Wednesday, July 17, 2013

From The Archives Of The Revolutionary History Journal-"Marxists and Military Thinking"


Click on the headline to link to the Revolutionary History Journal index.

Markin comment:

This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discovery” the work of our forebears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.

Additional Markin comment:

I place some material in this space which may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. Off hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these entries. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts.

**************



II: Marxists and Military Thinking



Before we move on to our case studies of mutiny and dissent in various places and at various times, it is useful to consider Marxist analyses of military questions more generally. We are delighted to publish the following article by Ian Birchall. Through its study of a minor character, Kersausie, who flits through reports on the uprising in the pages of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung in July 1848, Ian Birchall broaches questions of historical method, as well as shedding light on Friedrich Engels as a military thinker. Socialists have written much about the necessary connections between capitalism and war. In the writings of Marx and Engels, war and military technique provide a point of fascination: through analysis of military conquest, Marx and Engels gauge political and economic progress and reaction. As materialists they were not squeamish about the rôle of violence and force in history. Engels, known to his friends as ‘the General’, wrote extensively on military matters and the military aspects of insurrection. As a young man, Engels had undertaken military training. In 1841, keen to be in Berlin and in contact with the Young Hegelians, he volunteered for the Berlin-based Brigade of Artillery, so that he could simultaneously complete a final year of military service and participate in the intellectual life of the capital. Though lacking the formal requirements, he attended lectures at the university, and made contact with the Young Hegelian circle of The Free, formerly the Doctors’ Club, where Karl Marx was also to be found.
In subsequent years, Engels put his military training to practical use, taking an active part in the armed popular uprising against the Prussian armies in Elberfeld, close to his home town of Barmen, and later in Baden and the Palatinate. When the revolt was defeated, he escaped across the border to Switzerland, and then joined Marx in London. In the subsequent years, he would analyse contemporary military affairs and historical questions of force and violence in history. Gilbert Achcar informs us that Engels’ articles on the European uprisings were so good, that Wilhelm Liebknecht later reported that the pieces on Hungary were ‘attributed to a high-ranking officer in the Hungarian army’, just as, 10 years later, Engels’ pamphlets published unsigned in Berlin, The Po and the Rhine (1859) and Savoy, Nice and the Rhine (1860), were to be attributed to some Prussian general who was anxious to preserve his anonymity. Many of Engels’ articles on military affairs from the Neue Rheinische Zeitung are in Volume 9 of Marx and Engels, Collected Works (Progress, Moscow). Volume 13, Marx and Engels, 1854–55, also contains many key articles.
See also W.H. Chaloner and W.O. Henderson (eds.), Engels as a Military Critic, Manchester University Press, Manchester 1959 (articles by Engels reprinted from the Volunteer Journal and the Manchester Guardian of the 1860s, with an introduction by Chaloner and Henderson), reviewed by Brian Pearce, Labour Review, Volume 5, no. 3, October/November 1960, p. 99.
Studies of Engels’ military thought include Paul Morris, “The General” on War and Insurrection, Workers Power, June 1995; Michel Lequenne, Chroniques politico-militaire du Marx et Engels (a review of Volume 1 of their military writings), Quatrième Internationale, no. 49, May 1971, pp.54–7; Gilbert Achcar, Engels: Theorist of War, Theorist of Revolution, International Socialism, no. 83, Winter 2001; Leon Trotsky, Engels’ War Articles, 19 May 1924, How The Revolution Armed: Military Writings and Speeches, Volume 5, London 1981; Wilhelm Liebknecht, Reminiscences of Engels (1897), in W.A. Pelz (ed.), Wilhelm Liebknecht and German Social Democracy, Greenwood Press, Westport 1994, pp. 140–2; Martin Berger, Engels, Armies and Revolution, Archon Books, Hamden, 1977.
The second article in this section is Karl Radek’s article, Marxism and the Questions of War, translated here by Esther Leslie from Volume 1 of Radek’s collected works, entitled In den Reihen der Deutschen Revolution, 1909–1919, Kurt Wolff, Munich 1921. This was written for the journal Lichtstrahlen. We publish it here because it conveys something of the theoretical shock and confusion that befell Social Democracy upon the outbreak of world war in 1914. The development of an anti-war movement was the task of the very few twentieth century socialists who expressed opposition at the outbreak of the nationalistic bloodfests in 1914. Karl Radek was one of those isolated socialist voices, writing journal articles in 1914 such as Marxism and the Problems of War and Why Should We Bleed?, to which the resounding answer is ‘for capitalist interests’. He stated that socialist opposition to this warmongering is a response to a number of changes: the objectively reactionary rôle of the bourgeoisie, once it has secured its political and economic victory and is now in imperialist pursuit of worldwide profits; the changing technological modes of warfare (which multiply the victims of the slaughter, and shift the horror from the battlezone into civilian arenas); and the new mass mobilisation of men into conscripted armies. Modern total war exhausts great resources of energy, technology and human life. In My Life, Trotsky pinpoints the contradictions of the capitalist push to war: ‘It was as if a man, to prove that his pipes for breathing and swallowing were in order, had begun to cut his throat with a razor in front of a mirror.’
Karl Radek (Sobelsohn, 1885–1939?) was born in Lvov (Lemberg). He participated in the 1905 Revolution in Warsaw as a member of the Social Democratic Party of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania, and was a member of the RSDLP from its foundation. He took an anti-war stand during the First World War, living in exile in Switzerland. He became a Bolshevik in 1917, and, in 1923, a member of the Left Opposition. He was expelled from the party in 1927, re-entered after ‘recanting’ in 1930, but was again expelled in 1936. He confessed to the charge of treason in the Second Moscow Trial, and is believed to have died while in prison. Victor Serge described Radek as ‘a sparkling writer … thin, rather small, nervous, full of anecdotes which often had a savage side to them … just like an old-time pirate.’
Biographies of Radek include Warren Lerner, Karl Radek: The Last Internationalist, Stanford University Press, Stanford 1970, and Jim Tuck, Engine of Mischief: An Analytical Biography of Karl Radek, Greenwood, Westport 1988. Materials relating to Radek’s trial include The Moscow Trial, January 1937 (a summary of the proceedings in the trial of Yu.L. Pyatakov, K.B. Radek and others) plus two speeches by Stalin, compiled by W.P. Coates and Z.K. Coates, London 1937; D. Collard, Soviet Justice and the Trial of Radek and Others (appendix: verbatim report of Radek’s evidence), Victor Gollancz, London 1937. The German author Stefan Heym wrote a novel about Radek’s life in 1995, entitled Radek: The Conscience of a Revolutionary, Fischer, Frankfurt 1999.
Lichtstrahlen (Rays of Light) was published in Berlin and was edited by Julian Borchardt, a leader of the International Socialists of Germany. Born in Bromberg, Prussia in 1868, he died in Berlin in 1932. Borchardt was the author of a widely translated digest of Das Kapital. He edited Lichtstrahlen during 1913–16 and 1918–21. The journal was banned in 1916 and re-emerged as Der Leuchturm (The Lighthouse), but appeared once more as Lichtstrahlen from November 1918. The journal gave a platform to German and international anti-war oppositionists. The Lichtstrahlen-Gruppe was staunchly anti-militarist and was opposed to party-truce politics and the approval of war credits in August 1914. Borchardt never joined the Communist Party, for he believed in decentralised forms of political organisation, attempting to make links with the anarchists in Berlin in November 1914. Trotsky mentioned the group around the journal Lichtstrahlen in 1915:
In the delegation representing the left section of official German Social Democracy, there was in turn its own left wing. In Germany, two publications gave ideological expression to these tendencies: Julius Borchardt’s little propagandist bulletin Lichtstrahlen, which was formally very uncompromising but in effect very restrained and had little political influence, and Die Internationale, the organ of Luxemburg and Mehring, which in fact was not an organ but one issue in all, militant and lucid, after which the journal was closed down. Around the Internationale Group were such influential elements of the German Left as Liebknecht and Zetkin. No less than three delegates were supporters of the Luxemburg–Mehring group. One supported Lichtstrahlen. Out of the remaining delegates, two Reichstag deputies were by and large backers of Ledebour, two others possessed no definite physiognomy. Hoffmann, as we have said, is an ‘extreme’ left but he is a man of the old cast, and the younger generation of Lefts are seeking new paths. (L.D. Trotsky, Political Profiles, Ledebour and Hoffmann, Kievskaya Mysl, no. 296, 25 October 1915)

The Latest From "The National Committee to Free the Cuban Five" Website -Free The Five Ahora! -The Defense Of The Cuban Revolution Begins With The Defense Of The Cuban Five

Click on the title to link to the website mentioned in the headline for the latest news and opinion from that site.
Markin comment (re-post from July 26, 2011):On a day, July 26th, important in the history of the Cuban revolutionary movement it is also important, as always, to remember that the defense of the Cuban revolution here in the United States, the "heart of the beast", starts with the defense of the Cuban Five.

 
Snowden in Russia
17 Jul 2013
Snowden
Snowden in Russia

by Stephen Lendman

Snowden remains in Moscow Sheremetyevo Airport transit zone limbo. Russia's his safest option.

Traveling elsewhere's too risky. It's hazardous. He's seeking temporary asylum. Odds are he'll get it.

Moscow won't extradite him. It has no treaty obligation to do so. Washington never repatriated Russian defectors. Heavy US pressure's exerted anyway.

Few countries resist. Few push back effectively. China can do it. So can Russia. On the one hand, Putin values good relations. On the other, he won't be bullied.

Supporting Snowden's politically advantageous. According to Der Spiegel:

His activist status largely united a "deeply divided society. Whether conservative or liberal, anti- or pro-American, Putin supporter or opponent - they have all voiced support for granting (him) asylum."

Expect Putin to take full advantage. He has plenty of domestic problems. Snowden changes the subject. Supporting him's politically beneficial.

At the same time, he'll be diplomatically careful. It shows in his comments. Der Spiegel believes Kremlin officials are involved. They're helping Snowden. They wouldn't be without official authorization.

"Moscow-based lawyers and politicians close to the government" arranged his meeting with human rights groups. He needed their help to do it.

"Snowden (will) stay in Russia." It's just a matter of working things out.

On July 16, Voice of Russia headlined "Russia to give Snowden freedom of movement," saying:

He'll "be able to move across Russian territory while Moscow looks into his bid for political asylum."

"An informed police source told reporters a special permit will be issued for the American intelligence leaker, stranded in a no-man’s-land in Moscow’s airport lounge, giving him freedom to travel."

"The source said Snowden’s asylum plea would be considered even in the absence of any ID."

Immigration officials may take "five days to preview (his) request." A full review may last several months. Perhaps it'll be expedited. Given what's at stake and his prominence, it won't surprise.

For now, Russian territory's his best bet. Latin and Central American countries are more easily bullied. Venezuela's the one exception.

Cuba's less certain. Whether Raul Castro's as committed as Fidel remains to be seen. He wants normalized US relations. Granting Snowden asylum jeopardizes achieving them. It's unclear if he'll risk it.

Putin has less to lose. He has more to gain. Sergei Naryshkin chairs Russia's Duma. He's a former Kremlin chief of staff. Russian law permits granting Snowden asylum, he said.

In America, he risks capital punishment. "We simply don't have the right to allow something like that to happen," he stressed.

His comment appears to reflect Moscow's intentions. Snowden had direct contact with Russian officials. It shows government support. So does almost daily favorable Russia Today coverage. Voice of Russia's doing the same thing.

Snowden's supported for political reasons. Alexander Sidyakin's a ruling United Russia party parliamentarian. He'll nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize, he said.

Russia's mass-circulation Komsomolskaya Pravda praised Putin's support. It did so in song, saying:

"Putin is the hero of our time. The world loves this Russia, which is capable of withstanding all pressure."

Putin shows leadership. He's doing the right thing. It's not without risks. He wants people believing Russia remains a superpower.

It's proud and reassertive. It's not about to roll over for Washington. It's able to confront US policymakers effectively.

At the same time, delicate balancing is important. He wants no further bilateral deterioration. Short-term doesn't matter. Longer-term good relations are valued.

Putin holds more trump cards than Obama. America's influence is waning. It's slow but perceptible. No one likes a bully. Washington makes more enemies than friends.

Russia's able to capitalize strategically. Putin's taking full advantage. Fiona Hill's a Brookings Institution Russian/Eurasian expert. Her recently published book is titled "Mr. Putin: Operative in the Kremlin."

In late June, she said Moscow's "making everything (it) can of (the Snowden affair) to show the United States up in the global field of public relations."

It's doing it effectively. Snowden's more godsend than burden. Expect ruffled feathers with America to pass. Threats about "serious consequences" reflect more bluster than actionable intentions.

Washington has more to lose than gain. Fracturing bilateral relations makes no sense. Doing so's self-defeating. Expect anti-Russian measures to be minimal.

Behind the scenes business as usual continues. It's been that way for years. It won't change now. Both sides know the stakes. They agree. Bluster is red meat without substance. It makes good headlines. It accomplishes little else.

On June 24, Russia Beyond the Headlines asked "Will Snowden impact the US-Russia reset?"

Russian human rights ombudsman Vladimir Lukin said "Americans can't demand anything. We can extradite him, or we can refuse…"
"It's a good detective story." It's not much else.

Center for Political Technologies analyst Alexei Mararkin believes Snowden's status won't worsen bilateral relations. Perhaps reset notions will end. They've been fragile at best all along.

"The Snowden case is a piece of the general context of Russia-U.S. relations," said Marakin.

"A harsh and emotional reaction from Washington would have occurred if the situation had been at contrast with the generally good and remarkable relations and the sides had had a high level of mutual trust."

"I do not think the situation may worsen the relationship, which is already complicated."

Obama won't push Putin too hard, he added. America's next president may "close the reset question."

"The issue is important for Obama, and he does not want to abandon it publicly."

"Otherwise, he will seriously damage his image and hear criticism not only from the Republicans, but also from many Democrats for his inefficient" Russian policy.

At the same time, both countries disagree on major issues. Syria's contentious for both sides. Arms control differences remain.

America's global militarization remains worrisome. Obama's more belligerent than Bush. Washington's surrounding Russia with US bases.

Weapons of mass destruction target Russian sites. Close by missile defense and advanced tracking radar systems are for offense.

At issue is America maintaining first-strike capability. Strategic and tactical nuclear weapons are positioned nearby.

Russia's at risk. Putin knows it's targeted. It strains relations. It's far more important than Snowden. War or peace matters most.

Ignore public bluster on both sides. Bilateral priorities haven't changed. At the same time, events going forward bear close watching. Cold War memories persist.

A Final Comment

On July 15, Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald continued his Snowden coverage. He headlined "The crux of the NSA story in one phrase: 'collect it all.' "

Doing so reflects NSA head General Keith Alexander's agenda. He wants everyone monitored everywhere all time time. He wants Big Brother spying at home and abroad.

"Rather than look(ing) for a single needle in the haystack," he favors "collect(ing) the whole haystack." Collect everything. "Collect it all, tag it, store it."

His approach is "menacing" and "creepy." No electronic, telephonic, or perhaps other communications are free from NSA monitoring.

"(E)ven (Alexander's) defenders say (his) aggressiveness sometimes (exceeds) the outer edge of his legal authority."

Others say he prioritizes doing it. It's standard NSA policy. He's an authority unto himself. He does what he wants, when and how. He's accountable to no one. His rules alone matter. Nothing else.

He's obsessed and driven. He's a serial lawbreaker. He doesn't give a damn. Who'll stop him? He's got high-level support.

Numerous exposed NSA documents "demonstrate that the NSA's goal is to collect, monitor and store every telephone and internet communication that takes place inside the US and on the earth," said Greenwald.

"It already collects billions of calls and emails every single day." It's got trillions of internal US phone calls and emails.

It's "constantly seeking to expand its capabilities without limits." America's a classic "ubiquitous surveillance state."

Secrecy shrouds its activities from public view. Snowden changed things. He connected important dots. He did so for millions.

He told people what they need to know. He did so courageously. He sacrificed plenty to do it. Few would go as far.

Exposing "collect it all" notions matter. They need to be denounced. They need to be opposed. They need to be changed. Mass activism alone has a chance to do so.

Political Washington won't help. Nor will complicit media scoundrels. What's too disturbing to permit can't be tolerated.

Americans have a choice. They can fight for freedom or lose it. There's no in between.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen (at) sbcglobal.net.

His new book is titled "Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity."

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.

It airs Fridays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour

http://www.dailycensored.com/snowden-in-russia/
See also:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com

Free Herman Wallace!-Free Lynne Stewart Too!

Take action w/ Amnesty Intl: Compassionate Release for Herman Wallace of the Angola 3!
14 Jul 2013
In response to the tragic news that Herman Wallace is terminally ill with cancer, Amnesty International has launched a campaign calling for Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal to immediately release Herman on humanitarian grounds. "After decades of cruel conditions and a conviction that continues to be challenged by the courts, he should be released immediately to his family so that he can be cared for humanely during his last months," says Tessa Murphy, USA campaigner, about Herman Wallace.
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Please take action here: http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/siteapps/advocacy/ActionItem.aspx?c=6oJ

In response to the tragic news that Herman Wallace is terminally ill with cancer, Amnesty International has launched a campaign calling for Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal to immediately release Herman on humanitarian grounds.

Following his initial diagnosis on June 14, Herman continues to be held in isolation at Hunt Correctional Center's prison infirmary. Reflecting on his confinement while battling cancer, Herman says: "My own body has now become a tool of torture against me."

"After decades of cruel conditions and a conviction that continues to be challenged by the courts, he should be released immediately to his family so that he can be cared for humanely during his last months," says Tessa Murphy, USA campaigner, about Herman Wallace.

Amnesty International has long criticized the legal process and lack of evidence that has resulted in both Herman and Albert Woodfox's original murder convictions. In confronting Herman and Albert's continued cruel confinement in solitary for over 40 years, Amnesty has declared it to be in violation of international human rights law, as well as the US Constitution itself.

In today's statement, Amnesty declares that in the decades of Herman and Albert's confinement, the "prison authorities have broken their own policies to justify their continued incarceration in harsh and inhumane conditions." Amnesty also states that they are, "extremely concerned about the worsening conditions of confinement" for Albert in David Wade Correctional Center.

Creating public pressure for Herman is now more important than ever. We need Governor Jindal to get hundreds of thousands of emails demanding Herman's immediate release, so please take action now and help us spread the word by posting on Facebook and forwarding it to your friends.


--The full text of the 'take action' email to Bobby Jindal - Governor of Louisiana, Paul Rainwater - Chief of Staff, Emily Riser - Executive Assistant, and Tammy Woods - Assistant Chief of Staff reads:


Subject: We Call For Humane Release!

As I write you, 71 year old Herman Wallace is being held in isolation in the infirmary in Hunt Correctional Center. After spending more than four decades held in cruel and unusual solitary confinement, he has been diagnosed with terminal liver cancer. The time to act is now. I ask you to release Herman to his family on humanitarian grounds, so that they can care for him during his last months on earth.

Both Herman Wallace and fellow 'Angola 3' prisoner Albert Woodfox have spent most of the past 41 years of their lives alone in a tiny cell for 23 hours a day. Such conditions are cruel, inhuman and degrading. Prior to Wallace's cancer diagnosis, these conditions had already negatively impacted both men's physical and psychological health. In fact, in 2007, a US federal judge ruled that the conditions constituted a deprivation of a basic human need and that prison officials should have been aware of the potential for serious harm to physical and mental health.

Contrary to requirements under both international human rights law and the US Constitution, Herman has had no meaningful review of his continued isolation. Herman's prison records do not demonstrate that he is a threat to the security of the institution, himself or others. Furthermore, there are substantial concerns about the fairness of the legal process that resulted in Herman's conviction; a conviction that is still being challenged before the courts today. Evidence suggests that the decision to keep him in solitary is based at least in part on his political activism and association with the Black Panther party.

Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox are believed to have spent more time in solitary confinement than virtually any other US prisoner in recent history. Now, after surviving 41 years of a nightmare, Herman doesn't have much time left. Please release Herman to his family today.

(end of email text)

--Below is the full text of Amnesty International's July 10, 2013 press release.

Amnesty International Appeals for Release of Terminally Ill 'Angola 3' Prisoner, after 40 Years in Solitary Confinement

Contact: Suzanne Trimel, strimel (at) aiusa.org, 212-633-4150, @AIUSAmedia

(NEW YORK) – Amnesty International appealed to Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal today to immediately release from prison on humanitarian grounds. Herman Wallace, one of the ‘Angola 3,’ is terminally ill with cancer and has been imprisoned in solitary confinement for more than 40 years.

“Herman Wallace is 71 years old and has advanced liver cancer,” said Tessa Murphy, USA campaigner at Amnesty International. “After decades of cruel conditions and a conviction that continues to be challenged by the courts, he should be released immediately to his family so that he can be cared for humanely during his last months.”

Wallace was diagnosed with cancer after being taken to hospital on June 14. He had been on medication for some time for what was diagnosed as a stomach fungus and over the last months, has lost considerable weight. He is now being held in isolation in the infirmary at Hunt Correctional Center.

Wallace and fellow prisoner Albert Woodfox were first placed in isolation in 1972; since then they have been confined for 23 hours a day to cells measuring 6 by 9 feet.

Both men were convicted of the murder of a prison guard in 1973, yet no physical evidence links them to the crime – potentially exculpatory DNA evidence has been lost and the testimony of the main eyewitness has been discredited. Citing racial discrimination, misconduct by the prosecution, and inadequate defense, state and federal judges have overturned Woodfox’s conviction three times, while Wallace’s case is once again up for review before the federal courts.

The two men are believed to have spent longer in solitary confinement than virtually any other U.S. prisoner in recent history. During this time, prison authorities have broken their own policies to justify their continued incarceration in harsh and inhumane conditions.

Before Wallace’s cancer diagnosis, the harsh environment had already had an impact on both the man’s physical and psychological health as acknowledged by a federal judge in 2007. The severe toll of solitary confinement on inmates’ mental and physical health has been extensively documented in studies. In recognition of this damage, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture, Juan Mendez, has called on states to prohibit the practice in excess of 15 days.

Amnesty International is also extremely concerned about the worsening conditions of confinement for Woodfox in David Wade Correctional Center. For approximately two months, Woodfox has been subjected to additional punitive measures – including strip searches each time he leaves or enters his cell, being escorted in ankle and wrist restraints, restricted phone access, and non-contact visits through a perforated metal screen. Temperatures in the prison cells are reportedly extremely high, regularly reaching up to 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

Amnesty International is a Nobel Peace Prize-winning grassroots activist organization with more than 3 million supporters, activists, and volunteers in more than 150 countries campaigning for human rights worldwide. The organization investigates and exposes abuses, educates and mobilizes the public, and works to protect people wherever justice, freedom, truth, and dignity are denied.
See also:
http://www.angola3news.com
http://www.angola3.org

Free Tarek Mehanna

Dr. Tarek Mehanna's Appeal Hearing for Oral Arguments Tuesday July 30th at 9 AM!
16 Jul 2013
Pack the Courthouse!

Tuesday July 30 at 9 AM (please come early)
Moakley Federal Courthouse
1 Courthouse Way, Boston, MA

Fifteen months ago, Tarek Mehanna stood at his sentencing hearing in front
of Judge O’Toole, the US Attorneys that had prosecuted him, the media, and
a room overflowing with supporters, and gave an inspiring, historic speech
about the struggle of oppressed people and the right to self defense. He
was sentenced that day to 17 1/2 years in prison.
His speech was a challenge to all of us to keep up the fight for justice.

Tarek's appeal hearing is July 30th. It is crucial that we show the US
attorney's office, the media, and the federal government
that though they have tried to silence Tarek, they have failed. Please
join together to show your support for Tarek and his family at this
critical time!
Bring friends, and spread the word!

Tuesday July 30 at 9 AM Moakley Federal Courthouse
1 Courthouse Way, Boston, MA

For more information on Tarek's case, please go to www.freetarek.com.

Thank you for your support and Ramadan Kareem,

The Tarek Mehanna Support Committee

As Bradley Manning’s trial winds down- All out on July 27th at Park Street Station at 1:00 PM for an international day of solidarity with the heroic Wikileaks whistle-blower – Check Facebook https://www.facebook.com/savebradley#!/events/191172314377855/?fref=ts




Five Ways To Support Heroic Wikileaks Whistle-Blower Private Bradley Manning

*Sign the online petition at the Bradley Manning Support Network(for link go to http://www.bradleymanning.org/ ) addressed to the Secretary of the Army to drop all the charges and free Bradley Manning-1100 plus days are enough! Join the over 30,000 supporters in the United States and throughout the world clamoring for Bradley’s well-deserved freedom.

*Come to our stand-out in support of Private Bradley Manning in Central Square, Cambridge, Ma. (Corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Prospect Street near MBTA Redline station) every Wednesday between 5-6 PM.

*Contribute to the Bradley Manning Defense Fund- now that the trial has started funds are urgently needed! The hard fact of the American legal system is the more funds available the better the defense, especially in political prisoner cases like Bradley’s. The government has unlimited financial and personnel resources to prosecute Bradley. And has used them. So help out with whatever you can spare. For link go to http://www.bradleymanning.org/

*Call (Comments”202-456-1111), write The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20500, e-mail-(http://www.whitehouse.gov’contact/submitquestions-and comments) the White House to demand President Obama pardon Bradley Manning.

*Write letters of solidarity to Bradley Manning while he is being tried. Bradley’s mailing address: Commander, HHC, USAG, Attn: PFC Bradley Manning, 239 Sheridan Avenue, Bldg. 417, JBM-HH, VA 22211. Bradley Manning cannot receive stamps or money in any form. Photos must be on copy paper. Along with“contraband,” “inflammatory material” is not allowed. Six page maximum. Mail sent to the above address is forwarded to Bradley.

***Out In The 1940s Crime Noir Night-The Stuff Of Dreams-Take Two

 
 
Hey, Inspector Tim Riley here. I guess by now you have all read in the Examiner or heard on the radio about Sam Sutter who has flown the coop, Sam my old friend from when he was on the San Francisco police force with me several years ago, back in the rough and ready early ‘30s when this town was wide open. He, fresh out of college, U. of San Francisco if I recall correctly, and I fresh out of the academy the first in my family to make the civil service list and proud of it, were assigned to the D.A.s office where we had our hands full, no, more than our hands full with every desperado who headed west when things went south back east and we had to clean up the mess, or at least keep things in check. Sam pulled my chestnuts out of the fire more than once when I was more rum brave than smart running up again Jimmy Clancy’s gang. And another time when we were down at the Embarcadero and I was at the short end of the stick against Hymie Swartz’s boys when I tried to serve a silly summons on old Hymie. But enough of cutting up old torches, after all this is about Sam and his troubles, his big troubles.  
I kept in touch with Sam over the years even after he went private. Yah, a private snooper, oops, sorry, private detective, taking any case that interested him, and sometimes when the rent was due, some client “forgot” to pay the bill for services rendered leaving him short, or some dame was giving him that old come hither look instead of dough , anything that came through his door, no questions asked. Hell, not that long ago he and I worked a couple of cases where our investigations met. The Roma gang, yah, the big drug and numbers guys, was spreading its wings into the Bay Area trying to take over the rackets from old man Clancy and his son, Billy, and we were on the inside of that one and Sam was working a missing wayward  daughter, a Clancy daughter,  and our paths crossed. Crossed amid some old time gunfire and we had to shoot our way out over on Bay Street, down by the park. Jesus. He bailed me out of a couple of tight spots when the mobsters weren’t taking kindly to the idea of a collar and were throwing lead my way so I don’t know what got into  him. I don’t know why he flew the coop, why he left his partner Miles Regan, to take the heat after he left.

Who am I kidding. I know exactly, extremely exactly why he left, a dame, the whiff of perfume, the feel of satin sheets, you get it, right, get it if you are a guy. I got a few looks at her as we were honing in on the case after  it came to our attention that a couple of gunsels were unaccounted for, unaccounted for that is lying face down somewhere and Sam’s name came up on  the ticket. He gave us the runaround like he sometimes did when he was working at close quarters for a client, that thing about confidentiality that he hid behind when it was to his advantage. I could see why he might run amok with her but still he had plenty of dames, good-looking dames with dough, and no strings attached. One dame, a looker too, some soap heiress from back East, wanted to set him up in his very own suite, with car and expenses attached after he pulled her out of some opium den before she went off the deep end and lost all her jack through disinheritance. The scheme sounded like he was to be her pet poodle and so, no way, but he thought about it. There were a couple of others too maybe not the lookers like the soap woman but with dough and with plenty of tough guy big eyes to go around. I know this time, with this dame, is the note he left for me at his office desk that Miles passed on to me- “the stuff of dreams, I got to go for it, Tim. Good luck.”
Hell, I better back up and tell you what I know, the facts, and maybe you can make something out of what he wrote to me. Like I say Sam and Miles ran a private detective agency over on Post Street. Miles mainly did the divorce work, key-hole peeper stuff since that was what he was built for, a pretty boy, a skirt-chaser, although he was married, very married from what I heard. Sam, not so much of a good-looking guy as Miles, but built and tough, which some dames definitely go for, did the real work, the missing jewelry, the runaway husband or wife, the quick notice body guard stuff, and when necessary the ransom stuff that took a few brains to figure out like with that soap dame. Remind me to tell you about that one sometime when I have time, when we get Sam in our mitts it was beauty. The kidnappers never knew what hit them and our soap walked away from that mess just as nice as you please.

No job was off-limits except that it had to be legit, legit at least in Sam’s calculating mind. So he made a living at it after he left the force. He said to me after he left the D.A. office when the Madera case blew up in our face s that he got tired of chasing windmills trying to bring law and order to the Wild West for peanuts when he could make some decent dough on his own and without the bureaucracy crabbing on him all the time. And maybe he had a point, maybe he was right, except I am married and have three hungry kids and so couldn’t, wouldn’t think of leaving the force. Yah, and too I am still proud to be on the force, to be the first to make the civil service list. Sam had bigger dreams, dreams he kept hidden, hidden from me anyway. So Sam was ready, ready as hell, when she came through the door.        
She being Mary Kelly, but who knows what her name really was.  She used Brigitte O’Shea on me the first time I met her that first time I got a good look at her when we were trying to figure out what Sam was up to. She had a passport with the name Helen Dewar on it so and later, through Interpol we found she had used Susan Gross, Minnie Smith and Sarah Miles according to her rap sheet so who knows. Lets’ call he Mary because that is what Sam called her, okay. She came through the office door like a whirlwind. One of those dames whose every movement is calculated for effect, calculated to get some guy to do something daffy, pretty please. Good-looking too, Irish of course, a tall rangy one, taller than Sam, a little too thin for me but a looker, with long brunette hair, blues eyes, the works, and a  figure that cried out come hither. But if I know Sam it was the perfume, the scent, whatever she was wearing combined with her looks that got him, that and the story she had to tell.   

And what a story. Apparently she was a chronic lying because she told about six versions of the same story with different twists from what Sam said to Miles before he left and from what little he told me when a few things were going awry in his life before we lost  his trail. Sam, despite his reputation for chasing windmills, was cynical enough not to believe any of Mary’s stories too much, although that didn’t slow him down grasping for her favors once he got a whiff of that scent. I bet it was gardenia, it had to be; because I know for a fact that he almost felt off the deep end before when he was on the force after he ran into a woman, Hazel James, smelling of gardenia who murdered her husband and he was ready to jump through hoops for her saying it was self-defense. She had shot that dear husband while he was drunk and passed out on the floor. Sam also neglected, or tried to neglect, the little fact that he was having an affair with her after she shown up one day in our office claiming that dead husband was beating her up. So, yah, I bet six-two-and even that it was gardenia.  

Mary told him a story, a story about a statue that she had lost, a very valuable statue that she had purchased in the Orient, in some Hong Kong antique shop, and had been stolen from her room at the Grand Hotel in Shang-hai by a ring of high-end thieves one foggy night.  She had been on their trail ever since and had gotten wind that they were in town and she wanted Sam to go with her to negotiate for the return of the statue. Now I still don’t know if the statue thing, the value of it was hooey, or real. All I know is that a couple of guys are dead, Sam is gone, and I am left trying to pick up the pieces so I assume the thing was valuable. A small old time statue, with jewels on it, lots of jewels, in the form of a Buddha.           

So Sam and Mary meet this gang, the leader anyway, a guy named Sid Green, a guy known to us from Interpol, a bad character, drugs, kidnapping, art thefts, that kind of thing, and no loose ends from what we knew, and a couple of his bodyguards, at the Imperial Hotel over on Mission Street. Sam did the talking, the hires gun talking knowing who he was dealing with, but there was no go, no negotiations because after China Sid now knew that the damn thing was even more valuable than Mary thought. Supposedly there was a ton of stuff inside, rare, very rare, almost extinct jade that made the jewels on the outside seem like costume stuff.  So no go. What Sam also found out, found out to no effect as we now know, was that Mary had previously been an associate of Sid’s, a close associate in the days where she was his queen of the marriage man blackmail scams. They had had a falling out because she was trying to run her own operation, trying for her own stuff of dreams once she got onto the fact that she was smarter and better organizer that Sid. But now she was trying to grab that statue anyway she could, for herself to get a little capital to pull her own scores. And for Sam, of course, now that along the way between the different versions of her story, they had shared some satin sheets together. Nothing happened that night, no shoot-outs, but the no go signaled on both sides that some nasty business was coming down.         

The first nasty business was when Sid sent one of his gunsels, a punk kid named Elmer to eliminate Sam and Mary, eliminate for good over at his place. All this Elmer got for his efforts was a quick Sam R.I.P.  That action reopened negotiations or so Sam and Mary thought when Sid sent a message that he wanted a truce. Sid arranged for another meeting at the Imperial Hotel to reevaluate the situation under the new circumstances, the one less bodyguard circumstances he said. The new circumstances though turned out to be a planned ambush down the corridor from Sid’s suite. All that got was another gunsel, Willy Proust, a local rat, who we had a rap sheet on as long as your arm, another Sam R.I.P.  After the gun smoke settled Sid alone now in his suite was easy pickings for Sam and Mary. They just took the statue from Sid’s table while he watched, watched with a bemused smile. They left slamming the door behind with the Buddha in tow.    

Here is where things get squirrely though. Once they got back to Mary’s place and checked out the insides they found that the material, the jade, had been replaced with fake jade, some glass really. See Sid, the savvy old con, had pulled a switch, just in case. Needless to say Sid has since flown the coop for parts unknown. Sam was ready to call it quits, ready to come in and talk to me about everything. He did some over the phone, giving me a lot of the stuff that I am telling you, and I told him to come on in on his own.  Then something happened, something happened to Sam, because I never heard from him again, except that note, that “stuff of dreams” note he left at his office. I figure Mary did one of her come hither acts and got him all steamed up and so he threw in his lot with her. Or maybe he just got tired of living on cheap street, on somebody else’s sorrows. He, they, according to our sources which may have it all wrong have been variously seen in Hong Kong, Istanbul, and Vienna. Wherever he is and for whatever reason he blew town I hope, I hope like hell, that it isn’t me that has to bring Sam in.    

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

From The Marxist Archives -In Commemoration of the Paris Commune

Workers Vanguard No. 888
16 March 2007
TROTSKY
LENIN
In Commemoration of the Paris Commune
(Quote of the Week)

March 18 marks the date in 1871 of the workers’ uprising that created the Paris Commune. The Paris Commune stood as the first proletarian dictatorship in history until it was crushed in a massacre by bourgeois military forces who killed tens of thousands of workers. In his introduction to an address by Karl Marx given shortly after the Commune’s suppression, Friedrich Engels explained that the working class must smash the bourgeois state machinery and create its own state on the road to communist society, in which class divisions will have been overcome and there will be no need for a state power.
From the very outset the Commune was compelled to recognise that the working class, once come to power, could not go on managing with the old state machine; that in order not to lose again its only just conquered supremacy, this working class must, on the one hand, do away with all the old repressive machinery previously used against it itself, and, on the other, safeguard itself against its own deputies and officials, by declaring them all, without exception, subject to recall at any moment. What had been the characteristic attribute of the former state? Society had created its own organs to look after its common interests, originally through simple division of labour. But these organs, at whose head was the state power, had in the course of time, in pursuance of their own special interests, transformed themselves from the servants of society into the masters of society. This can be seen, for example, not only in the hereditary monarchy, but equally so in the democratic republic. Nowhere do “politicians” form a more separate and powerful section of the nation than precisely in North America. There, each of the two major parties which alternately succeed each other in power is itself in turn controlled by people who make a business of politics, who speculate on seats in the legislative assemblies of the Union as well as of the separate states, or who make a living by carrying on agitation for their party and on its victory are rewarded with positions….
According to the philosophical conception, the state is the “realisation of the idea,” or the Kingdom of God on earth, translated into philosophical terms, the sphere in which eternal truth and justice is or should be realised. And from this follows a superstitious reverence for the state and everything connected with it, which takes root the more readily since people are accustomed from childhood to imagine that the affairs and interests common to the whole of society could not be looked after otherwise than as they have been looked after in the past, that is, through the state and its lucratively positioned officials. And people think they have taken quite an extraordinarily bold step forward when they have rid themselves of belief in hereditary monarchy and swear by the democratic republic. In reality, however, the state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another, and indeed in the democratic republic no less than in the monarchy; and at best an evil inherited by the proletariat after its victorious struggle for class supremacy, whose worst sides the victorious proletariat, just like the Commune, cannot avoid having to lop off at once as much as possible until such time as a generation reared in new, free social conditions is able to throw the entire lumber of the state on the scrap heap.
Of late, the Social-Democratic philistine has once more been filled with wholesome terror at the words: Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Well and good, gentlemen, do you want to know what this dictatorship looks like? Look at the Paris Commune. That was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
—Friedrich Engels, 1891 Introduction to Karl Marx, The Civil War in France (1871)
*************

Leon Trotsky

Lessons of the Paris Commune

(February 1921)


Written: 4 February 1921.
First Published: Zlatoost, February 4, 1921
Source: New International, Vol.2 No.2, March 1935, pp.43-47.
Translated: By New International.
Transcription/HTML Markup: David Walters.
Copyleft: Leon Trotsky Internet Archive (www.marxists.org) 2002. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

EACH TIME that we study the history of the Commune we see it from a new aspect, thanks to the experience acquired by the later revolutionary struggles and above all by the latest revolutions, not only the Russian but the German and Hungarian revolutions. The Franco-German war was a bloody explosion, harbinger of an immense world slaughter, the Commune of Paris a lightning harbinger of a world proletarian revolution.
The Commune shows us the heroism of the working masses, their capacity to unite into a single bloc, their talent to sacrifice themselves in the name of the future, but at the same time it shows us the incapacity of the masses to choose their path, their indecision in the leadership of the movement, their fatal penchant to come to a halt after the first successes, thus permitting the enemy to regain its breath, to reestablish its position.
The Commune came too late. It had all the possibilities of taking the power on September 4 and that would have permitted the proletariat of Paris to place itself at a single stroke at the head of the workers of the country in their struggle against all the forces of the past, against Bismarck as well as against Thiers. But the power fell into the hands of the democratic praters, the deputies of Paris. The Parisian proletariat had neither a party, nor leaders to whom it would have been closely bound by previous struggles. The petty bourgeois patriots who thought themselves socialists and sought the support of the workers did not really have any confidence in themselves. They shook the proletariat’s faith in itself, they were continually in quest of celebrated lawyers, of journalists, of deputies, whose baggage consisted only of a dozen vaguely revolutionary phrases, in order to entrust them with the leadership of the movement.
The reason why Jules Favre, Picard, Gamier-Pages and Co. took power in Paris on September 4 is the same as that which permitted Paul-Boncour, A. Varenne, Renaudel and numerous others to be for a time the masters of the party of the proletariat. The Renaudels and the Boncours and even the Longuets and the Pressemanes are much closer, by virtue of their sympathies, their intellectual habits and their conduct, to the Jules Favres and the Jules Ferrys than to the revolutionary proletariat. Their socialist phraseology is nothing but an historic mask which permits them to impose themselves upon the masses. And it is just because Favre, Simon, Picard and the others used and abused a democratico-liberal phraseology that their sons and their grandsons are obliged to resort to a socialist phraseology. But the sons and the grandsons have remained worthy of their fathers and continue their work. And when it will be necessary to decide not the question of the composition of a ministerial clique but the much more important question of knowing what class in France must take power, Renaudel, Varenne, Longuet and their similars will be in the camp of Millerand – collaborator of Galliffet, the butcher of the Commune ... When the revolutionary babblers of the salons and of parliament find themselves face to face, in real life, with the revolution, they never recognize it.
The workers’ party – the real one 𔆇 is not a machine for parliamentary manoeuvres, it is the accumulated and organized experience of the proletariat. It is only with the aid of the party, which rests upon the whole history of its past, which foresees theoretically the paths of development, all its stages, and which extracts from it the necessary formula of action, that the proletariat frees itself from the need of always recommencing its history: its hesitations, its lack of decision, its mistakes.
The proletariat of Paris did not have such a party. The bourgeois socialists with whom the Commune swarmed, raised their eyes to heaven, waited for a miracle or else a prophetic word, hesitated, and during that time the masses groped about and lost their heads because of the indecision of some and the fantasy of others. The result was that the revolution broke out in their very midst, too late, and Paris was encircled. Six months elapsed before the proletariat had reestablished in its memory the lessons of past revolutions, of battles of yore, of the reiterated betrayals of democracy – and it seized power.
These six months proved to be an irreparable loss. If the centralized party of revolutionary action had been found at the head of the proletariat of France in September 1870, the whole history of France and with it the whole history of humanity would have taken another direction.
If the power was found in the hands of the proletariat of Paris on March 18, it was not because it had been deliberately seized, but because its enemies had quitted Paris.
These latter were losing ground continuously, the workers despised and detested them, the petty bourgeoisie no longer had confidence in them and the big bourgeoisie feared that they were no longer capable of defending it. The soldiers were hostile to the officers. The government fled Paris in order to concentrate its forces elsewhere. And it was then that the proletariat became master of the situation.
But it understood this fact only on the morrow. The revolution fell upon it unexpectedly.
This first success was a new source of passivity. The enemy had fled to Versailles. Wasn’t that a victory? At that moment the governmental band could have been crushed almost without the spilling of blood. In Paris, all the ministers, with Thiers at their head, could have been taken prisoner. Nobody would have raised a hand to defend them. It was not done. There was no organization of a centralized party, having a rounded view of things and special organs for realizing its decisions.
The debris of the infantry did not want to fall back to Versailles. The thread which tied the officers and the soldiers was pretty tenuous. And had there been a directing party center at Paris, it would have incorporated into the retreating armies – since there was the possibility of retreating – a few hundred or even a few dozen devoted workers, and given them the following instructions: enhance the discontent of the soldiers against the officers, profit by the first favorable psychological moment to free the soldiers from their officers and bring them back to Paris to unite with the people. This could easily have been realized, according to the admissions of Thiers’ supporters themselves. Nobody even thought of it. Nor was there anybody to think of it. In the midst of great events, moreover, such decisions can be adopted only by a revolutionary party which looks forward to a revolution, prepares for it, does not lose its head, by a party which is accustomed to having a rounded view and is not afraid to act.
And a party of action is just what the French proletariat did not have.
The Central Committee of the National Guard is in effect a Council of Deputies of the armed workers and the petty bourgeoisie. Such a Council, elected directly by the masses who have taken the revolutionary road, represents an excellent apparatus of action. But at the same time, and just because of its immediate and elementary connection with the masses who are in the state in which the revolutionary has found them, it reflects not only all the strong sides but also the weak sides of the masses, and it reflects at first the weak sides still more than it does the strong: it manifests the spirit of indecision, of waiting, the tendency to be inactive after the first successes.
The Central Committee of the National Guard needed to be led. It was indispensable to have an organization incarnating the political experience of the proletariat and always present-not only in the Central Committee, but in the legions, in the batallion, in the deepest sectors of the French proletariat. By means of the Councils of Deputies – in the given case they were organs of the National Guard – the party could have been in continual contact with the masses, known their state of mind; its leading center could each day put forward a slogan which, through the medium of the party’s militants, would have penetrated into the masses, uniting their thought and their will.
Hardly had the government fallen back to Versailles than the National Guard hastened to unload its responsibility, at the very moment when this responsibility was enormous. The Central Committee imagined “legal” elections to the Commune. It entered into negotiations with the mayors of Paris in order to cover itself, from the Right, with “legality”.
Had a violent attack been prepared against Versailles at the same time, the negotiations with the mayors would have been a ruse fully justified from the military standpoint and in conformity with the goal. But in reality, these negotiations were being conducted only in order to avert the struggle by some miracle or other. The petty bourgeois radicals and the socialistic idealists, respecting “legality” and the men who embodied a portion of the “legal” state – the deputies, the mayors, etc. – hoped at the bottom of their souls that Thiers would halt respectfully before revolutionary Paris the minute the latter covered itself with the “legal” Commune.
Passivity and indecision were supported in this case by the sacred principle of federation and autonomy. Paris, you see, is only one commune among many other communes. Paris wants to impose nothing upon anyone; it does not struggle for the dictatorship, unless it be for the ’dictatorship of example”.
In sum, it was nothing but an attempt to replace the proletarian revolution, which was developing, by a petty bourgeois reform: communal autonomy. The real revolutionary task consisted of assuring the proletariat the power all ove the country. Paris had to serve as its base, its support, its stronghold. And to attain this goal, it was necessary to vanquish Versailles without the loss of time and to send agitators, organizers, and armed forces throughout France. It was necessary to enter into contact with sympathizers, to strengthen the hesitators and to shatter the opposition of the adversary. Instead of this policy of offensive and aggression which was the only thing that could save the situation, the leaders of Paris attempted to seclude themselves in their communal autonomy: they will not attack the others if the others do not attack them; each town has its sacred right of self-government. This idealistic chatter – of the same gender as mundane anarchism – covered up in reality a cowardice in face of revolutionary action which should have been conducted incessantly up to the very end, for otherwise it should not have been begun.
The hostility to capitalist organization – a heritage of petty bourgeois localism and autonomism – is without a doubt the weak side of a certain section of the French proletariat. Autonomy for the districts, for the wards, for the batallions, for the towns, is the supreme guarantee of real activity and individual independence for certain revolutionists. But that is a great mistake which cost the French proletariat dearly.
Under the form of the “struggle against despotic centralism” and against “stifling” discipline, a fight takes place for the self-preservation of various groups and sub-groupings of the working class, for their petty interests, with their petty ward leaders and their local oracles. The entire working class, while preserving its cultural originality and its political nuances, can act methodically and firmly, without remaining in the tow of events, and directing each time its mortal blows against the weak sectors of its enemies, on the condition that at its head, above the wards, the districts, the groups, there is an apparatus which is centralized and bound together by an iron discipline. The tendency towards particularism, whatever the form it may assume, is a heritage of the dead past. The sooner French communist-socialist communism and syndicalist communism emancipates itself from it, the better it will be for the proletarian revolution.

* * *

The party does not create the revolution at will, it does not choose the moment for seizing power as it likes, but it intervenes actively in the events, penetrates at every moment the state of mind of the revolutionary masses and evaluates the power of resistance of the enemy, and thus determines the most favoraHe moment for decisive action. This is the most difficult side of its task. The party has no decision that is valid for every case. Needed are a correct theory, an intimate contact with the masses, the comprehension of the situation, a revolutionary perception, a great resoluteness. The more profoundly a revolutionary party penetrates into all the domains of the proletarian struggle, the more unified it is by the unity of goal and discipline, the speedier and better will it arrive at resolving its task.
The difficulty consists in having this organization of a centralized party, internally welded by an iron discipline, linked intimately with the movement of the masses, with its ebbs and flows. The conquest of power cannot be achieved save on the condition of a powerful revolutionary pressure of the toiling masses. But in this act the element of preparation is entirely inevitable. The better the party will understand the conjuncture and the moment, the better the bases of resistance will be prepared, the better the force and the roles will be distributed, the surer will be the success and the less victims will it cost. The correlation of a carefully prepared action and a mass movement is the politico-strategical task of the taking of power.
The comparison of March 18, 1871 with November 7, 1917 is very instructive from this point of view. In Paris, there is an absolute lack of initiative for action on the part of the leading revolutionary circles. The proletariat, armed by the bourgeois government, is in reality master of the town, has all the material means of power – cannon and rifles – at its disposal, but it is not aware of it. The bourgeoisie makes an attempt to retake the weapon of the giant: it wants to steal the cannon of the proletariat. The attempt fails. The government flees in panic from Paris to Versailles. The field is clear. But it is only on the morrow that the proletariat understands that it is the master of Paris. The “leaders” are in the wake of events, they record them when the latter are already accomplished, and they do everything in their power to blunt the revolutionary edge.
In Petrograd, the events developed differently. The party moved firmly, resolutely, to the seizure of power, having its men everywhere, consolidating each position, extending every fissure between the workers and the garrison on the one side and the government on the other.
The armed demonstration of the July days is a vast reconnoitering conducted by the party to sound the degree of close contact between the masses and the power of resistance of the enemy. The reconnoitering is transformed into a struggle of outposts. We are thrown back, but at the same time the action establishes a connection between the party and the depths of the masses. The months of August, September and October see a powerful revolutionary flux. The party profits by it and augments considerably its points of support in the working class and the garrison. Later, the harmony between the conspirative preparations and the mass action takes place almost automatically. The Second Congress of the Soviets is fixed for November ’. All our preceding agitation was to lead to the seizure of power by the Congress. Thus, the overturn was adapted in advance to November 7. This fact was well known and understood by the enemy. Kerensky and his councillors could not fail to make efforts to consolidate themselves, to however small an extent, in Petrograd for the decisive moment. Also, they stood in need of shipping out of the capital the most revolutionary sections of the garrison. We on our part profited by this attempt by Kerensky in order to make it the source of a new conflict which had a decisive importance. We openly accused the Kerensky government – our accusation subsequently found a written confirmation in an official document – of having planned the removal of a third of the Petrograd garrison not out of military considerations but for the purpose of counter-revolutionary combinations. This conflict bound us still more closely to the garrison and put before the latter a well-defined task, to support the Soviet Congress fixed for November 7. And since the government insisted – even if in a feeble enough manner – that the garrison be sent off, we created in the Petrograd Soviet, already in our hands, a Revolutionary War Committee, on the pretext of verifying the military reasons for the governmental plan.
Thus we had a purely military organ, standing at the head of the Petrograd garrison, which was in reality a legal organ of armed insurrection. At the same time we designated (communist) commissars in all the military units, in the military stores, etc. The clandestine military organization accomplished specific technical tasks and furnished the Revolutionary War Committee with fully trustworthy militants for important military tasks. The essential work concerning the preparation, the realization and the armed insurrection took place openly, and so methodically and naturally that the bourgeoisie, led by Kerensky, did not clearly understand what was taking place under their very eyes. (In Paris, the proletariat understood only on the following day that it had been really victorious – a victory which it had not, moreover, deliberately sought – that it was master of the situation. In Petrograd, it was the contrary. Our party, basing itself on the workers and the garrison, had already seized the power, the bourgeoisie passed a fairly tranquil night and learned only on the following morning that the helm of the country was in the hands of its gravedigger.)
As to strategy, there were many differences of opinion in our party.
A part of the Central Committee declared itself, as is known, against the taking of power, believing that the moment had not yet arrived, that Petrograd was detached from the rest of the country, the proletariat from the peasantry, etc.
Other comrades believed that we were not attributing sufficient importance to the elements of military complot. One of the members of the Central Committee demanded in October the surrounding of the Alexandrine Theater where the Democratic Conference was in session, and the proclamation of the dictatorship of the Central Committee of the party. He said: in concentrating our agitation as well as our preparatory military work for the moment of the Second Congress, we are showing our plan to the adversary, we are giving him the possibility of preparing himself and even of dealing us a preventive blow. But there is no doubt that the attempt at a military complot and the surrounding of the Alexandrine Theater would have been a fact too alien to the development of the events, that it would have been an event disconcerting to the masses. Even in the Petrograd Soviet, where our faction dominated, such an enterprise, anticipating the logical development of the struggle, would have provoked great disorder at that moment, above all among the garrison where there were hesitant and not very trustful regiments, primarily the cavalry regiments. It would have been much easier for Kerensky to crush a complot unexpected by the masses than to attack the garrison consolidating itself more and more on its positions: the defense of its inviolability in the name of the future Congress of the Soviets. Therefore the majority of the Central Committee rejected the plan to surround the Democratic Conference and it was right. The conjuncture was very well judged: the armed insurrection, almost without bloodshed, triumphed exactly on the date, fixed in advance and openly, for the convening of the Second Soviet Congress.
This strategy cannot, however, become a general rule, it requires specific conditions. Nobody believed any longer in the war with the Germans, and the less revolutionary soldiers did not want to quit Petrograd for the front. And even if the garrison as a whole was on the side of the workers for this single reason, it became stronger in its point of view to the extent that Kerensky’s machinations were revealed. But this mood of the Petrograd garrison had a still deeper cause in the situation of the peasant class and in the development of the imperialist war. Had there been a split in the garrison and had Kerensky obtained the possibility of support from a few regiments, our plan would have failed. The elements of purely military complot (conspiracy and great speed of action) would have prevailed. It would have been necessary, of course, to choose another moment for the insurrection.
The Lommune also had the complete possibility of winning even the peasant regiments, for the latter had lost all confidence and all respect for the power and the command. Yet it undertook nothing towards this end. The fault here is not in the relationships of the peasant and the working classes, but in the revolutionary strategy.
What will be the situation in this regard in the European countries in the present epoch? It is not easy to foretell anything on this score. Yet, with the events developing slowly and the bourgeois governments exerting all their efforts to utilize past experiences, it may be foreseen that the proletariat, in order to attract the sympathies of the soldiers, will have to overcome a great and well organized resistance at a given moment. A skillful and well-timed attack on the part of the revolution will then be necessary. The duty of the party is to prepare itself for it. That is just why it must maintain and develop its character of a centralized organization, which openly guides the revolutionary movement of the masses and is at the same time a clandestine apparatus of the armed insurrection.

* * *

The question of the electibility of the command was one of the reasons of the conflict between the National Guard and Thiers. Paris refused to accept the command designated by Thiers. Varlin subsequently formulated the demand that the command of the National Guard, from top to bottom, ought to be elected by the National Guardsmen themselves. That is where the Central Committee of the National Guard found its support.
This question must he envisaged from two sides: from the political and the military sides, which are interlinked but which should be distinguished. The political task consisted in purging the National Guard of the counter-revolutionary command. Complete electibility was the only means for it, the majority of the National Guard being composed of workers and revolutionary petty bourgeois. And in addition, the motto “electibility of the command”, being extended also to the infantry, Thiers would have been deprived at a single stroke of his essential weapon, the counter-revolutionary officers. In order to realize this plan, a party organization, having its men in all the military units, was required. In a word, electihility in this ease had as its immediate task not to give good commanders to the batallions, but to liberate them from commanders devoted to the bourgeoisie. Electibility served as a wedge for splitting the army into two parts, along class lines. Thus did matters occur with its in the period of Kerensky, above all on the eve of October.
But the liberation of the army from the old commanding apparatus inevitably involves the weakening of organizational cohesion and the diminution of combative power. As a rule, the elected command is pretty weak from the technico-military standpoint and with regard to the maintenance of order and of discipline. Thus, at the moment when the army frees itself from the old counterrevolutionary command which oppressed it, the question arises of giving it a revolutionary command capable of fulfilling its mission. And this question can by no means be resolved by simple elections. Before wide masses of soldiers acquire the experience of well choosing and selecting commanders, the revolution will be beaten by the enemy which is guided in the choice of its command by the experience of centuries. The methods of shapeless democracy (simple electibility) must be supplemented and to a certain extent replaced by measures of selection from above. The revolution must create an organ composed of experienced, reliable organizers, in which one can have absolute confidence, give it full powers to choose, designate and educate the command. If particularism and democratic autonomism are extremely dangerous to the proletarian revolution in general, they are ten times more dangerous ¥to the army. We saw that in the tragic example of the Commune.
The Central Committee of the National Guard drew its authority from democratic electibility. At the moment when the Central Committee needed to develop to the maximum its initiative in the offensive, deprived of the leadership of a proletarian party, it lost its head, hastened to transmit its powers to the representatives of the Commune which required a broader democratic basis. And it was a great mistake in that period to play with elections. But once the elections had been held and the Commune brought together, ft was necessary to concentrate everything in the Commune at a single blow and to have it create an organ possessing real power to reorganize the National Guard. This was not the case. By the side of the elected Commune there remained the Central Committee; the elected character of the latter gave it a political authority thanks to which it was able to compete with the Commune. But at the same time that deprived it of the energy and the firmness necessary in the purely military questions which, after the organization of the Commune, justified its existence. Electibility, democratic methods, are but one of the instruments in the hands of the proletariat and its party. Electibility can in no wise be a fetish, a remedy for all evils. The methods of electibility must be combined with those of appointments. The power of the Commune came from the elected National Guard. But once created, the Commune should have reorganized with a strong hand the National Guard, from top to bottom, given it reliable leaders and established a régime of very strict discipline. The Commune did not do this, being itself deprived of a powerful revolutionary directing center. It too was crushed.
We can thus thumb the whole history of the Commune, page by page, and we will find in it one single lesson: a strong party leadership is needed. More than any other proletariat has the French made sacrifices for the revolution. But also more than any other has it been duped. Many times has the bourgeoisie dazzled it with all the colors of republicanism, of radicalism, of socialism, so as always to fasten upon it the fetters of capitalism. By means of its agents, its lawyers and its journalists, the bourgeoisie has put forward a whole mass of democratic, parliamentary, autonomist formulae which are nothing but impediments on the feet of the proletariat, hampering its forward movement.
The temperament of the French proletariat is a revolutionary lava. But this lava is now covered with the ashes of skepticismresult of numerous deceptions and disenchantments. Also, the revolutionary proletarians of France must be severer towards their party and unmask more pitilessly any non-conformity between word and action. The French workers have need of an organization, strong as steel, with leaders controlled by the masses at every new stage of the revolutionary movement.
How much time will history afford us to prepare ourselves? We do not know. For fifty years the French bourgeoisie has retained the power in its hands after having elected the Third Republic on the bones of the Communards. Those fighters of ’71 were not lacking in heroism. What they lacked was clarity in method and a centralized leading organization. That is why they were vanquished. Half a century elapsed before the proletariat of France could pose the question of avenging the death of the Communards. But this time, the action will be firmer, more concentrated. The heirs of Thiers will have to pay the historic debt in full.
Leon TROTSKY
Smiley Lewis Versus Elvis On Smileys' One Night Of Sin -GoTo It Brothers!



***In The Time Of The Time Of An Outlaw Country Music Moment- The Belfast Cowboy Rides Again Van Morrison’s “Van Morrison At The Movies”





CD Review

Van Morrison At The Movies , Van Morrison, Exile Records, 2007


The basic comments here have been used, used many times, to review other Van Morrison albums from various points in his long and honorable career.

Apparently just now, although this time rather accidentally, I am on something of an outlaw country moment tear, again. I have mentioned on previously occasions when I have discussed county music, or rather more correctly outlaw country music, that I had a very short, but worthwhile period when I was immersed in this genre in the late 1970s. After tiring somewhat of Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and other more well know country outlaws I gravitated toward the music, eerily beautiful and haunting music, of Townes Van Zandt whose Steve Earle tribute album Townes I have recently reviewed in this space. As I noted there, as well, while this outlaw country thing was short-lived and I scrambled back to my first loves, blues, rock and folk music I always had time to listen to Townes and his funny mix of blues, folk rock, rock folk, and just downright outlaw country.

And that brings us to the album under review, Van Morrison At The Movies , and another “outlaw” country music man, the Belfast cowboy Van Morrison. Wait a minute, Van Morrison? Belfast cowboy? Okay, let me take a few steps back. I first heard Van Morrison in his 1960s rock period when I flipped out over his Into The Mystic on his Moondance album. And when I later saw him doing some blues stuff highlighted by his appearance in Martin Scorsese PBS History of Blues series several years ago I also flipped out, and said yes, brother blues. But somewhere along the way he turned again on us and has “reinvented” himself as the “son”, the legitimate son, of Hank Williams. But Van Morrison is no one-trick pony as his long and hard-bitten career proves.

If you do not believe me then just listen to him ante up on his Gloria (although I admit that I did not know that he wrote that one back in the day), a classic rock bluesy number; the thoughtful Brown-Eyed Girl; the pathos of Days Like This ; the John Lee Hooker song Baby Please Don’t Go; and, something out of time,Into The Mystic. The Belfast cowboy, indeed, although I always thought cowboys wore their emotions down deep, not on their blues high white note sleeves.
***In The Time Of The Time Of An Outlaw Country Music Moment- The Belfast Cowboy Rides Again Van Morrison’s “Magic Time”



CD Review

Magic Time , Van Morrison, Exile Records, 2005


The basic comments here have been used, used many times, to review other Van Morrison albums from various points in his long and honorable career.

Apparently just now, although this time rather accidentally, I am on something of an outlaw country moment tear, again. I have mentioned on previously occasions when I have discussed county music, or rather more correctly outlaw country music, that I had a very short, but worthwhile period when I was immersed in this genre in the late 1970s. After tiring somewhat of Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and other more well know country outlaws I gravitated toward the music, eerily beautiful and haunting music, of Townes Van Zandt whose Steve Earle tribute album Townes I have recently reviewed in this space. As I noted there, as well, while this outlaw country thing was short-lived and I scrambled back to my first loves, blues, rock and folk music I always had time to listen to Townes and his funny mix of blues, folk rock, rock folk, and just downright outlaw country.

And that brings us to the album under review, Magic Time, and another “outlaw” country music man, the Belfast cowboy Van Morrison. Wait a minute, Van Morrison? Belfast cowboy? Okay, let me take a few steps back. I first heard Van Morrison in his 1960s rock period when I flipped out over his Into The Mystic on his Moondance album. And when I later saw him doing some blues stuff highlighted by his appearance in Martin Scorsese PBS History of Blues series several years ago I also flipped out, and said yes, brother blues. But somewhere along the way he turned again on us and has “reinvented” himself as the “son”, the legitimate son, of Hank Williams. But Van Morrison is no one-trick pony as his long and hard-bitten career proves.

If you do not believe me then just listen to him ante up on his Keep Mediocrity At Bay , a classic folk bluesy number; the thoughtful Just Like Greta; the pathos of Lonely And Blue; the title song Magic Time; and, something out of time,Evening Train. The Belfast cowboy, indeed, although I always thought cowboys wore their emotions down deep, not on their blues high white note sleeves.

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