On The 75th Anniversary Of The Start Of World War II

 

September 1, 1939

There has been a lot of commentary this year marking the 100^th anniversary of the start of World War I (“the war to end all wars”); less so with respect to the Second World War, which began 75 years ago this month.  We now know that World War II was essentially a second round of the same conflict, behind which imperial rivalry was at least as important as the “madness” of Adolph Hitler.

 

Next week will also mark the anniversary of our own 9/11, after which the US launched death and violence many orders of magnitude higher than the atrocity committed that day. People in Chile – and older activists – will also remember an earlier 9/11, when the US government organized the violent overthrow of the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende in 1973. Henry Kissinger said at the time: “I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves.”

 

The famous poem by British writer W.H. Auden is still germane, as our elites have apparently evolved or learned little since then.

 

September 1, 1939 W. H. Auden, 1907 - 1973   I sit in one of the dives On Fifty-second Street Uncertain and afraid As the clever hopes expire Of a low dishonest decade: Waves of anger and fear Circulate over the bright And darkened lands of the earth, Obsessing our private lives; The unmentionable odour of death Offends the September night.   Accurate scholarship can Unearth the whole offence From Luther until now That has driven a culture mad, Find what occurred at Linz, What huge imago made A psychopathic god: I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return.   Exiled Thucydides knew All that a speech can say About Democracy, And what dictators do, The elderly rubbish they talk To an apathetic grave; Analysed all in his book, The enlightenment driven away, The habit-forming pain, Mismanagement and grief: We must suffer them all again.   Into this neutral air Where blind skyscrapers use Their full height to proclaim The strength of Collective Man, Each language pours its vain Competitive excuse: But who can live for long In an euphoric dream; Out of the mirror they stare, Imperialism’s face And the international wrong.   Faces along the bar Cling to their average day: The lights must never go out, The music must always play, All the conventions conspire To make this fort assume The furniture of home; Lest we should see where we are, Lost in a haunted wood, Children afraid of the night Who have never been happy or good.

The windiest militant trash Important Persons shout Is not so crude as our wish: What mad Nijinsky wrote About Diaghilev Is true of the normal heart; For the error bred in the bone Of each woman and each man Craves what it cannot have, Not universal love But to be loved alone.   From the conservative dark Into the ethical life The dense commuters come, Repeating their morning vow; “I will be true to the wife, I’ll concentrate more on my work," And helpless governors wake To resume their compulsory game: Who can release them now, Who can reach the deaf, Who can speak for the dumb?   All I have is a voice To undo the folded lie, The romantic lie in the brain Of the sensual man-in-the-street And the lie of Authority Whose buildings grope the sky: There is no such thing as the State And no one exists alone; Hunger allows no choice To the citizen or the police; We must love one another or die.   Defenceless under the night Our world in stupor lies; Yet, dotted everywhere, Ironic points of light Flash out wherever the Just Exchange their messages: May I, composed like them Of Eros and of dust, Beleaguered by the same Negation and despair, Show an affirming flame.

“Workers of The World Unite, You Have Nothing To Lose But Your Chains”-The Struggle For Trotsky's Fourth (Communist) International-From The Archives-Founding Conference of the Fourth International-1938

 

 
Markin comment (repost from September 2010 slightly edited):

Several years ago, when the question of an international, a new workers international, a fifth international, was broached by the International Marxist Tendency (IMT), faintly echoing the call issued during the presidency of the late Venezuelan caudillo, Hugo Chavez, I got to thinking a little bit more on the subject. Moreover, it must have been something in the air at the time (maybe caused by these global climatic changes that are hazarding our collective future) because I had  also seen a spade of then recent commentary on the need to go back to something that looked very much like Karl Marx’s one-size-fits-all First International. Of course in the 21^st century, after over one hundred and fifty years of attempts to create adequate international working-class organizations, just what the doctor by all means, be my guest, but only if the shades of Proudhon and Bakunin can join. Boys and girls that First International was disbanded in the wake of the demise of the Paris Commune for a reason, okay. Mixing political banners (Marxism and fifty-seven varieties of anarchism) was appropriate to a united front, not a hell-bent revolutionary International fighting, and fighting hard, for our communist future. Forward

The Second International, for those six, no seven, people who might care, is still alive and well (at least for periodic international conferences) as a mail-drop for homeless social democrats who want to maintain a fig leaf of internationalism without having to do much about it. Needless to say, one Joseph Stalin and his cohorts liquidated the Communist (Third) International in 1943, long after it turned from a revolutionary headquarters into an outpost of Soviet foreign policy. By then no revolutionary missed its demise, nor shed a tear goodbye. And of course there are always a million commentaries by groups, cults, leagues, tendencies, etc. claiming to stand in the tradition (although, rarely, the program) of the Leon Trotsky-inspired Fourth International that, logically and programmatically, is the starting point of any discussion of the modern struggle for a new communist international.

With that caveat in mind this month, the September American Labor Day month, but more importantly the month in 1938 that the ill-fated Fourth International was founded I am posting some documents around the history of that formation, and its program, the program known by the shorthand, Transitional Program. If you want to call for a fifth, sixth, seventh, what have you, revolutionary international, and you are serious about it beyond the "mail-drop" potential, then you have to look seriously into that organization's origins, and the world-class Bolshevik revolutionary who inspired it. Forward. 
 **************

Founding Conference of the

Fourth International

1938

---

Thesis On the World Role of
American Imperialism

The main spheres of activity of American imperialism are divided among the continents of Europe, Asia and Latin America, in each of which it pursues a different course in conformity with its general interests and adjusted to the concrete circumstances in which it has developed in relation to other powers.
In Latin America, although confronted with a powerful rival in the form of Great Britain and to a lesser but increasing extent of Japan and Germany, the United States remains the dominant imperialist force. The United States appeared on the scene at a later date than did such countries as Spain, Portugal, Germany and England, but by the turn of the century it was already on its way to outstrip its rivals. Its rapid industrial and financial development, the preoccupation of the European powers during the World War and the transformation of the United States into the world’s creditor during that period, facilitated its rise to the top and enabled it to establish its imperialist hegemony over most of the countries of Central and South America and the Caribbean Sea. It proclaimed its intention of maintaining this hegemony against encroachments by European and Japanese imperialism. The political form of this proclamation is the Monroe Doctrine which, particularly since the unfolding of a clear cut imperialist policy at the end of the 19th century, has been uniformly interpreted by all the Washington administrations as the right of American imperialism to the dominant position in the Latin American countries, preliminary to the conquest of the position as their exclusive exploiter. In the Central American Caribbean and tipper South American countries in particular this has signified the reduction of the peoples to the status of oppressed colonies or half colonies of Yankee imperialism and the imposition, often by the most naked use of force, of governments which are the merest puppets in the hands of Wall Street, backed by the diplomatic and direct military intervention of the United States government’. In order to achieve the “closed door” in Latin America closed, that is, to all rivals and open only to the United States "democratic” Yankee imperialism has been propped up in the Latin American countries by the most autocratic “native” military dictatorships which have, in turn, served to prop up the imperialist structure and to guarantee an undisturbed flow, of super profits to the Northern colossus. The most active and willing supporter of military dictatorships in the Latin American countries is American imperialism, the bulk of whose billions of dollars invested abroad is confined to the Western Hemisphere. The real character of “democratic” American capitalism is best revealed by the tyrannical dictatorships in the Latin American countries with which its fortunes and policies are inextricably bound up and without which its days of imperialist sway in the Western Hemisphere are numbered. The bloodthirsty despots under whose oppressive rule the millions of workers and peasants of Latin America stiffer, the Vargases and Batistas, are at bottom nothing but the political tools of the “democratic” United States imperialists.
In countries like Puerto Rico, American imperialism, through its Governor Winship, directly and ruthlessly frames up and suppresses the nationalist movement’ The rising national bourgeoisie in many of the Latin American countries, seeking a greater share in the booty and even striving for an increased measure of independence i.e., towards the dominant position in the exploitation of its own country—does, it is true, try to utilize the rivalries and conflicts of the foreign imperialists to this end’ But its general weakness and its belated appearance prevent it from attaining a higher level of development than that of serving one imperialist master as against another. It cannot launch a serious struggle against all imperialist domination and for genuine national independence for fear of unleashing a mass movement of the toilers of the country which would, in turn, threaten its own social existence, the recent example of Vargas, who attempts to utilize the rivalry between the United States and Germany but at the same time maintains the most savage dictatorship over the popular masses, is a case in point.
The Roosevelt administration, despite all its bland pretensions, has made no real alteration in the imperialist tradition of its predecessors. It has emphatically reiterated the vicious Monroe Doctrine. It has confirmed its monopolistic claims over Latin America at the Buenos Aires Conferences; it has given the sanctification of its approval to the unspeakable regimeÕs of Vargas and Batista; its demand for a bigger navy to police not only the Pacific but also the Atlantic is an earnest of its determination to wield the armed force of the United States in defense of its imperialist might in the Southern part of the hemisphere. Under Roosevelt, the policy of the iron fist in Latin America is shielded in the velvet glove of demagogic pretensions of friendship and ’’democracy,’’. The ’’good neighbor” policy is nothing but the attempt to unify the Western Hemisphere under the hegemony of Washington, as a solid bloc wielded by the latter in its drive to close the door of the two American continents to all the foreign imperialist powers except itself. This policy is materially supplemented by the favorable trade agreements which the United States seeks to conclude with the Latin American countries in the hope of systematically edging its rivals out of the market. The decisive role which foreign trade plays in the economic life of the United States impels the latter toward ever more determined efforts to exclude all competitors from the Latin American market, by a combination of cheap production, diplomacy, chicane and when need be, of force. This is especially true at the present moment with regard to Germany and Japan. Where as the basic imperialist conflict in Latin America (particularly in such countries as Mexico and the Argentine) remains that of England and the United States, it is expressed economically above all in the field of investment.
In the field of foreign trade, however, the principal immediate rival of the United States is Germany and, increasingly, Japan, because of their respective world positions and interests, the United States and Great Britain can, therefore, collaborate for the time being, in opposition to the encroachments of Germany and Japan in Latin America, but only on the condition that this collaboration occurs under the hegemony of Yankee imperialism for which the latter compensates in part by a support of British imperialism on the European continent. At the same time, the policy of American imperialism will necessarily increase the revolutionary resistance of the Latin American peoples whom it must exploit with growing intensity. This resistance, in turn, will encounter the fiercest reaction and attempts at suppression by the United States which will be revealed ever more plainly as the gendarme of foreign imperialist exploitation and a prop to the native dictatorships, by its very position, therefore, Wall Street’s Washington will play an increasingly reactionary role in the Latin American countries, thus the United States remains the predominant and aggressive master of Latin America, ready to protect its power with arms in hand against any serious assault by its imperialist rivals or against any attempt by the peoples of Latin America to liberate themselves from its exploitive rule.
American policy in Europe has differed from its direct and open intervention in Latin America in several respects, dictated essentially by the fact that the United States appeared as a decisive factor in the Old World at a later stage, namely, in the last generation. Its intervention has passed through three stages. In the first, it appeared as a brutal aggressor in defense of the vast financial interests acquired by the American ruling class in the outcome of the war, and by virtue of its tremendous industrial financial military power, it contributed the decisive force required by the Allies for the crushing and prostrating of the Central Powers, especially Germany.
While England, France, Belgium, and Italy were, consequently, able to impose the degrading Versailles Peace Treaty upon Germany, and to establish the League as a policeman to enforce its provisions, which included the spoilation of the former German colonies and the exacting of enormous tributes from Germany itself, the real victor in the war proved to be the United States, which became the main political and financial center of the world and was in a position to exact an even greater tribute from the Versailles victors in the form of war debt payments.
In the second stage, inaugurated by the defeat of the German proletariat at the end of 1923, the United States appeared at once as the “pacifier” of Europe and as the greatest counterrevolutionary force. In its role of pacifier of Europe, it revived the rule of capitalism at its weakest point in Germany by feeding it with the Dawes Young millions, 143 helped to install the regime of democratic illusion in Germany, France, and England, and put forth its demands for the slowing down of the armaments race expenditures which interfered with the payment of the war debts to Wall Street.
The demand for European “disarmament” (especially in the light of the American industrial superiority which permits it to outstrip any nation in armaments at short notice), was the pacifistic guise in which American imperialism exerted its pressure in the direction of reducing the already diminishing share of the world market then at the disposal of its European competitors. In the present, last stage of its intervention, it has been demonstrated that far from eliminating or even moderating the conflicts among the European powers themselves, the growing needs of American imperialism itself have resulted in an enormous aggravation of the inner European conflicts of the various powers. All of them are being driven irresistibly towards a new world war, some in defense of their present share of the rations to which America’s power has reduced Europe, others in struggle for such an increase in their share as will contribute substantially towards resolving their internal contradictions.
Where formerly the rise of American imperialism in Europe had the effect of “pacifying” the continent, it now has objectively the effect of hastening a new world war, heralded by the breathtaking armaments race, by the rape of Ethiopia, by the civil war in Spain, by the Japanese invasion of China a new world war which it will be impossible to confine to Europe and into which every important country on the face of the earth will inexorably be drawn. An understanding of the reality of America’s relationship to Europe’s development is enough to refute the pretensions of United States imperialism to a messianic mission as the defender or carrier of peace and democracy in Europe. Quite the contrary. The greater its own difficulties, the more it is compelled to discharge the burden of them upon the shoulders of the older and weaker imperialist powers of Europe the more surely and speedily does American capitalism bring the ruling classes of the Old World towards war and towards the regime of fascism under which the bourgeoisie finds itself least hampered in preparing for war or in conducting it once it has broken out.
The pressure of the new world power which has risen to such enormous strength since the last world war is goading Europe towards the abyss of barbarism and destruction. While the influence exerted by the United States in the past period has been more or less “passive,” formulated in the policy of “isolation,” its more recent trend has been noticeably in the other direction and foreshadows its active, direct, and decisive intervention in the period to come, i. e., the period of the next world war. So worldwide are the foundations of American imperialist power, so significant are its economic interests in Europe itself (billions invested in the industrial enterprises of the telephone, telegraph, automobile, electrical, and other trusts, as well as the billions in war debts and postwar loans), that it is out of the question for the United States to remain a passive observer of the coming war. Quite the contrary. Not only will it participate actively as one of the belligerents, but it is easy to predict that it will enter the war after a much shorter interval than elapsed before its entry in the last world war. In view of the weakness, financially and technically, of the other belligerents as compared with the still mighty United States, the latter will surely play an even more decisive role in the settling of the coming war than in the last. There is every indication that, unless European imperialism is smashed by the proletarian revolution and peace established on a socialist basis, the United States will dictate the terms of the imperialist peace after emerging as the victor. Its participation will not only determine the victory of the side it joins, but will also determine the disposition of the booty, of which it will claim the lion’s share.
If the rapid establishment of its domination over Latin America dictated to U.S. imperialism the aggressive striving for the “closed door” (the Monroe Doctrine), its belated appearance in Asia, after the partitioning of the continent among England, France, Germany, Japan, Russia, Portugal, and Italy, was already an accomplished fact, dictated the no less purely imperialist demand for the “open door,” which has since been the classic formulation of United States policy in the Far East, specifically, in China. In this form, American imperialism challenges the claims of its older rivals to exclusively exploit China’s vast rich resources, both natural and human. Behind this “pacific” slogan is the half drawn sword against both Japan and England for an increasing right to exploit China and the Chinese masses. As in all other cases, American imperialism in the Far East is a thin cloak for aggressive imperialist expansion.
The inter-imperialist struggle for the domination of China is at the same time a struggle for the mastery of the Pacific, in which the two principal contenders are Japan and the United States. Given her involvements on the European continent, the Mediterranean, and the Near East, Great Britain is greatly handicapped in any attempt to defend single handedly her position on the Asiatic continent. The Pan Asian movement fostered by Japanese imperialism and aimed at driving England out of her favored position in China and eventually also in India, cannot be effectively resisted by the British forces alone, especially under conditions which render unlikely the solidarity of all parts of the British Empire in a war against Japan. Britain is therefore increasingly dependent upon the tacit or direct military support of the United States in the conflict against Japan. American imperialism, however, is not inclined to intervene directly in the Far East against Japan exclusively or even mainly for the purpose of assuring the domination of England on the Asiatic continent. Quite the contrary, the conclusive mastery of the Pacific by the United States, that is a decisive defeat for Japan, signifies the beginning of the end of British rule and privilege in the East. That this is recognized even in the Empire is demonstrated by the fact that a growing section of the Australian bourgeoisie looks to the United States rather than to England for the defense of its interests, more specifically, for the joint struggle against Japan. In a remoter sense, the reorientation of sections of the British Empire may be discerned in the fact that Canada has been continually drawing away from London and towards New York and Washington.
While the biggest and most important rival of American imperialism in the East remains Great Britain, the most immediate opponent of the United States in that part of the world is now Japan. The question of the war between Japan and the United States for the domination of the Pacific and the Far East is therefore at the top of the order of the day. Fearing the outcome of a war with the United States at the present moment- which would in all probability involve her simultaneously in a war with England and the Soviet Union—Japan has been making desperate efforts to placate the United States and drive a wedge between it and England, at least until her position on the mainland has been consolidated.
American imperialism, however, especially in the recent past, has been driving more sharply in the direction of war with Japan, whose advances into potential fields of American exploitation in China and into actual American exploitation in Latin America, are a growing threat to the present and future positions of the American bourgeoisie. The preparations for the American Japanese war are manifest in the sharper tone of American diplomacy towards Japan, in the increased anti-Japanese jingoist agitation of the press, in the virtually open American maneuvers against Japan, in the military naval reinforcements of the Aleutians and Guam, and above all in the scarcely concealed anti-Japanese motivation given by Roosevelt for the unprecedented peacetime naval budget appropriations he has demanded of Congress.
Thus, the very magnitude of the problems of American imperialism, the worldwide scope of its interests and the foundations which underlie its power, dictate to it a vigorous and relentless policy of expansion. Moreover, they make it the principal motive force in propelling the capitalist world towards another war and the firmest brake upon the revolutionary movement of the world proletariat and the liberation movement of the colonies and semi-colonies.
The epoch during which the United States was able to maintain an approximate equilibrium between agriculture and industry, during which its interests beyond the frontiers of the United States were episodic and in any case comparatively insignificant, during which it followed a more or less “isolationist” policy (also rendered easier by a unique geographical position), is an epoch of the past. The crisis in American economic life demands an increase in foreign trade and an increase in the number of billions of dollars already exported to every corner of the earth for investment. It requires, therefore, a more intensive exploitation of those fields which are already being exploited by the United States which means the suppression of the revolutionary proletarian movement abroad and the checking of all revolutionary nationalist movements for independence in its colonies and spheres of influence. It requires, therefore, a larger share of the world market at present divided among the great powers of the earth, which means a new world war. Hence the departure in official American foreign policy from even the pretense of “isolationism” and the announcement of a “vigorous” course throughout the world.
The struggle against American imperialism is therefore at the same time a struggle against the coming imperialist war and for the liberation of oppressed colonial and semi-colonial peoples. Hence, it is inseparable from the class struggle of the American proletariat against the ruling bourgeoisie, and cannot be conducted apart from it. The American working class must gain support in this struggle from the poor farmers in the United States, who are under the heel of that monopoly capitalism which constitutes the basis of the imperialist overlords of the country. An indispensable ally in this struggle is the million headed mass of American Negroes, in industry and in agriculture, who are also bound by many ties to the other groups of Negro peoples oppressed by American imperialism in the Caribbean and in Latin America. It is necessary to carry on a campaign of proletarian education and organization among the white masses against the poisonous chauvinist “superiority” instilled in them by the ruling class; it is necessary also to organize the Negro masses against their capitalist oppressors, against the petty bourgeois demagogues in their own ranks, and against the agents of Japanese imperialism who are endeavoring to win the Negroes, especially in the South, to the treacherous banner of “Pan Asianism.”
One of the primary concerns of the United States section of the Fourth International, in the struggle against American imperialism, is the support of all genuinely progressive revolutionary movements directed against American imperialism in Latin America or the Pacific (the Philippines, Hawaii, Samoa, etc.) or against the Wall Street puppet dictatorships in those countries, while preserving its complete organizational and political independence, reserving and exercising the right to organize the working class in a separate movement and the right to present its own independent program as against the petty bourgeois, vacillating, and often treacherous program and activities of the nationalists. The revolutionists in the United States are obliged to rouse the American workers against the sending of any armed forces against the peoples of Latin America and the Pacific and for the withdrawal of any such forces where they now operate as instruments of imperialist oppression, as well as against any other form of imperialist pressure, be it “diplomatic” or “economic,” which is calculated to violate the national independence of any country or to prevent its attainment of such national independence.
The parties of the Fourth International, throughout the Western Hemisphere, stand for the immediate and unconditional independence of Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, the Philippine Islands, Hawaii, Samoa, and all other direct colonies, dependencies, and protectorates of American imperialism. The capitulation of the national bourgeoisie of the Philippines to American imperialist dominance, as well as the attempts by certain sections of the North American bourgeoisie to misuse the sentiment for national independence for their own reactionary ends, reveal the indispensability of proletarian class leadership of the colonial and semi-colonial countries as the only assurance that genuine national independence will be fought for seriously and consistently and be achieved. At the same time, the Fourth Internationalists point out that none of the countries of Latin America or the Pacific which are now under the domination of American imperialism to one degree or another, is able either to attain complete freedom from foreign oppression or to retain such freedom for any length of time if it confines its struggle to the efforts of its own self. Only a union of the Latin American peoples, striving towards the goal of a united socialist America and allied in the struggle with the revolutionary proletariat of the United States, would present a force strong enough to contend successfully with North American imperialism. Just as the peoples of the Old World can successfully resist and shatter the pressure of the American colossus, which keeps them impoverished and drives them to war, only by establishing a United States of Europe—realizable only in the form of the revolutionary socialist rule of the proletariat— so the peoples of the Western Hemisphere can assure themselves the fullest national independence, the unrestricted possibilities of cultural development, and freedom from exploitation from foreign and domestic tyrants, only by joining in the struggle for the United Socialist Republics of the Americas.
Just as the Latin American sections of the Fourth International must popularize in their press and agitation the struggles of the American labor and revolutionary movements against the common enemy, so the section in the U.S. must devote more time and energy in its agitational and propaganda work to acquaint the proletariat of the U.S. with the position and struggles of the Latin American countries and their working class movements. Every act of American imperialism must be exposed in the press and at meetings and on indicated occasions the section in the U.S. must seek to organize mass movements of protest against specific activities of Yankee imperialism. In addition, the section in the U.S., by utilizing the Spanish language literature of the Fourth International, must seek to organize, on however modest a scale to begin with, the militant revolutionary forces among the doubly exploited millions of Filipinos, Mexicans, Caribbeans, and Central and South American workers now resident in the U.S., not only for the purpose of linking them with the labor movement in the U.S., but also for the purpose of strengthening the ties with the labor and revolutionary movements in the countries from which these workers originally came. This task shall be carried on under the direction of the American Secretariat of the Fourth International, which will publish the necessary literature and organize the work accordingly.

 

As The 100th Anniversary Of The First Year Of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars) Continues ... Some Remembrances-Poet’s Corner-German Jewish Poets   

LEO STERNBERG (1876-1937)

OUT OF THE TRENCHES

1 THE BROTHERS

The man has submerged in the great army;

The army has disappeared into the earth; far away lies the sea

Of night-covered forest chains.

Lost breezes pass between home and enemy land,

They meet and fade away.

And patrols rise up from the trenches like ghosts from the grave

A helmet appears large for a moment before the night sky.

Then the whispering troop disappears in the stormy woods.

Only the wind rustles in the tree-tops and a call echoes in the darkness

Patrol meets patrols and stamps like shadows past each another

And one recognizes, from a  voice in the dark, his brother and like a choked cry

Whispers are heard  as they pass: Wilhelm? Heinrich? Mother wrote today?.

“Greetings” Till we meet again!”

And then they disappear in different directions in the darkness

The forest paths gleam brightly lit broadly by a flare

Again sunken in the night: shots from the forward posts

Silence of the hostile world.

 

2 THE RELIEF

We lie snowed in the trenches like snow-covered clods of earth,

Unknowing mirrors of the days and nights that roll over us,

In the foremost trenches, cut off from the help of the world

In front of the gun barrels of the enemies who aim across the level field,

Our breasts, like our raised earth wall, only a defense

Our death cry only a signal for the army

Behind us, We are only the feelers and the nerve cord

On which the burning town in the night and the flare pistols play their song

Every whispered word, heard at the front

Every step, that hisses in the  trenches before us

Until the hour of relief nears, when suddenly out of the foggy night

An unknown person stirs us, who will watch for us and continue the fight.

And we reach our comrade, whom we do not see.

Through the fog we grasp his hand and take up the rifle and start to go.

Then before we leave our post,

A bullet lies before us in the snowy clods atop the trenches edge.

Leo Sternberg  -  Translated by Peter Appelbaum

From The Labor History Archives -In The 80^th Anniversary Year Of The Great San Francisco, Minneapolis And Toledo General Strikes- A Lesson In The History Of Class Struggle   

 

 

COMMUNISTS AND THE GENERAL STRIKE

By Leon Trotsky

The signal for a review of the international tasks of Communism was given by the March 1921 events in Germany. You will recall what happened. There were calls for a general strike, there were sacrifices by the workers, there was a cruel massacre of the Communist Par­ty, internally there were disagreements on the part of some, and ut­ter treachery on the part of others. But the Comintern said firmly: In Germany the March policy of the Communist Party was a mistake. Why? Because the German Party reckoned that it was directly con­fronted with the task of conquering power. It turned out that the task confronting the party was that of conquering not power, but the working class. What nurtured the psychology of the German Communist Party in 1921 that drove it into the March action? It was nurtured by the circumstances and the moods which crystallis­ed in Europe after the war.

In 1919 the German working class engaged in a number of cruel and bloody battles, the same thing happened in 1920, and during the January and March days of 1920 the German working class became convinced that heroism alone, that readiness to venture and to die, was not enough; that somehow the working class was lack­ing something. It began to take a more watchful and expectant at­titude towards events and facts. It had banked in its time upon the old Social Democracy to secure the socialist overturn.

The Social Democracy dragged the proletariat into the war. When the thunders of the November 1918 revolution rolled, the old Social Democracy begins to talk the language of social revolution and even proclaimed, as you recall, the German republic to be a socialist republic. The proletariat took this seriously, and kept pressing for­ward. Colliding with the bourgeois gangs it suffered crushing defeats once, twice and a third time. Naturally this does not mean that its hatred of the bourgeosie or its readiness to struggle had lessened, but its brains had meanwhile acquired many new convolutions of caution and watchfulness. For new battles it already wants to have guarantees of victory.

And this mood began to grow increasingly stronger among the European working class in 1920-22 after the experiences of the in­itial assault, after the initial semi-victories and minor conquests and the subsequent major defeats. At that moment, in the days when the European working class began after the war to understand clearly, or at least to sense that the business of conquering state power is a very complicated business and that bare hands cannot cope with the bourgeoisie—at that moment the most dynamic section of the working class formed itself into the Communist Party.

But this Communist Party still felt as if it were a shell shot out of a cannon. It appeared on the scene and it seemed to it that it need­ed only shout its battle-cry, dash forward and the working class would rush out to follow. It turned out otherwise. It turned out that the working class had, upon suffering a series of disillusions con­cerning its primitive revolutionary illusions, assumed a watch-and-wait attitude by the time the Communist Party took shape in 1920 (and especially in 1921) and rushed forward. The working class was not accustomed to this party, it had not seen the party in action. Since the working class had been deceived more than once in the past, it has every reason to demand that the party win its confidence, or, to put it differently, the party must still discharge its obligation of demonstrating to the working class that it should follow and is justified in following the party into the fires of battle, when the party issues the summons. During the March days of 1921 in Germany we saw a Communist Party—devoted, revolutionary, ready for struggle—rushing forward, but not followed by the working class. Perhaps one-quarter or one-fifth of the German working class did follow. Because of its revolutionary impatience this most revolu­tionary section came into collision with the other four-fifths; and already tried, so to speak, mechanically and here and there by force to draw them into the struggle, which is of course completely out of the question.

In general, comrades, the International is a wonderful institution. And the training one party gives to another is likewise irreplaceable. But generally speaking, one must say that each working class tends to repeat all the mistakes at the expense of its own back and bones. The International can be of assistance only in the sense of seeing to it that this back receives the minimum number of scars, but in the nature of things scars are unavoidable.

We saw this almost the other day in France. In the port of Havre there occurred a strike of 15,000 workers. This strike of local im­portance attracted the nation-wide attention of the working class by its stubbornness, firmness and discipline. It led to rather large con­tributions for the benefit of the strikers through our party's central organ, L 'Humanite: there were agitational tours, and so on. The French government through its police-chief brought the strike to a bloody clash in which three workers were killed. (It is quite possible that this happened through some assistance by anarchist elements inside the French working class who time and again involuntarily abet reaction.) These killings were of course bound to produce great repercussions among the French working class.

You will recall that the March 1921 events in Germany also started when in Central Germany the chief of police, a Social Democrat, sent military-police gangs to crush the strikers. This fact was at the bottom of our German party's call for a general strike. In France we observe an analogous course of events: a stubborn strike, which catches the interest of the entire working class, followed by bloody clashes. Three strikers are killed. The murders occurred, say, on Fri­day and by Saturday there already convened a conference of the so-called unitarian unions, i.e., the revolutionary trade unions, which maintain close relations with the Communist Party; and at this con­ference it is decided to call the working class to a general strike on the next day. But no general strike came out of it. In Germany dur­ing the (so-called) general strike in March there participated one-quarter, one-fifth or one-sixth of the working class. In France even a smaller fraction of the French proletariat participated in the general strike. If one follows the French press to see how this whole affair was carried out, then, comrades, one has to scratch one's head ten times in recognising how young and inexperienced are the Communist parties of Western Europe. The Comintern had accused the French Communists of passivity. This was correct. And the German Com­munist Party, too, had been accused prior to March of passivity.

Demanded of the party was activity, initiative, aggressive agita­tion, intervention into the day-to-day struggles of the working class. But the party attempted in March to recoup its yesterday's passivity by the heroic action of a general strike, almost an uprising. On a lesser scale, this was repeated the other day in France. In order to emerge from passivity they proclaimed a general strike for a work­ing class which was just beginning to emerge from passivity under the conditions of an incipient revival and improvement in the con­juncture. How did they motivate this? They motivated it by this, that the news of the murder of the three workers had produced a shocking impression on the party's Central Committee and on the Confederation of Labour. How could it have failed to produce such an impression? Of course, it was shocking! And so the slogan of the general strike was raised. If the Communist Party were so strong as to need only issue a call for a general strike then everything would be fine. But a general strike is a component and a dynamic part of the proletarian revolution itself.

Out of the general strike there arise clashes with the troops and the question is posed of who is master in the country. Who controls the army—the bourgeoisie or the proletariat? It is possible to speak of a protest general strike, but this is a question of utmost impor­tance. When a dispatch comes over the wires that three workers have been killed at Havre and when it is known that there is no revolu­tion in France but, instead, a stagnant situation, that the working class is just beginning to stir slightly out of a condition of passivity engendered by events during the war and post-war period—in such a situation to launch the slogan for a general strike is to commit the geatest and crudest blunder which can only undermine for a long time, for many months to come, the confidence of the working masses in a party which behaves in such a manner.

True enough, the direct responsibility in this case was not borne by the party; the slogan was issued by the so-called unitarian, that is, revolutionary trade unions. But in reality what should the party and the trade unions have done? They should have mobilised every party and trade union worker who was qualified and sent them out to read this news from one end of the country to the other. The first thing was to tell the story as it should have been told. We have a daily paper, L'ffumanite, our central organ. It has a circulation of approximately 200,000—a rather large circulation, but France has a population of not less than 40 million. In the provinces there is virtually no circulation of the daily newspaper, consequently, the task was to inform the workers, to tell them the story agitationally, and to touch them to the quick with this story. The -second thing needed was to turn to the Socialist Party, the party of Longuet and Renaudel with a few questions—no occasion could have been more propitious—and say: "In Havre three worker strikers have been kill­ed; we take it for granted that this cannot be permitted to go un­punished. We are prepared to employ the most resolute measures. We ask, what do you propose?"

The very posing of these questions would have attracted a great attention. It was necessary to turn to Jouhaux's reformist trade unions which are much closer to the strikers. Jouhaux feigned sym­pathy for this strike and gave it material aid. It was necessary to put to him the following question: "You of the reformist trade unions, what do you propose? We, the Communist Party, propose to hold tomorrow not a general strike but a conference of the Com­munist Party, of the unitarian revolutionary trade unions and of the reformist trade unions in order to discuss how this aggression of capitalism ought to be answered."

It was necessary to swing the working masses into motion. Perhaps a general strike might have come into it. I do not know; maybe a protest strike, maybe not. In any case it was far too little simply to announce, to cry out that my indignation had been aroused, when I learned over the wires that three workers had been killed. It was instead necessary to touch to the quick the hearts of the working masses. After such an activity the whole working class might not perhaps have gone out on a demonstrative strike but we could, of course, have reached a very considerable section. However, instead there was a mistake, let me repeat, on a smaller scale than the March events. It was a mistake on a two by four scale. With this difference that in France there were no assaults, no sweeping actions, no new bloody clashes, but simply a failure; the general strike was a fiasco and by this token—a minus on the Communist Party's card, not a plus but a minus.

(From the Report on the Fifth Anniversary of the October Revolu­tion and the Fourth World Congress of the Communist International. Moscow, October 20th 1922)

 

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From the Website www.1934strike.org

The Minneapolis Teamster Strikes of 1934

by Dave Riehle

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This article has been edited slightly for Labor Standard.

Three successive strikes by Minneapolis truck drivers in 1934 resulted in the defeat of the Citizens Alliance, the dominant employer organization that had broken nearly every major strike in that city since 1916. The strikes also established the industrial form of union organization through the medium of an American Federation of Labor (AFL) craft union and set the stage for the organization of over-the-road drivers throughout an eleven-state area, transforming the Teamsters into a million-plus member union. The strikes in Minneapolis were notable for their almost unequaled advance preparation, military tactics, and the degree to which they drew union, non-union, and unemployed workers alike into active participation in the struggle. Veteran union militants expelled from the American Communist Party in 1928 as Trotskyists led the strikes.

Carl Skoglund and V. R. (Ray) Dunne, the central leaders, had also been expelled from the AFL Trades and Labor Assembly in Minneapolis in 1925 for their political views, along with 20 other Communists. In 1931 Skoglund obtained membership in Teamsters Local 574, a small general drivers’ local. The president, William Brown, was supportive of their perspective for organizing drivers, helpers, and inside workers into an industrial union formation that could break the hold of the Citizens Alliance.

By late 1933, working in Minneapolis coal yards, they had consolidated a volunteer organizing committee, including Grant and Miles Dunne (V.R.’s brothers), Harry DeBoer, and Farrell Dobbs. Dobbs, DeBoer, and Shaun (Jack) Maloney became key leaders of the over-the-road drivers’ organizing campaign from 1935 to 1940.

On February 7, 1934, a strike was called in the coal yards, shutting down sixty-five of sixty-seven yards in three hours. Under the leadership of DeBoer, an innovative strike tactic was introduced for the first time — cruising picket squads patrolling the streets by automobile. Cold winter demand for coal brought a quick end to the strike two days later, resulting in a limited victory for the union. Local 574’s membership rose to three thousand by April, as the organization drive continued.

In preparation for a general drivers’ strike, Local 574 got agreement for active support from Minneapolis unemployed organizations and the Farm Holiday Association, allied with the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party. On May 15, Local 574, now six thousand members strong, voted to strike all trucking employers, demanding union recognition, the right to represent inside workers, and wage increases.

The union deployed cruising picket squads from strike headquarters, a big garage where they also installed a hospital and commissary. A strike committee of one hundred was elected, with broad representation from struck firms. A women’s auxiliary was established at the suggestion of Carl Skoglund. On Monday, May 21, a major battle between strikers and police and special deputies took place in the central market area. At a crucial point, six hundred pickets, concealed the previous evening in nearby AFL headquarters, emerged and routed the police and deputies in hand-to-hand combat. Over thirty cops went to the hospital. No pickets were arrested. On Tuesday, May 22, the battle began again. About twenty thousand strikers, sympathizers, and spectators assembled in the central market area, and a local radio station broadcast live from the site.

Again, no trucks were moved. Two special deputies were killed, including C. Arthur Lyman, a leader of the Citizens Alliance. No pickets were arrested. On May 25, a settlement was reached that met the union’s major objectives, including representation of inside workers.

In the following weeks, it became clear the employers were not carrying out the agreement. Over seven hundred cases of discrimination were recorded between May and July. Another strike was called on July 16. The union’s newspaper, the Organizer, became the first daily ever published by a striking union.

Trucking was again effectively closed down until Friday, July 20, when police opened fire on unarmed pickets, wounding sixty-seven, two of whom, John Belor and Henry Ness, died. The Minneapolis Labor Review reported attendance of 100,000 at Ness’s funeral on July 24.

A public commission, set up later by the governor, reported: “Police took direct aim at the pickets and fired to kill. Physical safety of the police was at no time endangered. No weapons were in possession of the pickets.” On July 26, Farmer-Labor governor Olson declared martial law and mobilized four thousand National Guardsmen, who began issuing operating permits to truck drivers. On August 1, National Guard troops seized strike headquarters and placed arrested union leaders in a stockade at the state fairgrounds in Saint Paul.

The next day, the headquarters were restored to the union and the leaders released from the stockade, as the National Guard carried out a token raid on the Citizens Alliance headquarters. The union appealed to the Central Labor Union for a general strike and the governor issued an ultimatum that he would stop all trucks by midnight, August 5, if there was no settlement. Nevertheless, by August 14 there were thousands of trucks operating under military permits. Although the strike was gravely weakened by martial law and economic pressure, union leaders made it clear that it would continue.

On August 21, a federal mediator got acceptance of a settlement proposal from A. W. Strong, head of the Citizens Alliance, incorporating the union’s major demands. The settlement was ratified and the back of employer resistance to unionization in Minneapolis was broken. In March 1935 International president Daniel Tobin expelled Local 574 from the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT). However, in August 1936 Tobin was forced to relent and recharter the local as 544. The leaders of 544 went on to develop the area and conference bargaining that exists today in the IBT.

Local 544 remained under socialist leadership until 1941, when eighteen leaders of the union and the Socialist Workers Party were sentenced to federal prison, the first victims of the anti-radical Smith Act, a law eventually found by the United States Supreme Court to be unconstitutional.
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ONLINE RESOURCES:

[To view these, go to website www.1934strike.org]

How to Win Strikes in the ’90s: Lessons from the 1934 Truckers’ Strike — by Harry DeBoer
Forging a class-struggle course in the unions — by Farrell Dobbs from The Militant
The 1934 Minneapolis Strike — from Revolutionary History
Recollections of a striker — by Dave Riehle
Guide to the Shaun Maloney Papers — from the University of Washington Library
Murder in Minneapolis — by Meridel Le Sueur
The 1934 Minneapolis Strike — from The Spark
1934: rebellion from below — from Socialist Review
The Great Minneapolis Teamsters' Strike — by Sean Purdy from Socialist Worker
The Way Forward in 2002: Looking Back to 1934 — by Nat Weinstein from Socialist Viewpoint
Minnesota Women & Work Timeline — 1934
1934 Minneapolis Truckers Strike — Minnesota Historical Society
Photographs from the 1934 Truckers Strike — Minnesota Historical Society

FURTHER READING:

Citizens Alliance Papers, Minneapolis Central Labor Union Papers. Minnesota

Historical Society, Archives and Manuscripts Division, Saint Paul, Minnesota.

Dobbs, Farrell. Teamster Rebellion. 4 vols. New York: Pathfinder Press, 1972.

Taped interviews with Oscar Coover, Jr., Farrell Dobbs, V. R. Dunne, Carl Skoglund, in Oral History Collection, Minnesota Historical Society, Saint Paul, Minnesota.

Walker, Charles Rumford. American City. New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1937.

OTHER RESOURCE:

De Graaf, John (producer/director). Labor's Turning Point. Minneapolis: Labor Education Service, University of Minnesota. Film.

***Those Old Dust Bowl Wandering Blues-Woody Guthrie’s Bound For Glory

DVD Review

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Bound For Glory, starring David Carradine, 1976

Of course everybody, everybody who is interested in such matters, learns the different genre of the American Songbook in different ways. For example, one, probably without knowing it, learned many of the most popular Broadway-inspired tunes through going to the movies as a kid where the denizens of Tin Pan Alley held forth and provide many memorable lyrics which we hum almost unconsciously. Other genre like folk music (including mountain music and country and western)and its various sub-genre like talking blues came  via more thoughtful appreciation of the music, or that we got caught up in, those of us from the generation of ‘68 anyway , as part of our break-out from our parents’ music in the early 1960s. And in that folk tradition one strand followed a certain genealogy from Woody Guthrie in the 1930s, the subject of the film under review  Bound For Glory, through the guidance of Pete Seeger and on through Bob Dylan (and to a lesser extent Ramblin’ Jack Elliott).

No question the 1930s, the time of the Great Depression that affected the parents of the generation of ’68, those who got by the best way they could during that time and then slogged through the bloodshed of World War II, cried out for a troubadour to sing, like Walt Whitman did a couple of generations before, of the great troubles in the land. The plague of the dust bowls of the plains, the hard picking of the orchards and the fields, the plight of the Oakies, Arkies, and any other peoples afflicted by the economic downturn while others feasted on the goods produced by others. They needed a voice, as the story line in the film develops, who had been through it all, been choked by the plains dust, been forced to trample along by freight train, had been turned back at the “garden of Eden” California, and much more. A rolling stone for lack of a better word as this film amply demonstrates who could sing of new generation’s concerns using talking blues, simple but powerful lyrics, and the news of the day as his calling card. A voice who could speak to the better instincts of humankind without being foolish about such sentiments.

Of course Bound For Glory, based in part on Woody’s own autobiography from a specific period of his life includes the struggle to gain recognition for his form of expression without losing his integrity, his voice of the people. And hones in as well on his rather stormy personal life, including a failed marriage, his struggle to remain a master-less man in a period when such men were becoming a very scarce commodity indeed. Oh yes, and to fill American songbook with many, many classic songs that spoke (and speak) to the downtrodden, the sick, the homeless and those who have no voice like This Land Is My Land, Pretty Boy Floyd, Dust Bowl Blues, Do Re Mi, and Union Maid . See this one if only for the great soundtrack, and the message that Woody was trying to bring forth.