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Friday, January 31, 2014
Rally against the TPP & Corporate Globalization
When: Friday, January 31, 2014, 1:00 pm
to 2:00 pm
Where: Massachusetts State House • Park
Street • Boston Common • Boston
What is the TPP? Trans Pacific Partnership is the worst
trade deal you may not have ever heard of. And that is exactly what the
corporations want. The TPP is going to exploit you.
Nothing is secure, not your job, not your environment, not your health, not your
internet.Under TPP, corporations can undermine your city
and state laws legally, for their own profit.
Only corporations will benefit from TPP. These corporations want Fast Track. Fast Track is when Congress passes legislation that allows little debate, no amendments, and no final say about the Trans Pacific Partnership.
If you want to avoid this disaster, come to the rally on January 31st.
Sponsored by MoveOn
Only corporations will benefit from TPP. These corporations want Fast Track. Fast Track is when Congress passes legislation that allows little debate, no amendments, and no final say about the Trans Pacific Partnership.
If you want to avoid this disaster, come to the rally on January 31st.
Sponsored by MoveOn
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United for
Justice with Peace is a coalition of peace and justice organizations and
community peace groups in the Greater Boston region. The UJP Coalition, formed
after September 11th, seeks global peace through social and economic
justice.
Help us continue to do this critical work! Make a donation to UJP
today.
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| 617-383-4857 | www.justicewithpeace.org | |
Upcoming Events:
| FILM: "Unmanned: America’s Drone Wars" | Thu Jan 30 | 7:00pm | Robbins Library - Arlington | Arlington |  |
Alfred,
Observing tonight's messages from the President and several Republicans providing what we are told is the "other" side, we ought to step back, look at this as the outsiders we are, and ask questions:
? Why should Edward Snowden, who did humanity the service of exposing the vast surveillance of the NSA, be subject to threats of assasination by US intelligence officials, while the President asserts his intention to continue the programs?
Ray McGovern Discusses Threats to Edward Snowden
Full interview with Snowden on German TV
The US Government: "Everyone's a Suspect"
? Why should the people of Afghanistan, and those refugees along the border of Pakistan, who form one of the poorest populations on the globe — after 12 years of U.S. occupation — be subjected to another twelve years of U.S. miltiary occupation? Is the new agreement primarily to provide secure bases for U.S. secret black ops and targeted assassinations via drone?
More Than 2,400 Dead as Obama’s Drone Campaign Marks Five Years
Afghanistan Exit is Seen as Peril to C.I.A. Drone Mission
? Why should the men held already for twelve years in the torture camp at Guantanamo be held any longer without knowing if they will ever see their loved ones again, as the U.S. extends its need for a place it can openly flaunt international law on the rights of prisoners?
DOJ: Feinstein’s Committee Controls Torture Report; Has Final Say Over Public Release
There are many more questions to ask by people who are concerned about humanity and the planet. The Obama administration has its social media apparatus highly geared up tonight; certainly the Fox News crew will do the same. Undoubtedly, they'll direct people to think only very narrowly about what is in their interests.
We should use our energies and experience to ask the right questions, loudly, and challenge the government as we find the answers.
Observing tonight's messages from the President and several Republicans providing what we are told is the "other" side, we ought to step back, look at this as the outsiders we are, and ask questions:
? Why should Edward Snowden, who did humanity the service of exposing the vast surveillance of the NSA, be subject to threats of assasination by US intelligence officials, while the President asserts his intention to continue the programs?
Ray McGovern Discusses Threats to Edward Snowden
Full interview with Snowden on German TV
The US Government: "Everyone's a Suspect"
? Why should the people of Afghanistan, and those refugees along the border of Pakistan, who form one of the poorest populations on the globe — after 12 years of U.S. occupation — be subjected to another twelve years of U.S. miltiary occupation? Is the new agreement primarily to provide secure bases for U.S. secret black ops and targeted assassinations via drone?
More Than 2,400 Dead as Obama’s Drone Campaign Marks Five Years
Afghanistan Exit is Seen as Peril to C.I.A. Drone Mission
? Why should the men held already for twelve years in the torture camp at Guantanamo be held any longer without knowing if they will ever see their loved ones again, as the U.S. extends its need for a place it can openly flaunt international law on the rights of prisoners?
DOJ: Feinstein’s Committee Controls Torture Report; Has Final Say Over Public Release
There are many more questions to ask by people who are concerned about humanity and the planet. The Obama administration has its social media apparatus highly geared up tonight; certainly the Fox News crew will do the same. Undoubtedly, they'll direct people to think only very narrowly about what is in their interests.
We should use our energies and experience to ask the right questions, loudly, and challenge the government as we find the answers.
Smedleys &
Friends
"My Old Brown Earth",
sent around by Paul Winter - the jazz version of Pete Seeger.
Pete Seeger wrote this
song for a friend who had passed away and sang it at his funeral.
How fitting to send
this around in honor of Pete. Click on the link below, words are at the
bottom.
Pat
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End Drone Killing, Drone Surveillance and Global Militarization
The campaign will focus on drone bases, drone research facilities and test sites and drone manufacturers.
The campaign will provide information on:
1. The suffering of tens of thousands of people in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Gaza who are under drone attack, documenting the killing, the wounding and the devastating impact of constant drone surveillance on community life.
2. How attack and surveillance drones have become a key element in a massive wave of surveillance, clandestine military attacks and militarization generated by the United States to protect a global system of manufacture and oil and mineral exploitation that is creating unemployment and poverty, accelerating the waste of nonrenewable resources and contributing to environmental destruction and global warming.
In addition to cases in the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia, we will examine President Obama's "pivot" into the Asia-Pacific, where the United States has already sold and deployed drones in the vanguard of a shift of 60% of its military forces to try to control China and to enforce the planned Trans-Pacific Partnership. We will show, among other things, how this surge of "pivot" forces, greatly enabled by drones, and supported by the US military-industrial complex, will hit every American community with even deeper cuts in the already fragile social programs on which people rely for survival. In short, we will connect drones and militarization with "austerity" in America.
3. How drone attacks have effectively destroyed international and domestic legal protection of the rights to life, privacy, freedom of assembly and free speech and have opened the way for new levels of surveillance and repression around the world, and how, in the United States, increasing drone surveillance, added to surveillance by the National Security Agency and police, provides a new weapon to repress black, Hispanic, immigrant and low-income communities and to intimidate Americans who are increasingly unsettled by lack of jobs, economic inequality, corporate control of politics and the prospect of endless war.
We will discuss how the United States government and corporations conspire secretly to monitor US citizens and particularly how the Administration is accelerating drone surveillance operations and surveillance inside the United States with the same disregard for transparency and law that it applies to other countries, all with the cooperation of the Congress.
The campaign will encourage activists around the world to win passage of local laws that prohibit weaponized drones and drone surveillance from being used in their communities as well as seeking national laws to bar the use of weaponized drones and drone surveillance.
The campaign will draw attention to the call for a ban on weaponized drones by RootsAction.org that has generated a petition with over 80,000 signers
http://act.rootsaction.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=6180
and to efforts by the Granny Peace Brigade (New York City), KnowDrones.org and others to achieve an international ban on both weaponized drones and drone surveillance.
The campaign will also urge participation in the World Beyond War movement.
The following individuals and organizations endorse this Call:
Lyn Adamson – Co-chair, Canadian Voice of Women for Peace
Dennis Apel – Guadalupe Catholic Worker, California
Judy Bello – Upstate NY Coalition to Ground the Drones & End the Wars
Medea Benjamin – Code Pink
Leah Bolger – Former National President, Veterans for Peace
Canadian Voice of Women for Peace
Sung-Hee Choi – Gangjeong Village International Team, Jeju, Korea
Chelsea C. Faria – Graduate student, Yale Divinity School; Promoting Enduring Peace
Sandy Fessler – Rochester (NY) Against War
Joy First
Bruce K. Gagnon - Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
Holly Gwinn Graham – Singer/songwriter, Olympia, WA.
Regina Hagen - Darmstaedter Friedensforum, Germany
Kathy Kelly – Voices for Creative Nonviolence
Malachy Kilbride
Marilyn Levin and Joe Lombardo – Co-Coordinators, United National Antiwar Coalition
Tamara Lorincz – Halifax Peace Coalition, Canada
Nick Mottern – KnowDrones.org
Agneta Norberg – Swedish Peace Council
Pepperwolf – Director, Women Against Military Madness
Lindis Percy, Coordinator, Campaign for the Accountability of American Bases CAAB UK
Mathias Quackenbush – San Francisco, CA
Lisa Savage – Code Pink, State of Maine
Janice Sevre-Duszynska
Wolfgang Schlupp-Hauck- Friedenswerkstatt Mutlangen, Germany
Cindy Sheehan
Lucia Wilkes Smith – Convener, Women Against Military Madness (WAMM) – Ground Military Drones Committee
David Soumis – Veterans for Peace; No Drones Wisconsin
Debra Sweet – World Can’t Wait
David Swanson - WarisACrime.org
Brian Terrell – Voices for Creative Nonviolence
United National Antiwar Coalition
Veterans for Peace
Dave Webb – Chair, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (UK)
Curt Wechsler – Fire John Yoo! (a project of World Can’t Wait) – San Francisco, CA
Paki Wieland, Northampton (MA) Committee to Stop War(s)
Loring Wirbel – Citizens for Peace in Space (Colorado Springs, CO)
Women Against Military Madness
Ann Wright – Retired US Army colonel and former diplomat
Leila Zand - Fellowship of Reconciliation
Add your name by emailing it to: nickmottern@earthlink.net and watch for updates at http://KnowDrones.org
The campaign will focus on drone bases, drone research facilities and test sites and drone manufacturers.
The campaign will provide information on:
1. The suffering of tens of thousands of people in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and Gaza who are under drone attack, documenting the killing, the wounding and the devastating impact of constant drone surveillance on community life.
2. How attack and surveillance drones have become a key element in a massive wave of surveillance, clandestine military attacks and militarization generated by the United States to protect a global system of manufacture and oil and mineral exploitation that is creating unemployment and poverty, accelerating the waste of nonrenewable resources and contributing to environmental destruction and global warming.
In addition to cases in the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia, we will examine President Obama's "pivot" into the Asia-Pacific, where the United States has already sold and deployed drones in the vanguard of a shift of 60% of its military forces to try to control China and to enforce the planned Trans-Pacific Partnership. We will show, among other things, how this surge of "pivot" forces, greatly enabled by drones, and supported by the US military-industrial complex, will hit every American community with even deeper cuts in the already fragile social programs on which people rely for survival. In short, we will connect drones and militarization with "austerity" in America.
3. How drone attacks have effectively destroyed international and domestic legal protection of the rights to life, privacy, freedom of assembly and free speech and have opened the way for new levels of surveillance and repression around the world, and how, in the United States, increasing drone surveillance, added to surveillance by the National Security Agency and police, provides a new weapon to repress black, Hispanic, immigrant and low-income communities and to intimidate Americans who are increasingly unsettled by lack of jobs, economic inequality, corporate control of politics and the prospect of endless war.
We will discuss how the United States government and corporations conspire secretly to monitor US citizens and particularly how the Administration is accelerating drone surveillance operations and surveillance inside the United States with the same disregard for transparency and law that it applies to other countries, all with the cooperation of the Congress.
The campaign will encourage activists around the world to win passage of local laws that prohibit weaponized drones and drone surveillance from being used in their communities as well as seeking national laws to bar the use of weaponized drones and drone surveillance.
The campaign will draw attention to the call for a ban on weaponized drones by RootsAction.org that has generated a petition with over 80,000 signers
http://act.rootsaction.org/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=6180
and to efforts by the Granny Peace Brigade (New York City), KnowDrones.org and others to achieve an international ban on both weaponized drones and drone surveillance.
The campaign will also urge participation in the World Beyond War movement.
The following individuals and organizations endorse this Call:
Lyn Adamson – Co-chair, Canadian Voice of Women for Peace
Dennis Apel – Guadalupe Catholic Worker, California
Judy Bello – Upstate NY Coalition to Ground the Drones & End the Wars
Medea Benjamin – Code Pink
Leah Bolger – Former National President, Veterans for Peace
Canadian Voice of Women for Peace
Sung-Hee Choi – Gangjeong Village International Team, Jeju, Korea
Chelsea C. Faria – Graduate student, Yale Divinity School; Promoting Enduring Peace
Sandy Fessler – Rochester (NY) Against War
Joy First
Bruce K. Gagnon - Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
Holly Gwinn Graham – Singer/songwriter, Olympia, WA.
Regina Hagen - Darmstaedter Friedensforum, Germany
Kathy Kelly – Voices for Creative Nonviolence
Malachy Kilbride
Marilyn Levin and Joe Lombardo – Co-Coordinators, United National Antiwar Coalition
Tamara Lorincz – Halifax Peace Coalition, Canada
Nick Mottern – KnowDrones.org
Agneta Norberg – Swedish Peace Council
Pepperwolf – Director, Women Against Military Madness
Lindis Percy, Coordinator, Campaign for the Accountability of American Bases CAAB UK
Mathias Quackenbush – San Francisco, CA
Lisa Savage – Code Pink, State of Maine
Janice Sevre-Duszynska
Wolfgang Schlupp-Hauck- Friedenswerkstatt Mutlangen, Germany
Cindy Sheehan
Lucia Wilkes Smith – Convener, Women Against Military Madness (WAMM) – Ground Military Drones Committee
David Soumis – Veterans for Peace; No Drones Wisconsin
Debra Sweet – World Can’t Wait
David Swanson - WarisACrime.org
Brian Terrell – Voices for Creative Nonviolence
United National Antiwar Coalition
Veterans for Peace
Dave Webb – Chair, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (UK)
Curt Wechsler – Fire John Yoo! (a project of World Can’t Wait) – San Francisco, CA
Paki Wieland, Northampton (MA) Committee to Stop War(s)
Loring Wirbel – Citizens for Peace in Space (Colorado Springs, CO)
Women Against Military Madness
Ann Wright – Retired US Army colonel and former diplomat
Leila Zand - Fellowship of Reconciliation
Add your name by emailing it to: nickmottern@earthlink.net and watch for updates at http://KnowDrones.org
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End All War
User login
Asylum in Brazil for courageous Edward Snowden!Asilo no Brasil para o corajoso Edward Snowden!
More
than 1 million people have already signed!
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Dear friends
Please sign these petitions requesting asylum in
Brazil for whistleblower Edward Snowden,
exiled in Russia for
revealing massive spying by US and UK governments agencies NSA & GCHQ. His
disclosures were widely covered by The
Guardian – its readers voted him Person of the Year 2013.
Sign David Miranda*'s
petition : here
The petition says:
[translated from Portuguese]
Edward Snowden gave up everything to bring to light the operation of mega espionage by the U.S.
against Brazil and the rest
of the world. His passport was revoked
by his own country and now he's stuck in a legal limbo in Moscow, with a
visa for just one year.
Brazil, one of the main targets
of espionage, should provide shelter to someone who opened our eyes to the
indiscriminate U.S. surveillance
globally. It's time to offer Edward Snowden immediate asylum
in Brazil!
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To sign, go here, enter your email/details and press on
(If asked for your name
and country: EUA (USA), Reino Unido (UK) etc)
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* David Miranda is a
Brazilian gay man, who was detained on 18 August 2013 for nine hours under Section 7 of
Terrorism Act because he was carrying Snowden’s files from Berlin to Rio de
Janeiro for his partner, investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald. He is taking
the UK Home Office to court.
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Sign petition from Avaaz
(in English) here
Circulated
by:
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HONOR THE THREE L’S-LENIN, LUXEMBURG, LIEBKNECHT-Honor An Historic Leader Of The American Left-James P. Cannon
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. DURING THE MONTH WE ALSO HONOR OTHER HISTORIC LEADERS AS WELL ON THIS SITE.
Markin comment on founding member James P. Cannon and the early American Communist Party taken from a book review on the “American Left History” blog:
If you are interested in the history of the American Left or are a militant trying to understand some of the past mistakes of our history and want to know some of the problems that confronted the early American Communist Party and some of the key personalities, including James Cannon, who formed that party this book is for you.
At the beginning of the 21st century after the demise of the Soviet Union and the apparent ‘death of communism’ it may seem fantastic and utopian to today’s militants that early in the 20th century many anarchist, socialist, syndicalist and other working class militants of this country coalesced to form an American Communist Party. For the most part, these militants honestly did so in order to organize an American socialist revolution patterned on and influenced by the Russian October Revolution of 1917. James P. Cannon represents one of the important individuals and faction leaders in that effort and was in the thick of the battle as a central leader of the Party in this period. Whatever his political mistakes at the time, or later, one could certainly use such a militant leader today. His mistakes were the mistakes of a man looking for a revolutionary path.
For those not familiar with this period a helpful introduction by the editors gives an analysis of the important fights which occurred inside the party. That overview highlights some of the now more obscure personalities (a helpful biographical glossary is provided), where they stood on the issues and insights into the significance of the crucial early fights in the party.
These include questions which are still relevant today; a legal vs. an underground party; the proper attitude toward parliamentary politics; support to third party bourgeois candidates ;trade union policy; class war defense as well as how to rein in the intense internal struggle of the various factions for organizational control of the party. This makes it somewhat easier for those not well-versed in the intricacies of the political disputes which wracked the early American party to understand how these questions tended to pull it in on itself. In many ways, given the undisputed rise of American imperialism in the immediate aftermath of World War I, this is a story of the ‘dog days’ of the party. Unfortunately, that rise combined with the international ramifications of the internal disputes in the Russian Communist Party and in the Communist International shipwrecked the party as a revolutionary party toward the end of this period.
In the introduction the editors motivate the purpose for the publication of the book by stating the Cannon was the finest Communist leader that America had ever produced. This an intriguing question. The editors trace their political lineage back to Cannon’s leadership of the early Communist Party and later after his expulsion to the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party so their perspective is obvious. What does the documentation provided here show? I would argue that the period under study represented Cannon’s apprenticeship. Although the hothouse politics of the early party clarified some of the issues of revolutionary strategy for him I believe that it was not until he linked up with Trotsky in the late 1920’s that he became the kind of leader who could lead a revolution. Of course, since Cannon never got a serious opportunity to lead revolutionary struggles in America this is mainly reduced to speculation on my part. Later books written by him make the case better. One thing is sure- in his prime he had the instincts to want to lead a revolution.
As an addition to the historical record of this period this book is a very good companion to the two-volume set by Theodore Draper - The Roots of American Communism and Soviet Russia and American Communism- the definitive study on the early history of the American Communist Party. It is also a useful companion to Cannon’s own The First Ten Years of American Communism. I would add that this is something of a labor of love on the part of the editors. This book was published at a time when the demise of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe was in full swing and anything related to Communist studies was deeply discounted. Nevertheless, for better or worse, the American Communist Party (and its offshoots) needs to be studied as an ultimately flawed example of a party that failed in its mission to create a radical version of society in America. Now is the time to study this history.
***The Roots Is The Toots-The Music That Got The Generation Of ’68 Through The 1950s Red Scare Cold War Night-Elmore James’ Look On Yonder Wall
…who knows when he first began to notice the difference, notice that the music, his parents’ music, the stuff, as they constantly told him, that got them through the “Depression and the war,” grated on his ears. Noticed that he had had enough of Nat King Cole, the Inkpots, Bing Crosby and the like. Had become tired unto death of the cutesy Andrews Sisters and their antics bugle boy, rum and coca-cola, under the apple tree music, tired of Frank, Frankie and Den, tired of Benny, Tony, and very tired of swing, the big band sound and even blessed be-bop, be-bop jazz. Maybe it was because he was showing serious signs of growing pains, of juts being a pain his parents called him, and just wanted to be by himself up in his room and let the world pass by until his growing pains passed by.
To placate him (or, heaven forbid, to keep him out of sign and therefore out of mind) they, his usually clueless parents, had gone to the local Radio Shack store and bought him a transistor radio to listen to music up in his room rather than lie around the living room all night changing the dials looking for some other stations on the old family Emerson radio which had formed the center piece of the room before the television had displaced it. This transistor radio was a new gizmo, small and battery-powered, which allowed the average teenager to put the thing up to his or her ear and listen to whatever he or she wanted to listen to away from prying eyes. Hail, hail.
And that little technological feat saved his life, or at least help save it. The saving part was his finding out of the blue on one late Saturday night Buster Brim’s Blues Bonanza out of WRKO in Chicago. Apparently, although he was ignorant of the scientific aspects of the procedure, the late night air combined with the closing down of certain dawn to dusk radio stations left the airwaves clear at times to let him receive that long distance infusion. He immediately sensed that the music emanating from that show had a totally different beat from his parents’ music, a beat he would later find came out of some old-time primordial place when we all were born, out of some Africa cradle of civilization. Then though all he knew was that the beat spoke to his angst, spoke to his alienation from about twelve different things, spoke to that growing pains thing. Made him, well happy, when he snapped his fingers to some such beat. What he was unsure of, and what he also did not found out about until later, was whether this would last or was just a passing fancy life those Andrews Sisters his parents were always yakking about. What he didn’t know really was that he was present at the birth of rock and roll. Geez, and all he was doing was snapping his fingers until they were sore to Elmore James’ Look On Yonder Wall…
Songwriters: ELMORE ELMO JAMES, MARSHALL SEHORN
Look on yonder wall and hand me down my walkin' cane
Look on yonder wall and hand me down my walkin' cane
I got me another woman, baby, yon' come your man
Look on yonder wall and hand me down my walkin' cane
Look on yonder wall and hand me down my walkin' cane
I got me another woman and, uhh, baby, yon' come your man
You hurried up and went to the wall,
and you know it was tough, uhh
I don't know how many men you's killed,
but, I know you done killed enough for two
Look on yonder wall and hand me down my walkin' cane
Look on yonder wall and hand me down my walkin' cane
I got me another woman, now baby, yon' come your man
Ooh yeah
I love you baby, but you just can't treat me right,
spend all my money and walk the streets all night
But, look on yonder wall and hand me down my walkin' cane
I got me another woman, and baby, yon' come your man
Look on yonder wall and hand me down my walkin' cane
I got me another woman, baby, yon' come your man
Look on yonder wall and hand me down my walkin' cane
Look on yonder wall and hand me down my walkin' cane
I got me another woman and, uhh, baby, yon' come your man
You hurried up and went to the wall,
and you know it was tough, uhh
I don't know how many men you's killed,
but, I know you done killed enough for two
Look on yonder wall and hand me down my walkin' cane
Look on yonder wall and hand me down my walkin' cane
I got me another woman, now baby, yon' come your man
Ooh yeah
I love you baby, but you just can't treat me right,
spend all my money and walk the streets all night
But, look on yonder wall and hand me down my walkin' cane
I got me another woman, and baby, yon' come your man
From The Marxist Archives -The Revolutionary History Journal-
The awakening of the Chinese workers’ movement
BOOK REVIEWPROBLEMS OF THE CHINESE REVOLUTION, LEON TROTSKY, PATHFINDER PRESS, 1967
Recently I reviewed in this space Andre Malraux’s Man’s Fate, a novelistic treatment of the Chinese Revolution of 1925-27, that emphasized the problems at the base of Chinese society in its late phase after the popular front alliance with General Chiang Kai-Shek’s bourgeois nationalist Kuomintang broke down and Chiang began his extermination drive against the Chinese Communists. In Leon Trotsky’s book, under review here, we get a real time, real life analysis of the political questions that led to that catastrophe and what revolutionaries could learn from it.
I have noted elsewhere that the Communist International (hereafter Comintern) evolved in the mid-1920’s , under the impact of Stalinization, from a revolutionary organization that made political mistakes, sometimes grossly so, in pursuit of revolution to an organization that pursued anti-revolutionary aims as it turned primarily into an adjunct of Soviet foreign policy. Prima facie evidence for such a conclusion is the Soviet Communist Party /Commintern policy and its implementation toward the budding Chinese Revolution.
As much as policy toward the Chinese Revolution became a political football in the internal Russian Communist party fights between Stalin’s bloc and Trotsky’s bloc it is impossible to understand the strategy for the Chinese Revolution without an understanding of Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution. No Marxist, at least not openly and honestly, put forth any claim that in the West the national bourgeoisie could be a progressive force in any modern upheaval. Russia, in the early 20th century was, however, still a battleground over this question. This is where Trotsky formulated the advanced Marxist notion that in Russia the national bourgeoisie was too weak, too beholding to foreign capitalist interests and too dependent on the Czarist state and its hangers-on to fulfill the tasks associated with the classic bourgeois revolutions in the West. Thus, for Russia alone at that time Trotsky postulated that the working class had become the heirs of the revolutions in the West. The Revolution of 1905 gave a glimmer of understanding to that proposition and the Revolution of October 1917 cannot be understood except under that premise.
In the aftermath of the Russian Revolution the question of who would lead the revolutions of the countries even less developed that Russia, mainly colonial and semi-colonial regimes, formed one of the new political battlegrounds. And China was the first dramatic test that Trotsky’s originally Russia-only premise applied to underdeveloped ‘third world’ capitalist regimes, as well. However,unlike in Russia, this time Trotsky lost. The necessary independent organization of the working class and the political separation of the communist vanguard were not carried out and, to our regret, the Chinese Revolution was beheaded. As mentioned above this was a conscious Stalinist policy of kowtowing to Chiang by unequivocably ordering the Communist Party to make itself politically and militarily subservient to the Kuomintang as well as providing Comintern military advisers to Chiang.
Today, even a cursory look at countries of belated and uneven development emphasizes the fact that the various tasks associated with the Russian and Chinese Revolutions still need to be carried out. Thus, the political fights that wracked the international communist movement in the 1920’s which under ordinary circumstances would only be of historical interest today take on a more life and death meaning for many of the peoples of the world. That makes this book well worth the read.
I might add that there is a very interesting appendix at the end of this work detailing reports from the field filed by those Communist agents that carried out Comintern policy in China and who as a result of disillusionment with that policy had become oppositionists. These reports give added ammunition to Trotsky’s more theoretical arguments. They also give flesh and bones to the some of the points that Malraux was trying to bring out in Man’s Fate. Read on.
http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/revhist/backissu.htm
Peter Paul Markin comment on this series:
This is an excellent documentary source for today’s leftist militants to “discover” the work of our forebears, particularly the bewildering myriad of tendencies which have historically flown under the flag of the great Russian revolutionary, Leon Trotsky and his Fourth International, whether one agrees with their programs or not. But also other laborite, semi-anarchist, ant-Stalinist and just plain garden-variety old school social democrat groupings and individual pro-socialist proponents.
Some, maybe most of the material presented here, cast as weak-kneed programs for struggle in many cases tend to be anti-Leninist as screened through the Stalinist monstrosities and/or support groups and individuals who have no intention of making a revolution. Or in the case of examining past revolutionary efforts either declare that no revolutionary possibilities existed (most notably Germany in 1923) or alibi, there is no other word for it, those who failed to make a revolution when it was possible.
The Spanish Civil War can serve as something of litmus test for this latter proposition, most infamously around attitudes toward the Party Of Marxist Unification's (POUM) role in not keeping step with revolutionary developments there, especially the Barcelona days in 1937 and by acting as political lawyers for every non-revolutionary impulse of those forebears. While we all honor the memory of the POUM militants, according to even Trotsky the most honest band of militants in Spain then, and decry the murder of their leader, Andreas Nin, by the bloody Stalinists they were rudderless in the storm of revolution. But those present political disagreements do not negate the value of researching the POUM’s (and others) work, work moreover done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.
Finally, I place some material in this space which may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. Off hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these entries from the Revolutionary History journal in which they have post hoc attempted to rehabilitate some pretty hoary politics and politicians, most notably August Thalheimer and Paul Levy of the early post Liebknecht-Luxemburg German Communist Party. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts. So read, learn, and try to figure out the
wheat from the chaff.
********
The awakening of the Chinese workers’ movement |
From Revolutionary History, Vol.2 No.4, Spring 1990. Used by permission.
The pieces put together here first appeared in the British Militant on 17 and 30 March and 9 June 1972. and are reproduced by kind permission of the translator, Gregor Benton. They illustrate the high level of consciousness already shown by the Chinese working class when it first emerged into political awareness, as well as its internationalist identification with the Russian Revolution. The Proclamation of the Shanghai Workers of June 1919 was issued at the time of the strike against the arrest of the student leaders of the 4 May demonstrations, which succeeded in releasing them. The May Day Declaration of the Shanghai Trade Unions of 1920 was the belated response of the Shanghai workers to the publication of the declaration of the Russian government of 1919 renouncing all Tsarist rights in China and offering a treaty of friendship. The letter of Li Chung, a Shanghai naval dockyard worker, which appeared in Loo-tung-chieh (Workers’ World) in September 1920, is the first evidence of which we are aware of the penetration of Marxist ideas into the working class itself from radical student circles, and its confident internationalism and demands for a workers’ China are striking evidence for the rapid progress made in working class consciousness which was a prerequisite for the establishment of the Chinese Communist Party. The background to this ideological development can be found in Harold Isaacs. The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution, first edition, London 1938, pp.69-71. Arif Dirlik, The Origins of Chinese Communism, Oxford 1989. pp.212-4, and Elizabeth Millward, The Working Class in the Second Chinese Revolution, in Workers’ Liberty, nos.12-13, August 1989, pp.50-56.
Proclamation of the Shanghai workers
The tyrannical oppression suffered by our people has today reached its highest point. The foreigners are seizing our territory, and the government is selling out our people – if correct principles are not abided by, how can there be justice? The students have stopped studying and are forfeiting their youth, and yet the government has no compassion.
The merchants have stopped trading and are forfeiting tens of thousands of dollars, and yet the government still has no compassion – truly, our people can sit down and await death!However, the principles of universal justice will conquer tyranny. We, the hundreds of thousands of Shanghai workers, will sacrifice our lives and form the rearguard of the students’ and merchants’ struggle against barbaric tyranny. We propose that the workers act for themselves, that the workers in each trade organise various sorts of small workers’ groups. Afterwards, they can come together to form big workers’ groups.
The first step is to launch a campaign of workers’ demonstrations through the streets. The second step is to organise a big strike throughout industry. The third step is to sacrifice our red blood, the blood of hundreds of thousands of workers, in the struggle against this barbaric tyranny.
Signed in blood by ... [there follows 24 names]
May Day Declaration of the Shanghai Trade Unions
Brother workers and peasants of Russia and the workers’ and peasants’ government of Russia:
We, the workers relegated to a special category by the Washington Conference of Labour, were exceptionally moved to receive your Manifesto. Further, we warmly thank you for renouncing the wealth and various sorts of special rights seized by the former bandit government (ie Tsarist Russia).We trust that the Chinese toilers, who up to now have lacked an internationalist point of view, are today listening to your words of brotherly love.
The responsibilities we have, due to the existence of mankind, and our personal experiences of oppression at the hands of the bandit social classes, are clearly impressed upon our minds and we will never be able to forget them. We must take pains to construct a new and beautiful world for humanity, a world of lasting peace, and we have decided to set about that task in co-operation with you.
At present, we are oppressed by the moneyed classes, both at home and abroad. We hope that you, who first rose up to support us, will come to our aid together with our brother workers in India, Japan, Korea and Vietnam.
We realise that, as workers, our knowledge is very scanty, and that we are constantly exposed to the temptations offered us by the capitalist class and the stinking politicians, and we count all the more on your leadership. Our future happiness will truly be unbounded, and we especially hope that you will make mighty progress!
Letter of a Shanghai dockyard worker
We, the minority of workers, will unite with the majority of workers who speak our language and are of our kind, and so become a grand association of workers. Our association will then unite with other similar ones, and so form a grand All-China association. We will unite with other similar associations in other countries, and so form a grand world association.
Our minority group of workers is a first beginning. But we must bear in mind three essential points:Firstly, we must properly assess our position. Beloved brother workers, when the moment arrives, all the dark fogs and black storms will lift; all the hellish prisons will be opened and all class chains will be broken. This flood will rage more terribly and swiftly than the waters of the Yellow River which descend from the heavens.
No man, whoever he may be, will stem the waters of this new Yellow River! No man will have the strength to stop these waters and order them to flow upwards from the river-bed into the heavens. The workers’ movement is a tide more rapid and more terrible than the Yellow River.
The society of the future must be made a workers’ society, the China of the future – a workers’ China, and the world of the future – a workers’ world. Those who are not workers will not be allowed to live in a workers’ society – a workers’ China – a workers’ world. We will hasten their way off the face of the earth, so they can seek their living in Heaven.
Beloved brother workers! Russia is already a workers’ Russia. Italy will soon be a workers’ Italy and England will soon be a workers’ England. This tide will soon reach China. We workers are the masters of this tide and we intend to create a workers’ China. But do we properly understand that point?
Secondly, we must achieve unity. If we wish to create a workers’ China, we must first unite China’s workers – in the minority group, in the associations, in each village and town, in our nation, in the world, in each country and profession.
Seize the houses we build! Eat the rice we grow! Make our own clothes with the silk we cultivate! Let us not surrender up these things to the layabouts who use and consume them. Let us take into our control the railways we build! Let us sail in the ships we build! Let us take the weapons that we forge! Let us occupy the factories we build! Let us withhold these things from the gangster-capitalists, who control them, sail in them, take them and occupy them for force!
The worst is not that they gain advantages from us, but that they grievously mistreat us, we the workers who provide for them. For instance, we work nine hours a day, 12 hours a day, 15 hours a day! We get one-tenth of a silver dollar for a day’s work, with a cent or two thrown in. In this way, we are forced to eat stinking food, wear stinking clothes, live in stinking houses – in all things our bitterness knows no limits.
In such a situation, my face often turns ashen and I shed tears. Is it not true that we desire a great unity? First of all, we will settle the question of hours and pay, then we will settle the other questions – ‘we ourselves living in’, ‘we ourselves eating’, ‘we ourselves wearing’, ‘we ourselves sailing’, ‘we ourselves taking in hand’, ‘we ourselves occupying’. But if we do not succeed in achieving unity, we will not be strong enough to do these things.
Thirdly, we must show our spirit. On the one hand, the best thing we workers can do is work, and on the other, unite. Work is the destiny of each man, unity the tool of victory. This will be so all our lives, and it is the key to our actions.
Li Chung
Revolutionary History,Volume 2, No 4, Spring 1990
Editor: Al Richardson
Deputy Editors: Ted Crawford and Bob Archer
Reviews Editor: Keith Hassell
Business Manager: Barry Buitekant
Production and Design Manager: Paul Flewers
Editorial Board: John Archer, David Bruce, William Cazenave, George Leslie, Sam Levy, Jon Lewis, Charles Pottins, Jim Ring, Bruce Robinson, Ernest Rogers and Ken Tarbuck
Deputy Editors: Ted Crawford and Bob Archer
Reviews Editor: Keith Hassell
Business Manager: Barry Buitekant
Production and Design Manager: Paul Flewers
Editorial Board: John Archer, David Bruce, William Cazenave, George Leslie, Sam Levy, Jon Lewis, Charles Pottins, Jim Ring, Bruce Robinson, Ernest Rogers and Ken Tarbuck
ISSN 0953-2382
Copyright © 1990 Socialist Platform, BCM 7646, London WC1N 3XX
Typeset and printed by Upstream Ltd (TU), 1 Warwick Court, Choumert Road, London SE15 4SE Tel: 01-358 1344
Typeset and printed by Upstream Ltd (TU), 1 Warwick Court, Choumert Road, London SE15 4SE Tel: 01-358 1344
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