So You Want To Be A Rock ‘n’ Roll Star- Take Two

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

As a member in good standing of the generation of ‘68 I have spent much cyber-ink talking about this and that “seeking a newer world” experiment we tried, with the emphasis on “tried”, back in the day, back in the 1960s day under the sign of the 18^th century English poet William Wordworth’s response to the early stirrings of the French Revolution- “to be young was very heaven.” And while, in the end, we were defeated by the monsters of the prevailing mores of American society we tried to rock the boat. And politics aside nowhere was this culturally more exploited by us that in our music, our second-wave rock music (Elvis, Chuck, Bo, Buddy and Jerry Lee being the first wave back in the 1950s).

Some argued, argued strenuously in the heat of 1960s chaos that “music was the revolution.” Somehow, they argued, we would either withdraw from mainstream society and search for the gates of Eden in our own way, maybe in some Utah of our minds, or the music would drive all good-thinking youth tribesmen (tribe’s people?) to overwhelm that dangerous mainstream and bring forth that “newer world” we were so desperately seeking. Well, no, no it wasn’t, music wasn’t the revolution, but who could blame anybody at the time for thinking that lofty thought. Nowhere was this sentiment, or parts of it, more pronounced that in the garages and family rooms of America, of suburban America when guys, and it was mainly guys then, tried to form their own rock and roll bands, especially in the wake of the “British invasion (the Beatles and The Stones, mainly)”. Formed rock and roll bands to become famous, and if not famous as was the fate of most bands that were formed then, to act as a magnet for, what else, girls.

And funny to think it could have just as easily been guys from Ames, Iowa or Winnemucca, Nevada trying for the brass ring amid the upheavals all around including the down-pressing pressing down hard on us war in Vietnam, the black liberation struggle south then north, the budding women’s and gay struggles, and our very publicly declared war, our own civil war, against parental authority. That sentiment moreover even seeped down in the crevices of society, down among my people, the working poor, as guys, corner boy guys with a little musical talent and big, big dreams saw that as a way to avoid the factory life signed, sealed and tattooed on their brains.

Naturally, Ames, Winnemucca or Hullsville, my growing up hometown, as always with garage, family room and back of the school gym bands, there were struggles around who was, and who was not, going to be “on the bus”, going to be in the band. And what level of commitment those members were willing to pursue to make it to the“bigs.” Other issues that came up as well were how much hard time in lonely low-down joints were the band members willing to do to “pay their dues” and the big question in the break-out sixties about whether to be a cover band or concentrate, like the Beatles and the Stones, on writing their own music and not depend of Tin Pan Alley stuff, drivel really when the deal went down.

Of course no 1960s coming-of-age reminiscence could avoid the generational conflicts as back-drop to muddy the cultural waters that a lot of us faced. You know-“what are you going to do with your life after this momentary “live free” obsession, son or daughter”-what do you mean you are dropping out of school after I have just paid X tuition”- what are you going to do about that damn draft notice”-what do you mean you’re going to just live with him, or her-well you get the drift. And as well the changing boy-girl thing in the post-pill world, the beginning of women striking out on their own guys be damned, drugs, more drugs, and of course more rock and roll. That is what it was like for a minute back then through as seen through the eyes of those who were pioneers, or just confused and “winging it” And sometimes making great, if unheralded, music as well. Yah, if you listen to some of that stuff then you might know what I meant when I said “to be young was very heaven.”

Recently I reviewed one of those 1960s memory mist film sagas, Not Fade Away, and I mentioned my nostalgic response to the film to my old friend, Peter Paul Markin, from up the road in North Adamsville, whom I met one summer night in 1965 I think, but it was summer and night for sure. The“for sure” part is due to the fact that I met him at the Surf Ballroom in my hometown while we were at a Friday night dance that featured the Rockin’Ramrods, a local group that did covers of many 1960s rock groups like the Stones, the Kingsmen, and others. And that band was a band very much like the band in Not Fade Away.

Well, those remarks I made to Peter Paul brought to his mind the fate of Billy Bradley, a guy from his growing up neighborhood in the Adamsville housing projects, a guy who had plenty of ability and talent to put together a rock band and maybe make the big time. He even started to pronounce himself, trade puff himself up as the “President of Rock ‘n’ Roll” for a time. Yeah, as Peter Paul also said maybe Billy could have broken out, him and his corner boys who travelled the small-time band circuit with him, if he could have broken from that occasional armed robbery he pulled to get funds for his various music projects. A career choice that eventually led him to some serious time in the state pen, and later a fate face down in some southern hick town after trying to rob a White Hen variety store. Jesus. So, no, not everybody, make it out, made it out into the rock and roll night, or lived to tell about it. Let Peter Paul tell you one episode of his bouts with one Billy Bradley out in the be-bop 1950s night:

I hate Elvis, I love Elvis,” I can still hear the echo of my old “the projects”boy, William James Bradley, also known as Billie, Billie from the hills, a mad demon of a kid and my best friend down in the elementary school. We grew apart after a while, and I will tell you why in a minute, but for a long time, a long kid time long, Billie, Billie of a hundred dreams, Billie of fifty (at least) screw-ups made me laugh and made my day when things were tough, like they almost always were, at my beat down broke down family house.

You know fifty some years later Billie was right. We hated Elvis, especially at that time when all the girls, the young girls got weak-kneed over him and he made the older girls (and women, some mothers even) sweat and left no room for ordinary mortal boys, “the projects boys” most of all, on their “dream” card. And most especially, hard as we tried, for brown-haired, tow-headed, blue-eyed ten, eleven and twelve year old boys who didn’t know how to dance, or sneer. We both got pissed off at my brother because, he looked very much like Elvis and although he had no manners, and no time for girls, they were all following him. Christ there really is no justice in this wicked old world.

And we loved Elvis for giving us, at least as far as we knew then, our own music, our own "jump' and our own jail-break from the tired old stuff we heard on the radio and television but did not ‘”speak” to us. And for the songs that he left behind. Not the goofy, Tin Pan Alley or somewhere like that, inspired“happy” music that went along with his mostly maligned, and rightly so, films but the stuff from the Sun Records days, the stuff from when he was from hunger. That, as we also from hunger, was like a siren call to break-out and then we caught his act on television and that was that. I probably walk“funny”, knees and hips out of whack, today from trying way back then to pour a third-rate imitation of his moves into my body to impress the girls.

But enough of Elvis’ place in the pre-teen and teen rock pantheon this is after all about Billie, and Elvis’ twisted spell on the poor boy. Now you know Billie, or you should, from another story, a story about Bo Diddley and how Billie wanted to, as a change of pace break from the Elvis rut create his own “style.” Well, in hard, hard post-World War II Northern white "the projects" racial animosity poor unknowing Billie got blasted away by one of the older, more knowing boys about wanted to emulate a n----r for his troubles.

That sent Billie, Billie from the hills, back to Elvis pronto. See, Billie was desperate to impress the girls way before I was aware of them, or their charms. Half, on some days, three-quarters of our conversations (I won’t say monologues because I did get a word in edgewise every once in a while when Billie got on one of his rants) revolved around doing this or that, something legal something not, to impress the girls. And that is where the “hate” part mentioned above comes in. Billie believed, and he might still believe it today if he was alive, that if only he could approximate Elvis’s looks, look, stance, and substance that all the girls would be flocking to him.

Needless to say, such an endeavor required, requires money, dough, kale, cash, moola whatever you want to call it. And what twelve year old project boys (that’s the age time of this story, about late 1957, early 1958) didn’t have, and didn’t have in abundance was any of that do-re-mi. And no way to get it from missing parents, messed up parents, or just flat out poor parents. Billie’s and mine were the later, poor as church mice. No that‘s not right because church mice (in the way that I am using it, and as we used it back then to signify the respectable poor who “touted” their Catholic pious poorness as a badge of honor in this weasely old world) would not do, would not think about, would not even breathe the same air of what we were about to embark on. A life of crime, kid stuff crime but I'll leave that to the readers judgment.

See, on one of Billie’s rants he got the idea in his head, and, maybe, it got planted there by something that he read about Elvis (Christ, he read more about that guy that he did about anybody else once he became an acolyte), that if he had a bunch of rings on all his fingers the girls would give him a tumble (a tumble in those days being a hard kiss on the lips for about twelve seconds or“copping” a little feel, and if I have to explain that last in more detail you had better just move on). But see, also Billie’s idea is that if he has all those rings, especially for a projects boy then it will make his story that has set to tell easier. And that story is none other than he wrote to Elvis (possible) and spoke man to man about his situation (improbable) and Elvis, Elvis the king, Elvis from nowhere Mississippi like we were from the nowhere projects, Elvis bleeding heart, had sent him these rings to give him a start in life (outrageously impossible.) Christ, I don’t believe old Billie came up with that story even now when I am a million years world-weary.

But first you need the rings and as the late honorable bank robber, Willie Sutton, said about robbing banks-that’s where the money is-old Billie, blessed, beatified Billie, figured out, and figured out all by himself, that if you want to be a ring stealer that you better go to the jewelry store because that is where the rings are. The reader, and rightly so, now, might ask where was his best buddy during this time and why was he not offering wise counsel about the pitfalls of crime and the virtues of honesty and incorruptibility. Well, when Billie got off on his rant you just waited to see what played out but the real reason was, hell, maybe I could get a ring for my ring-less fingers and be on my way to impress the girls too. I think they call it, or could call it, aiding and abetting.

But enough of that superficial moralizing. Let’s get to the jewelry store, the best one in the downtown of the working class town we were appendaged to (literally so because it was located on a one road in and out peninsula). We walked a couple of miles to get there, plotting all the way. Bingo the Acme Jewelry Store (or some name like that) jumped up at us. Billie’s was as nervous as a colt and I was not far behind, although on this caper I am just the “stooge”, if that. I’m to wait outside to see if John Law comes by. Okay, Billie, good luck. And strangely enough his luck is good that day, and many days after, although those days after were not ring days. That day though his haul was five rings. Five shaky rings, shaky hands Billie, as we walked, then started running, away from the down town area. When we got close to home we stopped near the beach where we lived to see up close what the rings looked like. Billie yelled, “Damn.” And why did he yell that word. Well, apparently in his terror (his word to me) at getting caught he just grabbed what was at hand. And what were at hand were five women’s rings. Now, how are you going to impress girls, ten, eleven or twelve year old girls, even if as naïve as us, and maybe more so, that Elvis is you bosom buddy and you are practically his only life-line adviser with five women’s rings? Damn, damn is right.

P.S. It took a few years and some sense getting knocked into me, and a funny trip to the local library where I squirreled up and started reading books to break from the Billie, Billie from the hills habit, and his habits. We drifted away mainly because he was “hot” and I was just getting into being “cool”, or thinking I was. You read above about his fate. Damn, damn is right.

***********

So you want to be a rock 'n' roll star?
-The Byrds

So you want to be a rock 'n' roll star?
Then listen now to what I say
Just get an electric guitar
Then take some time
and learn how to play
And with your hair swung right
And your pants too tight
It's gonna be all right

Then it's time to go downtown
Where the agent man won't let you down
Sell your soul to the company
Who are waiting there to sell plastic ware
And in a week or two
If you make the charts
The girls'll tear you apart

The price you paid for your riches and fame
Was it all a strange game?
You're a little insane
The money, the fame, the public acclaim
Don't forget what you are
You're a rock 'n' roll star!

***Out In The Be-Bop 1950s High School Dance Night

 

 

 

A YouTube film clip of The Drifters performing their classic Save The Last Dance For Me. Please, pretty please.

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

A while back, maybe a couple of years ago now, yes, it was just about two years ago, I spend tons of time and reams of cyberspace “paper” reviewing many aspects of 1950s American teenage culture that in my time I was waist deep in like every other breathing post-war, red scare, cold war, atomic bomb dread kid.  (And maybe those glad tidings spread to Europe too. Think about the Beatles and Rolling Stones and what they were listening to out in the English night, especially that Chess Record-driven Chicago blues with Muddy, Howlin' Wolf, John Lee and the gang.)  Blame it on Elvis, blame it on American Bandstand, blame it on that atomic bomb worry, hell, blame it on Bo Didderly for asking that rhetorical question- “Who put the rock in rock ‘n’ roll?”- but certain social aspects of the be-bop teen night needed to be observed. Central to that teen culture, to the throbs of that first wave of post –war (World War II for the forgetful) was the inevitable school dance that, which if for no other reason than to maintain one’s social standing, school social standing, it was necessary to attend.
 

With that school dance came its’ also inevitable last dance drama, trauma as a kind of rite of passage into sainted teen-hood. John and Mick had to ask too, remember. A last dance, by the way, that I have been at great pains to describe elsewhere as the last chance for glory for shy boys like me (or girls, for that matter, but they can speak for themselves if they have overcome their shyness). That seminal event also ritualistically involved setting off the wallflowers from the “in” crowd in the school social pecking order. And from there by some mysterious process that pecking order was set in stone through three or four long serf-like years of high school. Or, perhaps, for you and your crowd, your guy crowd, your corner boys if you were a corner boy like me and imbibed all the macho manly clichés of that existence, acted as a test to prove that you had that something, some moxie to ask that certain she for the last one.

Of course, the critical question, the world historic question, was whether the last dance was to be a slow one that meant that you had to dance close and pray to high heaven that you did not ruin your partner’s feet or shoes in the process. That those secret lessons to Benny Flynn’s just out of high school sister , paid out of some misbegotten allowance  or the sweat of one’s brow from doing arduous household chores, were good enough, were embedded deep enough, to make it through the two minutes and fifty-eight seconds of say  the slow classic Til.    

That concern however was only the beginning of the evening’s preparations check-list. Don’t forget the hair cream that had to keep your cowlick in place (Wildroot, “a little dab will do ya,” of course- you taken in by the wistfulness of the television ad to give it a try since nothing else had worked not that strong bay rum of your father’s, not that nameless grease you tried last time on Slick Jones’ say so). That using your Gillette steel-edged razor that you never really got the hang of despite older brother instruction hadn't caused terminal blood lost but only a tissue sop wound hopefully blended into the darkened dance floor night or explained as some heroic wound. That the deodorant that was supposed to get you through the night (hell it said all- day protection but that was for mere normal mortals not for hyper-hormonal teens) did not wear off although you seemed to be sweating, excuse me, perspiring through your tee-shirt. And, finally, that that surefire kiss mouthwash, Listerine, that tasted, well, tasted like mouthwash and seemingly paralyzed your mouth as you gargled held up as well.

Maybe, though that last one, depending on the dee-jay’s mood or whether he and his girlfriend had had a fight, would be, with hosanna relief, a fast one, that you could kind of fake that you knew how to dance to, but was not as bound up with the ending of your rising social status like those slow ones. A little shake here, a pivot there, hands in the air, just keep moving like Benny’s sister showed you after she, exasperated, had practically given up in horror on your two-left-foot-ness.  And best of all no worry about hold-your nose mouthwash, hair cream, shaving cream or Right Guard.

Ah memory, Chuck Berry’s Back In The U.S.A. (fast and great doo-woppy back singing parts so you could sing along while you are not paying attention to your partner just in case things didn't work out); Tommy Edwards’ It’s All In The Game (slow, swoony, ouch, I am thinking about that razor-induced neck wound); the legendary late Bo Diddley’s Who Do You Love? (fast and sassy, sassy 'cause girls who liked Bo, well, they "did' it, didn't they, and you know what "did it" means, with all that Afro-Carib beat); and, the Flamingos I’ll Be Home (slow, and only if that certain she turned you down and you had to dance with your sister's best girlfriend, or something like that).

Ah memory too so you can get “nostalgic” for what did, or did not, transpire in the old days. That certain she that turned you down crushing all earthly hopes for happiness for eternity (or until the next sassy brunette came along your path). That song that became “your song,” you and her. That night after the last dance down at Breaker Beach. The possibilities were endless. Or forgetting nostalgia for a minute if you are now memory telling tall-tales to the younger set for them to giggle over, giggle over what their parents or grandparents got all heated up about and who are thanking somebody, thanking them ot high heaven even that they came along in the days of hip-hop nation and avoided all that. Whee!

 

From The Marxist Archives-Economic Planning and Workers Democracy

Workers Vanguard No. 917 4 July 2008 TROTSKY LENIN Economic Planning and Workers Democracy (Quote of the Week) While pointing to the great advances that working-class property forms brought to the Soviet Union, Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky emphasized that the parasitic Stalinist bureaucracy that usurped political power from the Soviet proletariat acted as a brake on the development of that society’s productive forces. Writing in 1938, Trotsky underlined the need for workers political revolution in the USSR, and the return to workers democracy, as key to the defense and extension of the gains of the 1917 October Revolution. Amid hostile imperialist encirclement, decades of Stalinist misrule led to the final undoing of the Soviet degenerated workers state in 1991-92, a world-historic defeat for the international proletariat. Trotsky’s analysis and program applies today to the remaining deformed workers states of China, North Korea, Vietnam and Cuba. In and of itself the preservation of state ownership of the means of production is of enormous progressive significance, inasmuch as with the aid of planned economy this permits of attaining a swift development of the productive forces. True, the economic statistics issued by the bureaucracy do not merit any confidence: they systematically exaggerate successes while concealing failures. It is nonetheless unthinkable to deny the fact that even today the Soviet Union’s productive forces are still developing at a tempo that was not and is not known in any other country in the world. Whoever refuses to see this side of the case, identifying the Soviet regime with fascism…throws out, as the Germans say, the baby with the dirty bath-water. The development of the productive forces is the fundamental factor of human culture. Without increasing man’s power over nature it is impossible even to think of destroying the rule of man over man. Socialism cannot be erected on backwardness and poverty. The technical premise of Socialism has taken an enormous forward step in the Soviet Union in the course of these twenty years. However, least of all is this the merit of the bureaucracy. On the contrary, the ruling caste has become transformed into the greatest brake upon the development of the productive forces. Socialist economy must by its very essence take as its guide the interests of the producers and the needs of the consumers. These interests and needs can find their expression only through the medium of a full-flowering democracy of producers and consumers. Democracy, in this particular case, is not some sort of abstract principle. It is the one and only conceivable mechanism for preparing the Socialist system of economy, and realizing it in life. —Leon Trotsky, “Does the Soviet Government Still Follow the Principles Adopted Twenty Years Ago?” (1938), as reprinted in Fourth International (March 1945) ******* Leon Trotsky Nationalized Industry and Workers’ Management Written: May or June 1938. Source: Fourth International [New York], Vol.7 No.8, August 1946,pp.239, 242. Translated: Duncan Ferguson. Transcription/HTML Markup: David Walters. Copyleft: Leon Trotsky Internet Archive (www.marxists.org) 2004. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. In 1938, when the Cardenas government of Mexico expropriated the oil industry from the Anglo-American imperialists, such newspapers as the NY Daily News ascribed the act to the influence of Leon Trotsky then in exile in Mexico. This, of course, was untrue. Trotsky had made an agreement, which he scrupulously observed, that in return for asylum he would not intervene in Mexican politics. He was forced consequently to limit himself to stating his position in general on the expropriation. He supported the act, explaining his views in an article dated June 5, 1938, published in the Socialist Appeal (now The Militant) of June 25, 1938. It was not known that Trotsky had written more fully on another aspect of the expropriation: the placing by the Mexican government of the oil industry under the management of the workers. In April 1946, Joseph Hansen, former Secretary of Leon Trotsky, visited Natalia Trotsky. He also called on friends of Trotsky. Among them was one who had made a study of the expropriation. This friend told about talking with Trotsky for a whole afternoon on the uniqueness of workers’ management of an expropriated industry in a capitalist country. Trotsky promised to consider the subject more fully. Some three days later, Trotsky’s French secretary called on the telephone that Trotsky had written a short article. This remarkable article had never been printed anywhere. Comrade Hansen examined the manuscript. Typewritten in French, it was undated and unsigned but the interpolations and stylistic corrections in ink appeared to be Trotsky’s handwriting. The style, and, above all, the method of analysis and the revolutionary conclusions were Trotsky’s, beyond question. Comrade Hansen immediately had a copy typed and brought it to Natalia. She was convinced of the authenticity of the article. The probable date it was written can be fixed as May or June 1938. – Editors, Fourth International, New York In the industrially backward countries foreign capital plays a decisive role. Hence the relative weakness of the national bourgeoisie in relation to the national proletariat. This creates special conditions of state power. The government veers between foreign and domestic capital, between the weak national bourgeoisie and the relatively powerful proletariat. This gives the government a Bonapartist character of a distinctive character. It raises itself, so to speak, above classes. Actually, it can govern either by making itself the instrument of foreign capitalism and holding the proletariat in the chains of a police dictatorship, or by maneuvering with the proletariat and even going so far as to make concessions to it, thus gaining the possibility of a certain freedom from the foreign capitalists. The present policy [of the Mexican government – Translator] is in the second stage; its greatest conquests are the expropriations of the railroads and the oil industries. These measures are entirely within the domain of state capitalism. However, in a semicolonial country, state capitalism finds itself under the heavy pressure of private foreign capital and of its governments, and cannot maintain itself without the active support of the workers. That is why it tries, without letting the real power escape from its hands, to place on the workers’ organizations a considerable part of the responsibility for the march of production in the nationalized branches of industry. What should be the policy of the workers’ party in this case? It would of course be a disastrous error, an outright deception, to assert that the road to socialism passes, not through the proletarian revolution, but through nationalization by the bourgeois state of various branches of industry and their transfer into the hands of the workers’ organizations. But it is not a question of that. The bourgeois government has itself carried through the nationalization and has been compelled to ask participation of the workers in the management of the nationalized industry. One can of course evade the question by citing the fact that unless the proletariat takes possession of the power, participation by the trade unions in the management of the enterprises of state capitalism cannot give socialist results. However, such a negative policy from the revolutionary wing would not be understood by the masses and would strengthen the opportunist positions. For Marxists it is not a question of building socialism with the hands of the bourgeoisie, but of utilizing the situations that present themselves within state capitalism and advancing the revolutionary movement of the workers. Participation in bourgeois parliaments can no longer give important positive results; under certain conditions it even leads to the demoralization of the worker deputies. But this is not an argument for revolutionists in favor of antiparliamentarism. It would be inexact to identify the policy of workers’ participation in the management of nationalized industry with the participation of socialists in a bourgeois government (which we called ministerialism). All the members of the government are bound together by ties of solidarity. A party represented in the government is answerable for the entire policy of the government as a whole. Participation in the management of a certain branch of industry allows full opportunity for political opposition. In case the workers’ representatives are in a minority in the management, they have every opportunity to declare and publish their proposals, which were rejected by the majority, to bring them to the knowledge of the workers, etc. The participation of the trade unions in the management of nationalized industry may be compared to the participation of socialists in the municipal governments, where the socialists sometimes win a majority and are compelled to direct an important municipal economy, while the bourgeoisie still has domination in the state and bourgeois property laws continue. Reformists in the municipality adapt themselves passively to the bourgeois regime. Revolutionists in this field do all they can in the interests of the workers and at the same time teach the workers at every step that municipality policy is powerless without conquest of state power. The difference, to be sure, is that in the field of municipal government the workers win certain positions by means of democratic elections, whereas in the domain of nationalized industry the government itself invites them to take certain posts. But this difference has a purely formal character. In both cases the bourgeoisie is compelled to yield to the workers certain spheres of activity. The workers utilize these in their own interests. It would be lightminded to close one’s eye to the dangers that flow from a situation where the trade unions play a leading role in nationalized industry. The basis of the danger is the connection of the top trade union leaders with the apparatus of state capitalism, the transformation of mandated representatives of the proletariat into hostages of the bourgeois state. But however great this danger may be, it constitutes only a part of a general danger – more exactly, of a general sickness. That is to say, the bourgeois degeneration of the trade union apparatuses in the imperialist epoch, not only in the old metropolitan centers, but also in the colonial countries. The trade union leaders are, in an overwhelming majority of cases, political agents of the bourgeoisie and of its state. In nationalized industry they can become and already are becoming direct administrative agents. Against this there is no other course than the struggle for the independence of the workers’ movement in general, and in particular through the formation within the trade unions of firm revolutionary nuclei, which, while at the same time maintaining the unity of the trade union movement, are capable of struggling for a class policy and for a revolutionary composition of the leading bodies. A danger of another sort lies in the fact that the banks and other capitalist enterprises, upon which a given branch of nationalized industry depends in the economic sense, may and will use special methods of sabotage to put obstacles in the way of the workers’ management, to discredit it and push it to disaster. The reformist leaders will try to ward off this danger by servile adaptation to the demands of their capitalist providers, in particular the banks. The revolutionary leaders, on the contrary, will draw the conclusion, from the sabotage by the banks, that it is necessary to expropriate the banks and to establish a single national bank, which would be the accounting house of the whole economy. Of course this question must be indissolubly linked to the question of the conquest of power by the working class. The various capitalist enterprises, national and foreign, will inevitably enter into a conspiracy with the state institutions to put obstacles in the way of the workers’ management of nationalized industry. On the other hand, the workers’ organizations that are in the management of the various branches of nationalized industry must join together to exchange their experiences, must give each other economic support must act with their joint forces on the government on the conditions of credit, etc. Of course such a central bureau of the workers’ management of nationalized branches of industry must be in closest contact with the trade unions. To sum up, one can say that this new field of work includes within it both the greatest opportunities and the greatest dangers. The dangers consist in the fact that, through the intermediary of controlled trade unions, state capitalism can hold the workers in check, exploit them cruelly, and paralyze their resistance. The revolutionary possibilities consist of the fact that, basing themselves upon their positions in the exceptionally important branches of industry, the workers can lead the attack against all the forces of capital and against the bourgeois state. Which of these possibilities will win out? And in what period of time? It is naturally impossible to predict. That depends entirely on the struggle of the different tendencies within the working class, on the experience of the workers themselves, on the world situation. In any case, to use this new form of activity in the interests of the working class, and not of the labor aristocracy and bureaucracy, only one condition is needed: the existence of a revolutionary Marxist party that carefully studies every form of working class activity, criticizes every deviation, educates and organizes the workers, wins influence in the trade unions, and assures a revolutionary workers’ representation in nationalized industry. Leon Trotsky Nationalized Industry and Workers’ Management Written: May or June 1938. Source: Fourth International [New York], Vol.7 No.8, August 1946,pp.239, 242. Translated: Duncan Ferguson. Transcription/HTML Markup: David Walters. Copyleft: Leon Trotsky Internet Archive (www.marxists.org) 2004. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. In 1938, when the Cardenas government of Mexico expropriated the oil industry from the Anglo-American imperialists, such newspapers as the NY Daily News ascribed the act to the influence of Leon Trotsky then in exile in Mexico. This, of course, was untrue. Trotsky had made an agreement, which he scrupulously observed, that in return for asylum he would not intervene in Mexican politics. He was forced consequently to limit himself to stating his position in general on the expropriation. He supported the act, explaining his views in an article dated June 5, 1938, published in the Socialist Appeal (now The Militant) of June 25, 1938. It was not known that Trotsky had written more fully on another aspect of the expropriation: the placing by the Mexican government of the oil industry under the management of the workers. In April 1946, Joseph Hansen, former Secretary of Leon Trotsky, visited Natalia Trotsky. He also called on friends of Trotsky. Among them was one who had made a study of the expropriation. This friend told about talking with Trotsky for a whole afternoon on the uniqueness of workers’ management of an expropriated industry in a capitalist country. Trotsky promised to consider the subject more fully. Some three days later, Trotsky’s French secretary called on the telephone that Trotsky had written a short article. This remarkable article had never been printed anywhere. Comrade Hansen examined the manuscript. Typewritten in French, it was undated and unsigned but the interpolations and stylistic corrections in ink appeared to be Trotsky’s handwriting. The style, and, above all, the method of analysis and the revolutionary conclusions were Trotsky’s, beyond question. Comrade Hansen immediately had a copy typed and brought it to Natalia. She was convinced of the authenticity of the article. The probable date it was written can be fixed as May or June 1938. – Editors, Fourth International, New York In the industrially backward countries foreign capital plays a decisive role. Hence the relative weakness of the national bourgeoisie in relation to the national proletariat. This creates special conditions of state power. The government veers between foreign and domestic capital, between the weak national bourgeoisie and the relatively powerful proletariat. This gives the government a Bonapartist character of a distinctive character. It raises itself, so to speak, above classes. Actually, it can govern either by making itself the instrument of foreign capitalism and holding the proletariat in the chains of a police dictatorship, or by maneuvering with the proletariat and even going so far as to make concessions to it, thus gaining the possibility of a certain freedom from the foreign capitalists. The present policy [of the Mexican government – Translator] is in the second stage; its greatest conquests are the expropriations of the railroads and the oil industries. These measures are entirely within the domain of state capitalism. However, in a semicolonial country, state capitalism finds itself under the heavy pressure of private foreign capital and of its governments, and cannot maintain itself without the active support of the workers. That is why it tries, without letting the real power escape from its hands, to place on the workers’ organizations a considerable part of the responsibility for the march of production in the nationalized branches of industry. What should be the policy of the workers’ party in this case? It would of course be a disastrous error, an outright deception, to assert that the road to socialism passes, not through the proletarian revolution, but through nationalization by the bourgeois state of various branches of industry and their transfer into the hands of the workers’ organizations. But it is not a question of that. The bourgeois government has itself carried through the nationalization and has been compelled to ask participation of the workers in the management of the nationalized industry. One can of course evade the question by citing the fact that unless the proletariat takes possession of the power, participation by the trade unions in the management of the enterprises of state capitalism cannot give socialist results. However, such a negative policy from the revolutionary wing would not be understood by the masses and would strengthen the opportunist positions. For Marxists it is not a question of building socialism with the hands of the bourgeoisie, but of utilizing the situations that present themselves within state capitalism and advancing the revolutionary movement of the workers. Participation in bourgeois parliaments can no longer give important positive results; under certain conditions it even leads to the demoralization of the worker deputies. But this is not an argument for revolutionists in favor of antiparliamentarism. It would be inexact to identify the policy of workers’ participation in the management of nationalized industry with the participation of socialists in a bourgeois government (which we called ministerialism). All the members of the government are bound together by ties of solidarity. A party represented in the government is answerable for the entire policy of the government as a whole. Participation in the management of a certain branch of industry allows full opportunity for political opposition. In case the workers’ representatives are in a minority in the management, they have every opportunity to declare and publish their proposals, which were rejected by the majority, to bring them to the knowledge of the workers, etc. The participation of the trade unions in the management of nationalized industry may be compared to the participation of socialists in the municipal governments, where the socialists sometimes win a majority and are compelled to direct an important municipal economy, while the bourgeoisie still has domination in the state and bourgeois property laws continue. Reformists in the municipality adapt themselves passively to the bourgeois regime. Revolutionists in this field do all they can in the interests of the workers and at the same time teach the workers at every step that municipality policy is powerless without conquest of state power. The difference, to be sure, is that in the field of municipal government the workers win certain positions by means of democratic elections, whereas in the domain of nationalized industry the government itself invites them to take certain posts. But this difference has a purely formal character. In both cases the bourgeoisie is compelled to yield to the workers certain spheres of activity. The workers utilize these in their own interests. It would be lightminded to close one’s eye to the dangers that flow from a situation where the trade unions play a leading role in nationalized industry. The basis of the danger is the connection of the top trade union leaders with the apparatus of state capitalism, the transformation of mandated representatives of the proletariat into hostages of the bourgeois state. But however great this danger may be, it constitutes only a part of a general danger – more exactly, of a general sickness. That is to say, the bourgeois degeneration of the trade union apparatuses in the imperialist epoch, not only in the old metropolitan centers, but also in the colonial countries. The trade union leaders are, in an overwhelming majority of cases, political agents of the bourgeoisie and of its state. In nationalized industry they can become and already are becoming direct administrative agents. Against this there is no other course than the struggle for the independence of the workers’ movement in general, and in particular through the formation within the trade unions of firm revolutionary nuclei, which, while at the same time maintaining the unity of the trade union movement, are capable of struggling for a class policy and for a revolutionary composition of the leading bodies. A danger of another sort lies in the fact that the banks and other capitalist enterprises, upon which a given branch of nationalized industry depends in the economic sense, may and will use special methods of sabotage to put obstacles in the way of the workers’ management, to discredit it and push it to disaster. The reformist leaders will try to ward off this danger by servile adaptation to the demands of their capitalist providers, in particular the banks. The revolutionary leaders, on the contrary, will draw the conclusion, from the sabotage by the banks, that it is necessary to expropriate the banks and to establish a single national bank, which would be the accounting house of the whole economy. Of course this question must be indissolubly linked to the question of the conquest of power by the working class. The various capitalist enterprises, national and foreign, will inevitably enter into a conspiracy with the state institutions to put obstacles in the way of the workers’ management of nationalized industry. On the other hand, the workers’ organizations that are in the management of the various branches of nationalized industry must join together to exchange their experiences, must give each other economic support must act with their joint forces on the government on the conditions of credit, etc. Of course such a central bureau of the workers’ management of nationalized branches of industry must be in closest contact with the trade unions. To sum up, one can say that this new field of work includes within it both the greatest opportunities and the greatest dangers. The dangers consist in the fact that, through the intermediary of controlled trade unions, state capitalism can hold the workers in check, exploit them cruelly, and paralyze their resistance. The revolutionary possibilities consist of the fact that, basing themselves upon their positions in the exceptionally important branches of industry, the workers can lead the attack against all the forces of capital and against the bourgeois state. Which of these possibilities will win out? And in what period of time? It is naturally impossible to predict. That depends entirely on the struggle of the different tendencies within the working class, on the experience of the workers themselves, on the world situation. In any case, to use this new form of activity in the interests of the working class, and not of the labor aristocracy and bureaucracy, only one condition is needed: the existence of a revolutionary Marxist party that carefully studies every form of working class activity, criticizes every deviation, educates and organizes the workers, wins influence in the trade unions, and assures a revolutionary workers’ representation in nationalized industry.

Those Who Fought For Our Communist Future Are Kindred Spirits

Peter Paul Markin comment (2008):

Every January, as readers of this blog are now, hopefully, familiar with the international communist movement honors the 3 Ls-Lenin, Luxemburg and Liebknecht, fallen leaders of the early 20th century communist movement who died in this month (and whose untimely deaths left a huge, irreplaceable gap in the international leadership of that time). January is thus a time for us to reflect on the roots of our movement and those who brought us along this far. In order to give a fuller measure of honor to our fallen forbears this January, and in future Januarys, this space will honor others who have contributed in some way to the struggle for our communist future. That future classless society, however, will be the true memorial to their sacrifices. This year we pay special honor to1930s American Socialist Workers Party leader Felix Morrow.

Note on inclusion: As in other series on this site (“Labor’s Untold Story”, “Leaders Of The Bolshevik Revolution”, etc.) this year’s honorees do not exhaust the list of every possible communist worthy of the name. Nor, in fact, is the list limited to Bolshevik-style communists. There will be names included from other traditions (like anarchism, social democracy, the Diggers, Levellers, Jacobins, etc.) whose efforts contributed to the international struggle. Also, as was true of previous series this year’s efforts are no more than an introduction to these heroes of the class struggle. Future years will see more detailed information on each entry, particularly about many of the lesser known figures. Better yet, the reader can pick up the ball and run with it if he or she has more knowledge about the particular exploits of some communist militant, or to include a missing one.

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Markin comment

EVERY JANUARY WE HONOR LENIN OF RUSSIA, ROSA LUXEMBURG OF POLAND, AND KARL LIEBKNECHT OF GERMANY AS THREE LEADERS OF THE INTERNATIONAL WORKING CLASS MOVEMENT.

Biography

The son of Wilhelm Liebknecht, one of the founders of the SPD, Karl Liebknecht trained to be a lawyer and defended many Social Democrats in political trials. He was also a leading figure in the socialist youth movement and thus became a leading figure in the struggle against militarism.

As a deputy in the Reichstag he was one of the first SPD representatives to break party discipline and vote against war credits in December 1914. He became a figurehead for the struggle against the war. His opposition was so successful that his parliamentary immunity was removed and he was improsoned.

Freed by the November revolution he immediately threw himself into the struggle and became with Rosa Luxemburg one of the founders of the new Communist Party (KPD). Along with Luxemburg he was murdered by military officers with the tacit approval of the leaders of the SPD after the suppression of the so-called“Spartacist Uprising” in January 1919.

From The American Left History Blog Archives(2008)- On American Political Discourse - A MODEST PROPOSAL-RECRUIT, RUN INDEPENDENT LABOR MILITANTS FOR THE 2013 ELECTIONS (Updated)

 

Markin comment:

In 2007-2008 I, in vain, attempted to put some energy into analyzing the blossoming American presidential campaign since it was to be, as advertised at least, a watershed election, for women, blacks, old white anglos, latinos, youth, etc. In the event I had to abandon the efforts in about May of 2008 when it became obvious, in my face obvious, that the election would be a watershed only for those who really believed that it would be a watershed election. The four years of the Obama presidency, the 2012 American presidential election campaign, and world politics have only confirmed in my eyes that that abandonment was essentially the right decision at the right time. In short, let the well- paid bourgeois commentators go on and on with their twitter. I, we, had (have) better things to do like fighting against the permanent wars, the permanent war economies, the struggle for more and better jobs, and for a workers party that fights for a workers government . More than enough to do, right? Still a look back at some of the stuff I wrote then does not a bad feel to it. Read on.
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This one commentary was edited and updated on February 17, 2013
A MODEST PROPOSAL-RECRUIT, RUN INDEPENDENT LABOR MILITANTS FOR THE 2008 ELECTIONS

IN THIS TIME OF THE ‘GREAT FEAR’ WE NEED CANDIDATES TO FIGHT FOR A WORKERS GOVERNMENT.

FORGET DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS AND GREENS- BUILD A WORKERS PARTY THAT FIGHTS FOR SOCIALISM!

I originally planned to repost the blog below in the summer of 2007. However, two trends have forced me to republish earlier than I planned. The first is the fact that the whole 2008 bourgeois electoral process has gone into warp speed. Yes, yes I know that thinking about electoral politics, or any politics, in the spring of 2007 is only for political junkies and other misbegotten types. I confess to that sin and someday I will turn myself into the appropriate twelve-step program. Nevertheless the campaign season goes full throttle. Thus if we are to have any effect on the 2008 campaign on behalf of our fight for socialism we better get in harness now.

The second trend revolves around the periodic publication of, and commentary on, the not so startling, by now, fact that the wealth distribution gap between the very, very rich here in America and the rest of us has over the last few years has once again become wider, the widest since the 1920s. In response a number of political commentators, especially liberal commentators, have bemoaned this condition noting that part of the problem is the very real ‘class struggle’ by the rich and their minions. One of the better commentators on this subject the Boston Globe Op/Ed writer Robert Kuttner, who is almost always worth reading to gauge the pulse of the Eastern liberal part of the Democratic Party, recently placed the blame on the fight against unionization by the corporations and their political hangers-on. So far, no argument there. Where we part company is over his exclusive and eternal strategy of relying on the political ‘goodwill’ of the ‘friends of labor’ in the Democratic Party to make capitalism fairer. He further argues that this is where labor has found its earlier successes. No, one thousand times no. Despite Kuttner’s obviously truncated reading of labor history (if at all) the way unions were organized, particularly in the 1930’s the heyday of militant action, usually meant hard-fought factory and street actions over and against those so-called ‘friends of labor’. This is the simple truth that we must get out and have labor militant candidates shout to the rooftops. LET OUR CAMPAIGN BEGIN.

MODEST PROPOSAL-RECRUIT, RUN INDEPENDENT LABOR MILITANTS IN FOR THE 2006 ELECTIONS.

Updated April 2007. In the summer of 2006 I wrote a commentary about writing in workers party candidates based on a program for the fall 2006 elections. With the hoopla already starting for the 2008 election cycle I repost that commentary below with that same intention of getting thoughtful leftist to use the 2008 campaign to further our propaganda needs.

All “anti-parliamentarian”,“anti-state”,“non-political” anarchist or anarcho-syndicalist brothers and sisters need read no further. This writer does not want to sully the purity of your politics with the taint of parliamentary electoral politics. Although I might remind you, as we remember the 70^th anniversary of the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, that your political ancestors in Spain were more than willing to support the state and enter the government when they got the chance- the bourgeois state and the bourgeois government. But, we can fight that issue out later. We will, hopefully, see you on the barricades.

As for other militants- here is my modest proposal. Either recruit fellow labor militants or present yourselves as candidates to run for public office, especially for Congress, during the 2006 election cycle. Why? Even a quick glance at the news of the day is calculated to send the most hardened politico screaming into the night. The quagmire in Iraq, immigration walls, flag-burning amendments, anti- same-sex marriage amendments, the threat to separation of church state raised by those who would impose a fundamentalist Christian theocracy on the rest of us, and the attacks on the hard fought gains of the Enlightenment posed by bogus theories such as ‘intelligent design’. And that is just an average day. Therefore, this election cycle provides militants, at a time when the dwindling electorate is focused on politics, a forum to raise our program and our ideas. We use this as a tool, like leaflets, petitions, meetings, demonstrations, etc. to get our message across. Why should the Donkeys, Elephants, and Greens have a monopoly on the public square?

I mentioned in the last paragraph the idea of program. Let us face it if we do not have a program to run on then it makes no sense for militants to run for public office. Given the political climate our task at this time is to fight an exemplary propaganda campaign. Our program is our banner in that fight. The Democrats and Republicans DO NOT RUN on a program. The sum of their campaigns is to promise not to steal from the public treasury (or at least not too much), beat their husbands or wives or grossly compromise themselves in any manner. On second thought, given today’s political climate, they may not promise not to beat their husbands or wives. You get the point. Damn, even the weakest neophyte labor militant can make a better presentation before working people that that. In any case, this writer presents a five point program that labor militants can run on (you knew this was coming, right?). As point five makes clear this is not a ‘minimum’ program but a program based on our need to fight for power.

1. FIGHT FOR THE IMMEDIATE AND UNCONDITIONAL WITHDRAWAL OF U.S. TROOPS FROM THE MIDDLE EAST NOW (OR BETTER YET, YESTERDAY)! U.S. HANDS OFF THE WORLD! VOTE NO ON THE WAR BUDGET!

The quagmire in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Middle East (Palestine, Iran, Syria you name it is the fault line of American politics today. Every bourgeois politician has to have his or her feet put to the fire on this one. Not on some flimsy ‘sense of the Congress’ softball motion for withdrawal next, year, in two years, or (my favorite) when the situation is stable. Moreover, on the parliamentary level the only real vote that matters is the vote on the war budget. All the rest is fluff. Militants should make a point of trying to enter Congressional contests where there are so-called anti-war Democrats or Republicans (an oxymoron, I believe) running to make that programmatic contrast vivid.

But, one might argue, that would split the ‘progressive’ forces. Grow up, please! That argument has grown stale since it was first put forth in the ‘popular front’ days of the 1930’s. If you want to end the war in Iraq fight for this no funding position on the war budget. Otherwise the same people (yah, those progressive Democrats) who unanimously voted for the last war budget get a free ride on the cheap. By rights this is our issue. Let us take it back.

2. FIGHT FOR A LIVING WAGE AND WORKING CONDITIONS-UNIVERSAL FREE HEALTH CARE FOR ALL.

It is a ‘no-brainer’ that no individual, much less families, can live on the minimum wage of $7/hr. (or proposed $10/hr). What planet do these politicians live on? We need an immediate fight for a living wage, full employment and decent working conditions. We need universal free health care for all. End of story. The organized labor movement must get off its knees and fight to organize Wal-Mart and the South. A boycott of Wal-Mart is not enough. A successful organizing drive will, like in the 1930’s, go a long ay to turning the conditions of labor around.

3. FIGHT THE ATTACKS ON THE ENLIGHTENMENT.

Down with the Death Penalty! Full Citizenship Rights for All Immigrants who make it here! Stop the Deportations! For the Separation of Church and State! Defend abortion rights! Down with ant-same sex marriage legislation! Full public funding of education! Stop the ‘war on drugs’, basically a war on blacks and minority youth-decriminalize drugs! Defend political prisoners! This list of demands hardly exhausts the “culture war” issues we defend. It is hard to believe that in the year 2006 over 200 years after the American Revolution and the French Revolution we are fighting desperately to preserve many of the same principles that militants fought for in those revolutions. But, so be it.

4. FIGHT FOR A WORKERS PARTY.

The Donkeys, Elephants and Greens have had their chance. Now is the time to fight for our own party and for the interests of our own class, the working class. Any campaigns by independent labor militants must highlight this point. And any campaigns can also become the nucleus of a workers party network until we get strong enough to form at least a small party. None of these other parties, and I mean none, are working in the interests of working people and their allies. The following great lesson of politic today must be hammered home. Break with the Democrats, Republicans and Greens!

5. FIGHT FOR A WORKERS AND XYZ GOVERNMENT.

THIS IS THE DEMAND THAT SEPARATES THE MILITANTS FROM THE FAINT-HEARTED REFORMISTS. We need our own form of government. In the old days the bourgeois republic was a progressive form of government. Not so any more. That form of government ran out of steam about one hundred years ago. We need a Workers Republic. We need a government based on workers councils with a ministry (I do not dare say commissariat in case any stray anarchists are still reading this) responsible to it. Let us face it if we really want to get any of the good and necessary things listed above accomplished we are not going to get it with the current form of government.

Why the XYZ part? What does that mean? No, it is not part of an algebra lesson. What it reflects is that while society is made up mainly of workers (of one sort or another) there are other classes (and parts of classes) in society that we seek as allies and could benefit from a workers government. Examples- small independent contractors, intellectuals, the dwindling number of small farmers, and some professionals like dentists. Yah, I like the idea of a workers and dentists government. The point is you have got to fight for it.

Obviously any campaign based on this program will be an exemplary propaganda campaign for the foreseeable future. But we have to start now. Continuing to support or not challenging the bourgeois parties does us no good now. That is for sure. While bourgeois electoral laws do not favor independent candidacies write-in campaigns are possible. ROLL UP YOUR SHEEVES! GET THOSE PETITIONS SIGNED! PRINT OUT THE LEAFLETS! PAINT THOSE BANNERS! GET READY TO SHAKE HANDS AND KISS BABIES

On Bradley Manning’s Show-Trial-Part Two-The Sentencing Phase

The following observations and comments are those of one of Bradley Manning’s supporters from Boston who has attended several sessions of the court-martial that has been held at Fort Meade in Maryland since June 3, 2013. This part concentrates on the sentencing phase which started on Wednesday July 31^st, the day after Private Manning was convicted of some 19 charges amounting to a total possible sentence at that point of 136 years.

July 31, 2013

The initial euphoria, or at least sign of relief over Judge Lind’s find Bradley not guilty of “aiding the enemy” charge, one that would essential have declared him a traitor and which carries a life without parole maximum, quickly dissipated as the grim reality of the total number of years that he faces, 136, unless some charges for similar acts are consolidated set in. The government, as has been the case throughout since it brought the case, will start first (and have the last word as well after the defense’s presentation) today once again to vilify Bradley, especially on the espionage counts. The gist of their claim is that Bradley’ s leaking of classified information to Wikileaks caused a severe blow to whatever it is the American government is trying to do around the world.

Retired Brigadier General Robert Carr, the first witness in the sentencing phase, testified that no individuals in Iraq or Afghanistan were killed as a result of WikiLeaks’ releasing the Afghan War Diary and Iraq War Logs.

Apparently this phase, like the trial phase, is also going to include plenty of material presented by governmental witnesses in closed session as occurred today with John Kirchhofer.

August 1, 2013

Most of the session was closed. An important expected defense motion to consolidate a number of the charges based on the same course of action or which were charged separately as part action was taken under by advisement by Judge Lind at that time. She eventually ruled that some of the charges should be consolidated and reduced Bradley’s total possible sentence from 136 years to 90. By my calculations, and correct my Math if I am wrong, 90 plus 25 (Bradley’s age) comes out to 115 years, a very long time making him a very old man unless we can gain his freedom, and gain it quickly.

August 2 to August 9

Most of the government witnesses, civilian from the State Department or those from the military spent their open court time (not much since many witnesses testified in closed court to the utter frustration of many Bradley court-side supporters) going on and on about the harmful effect of the Wikileaks revelations, although very little actual proof of harm was elicited. The defense has continually tried to rein in the governmental testimony when the prosecution has led the witnesses to speculate broadly about some speculative harm might have or might in the future affect American military or diplomatic policy. That was particularly true of the State Department’s Patrick Kennedy. Judge Lind has rules several times in the defense’s favor on the question of speculation but has also let some information in helpful to the prosecution. There was a running battle throughout as the prosecution ended its part of the sentencing phase on August 9^th.

The defense will be begin its efforts on Monday August 12^th- A now traditional first day of the trial week stand-out is scheduled in front of Fort Meade at 7 AM that day.

As the sentencing phase has wound down, with a potential sentence to be imposed as early as August 16^th the Bradley Manning Support Network has called for world-wide emergency actions on the day the sentence is announced. Here is some information on that- Stay tuned to the Support Network for a Boston action:

Immediately following the sentencing announcement of heroic WikiLeaks whistle-blower Bradley Manning by the military court at Fort Meade, Maryland, join us in the streets to declare, “Free Bradley Now!”

Many communities have a historic gathering location, such as a downtown intersection, central park, or other visible location. Please spread the word for folks to join you immediately following the sentencing to celebrate, protest, and/or simply show your support for Bradley.

We will likely have one day notice before sentencing occurs, so we’ll have some heads up. If it takes place in the morning, we suggest gathering that evening. If it takes place in the afternoon or evening, we suggest the following day. Same-day events are more likely to be covered by your local media in conjunction with the national breaking story of Bradley’s sentencing. Please contact the Support Network for posters, stickers, and info cards.

Our primary message for these response rallies:“President Obama: Pardon Bradley Manning”

From The Marxist Archives-The Fraud of Bourgeois Democracy

Workers Vanguard No. 916	6 June 2008

TROTSKY

LENIN

The Fraud of Bourgeois Democracy

(Quote of the Week)

Underlining that capitalist democracy is a fig leaf for the class dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, Bolshevik leader V.I. Lenin explained in a lecture delivered after the 1917 Russian Revolution that only under the dictatorship of the proletariat would the state serve the interests of the working masses against the capitalist exploiters. It will take the victory of proletarian revolution on an international scale to lay the basis for the creation of a classless communist society and the withering away of the state.

The forms of domination of the state may vary: capital manifests its power in one way where one form exists, and in another way where another form exists—but essentially the power is in the hands of capital, whether there are voting qualifications or some other rights or not, or whether the republic is a democratic one or not—in fact, the more democratic it is the cruder and more cynical is the rule of capitalism. One of the most democratic republics in the world is the United States of America, yet nowhere (and those who have been there since 1905 probably know it) is the power of capital, the power of a handful of multimillionaires over the whole of society, so crude and so openly corrupt as in America. Once capital exists, it dominates the whole of society, and no democratic republic, no franchise can change its nature....

We shall reject all the old prejudices about the state meaning universal equality—for that is a fraud: as long as there is exploitation there cannot be equality. The landowner cannot be the equal of the worker, or the hungry man the equal of the full man. This machine called the state, before which people bowed in superstitious awe, believing the old tales that it means popular rule, tales which the proletariat declares to be a bourgeois lie—this machine the proletariat will smash. So far we have deprived the capitalists of this machine and have taken it over. We shall use this machine, or bludgeon, to destroy all exploitation. And when the possibility of exploitation no longer exists anywhere in the world, when there are no longer owners of land and owners of factories, and when there is no longer a situation in which some gorge while others starve, only when the possibility of this no longer exists shall we consign this machine to the scrap-heap. Then there will be no state and no exploitation.

—V.I. Lenin, “The State” (July 1919)

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V. I. Lenin

Forward to

“Deception of the People with Slogans of Freedom and Equality”

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Delivered: 23 June, 1919
First Published: Published in the pamphlet N. Lenin, Two Speeches at the First All-Russia Congress on Adult Education, Moscow, 1919; Published according to the pamphlet.
Source: Lenin’s Collected Works, 4th English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972 Volume 29, pages 377-381
Translated: George Hanna
Transcription/HTML Markup: David Walters & Robert Cymbala
Copyleft: V. I. Lenin Internet Archive (www.marx.org) 2002. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

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The question I dealt with in my speech at the Congress on adult education on May 19—the question of equality in general and the equality of the worker and the peasant in particular—is undoubtedly one of the most pressing and “painful” questions of our time, and one that touches upon the most deep-seated prejudices of the petty bourgeois, the small proprietor, the petty commodity owner, every philistine and nine-tenths of the intelligentsia (including the Menshevik and Socialist-Revolutionary intelligentsia).

Deny the equality of the worker and the peasant! How terrible! Of course, this is something all the friends of the capitalists, all of their hangers-on, and the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries first of all, are trying to seize upon in order to “irritate” the peasant, to “stir him up”, to incite him against the workers, against the Communists. Such attempts are inevitable, but since they are founded on lies, they are doomed to disgraceful failure.
Peasants are sober-minded, business-like, practical people. Things must be explained to them in a practical light, through simple, everyday examples. Is the peasant who has a surplus of grain justified in hiding this surplus until prices reach exorbitant, profiteering levels, without any regard for the workers who are going hungry? Or is the state authority, which is in the hands of the workers, justified in taking over all surplus grain not at profiteering, huckstering, exorbitant prices, but at a fixed price set by the state?
That is the point at issue That is the whole thing in a nutshell. To avoid facing up to this fact the various swindlers who, like the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, are working for the capitalists, for the return of undivided power to them, are resorting to empty phrase-mongering about “equality” and the “unity of labour democracy”.
The peasant must make his choice:
either freedom to trade in grain, which means speculation in grain, freedom for the rich to grow richer, freedom for the poor to be pauperised and to starve, return of undivided power to the landowners and capitalists, dissolution of the alliance of the peasants and the workers,
or delivery of grain surpluses at a fixed price to the state, i.e., the united workers’ authority, which means an alliance between the peasants and the workers to get rid of the bourgeoisie altogether and to eliminate any possibility of their rule being restored.
Such is the choice.
The richer peasants, the kulaks, will choose the first alternative; they will want to try their luck in alliance with the capitalists and landowners against the workers, against the poor, but such peasants are a minority in Russia. The majority of the peasants will prefer an alliance with the workers against the restoration of capitalist rule, against “freedom for the rich to grow richer”, against “freedom for the poor to starve”, against the deceitful camouflage of this accursed capitalist “freedom” (freedom to starve to death) with flowery words about “equality” (the equality of the well-fed, who have a surplus of grain, and the starving).
Our task is to fight the—cunning capitalist deception which the Mensheviks and the Socialist-Revolutionaries practise by means of resounding and flowery phrase-mongering about “freedom” and “equality”.
Peasants! Unmask the wolves in sheep’s clothing who praise “freedom”, “equality”, and “unity of labour democracy” and thereby actually champion the “freedom” of the landowner to oppress the peasants, the “equality” of the wealthy capitalist and the worker or the semi-starved peasant, the “equality” of the well-fed man who hides his surplus grain and the worker who is tormented by hunger and unemployment because the country has been ruined by war. Such wolves in sheep’s clothing are the working people’s worst enemies; whether they call themselves Mensheviks, Socialist-Revolutionaries, or non-party they are in reality friends of the capitalists.
“The workers and peasants are equal as working people, but the well-fed grain profiteer is not the equal of the hungry worker.” “We are fighting only to protect the interests of labour, we take grain from profiteers, and not from working people.” “We want to reach an understanding with the middle peasants, the working peasants”—this is what I said in my speech, this is the crux of the matter, this is the real truth which is confused by loud-sounding phrases about “equality”. Moreover, the vast majority of the peasants know that this is the truth, that the workers’ state fights the profiteers and the rich while rendering every assistance to the working people and the poor, whereas both the landowner’ state (under a monarchy) and the capitalist state (under the freest and most democratic republic) have always and everywhere, in all countries, helped the rich to rob the working people, helped the speculators and the rich to grow richer at the expense of the poor who become poorer.
This is a truth every peasant knows. And hence the greater their awareness, the sooner and more resolutely the majority of the peasants will make their choice and declare for alliance with the workers, for agreement with the workers’ government, against the landowner or capitalist state; for Soviet power against the “Constituent Assembly” or the “democratic republic”; for agreement with the Bolshevik Communists, against any support for the capitalists, Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries!
To the “learned” gentlemen, to the democrats, socialists, Social-Democrats, Socialist-Revolutionaries, etc., we say: you all pay lip-service to the “class struggle”, but actually you close your eyes to it at the very time when it is growing especially acute. And to do that means to side with capital, with the bourgeoisie, against the working people.
He who recognises the class struggle must also recognise that in a bourgeois republic, even in the freest and most democratic bourgeois republic, “freedom” and “equality” never were, and never could be, anything but an expression of the equality and freedom of the commodity owners, the equality and freedom of capital. Marx, in all of his writings and especially in his Capital (which you all recognise in words ), made this clear thousands of times; he ridiculed the abstract conception of “freedom and equality” and the vulgarisers, the Benthams who closed their eyes to the facts, and he revealed the material roots of these abstractions.
Under the bourgeois system (i.e., as long as private property in land and in the means of production persists) and under bourgeois democracy, “freedom and equality” remain purely formal, signifying in practice wage-slavery for the workers (who are formally free and equal) and the undivided rule of capital, the oppression of labour by capital. This is the ABC of socialism, my learned gentlemen—and you have forgotten it.
It follows from this ABC that during the proletarian revolution, when the class struggle has sharpened to the point of civil war, only fools and traitors will seek to get away with empty talk about “freedom”, “equality” and “unity of labour democracy”. Actually everything depends on the outcome of the struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, and the intermediate, middle classes (including the entire petty bourgeoisie, and hence the entire peasantry) inevitably vacillate between the two camps.
The issue is this—which of the main forces, the proletariat or the bourgeoisie, these intermediate sections will join. There cannot be any third way; he who has not understood this from reading Marx’s Capital has understood nothing in Marx, understood nothing in socialism, but is in fact a philistine and a petty bourgeois who blindly follows in the wake of the bourgeoisie. On the other hand, he who has understood all this, will not allow himself to be deceived by empty phrases about “freedom” and “equality”, but will think and speak of practical things, that is, of the concrete conditions for a rapprochement between the peasants and the workers, their alliance against the capitalists, agreement between them against the exploiters, the rich and the profiteers.
The dictatorship of the proletariat is not the end of class struggle but its continuation in new forms. The dictatorship of the proletariat is class struggle waged by a proletariat that is victorious and has taken political power into its hands against a bourgeoisie that has been defeated but not destroyed, a bourgeoisie that has not vanished, not ceased to offer resistance, but that has intensified its resistance. The dictatorship of the proletariat is a specific form of class alliance between the proletariat, the vanguard of the working people, and the numerous non-proletarian strata of the working people (petty bourgeoisie, small proprietors, the peasantry, the intelligentsia, etc.), or the majority of these strata, an alliance against capital, an alliance whose aim is the complete overthrow of capital, complete suppression of the resistance offered by the bourgeoisie as well as of attempts at restoration on its part, an alliance for the final establishment and consolidation of socialism. It is a specific kind of alliance which takes shape in a specific situation, namely, amidst fierce civil war; it is an alliance between firm supporters of socialism and its vacillating allies, sometimes “neutrals” (in which case instead of an agreement on struggle the alliance becomes an agreement on neutrality); an alliance between economically, politically, socially, and spiritually different classes. Only the corrupt heroes of the corrupt Berne or yellow International, people like Kautsky, Martov and Co., can evade examination of the concrete forms, conditions, and tasks of this alliance by resorting to platitudes about “freedom”, “equality”, and “unity of labour democracy”, that is, by snatching fragments from the ideological baggage of the era of commodity economy.

N. Lenin

June 23, 1919