Gutting the Voting Rights Act-Supreme Court Spits on Black Rights

Workers Vanguard No. 1027	12 July 2013

Gutting the Voting Rights Act-Supreme Court Spits on Black Rights

“Our country has changed,” wrote Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts in the majority decision striking down the section of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that gives it teeth. In a five-to-four ruling, the Court effectively found its “pre-clearance” provision, i.e., prior approval from the Justice Department to fiddle with voting rules, too onerous for those states subject to it.

The gutting of the Voting Rights Act, which in its own words was meant to “enforce the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution,” is nothing but a punch in the face to black people. Part of the legal consolidation of the democratic gains that black people won, gun in hand, in the Civil War, the Fifteenth Amendment granted the right to vote regardless of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” But following the defeat of Reconstruction, it became a dead letter in the states of the old Confederacy, which employed poll taxes, literacy tests and other dirty tricks—backed up by the lynch-rope terror of the Ku Klux Klan and local police (often intertwined)—to keep black people from casting their ballots. It took a mass movement, and no small sacrifice of lives, to crush Jim Crow segregation in the South and wrest reforms such as the Voting Rights Act from the ruling class.

Signaling how little racist capitalist America has changed, the states that had fallen under federal oversight celebrated the Supreme Court decision by immediately gearing up their machinery of voter suppression. Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina and Virginia rushed to implement new voter ID laws that will redound against not just black people but many others at the bottom of society—Latinos, the poor, the elderly. In Arizona, where authorities have gone to great lengths to one-up the Obama administration’s anti-immigrant crackdown, state attorney general Tom Horne railed that the Voting Rights Act “humiliates Arizona by making it say ‘Mother may I’ to the federal government every time it wants to change some remarkably minor laws.” Meanwhile, North Carolina and other states are moving to drastically cut early voting and eliminate same-day registration.

The Court’s ruling should come as no surprise. Chief Justice Roberts is but one of those on the Court who were schooled in the legal doctrine of “strict constructionism,” which in plain English means rolling back rights that black people and others have gained through struggle. Roberts has been devoted to this pursuit since his days as a Justice Department lawyer under Ronald Reagan. Commenting on Roberts’ and Samuel J. Alito’s confirmation hearings, we observed: “Theirs is not a mere ‘judicial philosophy’ but the expression in the legal/judicial realm of the call that the ‘South will rise again’” (WV No. 864, 17 February 2006). For Senate Democrats at the time, the reactionary views of these Bush nominees were not an issue. Despite Democrats’ rancor over the Voting Rights Act decision, Barack Obama and his party have done their part to downplay the enduring character of racial oppression, not least through Obama’s much-lauded comment in 2008 that the civil rights movement took black people “90 percent of the way” to full equality.

The reality is that by every measure—employment, income, housing, education—the yawning gap between white and black America persists to this day. Nearly 50 years after the passage of the Voting Rights Act, black people are still blown away on the streets of this country simply for their appearance, as was 17-year-old Trayvon Martin last year. Today his vigilante killer is on trial, but only because nationwide protest prompted his arrest. Across the country, the police routinely stop, frisk, beat and jail black youth, although not to the satisfaction of NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg, who recently lamented that “we disproportionately stop whites too much and minorities too little.” Mass incarceration has left some 13 percent of black men with felony convictions. If ever released, most of them continue to be stripped of basic rights, including the franchise.

The “end of racism” nonsense plays into the hands of right-wing reactionaries as they go about instilling their view that oppressed minorities deserve nothing, ever. Take Justice Antonin Scalia sneering in February that pre-clearance is the “perpetuation of a racial entitlement.” Cut of the same cloth was the Supreme Court’s recent seven-to-one ruling that puts another nail in the coffin of affirmative action—also a gain, however minimal, of the civil rights movement. The case was kicked back to a lower court for consideration under a new standard that will make it even harder for universities to consider race in admissions. The ongoing racist purge of higher education and skyrocketing tuition costs cry out for a fight for free, quality, racially integrated education for everyone, through the university level.

These judicial feats turning back the clock have been very easy to carry out. Why? Time and again, the capitalist Democratic Party politicians who pass for leaders of the black masses have diverted justified anger back into electoral politics, as have the bureaucrats atop the trade unions. The resulting low ebb in social and class struggle has put wind in the sails of the decades-long effort to roll back the gains of the civil rights movement, not to mention the ongoing war on labor that has hit black workers, most recently in the public-sector unions, especially hard. Historically comprising a reserve army of labor to be maintained, albeit minimally, for the American bourgeoisie, today the black ghetto poor are increasingly considered to be an expendable population.

It is crucial to defend voting rights and every other gain for black people, other minorities and the working class. Depriving the oppressed of basic democratic rights is a declaration that it is open season on them. At the same time, a serious defense of those rights would involve mobilizing not votes for “lesser evil” representatives of the class enemy but rather mass struggles against the racist capitalist rulers. Such a fight for the rights of the oppressed would prove a powerful leaven to the class struggle of the working class as a whole.

Racial Oppression—Bedrock of U.S. Capitalism

Following the defeat of the South in the Civil War, the former slaves were liberated—codified in the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery—and extended such basic rights as the right to vote and hold office. This period of Radical Reconstruction was the most democratic in American history, with black rights enforced in the South at rifle-point by the interracial Union Army. Among the measures adopted were the Fourteenth Amendment—which conferred citizenship on “all persons born or naturalized in the United States,” an important protection for immigrants as well—and the Fifteenth Amendment.

Ultimately, though, the Northern bourgeoisie in pursuit of its class interests went on to betray Reconstruction, making common cause with Southern landholders to ensure the maintenance of private property in the means of production. This turn was exemplified by the Compromise of 1877, after which Union troops were ordered back to their barracks, opening the road for Jim Crow to ride in on the Klansman’s horse. The black population, although not returned to slavery, was solidified as a specially oppressed race-color caste.

With the mass migration of blacks from the South to the industrial cities of the North—initially around the time of World War I—the bourgeoisie increasingly fostered anti-black racism, making the color bar a dividing line that has served to obscure the fundamental class divide in society. To this day, racist poison plays a central role in blocking the development of class consciousness in the American proletariat. As a result, the U.S. is the only industrial country where the workers have not had their own independent political party, even a reformist one. The legacy of black chattel slavery is behind much in the U.S. political system that is anti-democratic, e.g., the Senate, which is designed to favor less populous rural and Southern regions by granting each state equal representation.

Although the courageous struggles of the civil rights foot soldiers were instrumental in ending Jim Crow, the bourgeoisie had its own reasons for acquiescing. The system of legal segregation in the South had become outdated with the mechanization of agriculture and the growth of a black proletariat in the region. It was also a blemish on the U.S. image abroad. In countering American bourgeois propaganda that praised the virtues of “democracy,” the Soviet Union made hay of scenes of police dogs mauling and truncheons pummeling black men, women and children in the South. As Louis Menand related in the New Yorker (8 July): “American Presidents were trying to run a Cold War. They could live with Jim Crow when it was an invisible regional peculiarity, but once conditions were broadcast around the world they experienced an urgent need to make the problem go away.”

The strategy of Martin Luther King and other liberal civil rights leaders was to appeal to the “conscience” of the capitalist rulers, pinning their hopes on the beneficence of their courts and the Democratic Party in Washington. The ruling class was willing to make concessions in the sphere of democratic rights. But it would not and could not redress the abject material conditions besetting the black masses. The civil rights movement met its defeat when it came North, where it confronted the conditions of black impoverishment and oppression woven into the fabric of American capitalism: rat-infested slums, crumbling schools, mass unemployment and rampant cop terror.

The great Marxist revolutionary Leon Trotsky, co-leader with V.I. Lenin of the 1917 Russian Revolution that brought the proletariat to power, described this dynamic in his 1922 report “The Position of the Republic and the Tasks of Young Workers”:

“The bourgeoisie makes concessions to the working class: universal suffrage, social and factory legislation, national insurance, the shortening of the working day. The bourgeoisie makes a retreat step by step; where necessary it grants a reform; when possible it puts on the pressure again and then makes a retreat. Why? It is manoeuvring; the ruling class is fighting for its rule, for the exploitation of the other class. Of course the reformists suppose that bit by bit they will remake the bourgeois system into a socialist one. And we reply to this: rubbish!—while power is in the hands of the bourgeoisie they will measure out each reform but they know up to what point they can grant a reform. And just for this purpose they have the power in their hands.”

What the bourgeoisie grants it also can take away. As the chipping away at the gains of the civil rights movement shows, reforms under capitalism are eminently reversible. The same is true for gay rights, now widely considered on firmer footing after another five-to-four Supreme Court ruling last month that declared unconstitutional a key provision of the anti-gay federal Defense of Marriage Act signed into law by Bill Clinton in 1996. That decision came amid increasing support among the bourgeoisie and more widely in society for extending to same-sex couples the institution of marriage—one of the means by which the ruling class exerts social control.

The only way to win social equality is to put an end to the capitalist system of exploitation. With black people historically a vital part of the American economy while at the same time in the mass forcibly segregated at its bottom, we advance the program of revolutionary integrationism. Fighting against all forms of discrimination and segregation, we understand that the liberation of black people can be achieved only through integration into an egalitarian socialist society. This perspective is counterposed to both liberal integrationism, which holds that black equality can be achieved within the confines of American capitalism, and black nationalism, which despairs of the possibility of overcoming racial divisions through united class struggle.

Liberalism and the American Nightmare

Adding a heavy dollop of cynicism to its reactionary ruling, the Supreme Court directed Congress to come up with a new, improved method of pre-clearance, well aware that lawmakers are unlikely to agree to any standard. But if you believe the NAACP and other liberal types, it is time to appeal to the “better angels” among the Congressional Republicans. Democratic Party mouthpiece Al Sharpton—one of the organizers of the August 24 “National Action to Realize the Dream” events commemorating the 50th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington—has pledged to “mobilize nationwide to put the pressure on Congress to come up with stricter voter protection laws.”

The predictable reaction of top officials of the unions, many of which have endorsed the August 24 events, is to similarly preach faith in the politicians who look after the interests of racist American capitalism. In his statement on the Voting Rights Act decision, AFL-CIO head Richard Trumka declared: “We call on Congress with leadership from President Obama to live up to the ideals of our democracy by protecting and ensuring the right to vote for all.” “Our” democracy is a society where the capitalist exploiters call the shots, offering up the electoral shell game to mask their class dictatorship. Barack Obama, the first black man elected president, took office at a time when the ruling class sought an effective Commander-in-Chief after the Bush-Cheney years, one who could sell the lie that rapacious U.S. imperialism was a bastion of democracy. He has delivered for them, advancing such American “ideals” as shredding democratic rights and expanding the surveillance state, pursuing the Afghanistan occupation and Libya bombing, deporting masses of immigrants and launching a crusade against teachers unions.

The real game for Sharpton, Trumka & Co. is to bolster the fortunes of the Democratic Party. Racist voter suppression impacts black, Latino and student populations that in the main vote for the Democrats. As such, it is advantageous for the Republicans to carry out a naked assault on voting rights, although this backfired in 2012 when the black voter turnout rate was higher than that of whites, impelled in part by outrage over attempts to suppress the vote.

The outright bigotry of the Republican Party allows the Democrats to take for granted support from black people, and in the recent past it has also thrown a lot more Latino votes in their direction. As Malcolm X once wrote: “‘Conservatism’ in America’s politics means ‘Let’s keep the n---ers in their place.’ And ‘liberalism’ means ‘Let’s keep the knee-grows in their place—but tell them we’ll treat them a little better; let’s fool them more, with more promises.’” Although he lacked a revolutionary working-class perspective, Malcolm was a scathing truth-teller, pointedly referring to the original March on Washington as the “Farce on Washington.”

Chattel slavery was abolished on the battlefields of the Civil War, the Second American Revolution. But a lot of unfinished business remains. It will take a Third American Revolution to do away with the system of wage slavery in which the oppression of black people is materially rooted. To this end, workers and the black masses must be broken from the grip of the Democratic Party. Workers need their own party, a revolutionary party capable of leading the struggle for an egalitarian socialist society, ushering in the dawn of black freedom. 

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

 

Hey, Inspector Tim Riley here. I guess by now you have all read in the Examiner or heard on the radio about how Sam Sutter, who were want for questioning about a couple of things, a couple of shootings and why, has flown the coop. This is a tough one, personally, see Sam was 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 and foolish than smart running up again Jimmy Clancy’s gang.  We were chasing windmills in those days going to clean up the whole world during our tenure although Sam and his college training (and maybe that one year of law school over at Hastings before he decided he wasn’t cut on to be somebody’s mouthpiece) always was reining me in trying get me to pace myself. I got wind that wind that the Clancy gang was unloading unbounded liquor over by the Sutro Baths and went out there along to make the bust one night. Sam came out guns blazing and saved me when things turned hot but it was close. He helped me another time when I was 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 case, 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 other 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, why he flew the coop. 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 dame but with dough and with plenty of tough guy wanting big eyes to go around. All 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. Miles stuck around for gratitude time and I heard did pretty well with lonely gay divorcees whatever his wife might think. Sam, frankly, not as a good-looking a guy as Miles, Miles and all his feathers, 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 because it was beauty. The kidnappers never knew what hit them and our soap dame walked away from that mess just as nice as you please. And knew how to show a tough guy her appreciation.

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 faces, when a couple of coppers got killed because we didn’t have enough intelligence about the operation when we moved in, 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 I 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 in the family 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 her Mary because that is what Sam called her, okay. She came through Sam’s 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. A woman who would not have to carry her own luggage, not for long, as my old Irish grandfather used to say.

The time I saw I would say though that maybe had had a couple of scrapes with cheap street but maybe that was me thinking that later when stuff came out about who she was and where she had been . Forget that, okay because that stuff wouldn’t mean anything to Sam when she got his wanting habits on. 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 the 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 hired 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 married 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 grab it 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 a couple of days later 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 them, 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 at that point 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, maybe did a couple of things to him in bed that she had picked up in the Orient, Kama Sutra stuff or whatever they call it, 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 had been variously seen in Hong Kong, Istanbul, and Vienna. Wherever Sam 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.    

 

From The Marxist Archives- The Deception of Bourgeois Democracy

Workers Vanguard No. 890 13 April 2007 TROTSKY LENIN The Deception of Bourgeois Democracy (Quote of the Week) In his classic work, The State and Revolution, written on the eve of the 1917 October Revolution, Bolshevik leader V.I. Lenin explained that capitalist democracy is nothing but a fig leaf for the class dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Pointing to the lessons drawn by Karl Marx from the experience of the 1871 Paris Commune, when the proletariat briefly held power, Lenin argued that only under the dictatorship of the proletariat would the state serve the interests of the working masses on the road to a classless world communist society. In capitalist society, providing it develops under the most favourable conditions, we have a more or less complete democracy in the democratic republic. But this democracy is always hemmed in by the narrow limits set by capitalist exploitation, and consequently always remains, in effect, a democracy for the minority, only for the propertied classes, only for the rich. Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in the ancient Greek republics: freedom for the slave-owners. Owing to the conditions of capitalist exploitation, the modern wage slaves are so crushed by want and poverty that “they cannot be bothered with democracy,” “cannot be bothered with politics”; in the ordinary, peaceful course of events, the majority of the population is debarred from participation in public and political life.... Democracy for an insignificant minority, democracy for the rich—that is the democracy of capitalist society.... Marx grasped this essence of capitalist democracy splendidly when, in analysing the experience of the Commune, he said that the oppressed are allowed once every few years to decide which particular representative of the oppressing class shall represent and repress them in parliament! But from this capitalist democracy—that is inevitably narrow and stealthily pushes aside the poor, and is therefore hypocritical and false through and through—forward development does not proceed simply, directly and smoothly, towards “greater and greater democracy,” as the liberal professors and petty-bourgeois opportunists would have us believe. No, forward development, i.e., development towards communism, proceeds through the dictatorship of the proletariat, and cannot do otherwise, for the resistance of the capitalist exploiters cannot be broken by anyone else or in any other way. —V.I. Lenin, The State and Revolution (1917) Chapter 1. The State: A Product of the Irreconcilability of Class Antagonisms What is now happening to Marx's theory has, in the course of history, happened repeatedly to the theories of revolutionary thinkers and leaders of oppressed classes fighting for emancipation. During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, received their theories with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to hallow their names to a certain extent for the “consolation” of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping the latter, while at the same time robbing the revolutionary theory of its substance, blunting its revolutionary edge and vulgarizing it. Today, the bourgeoisie and the opportunists within the labor movement concur in this doctoring of Marxism. They omit, obscure, or distort the revolutionary side of this theory, its revolutionary soul. They push to the foreground and extol what is or seems acceptable to the bourgeoisie. All the social-chauvinists are now “Marxists” (don't laugh!). And more and more frequently German bourgeois scholars, only yesterday specialists in the annihilation of Marxism, are speaking of the “national-German” Marx, who, they claim, educated the labor unions which are so splendidly organized for the purpose of waging a predatory war! In these circumstances, in view of the unprecedently wide-spread distortion of Marxism, our prime task is to re-establish what Marx really taught on the subject of the state. This will necessitate a number of long quotations from the works of Marx and Engels themselves. Of course, long quotations will render the text cumbersome and not help at all to make it popular reading, but we cannot possibly dispense with them. All, or at any rate all the most essential passages in the works of Marx and Engels on the subject of the state must by all means be quoted as fully as possible so that the reader may form an independent opinion of the totality of the views of the founders of scientific socialism, and of the evolution of those views, and so that their distortion by the “Kautskyism” now prevailing may be documentarily proved and clearly demonstrated. Let us being with the most popular of Engels' works, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, the sixth edition of which was published in Stuttgart as far back as 1894. We have to translate the quotations from the German originals, as the Russian translations, while very numerous, are for the most part either incomplete or very unsatisfactory. Summing up his historical analysis, Engels says: “The state is, therefore, by no means a power forced on society from without; just as little is it 'the reality of the ethical idea', 'the image and reality of reason', as Hegel maintains. Rather, it is a product of society at a certain stage of development; it is the admission that this society has become entangled in an insoluble contradiction with itself, that it has split into irreconcilable antagonisms which it is powerless to dispel. But in order that these antagonisms, these classes with conflicting economic interests, might not consume themselves and society in fruitless struggle, it became necessary to have a power, seemingly standing above society, that would alleviate the conflict and keep it within the bounds of 'order'; and this power, arisen out of society but placing itself above it, and alienating itself more and more from it, is the state." (Pp.177-78, sixth edition)[1] This expresses with perfect clarity the basic idea of Marxism with regard to the historical role and the meaning of the state. The state is a product and a manifestation of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms. The state arises where, when and insofar as class antagonism objectively cannot be reconciled. And, conversely, the existence of the state proves that the class antagonisms are irreconcilable. It is on this most important and fundamental point that the distortion of Marxism, proceeding along two main lines, begins. On the one hand, the bourgeois, and particularly the petty-bourgeois, ideologists, compelled under the weight of indisputable historical facts to admit that the state only exists where there are class antagonisms and a class struggle, “correct” Marx in such a way as to make it appear that the state is an organ for the reconciliation of classes. According to Marx, the state could neither have arisen nor maintained itself had it been possible to reconcile classes. From what the petty-bourgeois and philistine professors and publicists say, with quite frequent and benevolent references to Marx, it appears that the state does reconcile classes. According to Marx, the state is an organ of class rule, an organ for the oppression of one class by another; it is the creation of “order”, which legalizes and perpetuates this oppression by moderating the conflict between classes. In the opinion of the petty-bourgeois politicians, however, order means the reconciliation of classes, and not the oppression of one class by another; to alleviate the conflict means reconciling classes and not depriving the oppressed classes of definite means and methods of struggle to overthrow the oppressors. For instance, when, in the revolution of 1917, the question of the significance and role of the state arose in all its magnitude as a practical question demanding immediate action, and, moreover, action on a mass scale, all the Social-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks descended at once to the petty-bourgeois theory that the “state” “reconciles” classes. Innumerable resolutions and articles by politicians of both these parties are thoroughly saturated with this petty-bourgeois and philistine “reconciliation” theory. That the state is an organ of the rule of a definite class which cannot be reconciled with its antipode (the class opposite to it) is something the petty-bourgeois democrats will never be able to understand. Their attitude to the state is one of the most striking manifestations of the fact that our Socialist- Revolutionaries and Mensheviks are not socialists at all (a point that we Bolsheviks have always maintained), but petty-bourgeois democrats using near-socialist phraseology. On the other hand, the “Kautskyite” distortion of Marxism is far more subtle. “Theoretically”, it is not denied that the state is an organ of class rule, or that class antagonisms are irreconcilable. But what is overlooked or glossed over is this: if the state is the product of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms, if it is a power standing above society and “alienating itself more and more from it", it is clear that the liberation of the oppressed class is impossible not only without a violent revolution, but also without the destruction of the apparatus of state power which was created by the ruling class and which is the embodiment of this “alienation”. As we shall see later, Marx very explicitly drew this theoretically self-evident conclusion on the strength of a concrete historical analysis of the tasks of the revolution. And — as we shall show in detail further on — it is this conclusion which Kautsky has “forgotten” and distorted.

Free Bradley Manning!

Judge refuses to dismiss Aiding the Enemy and Computer Fraud charges against Manning: trial report, day 19

digg

By Nathan Fuller, Bradley Manning Support Network. July 18, 2013.

Defense lawyer David Coombs and Pfc. Bradley Manning, drawn by Debra Van Poolen

Ruling on two defense motions to direct not-guilty verdicts, Judge Denise Lind refused to throw out the ‘aiding the enemy’ and Computer Fraud charges against Pfc. Bradley Manning. The defense filed the motions at the conclusion of the government’s case, before it began with its own witnesses, arguing that the government had failed to provide evidence to support its charges. Rules for Court Martial instruct the judge for this type of motion to view the evidence in a light most favorable to the prosecution. The judge ruled that the evidence the government provided was sufficient to not throw out the charges at this time, but at her final verdict she will weigh both government and defense evidence and could still find Manning not guilty.
Judge Lind said that the prosecution established that in his training as an intelligence analyst, Manning learned that the enemy uses the Internet to attempt to obtain classified information and to keep such information secret. He plotted U.S. military activity, she said the government proved, and knew that the enemy would attempt to do the same. That evidence, she ruled, could tend to establish that Manning knew he was dealing with the enemy. (See here for why that evidence is weak, circumstantial, and therefore could set an extremely dangerous precedent.)
For the computer fraud charge, she ruled that the government established that Manning used unauthorized software (the automated downloading program Wget), and that her court instructions dictate that restrictions on access include “manner of access.” This evidence was enough, when viewed (per her instructions) in a light most favorable to the government, to not dismiss the charge at this time.
Stealing government property charges
The parties then litigated the defense’s other to motions to direct not-guilty verdicts, on the charges that Manning stole government property. The defense argues, as laid out here, that the government mischarged Manning in saying that he stole “databases” instead of saying the stole copies of some of the records in a database and the information contained within.
The first distinction is that Manning took copies, not original records, and therefore never deprived the government of the information. The second is that Manning stole records, and the information within, not the full databases themselves. He didn’t take the infrastructure that makes the database searchable and interconnected, so when the government worked to establish the value (the federal statute requires the stolen property be worth more than $1,000) of the database and cost of producing it, they were proving what they charged but not what Manning ever had in his possession. Defense lawyer David Coombs used the analogy of stealing merchandise from WalMart: if he stole a sweater, he wouldn’t be charged with stealing WalMart. Even if he took all of the merchandise in WalMart, he wouldn’t be charged with stealing the bricks and mortar of the store, and the value of the employees wouldn’t be used to prove the charge, as the government has essentially done in this case.
The government contends that it charged correctly, and that information contained in a record is inherent within that record. Prosecutor Capt. Von Elton said that charging Manning with a “thing of value” put him on notice that he would be charged with the information within. He also said that the distinction regarding “copies” doesn’t apply, because digital records can exist in multiple locations simultaneously, which the defense disagreed with thereafter.
Recess, rebuttal
The government recalled defense witness Chief Warrant Officer Joshua Ehersman to testify about his memory of which types of programs and files soldiers were authorized to install on or run from their work computers. He said he’d tried to install programs but didn’t have administrative privileges to do so, and he ran them from a CD while waiting for contractor Jason Milliman to install them for him.
The defense established that other soldiers used music, movies, and games, and that Milliman, as a civilian, didn’t have authority over soldiers’ use.
The government then recalled Milliman, who said that there was no physical restriction from running an unauthorized program on the work computers from a CD. The defense established that he was somewhat lax about using programs: if an unauthorized program was used and didn’t interfere with other programs or files, it was generally allowed.
This all goes to whether Manning’s use of Wget, with which he automated downloading of State Dept. cables, was authorized, and whether such use constitutes exceeding his unauthorized access.
Now Special Agent David Shaver is on the stand.
I’ll update this post again later today.

 

Bradley Manning: Aiding the Enemy Charge Sticks

by Stephen Lendman

Manning's an American hero. He's no criminal. He's being hung out to dry wrongfully. It's for doing the right thing. He's a 2013 Nobel Peace Prize Nominee.

He exposed US lawlessness. He spoke truth to power. He did so courageously. He challenged American imperial rampaging. Everyone has a right to know.

He's been secretly tried. Kangaroo court military injustice awaits him. It's baked in the cake. Doing so sends a message. It threatens other potential whistleblowers. Stay quiet or be treated like Manning.

He said America's "obsessed with capturing and killing people. Collateral murder" is policy. Human life has no value. Advancing America's imperium is prioritized.

Mass killing and destruction are small prices to pay. America's on a roll. It's heading the wrong way. It's on a fast track toward tyranny. It's virtually full-blown.

It honors its worst. It persecutes its best. Manning's heroic. He faces potential life in prison. It's for doing the right thing. Charges wrongfully include aiding and abetting America's enemies.

Pogo was right saying: "We have met the enemy and he is us." America belongs in the dock, not Manning.

On July 4, defense counsel moved to dismiss seven charges. In early July, military prosecutors rested their case. On July 11, defense lawyers concluded theirs. On July 16, Judge Col. Denise Lind agreed to consider Manning's defense move to dismiss.

They include falsely claiming he committed computer fraud. They said it was by downloading diplomatic cables from the Net-Centric Diplomacy (NCD) database.

Military prosecutors say he violated US statute 18 USC 1030 by "exceeding" his "authorized access" with Wget. It's a program used to automatically download files.

Defense counsel David Coombs said prosecutors want to turn restricted use into an access restriction. It constitutes computer fraud. Manning's absolutely innocent. Claiming otherwise is false.

According to forensic expert David Shaver, Wget doesn't give users more access than otherwise available. It merely changes how downloads obtain information.

Prosecutors conceded that Manning didn't use Wget for firewall circumvention. They said because NCD has no process to export cables in bulk, restrictions are implied.

They claim using Wget constitutes unauthorized access. It's because Manning was able to retrieve cables faster than without it.

Speed and efficiency don't constitute fraud. Legitimately claiming it doesn't wash. More on that below.

Coombs also moved to dismiss aiding the enemy charges. It's because prosecutors presented no credible evidence.

They failed to show Manning had "actual knowledge" that giving WikiLeaks information constituted indirectly aiding the enemy.

At best, said Coombs, prosecutors might have shown Manning had been "negligent" or "should have known" that Al Qaeda or other enemy groups could access WikiLeaks information.

Doing so doesn't aid and/or abet America's enemies. Whether Manning "should have known" something is a slippery slope judgment. It's a dangerously low burden of proof. It's especially so in Manning's case.

It involves potential capital punishment for alleged judgmental errors. No legitimate court would concur. Hanging ones convict by accusation. That alone suffices. Innocence is no defense. Police states operate that way.

Prosecutorial claims about Manning having "actual knowledge" that America's enemies would view WikiLeaks information flies in the face of reality. They're absurd on their face. They don't wash. They stuck.

On July 18, military Judge Lind ignored key facts. She refused to dismiss aiding and abetting America's enemy charges. She rejected Coombs' defense motion to do so.

She did what she was expected to do. Manning's guilty by accusation. Obama did the unconscionable. He interfered with an ongoing trial.

Manning "broke the law," he said. He said so without credible evidence. He hung him out to dry. He pronounced him guilty by accusation.

What military or civil judge would dare overrule the president and commander-in-chief? None hoping to rise to higher judicial or military ranks.

None planning a political career. None planning a business, academic or other professional one. None concerned for their safety.

Perhaps they'd face aiding and abetting America's enemy charges. It bears repeating. Police states operate that way.

Federation of American Scientists expert Steven Aftergood expressed outrage over Obama's comment. It was "not appropriate," he said.

"(I)t assumes Manning is guilty…No one should mistake a charge for a conviction - especially the nation's highest official."

National Institute of Military Justice legal expert Eugene Fidell said:

"Commenting on Manning's conditions of confinement is one thing. I would have strongly advised (Obama) to not comment about Manning's guilt."

Doing so obstructs justice. Manning faced faint hope for justice. Obama's comment assured none. According to Fidell:

It's not that hard to ensure that unlawful command influence hasn't in fact prejudiced the right to a fair trial." Improper Obama comments assured it.

He lied saying he's restricted like Manning. He claimed he must "abide by certain rules of classified information" or be punished.

As president and commander-in-chief, he has legal access to anything he wishes. He can get whatever he wants.

He's a legal scholar. He knows it. He claimed otherwise. Aftergood said he "had a bad day." He "said a number of things that really were not coherent."

He said plenty that was dead wrong. It's typical Obama doublespeak duplicity. It happens with disturbing regularity. It matters most with lives on the line. He dismissively doesn't care.

Aiding the enemy's a capital offense. Prosecutors said they won't pursue it. They want Manning facing life in prison hard time.

They want him enduring Supermax harshness. Perhaps back in isolation longterm. It's for prisoners called "the worst of the worst."

Allegedly they're considered too dangerous for general population circulation. They're for ones America wants punished viciously. Injustice is longstanding policy.

Thousands of political prisoners languish in America's gulag. It's the world's largest by far. It's the shame of the nation. It wants Manning joining other unjustly.

Judge Col. Lind's complicit. She shamelessly claimed her decision was based on Manning's "training and experience and preparation."

She cited the volume of "classified" information he disclosed to WikiLeaks. She said doing so buttressed prosecutorial charges of "knowingly provid(ing) information to the enemy."

She claimed because Manning has access to classified publications, he knows terrorist groups can access online anything made public.

She said he was trained to protect critical information. According to ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project director Ben Wizner:

"The aiding the enemy charge is not only unconstitutional, it is unnecessary."

"The point of charging Manning in this way is to transform what was widely seen around the world as a valuable leak into treason."

"The government purports to criminalize any information that is published somewhere where the enemy can see it."

According to Fidell:

If Manning's convicted, defense counsel "will have an appealable issue that could gain traction."

"The government's case on the (aiding the enemy) charge is circumstantial, and requires proof beyond a reason doubt."

Clear doubt exists. The charge is spurious. It's vicious. It's politically motivated. It doesn't wash. Legitimate judges would reject it.

At issue is finding them. In today's America, it's not easy. For Manning, it may be impossible. It bears repeating.

What judge will overrule the president and commander-in-chief? Who'd be bold enough to do it? Profiles in courage are scarce at all times. Perhaps for Manning, they're nonexistent.

Fidell added:

"Evidence that Pvt. Manning had been briefed on the reasons for security precautions could be key, but I'm not at all convinced the government carried its burden.”

"The sheer volume of the leaked documents does not, to my mind, constitute evidence of intent to aid the enemy."

"The unfortunate result of the judge's ruling is that if the appellate courts disagree with her, there will almost certainly have to be a rehearing on the sentence, and that could drag the case out further."

Harvard Law Professor Yochai Benkler testified for Manning. He called WikiLeaks "a legitimate journalistic organization."

It differs from conventional media in platform only.

"Once you accept that WikiLeaks is a new journalistic organization that can be read by anyone with an Internet connection…that essentially means that any leak to a media organization that can be read by any enemy anywhere in the world becomes automatically aiding the enemy."

Coombs urged Lind not to punish "people for getting information out to the press, to basically put…a hammer down on any whistleblower."

Prosecutors lied claiming bin Laden had access to WikiLeaks information Manning supplied. Impossible.

In December 2001, he died naturally. Major media reported it at the time. Conveniently they forgot. They claimed otherwise.

Obama's Abbottabad, Pakistan raid was a made for media proliferation stunt. It has nothing to do with killing bin Laden. Dead men don't die twice. Not even by presidential order.

Manning's trial began in June. Closing arguments could begin on Friday. Lind alone will rule. She could do so shortly after they end.

Once her verdict is announced, sentencing will follow. Manning pled guilty to 10 lesser charges. On those alone, he faces up to 20 years imprisonment.

At risk is far more than that. Manning faces longterm hard time. He does so unjustly. He deserves high praise for acting responsibly. Police states don't operate that way.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@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

Labor’s Untold Story- A Personal View Of The Class Wars In The Kentucky Hills And Hollows-Hard Times In Babylon-Growing Up Working Poor In The 1950s

Markin comment:

GROWING UP DIRT POOR IN THE 1950’S
Several years ago I wrote a personal commentary about a childhood friend from back in the old neighborhood in North Adamsville where I grew up in the 1950’s who had passed away. I had also at that time been re-reading the then recently deceased investigative journalist David Halberstam’s book, The Fifties, that covers that same basic period. Halberstam’s take on the trends of the period, in contrast to the reality of my own childhood experiences as a child of the working poor that missed most of the benefits of that ‘golden age,’ rekindled some memories, a few painful. It is no exaggeration to say that those were hard times in Babylon. Not so much for individual lacks like a steady (and reliable) family car to break out of the cramped quarters, house on house, where we lived once in a while. Or the inevitable hand-me-down clothes (all the way through high school, almost), or worst the Bargain Center bargains that were no bargains (the local “Wal-Mart” of the day to give you an idea of what I mean). Or even the always house coldness in winter (to save on precious fuel even in those cheap-priced heating oil times) and hotness in summer (ditto, save on electricity so no A/C, or fans).

They, and other such lacks, all had their place in the poor man’s pantheon, no question. No, what, in the end, turned things out badly was the sense of defeat that hung, hung heavily and almost daily over the household, the street, the neighborhood at a time when others, visibly and not so far away, were getting ahead. Some sociologist, some academic sociologist, for, sure, would call it the death of “rising expectations.” And for once they would be right, or at least on the right track. Thinking back on those times has also made me reflect on how the hard anti-communist politics of the period, the “red scare” left people like my parents high and dry, although they were as prone to support it as any American Legionaire. The defeat and destruction of the left-wing movement, principally pro-communist organizations, of that period has continued to leave a mark, and a gaping vacuum on today’s political landscape, and on this writer.

There are many myths about the 1950’s to be sure. However, one cannot deny that the key public myth was that those who had fought World War II and were afterwards enlisted in the anti-Soviet Cold War fight against communism were entitled to some breaks. The overwhelming desire for personal security and comfort on the part of those who had survived the Great Depression and fought the war (World War II just so there is no question about which in the long line of wars we are talking about) was not therefore totally irrational. That it came at the expense of other things like a more just and equitable society is a separate matter. Moreover, despite the public myth not everyone benefited from the ‘rising tide.' The experience of my parents is proof of that. Thus this commentary is really about what happened to those, like my parents, who did not make it and were left to their personal fates without a rudder to get them through the rough spots. Yes, my parents were of the now much ballyhooed and misnamed ‘greatest generation’ but they were not in it.

I will not go through all the details of my parents’ childhoods, courtship and marriage for such biographic details of the Depression and World War II are plentiful and theirs fits the pattern. One detail is, however, important and that is that my father grew up in the hills of eastern Kentucky, Hazard, near Harlan County to be exact, coal mining country made famous in song and story and by Michael Harrington in his 1960s book The Other America. This was, and is, hardscrabble country by any definition. Among whites these “hillbillies” were the poorest of the poor. There can be little wonder that when World War II began my father left the mines to join the Marines, did his fair share of fighting in the Pacific, settled in the Boston area and never looked back.

By all rights my father should have been able to take advantage of the G.I. Bill and enjoyed home and hearth like the denizens of Levittown (New York and elsewhere) described in Halberstam’s book and shown on such classic 1950s television shows as Ozzie and Harriet and Leave It To Beaver. But life did not go that way. Why? He had virtually no formal education. And moreover had three young sons born close together in the immediate post-war period. Furthermore he had no marketable skills usable in the Boston labor market. There was (and is) no call for coal-miners here. My father was a good man. He was a hard-working man; when he was able find work. He was an upright man. But he never drew a break. Unskilled labor, to which he was reduced, is notoriously unstable, and so his work life was one of barely making ends meet. Thus, well before the age when the two-parent working family became the necessary standard to get ahead, my mother went to work to supplement the family income. She too was an unskilled laborer. Thus, even with two people working we were always “dirt poor.” I have already run through enough of the litany of lacks to give an idea of what dirt poor meant in those hard times so we need not retrace those steps.

Our little family started life in the Adamsville housing projects, at that time not the notorious hell-holes of crime and deprivation that they later became but still a mark of being low, very low, on the social ladder at a time when others were heading to the Valhalla of the newly emerging suburbs. By clawing and scratching my parents saved enough money to buy an extremely modest single-family house. Hell, why pussyfoot about it, a shack. The house, moreover, was in a neighborhood that was, and is, one of those old working class neighborhoods where the houses are small, cramped, and seedy, the leavings of those who have moved on to bigger and better things. The neighborhood nevertheless reflected the desire of the working poor in the 1950’s, my parents and others, to own their own homes and not be shunted off into decrepit apartments or dilapidated housing projects, the fate of those just below them on the social ladder. This is social progress?

But enough of all that. Where in this story though is there a place for militant left-wing political class-consciousness to break the trap? Not the sense of social inferiority of the poor before the rich (or the merely middle class). Damn, there was plenty of that kind of consciousness in our house. A phrase from the time, and maybe today although I don’t hear it much, said it all “keeping up with the Jones.’” Or else. But where was there an avenue in the 1950’s, when it could have made a difference, for a man like my father to have his hurts explained and have something done about them? No where. So instead it went internally into the life of the family and it never got resolved. One of his sons, this writer, has had luxury of being able to fight essentially exemplary propaganda battles in small left-wing socialist circles and felt he has done good work in his life. My father’s hurts needed much more. The "red scare" aimed mainly against the American Communist Party but affecting wider layers of society decimated any possibility that he could get the kind of redress he needed. That dear reader, in a nutshell, is why I proudly bear the name communist today. And the task for me today? To insure that future young workers, unlike my parents in the 1950’s, will have their day of justice.