AMERICAN LEFT HISTORY

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Wednesday, September 04, 2013

From The Marxist Archives -In Honor Of The 75th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Leon Trotsky-Led Fourth International

Workers Vanguard No. 940	31 July 2009

TROTSKY

LENIN

On the Withering Away of the State

(Quote of the Week)

In his 1917 work, The State and Revolution, Bolshevik leader V.I. Lenin described the post-revolutionary transition from a workers state (dictatorship of the proletariat) to communism. This requires a series of workers revolutions internationally, extending to the economically advanced capitalist-imperialist countries. The expropriation of the capitalist class on a global scale and the establishment of collectivized, planned economies based on international planning would lay the material basis for the qualitative leap in labor productivity and material abundance necessary for the eventual “withering away” of the state and the creation of classless, communist society.

The dictatorship of the proletariat, i.e., the organisation of the vanguard of the oppressed as the ruling class for the purpose of suppressing the oppressors, cannot result merely in an expansion of democracy. Simultaneously with an immense expansion of democracy, which for the first time becomes democracy for the poor, democracy for the people, and not democracy for the money-bags, the dictatorship of the proletariat imposes a series of restrictions on the freedom of the oppressors, the exploiters, the capitalists....

Only in communist society, when the resistance of the capitalists has been completely crushed, when the capitalists have disappeared, when there are no classes (i.e., when there is no distinction between the members of society as regards their relation to the social means of production), only then “the state...ceases to exist,” and “it becomes possible to speak of freedom.” Only then will a truly complete democracy become possible and be realised, a democracy without any exceptions whatever. And only then will democracy begin to wither away, owing to the simple fact that, freed from capitalist slavery, from the untold horrors, savagery, absurdities and infamies of capitalist exploitation, people will gradually become accustomed to observing the elementary rules of social intercourse that have been known for centuries and repeated for thousands of years in all copy-book maxims. They will become accustomed to observing them without force, without coercion, without subordination, without the special apparatus for coercion called the state....

The state will be able to wither away completely when society adopts the rule: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs,” i.e., when people have become so accustomed to observing the fundamental rules of social intercourse and when their labour has become so productive that they will voluntarily work according to their ability.

—V.I. Lenin, The State and Revolution (1917)

***********

1. The State: A Product of the Irreconcilability of Class Antagonisms
What is now happening to Marx's theory has, in the course of history, happened repeatedly to the theories of revolutionary thinkers and leaders of oppressed classes fighting for emancipation. During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes constantly hounded them, received their theories with the most savage malice, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies and slander. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to hallow their names to a certain extent for the “consolation” of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping the latter, while at the same time robbing the revolutionary theory of its substance, blunting its revolutionary edge and vulgarizing it. Today, the bourgeoisie and the opportunists within the labor movement concur in this doctoring of Marxism. They omit, obscure, or distort the revolutionary side of this theory, its revolutionary soul. They push to the foreground and extol what is or seems acceptable to the bourgeoisie. All the social-chauvinists are now “Marxists” (don't laugh!). And more and more frequently German bourgeois scholars, only yesterday specialists in the annihilation of Marxism, are speaking of the “national-German” Marx, who, they claim, educated the labor unions which are so splendidly organized for the purpose of waging a predatory war!
In these circumstances, in view of the unprecedently wide-spread distortion of Marxism, our prime task is to re-establish what Marx really taught on the subject of the state. This will necessitate a number of long quotations from the works of Marx and Engels themselves. Of course, long quotations will render the text cumbersome and not help at all to make it popular reading, but we cannot possibly dispense with them. All, or at any rate all the most essential passages in the works of Marx and Engels on the subject of the state must by all means be quoted as fully as possible so that the reader may form an independent opinion of the totality of the views of the founders of scientific socialism, and of the evolution of those views, and so that their distortion by the “Kautskyism” now prevailing may be documentarily proved and clearly demonstrated.
Let us being with the most popular of Engels' works, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, the sixth edition of which was published in Stuttgart as far back as 1894. We have to translate the quotations from the German originals, as the Russian translations, while very numerous, are for the most part either incomplete or very unsatisfactory.
Summing up his historical analysis, Engels says:

“The state is, therefore, by no means a power forced on society from without; just as little is it 'the reality of the ethical idea', 'the image and reality of reason', as Hegel maintains. Rather, it is a product of society at a certain stage of development; it is the admission that this society has become entangled in an insoluble contradiction with itself, that it has split into irreconcilable antagonisms which it is powerless to dispel. But in order that these antagonisms, these classes with conflicting economic interests, might not consume themselves and society in fruitless struggle, it became necessary to have a power, seemingly standing above society, that would alleviate the conflict and keep it within the bounds of 'order'; and this power, arisen out of society but placing itself above it, and alienating itself more and more from it, is the state." (Pp.177-78, sixth edition)^[1]

This expresses with perfect clarity the basic idea of Marxism with regard to the historical role and the meaning of the state. The state is a product and a manifestation of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms. The state arises where, when and insofar as class antagonism objectively cannot be reconciled. And, conversely, the existence of the state proves that the class antagonisms are irreconcilable.
It is on this most important and fundamental point that the distortion of Marxism, proceeding along two main lines, begins.
On the one hand, the bourgeois, and particularly the petty-bourgeois, ideologists, compelled under the weight of indisputable historical facts to admit that the state only exists where there are class antagonisms and a class struggle, “correct” Marx in such a way as to make it appear that the state is an organ for the reconciliation of classes. According to Marx, the state could neither have arisen nor maintained itself had it been possible to reconcile classes. From what the petty-bourgeois and philistine professors and publicists say, with quite frequent and benevolent references to Marx, it appears that the state does reconcile classes. According to Marx, the state is an organ of class rule, an organ for the oppression of one class by another; it is the creation of “order”, which legalizes and perpetuates this oppression by moderating the conflict between classes. In the opinion of the petty-bourgeois politicians, however, order means the reconciliation of classes, and not the oppression of one class by another; to alleviate the conflict means reconciling classes and not depriving the oppressed classes of definite means and methods of struggle to overthrow the oppressors.
For instance, when, in the revolution of 1917, the question of the significance and role of the state arose in all its magnitude as a practical question demanding immediate action, and, moreover, action on a mass scale, all the Social-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks descended at once to the petty-bourgeois theory that the “state” “reconciles” classes. Innumerable resolutions and articles by politicians of both these parties are thoroughly saturated with this petty-bourgeois and philistine “reconciliation” theory. That the state is an organ of the rule of a definite class which cannot be reconciled with its antipode (the class opposite to it) is something the petty-bourgeois democrats will never be able to understand. Their attitude to the state is one of the most striking manifestations of the fact that our Socialist- Revolutionaries and Mensheviks are not socialists at all (a point that we Bolsheviks have always maintained), but petty-bourgeois democrats using near-socialist phraseology.
On the other hand, the “Kautskyite” distortion of Marxism is far more subtle. “Theoretically”, it is not denied that the state is an organ of class rule, or that class antagonisms are irreconcilable. But what is overlooked or glossed over is this: if the state is the product of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms, if it is a power standing above society and “alienating itself more and more from it", it is clear that the liberation of the oppressed class is impossible not only without a violent revolution, but also without the destruction of the apparatus of state power which was created by the ruling class and which is the embodiment of this “alienation”. As we shall see later, Marx very explicitly drew this theoretically self-evident conclusion on the strength of a concrete historical analysis of the tasks of the revolution. And — as we shall show in detail further on — it is this conclusion which Kautsky has “forgotten” and distorted.

2. Special Bodies of Armed Men, Prisons, etc.

Engels continues:

“As distinct from the old gentile [tribal or clan] order,^[2] the state, first, divides its subjects according to territory...."

This division seems “natural” to us, but it costs a prolonged struggle against the old organization according to generations or tribes.

“The second distinguishing feature is the establishment of a public power which no longer directly coincides with the population organizing itself as an armed force. This special, public power is necessary because a self-acting armed organization of the population has become impossible since the split into classes.... This public power exists in every state; it consists not merely of armed men but also of material adjuncts, prisons, and institutions of coercion of all kinds, of which gentile [clan] society knew nothing...."

Engels elucidates the concept of the “power” which is called the state, a power which arose from society but places itself above it and alienates itself more and more from it. What does this power mainly consist of? It consists of special bodies of armed men having prisons, etc., at their command.
We are justified in speaking of special bodies of armed men, because the public power which is an attribute of every state “does not directly coincide” with the armed population, with its “self-acting armed organization".
Like all great revolutionary thinkers, Engels tries to draw the attention of the class-conscious workers to what prevailing philistinism regards as least worthy of attention, as the most habitual thing, hallowed by prejudices that are not only deep-rooted but, one might say, petrified. A standing army and police are the chief instruments of state power. But how can it be otherwise?
From the viewpoint of the vast majority of Europeans of the end of the 19th century, whom Engels was addressing, and who had not gone through or closely observed a single great revolution, it could not have been otherwise. They could not understand at all what a “self-acting armed organization of the population” was. When asked why it became necessary to have special bodies of armed men placed above society and alienating themselves from it (police and a standing army), the West-European and Russian philistines are inclined to utter a few phrases borrowed from Spencer of Mikhailovsky, to refer to the growing complexity of social life, the differentiation of functions, and so on.
Such a reference seems “scientific”, and effectively lulls the ordinary person to sleep by obscuring the important and basic fact, namely, the split of society into irreconcilable antagonistic classes.
Were it not for this split, the “self-acting armed organization of the population” would differ from the primitive organization of a stick-wielding herd of monkeys, or of primitive men, or of men united in clans, by its complexity, its high technical level, and so on. But such an organization would still be possible.
It is impossible because civilized society is split into antagonistic, and, moreover, irreconcilably antagonistic classes, whose “self-acting” arming would lead to an armed struggle between them. A state arises, a special power is created, special bodies of armed men, and every revolution, by destroying the state apparatus, shows us the naked class struggle, clearly shows us how the ruling class strives to restore the special bodies of armed men which serve it, and how the oppressed class strives to create a new organization of this kind, capable of serving the exploited instead of the exploiters.
In the above argument, Engels raises theoretically the very same question which every great revolution raises before us in practice, palpably and, what is more, on a scale of mass action, namely, the question of the relationship between “special” bodies of armed men and the “self-acting armed organization of the population". We shall see how this question is specifically illustrated by the experience of the European and Russian revolutions.
But to return to Engel's exposition.
He points out that sometimes — in certain parts of North America, for example — this public power is weak (he has in mind a rare exception in capitalist society, and those parts of North America in its pre-imperialist days where the free colonists predominated), but that, generally speaking, it grows stronger:

“It [the public power] grows stronger, however, in proportion as class antagonisms within the state become more acute, and as adjacent states become larger and more populous. We have only to look at our present-day Europe, where class struggle and rivalry in conquest have tuned up the public power to such a pitch that it threatens to swallow the whole of society and even the state."

This was written not later than the early nineties of the last century, Engel's last preface being dated June 16, 1891. The turn towards imperialism — meaning the complete domination of the trusts, the omnipotence of the big banks, a grand-scale colonial policy, and so forth — was only just beginning in France, and was even weaker in North America and in Germany. Since then “rivalry in conquest” has taken a gigantic stride, all the more because by the beginning of the second decade of the 20th century the world had been completely divided up among these “rivals in conquest", i.e., among the predatory Great Powers. Since then, military and naval armaments have grown fantastically and the predatory war of 1914-17 for the domination of the world by Britain or Germany, for the division of the spoils, has brought the “swallowing” of all the forces of society by the rapacious state power close to complete catastrophe.
Engels' could, as early as 1891, point to “rivalry in conquest" as one of the most important distinguishing features of the foreign policy of the Great Powers, while the social-chauvinist scoundrels have ever since 1914, when this rivalry, many time intensified, gave rise to an imperialist war, been covering up the defence of the predatory interests of “their own" bourgeoisie with phrases about “defence of the fatherland", “defence of the republic and the revolution", etc.!

3. The State: an Instrument for the Exploitation of the Oppressed Class

The maintenance of the special public power standing above society requires taxes and state loans.

“Having pubic power and the right to levy taxes,” Engels writes, “the officials now stand, as organs of society, above society. The free, voluntary respect that was accorded to the organs of the gentile [clan] constitution does not satisfy them, even if they could gain it....” Special laws are enacted proclaiming the sanctity and immunity of the officials. “The shabbiest police servant” has more “authority” than the representative of the clan, but even the head of the military power of a civilized state may well envy the elder of a clan the “unrestrained respect” of society.

The question of the privileged position of the officials as organs of state power is raised here. The main point indicated is: what is it that places them above society? We shall see how this theoretical question was answered in practice by the Paris Commune in 1871 and how it was obscured from a reactionary standpoint by kautsky in 1912.

“Because the state arose from the need to hold class antagonisms in check, but because it arose, at the same time, in the midst of the conflict of these classes, it is, as a rule, the state of the most powerful, economically dominant class, which, through the medium of the state, becomes also the politically dominant class, and thus acquires new means of holding down and exploiting the oppressed class....” The ancient and feudal states were organs for the exploitation of the slaves and serfs; likewise, “the modern representative state is an instrument of exploitation of wage-labor by capital. By way of exception, however, periods occur in which the warring classes balance each other so nearly that the state power as ostensible mediator acquires, for the moment, a certain degree of independence of both....” Such were the absolute monarchies of the 17th and 18th centuries, the Bonapartism of the First and Second Empires in France, and the Bismarck regime in Germany.

Such, we may add, is the Kerensky government in republican Russia since it began to persecute the revolutionary proletariat, at a moment when, owing to the leadership of the petty-bourgeois democrats, the Soviets have already become impotent, while the bourgeoisie are not yet strong enough simply to disperse them.
In a democratic republic, Engels continues, “wealth exercises its power indirectly, but all the more surely", first, by means of the “direct corruption of officials” (America); secondly, by means of an “alliance of the government and the Stock Exchange" (France and America).
At present, imperialism and the domination of the banks have “developed” into an exceptional art both these methods of upholding and giving effect to the omnipotence of wealth in democratic republics of all descriptions. Since, for instance, in the very first months of the Russian democratic republic, one might say during the honeymoon of the “socialist” S.R.s and Mensheviks joined in wedlock to the bourgeoisie, in the coalition government. Mr. Palchinsky obstructed every measure intended for curbing the capitalists and their marauding practices, their plundering of the state by means of war contracts; and since later on Mr. Palchinsky, upon resigning from the Cabinet (and being, of course, replaced by another quite similar Palchinsky), was “rewarded” by the capitalists with a lucrative job with a salary of 120,000 rubles per annum — what would you call that? Direct or indirect bribery? An alliance of the government and the syndicates, or “merely” friendly relations? What role do the Chernovs, Tseretelis, Avksentyevs and Skobelevs play? Are they the “direct” or only the indirect allies of the millionaire treasury-looters?
Another reason why the omnipotence of “wealth” is more certain in a democratic republic is that it does not depend on defects in the political machinery or on the faulty political shell of capitalism. A democratic republic is the best possible political shell for capitalism, and, therefore, once capital has gained possession of this very best shell (through the Palchinskys, Chernovs, Tseretelis and Co.), it establishes its power so securely, so firmly, that no change of persons, institutions or parties in the bourgeois-democratic republic can shake it.
We must also note that Engels is most explicit in calling universal suffrage as well an instrument of bourgeois rule. Universal suffrage, he says, obviously taking account of the long experience of German Social-Democracy, is

“the gauge of the maturity of the working class. It cannot and never will be anything more in the present-day state."

The petty-bourgeois democrats, such as our Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks, and also their twin brothers, all the social-chauvinists and opportunists of Western Europe, expect just this “more” from universal suffrage. They themselves share, and instil into the minds of the people, the false notion that universal suffrage “in the present-day state" is really capable of revealing the will of the majority of the working people and of securing its realization.
Here, we can only indicate this false notion, only point out that Engels' perfectly clear statement is distorted at every step in the propaganda and agitation of the “official” (i.e., opportunist) socialist parties. A detailed exposure of the utter falsity of this notion which engels brushes aside here is given in our further account of the views of Marx and Engels on the “present-day” state.
Engels gives a general summary of his views in the most popular of his works in the following words:

“The state, then, has not existed from all eternity. There have been societies that did without it, that had no idea of the state and state power. At a certain stage of economic development, which was necessarily bound up with the split of society into classes, the state became a necessity owing to this split. We are now rapidly approaching a stage in the development of production at which the existence of these classes not only will have ceased to be a necessity, but will become a positive hindrance to production. They will fall as they arose at an earlier stage. Along with them the state will inevitably fall. Society, which will reorganize production on the basis of a free and equal association of the producers, will put the whole machinery of state where it will then belong: into a museum of antiquities, by the side of the spinning-wheel and the bronze axe."

We do not often come across this passage in the propaganda and agitation literature of the present-day Social-Democrats. Even when we do come across it, it is mostly quoted in the same manner as one bows before an icon, i.e., it is done to show official respect for Engels, and no attempt is made to gauge the breadth and depth of the revolution that this relegating of “the whole machinery of state to a museum of antiquities” implies. In most cases we do not even find an understanding of what Engels calls the state machine.

4. The “Withering Away” of the State, and Violent Revolution

Engel's words regarding the “withering away” of the state are so widely known, they are often quoted, and so clearly reveal the essence of the customary adaptation of Marxism to opportunism that we must deal with them in detail. We shall quote the whole argument from which they are taken.

“The proletariat seizes from state power and turns the means of production into state property to begin with. But thereby it abolishes itself as the proletariat, abolishes all class distinctions and class antagonisms, and abolishes also the state as state. Society thus far, operating amid class antagonisms, needed the state, that is, an organization of the particular exploiting class, for the maintenance of its external conditions of production, and, therefore, especially, for the purpose of forcibly keeping the exploited class in the conditions of oppression determined by the given mode of production (slavery, serfdom or bondage, wage-labor). The state was the official representative of society as a whole, its concentration in a visible corporation. But it was this only insofar as it was the state of that class which itself represented, for its own time, society as a whole: in ancient times, the state of slave-owning citizens; in the Middle Ages, of the feudal nobility; in our own time, of the bourgeoisie. When at last it becomes the real representative of the whole of society, it renders itself unnecessary. As soon as there is no longer any social class to be held in subjection, as soon as class rule, and the individual struggle for existence based upon the present anarchy in production, with the collisions and excesses arising from this struggle, are removed, nothing more remains to be held in subjection — nothing necessitating a special coercive force, a state. The first act by which the state really comes forward as the representative of the whole of society — the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society — is also its last independent act as a state. State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies down of itself. The government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production. The state is not 'abolished'. It withers away. This gives the measure of the value of the phrase 'a free people's state', both as to its justifiable use for a long time from an agitational point of view, and as to its ultimate scientific insufficiency; and also of the so-called anarchists' demand that the state be abolished overnight." (Herr Eugen Duhring's Revolution in Science [Anti-Duhring], pp.301-03, third German edition.)^[3]

It is safe to say that of this argument of Engels', which is so remarkably rich in ideas, only one point has become an integral part of socialist thought among modern socialist parties, namely, that according to Marx that state “withers away” — as distinct from the anarchist doctrine of the “abolition” of the state. To prune Marxism to such an extent means reducing it to opportunism, for this “interpretation” only leaves a vague notion of a slow, even, gradual change, of absence of leaps and storms, of absence of revolution. The current, widespread, popular, if one may say so, conception of the “withering away" of the state undoubtedly means obscuring, if not repudiating, revolution.
Such an “interpretation”, however, is the crudest distortion of Marxism, advantageous only to the bourgeoisie. In point of theory, it is based on disregard for the most important circumstances and considerations indicated in, say, Engels' “summary” argument we have just quoted in full.
In the first place, at the very outset of his argument, Engels says that, in seizing state power, the proletariat thereby “abolishes the state as state". It is not done to ponder over over the meaning of this. Generally, it is either ignored altogether, or is considered to be something in the nature of “Hegelian weakness” on Engels' part. As a matter of fact, however, these words briefly express the experience of one of the greatest proletarian revolutions, the Paris Commune of 1871, of which we shall speak in greater detail in its proper place. As a matter of fact, Engels speaks here of the proletariat revolution “abolishing” the bourgeois state, while the words about the state withering away refer to the remnants of the proletarian state after the socialist revolution. According to Engels, the bourgeois state does not “wither away", but is “abolished” by the proletariat in the course of the revolution. What withers away after this revolution is the proletarian state or semi-state.
Secondly, the state is a “special coercive force". Engels gives this splendid and extremely profound definition here with the utmost lucidity. And from it follows that the “special coercive force” for the suppression of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie, of millions of working people by handfuls of the rich, must be replaced by a “special coercive force” for the suppression of the bourgeoisie by the proletariat (the dictatorship of the proletariat). This is precisely what is meant by “abolition of the state as state". This is precisely the “act” of taking possession of the means of production in the name of society. And it is self-evident that such a replacement of one (bourgeois) “special force” by another (proletarian) “special force” cannot possibly take place in the form of “withering away".
Thirdly, in speaking of the state “withering away", and the even more graphic and colorful “dying down of itself", Engels refers quite clearly and definitely to the period after “the state has taken possession of the means of production in the name of the whole of society", that is, after the socialist revolution. We all know that the political form of the “state” at that time is the most complete democracy. But it never enters the head of any of the opportunists, who shamelessly distort Marxism, that Engels is consequently speaking here of democracy “dying down of itself", or “withering away". This seems very strange at first sight. But is is “incomprehensible” only to those who have not thought about democracy also being a state and, consequently, also disappearing when the state disappears. Revolution alone can “abolish” the bourgeois state. The state in general, i.e., the most complete democracy, can only “wither away".
Fourthly, after formulating his famous proposition that “the state withers away", Engels at once explains specifically that this proposition is directed against both the opportunists and the anarchists. In doing this, Engels puts in the forefront that conclusion, drawn from the proposition that “the state withers away", which is directed against the opportunists.
One can wager that out of every 10,000 persons who have read or heard about the “withering away” of the state, 9,990 are completely unaware, or do not remember, that Engels directed his conclusions from that proposition not against anarchists alone. And of the remaining 10, probably nine do not know the meaning of a “free people's state” or why an attack on this slogan means an attack on opportunists. This is how history is written! This is how a great revolutionary teaching is imperceptibly falsified and adapted to prevailing philistinism. The conclusion directed against the anarchists has been repeated thousands of times; it has been vulgarized, and rammed into people's heads in the shallowest form, and has acquired the strength of a prejudice, whereas the conclusion directed against the opportunists has been obscured and “forgotten”!
The “free people's state” was a programme demand and a catchword current among the German Social-Democrats in the seventies. this catchword is devoid of all political content except that it describes the concept of democracy in a pompous philistine fashion. Insofar as it hinted in a legally permissible manner at a democratic republic, Engels was prepared to “justify” its use “for a time” from an agitational point of view. But it was an opportunist catchword, for it amounted to something more than prettifying bourgeois democracy, and was also failure to understand the socialist criticism of the state in general. We are in favor of a democratic republic as the best form of state for the proletariat under capitalism. But we have no right to forget that wage slavery is the lot of the people even in the most democratic bourgeois republic. Furthermore, every state is a “special force” for the suppression of the oppressed class. Consequently, every state is not “free” and not a “people's state". Marx and Engels explained this repeatedly to their party comrades in the seventies.
Fifthly, the same work of Engels', whose arguments about the withering away of the state everyone remembers, also contains an argument of the significance of violent revolution. Engels' historical analysis of its role becomes a veritable panegyric on violent revolution. This, “no one remembers". It is not done in modern socialist parties to talk or even think about the significance of this idea, and it plays no part whatever in their daily propaganda and agitation among the people. And yet it is inseparably bound up with the 'withering away" of the state into one harmonious whole.
Here is Engels' argument:

“...That force, however, plays yet another role [other than that of a diabolical power] in history, a revolutionary role; that, in the words of Marx, it is the midwife of every old society which is pregnant with a new one, that it is the instrument with which social movement forces its way through and shatters the dead, fossilized political forms — of this there is not a word in Herr Duhring. It is only with sighs and groans that he admits the possibility that force will perhaps be necessary for the overthrow of an economy based on exploitation — unfortunately, because all use of force demoralizes, he says, the person who uses it. And this in Germany, where a violent collision — which may, after all, be forced on the people — would at least have the advantage of wiping out the servility which has penetrated the nation's mentality following the humiliation of the Thirty Years' War.^[4] And this person's mode of thought — dull, insipid, and impotent — presumes to impose itself on the most revolutionary party that history has ever known! (p.193, third German edition, Part II, end of Chap.IV)

How can this panegyric on violent revolution, which Engels insistently brought to the attention of the German Social-Democrats between 1878 and 1894, i.e., right up to the time of his death, be combined with the theory of the 'withering away" of the state to form a single theory?
Usually the two are combined by means of eclecticism, by an unprincipled or sophistic selection made arbitrarily (or to please the powers that be) of first one, then another argument, and in 99 cases out of 100, if not more, it is the idea of the “withering away” that is placed in the forefront. Dialectics are replaced by eclecticism — this is the most usual, the most wide-spread practice to be met with in present-day official Social-Democratic literature in relation to Marxism. This sort of substitution is, of course, nothing new; it was observed even in the history of classical Greek philosophy. In falsifying Marxism in opportunist fashion, the substitution of eclecticism for dialectics is the easiest way of deceiving the people. It gives an illusory satisfaction; it seems to take into account all sides of the process, all trends of development, all the conflicting influences, and so forth, whereas in reality it provides no integral and revolutionary conception of the process of social development at all.
We have already said above, and shall show more fully later, that the theory of Marx and Engels of the inevitability of a violent revolution refers to the bourgeois state. The latter cannot be superseded by the proletarian state (the dictatorship of the proletariat) through the process of 'withering away", but, as a general rule, only through a violent revolution. The panegyric Engels sang in its honor, and which fully corresponds to Marx's repeated statements (see the concluding passages of The Poverty of Philosophy^[5] and the Communist Manifesto,^[6] with their proud and open proclamation of the inevitability of a violent revolution; see what Marx wrote nearly 30 years later, in criticizing the Gotha Programme of 1875,^[7] when he mercilessly castigated the opportunist character of that programme) — this panegyric is by no means a mere “impulse”, a mere declamation or a polemical sally. The necessity of systematically imbuing the masses with this and precisely this view of violent revolution lies at the root of the entire theory of Marx and Engels. The betrayal of their theory by the now prevailing social-chauvinist and Kautskyite trends expresses itself strikingly in both these trends ignoring such propaganda and agitation.
The supersession of the bourgeois state by the proletarian state is impossible without a violent revolution. The abolition of the proletarian state, i.e., of the state in general, is impossible except through the process of “withering away".
A detailed and concrete elaboration of these views was given by Marx and Engels when they studied each particular revolutionary situation, when they analyzed the lessons of the experience of each particular revolution. We shall now pass to this, undoubtedly the most important, part of their theory.

Endnotes

^[1] See Frederick Engels, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Works, Vol. 3, Moscow, 1973, pp. 326-27).

Further below, on pp. 393-95, 395-99 of the volume, Lenin is quoting from the same work by Engels (op. cit., pp. 327-30).

^[2] Gentile, or tribal, organisation of society-the primitive communal system, or the first socio-economic formation in history. The tribal commune was a community of blood relatives linked by economic and social ties. The tribal system went through the matriarchal and the patriarchal periods. The patriarchate culminated in primitive society becoming a class society and in the rise of the state. Relations of production under the primitive communal system were based on social ownership of the means of production and equalitarian distribution of all products. This corresponded in the main to the low level of the productive forces and to their character at the time.

For the primitive communal system, see Karl Marx, Conspectus of Lewis Morgan's “Ancient Society", and Frederick Engels. The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Works, Vol. 3, Moscow, 1973, pp. 204-334).

^[3] See Frederick Engels, Anti-Duhring, Moscow, 1969, pp. 332-33.

Further down, on p. 404 of this volume, Lenin is quoting from the same work by Engels (op. cit., p. 220).

^[4] Thirty Years' War (1618-48), the first European war, resulted from an aggravation of the antagonisms between various alignments of European states, and took the form of a struggle between Protestants and Catholics. It began with a revolt in Bohemia against the tyranny of the Hapsburg monarchy and the onslaught of Catholic reaction. The states which then entered the war formed two camps. The Pope, the Spanish and Austrian Hapsburgs and the Catholic princes of Germany, who rallied to the Catholic Church, opposed the Protestant countries--Bohemia, Denmark, Sweden, the Dutch Republic, and a number of German states that had accepted the Reformation. The Protestant countries were backed by the French kings, enemies of the Hapsburgs. Germany became the chief battlefield and object of military plunder and predatory claims. The war ended in 1648 with the signing of the Peace Treaty of Westphalia, which completed the political dismemberment of Germany.

^[5] See Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, Moscow, 1973, pp. 151-52.

^[6] See Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Works, Vol. 1, Moscow, 1973, p. 137.

^[7] Gotha Programme--the programme adopted by the Socialist Workers' Party of Germany in 1875, at the Gotha Congress, which united two German socialist parties, namely, the Eisenachers-led by August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht and influenced by Marx and Engcls-and the Lassalleans. The programme betrayed eclecticism and was opportunist, because the Eisenachers had made concessions to the Lassalleans on major issues and accepted Lassallean formulations. Marx in his Critique of the Gotha Programme, and Engels in his letter to Bebel of March 18-28, 11475, devastated the Gotha Programme, which they regarded as a serious step backwards compared with the Eisenach programme of 1869.

03 September 2013

Lamar W. Hankins : The Tyranny of the Manning Trial

Pfc. Bradley Manning. Graphic by DonkeyHotey / Flickr.

A failure of the justice system:
The tyranny of the Manning trial

Pfc. Manning has been sentenced to 35 years in a military prison for embarrassing the government in a trial that grossly violated the constitutional guarantee of due process.

By Lamar W. Hankins / The Rag Blog / September 3, 2013

The right to due process is the bedrock of the right to trial in this country. The recently concluded trial of Pfc. Bradley Manning demonstrates that Manning did not receive due process, that is, procedural fairness and government actions that follow the law in all relevant aspects. Both the military courts and the civilian courts are controlled by the same Constitution, though Manning’s trial calls this proposition into question.

Certainly, Manning received the outward appearances of due process: he received notice of the charges against him; he had a jury trial presided over by an apparently unbiased judge; he was represented by able counsel; he had adequate time to prepare for trial; to a limited extent, he was given notice of the evidence against him, allowed to present evidence in his own defense, and permitted some cross-examination of the witnesses who testified against him; a written record was made of the proceeding; and the basis of the decision against him was made known.

If that’s all that were required, we could put this case behind us and move on, but the full story of the persecution (it was not just a prosecution) of Manning requires a more complete look at what the government did to him.

Manning was sentenced to 35 years in a military prison for leaking to WikiLeaks more than 700,000 classified files from the U.S. State Department, diplomatic cables, powerpoint presentations, lists of military addresses, military databases, videos of military actions, documents related to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and other similar materials.

No one disputes that Manning leaked these materials. What is disputed is how he should be dealt with for what he believed was his duty to expose wrongdoing.

Manning was charged with violations of Army regulations: failure to obey a lawful order or regulation, aiding the enemy, knowingly giving intelligence to the enemy through indirect means, wrongfully storing classified information, and related infractions.

From the beginning of Manning’s case, however, the government engaged in misconduct. After he was arrested he endured 11 months of solitary confinement in conditions that the United Nations special rapporteur on torture considers, based on article 16 of the convention against torture, as cruel, inhuman, and degrading -- very near to torture:

The special rapporteur concludes that imposing seriously punitive conditions of detention on someone who has not been found guilty of any crime is a violation of his right to physical and psychological integrity as well as of his presumption of innocence.

Had the special rapporteur been allowed private access to Manning as a part of his investigation, he would have been able to gauge whether Manning’s treatment amounted to torture. Officials at the Pentagon denied the special rapporteur private communications with Manning, thus thwarting a complete investigation into the conditions of his imprisonment, a violation of human rights procedures according to the UN.

Manning was forced to sleep naked facing a lamp, confined to a 6-by-8 foot cell for over 23-and-a-half hours a day, and denied contact with other inmates. When they found him asleep, guards woke him up. When he danced to overcome the boredom, guards considered that he was mentally unstable. Besides, dancing was not a form of exercise approved by his jailers.

Manning’s harsh treatment was justified by his guards as punishment for the most serious charge -- aiding the enemy -- though he had not been convicted of any crime at the time (and subsequently was found not guilty of aiding the enemy). His pretrial confinement conditions will be one issue taken up on appeal.

Another issue on appeal will be that Manning was denied his right to a speedy trial through a procedure in which an Army commander complied with a prosecution request several times to remove from consideration a period of time that would otherwise have counted toward the speedy trial clock. Such a procedure makes a complete mockery of the right to a speedy trial.

One of the most egregious violations of due process that I have ever heard in my over 35 years of practicing law was the changing of the charges against Manning after the government had rested its case. That is, after all evidence in the case had been presented and closed, the presiding military judge allowed the prosecution to change the charges of larceny to a different offense.

Notice of the charges against a defendant before the trial begins is essential to due process. Changing those charges after all evidence has closed clearly violates the notice requirement.

Some actions relating to witnesses and evidence prevented Manning’s attorney, David Coombs, from pursuing the defense that he had chosen. For example, before the defense was allowed to call a witness, the witness had to be approved by the prosecution. Important evidence that Manning’s attorney wanted to present was not allowed, on the specious ground that it would compromise national security, though the evidence for this is minimal at best.

Further, although Manning could have used the defense that he had a duty under the U.S. military code and international law to which the U.S. subscribes to expose war crimes, he was denied the right to present evidence of this duty by both the court and the prosecution.

Some evidence that could have aided Manning was kept from the defense because it was declared classified. Coombs believes that classification was used to inhibit Manning’s defense. It was the government’s prosecutor alone who decided what classified evidence was beneficial and what was not. Coombs has a security clearance, so he could have looked at the evidence and decided its usefulness to Manning’s defense. That is a decision for trial counsel, not the prosecution.

In civilian courts, where the prosecution has evidence that could be useful to the defense, but the prosecution is not sure of its usefulness, it is presented to judges privately and they decide what should be given to the defense. Not so in Manning’s trial. On the charge of “aiding the enemy,” of which Manning was found not guilty, Coombs had this to say after the trial:

Well, I think that, for starters, you go with an offense of aiding the enemy, and that offense really is unprecedented. When you look at how that was used in the past and how the government tried to use it in this case, they had to go back to an 1800s case to even make an argument, a colorable argument, as to why you would go after somebody who gave information to a journalist and say that they aided the enemy. That is an unprecedented aspect of this case.

Not only there, but in every other charging decision that they made, they pushed the envelope of, and even strained, any realistic reading of what the law is. And yet, they seemed to not have a problem with that. It was almost a win-at-all-costs mentality. And I think that ultimately will be something on appeal that will get reviewed, and perhaps at that point Brad will get some relief, even on appeal.

The claim of harm caused by Manning’s public disclosures seemed the most important reason for prosecuting him, but whether the disclosures had done actual harm was impossible for the government to prove. Coombs characterized the government’s evidence of harm, presented during the sentencing phase of the trial, as “pure speculation.”

Normally, witnesses are not allowed to speculate, but the government could find no actual evidence of harm to national security, so it was left to present witnesses who could only speculate about possible harm in the future, not even likely harm, but maybe some potential for harm.

It should not be surprising that no harm could be found. According to The Arizona Republic, 5 million government employees and contractors are eligible to see all of the information Manning leaked. U.S. Rep. Duncan Hunter believes that the government has far too many records classified -- that we are in a period of “classification inflation.”

As a result, average Americans cannot know what their government is doing in matters that, if publicized, would not harm national security, but would severely embarrass the government.

Such secretiveness prevents journalists from informing the public about matters that we should know if we are to be citizens capable of making informed and intelligent decisions about government policy and practice. Considering the government actions that we do know about, what is surprising to me is that there are not more leaks.

Preventing such leaks is, in part, what the Manning trial was all about -- an attempt to discourage whistleblowing by essentially ending the lives of those who dare to let the public know about the actions of its government and its abuse of its authority. The government wanted Manning sentenced to nearly double the 35 years in prison he received -- a sentence that could have kept him in prison for the rest of his life.

Another troubling aspect of Manning’s trial, directly related to secrecy, was that some of it was closed to the public (and none of it was allowed to be broadcast so the public could see first-hand what the government was doing). Coombs believes that the government used closed sessions to convince the public that some information released by Manning was harmful. Otherwise, there would be no reason for closed sessions.

Coombs and many other observers believe that the government was embarrassed by the content of some of the leaks, as well as by the massive amount of leaks. Especially with regard to the diplomatic cables that became public, Coombs believes that having the truth come out was extremely embarrassing:

I think the damage there was an embarrassment of having other people see that we don’t always do the right thing for the right reasons as the United States, which might come as a surprise to some people. You would think that when we deal with other countries, when we deal with people who are less fortunate than our country, that we’re doing so in a way that helps everybody, that’s in everyone’s best interest.

But that’s not always the case. And, in fact, frequently we do things that are in our own national interests, and sometimes that is to the detriment of people who are struggling to have what we have here in America -- a democracy, a free and open press. And that’s a little disheartening when you see that. And I think that’s probably the biggest damage, because if people actually look to these documents, they will see that we don’t always do what we should do, and we are not always the country that we should strive to be.

Perhaps the most embarrassing leak (released by WikiLeaks), and certainly one of the most damaging to America’s image in the world, was the 2007 video of airstrikes in Baghdad by two Apache helicopter crews that killed a Reuters cameraman and his assistant, along with nine Iraqis, two of whom may have had weapons.

The attack was approved by the crews’ commander via radio communication at the crews’ urging. Not content with the killing and maiming they had just done, at least one of the Apache helicopter crews opened fire just minutes later on a van that was trying to rescue the wounded. The van was occupied by a family that included two children who were both wounded.

No evidence has surfaced that any of the dead were insurgents. Their behavior did not indicate any activity that would have been considered threatening to nearby U.S. troops. It is not clear whether WikiLeaks obtained the footage from Manning first, or had obtained it before Manning released the material.

Regardless of where the Baghdad airstrike footage originated, what seems clear today is that Manning is, as Coombs described him, “a good young man who did what he thought was morally right, and for the right reasons, and he was sentenced the way we would sentence somebody who committed murder, the way we would sentence somebody who molested a child.”

It is a failure of the justice system, both military and civilian, that the callous, unjustified killing of innocent Iraqis, including children and journalists, has not been redressed, but Pfc. Manning has been sentenced to 35 years in a military prison for embarrassing the government in a trial that grossly violated the constitutional guarantee of due process and was nothing short of tyrannical.

This is a time when all patriotic Americans should be questioning the ability of their government to follow the values that are the foundation of our country. Manning should be at least as free as those who carried out the 2007 massacre in Baghdad.

NOTE: Quotes from David Coombs are from an interview he gave to independent journalist Alexa O’Brien just after the Manning trial ended. To join an effort to free Manning, go here.

[Lamar W. Hankins, a former San Marcos, Texas, city attorney, is also a columnist for the San Marcos Mercury. This article © Freethought San Marcos, Lamar W. Hankins. Read more articles by Lamar W. Hankins on The Rag Blog.]

The Rag Blog

03 September 2013

Michael James : Muddy Waters and James Cotton at the Fat Black Pussycat, 1963

Muddy Waters and James Cotton at the Fat Black Pussycat in Chicago, 1963. Photo by Michael James from his forthcoming book, Michael Gaylord James' Pictures from the Long Haul.

Pictures from the Long Haul:
Muddy Waters and James Cotton
at the Fat Black Pussycat, 1963

Music has always been big in my life... In the 1950’s I was all in when Rock and Roll swept the scene, its fans, its makers, and its content crossing racial boundaries. No more Snooky Lanson and Your Hit Parade for me.

By Michael James / The Rag Blog / September 3, 2013

[In this series, Michael James is sharing images from his rich past, accompanied by reflections about -- and inspired by -- those images. This photo will be included in his forthcoming book, Michael Gaylord James' Pictures from the Long Haul.]

My younger brother Beau was often ahead of me: like having a car with a nice paint job, and knowing what was going on in music. In our early Bedford Junior High years, while I was probably listening to Pat Boone muck up Fats Domino’s "Blueberry Hill," Beau and a little band of hipsters, the Jolly Jazzbos, were down in Norwalk at the Forest Hotel, a black joint where bluesman Jimmy Reed was too drugged-up and drunked-up to perform. They got to see him nod out on stage.

Regarding the paint job: when he graduated from high school, Beau spent the next year working at Kerrigan’s Auto Body, a place worthy of one hell of a sitcom. Beau had a beautiful 1950 Ford convertible. Unfortunately, I backed it out of the shop’s painting bay where it had just received a new paint job, leaving it with a big scratch.

It was only days since I had returned from my motorcycle trip to Mexico City and my eye-mind-heart-opening summer of study and adventure. Then I headed back on the highway with Beau, in his Ford. We headed west to Illinois, to Lake Forest College -- I to be a junior and Beau a freshman. I was glad to be bringing him along. I knew it would be a good year.

While I was now more aware of the world, I was still not old enough to drink legally, and not old enough to vote. I felt more grown up, though: smarter, and certainly cooler. However, I was (and still am) prone to infantile anti-authoritarianism; I refused to sign in for the required all-student-body college convocations. I conspicuously walked on the grass near the administration building that sported “Keep off the Grass” signs. (Hey, grass is for walking on!) I parked Beau’s Ford in the college president’s designated parking space, which seemed sensible since the Prez didn’t use it.

Having experimented with weed in Mexico, I was of course hooked, appreciating how it enhanced my perceptions. And I was looking for more. This quest took me and some friends to a pool hall in Waukegan where we found it, getting a lid from a pool-shooting black kid. Unfortunately, it didn’t have the same effect as the smoke in Mexico City, and I recall I felt burned.

All this said, it wasn’t as if I was going to the dogs: I was a productive young guy. I was getting A’s, going to classes, lectures, and the library. I was involved with student organizations and government, and the college newspaper, The Stentor. I explored religion, and considered becoming a minister. Checking out the religious scene had me going to Quaker meetings, visiting the Bahia Temple, and attending Unitarian services. I was unconsciously developing and nurturing the roots of my own spirituality and future political action.

That process included meeting William Sloan Coffin, the Yale Chaplain. He spoke at Lake Forest and we talked at a reception at President Cole’s home. He was among a growing number of people who influenced and inspired me. A few years later someone reported that he asked, “What happened to that young guy with good ideas?”

Ideas don’t drop from the sky. Humans learn from experience, both their own and others'. Learning: I was being exposed to, participating in, and observing all manner of things. In The Stentor office I heard about the New Left through the College Press Service. It reported on a meeting in Hazard, Kentucky, of unemployed coal miners with members of Students for a Democratic Society, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and the Northern Student Movement. That event caught my interest.

And the events kept coming.

On campus there was a foreign film series, and there were many speakers. I heard Alan Watts talk about Zen. I thought Feminist Mystique author Betty Freidan was great -- though the sorority housemothers and some sorority sisters did not and were bent out of shape by her ideas on women in society.

Classmates Dave Feldman and Penelope Bartok (now Rosemont) started the Jacobin Society, a leftist club that brought liberal and radical speakers to campus. There was Fair Play for Cuba, the American Friends Service Committee, Jay Miller of the American Civil Liberties Union, and Carl Shier, a labor organizer with the United Auto Workers. I really liked him. And the Jacobin Society provided my first encounter with Joffre Stewart, a black beat poet, anarchist, and long-time contrarian-type guy in Chicago’s left political scene. He got someone to burn a draft card at our small meeting!

On the music and political front we brought the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee’s Freedom Singers to campus. I drove the school’s van that brought them back to Hyde Park, to the home of Sylvia Fischer, who called herself a socialist and was a leader in the Chicago Area Friends of SNCC. James Foreman, a SNCC leader and major civil rights movement thinker, was handing out travel money. Willy Peacock said: “I can’t get back to Mississippi on $25” -- to which Foreman gruffly replied: “You have to.”

Music has always been big in my life -- listening, playing, singing, and dancing. In the 1950’s I was all in when Rock and Roll swept the scene, its fans, its makers, and its content crossing racial boundaries. No more Snooky Lanson and Your Hit Parade for me. Beau and I would blast our tunes. Our dad, a Broadway musical kind of guy, would yell up the stairs: “What do you think this is -- a fucking plantation?” Oh, Dad.

I danced my ass off on November 22, 1957, when Bo Diddley came to St Anthony’s Hall in Saugatuck, the Italian section of Westport. The ticket price was $5 a couple. I had a jug of cider brought back from a visit to see Beau at a school named North Hampton, in New Hampshire.

I loosened the cap to let the cider ferment. Apparently Beau had done the same thing, getting kicked out of that school a few weeks later when he got drunk and stole the school’s tractor for a nighttime joy ride into town. I too got drunk, sharing swigs of fermented, hard apple cider with Jerome, Bo Diddley’s maraca player. That was a night to remember!

A friend’s dad drove us to New York for Alan Freed’s rock ‘n roll shows at Lowe’s State and Brooklyn Paramount theatres. I went to shows at the Apollo in Harlem. I listened to Jocko’s Rocket Ship Show on WNJR out of Newark (“Woo-ditty-wop and we’re back with the Jock, back on the scene with the record machine...”). Late at night I listened to tunes on CKLW from Windsor, Ontario, and the Hound Dog Show from Buffalo’s WBLK. I started getting a regular dose of country and western listening to WWVA out of Wheeling, West Virginia.

Doing my time at Lake Forest from 1960 to 1964, the good music kept on coming -- listening to lots of jazz, plus Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Dave "Snaker" Ray, and Spider John Koerner. And Doc Watson, Roscoe Holcomb, The Country Gentleman, Woody Guthrie, Cisco Houston, the Seeger family, as well as chain gang chants and field hollers on Folkways Records.

Active on the Cultural Activities Committee, I met Old Town School of Folk Music pioneers Fleming Brown and George and Gerry Armstrong. We brought Mississippi country bluesmen Sleepy John Estes and Hammie Nixon, a guy named St. Louis Jimmy, and Muddy Waters’ cousin Otis Spann to the College.

I met Mike Bloomfield and Charlie Musselwhite, who were hanging around Joe Segal and Bob Koester’s Jazz Record Mart on Wabash below Roosevelt University. I worked with Bloomfield to put on a little blues show at a high school for the local Junior Chamber of Commerce; attendance at this early production was sparse.

My professor friend Sam Pasiencier, who’d developed the rolls of film from my 1962 Mexico motorcycle trip, took me to a place in Chicago on Broadway north of Diversey called the Fat Black Pussy Cat. There we saw Muddy Waters playing with harmonica player James Cotton and some young white musicians. I got a good shot of Muddy and James.

Early in the summer of 1963 I was heading to the Twin Cities on my motorcycle. Outside of Portage, Wisconsin, the engine blew. I chained the Triumph to a fence, hiked through fields and knocked on a farmhouse door. A big farmer in overalls let me use the phone in his kitchen. That night I took a bus out of Mauston, riding north to meet up with Beau and his squeeze Ellie, daughter of Werner Pese who had been my freshman World History professor -- a smart man and heavy smoker, with a heavy German accent.

A few days later, the three of us returned to the bike, with a trailer hooked to the back of the Ford. Back in Illinois, I sold the Triumph to a motorcycle shop in East Chicago, Indiana.

That summer I participated in an open-air art exhibit in the Lake Forest town square, displaying my welded sculptures, a torso carved from stone, and figures made of clay. Then, still needing language credit, I headed back to Connecticut for another dose of español.

I attended Trinity College in Hartford. Terry Montgomery and Tim Lyons were the two guys I hung with at Trinity. Tim lived in Kent, where we visited his family’s dairy farm. He urged me to climb on the back of a young Guernsey cow. I expected her to buck, rodeo-like, and could only laugh when the frightened beast stood in place, shitting and swinging her tail, decorating my backside.

The civil rights movement and upcoming March on Washington were in the news. The New York Times reported the leaders of the March were forcing SNCC’s John Lewis (now Congressman John Lewis) to cool it on radical demands, weakening his call for jobs and freedom to accommodate the Kennedy Administration. Tim, Terry, and I headed to Washington, D.C. in a green VW bug and spent the eve of the March at the home of a lady friend of Terry’s. He said she was a nymphomaniac; I had to ask what that was.

On the morning of August 23, 1963, we were moving: first in the little green critter of a car surrounded by busloads of people on the freedom road; then we walked -- marching, surrounded by a mass of humanity. And then thousands upon thousands of us stood together as one at the Lincoln Memorial and the Reflecting Pool. We felt a real sense of hope and togetherness, a belief in the future.

To this day I welcome the tears that come every time I hear Dr. King as he declares, “I have a dream... we shall over come, someday... black and white together.”

That day is good forever.

[Michael James is a former SDS national officer, the founder of Rising Up Angry, co-founder of Chicago's Heartland Café (1976 and still going), and co-host of the Saturday morning (9-10 a.m. CDT) Live from the Heartland radio show, here and on YouTube. He is reachable by one and all at michael@heartlandcafe.com. Find more articles by Michael James on The Rag Blog.]

The Rag Blog

Impeach Obama Now!

by Stephen Lendman

A previous article called impeaching him a national imperative. Do it now. Do it before it's too late.

He's already guilty of multiple high crimes of war, against humanity and genocide.

He plans much more ahead. He intends lawless aggression against Syria. He risks regional war. He's menacing humanity.

He risks WW III. He cares only about advancing America's imperium. Mass killing and destruction are small prices to pay. So is risking humanity's annihilation.

Francis Boyle wants him impeached. He urged doing so when Congress returns on September 9.

Last December, Boyle spoke at the Puerto Rican Summit Conference on Human Rights. US militarism threatens WW III, he said.

A century after earlier imperial aggressions, "neoconservative Republican Bush Junior administration and the neoliberal Democratic Obama administration are now threatening" global war, he said.

Obama, other high administration officials, and their subordinates "are responsible for the commission of crimes against peace."

The Nuremberg Charter, Judgment, and Principles, other international laws, and US Army Field Manual (FM) 27-10 define them.

In "international legal terms," said Boyle, "the United States government" is guilty of "serial wars of aggression, crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, and war crimes that are legally akin to those perpetrated by the former Nazi regime in Germany."

US citizens are constitutionally empowered to resist, he explained. They're entitled to challenge their own government.

They're obligated to do so. They should "prevent, impede, thwart, or terminate (its) ongoing criminal activities."

"Today's civil resisters are the sheriffs! The US government officials are the outlaws!"

They "disobeyed fundamental principles of international law as well as US criminal law, and thus committed international crimes and US domestic crimes as well as impeachable violations of the United States Constitution."

"The American people must insist upon the impeachment, dismissal, resignation, indictment, conviction, and long-term incarceration of all US government officials guilty of such heinous international and domestic crimes."

Fundamental rule of law principles are inviolable. They apply to everyone. Presidents, other top officials, and military commanders aren't excluded.

Obama can't be allowed to commit more egregious crimes. Impeaching, removing, and indicting him is essential. The alternative risks potential annihilation.

Obama exceeds the worst of his predecessors. He's guilty of repeated high crimes. They're too grave to permit. They can't be allowed to go unpunished.

The Constitution's Article 2, Section 4 states:

"The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."

In January 2003, Francis Boyle prepared a draft impeachment resolution against Bush. It applies to Obama. Substituting his name for Bush along with text changes relevant to him, it states:

"Impeaching Barack Hussein Obama, President of the United States, for high crimes and misdemeanors.

Resolved, That Barack Hussein Obama, President of the United States is impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors, and that the following articles of impeachment be exhibited to the Senate:

Articles of impeachment exhibited by the House of Representatives of the United States of America in the name of itself and of all of the people of the United States of America, against Barack Obama, President of the United States of America, in maintenance and support of its impeachment against him for high crimes and misdemeanors.

ARTICLE I

In the conduct of the office of President of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama, in violation of his constitutional oath faithfully to execute the office of President of the United States and, to the best of his ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has attempted to impose a police state and a military dictatorship upon the people and Republic of the United States of America by means of 'a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations' against the Constitution since January 20, 2009.

This subversive conduct includes but is not limited to suspending the constitutional Writ of Habeas Corpus; imposing sweeping police state powers; reauthorizing the totalitarian USA Patriot Act; the mass-round-up and incarceration of foreigners; kangaroo courts; waging war on freedom; appointing himself judge, jury and executioner; interfering with the constitutional right of defendants in criminal cases to lawyers; violating and subverting the Posse Comitatus Act; authorizing unconstitutional spying; unlawful and unreasonable searches and seizures; violating the First Amendment rights of the free exercise of religion, freedom of speech, peaceable assembly, and to petition the government for redress of grievances; packing the federal judiciary with hand-picked right-wing judges, and undermining the judicial independence of the Constitution's Article III federal court system; violating the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions and the US War Crimes Act; violating the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination; violating the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, the Convention against Torture, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights; and waging war on humanity.

In all of this, Barack Hussein Obama has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as President and subversive of constitutional government, to the great prejudice of the cause of law and justice and to the manifest injury of the people of the United States.