AMERICAN LEFT HISTORY

This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager

Sunday, July 28, 2013

*From The Pen Of Vladimir Lenin-Party Organisation and Party Literature (1905)

Click on the headline to link to the Lenin Internet Archives.

V. I. Lenin

Party Organisation and Party Literature

Published:Novaya Zhizn, No. 12, November 13, 1905. Signed: N. Lenin. Published according to the text in Novaya Zhizn.
Source:Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1965, Moscow, Volume 10, pages 44-49.
Translated:
Transcription\Markup:R. Cymbala
Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive (2001). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.
Other Formats: Text• README

The

new conditions for Social-Democratic work in Russia which have arisen since the October revolution have brought the question of party literature to the fore. The distinction between the illegal and the legal press, that melancholy heritage of the epoch of feudal, autocratic Russia, is beginning to disappear. It is not yet dead, by a long way. The hypocritical government of our Prime Minister is still running amuck, so much so that Izvestia Soveta Rabochikh Deputatov^[2]is printed “illegally”; but apart from bringing disgrace on the government, apart from striking further moral blows at it, nothing comes of the stupid attempts to prohibit” that which the government is powerless to thwart.

So long as there was a distinction between the illegal and the legal press, the question of the party and non-party press was decided extremely simply and in an extremely false and abnormal way. The entire illegal press was a party press, being published by organisations and run by groups which in one way or another were linked with groups of practical party workers. The entire legal press was non-party— since parties were banned—but it “gravitated”towards one party or another. Unnatural alliances, strange“bed-fellows” and false cover-devices were inevitable. The forced reserve of those who wished to express party views merged with the immature thinking or mental cowardice of those who had not risen to these views and who were not, in effect, party people.
An accursed period of Aesopian language, literary bondage, slavish speech, and ideological serfdom! The proletariat has put an end to this foul atmosphere which stifled everything living and fresh in Russia. But so far the proletariat has won only half freedom for Russia.
The revolution is not yet completed. While tsarism is no longer strong enough to defeat the revolution, the revolution is not yet strong enough to defeat tsarism. And we are living in times when everywhere and in everything there operates this unnatural combination of open, forthright, direct and consistent party spirit with an underground, covert,“diplomatic” and dodgy “legality”. This unnatural combination makes itself felt even in our newspaper: for all Mr. Guchkov’s^[3]witticisms about Social-Democratic tyranny forbidding the publication of moderate liberal-bourgeois newspapers, the fact remains that Proletary,^[4]the Central Organ of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, still remains outside the locked doors ofautocratic, police-ridden Russia.
Be that as it may, the half-way revolution compels all of us to set to work at once organising the whole thing on new lines. Today literature, even that published “legally”, can be nine-tenths party literature. It must become party literature In contradistinction to bourgeois customs, to the profit-making, commercialised bourgeois press, to bourgeois literary careerism and individualism, “aristocratic anarchism” and drive for profit, the socialist proletariat must put forward the principle of party literature, must develop this principle and put it into practice as fully and completely as possible.
What is this principle of party literature? It is not simply that, for the socialist proletariat, literature cannot be a means of enriching individuals or groups: it cannot, in fact, be an individual undertaking, independent of the common cause of the proletariat. Down with non-partisan writers! Down with literary supermen! Literature must become part of the common cause of the proletariat, “a cog and a screw” of one single great Social-Democratic mechanism set in motion by the entire politically-conscious vanguard of the entire working class. Literature must become a component of organised, planned and integrated Social-Democratic Party work.
“All comparisons are lame,” says a German proverb. So is my comparison of literature with a cog, of a living movement with a mechanism. And I daresay there will ever be hysterical intellectuals to raise a howl about such a comparison, which degrades, deadens, “bureaucratises” the free battle of ideas, freedom of criticism, freedom of literary creation, etc., etc. Such outcries, in point of fact, would be nothing more than an expression of bourgeois-intellectual individualism. There is no question that literature is least of all subject to· mechanical adjustment or levelling, to the rule of the majority over the minority. There is no question, either, that in this field greater scope must undoubtedly be allowed for personal initiative, individual inclination, thought and fantasy,, form and content. All this is undeniable; but all this simply shows that the literary side of the proletarian party cause cannot be mechanically identified with its other sides. This, however, does not in the least refute the proposition, alien and strange to the bourgeoisie and bourgeois democracy, that literature must by all means and necessarily become an element of Social-Democratic Party work, inseparably bound up with the other elements. Newspapers must become the organs of the various party organisations, and their writers must by all means become members of these organisations. Publishing and distributing centres, bookshops and reading-rooms, libraries and similar establishments—must all be under party control. The organised socialist proletariat must keep an eye on all this work, supervise it in its entirety, and, from beginning to end, without any exception, infuse into it the life-stream of the living proletarian cause, thereby cutting the ground from under the old, semi-Oblomov,^[5] semi-shopkeeper Russian principle: the writer does the writing, the reader does the reading..
We are not suggesting, of course, that this transformation of literary work, which has been defiled by the Asiatic censorship and the European bourgeoisie, can be accomplished all at once. Far be it from us to advocate any kind of standardised system, or a solution by means of a few decrees. Cut-and-dried schemes are least of all applicable here. What is needed is that the whole of our Party, and the entire politically-conscious Social-Democratic proletariat throughout Russia, should become aware of this new problem, specify it clearly and everywhere set about solving it. Emerging from the captivity of the feudal censorship, we have no desire to become, and shall not become, prisoners of bourgeois-shopkeeper literary relations. We want to establish, and we shall establish, a free press, free not simply from the police, but also from capital, from careerism, and what is more, free from bourgeois-anarchist individualism.
These last words may sound paradoxical, or an affront to the reader. What! some intellectual, an ardent champion of liberty, may shout. What, you want to impose collective control on such a delicate, individual matter as literary work! You want workmen to decide questions of science, philosophy, or aesthetics by a majority of votes! You deny the absolute freedom of absolutely individual ideological work!
Calm yourselves, gentlemen! First of all, we are discussing party literature and its subordination to party control. Everyone is free to write and say whatever he likes, without any restrictions. But every voluntary association (including the party) is also free to expel members who use the name of the party to advocate anti-party views. Freedom of speech and the press must be complete. But then freedom of association must be complete too. I am bound to accord you, in the name of free speech, the full right to shout, lie and write to your heart’s content. But you are bound to grant me, in the name of freedom of association, the right to enter into, or withdraw from, association with people advocating this or that view. The party is a voluntary association, which would inevitably break up, first ideologically and then physically, if it did not cleanse itself of people advocating anti-party views. And to define the border-line between party and anti-party there is the party programme, the party’s resolutions on tactics and its rules and, lastly, the entire experience of international Social-Democracy, the voluntary international associations of the proletariat, which has constantly brought into its parties individual elements and trends not fully consistent, not completely Marxist and not altogether correct and which, on the other hand, has constantly conducted periodical “cleansings” of its ranks. So it will be with us too, supporters of bourgeois “freedom of criticism”, within the Party. We are now becoming a mass party all at once, changing abruptly to an open organisation, and it is inevitable that we shall be joined by many who are inconsistent (from the Marxist standpoint), perhaps we shall be joined even by some Christian elements, and even by some mystics. We have sound stomachs and we are rock-like Marxists. We shall digest those inconsistent elements. Freedom of thought and freedom of criticism within the Party will never make us forget about the freedom of organising people into those voluntary associations known as parties.
Secondly, we must say to you bourgeois individualists that your talk about absolute freedom is sheer hypocrisy. There can be no real and effective“freedom” in a society based on the power of money, in a society in which the masses of working people live in poverty and the handful of rich live like parasites. Are you free in relation to your bourgeois publisher, Mr. Writer, in relation to your bourgeois public, which demands that you provide it with pornography in frames^[1]and paintings, and prostitution as a“supplement” to “sacred” scenic art? This absolute freedom is a bourgeois or an anarchist phrase (since, as a world outlook, anarchism is bourgeois philosophy turned inside out). One cannot live in society and be free from society. The freedom of the bourgeois writer, artist or actress is simply masked (or hypocritically masked) dependence on the money-bag, on corruption, on prostitution.
And we socialists expose this hypocrisy and rip off the false labels, not in order to arrive at a non-class literature and art (that will be possible only in a socialist extra-class society), but to contrast this hypocritically free literature, which is in reality linked to the bourgeoisie, with a really free one that will be openly linked to the pro let an at.
It will be a free literature, because the idea of socialism and sympathy with the working people, and not greed or careerism, will bring ever new forces to its ranks. It will be a free literature, because it will serve, not some satiated heroine, not the bored “upper ten thousand” suffering from fatty degeneration, but the millions and tens of millions of working people—the flower of the country, its strength and its future. It will be a free literature, enriching the last word in the revolutionary thought of man kind with the experience and living work of the socialist proletariat, bringing about permanent interaction between the experience of the past (scientific socialism, the completion of the development of socialism from its primitive, utopian forms) and the experience of the present (the present struggle of the worker comrades).
To work, then, comrades! We are faced with a new and difficult task. But it is a noble and grateful one—to organise a broad, multiform and varied literature inseparably linked with the Social-Democratic working-class movement. All Social-Democratic literature must become Party literature. Every newspaper, journal, publishing house, etc., must immediately set about reorganising its work, leading up to a situation in which it will, in one form or another, be integrated into one Party organisation or another. Only then will“Social-Democratic” literature really become worthy of that name, only then will it be able to fulfil its duty and, even within the framework of bourgeois society, break out of bourgeois slavery and merge with the movement of the really advanced and thoroughly revolutionary class.

Notes

[1]There must be a misprint in the source, which says ramkakh(frames), while the context suggests romanakh(novels).—Ed.

[2]Izvestia Soveta Rabochikh Deputatov (Bulletin of the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies)—an official newspaper of the St. Petersburg Soviet of Workers’ Deputies. It appeared from October 17(30)to December 14(27), 1905. Being in effect an information bulletin, it had no permanent staff and was printed by the workers themselves in the printing-works of various bourgeois papers. Altogether ten issues were brought out. Issue No. 11 was seized by the police while being printed.

[3]Guchkov, A. I. (1862-1936)—a monarchist representative of the big commercial and industrial bourgeoisie.

[4]Proletary (The Proletarian)—an Illegal Bolshevik weekly, Central Organ of the R.S.D.L.P., founded by decision of the Third Party Congress. On April 27 (May 10), 1905, a plenary meeting of the Central Committee of the Party appointed Lenin editor-in-chief of Proletary. The weekly appeared in Geneva from May 14 (27) to November 12(25), 1905. Twenty-six issues were published In all. The weekly continued the line of the old, Leninist Iskra, and of the Bolshevik paper Vperyod.

Lenin contributed about 90 articles and short items to Proletary. His articles determined the political line of the weekly, its ideological content and Bolshevik course. Lenin did a tremendous amount of work as the leader and editor of the weekly. He edited the material to be published, lending it the utmost fidelity to principle, a Party spirit, and precision and clarity in discussing important theoretical problems and elucidating questions of the revolutionary movement.

The editorial board was constantly assisted by V. V. Vorovsky, A. V. Lunacharsky and M. S. Olminsky. N. K. Krupskaya V M Velichkina and V. A. Karpinsky had a big share in the editorial work. The weekly was closely linked with the working-class movement in Russia. It carried articles and other items by workers directly engaged in the revolutionary movement. V. D. Bonch Bruyevich, S. I. Gusev and A. I. Ulyanova-Yelizarova arranged for the collection of articles in Russia and their dispatch to Geneva. N. K. Krupskaya and L. A. Fotieva were in charge of the weekly’s correspondence with Party organisations and readers in Russia.

Proletary was prompt to react to all major events in the Russian and international working-class movement. It fought relentlessly against the Mensheviks and other opportunist, revisionist elements.

The weekly did much to propagate the decisions of the Third Party Congress an d played a prominent role in the organisational and ideological unification of the Bolsheviks. It was the only Russian Social-Democratic paper that consistently upheld revolutionary Marxism and dealt with all the principal issues of the revolution developing in Russia. By giving full information on the events of 1905, it roused the broad masses of the working people to fight for the victory of the revolution.

Proletary had great influence over the Social-Democratic organisations in Russia, where some of Lenin’s articles were reprinted from it by Bolshevik papers and circulated in leaflet form.

Proletary ceased to a p pear shortly after Lenin had left for Russia early in November 1905. Its last two issues (Nos. 25 and 26) were published under the editorship of V. V. Vorovsky. The several articles Lenin had written for those issues appeared when he had left Geneva.

[5]Oblomov—a landlord, the chief character in a novel of the same name by the Russian writer I. A. Goncharov. Oblomov was the personification of routine, stagnation, and incapacity for action.

21 July 2013

HISTORY / Bob Feldman : A People's History of Egypt, Part 3, 1805-1849

Muhammad Ali Pasha, Ottoman ruler of Egypt. Painting by Auguste Couder, 1841 / Wikimedia Commons.

A people's history:
The movement to democratize Egypt

Part 3: 1805-1849 period -- The autocratic rule of Muhammad Ali Pasha.

By Bob Feldman / The Rag Blog / July 21, 2013

[With all the dramatic activity in Egypt, Bob Feldman's Rag Blog "people's history" series, "The Movement to Democratize Egypt," could not be more timely. Also see Feldman's "hidden history" of Texas series on The Rag Blog.]

Nearly two years after Muhammad Ali began ruling the Ottoman Turkish Empire’s Egyptian province, UK troops landed in Alexandria in March, 1807, and attempted to establish a permanent military base in Egypt.

But “when the British sought to extend their control...the result was fiasco” and “many British soldiers were killed” by Muhammad Ali’s troops; and the remaining UK troops in Egypt were compelled to withdraw from Egypt after September 1807, according to Jason Thompson’s A History of Egypt.

Then, according to the same book, in 1811 Muhammad Ali ended the remaining influence of the neo-Mamluk military elite in Egyptian society in the following way:

...Muhammad Ali held a celebration in the Citadel [royal palace] on Mar. 1, 1811... He invited all the principal people of Cairo, including nearly 500 Mamluk amirs. Afterward, as the Mamluks were leaving through the Citadel’s descending Interior Road...they found the exit locked... Sharpshooters [of Muhammad Ali’s loyal troops] appeared on the walls and shot them dead. Another thousand were hunted down and killed in Cairo over the next few days...

Egyptian Pasha Muhammad Ali next confiscated “the vast estates” of the slain Mamluks and the 20 percent of all Egyptian agricultural land that was owned by the religious endowments, or waqfs, and revised the Egyptian tax structure, so that “almost all of Egypt’s land came under state ownership” and he “could decree what to plant, then purchase the produce at a low price set by the state and export it for cash,” according to A History of Egypt.

Instead of just subsistence crops being grown on Egyptian agricultural land, more cash crops that earned foreign exchange -- like the cotton that became Egypt’s major export crop in the years after it was introduced in Egypt in 1821 -- were now grown on the state-owned land; and Muhammad Ali used the foreign exchange income to attempt to modernize Egypt’s economy by “building...factories and canals,” according to The Rough Guide To Egypt.

Muhammad Ali’s public works program of constructing 32 canals, 10 dikes, and 41 dams and barrages with conscripted Egyptian workers brought large amounts of new agricultural land into cultivation. In addition, as a result of his public works program of building factories in Egypt that produced textile, sugar, munitions, ships, and other manufactured goods, “Egypt became the leading industrial nation in the eastern Mediterranean” by the late 1830s, according to A History of Egypt.

By also conscripting Egyptian peasants into his military force, Muhammad Ali increased its size to 250,000 men and used his military force to occupy Sudan in the 1820, and “Egypt became the major military power in the eastern Mediterranean, making Muhammad Ali much stronger than his nominal master, the sultan in Istanbul,” according to the same book.

But after “the pasha became impatient with recognizing the sultan as his master” and “decided to move for independence” for Egypt in 1838, “a British force anchored at Alexandria” in 1839 and compelled him to reduce the size of his Egyptian military and no longer seek Egyptian independence from the Ottoman Empire of Turkey (which the UK government then supported), according to A History of Egypt.

Large numbers of Egyptians who were also drafted to work on Muhammad Ali’s various public works projects, however, lost their lives while working on the canal construction projects. As A History of Egypt, recalled:

One of the canals, the Mahmudiya, ran for 72 kilometers between Alexandria and the western branch of the Nile. It was constructed between 1817 and 1820 with...labor of as many as 300,000 conscripted workers (of whom between 12,000 and 100,000 are said to have died, according to widely varying accounts)...

And the same book also reported how large numbers of Egyptians suffered under Muhammad Ali’s undemocratic rule and his “modernization” policies:

Muhammad Ali’s accomplishments came at a heavy price to the Egyptian people. The degree of control that the pasha exerted in Egypt was probably unprecedented since ancient times... Every productive strip of land, every palm tree, every donkey, everything that could represent value was assessed and taxed at the maximum it could bear... The people complained incessantly, but they obeyed, for the pasha’s authority was absolute. A simple horizontal motion of his hand meant execution...

Although an “outbreak of bubonic plague in 1834-35 carried away as much as a third of Cairo’s population” during the years that Muhammad Ali undemocratically ruled people in Egypt, according to A History of Egypt, some improvement in Egypt’s health care system was achieved by the end of this pasha’s rule in 1848 (when he became insane) and his subsequent death in August 1849.

[Bob Feldman is an East Coast-based writer-activist and a former member of the Columbia SDS Steering Committee of the late 1960s. Read more articles by Bob Feldman on The Rag Blog.]

The Rag Blog

Race Car Love- Barbara Stanwyck and Clark Gable’s “To Please A Lady”

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

DVD Review

To Please A Lady, Barbara Stanwyck, Clark Gable, MGM, 1950

Yes, everybody loved, or should have loved, Barbara Stanwyck as the devious femme fatale scheming up a plot to kill her husband along with convenient insurance salesman-lover Fred MacMurray in the film adaptation of James M. Cain’s Double Indemnity and other 1940s film vehicles including some nicely done screwball comedies. And yes, every woman, femme fatale or not, and maybe a few guys too, loved, or should have loved romantic, dreamy and whatever Clark Gable any number of films, including famously Gone With The Wind and not a few screwball comedies as well. But nobody should love this combo in this film under review, To Please A Lady, a film that only goes to prove once again that not every actor made the right script choices in their careers since this one is leaden to say the least. Apparently film actors will take on films because they need the dough, need to see themselves on screen, need to fill up some time or need to, oh well, fill in the blanks. And one of those reasons must have impelled these two established stars on this one.

Here’s the plot- line quickly. Clark is nothing but a king hell race- car driver. No not the big Indy racers, not at first anyway, although he dreams dreams of such success (having previously, pre-war, pre-World War II if you are asking, failed to make the grade at Indy) but midget racers, racers in the racing realm that are just above those box-car racers from our childhoods. But more, much more, dangerous. At least dangerous when fame-hungry Clark gets on the track and willingly creates all kinds of mayhem to win, win prize money to front for an Indy-type racer and glory. But fellow racers (and fans for a while) do not like wreck-less and crazy drivers who get other drivers killed by their maneuvers and that is where Barbara, Barbara as a powerful nationally syndicated columnist with enough weight to make or break a man (or woman) comes into the picture when she, looking for a story, goes out to the race-track one day.

So that is how they met and how after Barbara sees Clark maneuver a fellow driver to his death aimed to destroy his career (and his dreams. Then it is curtains for Clark and his dreams. Well almost but roguish, manly Clark gets under Barbara’s skin, you know what I mean, right. Thereafter, even though theirs is not a match made in heaven, the two are a pair, a pair right up to the big-time race at Indy. Of course the problem for us with this romantic comedy is that the cooing is too gluey for our times (and probably for theirs as well) and the plot line cannot sustain the drizzle. See what I mean. Watch these two in their better stuff not this one.

***From The Boston Bradley Manning Support Committee Archives (Summer 2013 )

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

Six 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.

*Go to Fort Meade down in Maryland if you are in the area and sit in at the trial on the days it is in session. Please check with the Bradley Manning Support Network http://www.bradleymanning.org/ for details on transportation, directions, security procedures, days the court is in session and the like.

*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.

…and a seventh- Come to Park Street Station in Downtown Boston at 1;00 PM on Saturday July 27^th and stand with Bradley as part of an international day of solidarity as his trial winds down and a decision impending. Check the Bradley Manning Support Network event page for details at http://www.bradleymanning.org/

Photos From Bradley Manning Demo At Fort McNair

http://www.flickr.com/photos/savebradley/sets/72157634805904673/

From The Marxist Archives-Leon Trotsky on the Soviet Workers State

	Workers Vanguard No. 900	12 October 2007

TROTSKY

LENIN

Leon Trotsky on the Soviet Workers State

(Quote of the Week)

The Left Opposition of Leon Trotsky, co-leader with V.I. Lenin of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, led the struggle against the usurpation of political power in the Soviet Union by the Stalinist bureaucracy beginning in 1923-24 and the degeneration of the Third International (Comintern). Writing in 1936, Trotsky insisted that revolutionary Marxists must fight for the unconditional military defense of the Soviet degenerated workers state and for workers political revolution to oust the parasitic bureaucracy. Today, we apply this program to the remaining deformed workers states of China, North Korea, Vietnam and Cuba.

The decision of the Seventh World Congress of the Comintern, according to which socialism in the Soviet Union has “finally and irrevocably” triumphed—regardless of the low level of labor productivity as compared with the advanced capitalist countries and independently of the course of development of all the rest of the world!—is a crude and dangerous lie….

The principal mass of the means of production in the industry of the Soviet Union has grown tremendously and remains in the hands of the state—in agriculture, in the hands of the kolkhozes, which stand between state and private property. But not even state property is as yet socialist property, for the latter has as its premise the dying away of the state as the guardian of property, the mitigation of inequality and the gradual dissolution of the property concept even in the morals and customs of society. The real development in the Soviet Union in recent years has followed a directly opposite road. Inequality grows and, together with it, state coercion. Given favorable domestic and international conditions, the transition is possible from the present state property to socialism; given unfavorable conditions, however, a reversion to capitalism is also possible….

If a social counterrevolution—i.e., the overthrow of state ownership of the means of production and of the land as well as the reestablishment of private property—is necessary for the return of the USSR to capitalism, then for the further development of socialism a political revolution has become inevitable, i.e., the violent overthrow of the political rule of the degenerated bureaucracy while maintaining the property relations established by the October Revolution. The proletarian vanguard of the USSR, basing itself upon the toiling masses of the whole country and upon the revolutionary movement of the whole world, will have to batter down the bureaucracy by force, restore Soviet democracy, eliminate the enormous privileges, and assure a genuine advance to socialist equality….

The USSR is a state which bases itself upon the property relationships created by the proletarian revolution and which is administered by a labor bureaucracy in the interests of new privileged strata. The Soviet Union can be called a workers’ state in approximately the same sense—despite the vast difference in scale—in which a trade union, led and betrayed by opportunists, that is, by agents of capital, can be called a workers’ organization. Just as revolutionists defend every trade union, even the most thoroughly reformist, from the class enemy, combating intransigently the treacherous leaders at the same time, so the parties of the Fourth International defend the USSR against the blows of imperialism without for a single moment giving up the struggle against the reactionary Stalinist apparatus.

—Leon Trotsky, “The Fourth International and the Soviet Union” (July 1936)

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

Leon Trotsky

The New Constitution
of the USSR

(April 1936)

Written: 16 April 1936.
First Published: The New Militant [New York], 9 May 1936
Translated: The New Militant:
Transcription/HTML Markup: David Walters:
Public Domain: Leon Trotsky Internet Archive 2005; This work is completely free.

The Abolition of Soviets

Behind the Kremlin walls, work is going on to replace the Soviet constitution with a new one, which, according to the declarations of Stalin, Molotov, and others, will be the “most democratic in the world.” To be sure, doubts might be aroused by the procedure by which the constitution is being elaborated. Until recently, there has been no mention of this great reform, either in the press or at meetings. No one is acquainted with the draft of the constitution as yet. In the meantime, Stalin told the American interviewer Roy Howard, on March 1, 1936, that “We shall probably adopt our new constitution at the end of this year.” Thus Stalin is informed of the exact date of adoption of this constitution, about which the people still have practically no information. It is impossible not to conclude that the “most democratic constitution in the world” is being elaborated and introduced in a manner that is not entirely democratic.

Stalin confirmed to Howard, and through him also to the peoples of the USSR, that “according to the new constitution, suffrage will be universal, equal, direct, and secret.”
The inequalities in suffrage rights in favour of the workers against the peasants are to be abolished. Henceforth, obviously, not factories but citizens will vote, each one for himself. Once there are “no classes,” then all members of society are equal. Individuals can be disenfranchised only by the courts. All these principles are entirely derived from that very same program of bourgeois democracy which the soviets in their time came to replace. The party always held that the soviet system was a higher form of democracy. The soviet system was to wither away together with the dictatorship of the proletariat, of which it was the expression. The question of the new constitution therefore boils down to another and more fundamental question: Will the dictatorship continue to become “stronger” from now on, as is demanded by all the official speeches and articles, or will it begin to soften, weaken, and “wither away”? The meaning of the new constitution can be correctly appraised only in the light of this perspective. Let us immediately add here that the perspective itself does not at all depend upon the measure of Stalinist liberalism but upon the actual structure of the transitional Soviet society.
In explaining the reform, Pravda refers obscurely and not at all prudently to the party program written by Lenin in 1919, which does really state that “... disenfranchisement and any restrictions whatsoever upon liberty are necessary solely as temporary measures of struggle against the attempts of the exploiters to maintain or to restore their privileges. In proportion as the objective possibility for the exploitation of man by man disappears, all necessity for these temporary measures will likewise disappear, and the party will strive to narrow them down, and to completely abolish them” (our emphasis). These lines can no doubt serve to justify the refusal to “disenfranchise” in a society in which the possibility for exploitation has disappeared. But along with this the program demands the simultaneous abolition of “any restrictions whatsoever upon liberty.” For the entry into socialist society is characterized not by the peasants being made equal with the workers, and not by returning the franchise to the 3-5 percent of the citizens who are of bourgeois origin, but by the establishment of true liberty for 100 percent of the population. With the abolition of classes, according to Lenin, and according to Marx, not only the dictatorship but also the state itself withers away. Stalin, however, has said nothing as yet about removing “restrictions upon liberty” either to Howard or to the peoples of the USSR.
Molotov hastened to Stalin’s assistance, not, sad to say, very propitiously. In replying to a question of the editor-in-chief of Le Temps, Molotov said, “Now not infrequently (?) there is already no need for those administrative measures which were employed formerly,” but “the Soviet power must of course be strong and consistent in the struggle against terrorists and wreckers of public property ...” Ergo: “a Soviet power” – without soviets; a proletarian dictatorship – without the proletariat; and, in addition to that, a dictatorship not against the bourgeoisie, but against ... terrorists and thieves. At all events, the party program never foresaw such a type of state.
Molotov’s promise to do “not infrequently” without those extreme measures which might prove unnecessary is not worth much even by itself; but it loses all its value alongside of the reference to the enemies of law and order, who are precisely the ones that make it impossible to renounce emergency measures.
Whence, however, arise these enemies of law and order, these terrorists and thieves, and, moreover in such threatening numbers as would justify the preservation of a dictatorship in a classless society? Here we must come to the assistance of Molotov. At the dawn of Soviet power the terrorist acts were perpetuated by the SR’s and the Whites in the atmosphere of the still unfinished civil war. When the former ruling classes lost all their hopes, terrorism disappeared as well. Kulak terror, traces of which are observable even now, was always local in character, and supplemented the partisan war against the Soviet régime. This is not what Molotov has in mind. The new terror does not lean upon either the old ruling classes or the kulak. The terrorists of recent years are recruited exclusively from among the Soviet youth, from the ranks of the Young Communists and the party. While utterly impotent to solve those tasks which it sets itself, individual terror is, however, of the greatest symptomatic importance because it characterizes the sharpness of the antagonism between the bureaucracy and the broad masses of the people, especially the younger generation. Terrorism is the tragic supplement of Bonapartism. Each individual bureaucrat is afraid of the terror; but the bureaucracy as a whole successfully exploits it for the justification of its political monopoly. Stalin and Molotov did not discover any gunpowder in this field either.
Worst of all, however, is the fact that it is absolutely impossible to gather, either from the interviews or from the commentaries, the social nature of the state for which the new constitution is being prepared. The soviet system used to be officially considered as the expression of the dictatorship of the proletariat. But if the classes have been destroyed, then by reason of this very fact the social basis of the dictatorship has likewise been destroyed. Who, then, is its carrier now? Obviously the population as a whole. But when the entire people, emancipated from class contradictions, becomes the carrier of the dictatorship, this implies nothing else than the dissolution of the dictatorship into the socialist society, and consequently the liquidation of the state. The logic of Marxism is invulnerable. The liquidation of the state in its turn begins with the liquidation of the bureaucracy. Does the new constitution, perhaps, imply at least the liquidation of the GPU? Should anyone venture to express this idea in the USSR, the GPU would immediately find convincing counter-arguments. The classes have been destroyed, the soviets are being abolished, the class theory of society is reduced to dust, but the bureaucracy remains. Q.E.D.
We shall return later to the question of the extent to which universal, equal, and direct suffrage corresponds to the social equality that all citizens have allegedly attained. But if we accept this premise on faith, we become all the more perplexed by the following question: Why, if that is the case, must the elections be secret henceforth? Just whom does the populace in the socialist country fear? Against whose attempts in particular is it necessary to provide a defence? The child’s fear of darkness has a purely biological foundation; but when grown-up people dare not express their opinions openly, their fear is political in character. And for the Marxist, politics is always a function of the class struggle. In capitalist society the secret ballot is intended to provide a defence for the exploited against the terror of the exploiters. That the bourgeoisie did finally agree to such a reform – of course, under the pressure of the masses – was only because the bourgeoisie itself was interested in protecting its state at least partially against the demoralization of its own making. But in the USSR there obviously cannot be any pressure of the exploiters upon the toilers. Against whom, then, is it necessary to protect the Soviet citizens by means of the secret ballot?
Under the old Soviet constitution, the vote by show of hands was introduced as a weapon in the hands of the revolutionary class against bourgeois and petty-bourgeois enemies. The same purpose was served by the restrictions in the franchise itself. Now, at the end of the second decade after the revolution, no longer the class enemies but the toilers themselves are so frightened that they cannot vote except under the shield of secrecy. This concerns precisely the masses of the people, the overwhelming majority, for it is impossible to allow that the secret ballot is being especially introduced for the convenience of the counter-revolutionary minority!
But who is terrorizing the people? The answer is clear – the bureaucracy. It is preparing to protect the toilers against itself by means of the secret ballot. Stalin made this admission openly. To the question, “Why the secret ballot?” his reply was verbatim as follows: “Because we want to give the Soviet people complete freedom to vote for those they want to elect.” Thus we learn from Stalin that the “Soviet people” cannot vote today for those they want to elect. “We” are only getting ready to provide them with such an opportunity. Who are these “we” who can give or refuse the freedom to vote? The stratum in whose name Stalin speaks and acts: the bureaucracy. Stalin need only have added that his important admission applies as much to the party as to the state, and that, in particular, he himself occupies the post of general secretary by means of a system which does not permit party members to elect those they desire. The phrase “We want to give the Soviet people” is in itself infinitely more important than all the constitutions Stalin has yet to write, for this brief phrase is a ready-made constitution, and, moreover, a very real one, not a myth.
Like the European bourgeoisie in its time, so the Soviet bureaucracy today is compelled to resort to the secret ballot in order at least partially to purge its state apparatus, which it exploits “as the rightful owner,” from the corruption of its own making. Stalin was compelled to give an inkling of this motive for the reform. Said he to Howard, “There are not a few institutions in our country which work badly ... Secret suffrage in the USSR will be a whip in the hands of the population against the organs of government, which work badly.” A second noteworthy admission! After the bureaucracy has created with its own hands the socialist society, it feels the need ... of a whip – not only because the organs of government “work badly,” but above all because they are corroded through and through with the vices of uncontrolled cliques.
As far back as 1928, Rakovsky wrote the following with regard to a number of horrible cases of bureaucratic demoralization that broke out into the open: “The most characteristic and most dangerous feature in the tidal wave of scandals is the passivity of the masses, among the Communists even more than among the non-party people, toward the manifestations of unheard-of arbitrariness; of which the workers themselves were witnesses. Out of fear of those who wield power, or simply out of political indifference, they passed by without a protest, or confined themselves merely to grumbling.” More than eight years have elapsed since that time, and the situation has become infinitely worse. Stalin’s autocratic rule has erected nepotism, arbitrariness, profligacy, pillage, and bribery into a system of administration. The decay of the apparatus, cropping out at every step, has begun to threaten the very existence of the state as the source of power, income, and privileges of the ruling stratum. A reform became necessary. Taking fright at their own handiwork, the chiefs of the Kremlin turn to the population with a plea to help it cleanse and straighten out the apparatus of administration.
Turning to the people for the salutary whip, the bureaucracy, however, lays down one ultimatistic condition: that there be no politics. This holy function must remain as hitherto the monopoly of the “Leader.” To the ticklish question of the American interlocutor relative to other parties, Stalin replied: “Since there are no classes, since the dividing lines between classes are being obliterated (“there are no classes” – “the dividing lines between classes [which do not exist!] are being obliterated” – L.T.) there remains only a slight, but not a fundamental, difference between various strata in socialist society, and there can be no fertile soil for the creation of contending parties. Where there are not several classes there cannot be several parties, for a party is a part of a class.” Every word a mistake, sometimes even two!
According to Stalin, it seems that the dividing lines between classes are rigidly described, and that in every given period only one party corresponds to each class. The Marxist doctrine of the class nature of parties is transformed into a ludicrous bureaucratic caricature: political dynamics is entirely excluded from the historical process – in the interests of administrative order. In point of fact not a single instance can be found throughout the entire extent of political history of only one party corresponding to one class! Classes are not homogeneous; they are torn by internal antagonisms, and they arrive even at the solution of common tasks only through an internal struggle of tendencies, groupings, and parties. Within certain limits it may be allowed that “the party is a part of a class.” But inasmuch as a class has many “parts” – some facing forward, others backward – one and the same class can put forth several parties. For the same reason, a single party can lean upon the parts of several classes.
Remarkably enough, this scandalous mistake of Stalin is absolutely disinterested in character, for, you see, in relation to the USSR he proceeds from the assertion that no classes at all exist there. Of what class is the CPSU a part – after the abolition of all classes? Carelessly straying into the field of theory, Stalin proves more than he intended. From his reasoning it follows not that there cannot be different parties in the USSR, but that there cannot be even a single party. Where there are no classes there can be no room for politics in general. Stalin, however, makes a gracious exception from this law in the case of the party of which he is general secretary.
The history of the working class reveals best of all the bankruptcy of the Stalinist theory of parties. Despite the fact that the working class is in its social structure indubitably the least heterogeneous of all classes in capitalist society, the existence of such a “stratum” as the labour aristocracy and a labour bureaucracy bound up with it leads to the creation of reformist parties, which inevitably turn into one of the instruments of bourgeois rule. It matters nothing from the standpoint of Stalinist sociology whether the difference between the labour aristocracy and the proletarian mass is “fundamental” or only “slight"; but it was precisely by reason of this difference that the necessity to create the Third International arose in its time. On the other hand, it is indubitable that the structure of Soviet society is infinitely more heterogeneous and complex than that of the proletariat in capitalist countries. For this very reason, it can provide a sufficiently fertile soil for several parties.
Stalin is interested, as a matter of fact, not in the sociology of Marx but in the monopoly of the bureaucracy. These are two entirely different things. Every labour bureaucracy, even one that does not wield state power, inclines to the view that there is no “fertile soil” in the working class for the opposition. The leaders of the British Labour Party drive the revolutionists out of the trade unions on the grounds that there is no room for the struggle between parties within the framework of a “united” working class. Messrs. Vandervelde, Leon Blum, Jouhaux, etc., act in a similar manner. Their conduct is dictated not by the metaphysics of unity but by the egoistic interests of the privileged cliques. The Soviet bureaucracy is infinitely more powerful, wealthy, and self-reliant than the labour bureaucracy in bourgeois countries. Highly skilled workers in the Soviet Union enjoy privileges unknown to the highest categories of labour in Europe and America. This twofold stratum – the bureaucracy which leans upon the labour aristocracy – is the ruler of the country. The present ruling party of the USSR is nothing else than the political machine of a privileged stratum. The Stalinist bureaucracy has something to lose and nothing more to conquer. It is not inclined to share what it holds. For the future as well, it intends to reserve the “fertile soil” for itself.
To be sure, the Bolshevik Party also occupied a monopoly position in the state during the first period of the Soviet era. However, to identify these two phenomena is to mistake appearances for reality. During the years of civil war, under extremely difficult historical conditions, the party of the Bolsheviks found itself compelled temporarily to prohibit other parties, not because the latter lacked a “fertile soil” – in that case it would not have been necessary even to prohibit them – but on the contrary, precisely because fertile soil existed: this is what made them dangerous. The party explained openly to the masses what it was doing, for it was clear to everybody that at stake was the defence of the isolated revolution against mortal dangers. Today, the more the bureaucracy embellishes the social reality, the more shamelessly it exploits it for its own benefit. If it be true that the kingdom of socialism has already come, and the fertile soil for political parties has disappeared, there would be no need to prohibit them. It would only remain, in accordance with the program, to abolish “any restrictions whatsoever upon liberty.” But the bureaucracy will not allow so much as a peep about such a constitution. The internal falseness of the whole construction is all too apparent!
Seeking to dispel normal doubts on the part of his interlocutor, Stalin offered a new thought: “Candidates will be put forward not only by the Communist Party but by all sorts of public, non-party organizations. And we have hundreds of these ... Each of these strata (of Soviet society) may have its special interests and express them through our numerous existing organizations.” Evidently, it is for this reason that the new Soviet constitution will be the “most democratic constitution in the world.”
This piece of sophistry is no better than the rest. The most important “strata” in Soviet society are: the summits of the bureaucracy and its middle and nethermost layers, the labour aristocracy, the kolkhoz [collective farm] aristocracy, the common run of workers, the middle layers of the kolkhozes, the peasant proprietors, the labour strata of workers and peasants, and beyond them the lumpenproletariat, the homeless, the prostitutes, and so on. As to the Soviet public organizations – trade union, co-operative, cultural, sport, etc. – they do not at all represent the interests of different “strata” because they all have one and the same hierarchic structure. Even in those cases when the organizations are based upon privileged circles, as for instance the trade unions and co-operatives, the active role in them is played exclusively by the representatives of the privileged summits, while the “party,” i.e., the political organization of the ruling stratum, has the last word. The participation of nonpolitical organizations in the electoral struggle will consequently lead to nothing else than rivalry between the different cliques of the bureaucracy within the limits set by the Kremlin. The ruling summit calculates to learn in this manner some secrets hidden from it and to refurbish its régime, without at the same time permitting a political struggle which must inevitably be directed against itself.

The Historical Meaning of the New Constitution

In the person of its most authoritative leader, the bureaucracy again demonstrates how little it understands those historical tendencies which determine its movement. When Stalin remarks that the difference between various strata in Soviet society is “slight but not fundamental,” he obviously has in mind the fact that exclusive of the individual peasant proprietors, who are sufficiently numerous even today to populate Czechoslovakia, all other “strata” depend upon the statified or collectivized means of production. This is beyond dispute. But a “fundamental” difference still remains between the collective, i.e., group property in agriculture and the nationalized property in industry: it can still make itself felt in the future. We shall not, however, enter into a discussion of this important question. Of considerably more immediate importance is the difference between the “strata” which is determined by their relation not to the means of production but to the articles of consumption. The sphere of distribution is, of course, only a “superstructure” in relation to the sphere of production. However, it is precisely the sphere of distribution that is of decisive importance in the everyday life of the people. From the standpoint of the ownership of the means of production, the difference between a marshal and a street cleaner, between the head of a trust and an unskilled labourer, between the son of a peoples’ commissar and a homeless waif, is not “fundamental.” But some occupy lordly apartments, enjoy several dachas (summer homes) in various parts of the country, have the best automobiles at their disposal, and have long since forgotten how to shine their own boots; while others not infrequently live in wooden barracks, without any partitions for privacy, lead a half-starved existence, and do not clean their own boots only because they are barefoot. To a high dignitary this difference seems to be only “slight,” i.e., one that does not merit attention. To the unskilled labourer it appears, not without reason, to be “fundamental.”

In addition to the terrorists, according to Molotov, the object of the dictatorship in the USSR is the thief. But the very abundance of people of such a profession is a sure sign of the want that reigns in society. Where the material level of the overwhelming majority is so low that the ownership of bread and boots must be protected by firing squads, speeches about the alleged achievement of socialism sound like an infamous mockery of human beings!
In a truly homogeneous society, in which the normal wants of the citizens are satisfied without rancour and brawls, not only Bonapartist absolutism but bureaucracy in general would be inconceivable. The bureaucracy is not a technical but a social category. Every single bureaucracy originates in and maintains itself upon the heterogeneous nature of society, upon the antagonism of interests and the internal struggle. It regulates the social antagonisms in the interests of the privileged classes or layers, and exacts an enormous tribute for this from the toilers. This very same function, despite the great revolution in property relations, is being fulfilled, with cynicism and not without success, by the Soviet bureaucracy.
The latter raised itself on the NEP, exploiting the antagonism between the kulak and the NEPman, on the one hand, and the workers and peasants, on the other. When the kulak, grown strong, raised his hand against the bureaucracy itself, the latter, in the interests of self-defence, was compelled to lean directly upon the rank and file at the bottom. The bureaucracy was the weakest of all during the years of the struggle against the kulak (1929-32). Precisely for this reason, it zealously set about the formation of a labour and kolkhoz aristocracy: instituting a shocking difference in wage scales, bonuses, badges, and other similar measures which are called forth one-third by economic necessity and two-thirds by the political interests of the bureaucracy. Upon this new and ever deepening social antagonism, the ruling caste has exalted itself to its present Bonapartist heights.
In a country in which the lava of revolution has not cooled, the privileged are often very much afraid of their own privileges, especially against the background of general want. The topmost Soviet strata stand in dread of the masses, with a fear that is purely bourgeois. Stalin supplies the growing privileges of the ruling stratum with a “theoretical” justification by means of the Comintern, and he defends the Soviet aristocracy against dissatisfaction by means of concentration camps. Stalin is the indisputable leader of the bureaucracy and of the labour aristocracy. He keeps in constant touch only with these “strata.” A sincere “worship” of the Leader emanates only from these circles. Such is the essence of the present political system of the USSR.
But to maintain this mechanism, Stalin is compelled from time to time to side with the “people” as against the bureaucracy, naturally, with the latter’s silent consent. He is even compelled to seek a whip from below against the abuses from above. As we have already said, this is one of the motives for the constitutional reform. There is another and no less important motive.
The new constitution abolishes the soviets, dissolving the workers into the general mass of the population. The soviets, it is true, have long since lost their political meaning. But they might have revived with the growth of new social antagonisms and with the awakening of the new generation. Above all, of course, are to be feared the city soviets, with the growing participation of fresh and exacting Young Communists. In the cities the contrast between luxury and dire want is all too glaring. The first care of the Soviet aristocracy is to get rid of the workers and Red Army soviets.
Despite the collectivization, the material and cultural contradiction between the city and the village has hardly been touched. The peasantry is still very backward and atomized. Social antagonisms also exist within the kolkhozes and between the kolkhozes. The bureaucracy finds it much easier to cope with dissatisfaction in the village. It is able to use the kolkhozniks not without success against the city workers. To smother the protest of the workers against the growing social inequality by the weight of the more backward masses of the village – this is the chief aim of the new constitution, about which neither Stalin nor Molotov naturally has communicated anything to the world. Bonapartism, incidentally, always leans upon the village as against the city. In this, too, Stalin remains true to tradition.
Learned philistines like the Webbs failed to see any great difference between Bolshevism and tsarism prior to 1923, but, in return, they have completely recognized the “democracy” of Stalin’s régime. Small wonder: these people have all their lives been the ideologues of a labour bureaucracy. In point of fact, Soviet Bonapartism bears the same relation to Soviet democracy that bourgeois Bonapartism or even fascism bears to bourgeois democracy. Both arise equally from the frightful defeats of the world proletariat. Both will crash with its first victory.
Bonapartism, as history testifies, is able to abide very well with universal and even secret suffrage. The democratic ritual of Bonapartism is the plebiscite. From time to time the question is put to the citizens: For or against the Leader? The Leader, on his part, takes precautions so that the voter is able to feel the barrel of a gun at his temple. Since the days of Napoleon III, who now looks like a provincial dilettante, this technique has attained an unprecedented development, as witness, say, the latest spectacle by Goebbels. The new constitution is thus intended to liquidate juridically the outworn Soviet régime, replacing it by Bonapartism on a plebiscitary basis.

Tasks of the Vanguard

Drawing profounder conclusions from Stalin, Molotov told the editor of Le Temps that the question of parties in the USSR is “not a vital question as we are closely approaching the complete liquidation of ... classes.” What precision in ideas and terminology! In the year 1931, they liquidated the “last capitalist class, that of the kulaks,” and in the year 1936 they are “closely approaching” the liquidation of classes. For better or for worse, the question of parties is not a “vital” one to Molotov. Entirely different, however, are the views held upon this matter by those workers who know that the bureaucracy, while suppressing the exploiting classes with one hand, prepares for their rebirth with the other. For these advanced workers the question of their own party, independent of the bureaucracy, is the most vital of all questions. Stalin and Molotov understand this very well indeed: not for nothing have they expelled during the last few months from the so-called Communist Party of the Soviet Union several tens of thousands of Bolshevik-Leninists, i.e., in reality, an entire revolutionary party.

When the editor of Le Temps politely put the question about factions and their possible transformation into independent parties, Molotov replied, with the quick wit for which he is so noted: “In the party ... attempts were made to create special factions ... but it is now several years since the situation in this respect has fundamentally changed and the Communist Party is truly united.” Best of all, he might have added, this is proved by the interminable purges and concentration camps. However, the illegal existence of an opposition party is not non-existence, but only a difficult form of existence. Arrests may prove very effective against the parties of a class that is departing from the historical stage: the revolutionary dictatorship of the years 1917-23 has proved this fully. But the arrests aimed against the revolutionary vanguard will not save the outlived bureaucracy, which according to its own admission requires a “whip.”
It is a lie and a triple lie to allege that socialism has been realized in the USSR. The flowering of bureaucratism is barbaric proof that socialism is still far removed. So long as the productivity of labour in the USSR is several times below that of the advanced capitalist countries; so long as the people have not emerged from want; so long as a cruel struggle continues to be waged for articles of consumption; so long as the individualistic bureaucracy can strum with impunity upon social antagonisms – just so long will the danger of bourgeois restoration retain its full force. At the present time, with the growth of inequality on the basis of economic successes, the danger has even been increased. In this and in this alone lies the justification for the need of state power. But the bureaucratically degenerated state has itself become the chief danger to the socialist future. Inequality can be reduced to its economically inevitable limits at the given stage, and a road can be cut to socialist equality, only by the active political control of the toilers, beginning with their vanguard. The regeneration of the party of the Bolsheviks in counterposition to the party of the Bonapartists is the key to all other difficulties and tasks.
On the road toward a goal, one must be able to utilize the real possibilities which arise at every stage. Any illusions about the Stalinist constitution would of course be out of place. But it is equally impermissible to wave it aside as an insignificant trifle. The bureaucracy assumes the risk of a reform not at its own whim but out of necessity. History tells of many cases of a bureaucratic dictatorship resorting for its salvation to “liberal” reforms, and still further weakening itself. By laying bare Bonapartism, the new constitution creates a semi-legal cover for the struggle against it. The rivalry between the bureaucratic cliques can become the opening for a much wider political struggle. The whip against “government institutions that work badly” can be turned into a whip against Bonapartism. Everything depends upon the degree of activity of the advanced elements of the working class.
The Bolshevik-Leninists must henceforth follow attentively all the twists and turns of the constitutional reform, painstakingly taking into consideration the experience of the first coming elections. We must learn how to utilize the rivalry between the various “public organizations” in the interests of socialism. We must learn how to engage in battles on the subject of the plebiscites as well. The bureaucracy is afraid of the workers; we must unfold our work among them more audaciously and on a more extensive scale. Bonapartism is afraid of the youth; we must rally it to the banner of Marx and Lenin. From the adventures of individual terrorism, the method of those who are desperate, we must lead the vanguard of the young generation onto the broad road of the world revolution. It is necessary to train new Bolshevik cadres which will come to replace the decaying bureaucratic régime.

***Fragments Of A Treasure Island (Cady Park) Dream #2- A Family Outing

From a Wikipedia entry for Wollaston Beach (called Adamsville Beach in the story). The photo in the entry appears to have been taken from a point not far from Treasure Island (Cady Park).

Peter Paul Markin, North Adamsville Class Of 1964, comment:

Do you need to know about all the little family trips over to Treasure Island, a picnic spot down at the Merrymount end of Adamsville Beach that I have threatened to talk about when I mentioned how I “sold out” to my mother for a little Kennedy’s Deli home-style potato salad? Trips, that kind of formed the bookends of my childhood. Jesus, no. A thousand time no, and I say that having lived through them. My childhood memories overall can be best summed up in the words of the now long-departed black rapper extraordinaire, Biggie Smalls. He expressed it best and spoke a truth greater than he might have known, although he was closer to “hip-hop nation” than I ever could be, or could be capable of – “Christmas kind of missed us, birthdays were the worst days.” Ya, that’s the big truth, no question, but not the little Treasure Island truth, wobbly as it might come out. One such episode will give you an idea of what we (meaning me and my two brothers, one a little younger the other a little older than me) were up against but also, in the end, why although there were precious few wonderful childhood memories that are now worth the ink to tell you about, this one serves pretty well. Let me have my say.

******
There was a madness in this country in the 1950s. No, not the Cold War atomic-bomb-is-going-to-get-us-we-are-all-going-to-be-dead-next-week or “better dead than red” kind of madness although there was plenty of that, but a madness for the automobile, the sleeker, the more airplane-like, and more powerfully-engined the better. And, it wasn’t just, deafeningly mad as they were, those guys in the now almost sepia-faded photographic images of tight T-shirt wearing, rolled sleeve cigarette-packed, greased Pompadour-haired, long side-burned, dangling-combed , engineer-booted, chain-wielding, side of the mouth butt-puffing , didn’t care if school kept or not types bent over the hood of some souped-up ’57 Chevy working, sweating pools of sweat, sweating to get even more power out of that ferocious V-8 engine for the Saturday night “ chicken" run.

And it wasn’t even those mad faux James Dean-sneered, "rebel without a cause"-posed, cooled-out, maybe hop-headed guys either. And it was always guys, who you swore you would beat down if they ever even looked at your sister, if you had a sister, and if you liked her enough to beat a guy down to defend her honor, or whatever drove your sense of right. And, of course she, your sister no less, is looking for all she is worth at this “James Dean” soda jerk (hey, what else could he be) because this guy is “cute”. Go figure.

No, and forget all those stereotypes that they like to roll out when they want to bring a little “color” to the desperately color-craving 1950s. This car madness was driven, and driven hard, by your very own stay-at-home-and watch the television, water the lawn, if you have a lawn and it needed watering and sometimes when it didn’t just to get out of the house, have couple of beers and take a nap on Saturday afternoon father (or grandfather, I have to remember who might be in my audience now) who always said “ask your mother” to blow you off. You know him. I know you know him he just has a different name than mine did. And maybe even your very own mother (or grandmother) got caught up in the car thing too, your mother the one who always would say “ask your father. You know her too, don’t say no. I hope by now you knew they were working a team scam on you even if you didn’t have the kind of proof that you could take to court and get a little justice on.

Hell, on this car thing they were just doing a little strutting of their stuff in showcase, show-off, “see what I got and you don’t” time. Come on now, don’t pretend that you don’t know what I am talking about, at least if you too grew up in the 1950s, or heard about it, or even think you heard about it. Hey, it was about dreams of car ownership for the Great Depression-ed , World War II-ed survivors looking to finally cash in, as a symbol that one, and one’s family, has arrived in the great American dream, and all on easy monthly payments, no money down, and the bigger, the sleeker the better and I’ll take the heavy- chromed, aerodynamically-designed, two-toned one, thank you. That was how you knew who counted, and who didn’t. You know what I mean.

Heck, that 50s big old fluffy pure white cloud of a dream even seeped all the way down into “the projects” in Adamsville, and I bet over at the Columbia Point “projects” in Boston too that you could see on a clear day from Adamsville beach, although I don’t know for sure on that, and maybe in the thousand and one other displaced person hole-in-the-walls “projects” they built as an afterthought back then for those families like mine caught on the slow track in “go-go” America. Except down there, down there on the edge of respectability, and maybe even mixed in with a little disrespectability, you didn’t want to have too good of a car, even if you could get that easy credit, because what we you doing with that nice sleek, fin-tailed thing with four doors and plenty of room for the kids in the back in a place like “the projects” and maybe there was something the “authorities” should know about, yes. Better to move on with that old cranky 1940s-style un-hip, un-mourned, un-cool jalopy than face the wrath and clucking of that crowd, the venom-filled, green-eyed neighbors.

Yes, that little intro is all well and good and a truth you can take my word for but this tale is about, if I ever get around to it, those who had the car madness deep in their psyche, but not the wherewithal- this is a cry, if you can believe it today, from the no car families. Jesus, how could you not get the car madness then though, facing it every night stark-naked in front of you on the television set, small as the black and white picture was, of Buicks, and Chevys and Pontiacs and whatever other kind of car they had to sell to you. But what about us Eastern Mass bus dependents? The ones who rode the bus, back or front it didn’t matter, at least here it didn’t matter. Down South they got kind of funny about it.

As you might have figured out by now, and if you didn’t I will tell you, that was our family’s fate, more often than not. It was not that we never had a car back then, but there were plenty of times when we didn’t and I have the crooked heels, peek-a-boo-soles, and worn out shoe leather from walking rather than waiting on that never-coming bus to prove it. And not only that but I got so had no fear of walking, and walking great distances if I had to, all the way to Grandma’s Young Street, “up-town” North Adamsville if I had to. That was easy stuff thinking back on it. I‘ll tell you about walking those later long, lonesome roads out West in places like just before the mountains in Winnemucca, Nevada and 129 degree desert- hot Needles, California switching into 130 degree desert-hot Blythe, Arizona some other time, because it just doesn’t seem right to talk about mere walking, long or short, when the great American automobile is present and rolling by.

It’s kind of funny now but the thing was, when there was enough money to get one, that the cars my poor old, kind of city ways naïve, but fighting Marine-proud father would get, from wherever in this god forsaken earth he got them from would be, to be polite, clunkers and nothing but old time jalopies that even those “hot rod” James Dean guys mentioned above would sneer, and sneer big time, at. It would always be a 1947 something, like a Hudson or Nash Rambler, or who knows the misty, musty names of these long forgotten brands. The long and short it was, and this is what’s really important when you think about it, that they would inevitably break down, and breakdown in just the wrong place, at least the wrong place if you had a wife who couldn’t drive or help in that department and three screaming, bawling tow-headed boys who wanted to get wherever it was we were going, and get there-now.

I swear on those old battered crooked-heeled, peek-a-boo soled shoes that I told you about that this must have happened just about every time we were going on a trip, or getting ready to go on a trip, or thinking about going on a trip. So now you know what I was up against when I was a kid. Like I already told you before, in some other dream fragment, I was an easy target to be “pieced off” with a couple of spoonfuls of Kennedy's potato salad when things like that happened. Or some other easy “bought off” when the “car” joke of the month died again and there wasn’t any money to get it fixed right away and we couldn’t go more than a few miles. I blew my stack plenty and righteously so, don't you think?

So let me tell you about this one time, this one summer time, August I think, maybe in 1956, when we did have a car, some kind of grey Plymouth sedan from about 1947, that year seems to always come up when car year numbers come to mind, like I said before. Or maybe it was a converted tank from the war for all I know, it kind of felt like that sitting in the back seat because as the middle boy I never got to ride “shot gun” up front with Dad so I bore the brunt of the bumps, shakes, blimps, and slips in the back seat. I do know I never felt anything better than being nothing but always queasy back there.

This one, this beauty of a grey Plymouth sedan, I can remember very well, always had some major internal engine-type problem, or telltale oil- spilling on the ground in the morning, or a clutch-not-working right, when real cars had clutches not this automatic stuff, making a grinding sound that you could hear about half way around the world, but you will have to ask some who knows a lot more about cars about than I do for the real mechanical problems. Anyway this is the chariot that is going to get us out of “the projects” and away from that fiery, no breathe “projects” sun for a few hours as we started off on one of our family-famous outings to old Treasure Island down at the Merymount end of Adamsville Beach, about four or five miles from “the projects”, no more. It was hot as blazes that day that’s for sure, with no wind, no air, and it was one of those days, always one of those days, you could smell the sickly sweet fragrant coming from over the Proctor & Gamble soap factory across the channel on the Fore River side.

We got the old heap loaded with all the known supplies necessary for a “poor man’s” barbecue in those days. You know those cheap plastic lawn chairs from Grossman’s or Raymond’s or one of those discount stores before they had real discount stores like K-Mart and Wal-Mart, a few old worn-out blankets fresh from night duty on our beds, some resurrected threadbare towels that were already faded in about 1837 from the six thousand washings that kids put even the most resilient towel through in a short time, the obligatory King’s charcoal briquettes, including that fear-provoking, smelly lighter fluid you needed to light them with in those barbaric days before gas-saturated instant-lite charcoal. For food: hot dogs, blanched white-dough rolls, assorted condiments, a cooler with various kinds of tonic (a.k.a. soda, for the younger reader) and ice cream. Ya, and some beach toys, including a pail and shovel because today, of all days, I am bound and determined to harvest some clams across the way from the park on Adamsville Beach at low tide just like I’d seen all kinds of guys doing every time we went there so that we can have a real outing. I can see and hear them boiling in that percolating, turbulent, swirling grey-white water in the big steaming aluminum kettle already.

All of this stuff, of course, is packed helter-skelter in our “designer” Elm Farms grocery store paper shopping bags that we made due with to carry stuff around in, near or far. Hey, don’t laugh you did too, didn’t you? And what about hamburgers you say, right? No, no way, that cut of meat was too pricey. It wasn’t until much later when I was a teenager and invited to someone else’s family-famous barbecue that I knew that those too were a staple, I swear. I already told you I was the “official” procurer of the Kennedy’s potato salad in another dream fragment so I don’t need to tell you about that delicacy again, okay?

And we are off, amazingly, this time for one of the few time in family-recorded history without the inevitable- “who knows where it started or who started it” -incident, one of a whole universe of possible incidents that almost always delayed our start every time our little clan moved from point A to point B. Even a small point A to point B like this venture. So everything was okay, just fine all the way up that single way out of “the projects,” Palmer Street, until we got going on Sea Street, a couple of miles out, then the heap started choking, crackling, burping, sneezing, hiccupping, smoking and croaking and I don’t know what else. We tumbled out of the car, with me already getting ready to do my, by now, finely-tuned “fume act” that like I told you got a work-out every time one of these misadventures rolled around, and pulled out everything we could with us.

Ma, then knowingly, said we would have to go back home because even she knew the car was finished. I, revolutionary that I was back then, put my foot down and said no we could walk to Treasure Island, it wasn’t far. I don’t know if I can convey, or if I should convey to you, the holy hell that I raised to get my way that day. And I did a united front with my two brothers, who, usually, ignored me and I ignored them at this point in our family careers. Democracy, of a sort, ruled. Or maybe poor Ma just got worn out from our caterwauling. In any case, we abandoned a few things with my father, including that pail and shovel that was going to provide us with a gourmet’s delight of boiled clams fresh from the now mythical sea, and started our trek with the well-known basics-food and utensils and toys and chairs and, and…

Let me cut to the chase here a little. Of course I have to tell you about our route and about how your humble tour director got the bright idea that we could take a short cut down Chickatawbut Street. (This is a real street, look it up. I used to use it every time I wanted to ride my bike over to Grandma’s on Young Street in North Adamsville.) The idea of said "smart guy" tour director was to get a breeze, a little breeze while we are walking with our now heavy loads by cutting onto Shore Avenue near the Merrymount Yacht Club. The problem is that, in search of breeze or of no breeze, this way is longer, much longer for three young boys and a dragged-out mama. Well, the long and short of it was, have you ever heard of the “Bataan Death March” during World War II? If you haven’t, look it up on “Wikipedia.” Those poor, bedeviled guys had nothing on us by the time, late afternoon, we got to our destination. We were beat, beat up, beat down, beat around, beat six ways to Sunday, beat every way a human being can be beat. Did I say beat? Oh ya, I did. But Ma, sensing our three murderous hearts by then, got the charcoals burning in one of the fireplaces they provided back then, and maybe they still do. And we were off to the races.

Hey, do you really need to know about mustard and relish crammed char-broiled hot dogs or my brother’s strange ketchup-filled one on white-breaded, nasty-tasting hot dog rolls that we got cheap from Elm Farms or maybe it was First National, or my beloved Kennedy’s potato salad that kind of got mashed up in the mess up or "Hires" root beer, or "Nehi" grape, or "Nehi" orange or store–bought boxed ice cream, maybe, "Sealtest" harlequin (chocolate, strawberry and vanilla all together, see), except melted. Or those ever- present roasted marshmallow that stuck to the roof of my mouth. You’ve been down that road yourselves so you don’t need me for a guide. And besides I’m starting to get sleepy after a long day. But as tired, dusty, and dirty as I am just telling this story… Ah, Treasure Island.

On Bradley Manning’s Show-Trial-Notes

The following observations and comments are those of one of Bradley Manning’s supporters from Boston who attended the two days of closing argument and a rally at Fort McNair on July 25-26:

July 25, 2013-expanded

From Occupied Fort Meade- Tough day today although it started nicely with about twenty Bradley Manning supporters doing the 7 AM stand-out before trial. This stand-out has been a first trial day of the week event since the trial began on June 3^rdas a way to show solidarity with Bradley and in order to publicize the fact of the trial to people on way to work at the fort and in the environs. Everything else though was down-hill from there.

At the beginning of the court-martial proceedings the judge, Col. Denis Lind, denied Bradley’s civilian attorney, David Coomb’s motion for a directed verdict of not-guilty, a directed verdict meaning the government has not presented enough evidence to convict beyond a reasonable doubt, on the theft of government property over $1000 charge (the government property being essentially the computer(s) and information used to gather the Wikileaks material). She also granted the government’s motion to change the way the charges were read, a major change, on that part of the indictment. And Col. Lind also denied Bradley’s motion, as was expected, for a mistrial based on that major change in that charge. (A successful mistrial motion meaning the government having to start all over, or refuse to re-try, in the interest of a fair trial). Col, Lind has consistently ruled in the government’s favor throughout this case from denial of pre-trial motions to dismiss for lack of speedy trial and torturous behavior by the government during Bradley’s detention at Quantico on forward. Occasionally she has thrown the defense a bone like when she gave Bradley 112 days “good time”for the government’s torturous behavior and today when she ruled that she would not consider that Bradley stole, in essence, the United States government’s entire computer system when he used his computer during his Wikileaks activity.

The worst part of the day though was the prosecution’s summation which lasted all day (from about 10 AM until almost 6PM with breaks) where Major Fein, the government’s lead attorney , called Bradley an anarchist, evil, a traitor, and every other vile thing to impress the judge with his heinous crimes. Essentially that Bradley was a direct and conscious agent of Osama bin Laden and that ilk. A“highlight” of the presentation was when, several times, a picture of Osama bin Laden was placed on the court room screen as an example of the terrorists who could have benefitted from the information that Bradley exposed. Apparently the government decided to throw every possible evil intent theory in the book to present Bradley in that light hoping that some of it would stick in the judge’s mind. The main thing though was that the presentation had very little relationship to the evidence presented at trial which is what a summation is supposed to do. Basically to highlight the main points that one of the parties wants a judge (or jury) to consider while deliberating. And so it went.

After the judge called a recess for the day, and in response to the hachet job done to Bradley’ s name several people shouted “Free Bradley” as we were leaving and I held up my fist in solidarity. Yes, tough to take. Read the transcript, or some of it, maybe the first hour, at the Bradley Manning Support Network- http://www.bradleymanning.org/-to get a flavor of what happened. As a result of the long-winded government summation the defense is going tomorrow.

July 26, 2013

David Coomb’s presented a three- hour defense (with the inevitably recesses) which stuck to the point he probably originally intended to argue if the court schedule of one day for summation had been adhered to and added some directly related to the government’s argument of the day before. Remember Bradley has already taken political and legal responsibility for some of the charge against him in a pre-trial hearing statement back in February so Daivid Coomb’s did not cover those charges. He concentrated on the charges in contention, basically, those charges related to the “theft” and “unauthorized” use of governmental property and the real issue at hand, the one that could put his client away for life, knowingly “aiding the enemy, being a spy essentially. Mr.Coombs’ demeanor and voice was calm and collected (and occasionally a little humorous) as opposite to the “mad dog” presentation by Major Fein. At the end of the defense’s summation the audience applauded and some people called out “Free Bradley”.

We did not stay for the government’rebuttal (their right to have the last word since they brought the case)in order to attend a 3 PM rally at Fort McNair in support of the next phase in the fight for Bradley’s freedom.

Col. Lind recessed the court-martial stating that she will have a decision in the next few days and will give one day notice when she will delivery her opinion.

At Fort McNair, a small fort in Washington, D.C. where the convening officer for Bradley’s court-martial, General Buchanan has his office about one hundred and fifty supporters gathered for a two and one half hour rally. We have known all along that Bradley would be convicted of some crimes, crimes that he took political and legal responsibility for in February, although perhaps early on we did not expect that the life sentence “aiding the enemy” charge to prevail. After the trial closed on Friday no one should expect, although we all still hold out a little hope, that Bradley will not be convicted on that major “aiding the enemy”charge.

Thus we need to begin the next stage of Bradley’s campaign and that was the reason for the demo at Fort McNair. General Buchanan does not have the authority to overturn Bradley’s conviction (only an appeals court could, or the judge on reconsideration) but he can reduce the sentence. That is one avenue we can pursue now. The demo was spirited as we marched through the D.C. neighborhoods surrounding the and essentially closed the two main entrances as the military responded to our efforts.

Everyone should help by doing the following:

Call (202) 685-2900

The military is pulling out all the stops to chill efforts to increase transparency in our government. Now, we’re asking you to join us to ensure we’re doing all we can to secure Bradley’s freedom as well as protection for future whistleblowers.

Major General Jeffery S. Buchanan is the Convening Authority for Bradley’s court martial, which means that he has the authority to decrease Bradley’s sentence, no matter what the judge decides. As hundreds of activists join us in DC today to demonstrate at Maj. Gen. Buchanan’s base, Ft. McNair, we’re asking you to join our action demanding he do the right thing by calling, faxing, and e-mailing his Public Affairs Office.

The convening authority can reduce the sentence after the Judge makes her ruling.

Let’s Remind Maj. General Buchanan:

that Bradley was held for nearly a year in abusive solitary confinement, which the UN torture chief called “cruel, inhuman, and degrading”
that President Obama has unlawfully influenced the trial with his declaration of Bradley Manning’s guilt.
that the media has been continually blocked from transcripts and documents related to the trial and that it has only been through the efforts of Bradley Manning’s supporters that any transcripts exist.
that under the UCMJ a soldier has the right to a speedy trial and that it was unconsciable to wait 3 years before starting the court martial.
that absolutely no one was harmed by the release of documents that exposed war crimes, unnecessary secrecy and disturbing foreign policy.
that Bradley Manning is a hero who did the right thing when he revealed truth about wars that had been based on lies.

Remind General Buchanan that Bradley Manning’s rights have been trampled – Enough is enough!

Please help us reach all these important contacts:

Adrienne Combs, Deputy Officer Public Affairs (202) 685-2900

Col. Michelle Martin-Hing, Public Affairs Officer (202) 685-4899

The Public Affairs Office fax #: 202-685-0706

Try e-mailing Maj. Gen. Buchanan at jeffrey.s.buchanan@us.army.mil/

The Public Affairs Office is required to report up the chain of command the number of calls they receive on a particular issue, so please help us flood the office with support for whistleblower Bradley Manning today!

Saturday July 27, 2013 –Boston

At Park Street Station in Boston, a historic site for progressive stand-outs in the city, about fifty to sixty Bradley Manning supporters several organizations showed their solidarity as part of an international day of solidarity as Bradley’s trial winds down and a decision is pending shortly. Many spoke out in support of Bradley and other issues and we were able to raise $300 for the Bradley Manning defense campaign. Go to the Bradley Manning Support Network- http://www.bradleymanning.org/ - to view photos from this and other demos and to contribute to the defense fund.

AMERICAN LEFT HISTORY

Sunday, July 28, 2013

Party Organisation and Party Literature

Notes

21 July 2013

HISTORY / Bob Feldman : A People's History of Egypt, Part 3, 1805-1849

From The Marxist Archives-Leon Trotsky on the Soviet Workers State

Leon Trotsky

The New Constitution
of the USSR

(April 1936)

The Abolition of Soviets

The Historical Meaning of the New Constitution

Tasks of the Vanguard

Left Links

About Me

Sunday, July 28, 2013

Party Organisation and Party Literature

Notes

21 July 2013

HISTORY / Bob Feldman : A People's History of Egypt, Part 3, 1805-1849

From The Marxist Archives-Leon Trotsky on the Soviet Workers State

Leon Trotsky

The New Constitutionof the USSR

(April 1936)

The Abolition of Soviets

The Historical Meaning of the New Constitution

Tasks of the Vanguard

The New Constitution
of the USSR