these very restricted parliaments. Therefore, the Buonarroti organizations were conspiratorial organizations in several different senses. They were not merely a means of hiding from the authorities, the absolutely reactionary authorities; they were a means of the conspiratorial infiltration and manipulation of the liberal opposition.
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Guidelines for recruitment to the first international communist (Babouvist) organization, the Sublimes Maitres Parfaits led by Filippo Buonarroti.
*Devotion to the principles of the order and willingness to sacrifice to them personal interest and pleasure.
*Courage, that is to say, scorn of danger of work and hardship. *Patience and perseverance.
*Moderation in the use of intoxicating liquors.
*The habit of speaking little and to the point.
*No wish to make an impression, to shine, and to impose oneself.
*Caution in gambling, in love, in anger, and in the opening of one's
heart.
*Exquisite sensibility concerning the wrongs that weigh on humanity.
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Buonarroti's strategy was to attempt to achieve through conspiratorial manipulation the organic radicalization of the French Revolution. You begin with a constitutional monarch, then you go to the liberal bourgeoisie, then the radical bourgeoisie, and then communism. The Buonarroti secret societies would have their members join something like the Society for Freedom of the Press or the semi-legal, liberal nationalistic oppositions in Metternich-ean Europe. So, you were electing somebody you thought was a good liberal; but he was really a communist on the hotline to Geneva, where Buonarroti was running the operation.
Thus, Buonarroti's strategy, which was in a certain sense realistically
conditioned by the existence of an era of bourgeois-democratic revolution, was the conspiratorial manipulation of the bourgeois-democratic revolution in the service of communism. For that reason these were hierarchical organizations whose ultimate program was not known to its lower ranks. Only Buonarroti and the Central Committee knew the real program. You joined if you were a liberal and believed in universal suffrage. If you were a revo¬lutionary democrat, you reached the second level; and you only got to know the final program after you had been coopted onto the Central Committee. Ultimately, Buonarroti's conception, of course, was Utopian. However, in the year 1821, Buonarroti's followers were involved in—even leading—partially successful, simultaneous insurrections in Spain, Naples and Rome. For one man, that is not bad!
In one talk I can only give some index of the importance of Buonarroti. If you read a biography of Marx, you will find under this period just names: he collaborated with this person here and that person there. Well, in almost every case, all of Marx's collabor¬ators in the 1840’s were either indirectly or directly influenced or recruited by Buonarroti! To give you just two examples, which could be multi¬plied ad infinitum. In 1847 the front group for the Communist League in Belgium was called the Democratic Association, of which Marx was the vice-president and a man named Lucien Jottrand was the president. In 1828 Buonarroti was in Belgium and he recruited a small circle of Belgian followers, one of whom was Lucien Jottrand. Another example: Marx's leading non-German collaborator throughout this period was the left-wing leader of British Chartism, Julian Harney, a very important figure in his own right. Barney’s mentor was an earlier left-wing leader of British Chartism named James Bronterre O'Brien. In 1836, Buonarroti's book on Babeuf was translated into English by -James Bronterre O'Brien.
So, I’ll conclude with an anecdote indicating what Buonarroti contributed to the communist movement. James Bronterre O'Brien, after he translated the book [History of Babeuf s Conspiracy of EquaIs], began a correspondence with Buonarroti the year before Buonarroti died. At that time O'Brien was an Owenite, or had been an Owenite, Owenite socialism being pacifist and cooperativist. O'Brien translated Owen's writings into French and sent them to Buonarroti and asked him for his ideas on Owenite socialism. Buonarroti wrote back, in effect, "You know, it's remarkable that Owen, independent of Babeuf and I, has the same conception of what society should look like, what we are working for. But he seems to believe that you can get this while keeping the existing British government, while keeping the monarchy.
