Ancient Dreams, Dreamed- With Diana Talbot In Mind

 

 

A YouTube film clip of the Beatles performing When I'm Sixty-Four from the animated movie Yellow Submarine.

Peter Paul Markin, North Adamsville Class Of 1964 and thus already past sixty-four, comment:

Many of my fellows from the Generation of '68 (a. k. a. baby-boomers) will be, if you can believe this, turning sixty-four this year. So be it.

Yah, sometimes, and maybe more than sometimes, a frail, a frill, a twist, a dame, oh hell, let’s cut out the goofy stuff and just call her a woman and be done with it, will tie a guy’s insides up in knots so bad he doesn’t know what is what. Tie up a guy so bad he will go to the chair, go to the big step-off kind of smiling, okay maybe just half-smiling. Frank (read: future Peter Paul and a million, more or less, other guys) had it bad as a man could have from the minute Ms. Cora walked through the door in her white summer blouse, shorts, and the then de rigueur bandana holding back her hair, also white. She may have been just another blonde, very blonde, frail serving them off the arm in some seaside hash joint but from second one she was nothing but, well nothing but, a femme fatale. I swear, I swear on seven sealed bibles that I yelled, yelled through the womb or some toddler’s crib maybe, at the screen for him to get the hell out of there at that moment. But do you think he would listen, no not our boy. He had to play with fire, and play with it to the end.

Nose flattened cold against the frozen, snow falling front window “the projects” wait on better times, get a leg up, don’t get left behind in the dawning American streets paved with gold dream but for now just hang your hat dwelling, small, too small for three growing boys with hearty appetites and desires to match even then, warm, free-flow oil spigot warm, no hint of madness, or crazes only of sadness, brother kinship sadness, sadness and not understanding of time marching, relentlessly marching as he, that older brother, went off to foreign places, foreign elementary school reading, ‘riting, ‘rithmetic places and, he, the nose flattened against the window brother, is left to ponder his own place in those kind of places, those foreign-sounding places, when his time comes. If he has a time, has the time for the time of his time, in this red scare (but what knows he of red scare only brother scares), cold war, cold nose, dust particles floating aimlessly in the clogging still air night.

A cloudless day, a cloudless blasted eternal, infernal Korean War day, talk of peace, merciless truce peace and uncles coming home in the air, hot, hot end of June day laying, face up on freshly mown grass near fellowship carved-out fields, fields for slides and swings, diamonded baseball, no, friendlier softball fields the houses are too close, of gimps, glues, cooper-plated portraits of wildly-maned horses, of sweet shaded elms, starting, now that he too, that nose-flattened brother, has been to foreign places, strange boxed rooms filled with the wax and wane of learning, simple learning, in the time of his time, to find his own place in the sun but wondering, constantly wondering, what means this, what means that, and why all the changes, slow changes, fast changes, blip changes, but changes.

Nighttime fears, red-flagged Stalin-named fears, red bomb aimed right at my head unnamed shelter blast fears, named, vaguely named, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg hated stalinite jews killed fears, jews killed our catholic lord fears, and what did they do wrong to get the chair anyway fears against the cubed glass glistening flagless flag-pole rattling dark asphalt school yard night. Alone, and, and, alone with fears, and avoidance, clean, clear stand alone avoidance of old times sailors, tars, sailors’ homes AND deaths in barely readable fine- marked granite-grey lonely seaside graveyards looking out on ocean homelands and lost booty. Dead, and the idea of dead, the mystery of dead, and of sea sailor dead on mains, later stream thoughts of bitch proctoresses, some unnamed faraway crush teacher who crossed my path and such, in lonely what did he do wrong anyway prison cells, smoking, reading, writing of dinosaurs die and other laments. Dead.

Endless walks, endless one way sea street water rat-infested fear seawall walks, rocks, shells, ocean water-logged debris strewn every which way, fetid marsh smells, swaying grasses in light breezes to the right, mephitic swamps oozing mud splat stinks to the left making hard the way, the path, the symbolic life path okay, to uptown drug stores, some forgotten chain-name drug store, passing perfumes, lacquers, counter drugs, ailments cured, hurts fixed and all under a dollar, trinkets ten cents baubles, gee-gads, strictly gee-gads, grabbing, two-handed grabbing, heist-stolen valentines, a metaphor in the making, ribbon and bow ruby-red valentine night bushel, signed, hot blood-signed, weary-feet signed, if only she, about five candidates she, later called two blondes, two brunettes, and a red-head, sticks all, no womanly shape to tear a boy-man up, would give a look his way, his look, his newly acquired state of the minute Elvis-imitation look, on endless sea streets, the white-flecked splash inside his head would be quiet. Man emerging out of the ooze, and hope.

Walks, endless waiting bus stop, old late, forever late, story of a young boy’s life late, diesel-fueled, choking fumed non-stop bus stop walks, no golden age car for jet moves in American Dream wide-fin , high tech automatic drive nights, walks, walks up crooked cheap, low-rent, fifty-year no fix rutted pavement streets, deeply gouged, one-lane snow-drift hassles, you get the picture, pass trees are green, coded, secretly coded even fifty street rutted years later, endless trees are green super-secret-coded except for face blush waiting, waiting against boyish infinite time, infinite first blush of innocent manhood, boyhood times, gone now. For what? For one look, one look, and not a quick no-nonsense, no dice look, no time for ragamuffin boys either that would elude him, elude him forever. Such is life in lowly spots, lowly, lowly spots. And no dance, no coded trees are green dance, either, no high school confidential (hell elementary school either, man), handy man, breathless, Jerry Lee freak-out, at least no potato sack stick dance with coded name trees are green brunette. That will come, that will come. But when?

City square, no trespass, no standing, standing, low-slung granite buildings everywhere, granite steps leading to granite doors leading to granite gee-gad counters, hated, no name hated, low-head hated, waiting slyly, standing back on heels, going in furtively, coming out ditto, presto coming out with a gold nugget jewel, no carat, no russkie Sputnik panel glitter for his efforts such is the way of young lumped-up crime, no value, no look, just grab, grab hard, grab fast, grab get yours before the getting is over, or before the dark, dark night comes, the dark pitched-night when the world no longer is young, and dreamed dream make no more sense that this bodily theft.

A bridge too far, an unarched, unsteeled, unspanned, unnerved bridge too far. One speed bicycle boy, dungarees rolled up against dog bites and geared meshes, churning through endless heated, sweated, no handkerchief streets, names, all the parts of ships, names, all the seven seas, names, all the fishes of the seas, names, all the fauna of the sea, names. Twelve-year old hard churned miles to go before sleep, searching for the wombic home, for the old friends, the old drifter, grifter, midnight shifter petty larceny friends, that’s all it was, petty and maybe larceny, hard against the named ships, hard against the named seas, hard against the named fishes, hard against the named fauna, hard against the unnamed angst, hard against those changes that kind of hit one sideways all at once like some mack the knife smack devilish thing

Lindo, lindos, beautiful, beautifuls, not some spanish exotic though, maybe later, just some junior league dream fuss though, some future cheerleader football dame though, some sweated night pasty crust and I, too slip-shot, too, well, just too lonely, too lonesome, too long-toothed before my time to do more than endless walks along endless atlantic streets to summon up the courage to glance, glance right at windows, non-exotic atlantic cheerleader windows. Such is the new decade a-borning, a-borning but not for me, no jack swagger, or bobby goof as they run the table on old tricky dick or some tired imitation of him. Me, I’ll take exotics, or lindos, if they every cross my path, my lonely only path

Sweated dust bowl nights, not the sweated exotic atlantic cheerleader glance nights but something else, something not endless walked about, something done, or with the promise of done, for something inside, for some sense of worth in the this moldy white tee shirt, mildewy white shorts, who knows what diseased sneakers, Chuck Taylor sneakers pushing the red-faced Irish winds, harder, harder around the oval, watch tick in hand, looking, looking I guess for immortality, immortality even then. Later, in bobby darin times or percy faith times, who knows, sitting, sitting high against the lion-guarded pyramid statute front door dream, common dreams, common tokyo dreams, all gone asunder, all gone asunder, on this curious fact, no wind, Irish or otherwise. Stopped short. Who would have figured that one?

Main street walked, main street public telephone booth cheap talk walked searching for some Diana greek goddess wholesale on the atlantic streets. Diana, blonde Diana, cashmere-sweatered, white tennis –shoed Diana, million later Dianas although not with tennis shoes, really gym shoes fit for old ladies to do their rant, their lonely rant against the wind. Seeking, or rather courage-seeking, nickel and dime courage as it turns out; nickel and dime courage when home provided no sanctuary for snuggle-eared delights. Maybe a date, a small-time after school soda split sit at the counter Doc’s drugstore date, or slice of pizza and a coke date at Balducci’s with a few nickels juke boxed in playing our song, our future song, a Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall song, and dreams of I Want To Wanted sifting the hot afternoon air, maybe just a swirl at midnight drift, maybe a view of local lore car parked submarine races and mysteries unfurled, ah, to dream, no more than to dream, walking down friendly aisles, arm and arm along with myriad other arm and arm walkers on senior errands. No way, no way and then red-face, alas, red-faced no known even forty years later. Wow.

Multi-colored jacket worn, red and black, black and red, some combination reflecting old time glories, or promises of glory, cigarette, Winston small-filtered, natch, no romantic Bogie tobacco-lipped unfiltered, hanging from off the lip at some jagged angle, a cup of coffee, if coffee was the drink, in hand, a glad hand either way, look right, look left, a gentle nod, a hard stare, a gentle snarl if such a thing is possible beyond the page. Move out the act onto Boston fresh-mown streets. Finally, that one minute, no not fifteen, not fifteen at all, and not necessary of the fame game, local fame, always local fame but fame, and then the abyss on non-fame, non- recognition and no more snarls, gentle or otherwise. A tough life lesson learned, very tough. And not yet twenty.

Drunk, whisky drunk, whisky rotgut whisky drunk, in some bayside, altantic bayside, not childhood atlantic bayside though, no way, no shawlie way, bar. Name, nameless, no legion. Some staggered midnight vista street, legs weak from lack of work, brain weak, push on, push on, find some fellaheen relieve for that unsatisfied bulge, that gnawing at the brain or really at the root of the thing. A topsy-turvy time, murder, death, the death of death, the death of fame, murder, killing murder, and then resolve, wrong resolve and henceforth the only out, war, war to the finish, although who could have known that then. Who could have know that tet, lyndon, bobby, hubert, tricky dick war-circus all hell broke loose thing then, or wanted to.

Shaved-head, close anyway, too close to distinguish that head and ten-thousand, no on hundred-thousand other heads, all shave-headed. I fall down to the earth, spitting mud-flecked red clay, spitting, dust, spitting, spitting out the stars over Alabama that portent no good, no earthy good. Except this-if this is not murder, if this is not to slay, then what is? And the die is cast, not truthfully cast, not pure warrior in the night cast but cast. Wild dreams, senseless wild dreams follow, follow in succession. The days of rage, rage against the light, and then the glimmer of the light.

The great Mandela cries, cries to the high heavens, for revenge against the son’s hurt, now that the son has found his way, a strange way but a way. And a certain swagger comes to his feet in the high heaven black Madonna of a night. No cigarette hanging off the lip now, not Winston filter-tipped seductions, no need, and no rest except the rest of waiting, waiting on the days to pass until the next coming, and the next coming after that. Ah, sweet Mandela, turn for me, turn for me and mine just a little. Free at last but with a very, very sneaking feeling that this is a road less traveled for reason, and not for ancient robert frost to guide you… Just look at blooded Kent State, or better, blooded Jackson State. Christ.

Bloodless bloodied streets, may day tear down the government days, tears, tear-gas exploding, people running this way and that coming out of a half-induced daze, a crazed half-induced daze that mere good- will, mere righteousness would right the wrongs of this wicked old world. But stop. Out of the bloodless fury, out of the miscalculated night a strange bird, no peace dove and no flame-flecked phoenix but a bird, maybe the owl of Minerva comes a better sense that this new world a-bornin’ will take some doing, some serious doing. More serious that some wispy-bearded, pony-tailed beat, beat down, beat around, beat up young stalwart acting in god’s place can even dream of.

Chill chili nights south of the border, endless Kennebunkports, Bar Harbors, Calais’, Monktons, Peggy’s Coves, Charlottetowns, Montreals, Ann Arbors, Neolas, Denvers by moonlight, Boulders echos, Dinosaurs dies, salted lakes, Winnemuccas’ flats, golden-gated bridges, malibus, Joshua Trees, pueblos, embarcaderos, and flies. Enough to last a life-time, thank you. Enough of Bunsen burners, Coleman stoves, wrapped blankets, second-hand sweated army sleeping bags, and minute pegged pup tents too. And enough too of granolas, oatmeals, desiccated stews, oregano weed, mushroomed delights, peyote seeds, and the shamanic ghosts dancing off against apache (no, not helicopters, real injuns) ancient cavern wall. And enough of short-wave radio beam tricky dick slaughters south of the border in deep fall nights. Enough, okay.

He said struggle. He said push back. He said stay with your people. He said it would not be easy. He said you have lost the strand that bound you to your people. He said you must find that strand. He said that strand will lead you away from you acting in god’s place ways. He said look for a sign. He said the sign would be this-when your enemies part ways and let you through then you will enter the golden age. He said it would not be easy. He said it again and again. He said struggle. He said it in 1848, he said it in 1917, he said it in 1973. Whee, an old guy, huh.

Greyhound bus station men’s wash room stinking to high heaven of seven hundred pees, six hundred laved washings, five hundred wayward unnamed, unnamable smells, mainly rank. Out the door, walk the streets, walk the streets until, until noon, until five, until lights out. Plan, plan, plan, plain paper bag in hand holding, well, holding life, plan for the next minute, no, the next ten seconds until the deadly impulses subside. Then look, look hard, for safe harbors, lonely desolate un-peopled bridges, some gerald ford-bored antic newspaper-strewn bench against the clotted hobo night snores. Desolation row, no way home.

A smoky sunless bar, urban style right in the middle of high Harvard civilization, belting out some misty time Hank Williams tune, maybe Cold, Cold Heart from father home times. Order another deadened drink, slightly benny-addled, then in walks a vision. A million time in walks a vision, but in white this time. Signifying? Signifying adventure, dream one-night stands, lost walks in loaded woods, endless stretch beaches, moonless nights, serious caresses, and maybe, just maybe some cosmic connection to wear away the days, the long days ahead. Ya that seems right, right against the oil-beggared time, right.

Lashed against the high end double seawall, bearded, slightly graying against the forlorn time, a vision in white not enough to keep the wolves of time away, the wolves of feckless petty larceny times reappear, reappear with a vengeance against the super-rational night sky and big globs of ancient hurts fester against some unknown enemy, unnamed, or hiding out in a canyon under an assumed name. Then night, the promise of night, a night run up some seawall laden streets, some Grenada night or maybe Lebanon sky boom night, and thoughts of finite, sweet flinty finite haunt his dreams, haunt his sleep. Wrong number, brother. Ya, wrong number, as usual.

White truce flags neatly placed in right pocket. Folded aging arms showing the first signs of wear-down, unfolded. One more time, one more war-weary dastardly fight against Persian gulf oil-driven time, against a bigger opponent, and then the joys of retreat and taking out those white flags again and normalcy. The first round begins. He holds his own, a little wobbly. Second round he runs into a series of upper-cuts that drive him to the floor. Out. Awake later, seven minutes, hours, eons later he takes out the white flags now red with his own blood. He clutches them in his weary hands. The other he said struggle, struggle. Ya, easy for you to say.

Desperately clutching his new white flags, his 9/11 white flags, exchanged years ago for bloodied red ones, white flags proudly worn for a while now, he wipes his brow of the sweat accumulated from the fear he has been living with for the past few months. Now ancient arms folded, hard-folded against the rainless night, raining, he carefully turns right, left, careful of every move as the crowd comes forward. Not a crowd, no, a horde, a beastly horde, and this is no time to stick out with white flags (or red, for that matter). He jumps out of the way, the horde passes brushing him lightly, not aware, not apparently aware of the white flags. Good. What did that other guy say, oh yes, struggle.

One more battle, one more, please one more, one fight against the greed tea party night. He chains himself, well not really chains, but more like ties himself to the black wrought-iron fence in front of the big white house with his white handkerchief. Another guy does the same, except he uses some plastic hand-cuff-like stuff. A couple of women just stand there, hard against that ebony fence, can you believe it, just stand there. More, milling around, disorderly in a way, someone starts om-ing, om-ing out of Allen Ginsberg Howl nights, or at least Jack Kerouac Big Sur splashes. The scene is complete, or almost complete. Now, for once he knows, knows for sure, that it wasn’t Ms. Cora whom he needed to worry about, and that his child dream was a different thing altogether. But who, just a child, could have known that then.

From The Pages Of The Communist International- In Honor Of The 95th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Communist International (1919) -Desperately Seeking Revolutionary Intellectuals-Now, And Then

Click below to link to the Communist International Internet Archives"

http://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/index.htm

Markin comment from the American Left History blog (2007):

BOOK REVIEW

‘LEFT-WING’ COMMUNISM-AN INFANTILE DISORDER, V.I. LENIN, UNIVERSITY PRESS OF THE PACIFIC, CALIFORNIA, 2001

An underlying premise of the Lenin-led Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917 was that success there would be the first episode in a world-wide socialist revolution. While a specific timetable was not placed on the order of the day the early Bolshevik leaders, principally Lenin and Trotsky, both assumed that those events would occur in the immediate post-World War I period, or shortly thereafter. Alas, such was not the case, although not from lack of trying on the part of an internationalist-minded section of the Bolshevik leadership.

Another underlying premise, developed by the Leninists as part of their opposition to the imperialist First World War, was the need for a new revolutionary labor international to replace the compromised and moribund Socialist International (also known as the Second International) which had turned out to be useless as an instrument for revolution or even of opposition to the European war. The Bolsheviks took that step after seizing power and established the Communist International (also known as the Comintern or Third International) in 1919. As part of the process of arming that international with a revolutionary strategy (and practice) Lenin produced this polemic to address certain confusions, some willful, that had arisen in the European left and also attempted to instill some of the hard-learned lessons of the Russian revolutionary experience in them.

The Russian Revolution, and after it the Comintern in the early heroic days, for the most part, drew the best and most militant layers of the working-class and radical intellectuals to their defense. However, that is not the same as drawing experienced Bolsheviks to that defense. Many militants were anti-parliamentarian or anti-electoral in principle after the sorry experiences with the European social democracy. Others wanted to emulate the old heroic days of the Bolshevik underground party or create a minority, exclusive conspiratorial party.

Still others wanted to abandon the reformist bureaucratically-led trade unions to their then current leaderships, and so on. Lenin’s polemic, and it nothing but a flat-out polemic against all kinds of misconceptions of the Bolshevik experience, cut across these erroneous ideas like a knife. His literary style may not appeal to today’s audience but the political message still has considerable application today. At the time that it was written no less a figure than James P. Cannon, a central leader of the American Communist Party, credited the pamphlet with straightening out that badly confused movement (Indeed, it seems every possible political problem Lenin argued against in that pamphlet had some following in the American Party-in triplicate!). That alone makes it worth a look at.

I would like to highlight one point made by Lenin that has currency for leftists today, particularly American leftists. At the time it was written many (most) of the communist organizations adhering to the Comintern were little more than propaganda groups (including the American party). Lenin suggested one of the ways to break out of that isolation was a tactic of critical support to the still large and influential social-democratic organizations at election time. In his apt expression- to support those organizations "like a rope supports a hanging man".

However, as part of my political experiences in America around election time I have run into any number of ‘socialists’ and ‘communists’ who have turned Lenin’s concept on its head. How? By arguing that militants needed to ‘critically support’ the Democratic Party (who else, right?) as an application of the Leninist criterion for critical support. No, a thousand times no. Lenin’s specific example was the reformist British Labor Party, a party at that time (and to a lesser extent today) solidly based on the trade unions- organizations of the working class and no other. The Democratic Party in America was then, is now, and will always be a capitalist party. Yes, the labor bureaucrats and ordinary workers support it, finance it, drool over it but in no way is it a labor party. That is the class difference which even sincere militants have broken their teeth on for at least the last seventy years. And that, dear reader, is another reason why it worthwhile to take a peek at this book.

Desperately Seeking Revolutionary Intellectuals-Now, And Then

Commentary

No, this is not a Personals section ad, although it qualifies as a Help Wanted ad in a sense. On a number of occasions over past several years, in reviewing books especially those by James P. Cannon the founder of The Socialist Workers Party in America, I have mentioned that building off of the work of the classical Marxists, including that of Marx and Engels themselves, and later that of Lenin and Trotsky the critical problem before the international working class in the early part of the 20th century was the question of creating a revolutionary leadership to lead imminent uprisings. Armed with Lenin’s work on the theory of the imperialist nature of the epoch and the party question and Trotsky’s on the questions of permanent revolution and revolutionary timing the tasks for revolutionaries were more than adequately defined.

The conclusion that I drew from that observation was that the revolutionary socialist movement was not as desperately in need of theoreticians and intellectuals as previously (although having them is always a good thing). It needed leaders steeped in those theories and with a capacity to lead revolutions. We needed a few good day-to-day practical leaders to lead the fight for state power.

In that regard I have always held up, for the early part of the 20th century, the name Karl Liebknecht the martyred German Communist co-leader (along with Rosa Luxemburg) of the aborted Spartacist uprising of 1919 as such an example. In contrast the subsequent leadership of the German Communists in the 1920’s Paul Levi, Henrich Brandler and Ernest Thaelmann did not meet those qualifications. For later periods I have held up the name James P. Cannon, founder of the American Socialist Workers Party (to name only the organization that he was most closely associated with), as a model. That basically carries us to somewhere around the middle of the 20th century. Since I have spend a fair amount of time lately going back to try to draw the lessons of our movement I have also had occasion to think, or rather to rethink my original argument on the need for revolutionary intellectuals. That position stands in need of some amendment now.

Let’s be clear here about our needs. The traditional Marxist idea that in order to break the logjam impeding humankind’s development the international working class must rule is still on the historic agenda. The Leninist notions that, since the early part of the 20th century, we have been in the imperialist era and that a ‘hard’ cadre revolutionary party is necessary to take state power are also in play. Moreover, the Trotskyist understanding that in countries of belated development the working class is the only agency objectively capable of leading those societies to the tasks traditionally associated with the bourgeois revolution continues to hold true. That said, we are seriously in need of revolutionary intellectuals who can bring these understandings into the 21st century.


It is almost a political truism that each generation will find its own ways to cope with the political tasks that confront it. The international working class movement is no exception in that regard. Moreover, although the general outlines of Marxist theory mentioned above hold true such tasks as the updating of the theory of imperialism to take into account the qualitative leap in its globalization is necessary (as is, as an adjunct to that, the significance of the gigantic increases in the size of the ‘third world’ proletariat). Also in need of freshening up is work on the contours of revolutionary political organization in the age of high speed communications, the increased weight that non-working class specific questions play in world politics (the national question, religion, special racial and gender oppressions) and various other tasks that earlier generations had taken for granted or had not needed to consider. All this moreover has to be done in a political environment that sees Marxism, communism, even garden variety reform socialism as failed experiments. To address all the foregoing issues is where my call for a new crop of revolutionary intellectuals comes from.

Since the mid- 20th century we have had no lack of practical revolutionary leaders of one sort or another - one thinks of Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and even Mao in his less rabid moments. We have witnessed any number of national liberation struggles, a few attempts at political revolution against Stalinism, a few military victories against imperialism, notably the Vietnamese struggle. But mainly this has been an epoch of defeats for the international working class. Moreover, we have not even come close to developing theoretical leaders of the statue of Lenin or Trotsky.

As a case in point, recently I made some commentary about the theory of student power in the 1960’s and its eventual refutation by the May 1968 General Strike lead by the working class in France. One of the leading lights for the idea that students were the ‘new’ working class or a ‘new’ vanguard was one Ernest Mandel. Mandel held himself out to be an orthodox Marxist (and Trotskyist, to boot) but that did not stop him from, periodically, perhaps daily, changing the focus of his work away from the idea of the centrality of the working class in social struggle an ideas that goes back to the days of Marx himself.

And Mandel, a brilliant well-spoken erudite scholar probably was not the worst of the lot. The problem is that he was the problem with his impressionistic theories based on , frankly, opportunistic impulses. Another example, from that same period, was the idea of Professor Regis Debray ( in the service of Fidel at the time ) that guerrilla foci out in the hills were the way forward ( a codification of the experience of the Cuban Revolution for which many subjective revolutionary paid dearly with their lives). Or the anti-Marxist Maoist notion that the countryside would defeat the cities that flamed the imagination of many Western radicals in the late 1960’s. I could go on with more examples but they only lead to one conclusion- we are, among other things, in a theoretical trough. This, my friends, is why today I have my Help Wanted sign out. Any takers?

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

Save the Date - UNAC National Conference, May 8 - 10, 2015

 

No Justice, No Peace- Black Lives Matter- You Have Got That Right Brothers and Sisters-Speaking Truth To Power-The Struggle Continues 

 

 

 

Listen up. No, I am not black but here is what I know. Know because my grandfather, son of old Irish immigrants before the turnoff the 20^th century, the ethnic immigrant group which provided a hard core of police officers in the City of Boston and surrounding towns back then, and now too for that matter, told me some stuff. (The “surrounding towns” part as they left the Irish ghettoes in South Boston and Dorchester, the latter now very heavily filled with all kinds of people of color, and moved first to Quincy and Weymouth then for some to the Irish Rivera further south in Marshfield and places like that). Those Irish also provided their fair share of militants in the “so-called” Boston Police Strike of 1919.

Here is what he said when I was a kid and has been etched in my brain since my youth. Cops are not workers, cops are around to protect property, not yours but that of the rich, cops are not your friends because when the deal goes down they will pull the hammer down on you no matter how “nice” they are, no matter how many old ladies and old gentlemen they have escorted across the street. And every time I forget that wisdom they, the police remind me, for example, when they raided the Occupy Boston encampment late one night in October 2011 and then razed the place in December 2011 when the restraining order was lifted without batting an eye.

Now this is pretty damn familiar to the audience I am trying to address, those who are raising holy hell in places like Ferguson, Missouri and Staten Island, New York about police brutality, about police murder under the color of law. And those who support the, well, let’s call a thing by its right name, rebellion.

Here is what my grandfather, or my father for that matter, did not have to tell me. They, and I ask that you refer to the graphic above, DID NOT need when I came of age for such discussions that I had to be careful of the cops as I walked down the street minding my own business(unless of course I was in a demonstration but I had that figured already). Did not need to tell me that I was very likely to be pulled over while “walking while Irish.” Did not suggest, as the graphic wisely points out, that I would need to have more identification than an NSA agent to walk down my neighborhood streets. Did not need to tell me that I would suffer all kinds of indignities for breathing.                        

He, they, did not have to tell me a lot of things that every black adult has to tell every black child about the ways on the world in the United States. But remember what that old man did tell me, cops are not workers, cops are not friends, cops are working the   other side of the street. That old man would also get a chuckle out of the slogan-“Fuck The Cops.” If more people, if more white people especially, would think that way maybe we could curb the bastards in a little.  

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

In say 1912, 1913, hell, even the beginning of 1914, the first few months anyway, before the war clouds got a full head of steam in the summer they all profusely professed their unmitigated horror at the thought of war, thought of the old way of doing business in the world. Yes the artists of every school but the Cubist/Fauvists/Futurists and  Surrealists or those who would come to speak for those movements, those who saw the disjointedness of modern industrial society and put the pieces to paint, sculptors who put twisted pieces of metal juxtaposed to each other saw that building a mighty machine from which you had to run created many problems; writers of serious history books proving that, according to their Whiggish theory of progress,  humankind had moved beyond war as an instrument of policy and the diplomats and high and mighty would put the brakes on in time, not realizing that they were all squabbling cousins; writers of serious and not so serious novels drenched in platitudes and hidden gabezo love affairs put paid to that notion in their sweet nothing words that man and woman had too much to do, too much sex to harness to denigrate themselves by crying the warrior’s cry and by having half-virgin, neat trick, maidens strewing flowers on the bloodlust streets; musicians whose muse spoke of delicate tempos and sweet muted violin concertos, not the stress and strife of the tattoos of war marches with their tinny conceits; and poets, ah, those constricted poets who bleed the moon of its amber swearing, swearing on a stack of seven sealed bibles, that they would go to the hells before touching the hair of another man. They all professed loudly (and those few who did not profess, could not profess because they were happily getting their blood rising, kept their own consul until the summer), that come the war drums they would resist the siren call, would stick to their Whiggish, Futurist, Constructionist, Cubist worlds and blast the war-makers to hell in quotes, words, chords, clanged metal, and pretty pastels. They would stay the course.  

 

And then the war drums intensified, the people, their clients, patrons and buyers, cried out their lusts and they, they made of ordinary human clay as it turned out, poets, beautiful English poets (we will speak of American poets when they slip into war footing in 1917)like Wilfred Owens before he got religion, e.e. cummings madly driving his safety ambulance, beautiful Rupert Brookes wondering which way to go but finally joining the mob in some fated oceans, sturdy Robert Graves all blown to hell and back surviving but just surviving, French , German, Russian, Italian poets tooo all aflutter; artists, reeking of blooded fields, the battle of the Somme Muirhead Bone's nothing but a huge killing field that still speaks of small boned men, drawings, etchings that no subtle camera could make beautiful, that famous one by Picasso, another by Singer Sargent about the death trenches, about the gas, and human blindness for all to see; sculptors, chiseling monuments to the national brave even before the blood was dried before the last tear had been shed, huge memorials to the unnamed, maybe un-nameable dead dragged from some muddied trench half blown away; writers, serious and not, wrote beautiful Hemingway stuff about the scariness of war, about valor, about romance on the fly, among those women. camp-followers who have been around  since men have left their homes to slaughter and maim, lots of writers speaking, after the fact about the vein-less leaders and what were they thinking, and, please, please do not forgot those Whiggish writers who once the smoke had cleared had once again put in a word about the endless line of human progress, musicians, sad, mystical, driven by national blood lusts to the high tattoo, went to the trenches to die deathless deaths in their thousands for, well, for humankind, of course, their always fate  ….    

Three Soldiers

by John Dos Passos

Three Soldiers 3.6 of 5 stars 3.60  ·  rating details  ·  590 ratings  ·  68 reviews

A searing novel exposing the fate of the common soldier during World War I. Driven by the idealism that infected many young Americans at the time (including Ernest Hemingway), author John Dos Passos joined the Ambulance Corps. His rapid and profound disillusionment forms the core of this fierce denouncement of the military and of the far-reaching social implications of its A searing novel exposing the fate of the common soldier during World War I. Driven by the idealism that infected many young Americans at the time (including Ernest Hemingway), author John Dos Passos joined the Ambulance Corps. His rapid and profound disillusionment forms the core of this fierce denouncement of the military and of the far-reaching social implications of its exploitation of young men. 400 pp. ...more

 

Desperately Seeking Revolutionary Intellectuals-Then, And Now
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

 

 

 

Several years ago, I guess about three years now, in the aftermath of the demise of the Occupy movement with the shutting down of its campsites across the country (and the world) I wrote a short piece centered on the need for revolutionary intellectuals to take their rightful place on the left, on the people’s side, and to stop sitting on the academic sidelines (or wherever they were hiding out). One of the reasons for that piece was that in the aftermath of the demise of the Occupy movement a certain stock-taking was in order. A stock-taking at first centered on those young radicals and revolutionaries that I ran into in the various campsites and on the flash mob marches who were disoriented and discouraged when their utopian dreams went up in smoke without a murmur of regret from the masses. Now a few years later it is apparent that they have, mostly, moved back to the traditional political ways of operating or have not quite finished licking their wounds.

Although I initially addressed my remarks to the activists still busy I also had in mind those intellectuals who had a radical streak but who then hovered on the sidelines and were not sure what to make of the whole experiment although some things seemed very positive like the initial camp comradery. In short, those who would come by on Sunday and take a lot of photographs and write a couple of lines but held back from further commitment. Now as we head into 2015 it is clear as day that the old economic order (capitalism if you were not quite sure what to name it) that we were fitfully protesting against (especially the banks who led the way downhill) has survived another threat to its dominance. The old political order, the way of doing political business now clearly being defended by one Barack Obama with might and main is still intact. The needs of working people although now widely discussed (the increasing gap between the rich, really the very rich, and the poor, endlessly lamented and then forgotten, the student debt death trap, and the lingering sense that most of us will never get very far ahead in this wicked old world especially compared to previous generations) have not been ameliorated. All of this calls for intellectuals with any activist spark to come forth and help analyze and plan how the masses are to survive, how a new social order can be brought forth. Nobody said, or says, that it will be easy but this is the plea. I have reposted the original piece with some editing to bring it up to date.          

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No, this is not a Personals section ad, although it qualifies as a Help Wanted ad in a sense. On a number of occasions over past several years, in reviewing books especially those by James P. Cannon, a founding member of the American Communist Party and the founder of the Socialist Workers Party in America, I have mentioned that building off of the work of the classical Marxists, including that of Marx and Engels themselves, and later that of Lenin and Trotsky the critical problem before the international working class in the early part of the 20th century was the question of creating a revolutionary leadership to lead imminent uprisings. Armed with Lenin’s work on the theory of the imperialist nature of the epoch and the party question and Trotsky’s on the questions of permanent revolution and revolutionary timing the tasks for revolutionaries were more than adequately defined. A century later with some tweaking, unfortunately, those same theories and the same need for organization are still on the agenda although, as Trotsky once said, the conditions are overripe for the overthrow of capitalism as it has long ago outlived its progressive character in leading humankind forward.   

The conclusion that I originally drew from that observation was that the revolutionary socialist movement was not as desperately in need of theoreticians and intellectuals as previously (although having them, and plenty of them, especially those who can write, is always a good thing). It needed leaders steeped in those theories and with a capacity to lead revolutions. We needed a few good day-to-day practical leaders, guys like Cannon, like Debs from the old Socialist Party, like Ruthenberg from the early Communist Party, to lead the fight for state power.

In that regard I have always held up, for the early part of the 20th century, the name Karl Liebknecht the martyred German Communist co-leader (along with Rosa Luxemburg) of the aborted Spartacist uprising of 1919 as such an example. He led the anti-war movement in Germany by refusing to vote for the Kaiser’s war budgets, found himself in jail as a result, but also had tremendous authority among the left-wing German workers when that mattered. In contrast the subsequent leadership of the German Communists in the 1920’s Paul Levi, Henrich Brandler and Ernest Thaelmann did not meet those qualifications. For later periods I have, as mentioned previously, held up the name James P. Cannon, founder of the American Socialist Workers Party (to name only the organization that he was most closely associated with), as a model. Not so Communist Party leaders like William Z. Foster and Earl Browder (to speak nothing of Gus Hall from our generation) or Max Shachtman in his later years after he broke with Cannon and the SWP. That basically carries us to somewhere around the middle of the 20th century. Since I have spent a fair amount of time lately going back to try to draw the lessons of our movement I have also had occasion to think, or rather to rethink my original argument on the need for revolutionary intellectuals. I find that position stands in need of some amendment now.

Let’s be clear here about our needs. The traditional Marxist idea that in order to break the logjam impeding humankind’s development the international working class must rule is still on the historic agenda. The Leninist notions that, since the early part of the 20th century, we have been in the imperialist era and that a ‘hard’ cadre revolutionary party is necessary to lead the struggle to take state power are also in play. Moreover, the Trotskyist understanding that in countries of belated development the working class is the only agency objectively capable of leading those societies to the tasks traditionally associated with the bourgeois revolution continues to hold true. That said, rather than some tweaking, we are seriously in need of revolutionary intellectuals who can bring these understandings into the 21st century.
 

It is almost a political truism that each generation will find its own ways to cope with the political tasks that confront it. The international working class movement is no exception in that regard. Moreover, although the general outlines of Marxist theory mentioned above hold true such tasks as the updating of the theory of imperialism to take into account the qualitative leap in its globalization is necessary (as is, as an adjunct to that, the significance of the gigantic increases in the size of the ‘third world’ proletariat). Also in need of freshening up is work on the contours of revolutionary political organization in the age of high speed communications, the increased weight that non-working class specific questions play in world politics (the national question which if anything has had a dramatic uptick since the demise of the Soviet Union), religion (the almost universal trend for the extremes of religious expression to rear their ugly heads which needs to be combated), special racial and gender oppressions, and various other tasks that earlier generations had taken for granted or had not needed to consider. All this moreover has to be done in a political environment that sees Marxism, communism, even garden variety reform socialism as failed experiments. To address all the foregoing issues is where my call for a new crop of revolutionary intellectuals comes from.

 

Since the mid- 20th century we have had no lack of practical revolutionary leaders of one sort or another - one thinks of Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and even Mao in his less rabid moments. We have witnessed any number of national liberation struggles, a few attempts at political revolution against Stalinism, a few military victories against imperialism, notably the Vietnamese struggle. But mainly this has been an epoch of defeats for the international working class. Moreover, we have not even come close to developing theoretical leaders of the statue of Lenin or Trotsky.

As a case in point, recently I made some commentary about the theory of student power in the 1960’s and its eventual refutation by the May 1968 General Strike lead by the working class in France. One of the leading lights for the idea that students were the “new” working class or a “new” vanguard was one Ernest Mandel. Mandel held himself out to be an orthodox Marxist (and Trotskyist, to boot) but that did not stop him from, periodically, perhaps daily, changing the focus of his work away from the idea of the centrality of the working class in social struggle an idea that goes back to the days of Marx himself.

And Mandel, a brilliant well-spoken erudite scholar probably was not the worst of the lot. The problem is that he was the problem with his impressionistic theories based on, frankly, opportunistic impulses. Another example, from that same period, was the idea of Professor Regis Debray (in the service of Fidel at the time ) that guerrilla foci out in the hills were the way forward ( a codification of the experience of the Cuban Revolution for which many subjective revolutionary paid dearly with their lives). Or the anti-Marxist Maoist notion that the countryside would defeat the cities that flamed the imagination of many Western radicals in the late 1960s. I could go on with more examples but they only lead to one conclusion- we are, among other things, in a theoretical trough. The late Mandel’s students from the 1960s have long gone on to academia and the professions (and not an inconsiderable few in governmental harness-how the righteous have fallen). Debray’s guerilla foci have long ago buried their dead and gone back to the cities. The “cities” of the world now including to a great extent China have broken the third world countryside. This, my friends, is why today I have my Help Wanted sign out. Any takers?

A View From The Left-From The Recent Past-Greece: European Union Austerity Elections-No Vote to Syriza! Vote Communist Party! Victory To The Greek Workers- Build Workers Councils Now-Fight For A Workers Government! Re-post from an American Left History blog, February 14, 2012 the major points which are appropriate today as we head into the upcoming Greek parliamentary elections: Markin comment: The situation in Greece today cries out to high heaven for a revolution and a revolutionary party to intervene and lead the damn thing. Enough of one day general strikes. General strikes only pose the question of power, of dual power. Who shall rule. We say labor must rule. Strike the final blow. Back to the communist road. The Greek workers are just this minute the vanguard, yes, terrible word to some, vanguard of the international working class struggle. Forward to victory. Tuesday, May 11, 2010-Repost from American Left History blog *Be Still My Heart- On Calling For The Greek Communist Parties And Trade Unions To Take Power Markin comment: On May 10, 2010 I posted an entry on the situation in Greece in response to a post from the International Marxist Tendency’s Greek section’s analysis of the tasks that confront revolutionaries today. I agreed with the comment in the post that general strikes were of limited value if they did not, at some point, pose the question of who shall rule- working people or the capitalists. I went further and proposed two propaganda points that revolutionaries in Greece, and their supporters internationally, should be fighting for. Right now. The first point revolved around the fight to create workers councils, committees of action or factory committees in order to fight for a revolutionary perspective. That program, the specifics which are better to left to those on the ground, needs to include refusal to pay the capitalists debts, under whatever guise, defense of the hard fought social welfare gains of the past, the struggle against the current government’s austerity program, the fight against any taint of popular frontism (opposition to alliances, at this critical juncture, with non-working class forces where the working class is the donkey and the small capitalist parties are the riders), and prepare to pose the question of who shall rule. Thus there is plenty of work that needs to be started now while the working masses are mobilized and in a furor over the current situation. The second point, which flows out of the first, is the call for the Communist parties and trade unions to take power in their own right and in the interest of the working class. Now, clearly, and this is where some confusion has entered the picture, this is TODAY a propaganda call but is a concrete way to pose the question of who shall rule. Of course, we revolutionaries should have no illusions in the Stalinists and ex-Stalinists who run those parties and who, in previous times, have lived very comfortably with their various popular front, anti-monopolist strategies that preserve capitalism. However, today those organizations call for anti-governmental action and are listened to by the masses in the streets. The point is to call their political bluff, carefully, but insistently. In that sense we are talking over the heads of the leaders to their social bases. Now that tactic is always proper for revolutionaries to gain authority but today we have to have a more concrete way to do so. In short, call on the Greek labor militants to call on their parties and unions to take power. And if not, then follow us. This is not some exotic formula from nowhere but reflects the sometimes painful experience, at least since the European revolutions of 1848. Note: I headed today’s headline with the expression “be still my heart” for a reason. It has been a very long time since we have been able to, even propagandistically, call for workers parties on the European continent to take power. Especially, after the demise of the Soviet Union, for Stalinist (reformed or otherwise) parties to do so. Frankly, I did not think, as a practical matter, that I would be making such a call in Europe again in my lifetime. All proportions guarded, this may be the first wave of a new revolutionary upsurge on that continent. But, hell, it’s nice just to be able to, rationally, make that political call. In any case, the old utopian dream of a serious capitalist United States of Europe is getting ready to go into the dustbin of history. Let’s replace it with a Socialist Federation of Europe- and Greece today is the “epicenter”. SYRIZA-KKE to power! *************************** Workers Vanguard No. 1060

23 January 2015

Greece: European Union Austerity Elections-No Vote to Syriza! Vote Communist Party!

 

Greek voters will go to the polls on January 25 with the dominant powers of the European Union (EU), centrally the German bankers, demanding continued austerity to pay for Greece’s massive debt. The snap parliamentary election was called by Prime Minister Antonis Samaras of New Democracy (ND) when the parliament in late December failed for the third time to elect a new president.

In a country suffering mass unemployment and poverty due to the deep, ongoing capitalist economic crisis in Europe, the main issue looming behind the elections is Greece’s continued membership in the imperialist EU and use of the euro. Most ostensible socialists, in Greece and internationally, look to a victory by the left-sounding petty-bourgeois Syriza led by Alexis Tsipras, despite its explicit commitment to the EU. In contrast, our comrades of the Trotskyist Group of Greece call for critical electoral support to the Greek Communist Party (KKE) as they did in 2012. Printed below is a translation of the TGG’s January 15 statement, which raises the demands: Down with the EU! For workers revolution! For a Socialist United States of Europe!

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The Trotskyist Group of Greece, section of the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist), calls for a vote to the KKE in the January 25 general election. The KKE, uniquely on the left, is standing in this election completely opposed both to the imperialist EU and to all those parties who defend the EU, including the petty-bourgeois Syriza party. No vote to Syriza!

As Trotskyists, our perspective is the fight for workers revolution here and internationally. We therefore oppose Syriza not only because it is committed to keeping Greece in the EU, which is a pledge for more hunger and joblessness, but also because it does not in any way represent the interests of the working class. Syriza’s program is bourgeois and its base is among the petty-bourgeoisie—small business owners, farmers and professionals like lawyers, doctors, professors, etc.—a layer with no independent class interests, which under capitalism is generally drawn behind the interests of the bourgeoisie. Syriza’s mild anti-austerity rhetoric and left-sounding stances on some social questions may make the bourgeoisie scream about their supposed radicalism. And the EU imperialists and Greek capitalists are clearly worried that Syriza cannot be trusted to impose EU-dictated austerity. But Syriza’s class character is nonetheless bourgeois. This makes it unprincipled for revolutionary Marxists to give it any form of political support.

The reformist Antarsya has no such principles and even though it claims to oppose the EU, it cannot bring itself to call explicitly for a vote against Syriza. Antarsya complains that the KKE “turn their fire more toward the militant left forces instead of the government and the system” (“ANTARSYA statement for the elections of 25/1”). Given that the KKE’s polemical fire is overwhelmingly aimed at Syriza, this amounts to an attack on the KKE from the right in defense of Syriza. No vote to Antarsya! In contrast to the rest of the reformist left, the KKE opposes any kind of political support to Syriza and has continued to reject its overtures to form a coalition in order to bring a “left” capitalist government to power.

The International Communist League has stood in principled opposition to the imperialist EU and the euro from the beginning. The EU’s purpose is to enable the imperialist powers of Europe, led by Germany, to subordinate weaker capitalist countries like Greece and impose savage austerity on working people throughout Europe, including in Germany. The EU, IMF and local capitalists have devastated the living standards of the masses in Greece, Portugal, Spain and other countries and continue to demand more vicious cuts and the total overturn of trade union rights. Working people are thus made to pay the debts racked up by the capitalists and their bloodsucking banks. There is no way forward for the workers and the oppressed within the capitalist EU!

The reformist KKE correctly says: “Out of the EU, cancel the debt” and “Reject the blackmail and lies of ND-Syriza, the people have bled enough for the EU-plutocracy.” As we did in our campaign of critical support in 2012, we call for a vote to the KKE while sharply criticizing their political program of nationalist populism, which is an obstacle to the consciousness the working class needs in order to carry out a successful socialist revolution.

A Greek exit from the EU as a result of militant workers struggle would be an important step forward, but not a solution in itself. The crisis in Greece is part of a world economic crisis of the imperialist system, which cannot be resolved within the borders of any single country, particularly within small, dependent Greece with its low level of industry and resources. The only way forward is a series of socialist revolutions that will expropriate the bourgeoisies, including in the imperialist centers, and establish an internationally collectivized, planned economy under workers rule. For a Socialist United States of Europe!

But the KKE’s leaders posit that Greece can achieve “socialism” without an international extension of workers revolution, a Stalinist distortion of Marxism. They also call for “people’s power,” dissolving the proletariat, which uniquely has the social power to overthrow capitalism, into the “people.” This obscures that the central class division in capitalist society is between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, and not between the “people” and the “monopolies.” The KKE embraces Greek nationalism, as shown by their defense of capitalist Greece’s borders. To prove their patriotism they are running as an election candidate Giannis Douniadakis, a retired Greek naval officer who served in defense posts for the Greek government. This bona fide representative of the repressive apparatus of the capitalist state also served in NATO, which makes a mockery of the KKE’s opposition to this imperialist alliance. We say: No vote to Douniadakis!

Greek nationalism, based on the pillars of the Orthodox church, the institution of the family and the military, is the poison used by the fascist Golden Dawn to win support among the ruined petty-bourgeoisie and to deflect its anger toward immigrants, leftists, gay people and trade unionists. The KKE leadership has remained criminally passive in response to fascist attacks on its party and others. Despite the KKE’s social weight in the trade unions, it has no perspective of taking the lead in mobilizing contingents of workers, based on the unions, to defend immigrants, leftists and gay people and sweep the fascists off the streets. The working class cannot defend itself against the capitalist crisis if it does not take up this urgent struggle. The fascists’ ultimate goal is the destruction of the unions and the left, which is why the capitalists keep them in reserve. For mass, workers united-front mobilizations to stop the fascists!

Workers must not believe that the fascists can be stopped through the jailing of some Golden Dawn leaders and other legal measures by the state against them. Such measures serve to repress the left as well. No capitalist government, even a “left” one under Syriza, will be able to satisfy the desperate demands of the masses for jobs, healthcare and pensions. In these conditions, the fascists will continue to grow. It is necessary for the working class to come to the fore in militant struggle to defend all those ruined by the capitalist crisis. A class-struggle response to the populist demagogy of the fascists is needed: Organize the unorganized! Unions must defend immigrant workers—for full citizenship rights for all immigrants! For jobs for all through a shorter workweek with no loss in pay! For a sliding scale of wages to keep up with the cost of living! Repudiate the debt! Nationalize the banks!

This struggle would point to the need for the working class to completely expropriate the bourgeoisie and establish its own government through socialist revolution. But this is not the perspective of the KKE leadership who might currently refuse a coalition government with Syriza, but are not opposed to administering the capitalist state. In fact, a KKE mayor currently administers the capitalist state on the local level in Patras, just as Syriza’s bourgeois prefect administers Attica. Nor has the KKE fundamentally broken with the program that led them to join bourgeois governments in the past, as explained at length in our article “Greece 1940s: A Revolution Betrayed” [in Spartacist (English-language edition) No. 64, Summer 2014, see the ad below to order, or read it on the ICL website at www.icl-fi.org].

We take Lenin and Trotsky’s Bolshevik Party as our model for the kind of revolutionary party that needs to be forged here and internationally in counterposition to the reformist programs of both the Stalinist KKE and the rest of the Greek left. For new October Revolutions!

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A View From The Left -Senate Report Whitewashes White House-CIA Torture, Inc. Workers Vanguard No. 1060	23 January 2015

Senate Report Whitewashes White House-CIA Torture, Inc.

 

On December 9, the Senate Intelligence Committee released its summary report on the CIA’s post-9/11 detention and torture program. Most of those whose lives were destroyed under this program were picked up in Afghanistan and Iraq following the U.S. invasions—for the “crime” of being in those countries. The heavily censored summary (less than one-tenth the length of the classified full report) sheds a little more light on the crimes of U.S. imperialism by detailing the sadistic brutality of the CIA torturers. Yet this report, which mostly documents what was already known, is the mere tip of the iceberg in the “war on terror.”

The list of 119 detainees in the report does not touch on the many tens of thousands detained and tortured by the U.S. military in Abu Ghraib and beyond, its local proxies in Afghanistan and Iraq, or the governments that received prisoners as part of the CIA’s “extraordinary rendition” operations. The report is also a complete cover-up for the White House, portraying the program as a rogue operation with President George W. Bush kept in the dark. In fact, both Bush and his vice president Dick Cheney have affirmed their knowledge of the program.

A section of the U.S. capitalist ruling class is worried that earlier exposures of the CIA’s widespread use of torture have done damage to the pretense that it is a champion of “human rights.” President Barack Obama declared torture to be “contrary to our values” and Democrat Dianne Feinstein, the Senate committee’s chair, chimed in that it was “a stain on our values and our history.” By fessing up to the existence of the (supposedly defunct) CIA program and tossing the public some tidbits, the Senate report is an attempt to close the book on the issue.

The Senate committee’s main criticism of the CIA program is that torture “was not an effective means of acquiring intelligence.” Anyone subjected to the CIA’s depraved tortures would tell their tormenters whatever they wanted to hear, true or not. Such barbarism primarily serves as a means to establish domination and instill terror more widely. As one CIA officer said, torture like “rectal hydration” established the interrogator’s “total control over the detainee.”

Those dragged off to the CIA “black site” prisons were shackled in stress positions for extended periods, sometimes with broken limbs, and subjected to sleep deprivation and mock executions. One detainee, after weeks of waterboarding, was placed in a coffin-sized box for 266 hours. Another, Gul Rahman, was beaten, shackled to the wall of his cell and stripped of most of his clothing. The next day, he was dead from hypothermia. The report admits that 26 people did not even meet the CIA’s own standards for being detained, including two who were wrongly held “based solely on information fabricated by a CIA detainee” who had been tortured. The torturers realized that another man wasn’t the person they thought he was, but not before subjecting him to ice baths and 66 hours of standing without sleep.

No doubt there are many, especially young activists, who see a ray of hope that the CIA will be reined in as a result of these latest revelations, to which we can only say: “Ain’t going to happen.” The U.S. has tortured, is torturing and will continue to torture so long as it exists as a capitalist country. Under capitalism, society is ruled by the bourgeoisie, a tiny stratum that owns the means of production (factories, mines, banks, etc.) and lives off the profits extracted from the working class. That capitalist ruling class relies on the organized violence of its state apparatus to maintain its position atop the exploited and oppressed masses.

Under imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism, mass murder, torture and humiliation necessarily accompany the exploitation of labor and the ceaseless struggle of competing advanced powers to dominate the world. The brutalization and dehumanization of “lesser peoples,” untermenschen to the Nazis, is a mainstay of imperialist subjugation—reinforcing the view of the capitalist masters that they are meant to rule over the poor, dirty masses. Former secretary of state John Foster Dulles expressed this mindset: “There are two kinds of people in the world. There are those who are Christians and support free enterprise, and there are others.”

In response to the recent report, Cheney pronounced, “I’d do it again in a minute,” while denying that the practices outlined in it constituted torture on the grounds that the victims were not Americans. In reality, the U.S. rulers have wielded torture against not only dark-skinned people around the world, but also leftists and minorities at home, particularly black people. When not presiding over torture themselves, the self-proclaimed leaders of the free world have shared their techniques with their blood-soaked client regimes, especially in Latin America.

State Repression and Bourgeois Democracy

The capitalist politicians behind the Senate committee report are trying to refurbish the image of U.S. imperialism in order to better prosecute the “war on terror,” which both the Democrats and Republicans have fully backed from the first. That so-called war has served as a pretext for imperialist depredations abroad and a wholesale assault on civil liberties at home. The release of the report was held up for two years as the committee, the CIA and the White House sought to balance releasing enough information to be credible against not revealing anything too damaging. After all, Commander-in-Chief Obama, just like any U.S. president, needs the likes of the CIA to do imperialism’s dirty work.

The facade that is bourgeois democracy, not least the lie that the government is responsible to the people, disguises the brutality at the core of capitalist class rule. Witness Feinstein, who is prancing around with a halo as a supposed defender of civil liberties. The Senator has helped push through the massive expansion of the repressive powers of the state under the “war on terror” and howled for the heads of those like Julian Assange and Edward Snowden who exposed some of the imperialists’ crimes. Leading Congressional Democrats, including then-House speaker Nancy Pelosi, were briefed on the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation techniques” as early as 2002.

A former White House official told the New York Times (26 December 2014): “Many presidents tend to be smitten with the instruments of the intelligence community. I think Obama was more smitten than most,” adding, “this has been an intelligence presidency in a way we haven’t seen maybe since Eisenhower.” Such a reference may seem bizarre to liberals who like to quote Eisenhower’s warnings against the growth of the “military industrial complex.” Like Obama today, Eisenhower fretted over military quagmires costing American lives and dollars. So he vastly expanded covert activity, authorizing the CIA to engineer the overthrow of left-nationalist governments, beginning with Iran in 1953 and Guatemala in 1954, with many more to follow. His efforts to undo the Cuban Revolution included a proposal for the U.S. government to carry out murderous acts of sabotage within the U.S. and blame them on Cuba as a pretext for war.

For his part, Obama, who never wanted the Senate investigation, has an anti-terror strategy that he presents as more compatible with the trappings of bourgeois democracy than that of his predecessor: pervasive snooping by the National Security Agency (NSA) and its ilk coupled with the CIA’s take-no-prisoners drone attacks, which have killed thousands, including many women and children. Torture isn’t by any means off Obama’s menu, though, as the 122 people still held in Guantánamo could attest.

Many liberals feel that the lack of any prosecutions weakens the effort to clean up the CIA’s image. Thus, the headline of a New York Times (21 December 2014) editorial calls to “Prosecute Torturers and Their Bosses” (by which its editors did not mean Bush). Since 2009, before his first inauguration, Obama has made clear that he did not intend to subject the torture carried out under Bush to official scrutiny, offering: “We need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards.” Shortly after taking office, he promised CIA officers that none of them would ever be prosecuted and, indeed, a Justice Department review of the torture program found no reason to indict anyone. In response to the Senate report, Obama declared that “a profound debt of gratitude” is owed to “the dedicated men and women of our intelligence community, including the Central Intelligence Agency.”

We are all for those responsible for torture getting their just deserts, while recognizing that such savagery is endemic to this system of exploitation and oppression. Justice for the innumerable victims of imperialist terror will only come when the working class has overthrown capitalist rule, sweeping aside the capitalist state apparatus and establishing a workers state. Reformist socialists pretend otherwise, sowing illusions in the possibility of a kinder, gentler imperialism, if only enough pressure is applied to Democratic Party politicians.

One such group, the Workers World Party, cites the Senate’s 1975-76 Church Committee as an example of the “struggle to restrain the CIA” (workers.org, 13 December 2014). Coming in the wake of the Watergate affair and the tumultuous social struggles of the 1960s and early ’70s, the Church Committee was set up to contain outrage sparked by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh’s revelations that the CIA was not only destabilizing foreign governments but also spying on thousands of Americans. Committee hearings exposed the FBI/CIA’s repeated efforts to assassinate Cuba’s Fidel Castro and other foreign leaders as well as the campaign of spying on antiwar and civil rights activists.

In the end, the Church Committee covered up more than it revealed and led to the implementation of toothless “reforms”: Congressional “oversight” committees that have rubber stamped all the CIA’s machinations and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which has given legal sanction to massive CIA/NSA wiretapping and surveillance. A rare dose of reality emerged from the Church Committee hearings when James Angleton, the CIA’s former chief of counterintelligence, said, “It is inconceivable that a secret intelligence arm of the government has to comply with all the overt orders of the government.”

The Long History of American Torture

Far from an aberration, torture has been a commonplace of modern capitalist society: the Belgians in the Congo, the British in Kenya and Northern Ireland, the French in Algeria, the now-ubiquitous “war on terror.” The U.S.—a society originating with the genocide of the indigenous population and built on the systematic oppression of black people from chattel slavery to today’s wage slavery—has its own long history of torture.

After seizing the Philippines, Cuba and Puerto Rico as colonies from Spain in 1898, U.S. troops killed up to half a million Filipinos to suppress a nationalist uprising. Colonel Jacob Smith (who a decade earlier participated in the massacre of Lakota Sioux at Wounded Knee) declared to his troops: “I want no prisoners. I wish you to kill and burn. The more you kill and the more you burn, the better you will please me.” Those who were taken prisoner were subjected to hideous torture. The most notorious was the “water cure,” in which bamboo tubes were forced down prisoners’ throats and dirty water pumped into their stomachs. Soldiers then jumped on their abdomens until the individual either “informed” or died.

While Washington was consolidating the country’s status as an imperialist power abroad, there was an epidemic of lynching at home. An average of two black people were lynched every week as Jim Crow segregation became the law of the land in the South. In addition to lynch mobs, there was the state’s legal lynching—the death penalty—often based on false confessions extracted with threats of the gun or the noose. But even the Mississippi Supreme Court in 1926 ruled that confessions obtained through waterboarding, “a specie of torture well known to the bench and bar of the country,” had crossed a line that mandated overturning a murder conviction.

Most of the world knows of the Nazi torture machine in the 1930s and ’40s. Kept hidden are the horrendous practices of the imperialist democracies at the time, including during the occupation of Germany after World War II. The Americans, along with the British, had set up Direct Interrogation Centers purportedly to uncover Nazi war criminals, but with the Cold War beginning they shortly turned to gathering intelligence on the Soviet Union. Anyone who had contact with the Soviet Zone could wind up in an interrogation center, where they were stripped naked, beaten, forced to stand for hours and deprived of sleep, mirroring the tortures described in the recent Senate report.

As Giles MacDonogh records in his book After the Reich: The Brutal History of the Allied Occupation (2007):

“The Americans had used methods similar to those employed by the SS in Dachau. One of these was keeping the prisoner for long periods in solitary confinement.... Worse still were the mock executions, where the men were led off in hoods, while their guards told them they were approaching the gallows. Prisoners were actually lifted bodily off the ground to convince them they were about to swing.”

Many were kept imprisoned solely for having too much firsthand knowledge of the tortures to which they were subjected. Most of those held in American prisoner-of-war camps were German army conscripts drawn from the working masses, while former Nazi intelligence agents of the Gehlen organization were incorporated into the CIA.

CIA-organized torture was a weapon in U.S. imperialism’s efforts to overthrow the Soviet Union and the other deformed workers states, not least its attempted rollback of the social revolution in Vietnam. The CIA’s Phoenix program, begun in 1967, set up torture centers in every district of that country. In 1970, two U.S. Congressmen went to Vietnam, finding tens of thousands of prisoners held in underground “tiger cages.” Then-Congressman Tom Harkin described, “There were as many as five people in an airless pit.... Many are forced to drink their own urine. Most of the men could not stand up, their legs having been paralyzed by beatings and by being shackled to a bar about one or two feet off the floor.”

In that same period, the cops and FBI tortured black militants in the U.S. One example was the effort to get Black Panthers to confess to the 1971 killing of San Francisco police officer John Young. During several days of interrogation in 1973, three Panther members were stripped, blindfolded and beaten, covered with blankets soaked in boiling water, shocked with electric cattle prods on their genitals and anuses. Even though the charges were thrown out in 1975 on the basis that their confessions had been coerced through torture, the vendetta against the former Panthers framed up for the killing of the cop continued until 2011.

Today, tortures such as isolation and sensory deprivation are a daily reality for the thousands of inmates—overwhelmingly black and Latino—in the solitary confinement Special Housing Units (SHU) of America’s prisons. The High Security Units in the Lexington, Kentucky, women’s prison were a prototype for the SHUs. Those units were designed to hold leftist political activists as part of Ronald Reagan’s “war on terror,” launched in 1986. Among the women locked up in them were leftists Susan Rosenberg and Silvia Baraldini as well as Alejandrina Torres, a supporter of the Puerto Rican-nationalist FALN.

The prisoner held the longest in solitary confinement in this country is Albert Woodfox. He has been in solitary since 1972, framed up with another Black Panther for the killing of a prison guard. Woodfox is kept in a closet-size, windowless cell 23 hours per day. He eats all his meals alone and has no access to the prison’s educational or religious activities. Even though he is under constant supervision and is shackled whenever he is moved, he is subjected to visual body cavity searches up to six times a day. Woodfox’s conviction has repeatedly been overturned, most recently this past November, but his conditions remain unchanged.

Socialist Revolution Will End Imperialist Barbarism

While torture is an intrinsic part of the armory of repression of capitalist states everywhere, another type of society is possible, the model for which issued out of the Russian October Revolution of 1917. Led by the Bolshevik Party of Lenin and Trotsky, that revolution made the working class the rulers of society for the first time in history. The Soviet workers state was a fundamentally different state than any capitalist state. It defended not the interests of a tiny exploiting minority but of the vast majority of society—the working masses of the proletariat and poor peasantry. As part of their liberating program, the Bolsheviks repudiated dehumanizing barbarities like torture, even while using all means necessary to ensure victory in the civil war against Russian counterrevolutionaries and the 14 capitalist powers that sent troops to overthrow the workers government.

Temporary and drastic measures were required to defeat counterrevolution. For that purpose, the early Soviet workers state established the Cheka (Extraordinary Commission to Combat Counterrevolution and Sabotage). The Cheka’s methods reflected the proletarian morality of the Soviet power. In 1918, Cheka head Felix Dzerzhinsky issued the following instructions:

“Let all those who are assigned to conduct searches, take people into custody, and imprison them behave solicitously toward those being arrested or searched. Let them be much more courteous even than toward close friends. Let them remember that the incarcerated cannot defend themselves and that they are in our power. Each and every one must remember that they represent Soviet power, the workers’ and peasants’ government, and that any verbal abuse, rudeness, injustice, or impropriety is a blot upon the Soviet power.”

When a small Moscow journal, Cheka Weekly, published a letter calling for the use of torture, the Cheka responded, “The proletariat is merciless in its struggle. At the same time it is unshakable and strong. Not a single curse at our most wicked enemies. No tortures and torments!” The Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, the highest governmental body, passed a decree: “The Soviet regime fundamentally rejects the measures advocated in the indicated article, as despicable, dangerous, and contrary to the interests of the struggle for Communism” (quoted in Roy A. Medvedev, Let History Judge [1972]). The Cheka Weekly was closed down, and the authors of the letter dismissed and forbidden to hold office in the Soviet republic.

The economic backwardness of Russia, the decimation of the advanced layers of the proletariat during the civil war and the failure to extend the revolution internationally allowed a bureaucratic caste headed by J.V. Stalin to usurp political power from the proletariat in 1923-24. Under the Stalinist regime, all the old “tortures and torments” denounced by the early Soviet government were revived. Despite its Stalinist degeneration, the Soviet Union remained a workers state, based on proletarian property forms, until its final undoing through capitalist counterrevolution in 1991-92.

We stand in the tradition of the liberating goals of Lenin and Trotsky’s Bolsheviks. Our aim is to win revolutionary-minded youth and proletarian fighters to the necessity of building revolutionary parties, in the U.S. and internationally, to lead the working class to power. Only then will mankind be able put an end to torture, repression and imperialist war and develop a society of abundance, where the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.