This space is dedicated to the proposition that we need to know the history of the struggles on the left and of earlier progressive movements here and world-wide. If we can learn from the mistakes made in the past (as well as what went right) we can move forward in the future to create a more just and equitable society. We will be reviewing books, CDs, and movies we believe everyone needs to read, hear and look at as well as making commentary from time to time. Greg Green, site manager
Tuesday, March 03, 2015
Stop The Damn Wars, Stop The Damn Bombings, Congress Vote Down Obama’s War Resolution On ISIS (And Whatever Resolution He Or The Next War President Brings Forth For The Next War)-Vote Down The War Budgets
For a very long time now under the influence of the Bolshevik Duma deputies in voting against the Czar’s war budgets for supplies in World War I (and winding up in Siberian exile for their troubles), the Bulgarian and Serbian Social-Democrats in that war voting against their respective war budgets, and more so the valor of Karl Liebknecht in Germany in breaking with his Social-Democratic Party policy of voting as a bloc in voting against the Kaiser’s war budgets also in that same war (and winding in the Kaiser’s jails for his efforts) I have argued with those in the anti-war movement that the key to any political support to any politician is their negative vote on the war budgets. That is not the over-all defense budget which is asking for way too much these days and would have me put away for my own good even by Senator Bernie Saunders of Vermont but just against the specific budgets for whatever current adventure the United States government has embarked upon. That is the litmus test for any serious opposition at the parliamentary level.
This is no abstract question these days as I write (February 2015) since President Obama is now scratching around once again for Congressional authorization to go after ISIS and whoever else he has in his gun-sights these days. That said this moment I, we are not asking anything about the war budgets but for Congress to simply say “no.” That would be a big step and even Senator Bernie Saunders of Vermont would grant me a reprieve from that institution he was about to throw me in for such a reasonable request. Let’s get to it, let’s set a fire under the Congress and hold each and every hand to that fire on this one.
Some of my fellow anti-war activists have argued with me about this “no support for politicians who say “yes” to war resolutions and budgets citing the “progressive” variation of the old chestnut that you must support Democrat X because despite the fact that he or she put up every hand for every war resolution and every war budget you have to support him or her because the other guys, usually Republican W, Y, Z, are so much worse, maybe wants to bomb extra countries or jack up the war budget or something (all these maneuvers whether my fellows know it or not honed to an art form in their turns by the Socialist Party, the Communist Party and the Socialist Workers Party the three leftwing organizations in this country that have had the minimal clout necessary to argue this point). I cannot follow that path. However I am always ready to join with the too few forces who care about such questions of war and peace to oppose whatever action the American government is taking to gear up for war, or gear up their incessant bombing campaigns. So yes you will see me walking along with the brethren whenever the call comes out.
Off the recent track record in the failed state of Iraq, the failed state in Libya, the nearly failed state in Syria (I am still looking for those “moderate” anti-ISIS forces that the United States is trying to supply in Syria) and also the nearly failed state in Ukraine all of which have the fingerprints of American involvement over them the beginning of wisdom is to oppose further military involvement. Hands Off Syria! No New War In Iraq! Stop The Bombings and Drone Attacks! No Military Aid to Ukraine….and that is just for starters.
The Latest From The Justice For Lynne Stewart Website
Click below to link to the Justice For Lynne Stewart website
Although Lynne Stewart has been released by “Uncle” on medical grounds since last winter (2014) after an international campaign to get her adequate medical attention her case should still be looked at as an especially vindictive ploy on the part of the American government in post-9/11 America to tamp down on attorneys (and others concerned about the fate of "los olvidados," the forgotten ones, the forgotten political prisoners) who have been zealously defending their unpopular clients (and political prisoners). A very chilling effect on the legal profession and elsewhere as I have witnessed on too many occasions when legal assistance is desperately needed. As a person who is committed to doing political prisoner defense work I have noted how few such “people’s lawyers” there around to defend the voiceless, the framed and “the forgotten ones.” There are not enough, there are never enough such lawyers around and her disbarment by the New York bar is an added travesty of justice surrounding the case.
Back in the 1960s and early 1970s there were, relatively speaking, many Lynne Stewarts. Some of this reflecting the radicalization of some old-time lawyers who hated what was going in America with its prison camp mentality and it’s seeking out of every radical, black or white but as usual especially black revolutionaries, it could get its hands on. Hell, who hated that in many cases their sons and daughters were being sent to the bastinado. But mostly it was younger lawyers, lawyers like Lynne Stewart, who took on the Panther cases, the Chicago cases, the Washington cases, the military cases (which is where I came to respect such “people’s lawyers” as I was working with anti-war GIs at the time and we needed, desperately needed, legal help to work our way in the arcane military “justice” system then, and now witness Chelsea Manning) who learned about the class-based nature of the justice system. And then like a puff those hearty lawyers headed for careers and such and it was left for the few Lynne Stewarts to shoulder on. Probably the clearest case of that shift was with the Ohio Seven (two, Jann Laamann and Tom Manning, who are still imprisoned) in the 1980s, working-class radicals who would have been left out to dry without Lynne Stewart. Guys and gals who a few years before would have been heralded as front-line anti-imperialist fighters like thousands of others were then left out to dry. Damn. ******
The following paragraph is a short description of the Lynne Stewart case from the 2013 Holiday Appeal when she was a recipient of a stipend by the class-war prisoners’ defense organization, the Partisan Defense Committee, as part of their solicitation for funds to continue their work of seeing those of our people behind bars are not forgotten.
“Lynne Stewart is a lawyer imprisoned in 2009 for defending her client, a blind Egyptian cleric convicted for an alleged plot to blow up New York City landmarks in the early 1990s. Stewart is a well-known advocate who defended Black Panthers, radical leftists and others reviled by the capitalist state. She was originally sentenced to 28 months; a resentencing pursued by the Obama administration more than quadrupled her prison time to ten years. As she is 74 years old and suffers from Stage IV breast cancer that has spread to her lungs and back, this may well be a death sentence. Stewart qualifies for immediate compassionate release, but Obama’s Justice Department refuses to make such a motion before the resentencing judge, who has all but stated that he would grant her release!”
********* Lynne Stewart’s pressing continuing medical needs and the need for funds to get that attention is also of continuing concern so click on to the link on the site where you can help defray her medical expenses.
February 25th, 2015
Lynne wanted to share this letter from political prisoner David Gilbert with everyone: Click here to read David Gilbert’s letter.
People can write David at: Gilbert, David, #83A6158, Auburn Correctional Facility, P.O. Box 618, Auburn, NY 13021-0618
You can find out more about writing to David and other political prisoners by clicking here to visit the Jericho Movement’s website.
February 23rd, 2015 Photo by Marty Goodman
It was a bitter cold night outside on East 54 Street and Lexington Avenue but the temperature inside St. Peters Church began to rise with the first arrivals at around 5 for an evening of historic remembrance and love. We were there to celebrate and re-commit ourselves to the heroic men and women who sacrificed and continue to be at the mercy of the most barbaric prison systems in this world. “Bring Them All Home” was the rallying cry, repeated many times during the course of the evening and re-inforced by prison veteran Laura Whitehorn when she reminded us that these heroes do not “languish”,they are a vital part of the force that will ultimately free them.
After the crowd gathered we were serenaded.exhorted,made to laugh out loud and weep by the various persons who had come to the Valentine. And that was the right name because this was all about love. Not the sickeningly sentimental Hollywood or tv editions but the kind that is strong in recognizing that heroes and sheroes. The kind that understands that freedom is sometimes sacrifice but must never descend to cynicism. That righteous anger is truth, an Honest response to an intolerable situation. And that “By Any Means Necessary” is not just a slogan but the way forward to reach our goals.
We were favored by the physical presence of ex-Political Prisoners Kaze. Toure, Joel Meyers, Sekou Odinga, Cisco Torres, Laura Whitehorn, Kathy Boudin, myself.
We were exhorted and challenged by speakers Pam Africa, Larry Hamm, Ralph Poynter and Glenn Ford to carry the fight forward. no matter how discouraging or repressive conditions may be. We were serenaded by the Grannies (lynne included) and Lucy Murphy, Janine Otis, Seraphina Brown. The spoken word was given to us by actress extraordinaire Vinie Burrows and First Class Rhymer Comic Professor Louis. Vinie inspired with the words spoken at the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti. The good professor reminded us that that working class always get kicked in the A– and what to do about it.
This fabulous evening was punctuated by remarks of our mcs Mimi Rosenberg and Nelle Bailey. We had messages read from comrades Jeff Mackler, and political prisoners Jalil Montaquim and David Gilbert. We had skypes with pp Larry Giddings , Ralph Shoenman, and from Minnesota Jess Sundin representing one of twenty three grand jury resisters. I personally want to reach out and embrace all the comrades and supporters who worked and contributed to make this event the joyous scene it was. More than I can mention and I don’t want to slight anyone but we had wonderful food before the main event and a red (emphasis on red) velvet cake to make the final celebration at 10 oclock at the close of festivities.
We left in the teeth of a winter wind and below freezing temperatures but our hearts and minds were warm and dedicated once again…At least this warrior woman who was rescued by the People from the vile system and who is still fighting her death warrant was re-invigorated.
More photos from Marty Goodman: Read the rest of this entry »
Friday February 20, 2015 btw 6:00 – 10:00pm in St. Peter`s Church at Lexington Av. & E. 54th.
Take the E, M, #6, 4, 5, N, Q, R, F, B, D, E, also #1, C, D stops & cross town bus via 57th or via 50th https://goo.gl/maps/XkFQ5
If you are in New York City on Feb. 20th please join us for a wonderful event both celebrating the 1 year anniversary of the release of Lynne Stewart and the continuing work to bring all of the political prisoners home.
It’s Time To Free Them All And Bring Our Political Prisoners Home! Who: Ralph & Lynne New Abolitionist Movement, Lynne Stewart Organization What: Support Political Prisoners Where: St. Peter’s church on Lex & 54 St in Manhattan When: Feb. 20, 2015 Btw 6-10pm Why: Because we owe all of the human rights legislation of the 60′s, 70′s, 80′s & 90′s,etc to our political prisoners. We owe the voice we now have about our Mother Earth to our Eco political prisoners. And to do nothing about the torture of our Muslim political prisoners is immoral. So join us in sending this Valentine far & wide. Bring them home NOW. Free the Land!!!
February 11th, 2015 ANNOUNCEMENT! “Ralph Poynter: What’s Happening” is the new show on Human Rights Demand channel at Blogtalkradio, beginning Tuesdays at 9pmEST. Poynter is a retired NY school teacher, former union organizer, legal investigator, and a noted public speaker. He and his wife, Lynne Stewart, are human and civil rights icons. Poynter looks forward to your questions and comments during each radio broadcast. Please call (347)857-3293 to speak on air, or simply listen via computer.
All “Human Rights Demand” shows are archived for future listening at your convenience: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/humanrightsdemand
January 28th, 2015 A Valentine from Lynne Stewart to all Political Prisoners — In and Out, On February 20 we will have an event at St Peters Church (the Jazz church) from 5:30 to 10 pm celebrating and sending Mad Love to all who still remain behind the walls and to those who have been forced to be guests of the State and who are now released. This is meant to be as Inclusive as the Lynne Stewart Organization has always been.
St Peters is located at 54 Street and Lexington Avenue in Manhattan. We will have entertainment–musical, comedy There will be speeches (short) with Glenn Ford as a featured keynoter. We are hoping to duplicate the wonderful outpouring of a year ago to welcome Lynne home.
Admission is $10 No one will be turned away, and there will be refreshments.
We are dedicated to bring home all political prisoners and prisoners of war and conscience from all progressive struggles! Come One Come All February 20 at St Peters Church!
Ralph Poynter . New Abolitionist Movement
February 20 at 5:30 to 10 pm At St Peters Church (Lexington and 55 Street Manhattan) A Valentine from Lynne Stewart to all Political Prisoners — In and Out! Admission is $10 - No one will be turned away
If you have done time as a political prisoner or prisoner of war or person of conscience: please be in touch with us!
Support Tom Manning's new book project! Tom Manning is a freedom fighter, political prisoner and prolific artist. His paintings are stories that jump off the page, revealing the outlook of people who struggle for liberation around the world. His paintings are about life and his landscapes recall times of importance. The years of work to produce this beautiful book and important document are nearing their end and we need your help to fund the last phase of production!
In
Honor Of The 96th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Communist International-Take
Three –A Daughter of The Communards?
Claudette Longuet idolized her grandfather, her maternal
grandfather, Louis Paret, called the Lyonese Jaures by his comrades in the
Socialist Party and by others as well not attuned to his political perspectives
but respectful of the power of his words nevertheless, an honorific
well-deserved for his emulation of the internationally famous French socialist
orator, Jean Jaures, who had been villainously assassinated just before the
war. Claudette had reason to idolize Papa Paret for his was a gentle man toward
his several grandchildren and so had a built-in fan club of sorts before he
even left the comfortable confines of his townhouse on the edges of downtown
Lyon.
More importantly Claudette had idolized him for his political
past, his proud working class and socialist political past. As a mere boy he had
fought on the barricades during the Paris Commune, a touchstone for all those
who survived the bloody massacre reprisals of the Thiers government carried out
by the sadistic General Gallifit. He just barely missed being transported.
Fortunately no “snitch” could place him on the barricades, although the Thiers
government was not always so choosey about such things when they had their
killing habits on. He had defended the poor Jewish soldier Dreyfus when Emile Zola
screamed for his release. He had opposed Alexander Millerand, an avowed
socialist, in joining the murderous bourgeois government when he took that
step. He tirelessly campaigned against war, signed all the national and
international petitions to prevent that occurrence, and attended all the
conferences too. Although he himself was no Marxist, his socialism ran to more
mystical and philosophical trends, he welcomed the Russian Revolution of 1905
with open arms. So, yes, Claudette, as she grew to young womanhood and began
her own search for social and political meaning, understandable took her cues
from her Papa. Moreover before the war she spent many hours in his company at
the local socialist club doing the “this and that” to spread the socialist faith
around and about Lyons.
Then the war came, that dreaded awful August 1914 when the
guns of war howled into the night and her grandfather changed, almost
chameleon-like. From a fervent anti-warrior he turned overnight into a paragon
of defense ofFrench culture, French
bourgeois culture, as he would have previously said against, against, the Hun,
the Boche, the, the, whatever foul word he could use to denigrate the Germans,
all of them. He stood in the central square in Lyon and preached, preached the
duty of every eligible young Frenchman to defend the republic to the death, no
questions asked. And since he had that Jaures-like quality those young boys
listened and sadly went off to war, many to never return. For a while he also had
Claudette with him, for the first couple of years when he, they uttered not one
anti-war word, not one. But after about two years, after some awful battles
fought on French soil, some awful battles that were just stacking up the
corpses without let-up, she started to listen to that younger Papa voice, the
voice that thrilled her young girl-hood, and silently began to oppose the war,
to oppose her grandfather who had not changed his opinion one iota throughout the
carnage.
Claudette kept his silence until the February Revolution in
Russia in 1917 when it seemed like peace might be at hand. He grandfather
cursed the Russians whenever there was talk that they might withdraw from the
war but she saw that their withdrawal might stop the war on all fronts. Mainly
she was tired of seeing the weekly casualty lists and all the women, young and
old, in black, always black. Then in November or maybe December 1917 she heard,
heard from her new beau (a beau a little younger than her, almost just a boy,
since the men her age were either at the fronts or had laid their heads down in
some sodden ground) who had been agitating for an end to the war (and getting
hell for it from the local government, and her grandfather) that the Russians
under the Bolsheviks had withdrawn from the war. Things were sketchy, very
sketchy with the wartime censorship on but that is what she heard from him. She
talked to, or tried to talk to her grandfather about it, but he would not hear
of the damn Bolshevik rabble.
Papa Paret moreover said when peace came, and it would come,
with or without the damn Russians, since the entry of the American would take
the final stuffing out of the Germans, then everybody could go back to arguing
against war and French and German workers could unite again under the banner of
the Socialist International and maybe really end war for good. And the war did
end, and the various socialists who had just supported the massive
blood-letting in Europe and elsewhere started talking of brotherhood once again
and of putting that old peacetime International back together. Claudette though,
now more under the spell of that feisty boyfriend, was not sure that
grandfather had it right. And in the summer of 1919 when she heard (via that
same boyfriend who had already joined the French Communist Party, or really the
embryo of that party) that the Bolsheviks had convened a conference to form a
new International, a Third International, to really fight against war and fight
for socialism she was more conflicted. See she really did idolize Papa and so
she would wait and see…
As The 100th
Anniversary Of The First Year Of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars)
Continues... Some Remembrances-From The Marxist Archives-
HONOR ROSA LUXEMBURG-THE ROSE OF THE REVOLUTION
Every January leftists honor three revolutionaries who died in that month, V.I. Lenin of Russia in 1924, Karl Liebknecht of Germany and Rosa Luxemburg of Poland in 1919 murdered after leading the defeated Spartacist uprising in Berlin. Lenin needs no special commendation. I will make my political points about the heroic Karl Liebknecht and his parliamentary fight against the German war budget in World War I in this space tomorrow so I would like to make some points here about the life of Rosa Luxemburg. These comments come at a time when the question of a woman President is the buzz in the political atmosphere in the United States in the lead up to the upcoming 2016 elections. Rosa, who died almost a century ago, puts all such pretenders to so-called ‘progressive’ political leadership in the shade.
The early Marxist movement, like virtually all progressive political movements in the past, was heavily dominated by men. I say this as a statement of fact and not as something that was necessarily intentional or good. It is only fairly late in the 20th century that the political emancipation of women, mainly through the granting of the vote earlier in the century, led to mass participation of women in politics as voters or politicians. Although, socialists, particularly revolutionary socialists, have placed the social, political and economic emancipation of women at the center of their various programs from the early days that fact had been honored more in the breech than the observance.
All of this is by way of saying that the political career of the physically frail but intellectually robust Rosa Luxemburg was all the more remarkable because she had the capacity to hold her own politically and theoretically with the male leadership of the international social democratic movement in the pre-World War I period. While the writings of the likes of then leading German Social Democratic theoretician Karl Kautsky are safely left in the basket Rosa’s writings today still retain a freshness, insightfulness and vigor that anti-imperialist militants can benefit from by reading. Her book Accumulation of Capital , whatever its shortfalls alone would place her in the select company of important Marxist thinkers.
But Rosa Luxemburg was more than a Marxist thinker. She was also deeply involved in the daily political struggles pushing for left-wing solutions. Yes, the more bureaucratic types, comfortable in their party and trade union niches, hated her for it (and she, in turn, hated them) but she fought hard for her positions on an anti-class collaborationist, anti-militarist and anti-imperialist left-wing of the International of the social democratic movement throughout this period. And she did this not merely as an adjunct leader of a women’s section of a social democratic party but as a fully established leader of left-wing men and women, as a fully socialist leader. One of the interesting facts about her life is how little she wrote on the women question as a separate issue from the broader socialist question of the emancipation of women. Militant leftist, socialist and feminist women today take note.
One of the easy ways for leftists, particularly later leftists influenced by Stalinist ideology, to denigrate the importance of Rosa Luxemburg’s thought and theoretical contributions to Marxism was to write her off as too soft on the question of the necessity of a hard vanguard revolutionary organization to lead the socialist revolution. Underpinning that theme was the accusation that she relied too much on the spontaneous upsurge of the masses as a corrective to the lack of hard organization or the impediments that reformist socialist elements threw up to derail the revolutionary process. A close examination of her own organization, The Socialist Party of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania, shows that this was not the case; this was a small replica of a Bolshevik-type organization. That organization, moreover, made several important political blocs with the Bolsheviks in the aftermath of the defeat of the Russian revolution of 1905. Yes, there were political differences between the organizations, particularly over the critical question for both the Polish and Russian parties of the correct approach to the right of national self-determination, but the need for a hard organization does not appear to be one of them.
Furthermore, no less a stalwart Bolshevik revolutionary than Leon Trotsky, writing in her defense in the 1930’s, dismissed charges of Rosa’s supposed ‘spontaneous uprising’ fetish as so much hot air. Her tragic fate, murdered with the complicity of her former Social Democratic comrades, after the defeated Spartacist uprising in Berlin in 1919 (at the same time as her comrade, Karl Liebknecht), had causes related to the smallness of the group, its political immaturity and indecisiveness than in its spontaneousness. If one is to accuse Rosa Luxemburg of any political mistake it is in not pulling the Spartacist group out of Kautsky’s Independent Social Democrats (itself a split from the main Social Democratic party during the war, over the war issue) sooner than late 1918. However, as the future history of the communist movement would painfully demonstrate revolutionaries have to take advantage of the revolutionary opportunities that come their way, even if not the most opportune or of their own making.
All of the above controversies aside, let me be clear, Rosa Luxemburg did not then need nor does she now need a certificate of revolutionary good conduct from today’s leftists, from any reader of this space or from this writer. For her revolutionary opposition to World War I when it counted, at a time when many supposed socialists had capitulated to their respective ruling classes including her comrades in the German Social Democratic Party, she holds a place of honor. Today, as we face the endless wars of imperialist intervention in the Middle East and elsewhere in Iraq we could use a few more Rosas, and a few less tepid, timid parliamentary opponents. For this revolutionary opposition she went to jail like her comrade Karl Liebknecht. For revolutionaries it goes with the territory. And in jail she wrote, she always wrote, about the fight against the ongoing imperialist war (especially in the Junius pamphlets about the need for a Third International). Yes, Rosa was at her post then. And she died at her post later in the Spartacist fight doing her internationalist duty trying to lead the German socialist revolution the success of which would have gone a long way to saving the Russian Revolution. This is a woman leader I could follow who, moreover, places today’s bourgeois women parliamentary politicians in the shade. As the political atmosphere gets heated up over the next couple years, remember what a real fighting revolutionary woman politician looked like. Remember Rosa Luxemburg, the Rose of the Revolution.
**************
Workers Vanguard No. 1060
23 January 2015
From the Archives of Marxism
Honor Rosa Luxemburg!
From Lenin, Liebknecht, Luxemburg by Max Shachtman
“Today the bourgeoisie and the social-traitors are jubilating in Berlin—they have succeeded in murdering Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. Ebert and Scheidemann, who for four years led the workers to the slaughter for the sake of depredation, have now assumed the role of butchers of the proletarian leaders. The example of the German revolution proves that ‘democracy’ is only a camouflage for bourgeois robbery and the most savage violence.
“Death to the butchers!”
— “Speech at a Protest Rally Following the Murder of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg,” 19 January 1919
This was Bolshevik leader V.I. Lenin’s cry of rage after the assassination of two revered Marxist leaders of the German proletariat. They were murdered by the fascistic Freikorps at the behest of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) government of Friedrich Ebert and Philipp Scheidemann as it moved to crush the unfolding workers revolution in that country. German Social Democracy had proved its rottenness on 4 August 1914, when SPD deputies in parliament voted to fund the German military in World War I. Against the social-traitors Ebert & Co., Liebknecht and Luxemburg fought for revolutionary proletarian internationalism. In the tradition of the early Communist International, every January we honor the memory of these revolutionary fighters, the “Three Ls”—Luxemburg, Liebknecht and Lenin himself, who died on 21 January 1924.
The appreciation of Luxemburg reprinted below comes from the undated pamphlet Lenin, Liebknecht, Luxemburg published by the Young Workers (Communist) League of America sometime between 1924 and 1928. The pamphlet’s author, Max Shachtman, was expelled in 1928 from the U.S. Communist Party for supporting the Left Opposition led internationally by Leon Trotsky. The Trotskyists fought down the line against the Stalinist degeneration of the Soviet workers state and the Communist International. Although Shachtman would break from Trotskyism during World War II and eventually become an open supporter of U.S. imperialism, he was for a time a revolutionary leader and talented proponent of Marxism.
The excerpt below erroneously states that Berlin police chief Emil Eichhorn was removed from office a year after the founding of the German Communist Party. In fact, it was only a few days later, as the article on the facing page lays out in greater detail.
August 4, 1914. The world was astounded by the social democratic vote on war credits. But Rosa wasted not a moment. Declaring the social democracy a whited sepulchre, a foul corpse, she grouped around herself the cream of the revolutionary wing of the old party. With her came Karl Liebknecht, Leo Jogiches, Franz Mehring, Wilhelm Pieck, Clara Zetkin, [Ernst] Meyer and others. A small band they were, but immediately they proceeded to their task. Illegal literature was spread at every opportunity. Flaming appeals against the imperialist war were the order of the day. Rosa Luxemburg, who had written her famous open letter to [French social democrat] Jean Jaures six years before, arguing against his declaration that the alliance between France, England and Russia was a step towards peace, was being confronted by the truth of her own prophetic words.
The workers were beginning to come out of the stupor resulting from the first shock at the socialist betrayal. Within six months the small handful of revolutionists had grown to greater proportions despite its illegality and the hindrances in its way. In February of the year following the declaration of war, representatives from many cities gathered to found the group of “The International.” To combine legal with illegal work they proposed to issue a magazine with the name of their group at its head and with Red Rosa as its editor. This brilliant organ was declared illegal after the publication of the first number.
And now the sentence against Rosa for her Frankfurt speech [in 1914 against the imperialist war] was confirmed and she was once more imprisoned for a year. Surrounded by stone and iron she continued to carry on her agitation as though she were free. With the cooperation of the faithful Leo Tyszka [Jogiches], her oldest friend and co-worker, she issued numbers of Die Internationale, which stands today as the official theoretical organ of the party she founded, the German Communist Party, a monument to her work. From prison, also, she wrote her famous pamphlet, “The Crisis in the German Social Democracy,” which became known far and wide as the Junius brochure, since she was unable to sign her own name to it and was therefore obliged to use the pseudonym Junius.
“Shamed, dishonored, wading in blood and dripping with filth, thus capitalist society stands. Not as we usually see it, playing the roles of peace and righteousness, of order, of philosophy, of ethics—as a roaring beast, as an orgy of anarchy, as a pestilential breath, devastating culture and humanity—so it appears in all its hideous nakedness. And in the midst of this orgy a world tragedy has occured: the capitulation of the social democracy.... It forgot all its principles, its pledges, the decision of international congresses, just at the moment when they should have found their application.”
Bitterly did she scourge the social democratic traitors; scornfully she lashed to tatters their false arguments of national defense; and skilfully she exposed the imperialist roots of the war. Yet here also she relied too greatly upon the spontaneous action of the masses. Unlike Lenin she did not raise the inspiring slogan: Turn the imperialist war into a civil war of the proletariat against its oppressors! And Lenin, while greeting joyously this noble revolutionary voice crying in the sterile desert of shameless betrayal, did not fail to criticize this omission in his own book, “Against the Stream,” which he collected together with other articles written by Zinoviev.
Against the stream! “It is never easy to swim against the current, and when the stream rushes on with the rapidity and the power of a Niagara it does not become easier!” said the older Liebknecht [Karl’s father Wilhelm]. And yet Rosa swam bravely with her comrades against the streams of blood which were being shed in the imperialist slaughter. Released from prison just before Liebknecht’s arrest [for speaking against the war in 1916] at the famous May Day demonstration, she was soon rearrested to be released only by the first revolution in Germany [in November 1918]. Again there flowed from prison a constant stream of propaganda from her fertile pen. From her prison cell were written the famous Spartacus Letters. There also she replied to the critics of her “Accumulation of Capital” which had been published before the war, in which she attempted to set forth a Marxist theory of imperialist political economy. From that cell, too, came the letters to the wife of Karl Liebknecht which portrayed the sensitive and lovable soul of this uncompromising rebel, her love for life and struggle. There also her pamphlet on the Russian revolution, unfortunately composed on the basis of misinformation, the errors of which she later partially corrected, and which was triumphantly published by the renegade Paul Levi [after his departure from the Communist Party] who attempted to use it to justify his own cowardice and to attack the first working class republic.
“This madness will not stop, and this bloody nightmare of hell will not cease until the workers of Germany, of France, of Russia and of England will wake up out of their drunken sleep; will clasp each other’s hands in brotherhood and will drown the bestial chorus of war agitators and the hoarse cry of capitalist hyenas with the mighty cry of labor, ‘Proletarians of all countries, unite!’”
Thus had she ended her Junius brochure. And when the German revolution followed the successful uprising in Russia she was freed, together with Liebknecht, again to take up her incessant struggle for the workers’ cause. With new hopes the two Spartacans renewed their labors to build up a Communist Party in Germany. Battle-scarred, undaunted, they proceeded to unite the revolutionary forces of Germany: the Spartakusbund and the revolutionary groups of Hamburg and Bremen which were led by Paul Frölich, [Johann] Knief, and Karl Radek. At the end of the year of 1918 the first congress of the Communist Party of Germany was completed. The party was as yet weak; it was dominated by leftist elements. Despite the opposition of Rosa and Karl, the congress voted to oppose participation in elections or parliaments of any kind, as well as for the boycotting of the trade unions and appeals to the workers to leave them. Rosa argued, with little avail. Yet, in the program she wrote and which was adopted by the congress, the aims of the young Communist movement are clearly stated:
“The proletarian revolution is the death-bed of slavery and oppression. For this reason all capitalists, Junkers [landed nobility], members of the petty middle class, officers, and all those who live on exploitation and class hegemony, will rise against it to a man in a struggle for life and death. It is madness to believe that the capitalist class will, with good will, subordinate itself to the verdict of a socialist majority in parliament; and that it will voluntarily renounce its proprietary rights and its privileges of exploitation. Every ruling class has, to the very end, fought for its privileges with the most stubborn energy. The class of capitalist imperialists exceeds all its predecessors in undisguised cynicism, brutality, and meanness.... Against the threatening danger of the counter-revolution must come the arming of the workers and the disarming of the hitherto ruling class. The fight for socialism is the most gigantic civil war in history, and the proletarian revolution must prepare the necessary defense for this war. It must learn to use it, to fight and to conquer. This defence of the compact masses of the workers, this arming of them with the full political power for the accomplishment of the revolution, is what is known as the dictatorship of the proletariat. This, and only this, is the true democracy.”
The young party was soon to receive its baptism in blood. The social democrats were placed at the head of the so-called revolutionary government to head off the real revolution which would place power actually into the hands of the working class. Traitorous, they quaked at the idea of a proletarian revolution. Growing up by their side, like the Soviets alongside of the decaying Russian Constituent Assembly, were the Workmen’s Councils and the Communist Party. The social democrats did not hesitate to choose between revolution and suppression of revolutionary forces. A year after the founding of the Communist Party, the Workmen’s Councils were maliciously provoked by the social democratic government which removed the popular police president of Berlin, Emil Eichhorn, a member of the Independent Socialist Party. Rosa knew that the situation was not yet developed for an uprising. She realized that the masses had not yet been rallied to the support of the Communist Party; that they had not, in the words of the program she had written, gained “the consent of the clear, unanimous will of the majority of the proletarian masses of Germany and...conscious agreement with the aims and methods of the Spartakusbund.” But less clear heads prevailed and instantly the battle was on.
Together with a group of independent socialists, the Communists seized the building of the social democratic Vorwärts [newspaper] and issued a manifesto deposing the national government. Barricades were thrown up overnight. Workers armed themselves and prepared to give battle. Red Rosa did not hesitate. Marx, before her, had disapproved of the action of the revolutionaries of Paris in proclaiming the Commune [in 1870]; but as soon as the revolt was on he placed himself in line with the rebels—uncompromisingly; and after their terrible defeat he wrote the most brilliant declaration in its defense that the world has yet seen. And Rosa, in the same dilemma of being obliged to take a position in favor of an action which had been taken against her best judgment, showed the same revolutionary spirit as Karl Marx.
Unhesitatingly, the young party threw itself into the battle. With historic heroism they fought the troops of the social democrat [Gustav] Noske. With sabers and machine guns their proletarian lives were cut down to the ground. Rosa led in the battles. Liebknecht was everywhere, in the front ranks, among the youth who defended buildings that were being held by the Spartacans, in the barricades, indefatigably working among the inexperienced troops, giving encouragement and good cheer to all.
A general strike is declared; the factories stand gaunt and silent. The Berliner Tageblatt [newspaper] is taken over by the Berlin youth; the paper rolls are used for barricades, the books of the concern to bolster up the windows; a Red Cross station is established and guards are placed. On a number of churches, machine guns are lashed to command the streets. In front of the Vorwärts building a huge bonfire of the social democratic leaflets which have insulted the working class. The Bötzow brewery is held by the armed workers.
The government marshalls its forces: social democratic workers who have been poisoned against the revolutionaries. Workers against workers.
Saturday sees the end of the brave battle. The Vorwärts building is surrounded and surrendered. Whoever is caught with arms is forthwith shot. A sixteen year old fighter is called upon to shout “Long live the republic!”; he shouts instead “Long live Liebknecht!”; he is killed. The historic January days are over. They have seen heroic sacrifice and base betrayal.
A short few days pass. Liebknecht and Luxemburg are discovered. They are taken to the Eden Hotel, the headquarters of the troopers. Karl is spirited away and murdered by these “heroes.” As Rosa is leaving the hotel entrance, the trooper Runge is standing at the door. Commander Petri has given the order that she is not to reach the prison alive. The obliging Runge strikes her heavily on the head twice, so heavily that the blows are heard in the lobby of the hotel. Rosa sinks to the ground. She is lifted and thrown into the vehicle, one man on each side of her and Lieutenant Vogel in the rear. As the truck drives off, a soldier springs up from behind and delivers another sharp blow to the unconscious martyr; Lieutenant Vogel levels his revolver and shoots her in the back of the head; the frail, broken body quivers for the last time. They drive between the Landwehr Canal and the Zoological Gardens. No one is in sight. At the exit of the gardens near the canal, a group of soldiers are standing. The auto halts and the corpse is heaved into the canal at the order of Lieutenant Vogel. A few days later the watersoaked body is recovered and interred by the side of Liebknecht. The assassinated Jogiches finds his resting place by their side a short time later.
The social democratic Vorwärts has very humorous writers of jingles. On the eve of the murders they publish a little song:
“Five hundred corpses in a row,
Liebknecht, Rosa, Radek & Co.:
Are they not there also?”
The workers mourn and plan their vengeance. The murderers walk the streets today: they are free men.
* * *
It is said that were Red Rosa living today she would be among the best leaders of the iron regiments of the powerful Communist Party of Germany. Of that there can be little doubt. The attempts of renegades and unscrupulous scoundrels to darken the sacred memory of Rosa Luxemburg by spreading the tale that she opposed the Russian revolution and the Russian Bolsheviks have already been brought to nought. Rosa had many shortcomings. Perhaps only in her last days did she begin to understand that her attitude towards the question of the peasantry was incorrect. In the question of the attitude of revolutionaries towards national independence and the right of self-determination to the point of separation she also held the wrong position. She erred in certain respects in her estimation of the Russian party conflicts, and later in her understanding of the Bolshevik revolution and its tactics. She was wrong in her book “The Accumulation of Capital” and unconsciously, in fighting so vigorously for the principles of Marxism against the opportunist revisionists, herself deviated from those basic economic principles. She had too much confidence in the spontaneous action of the masses irrespective of preparatory organizational work and of the leading role of the party.
And yet she will remain a cherished, beloved memory; yet her spirit will continue to be embodied in the world’s revolutionary movement; yet her name will continue to grow in the hearts of the masses for whom she fought when those who betrayed her will have cheated oblivion only by obloquy.
The Paul Levis who seek to capitalize her errors and forget her glorious history of revolutionary struggle have best been answered by Lenin, who often took issue with Red Rosa, but who appreciated her work as few men do:
“An eagle may descend lower than a chicken, but the chicken can never rise like an eagle. Rosa Luxemburg was mistaken on the question of the independence of Poland, she was mistaken in 1903 in her estimate of the Mensheviki; she was mistaken in her theory of the accumulation of capital; she was mistaken in defending the union of the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks in 1914 along with Plekhanov, Vandervelde, Kautsky and others; she was mistaken in her prison writings in 1918 (on coming out of prison, however, at the end of 1918, she corrected a large number of these mistakes herself). But notwithstanding all her mistakes she was and remains an eagle; and not only will her memory always be highly esteemed by the Communists of all the world, but her biography and the complete collection of her writings will be useful for the instruction of many generations of Communists in all countries. As for the German social democrats after the 4th of August, 1914,—‘a foul corpse’ is the appellation which Rosa Luxemburg gave them, and with which their name will go down in the history of the international labor movement. But in the backyard of the labor movement, among the manure piles, chickens like Paul Levi, Scheidemann, Kautsky and all that fraternity, will be especially enraptured by the mistakes of the great Communist.”
Rosa Luxemburg died like the bravest soldier of the revolution at his post. She died after the defeat of a revolution, after “order” had been established. The last words she is known to have written are her best epitaph:
“Order reigns in Berlin! You senseless thugs! Your ‘order’ is built on sand. The Revolution will rise tomorrow, bristling to the heights, and will to your terror sound forth the trumpet call: ‘I was, I am, I am to be!’”
These words are the muted song of the grim regiments of the proletariat who march in the final struggle and for the final victory.
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 the Cubist/Fauvists/Futurists/Constructivists,
Surrealists or those who would come to speak for those movements (hell even the
Academy spoke the pious words when there was sunny weather), 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 gazebo 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, putting another man to ground or lying their
own heads down for some imperial mission. 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 poets like Wilfred Owens who would sicken of war before he passed
leaving a beautiful damnation on war, its psychoses, and broken bones and
dreams, and the idiots who brought humankind to such a fate, like e. e.
cummings who drove through sheer hell in those rickety ambulances floors
sprayed with blood, man blood, angers, anguishes and more sets of broken bones,
and broken dreams, like Rupert Brooke all manly and old school give and go, as
the marched in formation leaving the ports and then mowed down like freshly
mown grass in their thousands as the charge call came and they rested, a lot of
them, in those freshly mown grasses, like Robert Graves all grave all
sputtering in his words confused about what had happened, suppressing, always
suppressing that instinct to cry out against the hatred night, like old school,
old Thomas Hardy writing beautiful old English pastoral sentiments before the
war and then full-blown into imperium’s service, no questions asked old England
right or wrong, like old stuffed shirt himself T.S. Eliot speaking of hollow
loves, hollow men, wastelands, and such in the high club rooms on the home front,
and like old brother Yeats speaking of terrible beauties born in the colonies
and maybe at the home front too as long as Eliot does not miss hi shigh tea.
Jesus what a blasted nigh that Great War time was.
And do not forget
when the war drums intensified, and the people, their clients, patrons and
buyers, cried out their lusts and they, they, other creative souls made of ordinary
human clay as it turned out artists, sculptors, writers, serious and not,
musicians went to the trenches to die deathless deaths in their thousands for,
well, for humankind, of course, their always fate ….
Field Marshal Erwin Rommel exerted an almost hypnotic influence not only over his own troops but also over the Allied soldiers of the Eighth Army in World War II. Even when the legend surrounding his invincibility was overturned at El Alamein, the aura surrounding Rommel himself remained unsullied. In this classic study of the art of war, Rommel analyzes the tactics that lField Marshal Erwin Rommel exerted an almost hypnotic influence not only over his own troops but also over the Allied soldiers of the Eighth Army in World War II. Even when the legend surrounding his invincibility was overturned at El Alamein, the aura surrounding Rommel himself remained unsullied. In this classic study of the art of war, Rommel analyzes the tactics that lay behind his success. First published in 1937, it quickly became a highly regarded military textbook and also brought its author to the attention of Adolph Hitler. Rommel was to subsequently advance through the ranks to the high command in World War II.
Though most people immediately connect Rommel with the African campaigns of World War II, he made his initial legendary giant steps during the First World War. In this 1935 title, he recalls his greatest battles, outlines how he won them, and provides his strategies on the use of armor in the field lessons ultimately used by Patton and other Allied tank commanders to defeat him.--Library Journal
As a leader of a small unit in the First World War, Rommel proved himself an aggressive and versatile commander, with a reputation for using the battleground terrain to his own advantage, for gathering intelligence, and for seeking out and exploiting enemy weaknesses. Rommel graphically describes his own achievements, and those of his units, in the swift-moving battles on the Western Front, in the ensuing trench warfare, in the 1917 campaign in Romania, and in the pursuit across the Tagliamento and Piave rivers. This classic account seeks out the basis of his astonishing leadership skills, providing an indispensable guide to the art of war written by one of its greatest exponents....more
Paperback, 288 pages
Published May 5th 2009 by Zenith Press (first published 1937)
