Class, Race and the Black Struggle in the U.S.

Workers Vanguard No. 1018	22 February 2013

Black History Month

Class, Race and the Black Struggle in the U.S.

Claude McKay, 1922

Claude McKay, a Jamaican-born poet active on the left in the U.S. and Britain, traveled to Soviet Russia for the Fourth Congress of the Communist International in November 1922. In his presentation at the Congress (reprinted in “Blacks and Bolsheviks,” Black History and the Class Struggle No. 5, February 1988), McKay stressed the centrality of black oppression to American capitalism and criticized American Communists for not adequately addressing this issue. It took the intervention of the Comintern to get the American Communists to begin to actively fight for black rights.

At the time of the Congress, he drafted notes about the situation of black people in the United States, the Caribbean and Africa. The notes are unsigned, but McKay referred to them in other correspondence. We print below excerpts from the sections on the black struggle in the U.S., which we obtained from Tamiment Library at New York University. The original is in the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI) in Moscow. In his notes, McKay refers to the African Blood Brotherhood, a Harlem-based organization, mainly comprising Caribbean immigrants, whose leadership had recently joined the American Communist Party.

*   *   *

During the World War the economic status of the Negro Race in the New World underwent a swift transition for the better. Especially was this the case in the United States where, on account of the giant war industries and the shutting down of immigration, the services of Negro workers were greatly in demand in the northern industrial zone. During this period it is estimated that over 500,000 Negro workers left the South for jobs in the less hostile atmosphere of the North.

Along with the improvement in their economic status came a great wave of emotional racialism, aroused in part by the wrongs suffered by the race and the sacrifices it was called upon to make for “World Democracy,” as well as by the fine democratic phrases with which the Entente statesmen were gassing the credulous liberals of their own countries and misleading the peoples of the colonies. This racialism among the Negro workers at first took the form of a proletariat movement but has been to a great extent perverted by subsequent activities of opportunists and charlatans with their cowardly compromises and surrenders and their grafting of all sorts of stock schemes upon the mass movement....

The prey of unscrupulous leaders who glibly promised everything but accomplished nothing save the periodical emptying of the pockets of their credulous followers, the Negro masses are discouraged and suspicious, yet there are organizational possibilities on a wide scale for any organization that can, first, win their confidence and, second, push energetically the campaign of organizing and, third, keep up interest in the organization.

The Negro masses are leavened by an increasingly large body of race radicals and class radicals. The former are Negroes who, while roused to thought and action by the wrongs of the race, have not yet recognized the essential class nature of the struggle, nor the exact cause and source of their oppression, which they blame indiscriminately upon the entire white race. They are, however, generally inclined to side with and follow the leadership of the class radicals who, fully cognizant of the value of race radicalism for rousing the masses and as a natural and necessary step toward class radicalism, have not been slow in utilizing it and even in helping in its development.

Comparatively few Negro workers are in the unions for the reason that, until recently, they were almost universally barred from the ranks of Organized Labor. However, several thousand are now unionized. Some in the regular unions, but many in segregated unions which are generally affiliated with the national bodies.

Most of the class radicals are to be found in the ranks of the “African Blood Brotherhood” and the “Friends of Negro Freedom”—the latter an organization backed by the Socialist Party of America; the former said to have Communist tendencies.

A large group of race radicals are also in the African Blood Brotherhood (which makes a race as well as a class appeal); and a larger group in the so-called “Garvey Movement” of “Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League.” The true race radical should not be confused, however, with the motley crowd of fanatics, emotionalists, title and tinsel worshippers who make up the huge mass of the Garvey organization....

The petit-bourgeoisie, with whom the race is honeycombed, find expression chiefly in the “National Association for the Advancement of Colored People,” in which a group of bourgeois gentlemen (colored and white) and gentlemen who, while lacking the bourgeois gold, carry around the bourgeois psychology, dominate a large but not compactly organized or effectively functioning body of workers and professionals. The domination of the bourgeoisie is here more open and complete than in the Garvey Movement which, while cursed with petit-bourgeoisie for leaders, has a rank and file wholly made up of workers, and the bourgeoisie in the latter movement have been accordingly forced to resort to camouflage tactics. The compact organization of the Garvey Movement, together with the mighty enthusiasm and blind fanaticism of most of its membership have made it in the past more of an obstacle to the proper prosecution of the Negro Liberation Struggle than has been the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People....

As is well-known, the Negro workers are the most viciously oppressed and poorly paid of any group of workers in the United States. No matter what a Negro’s ability and fitness there are positions which he may not fill and trades whose doors are closed to him. As a rule, only the most menial jobs are open to him during normal times. Made to believe that the antagonistic attitude of Organized Labor is wholly responsible for his exclusion from the better-paid industries, he becomes a willing—and often a joyous—tool of the Interests, and a scab in times of crisis for Organized Labor. He knows that in numerous instances White Labor opposes his employment. He knows, too, of frequent and widely heralded “philanthropies” to his race—by way of subsidies to Negro colleges, etc.—on the part of the White Bourgeoisie and being at least as backward as White Labor, which by its silly prejudices splits the ranks of Labor, he is not able to see the facts as they really are.... His doubts are further increased when he is shown that the white bourgeoisie controls the press, the schools, the churches, the theatres, etc., in which race prejudice is engendered and promoted....

And this leads naturally to a consideration of the present aspirations of the Negro Race. The vast masses of the race in America have only the very simplest aspirations, viz: to be permitted to live and eke out a mean and miserable existence in peace. Of the various groups that rise above this low level, the aspirations of some are confined to safety of life and property and the protection of their women from insult and rape at the hands of white men. Other groups would have political equality in addition; while the most progressive groups demand nothing less than full equality: political, economic, racial; and the abolition of human exploitation.

Poet’s Corner- Claude McKay-If We Must Die-In Honor Of The 94^thAnniversary Of The Communist International

…they had heard that a group of White Guards, a first detachment on horse, maybe from the dreaded mercenary Czech Legion that were running amok form Siberia to the Urals or worst maybe the dreaded Cossacks who took no prisoners, none, were heading their way, heading right for their line of defense in the city ready to take back Kazan for the asking, so those Whites thought. Kazan fallen then the road to Moscow lay wide open and perhaps the end of the Soviet experiment in that dragged on second year of hellish civil war. But Commissar Vladimir and his band of comrade brothers, five in all, (and one sister, one stray Red Emma, they called her who learned of revolution and sex, young love smitten sex even in war-torn Kazan with young Zanoff, in that exact order while in their company and proved as fierce a fighter both ways, according to that same Zanoff, as any man) swore, swore a blood oath on their tattered red flag, the previous day that they would retreat no further, that here was their stand, their last stand if necessary but no more moves away from Moscow.

It had not always been that way with them, not by a long shot. They had all farmed, like their fathers eons before them, the same fruitless task (for them) land for Orlov, the richest landowner in Omsk, and never lifted their heads when the Social Revolutionaries had come with glad tidings (and before them other city radicals had spoken to their fathers and grandfathers). They just shoveled the dirt and kept their heads down. Then the war came, the bloody world war, and the Czar’s police came and “drafted” them into some vast ill-fed, ill-clad, ill-armed peasant force which proved no match for the methodical Germans as they were slaughtered by the millions in those foul trenches. And still they kept their heads bent. Kept them bent until the February revolution and in the fall of 1917 they had just followed their fellow out of the trenches and went home. Went home to farm Orlov’s land. Even when the Bolsheviks took power in November and decreed the land of Orlov’s theirs they kept their heads bent. It was not until Orlov and his agents and his White Guard friends came back and took the land, their now precious land, that they roared back. And joined one of Trotsky’s red brigades passing through.

Just then a messenger came to their line, a messenger from the river in front of Kazan. The message said that Trotsky himself had decided to fight and die before Kazan if necessary to save the revolution, to save their precious land. Vladimir and his comrades, including Red Emma, reaffirmed their blood oath. If they must die they would die in defense of Kazan, and maybe just maybe somebody would hear of their story, the story of five peasant boys and a pretty peasant girl as brave as they, and lift their heads and roar back too….
******

If We Must Die

If we must die, let it not be like hogs
Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot,
While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs,
Making their mock at our accursèd lot.
If we must die, O let us nobly die,
So that our precious blood may not be shed
In vain; then even the monsters we defy
Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!
O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!
Though far outnumbered let us show us brave,
And for their thousand blows deal one death-blow!
What though before us lies the open grave?
Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack,
Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

Workers Vanguard No. 1018	22 February 2013

Black History Month

Class, Race and the Black Struggle in the U.S.

Claude McKay, 1922

Claude McKay, a Jamaican-born poet active on the left in the U.S. and Britain, traveled to Soviet Russia for the Fourth Congress of the Communist International in November 1922. In his presentation at the Congress (reprinted in “Blacks and Bolsheviks,” Black History and the Class Struggle No. 5, February 1988), McKay stressed the centrality of black oppression to American capitalism and criticized American Communists for not adequately addressing this issue. It took the intervention of the Comintern to get the American Communists to begin to actively fight for black rights.

At the time of the Congress, he drafted notes about the situation of black people in the United States, the Caribbean and Africa. The notes are unsigned, but McKay referred to them in other correspondence. We print below excerpts from the sections on the black struggle in the U.S., which we obtained from Tamiment Library at New York University. The original is in the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History (RGASPI) in Moscow. In his notes, McKay refers to the African Blood Brotherhood, a Harlem-based organization, mainly comprising Caribbean immigrants, whose leadership had recently joined the American Communist Party.

*   *   *

During the World War the economic status of the Negro Race in the New World underwent a swift transition for the better. Especially was this the case in the United States where, on account of the giant war industries and the shutting down of immigration, the services of Negro workers were greatly in demand in the northern industrial zone. During this period it is estimated that over 500,000 Negro workers left the South for jobs in the less hostile atmosphere of the North.

Along with the improvement in their economic status came a great wave of emotional racialism, aroused in part by the wrongs suffered by the race and the sacrifices it was called upon to make for “World Democracy,” as well as by the fine democratic phrases with which the Entente statesmen were gassing the credulous liberals of their own countries and misleading the peoples of the colonies. This racialism among the Negro workers at first took the form of a proletariat movement but has been to a great extent perverted by subsequent activities of opportunists and charlatans with their cowardly compromises and surrenders and their grafting of all sorts of stock schemes upon the mass movement....

The prey of unscrupulous leaders who glibly promised everything but accomplished nothing save the periodical emptying of the pockets of their credulous followers, the Negro masses are discouraged and suspicious, yet there are organizational possibilities on a wide scale for any organization that can, first, win their confidence and, second, push energetically the campaign of organizing and, third, keep up interest in the organization.

The Negro masses are leavened by an increasingly large body of race radicals and class radicals. The former are Negroes who, while roused to thought and action by the wrongs of the race, have not yet recognized the essential class nature of the struggle, nor the exact cause and source of their oppression, which they blame indiscriminately upon the entire white race. They are, however, generally inclined to side with and follow the leadership of the class radicals who, fully cognizant of the value of race radicalism for rousing the masses and as a natural and necessary step toward class radicalism, have not been slow in utilizing it and even in helping in its development.

Comparatively few Negro workers are in the unions for the reason that, until recently, they were almost universally barred from the ranks of Organized Labor. However, several thousand are now unionized. Some in the regular unions, but many in segregated unions which are generally affiliated with the national bodies.

Most of the class radicals are to be found in the ranks of the “African Blood Brotherhood” and the “Friends of Negro Freedom”—the latter an organization backed by the Socialist Party of America; the former said to have Communist tendencies.

A large group of race radicals are also in the African Blood Brotherhood (which makes a race as well as a class appeal); and a larger group in the so-called “Garvey Movement” of “Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League.” The true race radical should not be confused, however, with the motley crowd of fanatics, emotionalists, title and tinsel worshippers who make up the huge mass of the Garvey organization....

The petit-bourgeoisie, with whom the race is honeycombed, find expression chiefly in the “National Association for the Advancement of Colored People,” in which a group of bourgeois gentlemen (colored and white) and gentlemen who, while lacking the bourgeois gold, carry around the bourgeois psychology, dominate a large but not compactly organized or effectively functioning body of workers and professionals. The domination of the bourgeoisie is here more open and complete than in the Garvey Movement which, while cursed with petit-bourgeoisie for leaders, has a rank and file wholly made up of workers, and the bourgeoisie in the latter movement have been accordingly forced to resort to camouflage tactics. The compact organization of the Garvey Movement, together with the mighty enthusiasm and blind fanaticism of most of its membership have made it in the past more of an obstacle to the proper prosecution of the Negro Liberation Struggle than has been the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People....

As is well-known, the Negro workers are the most viciously oppressed and poorly paid of any group of workers in the United States. No matter what a Negro’s ability and fitness there are positions which he may not fill and trades whose doors are closed to him. As a rule, only the most menial jobs are open to him during normal times. Made to believe that the antagonistic attitude of Organized Labor is wholly responsible for his exclusion from the better-paid industries, he becomes a willing—and often a joyous—tool of the Interests, and a scab in times of crisis for Organized Labor. He knows that in numerous instances White Labor opposes his employment. He knows, too, of frequent and widely heralded “philanthropies” to his race—by way of subsidies to Negro colleges, etc.—on the part of the White Bourgeoisie and being at least as backward as White Labor, which by its silly prejudices splits the ranks of Labor, he is not able to see the facts as they really are.... His doubts are further increased when he is shown that the white bourgeoisie controls the press, the schools, the churches, the theatres, etc., in which race prejudice is engendered and promoted....

And this leads naturally to a consideration of the present aspirations of the Negro Race. The vast masses of the race in America have only the very simplest aspirations, viz: to be permitted to live and eke out a mean and miserable existence in peace. Of the various groups that rise above this low level, the aspirations of some are confined to safety of life and property and the protection of their women from insult and rape at the hands of white men. Other groups would have political equality in addition; while the most progressive groups demand nothing less than full equality: political, economic, racial; and the abolition of human exploitation.

Out In The Film Noir Night- Barbara Stanwyck’s Witness To Murder

DVD Review

Witness to Murder, Barbara Stanwyck, Gary Merrill, George Sanders, United Artists, 1954

The last time the name Barbara Stanwyck appeared in this space she and Fred MacMurry were plotting, plotting big time, to murder her husband for his life insurance policy (and other considerations left unsaid ) in the film adaptation of James M. Cain’s Double Indemnity. Times have changed for Ms. Stanwyck though as here in Witness To Murder she off-handedly witnesses what she believes is a murder of a woman by a man in the apartment building across from her one night. And, unlike in Double Indemnity where everybody and their brother (and sister) KNOWS she and Fred did the deed here she cannot get anyone to believe her. Especially when the mad man who actually did the deed was a Svengali –like mastermind, an alleged ex-Nazi (although that de-nazification program stuff after World War II didn’t seem to take in his case), played by George Sanders.

Now the problem with accusing someone of murder, murder most foul , who actually did the deed is that unless and you have a body you are in trouble trying to pin the rap on him. Moreover, yelling bloody murder about the guy is going to, well, put him off-balance especially when he is lined up to marry into some serious California dough. So you might as well say Ms. Stanwyck’s life just got very complicated, very complicated in deed when she takes a small stand for some rough justice in this wicked old world. Worst this murderer is so smooth that the cops, the guys who are supposed to live to solve dastardly crimes are practically taking up a collection for the poor guy and are ready putting her in the loony bin, for good. Really. Of course one cop, the love interest cop played by Gary Merrill is not going to let a smart, sassy, good-looking woman go under without a fight. So you know in the end that this case will get solved and old Mr. Smoothie will get his just desserts. But doesn’t Ms. Stanwyck have a case for dereliction of duty or something against those nay-saying cops.

In Honor Of The 94^th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Communist International-In The Time Of His Time

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Billy Casey woke up in a sweat that early March 1919 night, woke up in a once again sweat that he had earned from his experiences as a doughboy, an American doughboy in France now furloughed home to New York City, awaiting medical discharge from that mustard gas explosion that harried his breathe ever since. Yes, he had had it rough overseas, had seen some stuff and done some stuff he didn’t want to repeat to anybody, stuff that frankly no man should be forced to do, and which he believed, or he came to believe, no man would do even to an animal. He had put some of that behind him but still a little corner would flare up on nights when he was excited and he was excited this night and had been for the past few nights about big doings in Moscow coming up in a few days (or since he wasn’t sure of the dates of the conference, except early March, maybe had already occurred), about creating a new organization to right the wrongs of this wicked old world.

See, Bill Casey had gotten “religion,” no not catholicprotestantjewishmuslim religion but the good word-the socialist word , the word that all workingmen, and Bill Casey was nothing if not a working man, were brothers and that the robbers of the world were the only ones who had benefited from the damn war “to end all wars” over in Europe. And Bill had the destroyed lungs to prove it was not him who had benefited. This new language had been taught to him by a fellow soldier, a fellow doughboy, who had belonged to the American Socialist Party before the war, before he passed away from failed lungs in that French convalescent home Bill was assigned before coming back to America. So when Bill got back to New York the first thing, well maybe not the first, the first being to roll the pillows with his long-suffering girlfriend, Rosie, also nothing if not a daughter of the working class, he marched down to the American Socialist Party office in Greenwich Village (that is where his deceased comrade told him to go since that is where he had been a member) and joined right up.

Now Bill Casey had never been much for the books, and the materials that he received from the local secretary when he paid his dues and received his membership card seemed a lot more convoluted that the way his hospital pal explained it, but he plugged at it for a while, and that along with the weekly lectures helped him along. And he was going to be in full need of that knowledge because he had landed on his socialist arse (his expression) right at a time when the whole socialist movement was in turmoil. And the big event was the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the fall-out from that event. See Bill’s pal had only known the American Socialist Party before that revolution, and since most of the party had been anti-war before his pal joined up to fight he didn’t know the stuff that was going on between the different factions-basically to stick with the Socialist International or go with the new one, the one that said that the old one was done for and a new Communist International had to be formed to fight for revolutions everywhere. Heady stuff. Stuff to make Bill sweat in anticipation.

And that is where the martyred James Connolly, Bill’s hero from the Easter 1916 uprising in Dublin and a man who had been executed by the bloody British for his part in it, came into it. Or kind of came into it. See the fight over who were the real revolutionaries, the Europeans or the Russians, basically was hard to figure. That is when he met a guy, an Irish guy, a comrade, from one of the factions, Jim Cannon, who put him straight, who told him that if he wanted to get back for that dirty deal he received in France by his own government he had to go with the Russian Bolsheviks and the new international they were trying to form. And Bill Casey respected Jim Cannon, respected the big heavy-drinking Irishman from out in the sticks of Kansas and so he cast his fate with Jim and his communist brethren. And you know what else Jim said to him- he, Bill Casey, should say at meetings and out on the Union Square and Village soapboxes to one and all what he saw and did in France so people would know, know better the next time the government tried to stuff a war down their throats. Bill Casey didn’t know if he could so that, could avoid some tough night sweats thinking about doing it, but he thought if it stopped some young guy from joining up maybe he would at that…

*******

V. I. Lenin

Founding Of The Communist International

Speech At A Joint Meeting Of The All-Russia Central Executive Committee, The Moscow Soviet, The Moscow Committee Of The Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), The All-Russia Central Council Of Trade Unions, Moscow Trade Unions And Factory Committees To Mark The Founding Of The Communist International

March 6, 1919

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Delivered: 6 March, 1919
First Published: Brief report published in Pravda No. 52, March 7, 1919; Published in full in May 1919 Published according to the verbatim report
Source: Lenin’s Collected Works, 4th English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972 Volume 28, pages 480-484
Translated: Jim Riordan
Transcription/HTML Markup: David Walters & Robert Cymbala
Copyleft: V. I. Lenin Internet Archive (www.marx.org) 2002. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

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(Stormy ovation.) Comrades, at the First Congress of the Communist International we did not succeed in getting representatives from all countries where this organisation has most faithful friends and where there are workers whose sympathies are entirely with us. Allow me, therefore, to begin with a short quotation which will show you that in reality we have more friends than we can see, than we know and than we were able to assemble here, in Moscow, despite all persecution, despite the entire, seemingly omnipotent, union of the bourgeoisie of the whole world. This persecution has gone to such lengths as to attempt to surround us with a sort of Great Wall of China, and to deport Bolsheviks in dozens from the freest republics of the world. They seem to be scared stiff that ten or a dozen Bolsheviks will infect the whole world. But we, of course, know that this fear is ridiculous—because they have already infected the whole world, because the Russian workers’ struggle has already convinced working people everywhere that the destiny of the world revolution is being decided here,. in Russia.

Comrades, I have here a copy of L’Humanité, a French newspaper whose policy corresponds more to that of our Mensheviks or Right Socialist-Revolutionaries. During the war, this paper was utterly ruthless in its attacks on those who supported our viewpoint. Today it is defending those who during the war went along with their own bourgeoisie. This very newspaper reports in its issue of January 13, 1919, that a mammoth meeting (as the newspaper itself admits) took place in Paris of active party and trade union members of the Seine Federation, i.e., the district nearest to Paris, the centre of the proletarian movement, the centre of all political life in France. The first speaker was Bracke, a socialist who throughout the war took the same line as our Mensheviks and Right-wing defence advocates. He was meek and mild now. Not a word about a single burning issue! He ended by saying that he was against his government’s interference in the struggle of the proletariat of other countries. His words were drowned in applause. The next speaker was a supporter of his, a certain Pierre Laval. He spoke of demobilisation, the burning issue in France today—a country which has probably borne greater sacrifices than any other country in this criminal war. And this country now sees that demobilisation is being dragged out, held up, that there is no desire to carry it through, that preparations are being made for a new war that will obviously demand new sacrifices from the French workers for the sake of settling how much more of the spoils the French or British capitalists will get. The newspaper goes on to say that the crowd listened to the speaker, Pierre Laval, but when he started running down Bolshevism, the protests and excitement stopped the meeting. After that, citizen Pierre Renaudel was refused a hearing, and the meeting ended with a brief statement by citizen Pdricat. He is one of the few people in the French labour movement who in the main is in agreement with us. And so, the newspaper has to admit that the speaker who began to attack the Bolsheviks was immediately pulled up.

Comrades, we have not been able to get even one delegate here directly from France, and only one Frenchman, Comrade Guilbeaux, arrived here, and he with great difficulty. (Stormy applause.) He will speak here today. He spent months in the prisons of that free republic, Switzerland, being accused of having contact with Lenin and preparing a revolution in Switzerland. He was escorted through Germany by gendarmes and officers, for fear, evidently, that he might drop a match that would set Germany on fire. But Germany is ablaze without this match. In France, too, as we can see, there are sympathisers with the Bolshevik movement. The French people are probably among the most experienced, most politically conscious, most active and responsive. They will not allow a speaker at a public meeting to strike a false note: he is stopped. Considering the French temperament, he was lucky not to have been dragged down from the rostrum! Therefore, when a newspaper hostile to us admits what took place at this big meeting we can safely say the French proletariat is on our side.

I am going to read another short quotation, from an Italian newspaper. The attempts to isolate us from the rest of the world are so great that we very rarely receive socialist newspapers from abroad. It is a rare thing to receive a copy of the Italian newspaper Avanti!, the organ of the Italian Socialist Party, a party which participated in Zimmerwald, fought against the war and has now resolved not to attend the yellow congress in Berne, the congress of the old International, which was to be attended by people who had helped their governments to prolong this criminal war. To this day, Avanti! is under strict censorship. But in this issue, which arrived here by chance, I read an item on party life in a small locality called Cavriago (probably a remote spot because it cannot be located on the map). It appears that the workers there adopted a resolution supporting their newspaper for its uncompromising stand and declared their approval of the German Spartacists. Then follow the words “Sovietisti russi” which, even though they are in Italian, can be understood all over the world. They sent greetings to the Russian “Sovietisti” and expressed the wish that the programme of the Russian and German revolutionaries should be adopted throughout the world and serve to carry the fight against the bourgeoisie and military domination to a conclusion. When you read a resolution like that, adopted in some Italian Poshekhonye,’82 you have every right to say to yourself that the Italian people are on our side, the Italian people understand what the Russian “Sovietisti” are, what the programme of the Russian “Sovietisti” and the German Spartacists is. Yet at that time we had no such programme! We had no common programme with the German Spartacists, but the Italian workers rejected all they had seen in their bourgeois press, which, bribed as it is by the millionaires and multimillionaires, spreads slander about us in millions of copies. It failed to deceive the Italian workers, who grasped what the Spartacists and the “Sovietisti” were and declared that they sympathised with their programme, at a time when this programme did not exist. That is why we found our task so easy at this Congress. All we had to do was to record as a programme what had already been implanted in the minds and hearts of the workers, even those cast away in some remote spot and cut off from us by police and military cordons. That is why we have been able to reach concerted decisions on all the main issues with such ease and complete unanimity. And we are fully convinced that these decisions will meet with a powerful response among workers elsewhere.

The Soviet movement, comrades, is the form which has been won in Russia, which is now spreading throughout the world and the very name of which gives the workers a complete programme. I hope that we, having had the good fortune to develop the Soviet form to victory, will not become swelled-headed about it.

We know very well that the reason we were the first to take part in a Soviet proletarian revolution was not because we were as well or better prepared than other workers, but because we were worse prepared. This is why we were faced with the most savage and decrepit enemy, and it is this that accounted for the outward scale of the revolution. But we also know that the Soviets exist here to this day, that they are grappling with gigantic difficulties which originate from an inadequate cultural level and from the burden that has weighed down on us for more than a year, on us who stand alone at our posts, at a time when we are surrounded on all sides by enemies, and when, as you know perfectly well, harrowing ordeals, the hardships of famine and terrible suffering have befallen us.


Those who directly or indirectly side with the bourgeoisie often try to appeal to the workers and provoke indignation among them by pointing to the severe sufferings of the workers today. And we tell them: yes, these sufferings are evere and we do not conceal them from you. We tell the workers that, and they know it well from their own experience. You can see we are fighting not only to win socialism for ourselves, not only to ensure that our children shall only recollect capitalists and landowners as prehistoric monsters; we are fighting to ensure that the workers of the whole world triumph together with us.

And this First Congress of the Communist International, which has made the point that throughout the world the Soviets are winning the sympathy of the workers, shows us that the victory of the world communist revolution is assured. (Applause.) The bourgeoisie will continue to vent their fury in a number of countries; the bourgeoisie there are just beginning to prepare the destruction of the best people, the best representatives of socialism, as is evident from the brutal murder of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht by the whiteguards. These sacrifices are inevitable. We seek no agreement with the bourgeoisie, we are marching to the final and decisive battle against them. But we know that after the ordeal, agony and distress of the war, when the people throughout the world are fighting for demobilisation, when they feel they have been betrayed and appreciate how incredibly heavy the burden of taxation is that has been placed upon them by the capitalists who killed tens of millions of people to decide who would receive more of the profits—we know that these brigands’ rule is at an end!

Now that the meaning of the word “Soviet” is understood by everybody, the victory of the communist revolution is assured. The comrades present in this hall saw the founding of the first Soviet republic; now they see the founding of the Third, Communist International (applause), and they will all see the founding of the World Federative Republic of Soviets. (Applause.)

Brief report published; in Pravda No. 52, March 7, 1919; Published in full in May 1919 Published according to the verbatim report

From Out In The Film Noir Night- With Robert Cummings’s Sleep, My Love In Mind

DVD Review

Sleep, My Love, Robert Cummings, Claudette Colbert, directed by Douglas Sirk, 1948

Daphne Swann was a piece of work, a piece of work alright. She could have a man, men actually, wrapped around her tiny finger, wrapped around tight and make them like it. Make them think it was natural. And she had all the equipment for the work, long dark hair, brown eyes, big ruby red lips, and a models’ figure, not a high fashion model’s figure, they were too skinny she said, but a department store model’s, something a man could hold onto, and hold onto dreams about. She said give her a few nights with a man, or rather a man with her, and he would do anything she asked, anything. Sometimes like with her boss, Four-eyes (real name Bruce Lang but with those bi-focals nothing else seemed to fit), she didn’t even have to spent the night, she could piece him off with a couple of, uh, provocative photos of her to sell to discerning customers and that was all he needed to be her lap dog. See she “worked” for Bruce as, uh, model and assistant in his photography shop and that was how she met Mister Abbott. Mister Abbott, a real catch, a meal ticket out of sleazy photos, men pawing modeling and the whole cheap Four-eyes gaff.

Mister Abbott had come into the shop one afternoon looking to have a photograph taken for a passport. While he was waiting he had spied Daphne going about in a revealing swim suit after a shoot and struck up a conversation. (Little did he know that Daphne had eyed him, eyed him as a catch, as simple bait, as he entered the door and put had on her fangs.) That conversation led to a swanky dinner led to an uptown hotel bedroom and a few days later one Mister William Abbott was hooked, hooked bad, hooked as bad as a man could be about a woman. He would do anything she asked, anything.

Bill Abbot, it turned out, was from a branch of the famous Abbotts that worked their wills in Wall Street and peopled the upscale Sutton Place apartments of New York City. And married other Mayfair swells like the Penningtons. See Bill was from what he described as the declining gentry, the poor relatives Abbotts, who nevertheless were pedigreed enough to make marriages with the families with real dough. Families like the Elliott Penningtons, one of whose daughters, Cora, Bill had married. But she had control of all the dough, all the dough until she died and that was that. Bill would have to wait it out. Well, not quite because Daphne dreamed, dreamed night and day about getting out from under cheap street and she didn’t particularly care how she got out. So when she presented her plan, her ultimatum plan to Bill he didn’t think twice about refusing, especially since it seemed so fool-proof.

And it was to a point. See guys like Bill Abbott, and even a woman like Daphne draw back at old-fashion murder, draw back at taking the big step-off at Ossining and places like that where they would not be able to enjoy earthly goods, So Daphne‘s idea was to get the high-strung Cora to kill herself, aided by an unrelenting program directed by Bill to lead her along that path. Then a quick jump off a building or something like that and easy street. Bill loved the idea, and moved to implement it as quickly as possible. He had real skill at making Cora doubt her sanity. When Bill told Daphne each detail over pillows she practically salivated.

Of course one virtue of old-fashioned murder is that it gets done, and is then done. Finished. This murder cum suicide is trickier. It requires a willing subject and good luck. And that is just what Bill and Daphne did not have in the end. They were doing just fine until Chad Smith , a brother of a classmate of Cora’s at Miss Prissy’s, or something like that, boarding school, came down from Boston and started to gum up the works. He was smitten with Cora and thus parried, first unknowingly, then knowingly, each psychological blow Bill threw at her. It got so bad that Bill and Daphne decided to try some other more direct way, like an ambush. That didn’t work, didn’t work at all as Bill became a victim of his own over-cleverness and was shot, shot dead, in self-defense (or that would be the way it would work out in front of a jury) by Cora directing the fire his way at Chad’s command. Poor Daphne will spend many a cold night thinking through what might have been, a place on Sutton and everything.

Hold on, hold on a minute with your handkerchiefs and tears, Daphne Swann was no fool. See Chad had entered the picture at her request. Chad was as smitten Daphne as any other man she fancied and had been brought in by her from Boston when it did not look like Bill was going to be successful. Besides she wanted the Pennington dough and position herself and not doled out by Bill. So if one morning you wake up and see in the newspapers where Cora Smith (nee Pennington) killed herself, or died under mysterious circumstances, you will know what really happened. Yah, that Daphne Swann was a piece of work, a real piece of work.

Update 2/27/13: Bradley to take stand tomorrow to justify WikiLeaks releases

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A supporter sent us this photo of the Highway 80 overpass near Berkeley, CA.

By the Bradley Manning Support Network, February 27, 2013
Ft. Meade, MD–This Thursday, Feb. 28, from 9:30am in the courtroom at Ft. Meade, MD, Army Private First Class Bradley Manning is expected to publicly explain his reasons for releasing classified information through WikiLeaks.
This will be only the second time that Manning has testified in open court since his arrest in May 2010. Manning first testified in court at a per-trial hearing in December 2012. At that time, military Judge Col. Denise Lind ruled staff at the Quantico Marine Brig in Virginia subjected Manning to unlawful pretrial punishment in violation of Article 13 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ).
Manning’s testimony this Thursday will speak to larger issues affecting his case as a whole, and expands upon a plea proffering responsibility for releasing information with noble motive, while contesting the most serious charges. Spectators in the courtroom earlier this week got a brief preview of Manning’s statement, which included reference to a pivotal incident in Iraq that caused Manning to question the military’s methods there, in addition to a general statement that he’d hoped releasing information would ‘spark a domestic debate on the role of our military and foreign policy in general.’ His testimony will consist partially of reading from a written statement, in addition to taking questions from the Judge.
This momentous week in court follows the largest worldwide day of activism supporting the WikiLeaks soldier thus far. On February 23, more than 70 cities demonstrated for Manning’s 1,000^th day in prison, across the U.S. and on five continents altogether. Yesterday, Judge Lind rejected Manning’s bid to dismiss all charges due to the government’s violations of his right to a speedy trial under Rule for Court Martial (RCM) 707.
While transcripts from the proceedings are not made immediately public, the proceedings on Thursday are open for the public and journalists to attend. Contact us for more information about attending the proceedings, or if you wish to schedule an interview with a Support Network spokesperson.
The Bradley Manning Support Network is responsible for funding 100% of PFC Manning’s legal fees and educates the public about his case.

Day of action June 1st. Fort Meade. Worldwide. Is this email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser. Bradley to take stand tomorrow to justify WikiLeaks releases Ft. Meade, MD--This Thursday, Feb. 28, from 9:30am in the courtroom at Ft. Meade, MD, Army Private First Class Bradley Manning is expected to publicly explain his reasons for releasing classified information through WikiLeaks. Read more... International actions demonstrate enormous public support After spending 1,005 days in prison, Bradley Manning entered into the latest round of pre-trial hearings yesterday where Judge Denise Lind began the proceedings by denying the defense's motion to dismiss charges due to the lack of a speedy trial. Her decision, while disappointing, exemplifies a courtroom so far unwilling to provide justice for the 25-year-old whistleblower, fueling worldwide rallies and demonstrations. This past Saturday, supporters gathered in more than 70 cities across the globe to Manning's release, suggesting the resolve of those in Bradley's corner may far outweigh his short-sighted detractors. Lind's ruling proves once again that this case will not only be decided at Ft. Meade, but in the courtroom of public opinion, which is why the Bradley Manning Support Network is now calling for June 1 as an International Day of Action. After more than three years of imprisonment, including nine months of torture, Nobel Peace Prize nominee Bradley Manning’s trial is finally scheduled to begin June 3, 2013, at Fort Meade, Md. The outcome of this trial will determine whether the most important whistleblower of a generation spends the rest of his life in prison. As he made clear in his chat logs with Adrian Lamo in 2010, Bradley believed that the American people have a right to know the truth about what our government does around the world in our name. Now is the time we must send a message to the military prosecuting authority and President Obama, that Bradley Manning is a patriot and heroic truth-teller. Day of action June 1; Fort Meade, worldwide Demonstrating in support of Bradley on his 1000th day in prison without trial. June 1st is the International Day of Action to Support Bradley Manning. Join us at Fort Meade on the eve of Bradley’s court martial. Sponsored by the Bradley Manning Support Network, the national Veterans for Peace organization, Courage to Resist, and endorsed by many more, supporters are encouraged to join us for this historic day to send a strong message that this young man has been punished enough and should be set free. Solidarity actions are welcome at bases, recruiting centers and U.S. embassies worldwide. Saturday, June 1 1pm Gather at Ft Meade Main Gate (Reece Road and US 175, Fort Meade, Maryland) 2pm March 3pm Rally and Speak Out Read more... Help us continue to cover 100% of Bradley's legal fees! Donate today.

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Out In The Black Liberation Night- The Black Panthers And The Struggle For The Ten-Point Program-Fourteen –A Nation Of One’s Own?

Jackson Pulley had been doing his Saturday morning soapbox spiel in the environs of Lenox Avenue and 125^th Street in high Harlem up in New Jack City for as long as anyone could remember. Some grandmothers would tell their grandchildren whom they were minding or raising as their own while passing by doing the Saturday morning shopping that they could remember when their own grandmothers of blessed memory had taken them to that very same Saturday shopping not to listen to, not to be bothered by Jackson’s big boom voice, and of his hand-held mic that could be heard far above and below the avenue. And Jackson Pulley’s spiel had not changed much since he had first given voice to his project back in the late 1920s. His basis idea was that the black people in America, his people, his sweated, kicked around, abused beautiful people, due to the white man’s inherent racism, needed a country, a nation of their own. He would moreover argue his conceptions through good times and bad, against all comers, from old black knight scoundrel Marcus Garvey through the Communist party turns for and against the black nation, through the “new negro” stuff in the 1950s through to the Doctor King and Malcolm X knock down drag out fight and right up until recently when the Black Panthers gave the idea of a black nation a whirl for a while. Old Jackson kept his main idea front and center and would as the “false” challengers arose kick them like tin cans down the road.

Jackson had had no truck with old black knight Marcus Garvey seeing in him just another black hustler working the ignorant West Indies immigrant black janitors and black maids and down and out southern slave-branded sharecroppers out of their hard earned dough. He had been right as rain on that man when he first started seeing that blacks needed a new homeland. The pivotal event though that drove him to his position was seeing one of his own kin lynched right after World War I down in the great state of Georgia while the whites watched with red-heat passion bordering on lunacy. Later before heading north he bore the full brunt of Mister James Crow and his equally savage ways. No, it was time to separate, long past time.

He had had some respect for the Communist Party and their black nation idea. In fact he had been in a study circle with some brothers in the African Blood Brotherhood before some of them went over to the party. He could not go with them since he refused to belong to an organization that allowed whites in. Besides those reds didn’t follow that black nation policy except when they wanted to use it to recruit blacks in hard times. That “new negro” stuff was a joke as far as he was concerned, something out of W.E.B. Dubois’ “talented tenth” and just another way to buy off the natural leaders of black people. Stuff them harmlessly out of the way like some old time Toms. He got serious when Malcolm X arose like a phoenix out of the ashes but he had no truck with Elijah Mohammed seeing him as a less clever Marcus Garvey with all that religious mumbo-jumbo that never did anybody any good. Just another fast-talking preacher hustle, except not Baptist hustle like he knew growing up. The Black Panthers of course demanded respect, respect as black warriors ready to stick their necks out for the black community, but they had been taking a beating of late trying to stay in America, in the cities. Were taking a beating from whitey and his bad ass cops who went crazy when he saw black men with guns ready to defend their own. Still they were righteous and had an idea of what black people needed to get the hell off the eight-ball.

When pressed Jackson like he was this Saturday by a young black brother who seemed to want to know more details about how it would work he would say that what blacks should fight for is a place like Idaho, a place with lots of land and far away from the vast majority of whites. Although he himself had never been there he was sure it would do, and equally sure once black people had had enough of the white man (and increasingly woman) on their necks they would be flocking there. But the young man seemed to say by the shrug of his shoulders like one grandmother said as she passed Jackson Pulley and his soapbox for the hundredth time to her grandchildren “Don’t pay old Jackson any never mind.”…

The Ten Point Program

The original "Ten Point Program" from October, 1966 was as follows:^[39][40]

1. We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our black Community.

We believe that black people will not be free until we are able to determine our destiny.

2. We want full employment for our people.

We believe that the federal government is responsible and obligated to give every man employment or a guaranteed income. We believe that if the white American businessmen will not give full employment, then the means of production should be taken from the businessmen and placed in the community so that the people of the community can organize and employ all of its people and give a high standard of living.

3. We want an end to the robbery by the white man of our black Community.

We believe that this racist government has robbed us and now we are demanding the overdue debt of forty acres and two mules. Forty acres and two mules was promised 100 years ago as restitution for slave labor and mass murder of black people. We will accept the payment as currency which will be distributed to our many communities. The Germans are now aiding the Jews in Israel for the genocide of the Jewish people. The Germans murdered six million Jews. The American racist has taken part in the slaughter of over 50 million black people; therefore, we feel that this is a modest demand that we make.

4. We want decent housing, fit for shelter of human beings.

We believe that if the white landlords will not give decent housing to our black community, then the housing and the land should be made into cooperatives so that our community, with government aid, can build and make decent housing for its people.

5. We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society. We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in the present-day society.

We believe in an educational system that will give to our people a knowledge of self. If a man does not have knowledge of himself and his position in society and the world, then he has little chance to relate to anything else.

6. We want all black men to be exempt from military service.

We believe that black people should not be forced to fight in the military service to defend a racist government that does not protect us. We will not fight and kill other people of color in the world who, like black people, are being victimized by the white racist government of America. We will protect ourselves from the force and violence of the racist police and the racist military, by whatever means necessary.

7. We want an immediate end to POLICE BRUTALITY and MURDER of black people.

We believe we can end police brutality in our black community by organizing black self-defense groups that are dedicated to defending our black community from racist police oppression and brutality. The Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States gives a right to bear arms. We therefore believe that all black people should arm themselves for self defense.

8. We want freedom for all black men held in federal, state, county and city prisons and jails.

We believe that all black people should be released from the many jails and prisons because they have not received a fair and impartial trial.

9. We want all black people when brought to trial to be tried in court by a jury of their peer group or people from their black communities, as defined by the Constitution of the United States.

We believe that the courts should follow the United States Constitution so that black people will receive fair trials. The 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution gives a man a right to be tried by his peer group. A peer is a person from a similar economic, social, religious, geographical, environmental, historical and racial background. To do this the court will be forced to select a jury from the black community from which the black defendant came. We have been, and are being tried by all-white juries that have no understanding of the "average reasoning man" of the black community.

10. We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace. And as our major political objective, a United Nations-supervised plebiscite to be held throughout the black colony in which only black colonial subjects will be allowed to participate for the purpose of determining the will of black people as to their national destiny.

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self- evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly, all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariable the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

From Out In The 1960s Night- The Lady With The Botticelli Smile

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

She had been behind him and had asked him for some spare change, nothing more. Normally requests for spare change, in Harvard Square where he was just then, Park Street, Kenmore Square or wherever he happened to be where pan-handlers grew like trees went through him like water since the beggar usually was some surly life-time drunk looking for the next bottle and the scab-filled, ragged, and smelly figure that confronted him could be dismissed out of hand. But this was 1967, the fall of 1967, after the summer of love and so, as likely as not, young hipsters, young men and women who were dropping out of the nine to five society, for a while anyway, but who either from circumstances or studied will decided to evade that bourgeois society could be found pan-handling for their daily needs in a sea of other young people who too were questioning a world that they had not created, and had not been asked about by their elders. So when he heard that sweet gentle good night voice in back of him he stopped out of curiosity since he had never been asked by a woman for spare change before, not at least out in the streets.

When he did turn around he saw nothing but a vision of some ancient Botticelli portrait, although with her silky brown hair she was just a tad too dark-haired for a Botticelli model for that artist, if he remembered correctly, ran to blondes, or brownish blondes. That brown hair all braided at the ends, a face filled to the brim with dangling brown eyes, ruby red lips (natural, no lipstick as was becoming the fashion among women then), slender, an indeterminate figure since she was full-blown garmented in some shapeless thing (also becoming the fashion, earth mother fashion) covered with shawls and a ton of beads to ward off, well, ward off evil probably. And then that smile, that wordless smile, that spoke of adventures and nighttime pillows, that not quite Mona Lisa smile, a smile that would leave you guessing but a smile that held promise to both cause great joy, and great madness sorrow before she was through with you. A smile like that smile that Vivian Leigh, the actress, smiled just before she gave that wilting “I’ve always depended on the kindnesses of strangers” look in the film adaptation of Tennessee Williams’ Streetcar Named Desire. Yes, just that look that would take a man down every known path, for good or evil, but take him down nevertheless.

She softly repeated that request and as he fished his pockets for some change, for some dollars if he had them, he was in a minor turmoil about whether to hit on her or to just let it pass. After handing her a couple of dollars and some change, and she just as softly as her request said thank you she made his decision for him as she walked away to ply her trade at her next target. For the rest of the day he kept thinking about that encounter, and that night, a little restless, he had a dream about her.

In the dream he dreamed that he had given her the money, and had been quick enough to engage her in a conversation. He had dream given her a name, some ancient name, Rowena, a name to spark ancient thoughts of fair maidens in distress. And of gallants to ease that situation. She laughed, called him silly, a romantic, but did take up his offer to have a cup of coffee with him at the Hayes-Bickford. He bought her lunch and they talked for hours there and later down by the Charles River although she, as was also becoming a fashion, did not want to talk about her past, about any previous sorrows or previous madnesses. She, they, he, were to be of the moment. He, as it turned out, was okay with that, and she went home with him after she picked up her rucksack and bedroll that a friend in Allston was holding for her. Thus their short sweet affair started.

Short and sweet since his fair Rowena made it clear to him that not only was she not going to dwelt on her, his, their pasts but that she was going to be a rolling stone-meaning 1967 meaning- that she had no strings attached to her and that she would see, and sleep with, whomever struck her fancy. And that was fine by him, he being very dream liberal and very a child of his age. Fine with him until she did not come home one night and he was distraught beyond compare. He confronted her, she got ready to pack her things, but he waved that off. That happened a couple more times and then one night he got very angry, an anger he couldn’t explain, and an anger that left her off the hook when she walked out the door and he didn’t wave her off. Then he awoke from his dream, awoke in a sweat.

The next afternoon he purposefully went over to Harvard Square to see if his Rowena was there. As he was looking a soft voice came from behind him asking if he had any spare change. He turned around and there she was with her Botticelli looks and that smile, that same “depend on the kindnesses of strangers” smile she gave him the previous day. He nervously fished in his pockets for some money, passed it over to her, and as he moved on then she again wandered to her next target. He never saw her again…