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Wednesday, November 21, 2012
Defend The Palestinian People- Defend Gaza
The Israeli government has declared that its shocking and
brutal assault on the Gaza strip, "Operation Pillar of Defence," will be a
“widespread campaign” and threatens “protracted conflict.” Among its opening
strikes was the assassination of the military leader of Islamist party Hamas,
Ahmed Jabari, and more than ten other Palestinians, as a terrifying rain of
missiles was fired from the air. 
Workers Vanguard No. 1012 |
9 November 2012
|
Free the Class-War Prisoners!
27th Annual PDC Holiday Appeal
(Class-Struggle Defense Notes)
This year marks the 27th Holiday Appeal for class-war prisoners, those thrown behind bars for their opposition to racist capitalist oppression. The Partisan Defense Committee provides monthly stipends to 16 of these prisoners as well as holiday gifts for them and their families. This is a revival of the tradition of the early International Labor Defense (ILD) under its secretary and founder James P. Cannon. The stipends are a necessary expression of solidarity with the prisoners—a message that they are not forgotten.
Launching the ILD’s appeal for the prisoners, Cannon wrote, “The men in prison are still part of the living class movement” (“A Christmas Fund of our Own,” Daily Worker, 17 October 1927). Cannon noted that the stipends program “is a means of informing them that the workers of America have not forgotten their duty toward the men to whom we are all linked by bonds of solidarity.” This motivation inspires our program today. The PDC also continues to publicize the causes of the prisoners in the pages of Workers Vanguard, the PDC newsletter, Class-Struggle Defense Notes, and our Web site partisandefense.org. We provide subscriptions to WV and accompany the stipends with reports on the PDC’s work. In a recent letter, MOVE prisoner Eddie Africa wrote, “I received the letters and the money, thank you for both, it’s a good feeling to have friends remembering you with affection!”
The Holiday Appeal raises the funds for this vital program. The PDC provides $25 per month to the prisoners, and extra for their birthdays and during the holiday season. We would like to provide more. The prisoners generally use the funds for basic necessities: supplementing the inadequate prison diet, purchasing stamps and writing materials needed to maintain contact with family and comrades, and pursuing literary, artistic, musical and other pursuits to mollify a bit the living hell of prison. The costs of these have obviously grown, including the exponential growth in prison phone charges.
The capitalist rulers have made clear their continuing determination to slam the prison doors on those who stand in the way of brutal exploitation, imperialist depredations and racist oppression. We encourage WV readers, trade-union activists and fighters against racist oppression to dig deep for the class-war prisoners. The 16 class-war prisoners receiving stipends from the PDC are listed below:
* * *
Mumia Abu-Jamal is a former Black Panther Party spokesman, a well-known supporter of the MOVE organization and an award-winning journalist known as “the voice of the voiceless.” Last December the Philadelphia district attorney’s office announced it was dropping its longstanding efforts to execute America’s foremost class-war prisoner. While this brings to an end the legal lynching campaign, Mumia remains condemned to spend the rest of his life in prison with no chance of parole, despite overwhelming evidence of his innocence.
Mumia was framed up for the 1981 killing of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner and was initially sentenced to death explicitly for his political views. Mountains of documentation proving his innocence, including the sworn confession of Arnold Beverly that he, not Mumia, shot and killed Faulkner, have been submitted to the courts. But from top to bottom, the courts have repeatedly refused to hear the exculpatory evidence.
The state authorities hope that with the transfer of Mumia from death row his cause will be forgotten and that he will rot in prison until he dies. This must not be Mumia’s fate. Fighters for Mumia’s freedom must link his cause to the class struggles of the multiracial proletariat. Trade unionists, opponents of the racist death penalty and fighters for black rights must continue the fight to free Mumia from “slow death” row in the racist dungeons of Pennsylvania.
Leonard Peltier is an internationally renowned class-war prisoner. Peltier’s incarceration for his activism in the American Indian Movement has come to symbolize this country’s racist repression of its native peoples, the survivors of centuries of genocidal oppression. Peltier’s frame-up for the 1975 deaths of two marauding FBI agents in what had become a war zone on the South Dakota Pine Ridge Reservation, shows what capitalist “justice” is all about. Although the lead government attorney has admitted, “We can’t prove who shot those agents,” and the courts have acknowledged blatant prosecutorial misconduct, the 68-year-old Peltier is still locked away. Peltier suffers from multiple serious medical conditions and is incarcerated far from his people and family. He is not scheduled to be reconsidered for parole for another 12 years!
Eight MOVE members—Chuck Africa, Michael Africa, Debbie Africa, Janet Africa, Janine Africa, Delbert Africa, Eddie Africa and Phil Africa—are in their 35th year of prison. They were sentenced to 30-100 years after the 8 August 1978 siege of their Philadelphia home by over 600 heavily armed cops, having been falsely convicted of killing a police officer who died in the cops’ own cross fire. In 1985, eleven of their MOVE family members, including five children, were massacred by Philly cops when a bomb was dropped on their living quarters. After more than three decades of unjust incarceration, these innocent prisoners are routinely turned down at parole hearings. None have been released.
Lynne Stewart is a radical lawyer sentenced to ten years for defending her client, a blind Egyptian cleric imprisoned for an alleged plot to blow up New York City landmarks in the early 1990s. For this advocate known for defense of Black Panthers, radical leftists and others reviled by the capitalist state, her sentence may well amount to a death sentence as she is 73 years old and suffers from breast cancer. Originally sentenced to 28 months, her resentencing more than quadrupled her prison time in a loud affirmation by the Obama administration that there will be no letup in the massive attack on democratic rights under the “war on terror.” This year her appeal of the onerous sentence was turned down.
Jaan Laaman and Thomas Manning are the two remaining anti-imperialist activists known as the Ohio 7 still in prison, convicted for their roles in a radical group that took credit for bank “expropriations” and bombings of symbols of U.S. imperialism, such as military and corporate offices, in the late 1970s and ’80s. Before their arrests in 1984 and 1985, the Ohio 7 were targets of massive manhunts. Their children were kidnapped at gunpoint by the Feds.
The Ohio 7’s politics were once shared by thousands of radicals during the Vietnam antiwar movement and by New Leftists who wrote off the possibility of winning the working class to a revolutionary program and saw themselves as an auxiliary of Third World liberation movements. But, like the Weathermen before them, the Ohio 7 were spurned by the “respectable” left. From a proletarian standpoint, the actions of these leftist activists against imperialism and racist injustice are not a crime. They should not have served a day in prison.
Ed Poindexter and Wopashitwe Mondo Eyen we Langa are former Black Panther supporters and leaders of the Omaha, Nebraska, National Committee to Combat Fascism. They were victims of the FBI’s deadly COINTELPRO operation under which 38 Black Panther Party members were killed and hundreds more imprisoned on frame-up charges. Poindexter and Mondo were railroaded to prison and sentenced to life for a 1970 explosion that killed a cop, and they have now spent more than 40 years behind bars. Nebraska courts have repeatedly denied Poindexter and Mondo new trials despite the fact that a crucial piece of evidence excluded from the original trial, a 911 audio tape long-suppressed by the FBI, proved that testimony of the state’s key witness was perjured.
Hugo Pinell, the last of the San Quentin 6 still in prison, has been in solitary isolation for more than four decades. He was a militant anti-racist leader of prison rights organizing along with George Jackson, his comrade and mentor, who was gunned down by prison guards in 1971. Despite numerous letters of support and no disciplinary write-ups for over 28 years, Pinell was again denied parole in 2009. Now in his 60s, Pinell continues to serve a life sentence at the notorious torture chamber, Pelican Bay Security Housing Unit in California, a focal point for hunger strikes against grotesquely inhuman conditions.
Send your contributions to: PDC, P.O. Box 99, Canal Street Station, New York, NY 10013; (212) 406-4252.
Tuesday, November 20, 2012
From The Pen Of Vladimir Lenin-Party Organisation and Party Literature(1905)
Click on the headline to link to the Lenin Internet Archives.
The film goes through Lenin's early childhood, the key role that the execution of older brother Alexander for an assassination attempt on the Czar played in driving him to revolution, his early involvement in the revolutionary socialist movement, his imprisonment and various internal and external exiles, his role in the 1905 Revolution, his role in the 1917 Revolution, his consolidation of power through the Bolshevik Party and his untimely death in 1924. An added feature, as usual in these kinds of films, is the use of ‘talking heads’ who periodically explain what it all meant. I would caution those who are unfamiliar with the history of the anti-Bolshevik movement that three of the commentators, Adam Ulam, Richard Daniels and Robert Conquest were ‘stars’ of that movement at the height of the anti-Soviet Cold War. I would also add that nothing presented in this biography, despite the alleged additional materials available with the ‘opening’ of the Soviet files, that has not been familiar for a long time.
*******
V. I. Lenin
An accursed period of Aesopian language, literary bondage, slavish speech, and ideological serfdom! The proletariat has put an end to this foul atmosphere which stifled everything living and fresh in Russia. But so far the proletariat has won only half freedom for Russia.
The revolution is not yet completed. While tsarism is no longer strong enough to defeat the revolution, the revolution is not yet strong enough to defeat tsarism. And we are living in times when everywhere and in everything there operates this unnatural combination of open, forthright, direct and consistent party spirit with an underground, covert,“diplomatic” and dodgy “legality”. This unnatural combination makes itself felt even in our newspaper: for all Mr. Guchkov’s[3]witticisms about Social-Democratic tyranny forbidding the publication of moderate liberal-bourgeois newspapers, the fact remains that Proletary,[4]the Central Organ of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, still remains outside the locked doors ofautocratic, police-ridden Russia.
Be that as it may, the half-way revolution compels all of us to set to work at once organising the whole thing on new lines. Today literature, even that published “legally”, can be nine-tenths party literature. It must become party literature In contradistinction to bourgeois customs, to the profit-making, commercialised bourgeois press, to bourgeois literary careerism and individualism, “aristocratic anarchism” and drive for profit, the socialist proletariat must put forward the principle of party literature, must develop this principle and put it into practice as fully and completely as possible.
What is this principle of party literature? It is not simply that, for the socialist proletariat, literature cannot be a means of enriching individuals or groups: it cannot, in fact, be an individual undertaking, independent of the common cause of the proletariat. Down with non-partisan writers! Down with literary supermen! Literature must become part of the common cause of the proletariat, “a cog and a screw” of one single great Social-Democratic mechanism set in motion by the entire politically-conscious vanguard of the entire working class. Literature must become a component of organised, planned and integrated Social-Democratic Party work.
“All comparisons are lame,” says a German proverb. So is my comparison of literature with a cog, of a living movement with a mechanism. And I daresay there will ever be hysterical intellectuals to raise a howl about such a comparison, which degrades, deadens, “bureaucratises” the free battle of ideas, freedom of criticism, freedom of literary creation, etc., etc. Such outcries, in point of fact, would be nothing more than an expression of bourgeois-intellectual individualism. There is no question that literature is least of all subject to· mechanical adjustment or levelling, to the rule of the majority over the minority. There is no question, either, that in this field greater scope must undoubtedly be allowed for personal initiative, individual inclination, thought and fantasy,, form and content. All this is undeniable; but all this simply shows that the literary side of the proletarian party cause cannot be mechanically identified with its other sides. This, however, does not in the least refute the proposition, alien and strange to the bourgeoisie and bourgeois democracy, that literature must by all means and necessarily become an element of Social-Democratic Party work, inseparably bound up with the other elements. Newspapers must become the organs of the various party organisations, and their writers must by all means become members of these organisations. Publishing and distributing centres, bookshops and reading-rooms, libraries and similar establishments—must all be under party control. The organised socialist proletariat must keep an eye on all this work, supervise it in its entirety, and, from beginning to end, without any exception, infuse into it the life-stream of the living proletarian cause, thereby cutting the ground from under the old, semi-Oblomov,[5] semi-shopkeeper Russian principle: the writer does the writing, the reader does the reading..
We are not suggesting, of course, that this transformation of literary work, which has been defiled by the Asiatic censorship and the European bourgeoisie, can be accomplished all at once. Far be it from us to advocate any kind of standardised system, or a solution by means of a few decrees. Cut-and-dried schemes are least of all applicable here. What is needed is that the whole of our Party, and the entire politically-conscious Social-Democratic proletariat throughout Russia, should become aware of this new problem, specify it clearly and everywhere set about solving it. Emerging from the captivity of the feudal censorship, we have no desire to become, and shall not become, prisoners of bourgeois-shopkeeper literary relations. We want to establish, and we shall establish, a free press, free not simply from the police, but also from capital, from careerism, and what is more, free from bourgeois-anarchist individualism.
These last words may sound paradoxical, or an affront to the reader. What! some intellectual, an ardent champion of liberty, may shout. What, you want to impose collective control on such a delicate, individual matter as literary work! You want workmen to decide questions of science, philosophy, or aesthetics by a majority of votes! You deny the absolute freedom of absolutely individual ideological work!
Calm yourselves, gentlemen! First of all, we are discussing party literature and its subordination to party control. Everyone is free to write and say whatever he likes, without any restrictions. But every voluntary association (including the party) is also free to expel members who use the name of the party to advocate anti-party views. Freedom of speech and the press must be complete. But then freedom of association must be complete too. I am bound to accord you, in the name of free speech, the full right to shout, lie and write to your heart’s content. But you are bound to grant me, in the name of freedom of association, the right to enter into, or withdraw from, association with people advocating this or that view. The party is a voluntary association, which would inevitably break up, first ideologically and then physically, if it did not cleanse itself of people advocating anti-party views. And to define the border-line between party and anti-party there is the party programme, the party’s resolutions on tactics and its rules and, lastly, the entire experience of international Social-Democracy, the voluntary international associations of the proletariat, which has constantly brought into its parties individual elements and trends not fully consistent, not completely Marxist and not altogether correct and which, on the other hand, has constantly conducted periodical “cleansings” of its ranks. So it will be with us too, supporters of bourgeois “freedom of criticism”, within the Party. We are now becoming a mass party all at once, changing abruptly to an open organisation, and it is inevitable that we shall be joined by many who are inconsistent (from the Marxist standpoint), perhaps we shall be joined even by some Christian elements, and even by some mystics. We have sound stomachs and we are rock-like Marxists. We shall digest those inconsistent elements. Freedom of thought and freedom of criticism within the Party will never make us forget about the freedom of organising people into those voluntary associations known as parties.
Secondly, we must say to you bourgeois individualists that your talk about absolute freedom is sheer hypocrisy. There can be no real and effective“freedom” in a society based on the power of money, in a society in which the masses of working people live in poverty and the handful of rich live like parasites. Are you free in relation to your bourgeois publisher, Mr. Writer, in relation to your bourgeois public, which demands that you provide it with pornography in frames[1]and paintings, and prostitution as a“supplement” to “sacred” scenic art? This absolute freedom is a bourgeois or an anarchist phrase (since, as a world outlook, anarchism is bourgeois philosophy turned inside out). One cannot live in society and be free from society. The freedom of the bourgeois writer, artist or actress is simply masked (or hypocritically masked) dependence on the money-bag, on corruption, on prostitution.
And we socialists expose this hypocrisy and rip off the false labels, not in order to arrive at a non-class literature and art (that will be possible only in a socialist extra-class society), but to contrast this hypocritically free literature, which is in reality linked to the bourgeoisie, with a really free one that will be openly linked to the pro let an at.
It will be a free literature, because the idea of socialism and sympathy with the working people, and not greed or careerism, will bring ever new forces to its ranks. It will be a free literature, because it will serve, not some satiated heroine, not the bored “upper ten thousand” suffering from fatty degeneration, but the millions and tens of millions of working people—the flower of the country, its strength and its future. It will be a free literature, enriching the last word in the revolutionary thought of man kind with the experience and living work of the socialist proletariat, bringing about permanent interaction between the experience of the past (scientific socialism, the completion of the development of socialism from its primitive, utopian forms) and the experience of the present (the present struggle of the worker comrades).
To work, then, comrades! We are faced with a new and difficult task. But it is a noble and grateful one—to organise a broad, multiform and varied literature inseparably linked with the Social-Democratic working-class movement. All Social-Democratic literature must become Party literature. Every newspaper, journal, publishing house, etc., must immediately set about reorganising its work, leading up to a situation in which it will, in one form or another, be integrated into one Party organisation or another. Only then will“Social-Democratic” literature really become worthy of that name, only then will it be able to fulfil its duty and, even within the framework of bourgeois society, break out of bourgeois slavery and merge with the movement of the really advanced and thoroughly revolutionary class.
Markin comment from the American Left History blog:
DVD REVIEW
LENIN-VOICE OF THE REVOLUTION, A&E PRODUCTION,
2005
Every militant who wants to
fight for socialism, or put the fight for socialism back on the front burner,
needs to come to terms with the legacy
of Vladimir Lenin and his impact on 20th century revolutionary thought. Every
radical who believes that society can be changed by just a few adjustments
needs to address this question as well in order to understand the limits of
such a position. Thus, it is necessary for any politically literate person of
this new generation to go through the arguments both politically and
organizationally associated with Lenin’s name. Before delving into his works a
review of his life and times would help to orient those unfamiliar with the
period. Obviously the best way to do this is read one of the many biographies
about him. There is not dearth of such biographies although they overwhelmingly
tend to be hostile. But so be it. For those who prefer a quick snapshot view of
his life this documentary, although much, much too simply is an adequate sketch
of the highlights of his life. It is worth an hour of your time, in any case.
The film goes through Lenin's early childhood, the key role that the execution of older brother Alexander for an assassination attempt on the Czar played in driving him to revolution, his early involvement in the revolutionary socialist movement, his imprisonment and various internal and external exiles, his role in the 1905 Revolution, his role in the 1917 Revolution, his consolidation of power through the Bolshevik Party and his untimely death in 1924. An added feature, as usual in these kinds of films, is the use of ‘talking heads’ who periodically explain what it all meant. I would caution those who are unfamiliar with the history of the anti-Bolshevik movement that three of the commentators, Adam Ulam, Richard Daniels and Robert Conquest were ‘stars’ of that movement at the height of the anti-Soviet Cold War. I would also add that nothing presented in this biography, despite the alleged additional materials available with the ‘opening’ of the Soviet files, that has not been familiar for a long time.
*******
V. I. Lenin
V. I. Lenin
Party Organisation and Party Literature
Published:Novaya Zhizn, No. 12, November 13, 1905. Signed: N. Lenin. Published according to the text in Novaya Zhizn.
Source:Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1965, Moscow, Volume 10, pages 44-49.
Translated:
Transcription\Markup:R. Cymbala
Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive (2001). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.
Other Formats: Text• README
The
new conditions for Social-Democratic work in Russia which have arisen since the October revolution have brought the question of party literature to the fore. The distinction between the illegal and the legal press, that melancholy heritage of the epoch of feudal, autocratic Russia, is beginning to disappear. It is not yet dead, by a long way. The hypocritical government of our Prime Minister is still running amuck, so much so that Izvestia Soveta Rabochikh Deputatov[2]is printed “illegally”; but apart from bringing disgrace on the government, apart from striking further moral blows at it, nothing comes of the stupid attempts to prohibit” that which the government is powerless to thwart.
So long as there was a distinction between the illegal and the legal press, the question of the party and non-party press was decided extremely simply and in an extremely false and abnormal way. The entire illegal press was a party press, being published by organisations and run by groups which in one way or another were linked with groups of practical party workers. The entire legal press was non-party— since parties were banned—but it “gravitated”towards one party or another. Unnatural alliances, strange“bed-fellows” and false cover-devices were inevitable. The forced reserve of those who wished to express party views merged with the immature thinking or mental cowardice of those who had not risen to these views and who were not, in effect, party people.
An accursed period of Aesopian language, literary bondage, slavish speech, and ideological serfdom! The proletariat has put an end to this foul atmosphere which stifled everything living and fresh in Russia. But so far the proletariat has won only half freedom for Russia.
The revolution is not yet completed. While tsarism is no longer strong enough to defeat the revolution, the revolution is not yet strong enough to defeat tsarism. And we are living in times when everywhere and in everything there operates this unnatural combination of open, forthright, direct and consistent party spirit with an underground, covert,“diplomatic” and dodgy “legality”. This unnatural combination makes itself felt even in our newspaper: for all Mr. Guchkov’s[3]witticisms about Social-Democratic tyranny forbidding the publication of moderate liberal-bourgeois newspapers, the fact remains that Proletary,[4]the Central Organ of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, still remains outside the locked doors ofautocratic, police-ridden Russia.
Be that as it may, the half-way revolution compels all of us to set to work at once organising the whole thing on new lines. Today literature, even that published “legally”, can be nine-tenths party literature. It must become party literature In contradistinction to bourgeois customs, to the profit-making, commercialised bourgeois press, to bourgeois literary careerism and individualism, “aristocratic anarchism” and drive for profit, the socialist proletariat must put forward the principle of party literature, must develop this principle and put it into practice as fully and completely as possible.
What is this principle of party literature? It is not simply that, for the socialist proletariat, literature cannot be a means of enriching individuals or groups: it cannot, in fact, be an individual undertaking, independent of the common cause of the proletariat. Down with non-partisan writers! Down with literary supermen! Literature must become part of the common cause of the proletariat, “a cog and a screw” of one single great Social-Democratic mechanism set in motion by the entire politically-conscious vanguard of the entire working class. Literature must become a component of organised, planned and integrated Social-Democratic Party work.
“All comparisons are lame,” says a German proverb. So is my comparison of literature with a cog, of a living movement with a mechanism. And I daresay there will ever be hysterical intellectuals to raise a howl about such a comparison, which degrades, deadens, “bureaucratises” the free battle of ideas, freedom of criticism, freedom of literary creation, etc., etc. Such outcries, in point of fact, would be nothing more than an expression of bourgeois-intellectual individualism. There is no question that literature is least of all subject to· mechanical adjustment or levelling, to the rule of the majority over the minority. There is no question, either, that in this field greater scope must undoubtedly be allowed for personal initiative, individual inclination, thought and fantasy,, form and content. All this is undeniable; but all this simply shows that the literary side of the proletarian party cause cannot be mechanically identified with its other sides. This, however, does not in the least refute the proposition, alien and strange to the bourgeoisie and bourgeois democracy, that literature must by all means and necessarily become an element of Social-Democratic Party work, inseparably bound up with the other elements. Newspapers must become the organs of the various party organisations, and their writers must by all means become members of these organisations. Publishing and distributing centres, bookshops and reading-rooms, libraries and similar establishments—must all be under party control. The organised socialist proletariat must keep an eye on all this work, supervise it in its entirety, and, from beginning to end, without any exception, infuse into it the life-stream of the living proletarian cause, thereby cutting the ground from under the old, semi-Oblomov,[5] semi-shopkeeper Russian principle: the writer does the writing, the reader does the reading..
We are not suggesting, of course, that this transformation of literary work, which has been defiled by the Asiatic censorship and the European bourgeoisie, can be accomplished all at once. Far be it from us to advocate any kind of standardised system, or a solution by means of a few decrees. Cut-and-dried schemes are least of all applicable here. What is needed is that the whole of our Party, and the entire politically-conscious Social-Democratic proletariat throughout Russia, should become aware of this new problem, specify it clearly and everywhere set about solving it. Emerging from the captivity of the feudal censorship, we have no desire to become, and shall not become, prisoners of bourgeois-shopkeeper literary relations. We want to establish, and we shall establish, a free press, free not simply from the police, but also from capital, from careerism, and what is more, free from bourgeois-anarchist individualism.
These last words may sound paradoxical, or an affront to the reader. What! some intellectual, an ardent champion of liberty, may shout. What, you want to impose collective control on such a delicate, individual matter as literary work! You want workmen to decide questions of science, philosophy, or aesthetics by a majority of votes! You deny the absolute freedom of absolutely individual ideological work!
Calm yourselves, gentlemen! First of all, we are discussing party literature and its subordination to party control. Everyone is free to write and say whatever he likes, without any restrictions. But every voluntary association (including the party) is also free to expel members who use the name of the party to advocate anti-party views. Freedom of speech and the press must be complete. But then freedom of association must be complete too. I am bound to accord you, in the name of free speech, the full right to shout, lie and write to your heart’s content. But you are bound to grant me, in the name of freedom of association, the right to enter into, or withdraw from, association with people advocating this or that view. The party is a voluntary association, which would inevitably break up, first ideologically and then physically, if it did not cleanse itself of people advocating anti-party views. And to define the border-line between party and anti-party there is the party programme, the party’s resolutions on tactics and its rules and, lastly, the entire experience of international Social-Democracy, the voluntary international associations of the proletariat, which has constantly brought into its parties individual elements and trends not fully consistent, not completely Marxist and not altogether correct and which, on the other hand, has constantly conducted periodical “cleansings” of its ranks. So it will be with us too, supporters of bourgeois “freedom of criticism”, within the Party. We are now becoming a mass party all at once, changing abruptly to an open organisation, and it is inevitable that we shall be joined by many who are inconsistent (from the Marxist standpoint), perhaps we shall be joined even by some Christian elements, and even by some mystics. We have sound stomachs and we are rock-like Marxists. We shall digest those inconsistent elements. Freedom of thought and freedom of criticism within the Party will never make us forget about the freedom of organising people into those voluntary associations known as parties.
Secondly, we must say to you bourgeois individualists that your talk about absolute freedom is sheer hypocrisy. There can be no real and effective“freedom” in a society based on the power of money, in a society in which the masses of working people live in poverty and the handful of rich live like parasites. Are you free in relation to your bourgeois publisher, Mr. Writer, in relation to your bourgeois public, which demands that you provide it with pornography in frames[1]and paintings, and prostitution as a“supplement” to “sacred” scenic art? This absolute freedom is a bourgeois or an anarchist phrase (since, as a world outlook, anarchism is bourgeois philosophy turned inside out). One cannot live in society and be free from society. The freedom of the bourgeois writer, artist or actress is simply masked (or hypocritically masked) dependence on the money-bag, on corruption, on prostitution.
And we socialists expose this hypocrisy and rip off the false labels, not in order to arrive at a non-class literature and art (that will be possible only in a socialist extra-class society), but to contrast this hypocritically free literature, which is in reality linked to the bourgeoisie, with a really free one that will be openly linked to the pro let an at.
It will be a free literature, because the idea of socialism and sympathy with the working people, and not greed or careerism, will bring ever new forces to its ranks. It will be a free literature, because it will serve, not some satiated heroine, not the bored “upper ten thousand” suffering from fatty degeneration, but the millions and tens of millions of working people—the flower of the country, its strength and its future. It will be a free literature, enriching the last word in the revolutionary thought of man kind with the experience and living work of the socialist proletariat, bringing about permanent interaction between the experience of the past (scientific socialism, the completion of the development of socialism from its primitive, utopian forms) and the experience of the present (the present struggle of the worker comrades).
To work, then, comrades! We are faced with a new and difficult task. But it is a noble and grateful one—to organise a broad, multiform and varied literature inseparably linked with the Social-Democratic working-class movement. All Social-Democratic literature must become Party literature. Every newspaper, journal, publishing house, etc., must immediately set about reorganising its work, leading up to a situation in which it will, in one form or another, be integrated into one Party organisation or another. Only then will“Social-Democratic” literature really become worthy of that name, only then will it be able to fulfil its duty and, even within the framework of bourgeois society, break out of bourgeois slavery and merge with the movement of the really advanced and thoroughly revolutionary class.
Source:Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1965, Moscow, Volume 10, pages 44-49.
Translated:
Transcription\Markup:R. Cymbala
Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive (2001). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.
Other Formats: Text• README
Notes
[1]There must be a misprint in the source, which says ramkakh(frames), while the context suggests romanakh(novels).—Ed.
[2]Izvestia Soveta Rabochikh Deputatov (Bulletin of the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies)—an official newspaper of the St. Petersburg Soviet of Workers’ Deputies. It appeared from October 17(30)to December 14(27), 1905. Being in effect an information bulletin, it had no permanent staff and was printed by the workers themselves in the printing-works of various bourgeois papers. Altogether ten issues were brought out. Issue No. 11 was seized by the police while being printed.
[3]Guchkov, A. I. (1862-1936)—a monarchist representative of the big commercial and industrial bourgeoisie.
[4]Proletary (The Proletarian)—an Illegal Bolshevik weekly, Central Organ of the R.S.D.L.P., founded by decision of the Third Party Congress. On April 27 (May 10), 1905, a plenary meeting of the Central Committee of the Party appointed Lenin editor-in-chief of Proletary. The weekly appeared in Geneva from May 14 (27) to November 12(25), 1905. Twenty-six issues were published In all. The weekly continued the line of the old, Leninist Iskra, and of the Bolshevik paper Vperyod.
Lenin contributed about 90 articles and short items to Proletary. His articles determined the political line of the weekly, its ideological content and Bolshevik course. Lenin did a tremendous amount of work as the leader and editor of the weekly. He edited the material to be published, lending it the utmost fidelity to principle, a Party spirit, and precision and clarity in discussing important theoretical problems and elucidating questions of the revolutionary movement.
The editorial board was constantly assisted by V. V. Vorovsky, A. V. Lunacharsky and M. S. Olminsky. N. K. Krupskaya V M Velichkina and V. A. Karpinsky had a big share in the editorial work. The weekly was closely linked with the working-class movement in Russia. It carried articles and other items by workers directly engaged in the revolutionary movement. V. D. Bonch Bruyevich, S. I. Gusev and A. I. Ulyanova-Yelizarova arranged for the collection of articles in Russia and their dispatch to Geneva. N. K. Krupskaya and L. A. Fotieva were in charge of the weekly’s correspondence with Party organisations and readers in Russia.
Proletary was prompt to react to all major events in the Russian and international working-class movement. It fought relentlessly against the Mensheviks and other opportunist, revisionist elements.
The weekly did much to propagate the decisions of the Third Party Congress an d played a prominent role in the organisational and ideological unification of the Bolsheviks. It was the only Russian Social-Democratic paper that consistently upheld revolutionary Marxism and dealt with all the principal issues of the revolution developing in Russia. By giving full information on the events of 1905, it roused the broad masses of the working people to fight for the victory of the revolution.
Proletary had great influence over the Social-Democratic organisations in Russia, where some of Lenin’s articles were reprinted from it by Bolshevik papers and circulated in leaflet form.
Proletary ceased to a p pear shortly after Lenin had left for Russia early in November 1905. Its last two issues (Nos. 25 and 26) were published under the editorship of V. V. Vorovsky. The several articles Lenin had written for those issues appeared when he had left Geneva.
[5]Oblomov—a landlord, the chief character in a novel of the same name by the Russian writer I. A. Goncharov. Oblomov was the personification of routine, stagnation, and incapacity for action.
Published:Novaya Zhizn, No. 12, November 13, 1905. Signed: N. Lenin. Published according to the text in Novaya Zhizn.
Source:Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1965, Moscow, Volume 10, pages 44-49.
Translated:
Transcription\Markup:R. Cymbala
Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive (2001). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.
Other Formats: Text• README
Source:Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1965, Moscow, Volume 10, pages 44-49.
Translated:
Transcription\Markup:R. Cymbala
Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive (2001). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.
Other Formats: Text• README
The
new conditions for Social-Democratic work in Russia which have arisen since the October revolution have brought the question of party literature to the fore. The distinction between the illegal and the legal press, that melancholy heritage of the epoch of feudal, autocratic Russia, is beginning to disappear. It is not yet dead, by a long way. The hypocritical government of our Prime Minister is still running amuck, so much so that Izvestia Soveta Rabochikh Deputatov[2]is printed “illegally”; but apart from bringing disgrace on the government, apart from striking further moral blows at it, nothing comes of the stupid attempts to prohibit” that which the government is powerless to thwart.
So long as there was a distinction between the illegal and the legal press, the question of the party and non-party press was decided extremely simply and in an extremely false and abnormal way. The entire illegal press was a party press, being published by organisations and run by groups which in one way or another were linked with groups of practical party workers. The entire legal press was non-party— since parties were banned—but it “gravitated”towards one party or another. Unnatural alliances, strange“bed-fellows” and false cover-devices were inevitable. The forced reserve of those who wished to express party views merged with the immature thinking or mental cowardice of those who had not risen to these views and who were not, in effect, party people. An accursed period of Aesopian language, literary bondage, slavish speech, and ideological serfdom! The proletariat has put an end to this foul atmosphere which stifled everything living and fresh in Russia. But so far the proletariat has won only half freedom for Russia.
The revolution is not yet completed. While tsarism is no longer strong enough to defeat the revolution, the revolution is not yet strong enough to defeat tsarism. And we are living in times when everywhere and in everything there operates this unnatural combination of open, forthright, direct and consistent party spirit with an underground, covert,“diplomatic” and dodgy “legality”. This unnatural combination makes itself felt even in our newspaper: for all Mr. Guchkov’s[3]witticisms about Social-Democratic tyranny forbidding the publication of moderate liberal-bourgeois newspapers, the fact remains that Proletary,[4]the Central Organ of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, still remains outside the locked doors ofautocratic, police-ridden Russia.
Be that as it may, the half-way revolution compels all of us to set to work at once organising the whole thing on new lines. Today literature, even that published “legally”, can be nine-tenths party literature. It must become party literature In contradistinction to bourgeois customs, to the profit-making, commercialised bourgeois press, to bourgeois literary careerism and individualism, “aristocratic anarchism” and drive for profit, the socialist proletariat must put forward the principle of party literature, must develop this principle and put it into practice as fully and completely as possible.
What is this principle of party literature? It is not simply that, for the socialist proletariat, literature cannot be a means of enriching individuals or groups: it cannot, in fact, be an individual undertaking, independent of the common cause of the proletariat. Down with non-partisan writers! Down with literary supermen! Literature must become part of the common cause of the proletariat, “a cog and a screw” of one single great Social-Democratic mechanism set in motion by the entire politically-conscious vanguard of the entire working class. Literature must become a component of organised, planned and integrated Social-Democratic Party work.
“All comparisons are lame,” says a German proverb. So is my comparison of literature with a cog, of a living movement with a mechanism. And I daresay there will ever be hysterical intellectuals to raise a howl about such a comparison, which degrades, deadens, “bureaucratises” the free battle of ideas, freedom of criticism, freedom of literary creation, etc., etc. Such outcries, in point of fact, would be nothing more than an expression of bourgeois-intellectual individualism. There is no question that literature is least of all subject to· mechanical adjustment or levelling, to the rule of the majority over the minority. There is no question, either, that in this field greater scope must undoubtedly be allowed for personal initiative, individual inclination, thought and fantasy,, form and content. All this is undeniable; but all this simply shows that the literary side of the proletarian party cause cannot be mechanically identified with its other sides. This, however, does not in the least refute the proposition, alien and strange to the bourgeoisie and bourgeois democracy, that literature must by all means and necessarily become an element of Social-Democratic Party work, inseparably bound up with the other elements. Newspapers must become the organs of the various party organisations, and their writers must by all means become members of these organisations. Publishing and distributing centres, bookshops and reading-rooms, libraries and similar establishments—must all be under party control. The organised socialist proletariat must keep an eye on all this work, supervise it in its entirety, and, from beginning to end, without any exception, infuse into it the life-stream of the living proletarian cause, thereby cutting the ground from under the old, semi-Oblomov,[5] semi-shopkeeper Russian principle: the writer does the writing, the reader does the reading..
We are not suggesting, of course, that this transformation of literary work, which has been defiled by the Asiatic censorship and the European bourgeoisie, can be accomplished all at once. Far be it from us to advocate any kind of standardised system, or a solution by means of a few decrees. Cut-and-dried schemes are least of all applicable here. What is needed is that the whole of our Party, and the entire politically-conscious Social-Democratic proletariat throughout Russia, should become aware of this new problem, specify it clearly and everywhere set about solving it. Emerging from the captivity of the feudal censorship, we have no desire to become, and shall not become, prisoners of bourgeois-shopkeeper literary relations. We want to establish, and we shall establish, a free press, free not simply from the police, but also from capital, from careerism, and what is more, free from bourgeois-anarchist individualism.
These last words may sound paradoxical, or an affront to the reader. What! some intellectual, an ardent champion of liberty, may shout. What, you want to impose collective control on such a delicate, individual matter as literary work! You want workmen to decide questions of science, philosophy, or aesthetics by a majority of votes! You deny the absolute freedom of absolutely individual ideological work!
Calm yourselves, gentlemen! First of all, we are discussing party literature and its subordination to party control. Everyone is free to write and say whatever he likes, without any restrictions. But every voluntary association (including the party) is also free to expel members who use the name of the party to advocate anti-party views. Freedom of speech and the press must be complete. But then freedom of association must be complete too. I am bound to accord you, in the name of free speech, the full right to shout, lie and write to your heart’s content. But you are bound to grant me, in the name of freedom of association, the right to enter into, or withdraw from, association with people advocating this or that view. The party is a voluntary association, which would inevitably break up, first ideologically and then physically, if it did not cleanse itself of people advocating anti-party views. And to define the border-line between party and anti-party there is the party programme, the party’s resolutions on tactics and its rules and, lastly, the entire experience of international Social-Democracy, the voluntary international associations of the proletariat, which has constantly brought into its parties individual elements and trends not fully consistent, not completely Marxist and not altogether correct and which, on the other hand, has constantly conducted periodical “cleansings” of its ranks. So it will be with us too, supporters of bourgeois “freedom of criticism”, within the Party. We are now becoming a mass party all at once, changing abruptly to an open organisation, and it is inevitable that we shall be joined by many who are inconsistent (from the Marxist standpoint), perhaps we shall be joined even by some Christian elements, and even by some mystics. We have sound stomachs and we are rock-like Marxists. We shall digest those inconsistent elements. Freedom of thought and freedom of criticism within the Party will never make us forget about the freedom of organising people into those voluntary associations known as parties.
Secondly, we must say to you bourgeois individualists that your talk about absolute freedom is sheer hypocrisy. There can be no real and effective“freedom” in a society based on the power of money, in a society in which the masses of working people live in poverty and the handful of rich live like parasites. Are you free in relation to your bourgeois publisher, Mr. Writer, in relation to your bourgeois public, which demands that you provide it with pornography in frames[1]and paintings, and prostitution as a“supplement” to “sacred” scenic art? This absolute freedom is a bourgeois or an anarchist phrase (since, as a world outlook, anarchism is bourgeois philosophy turned inside out). One cannot live in society and be free from society. The freedom of the bourgeois writer, artist or actress is simply masked (or hypocritically masked) dependence on the money-bag, on corruption, on prostitution.
And we socialists expose this hypocrisy and rip off the false labels, not in order to arrive at a non-class literature and art (that will be possible only in a socialist extra-class society), but to contrast this hypocritically free literature, which is in reality linked to the bourgeoisie, with a really free one that will be openly linked to the pro let an at.
It will be a free literature, because the idea of socialism and sympathy with the working people, and not greed or careerism, will bring ever new forces to its ranks. It will be a free literature, because it will serve, not some satiated heroine, not the bored “upper ten thousand” suffering from fatty degeneration, but the millions and tens of millions of working people—the flower of the country, its strength and its future. It will be a free literature, enriching the last word in the revolutionary thought of man kind with the experience and living work of the socialist proletariat, bringing about permanent interaction between the experience of the past (scientific socialism, the completion of the development of socialism from its primitive, utopian forms) and the experience of the present (the present struggle of the worker comrades).
To work, then, comrades! We are faced with a new and difficult task. But it is a noble and grateful one—to organise a broad, multiform and varied literature inseparably linked with the Social-Democratic working-class movement. All Social-Democratic literature must become Party literature. Every newspaper, journal, publishing house, etc., must immediately set about reorganising its work, leading up to a situation in which it will, in one form or another, be integrated into one Party organisation or another. Only then will“Social-Democratic” literature really become worthy of that name, only then will it be able to fulfil its duty and, even within the framework of bourgeois society, break out of bourgeois slavery and merge with the movement of the really advanced and thoroughly revolutionary class.
Notes
[1]There must be a misprint in the source, which says ramkakh(frames), while the context suggests romanakh(novels).—Ed.
[2]Izvestia Soveta Rabochikh Deputatov (Bulletin of the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies)—an official newspaper of the St. Petersburg Soviet of Workers’ Deputies. It appeared from October 17(30)to December 14(27), 1905. Being in effect an information bulletin, it had no permanent staff and was printed by the workers themselves in the printing-works of various bourgeois papers. Altogether ten issues were brought out. Issue No. 11 was seized by the police while being printed.
[3]Guchkov, A. I. (1862-1936)—a monarchist representative of the big commercial and industrial bourgeoisie.
[4]Proletary (The Proletarian)—an Illegal Bolshevik weekly, Central Organ of the R.S.D.L.P., founded by decision of the Third Party Congress. On April 27 (May 10), 1905, a plenary meeting of the Central Committee of the Party appointed Lenin editor-in-chief of Proletary. The weekly appeared in Geneva from May 14 (27) to November 12(25), 1905. Twenty-six issues were published In all. The weekly continued the line of the old, Leninist Iskra, and of the Bolshevik paper Vperyod.
Lenin contributed about 90 articles and short items to Proletary. His articles determined the political line of the weekly, its ideological content and Bolshevik course. Lenin did a tremendous amount of work as the leader and editor of the weekly. He edited the material to be published, lending it the utmost fidelity to principle, a Party spirit, and precision and clarity in discussing important theoretical problems and elucidating questions of the revolutionary movement.
The editorial board was constantly assisted by V. V. Vorovsky, A. V. Lunacharsky and M. S. Olminsky. N. K. Krupskaya V M Velichkina and V. A. Karpinsky had a big share in the editorial work. The weekly was closely linked with the working-class movement in Russia. It carried articles and other items by workers directly engaged in the revolutionary movement. V. D. Bonch Bruyevich, S. I. Gusev and A. I. Ulyanova-Yelizarova arranged for the collection of articles in Russia and their dispatch to Geneva. N. K. Krupskaya and L. A. Fotieva were in charge of the weekly’s correspondence with Party organisations and readers in Russia.
Proletary was prompt to react to all major events in the Russian and international working-class movement. It fought relentlessly against the Mensheviks and other opportunist, revisionist elements.
The weekly did much to propagate the decisions of the Third Party Congress an d played a prominent role in the organisational and ideological unification of the Bolsheviks. It was the only Russian Social-Democratic paper that consistently upheld revolutionary Marxism and dealt with all the principal issues of the revolution developing in Russia. By giving full information on the events of 1905, it roused the broad masses of the working people to fight for the victory of the revolution.
Proletary had great influence over the Social-Democratic organisations in Russia, where some of Lenin’s articles were reprinted from it by Bolshevik papers and circulated in leaflet form.
Proletary ceased to a p pear shortly after Lenin had left for Russia early in November 1905. Its last two issues (Nos. 25 and 26) were published under the editorship of V. V. Vorovsky. The several articles Lenin had written for those issues appeared when he had left Geneva.
[5]Oblomov—a landlord, the chief character in a novel of the same name by the Russian writer I. A. Goncharov. Oblomov was the personification of routine, stagnation, and incapacity for action.
From The Pages Of The Communist International- In Honor Of The Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Communist International (1919)
Click on the headline to link to the "Communist International Internet Archives."
Markin comment from the
American Left History blog (2007) :
BOOK REVIEW
‘LEFT-WING’ COMMUNISM-AN
INFANTILE DISORDER, V.I. LENIN, UNIVERSITY PRESS OF THE PACIFIC, CALIFORNIA,
2001
An underlying premise of the
Lenin-led Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917 was that success there would
be the first episode in a world-wide socialist revolution. While a specific
timetable was not placed on the order of the day the early Bolshevik leaders,
principally Lenin and Trotsky, both assumed that those events would occur in
the immediate post-World War I period, or shortly thereafter. Alas, such was
not the case, although not from lack of trying on the part of an
internationalist-minded section of the Bolshevik leadership.
Another underlying premise,
developed by the Leninists as part of their opposition to the imperialist First
World War, was the need for a new revolutionary labor international to replace
the compromised and moribund Socialist International (also known as the Second
International) which had turned out to be useless as an instrument for
revolution or even of opposition to the European war. The Bolsheviks took that
step after seizing power and established the Communist International (also
known as the Comintern or Third International) in 1919. As part of the process
of arming that international with a revolutionary strategy (and practice) Lenin
produced this polemic to address certain confusions, some willful, that had
arisen in the European left and also attempted to instill some of the
hard-learned lessons of the Russian revolutionary experience in them.
The Russian Revolution and
after it the Comintern in the early heroic days, for the most part, drew the
best and most militant layers of the working class and radical intellectuals to
their defense. However, that is not the same as drawing experienced Bolsheviks
to that defense. Many militants were anti-parliamentarian or anti-electoral in
principle after the sorry experiences with the European social democracy.
Others wanted to emulate the old heroic days of the Bolshevik underground party
or create a minority, exclusive conspiratorial party.
Still others wanted to abandon the reformist
bureaucratically-led trade unions to their then current leaderships, and so on.
Lenin’s polemic, and it nothing but a flat-out polemic against all kinds of
misconceptions of the Bolshevik experience, cut across these erroneous ideas
like a knife. His literary style may not appeal to today’s audience but the
political message still has considerable application today. At the time that it
was written no less a figure than James P. Cannon, a central leader of the
American Communist Party, credited the pamphlet with straightening out that
badly confused movement (Indeed, it seems every possible political problem
Lenin argued against in that pamphlet had some following in the American
Party-in triplicate!). That alone makes it worth a look at.
mmunist
I would like to highlight one
point made by Lenin that has currency for leftists today, particularly American
leftists. At the time it was written many (most) of the communist organizations
adhering to the Comintern were little more than propaganda groups (including
the American Party). Lenin suggested one of the ways to break out of that
isolation was a tactic of critical support to the still large and influential
social democratic organizations at election time. In his apt expression- to
support those organizations "like a rope supports a hanging man".
However, as part of my
political experiences in America around election time I have run into any
number of ‘socialists’ and ‘communists’ who have turned Lenin’s concept on its
head. How? By arguing that militants needed to ‘critically support’ the
Democratic Party (who else, right?) as an application of the Leninist criterion
for critical support. No, a thousand times no. Lenin’s specific example was the
reformist British Labor Party, a party at that time (and to a lesser extent
today) solidly based on the trade unions- organizations of the working class
and no other. The Democratic Party in America was then, is now, and will always
be a capitalist party. Yes, the labor bureaucrats and ordinary workers support
it, finance it, drool over it but in no way is it a labor party. That is the
class difference which even sincere militants have broken their teeth on for at
least the last seventy years. And that, dear reader, is another reason why it
worthwhile to take a peek at this book.
From The Massachusetts Citizens Against The Death Penalty Website
Click on the headline to link to the “Massachusetts Citizens Against The Death Penalty” website.
Markin comment:
I have been an opponent of
the death penalty for as long as I have been a political person, a long time.
While I do not generally agree with the thrust of the Massachusetts Citizens
Against The Death Penalty strategy for eliminating the death penalty nation-wide
almost solely through legislative and judicial means (think about the 2011 Troy
Davis case down in Georgia for a practical example of the limits of that
strategy) I am always willing to work with them when specific situations come
up. In any case they have a long pedigree extending, one way or the other, back
to Sacco and Vanzetti and that is always important to remember whatever our
political differences.
From The Pen Of American Communist Party Founder And Trotskyist Leader James P. Cannon-THE AFL, THE STRIKE WAVE, AND TRADE UNION PERSPECTIVES (1933)
Click on the headline to
link to the “James P. Cannon Internet Archives.”
*************
Markin comment on founding
member James P. Cannon and the early American Communist Party from the “American
Left History” blog:
If you are interested in the
history of the American Left or are a militant trying to understand some of the
past mistakes of our history and want to know some of the problems that
confronted the early American Communist Party and some of the key
personalities, including James Cannon, who formed that party this book is for
you.
At the beginning of the 21st
century after the demise of the Soviet Union and the apparent ‘death of
communism’ it may seem fantastic and utopian totoday’s militants that early in
the 20th century manyanarchist, socialist, syndicalist and other working class
militants of this country coalesced to form an American Communist Party. For
the most part, these militants honestly did so in order to organize an American
socialist revolution patterned on and influenced by the Russian October
Revolution of 1917. James P. Cannon represents one of the important individuals
and faction leaders in that effort and was in the thick of the battle as a
central leader of the Party in this period. Whatever his political mistakes at
the time, or later, one could certainly use such a militant leader today. His
mistakes were the mistakes of a man looking for a revolutionary path.
For those not familiar with
this period a helpful introduction by the editors gives an analysis of the
important fights which occurred inside the party. That overview highlights some
of the now more obscure personalities (a helpful biographical glossary is
provided), where they stood on the issues and insights into the significance of
the crucial early fights in the party.
These include questions which
are still relevant today;alegal vs. an underground party; the proper attitude
toward parliamentary politics; support to third party bourgeois
candidates;trade union policy; class war defense as well as how to rein in the
intense internal struggle of the various factions for organizational control of
the party. This makes it somewhat easier for those not well-versed in the
intricacies of the political disputes which wracked the early American party to
understand how these questions tended to pull it in on itself. In many ways,
given the undisputed rise of American imperialism in the immediate aftermath of
World War I, this is a story of the ‘dog days’ of the party. Unfortunately,
that rise combined with the international ramifications of the internal dispute
in the Russian Communist Party and in the Communist International shipwrecked
the party as a revolutionary party toward the end of this period.
In the introduction the
editors motivate the purpose for the publication of the book by stating the
Cannon was the finest Communist leader that America had ever produced. This an
intriguing question. The editors trace their political lineage back to Cannon’s
leadership of the early Communist Party and later after his expulsion to the
Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party so their perspective is obvious. What does
the documentation provided here show? I would argue that the period under study
represented Cannon’s apprenticeship. Although the hothouse politics of the
early party clarified some of the issues of revolutionary strategy for him I
believe that it was not until he linked up with Trotsky in the 1930’s that he became
the kind of leader who could lead a revolution. Of course, since Cannon never
got a serious opportunity to lead revolutionary struggles here this is mainly
reduced to speculation on my part. Later books written by him make the case
better. One thing is sure- in his prime he had the instincts to want to lead a
revolution.
As an addition to the
historical record of this period this book is a very good companion to the
two-volume set by Theodore Draper - The Roots of American Communism and Soviet
Russia and American Communism- the definitive study on the early history of the
American Communist Party.It is also a useful companion to Cannon’s own The
First Ten Years of American Communism. I would add that this is something of a
labor of love on the part of the editors. This book was published at a time
when the demise of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe was in full swing
and anything related to Communist studies was deeply discounted. Nevertheless,
for better or worse, the American Communist Party (and its offshoots) needs to
be studied as an ultimately flawed example of a party that failed in its
mission to create a radical version of society in America. Now is the time to
study this history.
*************James P. Cannon
The Militant
October 14, 1933
THE AFL, THE STRIKE WAVE, AND TRADE UNION PERSPECTIVES
Written: 1933
Source: The Militant. Original bound volumes of The Militant and microfilm provided by the Holt Labor Library, San Francisco, California.
Transcription\HTML Markup:Andrew Pollack
The new masses who are sweeping into the trade union movement, heralding their arrival by tumultuous struggles, are without any direct representation at the convention. The strike wave, the great, new, vital, and determining factor in the labor movement, lacks an authentic spokesman there. But this dread specter is present all the time and dominates the proceedings. The strike wave is the unofficial delegate which disturbs the dead calm of self-satisfied conservatism so familiar at all AFL gatherings in recent years. All the important speeches and deliberations were made as if in reply to the thunderous arguments of this new force which is speaking in terms of class battles, of strikes and picket lines.
The forces of resurgent life, represented by the strike wave, which have not yet found formal expression in official representation, did not record their real strength in the convention proceedings. They only recorded their presence in the situation and served notice of a future participation. That alone was sufficient—so ominous is the new power—to make it the axis around which all the proceedings and discussion revolved. The stormy and irrepressible forces of the new labor militancy, clamoring their demands in the nationwide strike movement, evoked the terrified concern of the labor lieutenants of capital gathered in solemn convention, and of the political spokesmen of capital, including the president of the U.S. and his general, Johnson, who addressed them.
The real design behind the benevolence of the Roosevelt administration toward union organization was brought out more sharply and clearly at the convention. They want a trade union movement that will be an instrument to restrain the workers, to prevent strikes and to suppress and outlaw the strikes that do occur. Only a few months have gone by since the NRA was hailed as the liberator of the workers, and already the iron fist is coming out of the velvet glove. Roosevelt’s threat to put the recalcitrant horses in a corral; General Johnson’s blunter declaration, “You cannot tolerate the strike,” and his appeal to public opinion “to destroy every subversive influence”; the glorification of Gompers and the reminder of his role in dragooning the American workers into the war—in these expressions of the authentic spokesmen of the capitalist exploiters the Roosevelt program was given a plainer and more easily read translation than before.
The appearance of Green in a Washington church pulpit, with his pitiful appeal in biblical language to the “masters” to be good to their “servants,” unspeakably contemptible and servile as it was, only served to demonstrate how neatly the AFL leaders have fitted themselves into the NRA scheme to harness the insurgent movement of the American workers through the official trade union movement. There is no doubt where they stand, nor where the convention which they dominate stands.
But the outward manifestations at Washington are by no means an accurate reflection of the situation within the AFL, and still less of the present-day labor movement in its broader aspects. Against the policy and intentions of the capitalist politicians and their labor allies, as revealed at the Washington convention, the new outstanding developments must be considered—the influx of hundreds of thousands of new workers into the unions, the formation within a few months’ time of 500 new federal unions, the insistent demand for the industrial union form of organization to meet the needs of the newly organized masses. These factors, counterbalanced to the formal official decisions and pronouncements, require consideration in a rounded view of the actual situation.
They are an essential part of the “proceedings” of the fifty-third convention of the AFL. And in addition to that, the thunder of the strike wave outside the door also belongs in the record. An appreciation of the present situation in the trade union movement, and of the AFL convention as a distorted reflection of it, is possible only if these factors are taken into account and given due weight and importance. In that case the one-sided picture of the Washington gathering, as just another expression of hidebound conservatism, fades away and we see the actual movement as it is in reality, fermenting with new life and on the verge of great convulsions which will upset all the schemes and plans.
Nothing was firmly settled or decided for the labor movement at the Washington convention. The new elements at work in the trade unions registered themselves and served notice, so to speak, of a further participation later on. The contending forces in the trade union movement, which will clash with increasing fury from this time forward, met in a preliminary skirmish at Washington. From there the conflict will be transferred back to the field of class struggle—to the strikes, the picket lines, the battles with the state forces and armed thugs, and the forthcoming internal struggles within the trade union organizations.
All of this is projected on the basis of a strike wave of such dimensions as has not been seen in recent times and which, in our judgment, is only a curtain raiser of what is to follow. The bosses and their political and trade union agents apparently have the same opinion. They have enunciated their program at the AFL convention. The labor movement itself, that is, the real movement of the masses, has not yet worked out an estimation of the perspective and a program of its own. This is the big task and need of the present time. Its solution devolves naturally on the class-conscious elements.
The strike wave is the first reply that the American workers have made to the frightful conditions and standards imposed upon them during the crisis and which the NRA mechanism is seeking to stabilize and make permanent. The present scope and insurgent militancy of the strike wave are especially portentous as to what is to follow if the workers fail to get satisfaction of their demands.
And this, in our opinion, is precisely what is going to happen. The attempt of the Roosevelt administration to “plan” industry on a basis of capitalist private ownership is inevitably doomed to a resounding collapse, and that very probably in the near future. With that, and with the failure also to satisfy the expectations of the workers which were aroused by the ballyhoo campaign of the NRA, will come a tremendous disillusionment of the workers and a rapidly increasing tendency on their part to resort to more aggressive struggles; to rely on their own strength and organization. Trade unionism, which was held out to them in the first stages of the NRA as a device to restrain their independent movement, will become for the workers the medium for its expression on a colossal scale. The workers will turn to trade unionism in real earnest, and they will be bent on making the unions serve as instruments of struggle against the exploiters.
Then, as has already been clearly intimated in the threatening speeches of Roosevelt and Johnson at the Washington convention, the benevolent mask of the Roosevelt administration will be taken off. The unions they encouraged, and even coddled, as long as they thought they could serve as “harness” will meet open opposition from the government. All the forces at its command, from systematic antiunion and antistrike propaganda to police and military force, will be brought to bear. The unions, insofar as they really fight—and that is the function which the conditions of the times impose upon them—will have to fight for their existence against the government itself.
The capitalist attack against the trade unions as organs of struggle will be carried inside the unions. Green, Lewis, and Company will be called upon to purge the organizations of their militant elements and restore the unions to conservative and respectable docility. The prompt response of these treacherous agents of capital to this demand is assured in advance; their attitude at Washington, in harmony with all their previous conduct, signifies this first of all.
The trade unions, swelling into larger proportions by the influx of new members on one side, will witness wholesale expulsions and splits, engendered by the reactionary bureaucracy on the other. Insurgent workers who insist on striking—the “horses” that “refuse to work in harness”will meet the condemnation of the labor bureaucracy. Their strikes will be outlawed and denounced as communistic plots. A campaign of redbaiting will be inaugurated against revolutionaries and communists. Where these do not exist they will be invented. Every worker who wants to fight for his rights and wants to make the union fight for them will be branded as a “red.” The next developments of the trade union movement will unfold in a seething tide of labor rebellion—of “outlaw” strikes, clashes with the authorities, fierce internal struggles in the unions, expulsions, and splits.
The fact that already today hundreds of thousands of workers are streaming into the trade unions is in itself a fact of incalculable significance. The workers are on the move. That is what is new; that is what is important in the situation. The trade union is the first and most elementary form of working-class organization, for which no substitute has ever been invented. The workers take their first steps on the path of class development through that door. Hundreds of thousands are taking this step already today, a large percentage of them for the first time. Millions of others will follow them tomorrow. No matter how conservative the unions may be, no matter how reactionary their present leadership, and regardless of what the real purposes of the Roosevelt administration were in giving a certain encouragement and impetus to this trade union revival—in spite of all of this, the movement itself represents an elemental force, a power which properly influenced at the right time by the class-conscious vanguard, can break through all the absolute forms and frustrate all the reactionary schemes.
This movement of the masses into the trade unions can be seriously influenced only from within. From this it follows: Get into the unions. Stay there. Work within.
Before any serious development of a revolutionary organization can be expected in America this penetration of the trade unions must begin in earnest. The militants who undertake this task now, after all the discredit brought to the name of communism by the Stalinists, will labor under a double handicap. The complete and unchallenged supremacy of the reactionaries in the trade union leadership; the weight of the government and of all capitalist propaganda and repressive forces on their side; the popular hostility to communism and the relationship of forces in general—these circumstances alone will constitute huge obstacles at the beginning. Besides that, the new left-wing movement will have to pay for the sins and failures of the old.
The labor fakers will start new expulsion campaigns against the radicals the moment their influence is felt again in the mass movement. It is folly to think that the task of penetrating the mass trade unions, under the given conditions, and of reconstituting a vigorous left wing within them can be accomplished with brass bands playing and banners flying. Quiet and persistent work, and loyal cooperation with all progressive-minded workers who want to build fighting unions—this simple prescription stands first in order. The rest will follow.
We give no pledge to refrain from revolutionary activity in the unions or to turn our backs on “outlaw” strikes. We leave such trade union tactics to opportunists and traitors. It is our aim, on the contrary, to be with the masses, especially at the moment of their sharpest collisions with the capitalists, whatever form these collisions may take. In order that this association with the revolting masses can have a fruitful revolutionary influence, it has to begin now by an entrenchment of the militant and class-conscious elements in the AFL unions and the formation of a left wing within them.
Source: The Militant. Original bound volumes of The Militant and microfilm provided by the Holt Labor Library, San Francisco, California.
Transcription\HTML Markup:Andrew Pollack
Editorial
The Fifty-third Annual Convention of the American Federation of Labor convened at a turning point in the life of the labor movement, when the resurgent forces of new life, thrust forward by the powerful impulsion of the class struggle, are beginning to push their way through the dry crust and restraining forms of conservative trade unionism.The new masses who are sweeping into the trade union movement, heralding their arrival by tumultuous struggles, are without any direct representation at the convention. The strike wave, the great, new, vital, and determining factor in the labor movement, lacks an authentic spokesman there. But this dread specter is present all the time and dominates the proceedings. The strike wave is the unofficial delegate which disturbs the dead calm of self-satisfied conservatism so familiar at all AFL gatherings in recent years. All the important speeches and deliberations were made as if in reply to the thunderous arguments of this new force which is speaking in terms of class battles, of strikes and picket lines.
The forces of resurgent life, represented by the strike wave, which have not yet found formal expression in official representation, did not record their real strength in the convention proceedings. They only recorded their presence in the situation and served notice of a future participation. That alone was sufficient—so ominous is the new power—to make it the axis around which all the proceedings and discussion revolved. The stormy and irrepressible forces of the new labor militancy, clamoring their demands in the nationwide strike movement, evoked the terrified concern of the labor lieutenants of capital gathered in solemn convention, and of the political spokesmen of capital, including the president of the U.S. and his general, Johnson, who addressed them.
The real design behind the benevolence of the Roosevelt administration toward union organization was brought out more sharply and clearly at the convention. They want a trade union movement that will be an instrument to restrain the workers, to prevent strikes and to suppress and outlaw the strikes that do occur. Only a few months have gone by since the NRA was hailed as the liberator of the workers, and already the iron fist is coming out of the velvet glove. Roosevelt’s threat to put the recalcitrant horses in a corral; General Johnson’s blunter declaration, “You cannot tolerate the strike,” and his appeal to public opinion “to destroy every subversive influence”; the glorification of Gompers and the reminder of his role in dragooning the American workers into the war—in these expressions of the authentic spokesmen of the capitalist exploiters the Roosevelt program was given a plainer and more easily read translation than before.
The appearance of Green in a Washington church pulpit, with his pitiful appeal in biblical language to the “masters” to be good to their “servants,” unspeakably contemptible and servile as it was, only served to demonstrate how neatly the AFL leaders have fitted themselves into the NRA scheme to harness the insurgent movement of the American workers through the official trade union movement. There is no doubt where they stand, nor where the convention which they dominate stands.
But the outward manifestations at Washington are by no means an accurate reflection of the situation within the AFL, and still less of the present-day labor movement in its broader aspects. Against the policy and intentions of the capitalist politicians and their labor allies, as revealed at the Washington convention, the new outstanding developments must be considered—the influx of hundreds of thousands of new workers into the unions, the formation within a few months’ time of 500 new federal unions, the insistent demand for the industrial union form of organization to meet the needs of the newly organized masses. These factors, counterbalanced to the formal official decisions and pronouncements, require consideration in a rounded view of the actual situation.
They are an essential part of the “proceedings” of the fifty-third convention of the AFL. And in addition to that, the thunder of the strike wave outside the door also belongs in the record. An appreciation of the present situation in the trade union movement, and of the AFL convention as a distorted reflection of it, is possible only if these factors are taken into account and given due weight and importance. In that case the one-sided picture of the Washington gathering, as just another expression of hidebound conservatism, fades away and we see the actual movement as it is in reality, fermenting with new life and on the verge of great convulsions which will upset all the schemes and plans.
Nothing was firmly settled or decided for the labor movement at the Washington convention. The new elements at work in the trade unions registered themselves and served notice, so to speak, of a further participation later on. The contending forces in the trade union movement, which will clash with increasing fury from this time forward, met in a preliminary skirmish at Washington. From there the conflict will be transferred back to the field of class struggle—to the strikes, the picket lines, the battles with the state forces and armed thugs, and the forthcoming internal struggles within the trade union organizations.
All of this is projected on the basis of a strike wave of such dimensions as has not been seen in recent times and which, in our judgment, is only a curtain raiser of what is to follow. The bosses and their political and trade union agents apparently have the same opinion. They have enunciated their program at the AFL convention. The labor movement itself, that is, the real movement of the masses, has not yet worked out an estimation of the perspective and a program of its own. This is the big task and need of the present time. Its solution devolves naturally on the class-conscious elements.
The strike wave is the first reply that the American workers have made to the frightful conditions and standards imposed upon them during the crisis and which the NRA mechanism is seeking to stabilize and make permanent. The present scope and insurgent militancy of the strike wave are especially portentous as to what is to follow if the workers fail to get satisfaction of their demands.
And this, in our opinion, is precisely what is going to happen. The attempt of the Roosevelt administration to “plan” industry on a basis of capitalist private ownership is inevitably doomed to a resounding collapse, and that very probably in the near future. With that, and with the failure also to satisfy the expectations of the workers which were aroused by the ballyhoo campaign of the NRA, will come a tremendous disillusionment of the workers and a rapidly increasing tendency on their part to resort to more aggressive struggles; to rely on their own strength and organization. Trade unionism, which was held out to them in the first stages of the NRA as a device to restrain their independent movement, will become for the workers the medium for its expression on a colossal scale. The workers will turn to trade unionism in real earnest, and they will be bent on making the unions serve as instruments of struggle against the exploiters.
Then, as has already been clearly intimated in the threatening speeches of Roosevelt and Johnson at the Washington convention, the benevolent mask of the Roosevelt administration will be taken off. The unions they encouraged, and even coddled, as long as they thought they could serve as “harness” will meet open opposition from the government. All the forces at its command, from systematic antiunion and antistrike propaganda to police and military force, will be brought to bear. The unions, insofar as they really fight—and that is the function which the conditions of the times impose upon them—will have to fight for their existence against the government itself.
The capitalist attack against the trade unions as organs of struggle will be carried inside the unions. Green, Lewis, and Company will be called upon to purge the organizations of their militant elements and restore the unions to conservative and respectable docility. The prompt response of these treacherous agents of capital to this demand is assured in advance; their attitude at Washington, in harmony with all their previous conduct, signifies this first of all.
The trade unions, swelling into larger proportions by the influx of new members on one side, will witness wholesale expulsions and splits, engendered by the reactionary bureaucracy on the other. Insurgent workers who insist on striking—the “horses” that “refuse to work in harness”will meet the condemnation of the labor bureaucracy. Their strikes will be outlawed and denounced as communistic plots. A campaign of redbaiting will be inaugurated against revolutionaries and communists. Where these do not exist they will be invented. Every worker who wants to fight for his rights and wants to make the union fight for them will be branded as a “red.” The next developments of the trade union movement will unfold in a seething tide of labor rebellion—of “outlaw” strikes, clashes with the authorities, fierce internal struggles in the unions, expulsions, and splits.
The fact that already today hundreds of thousands of workers are streaming into the trade unions is in itself a fact of incalculable significance. The workers are on the move. That is what is new; that is what is important in the situation. The trade union is the first and most elementary form of working-class organization, for which no substitute has ever been invented. The workers take their first steps on the path of class development through that door. Hundreds of thousands are taking this step already today, a large percentage of them for the first time. Millions of others will follow them tomorrow. No matter how conservative the unions may be, no matter how reactionary their present leadership, and regardless of what the real purposes of the Roosevelt administration were in giving a certain encouragement and impetus to this trade union revival—in spite of all of this, the movement itself represents an elemental force, a power which properly influenced at the right time by the class-conscious vanguard, can break through all the absolute forms and frustrate all the reactionary schemes.
This movement of the masses into the trade unions can be seriously influenced only from within. From this it follows: Get into the unions. Stay there. Work within.
Before any serious development of a revolutionary organization can be expected in America this penetration of the trade unions must begin in earnest. The militants who undertake this task now, after all the discredit brought to the name of communism by the Stalinists, will labor under a double handicap. The complete and unchallenged supremacy of the reactionaries in the trade union leadership; the weight of the government and of all capitalist propaganda and repressive forces on their side; the popular hostility to communism and the relationship of forces in general—these circumstances alone will constitute huge obstacles at the beginning. Besides that, the new left-wing movement will have to pay for the sins and failures of the old.
The labor fakers will start new expulsion campaigns against the radicals the moment their influence is felt again in the mass movement. It is folly to think that the task of penetrating the mass trade unions, under the given conditions, and of reconstituting a vigorous left wing within them can be accomplished with brass bands playing and banners flying. Quiet and persistent work, and loyal cooperation with all progressive-minded workers who want to build fighting unions—this simple prescription stands first in order. The rest will follow.
We give no pledge to refrain from revolutionary activity in the unions or to turn our backs on “outlaw” strikes. We leave such trade union tactics to opportunists and traitors. It is our aim, on the contrary, to be with the masses, especially at the moment of their sharpest collisions with the capitalists, whatever form these collisions may take. In order that this association with the revolting masses can have a fruitful revolutionary influence, it has to begin now by an entrenchment of the militant and class-conscious elements in the AFL unions and the formation of a left wing within them.
Special Thanksgiving Private Manning Stand-Out-Central Square, Cambridge, Wednesday November 21st, 5:00 PM
Special Thanksgiving Private
Manning Stand-Out-Central Square, Cambridge, Wednesday November 21st, 5:00
PM
Let’s Redouble Our Efforts To
Free Private Bradley Manning-President Obama Pardon Bradley Manning -Make Every
Town Square In America (And The World) A Bradley Manning Square From Boston To
Berkeley to Berlin-Join Us In Central Square, Cambridge, Ma. For A Thanksgiving
Stand-Out For Bradley- Wednesday November 21 From 5:00-6:00 PM
***********
The Private Bradley Manning
case is headed toward a mid- winter trial now scheduled for February 2013. The
recent news on his case has centered on the many (since last April) pre-trial
motions hearings including defense motions to dismiss for lack of speedy trial
(Private Manning’s pre-trial confinement is now entering 900 plus days),
dismissal as a matter of freedom of speech and alleged national security issues
(issues for us to know what the hell the government is doing either in front of
us, or behind our backs) and dismissal based on serious allegations of
torturous behavior by the military authorities extending far up the chain of
command while Private Manning was detained at the Quantico Marine brig for
about a year ending in April 2011. The latest news from the November 2012
pre-trail sessions is the offer by the defense to plead guilty to lesser
charges (wrongful, unauthorized use of the Internet, etc.) in order to clear
the deck and have the major (with a possibility of a life sentence) espionage
/aiding the enemy issue solely before the court-martial judge (a single
military judge, the one who has been hearing the pre-trial motions, not a
lifer-stacked panel).
For the past several months
there has been a weekly stand-out in Greater Boston across from the Davis
Square Redline MBTA stop (renamed Bradley Manning Square for the stand-out’s
duration) in Somerville on Friday afternoons but we have since July 4, 2012
changed the time and day to 4:00-5:00 PM on Wednesdays. This stand-out has, to
say the least, been very sparsely attended. We need to build it up with more
supporters present.This Wednesday Novemeber 21st at 5:00 PM
in order to broaden our outreach we, in lieu of our regular Davis Square
stand-out, are meeting in Central Square , Cambridge, Ma.(small park at the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Prospect Street) for a special
Thanksgiving stand-out for Private Manning. President Obama Pardon Private
Manning Now!
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