A View From The Left -For a Class-Struggle Leadership!-UAW Tops Push Repackaged Sellout

Workers Vanguard No. 1076	16 October 2015

For a Class-Struggle Leadership!-UAW Tops Push Repackaged Sellout

 

What part of “no more tiers” does United Auto Workers (UAW) head Dennis Williams not understand? Union members, by a two-to-one margin, rejected the first rotten deal that his team negotiated with Fiat Chrysler (FCA)—the first time UAW workers have voted down a national contract since 1982. Deliberations had been kept hidden from workers, who were rightly furious at the extension of the two-tier wage system even as Williams hailed the proposed contract for its supposed “tremendous gains.” Returning to the table for Round Two, the UAW bureaucracy this time set a deadline for a strike and very belatedly began preparations, only to announce an eleventh-hour agreement. In the end, more of the same was served up—the tiers that are so corrosive to the unity and integrity of the union are preserved over the life of the deal. This repackaged sellout deserves to share the fate of the first.

Of course, simply sending the same birds back for a third go-round is highly unlikely to yield anything better. To wrest real gains from FCA, as well as General Motors and Ford, the union will have to draw a line with strike action when the bosses don’t budge. Indeed, the mere threat of a strike convinced management to seemingly discover a little extra money it could afford to fork over. But for Williams & Co., who are devoted to maintaining the profitability of the automakers, that threat was intended as theater, not a serious declaration of class battle. Auto workers need a new union leadership, one that will confront the employers from the standpoint of class versus class, not passive acceptance of capitalist exploitation and oppression.

The existing union officialdom’s connivance with the employers was evident in how they addressed the genuine concerns of their members. Equal pay (and benefits) for equal work means all workers should receive the highest rate, immediately. Instead, the union bureaucrats have hatched an eight-year phase-in scheme to close the enormous wage gap. Conveniently for FCA, much of this wage hike is to take place, if at all, after the 2019 expiration of the proposed contract. In other words, it has as much reality as the promised but never delivered cap on the number of second-tier workers from contract talks four years ago. But in the unlikely event that the company adheres entirely to this prolonged wage progression, those hired since 2007 would remain second-class union members, saddled with an inferior health plan and a 401(k) in place of a defined-benefit pension. Tellingly, even if all UAW members tomorrow earned the current top-tier wage of $28 an hour, FCA’s costs per worker would be comparable to those at Toyota’s non-union U.S. operations.

The very purpose of the tier system imposed in the 2007 contract was to gouge UAW workers in order to make the domestic automakers more competitive against their foreign rivals that have set up non-union shops in this country, primarily in the South. For Fiat (now FCA) CEO Sergio Marchionne, who introduced himself to the UAW during the 2009 Chrysler bankruptcy proceedings by insisting the union accept a “culture of poverty,” the gutting of the union is on track. At every step, the pro-capitalist union misleaders have accommodated the bosses, including by helping slash wages. In 2007, then UAW president Ron Gettelfinger boasted that “the gap in labor costs” between the Detroit Three and the “foreign transplant operations will be largely or completely eliminated by the end of the contracts.” Today, Williams, who embraces the notorious union-buster Marchionne literally as well as figuratively, continues to facilitate the plan the FCA chief outlined to investors last year: “We need to freeze the tier ones and make them a dying class.”

The new deal, like the first, also falls far short in many other respects. Left intact is the Alternative Work Schedule, which rotates workers between day, afternoon and night shifts over short periods of time, jeopardizing health and safety. As one worker told WV, “I trade my body for a paycheck.” Enhanced profit sharing and productivity bonuses, intended to blur the class line and grease the skids for speedup, put conditions on money that should just get added to base wages. Retirees, all but told to shut up and die at the time of the bankruptcy, are tossed a lousy $1,000 car voucher for their many years of sweat and toil. And while the union bureaucrats have—for the moment—put on hold their push for a health care co-op (at least at FCA), they still insist on finding “smart solutions” to help the company avoid rising health care costs. One such “solution” is tucked away in the proposed contract: top-tier workers will be forced to pay deductibles for the first time if the “Cadillac tax” mandated by Obama’s Affordable Care Act kicks in.

Enough already! Williams tried to downplay the resounding opposition to his co-op project, claiming it was due to a botched communication effort. No, a stinker is a stinker. The matter is simple: the automakers should foot the bill for any and all expenses (including the Cadillac tax) associated with providing top-level health care to all workers (and their families), who risk life and limb to churn out cars for the bosses’ profit. The health care cost studies proposed by the UAW tops are more smoke and mirrors from a union leadership that goes out of its way to be company-friendly, that is to say, loyal lapdogs of the greedy employers who amass fortunes by exploiting labor.

Accepting the terms set by the capitalists is the road to ruin for the union and its membership. Take the false choice that the UAW bureaucrats present as “the give and take between job security, and good pay and benefits.” Over the years, this “give and take” has brought everything from the spinning off of parts workers and growth in temps to the institution of tiers—everything, that is, except job security and good pay and benefits. Despite modest membership gains since 2012, the UAW represents 42 percent fewer Detroit Three workers than it did in 2005. Meanwhile, the top-tier UAW wage for assembly workers has remained frozen since 2003 (with a marginal increase included in the FCA agreement).

Today, union officials claim to be “proactive” in response to job losses, boasting of measures in the deal like “sourcing conferences” and “strategic partnership initiatives” with the company purchasing department. Such efforts to encourage so-called insourcing are supposed to convince the automaker to bring contracted-out jobs back under the FCA umbrella by offering to have union members do them for subpar wages. Yet more tiers to save the bosses money! In the 1970s, Detroit Three new hires started at over 90 percent full pay and reached top rate after three months. Almost all production workers across a company made the same wage, with some loose change for different classifications and shift premiums.

Far from undertaking an industry-wide strike to restore wage parity, or a militant fight to organize the unorganized at the suppliers, much less auto plants in the South, the UAW tops instead act despicably like labor brokers, reinforcing divisions among the workers and fueling a race to the bottom. The same goes for all the finger-wagging at Mexico, where some FCA auto production is scheduled to move. The framework of U.S. auto worker versus Mexican auto worker is a recipe for driving down wages and working conditions on both sides of the border. Marchionne certainly is no stranger to divide-and-conquer; in recent years, he foisted major concessions on union auto workers in Italy by threatening to move production out of that country (with the U.S. as one possible destination). The way forward is to proceed from the unity of interests of auto workers in the U.S., Mexico and elsewhere against the common class enemy—the Detroit Three auto bosses who bleed workers dry regardless of locale—which would open the prospect of joint struggle.

UAW members have every reason to distrust Williams and his gang. The labor traitors are, for the second time in as many weeks, attempting to sell a bill of goods. Auto workers must not give in to resignation over the possibility of doing any better. Neither should they let their just anger at the union bureaucrats take the form of refusing to pay union dues—a danger opened up by recent “right to work” laws in Michigan and Indiana. Such a step would simply weaken the union in its coming battles. Instead, all members should insist that their hard-earned dues money go into the union strike fund or toward organizing drives—and above all not get wasted on the electoral campaigns of Democratic Party politicians, who no less than Republicans are the political representatives of the bosses. Michigan went “right to work” a couple of years ago after the UAW tops and the rest of labor officialdom channeled protest against the anti-union forces into the dead end of reliance on Democrats and the ballot box.

The Detroit auto giants are today solidly in the black thanks to the massive concessions shoved down the throats of the workers with the active assistance of the UAW bureaucracy. This time around, the automakers are willing to pay out a little to buy labor peace; but for workers to truly get theirs, it is going to take a fight. Given their abiding respect for the bosses’ rules and bottom line, the sellouts atop the union are utterly incapable of directing any serious battle. It is well past time that they be shown the door.

The forging of a class-struggle leadership would go a long way toward transforming the unions into battalions of organized labor, capable of fighting for quality health care that is free for everyone at the point of delivery and jobs for all through a shorter workweek with no loss in pay, among other causes of the entire working people. Armed with a program based on the understanding that the working class shares no interest with the bosses, a union with the power of the UAW could head up a broader fight against capitalism’s ravages, enlisting support from the rest of the proletariat as well as the unemployed and black and immigrant communities in the crosshairs of the capitalist rulers. This perspective demands the building of a multiracial revolutionary workers party dedicated to the overthrow of capitalist production for profit once and for all.

A View From The Left-Imperialist Atrocity in Kunduz-U.S. Out of Afghanistan and the Near East!

Workers Vanguard No. 1076	16 October 2015

Imperialist Atrocity in Kunduz-U.S. Out of Afghanistan and the Near East!

 

Over 100 patients and 80 medical staff were packed into the hospital in the Afghan city of Kunduz as the building was ripped apart by aerial bombardment in the dead of night on October 3. Wave after wave of deadly bombing continued, lasting at least an hour, despite frantic calls from the Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF—Doctors Without Borders) staff to U.S., NATO and Afghan military headquarters. By the time it was over, 12 staff and ten patients, including three children, were dead and the intensive care, emergency room and physiotherapy units razed to the ground. Six patients burned to death in their beds in the intensive care unit, another lay dead on the operating table; a surgeon died on an office table. Over 30 people are missing. A fitting marker for the 14th anniversary of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Afghanistan.

As survivors mourned colleagues and loved ones, the Pentagon scrambled for cover, issuing a steady stream of contradictory lies, replete with trite references to “collateral damage” and Taliban “human shields.” That might have been the end of it, had the dead simply been indigent, illiterate Afghan villagers. But MSF is internationally respected and well-connected, and its spokesmen swatted down the Pentagon lies like flies, demanding an independent investigation into this war crime. So after nearly a week of prevarication, President Obama was finally compelled to issue a grudging apology, even as he insisted on keeping the “investigation” in-house.

Afghanistan was the “good war” Obama pledged to win when he won the presidency in 2008, as opposed to George W. Bush’s “bad war” and occupation in Iraq, which the Democrats vowed to end in short order. Seven years later, American forces remain in Iraq. In Afghanistan, notwithstanding that the U.S. combat role was officially brought to an end last year, Obama has increased the use of drone warfare, while almost 10,000 U.S. troops remain in the country on a training and advisory mission. The “advisers” are clearly still bombing away.

The Kunduz bombing was no accident. The hospital offered medical care to victims from all sides of the conflict; that’s why it was raided by Afghan government troops in July, and that’s why it was bombed. The Taliban religious reactionaries are die-hard opponents of social liberation; nonetheless, U.S. imperialism is the main enemy of the world’s working people and oppressed masses, who have a military side with even these Islamic fundamentalists against the imperialists. All U.S. and other imperialist forces out of Afghanistan and the Near East now!

U.S.-Led Anti-Soviet “Holy War” in Afghanistan

The history of U.S. imperialism in Afghanistan has been one long atrocity from the time it got involved there more than 35 years ago. In the late 1970s, the CIA began funding and training Islamic fundamentalists who rose up against a pro-Soviet left-nationalist regime that had come to power in Kabul and implemented a handful of reforms particularly benefiting women. The Islamist cutthroats specialized in targeting schoolgirls and unveiled women, among other “heathens.” Thus began the biggest covert operation in CIA history, and a decade-long proxy war against Soviet military forces. The Taliban, Al Qaeda and Islamic State (ISIS) are all first- or second-generation offspring of that U.S.-sponsored “holy war” against the Soviet Union.

The Soviet Union was based on a historically progressive collectivized and planned economy—product of the Bolshevik-led workers revolution of October 1917—albeit, beginning in 1923-24, under the rule of a nationalist and anti-revolutionary Stalinist bureaucracy. The Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan in December 1979, launched to defend the USSR’s southern flank against the CIA-sponsored insurgency, also objectively opened up the possibility of modernizing Afghan society and freeing Afghan women from centuries of degradation. The Soviet presence encouraged them to shed their burqas and study science, medicine and engineering; the victory of the mujahedin meant a return to slavery. As Trotskyists who stood for unconditional military defense of the Soviet degenerated workers state and championed the cause of women’s emancipation, we defended the Soviet intervention and proclaimed: Hail Red Army in Afghanistan! Extend social gains of October Revolution to the Afghan peoples!

Washington seized on the Red Army intervention to launch a renewed anti-Soviet campaign of military provocation and economic strangulation. Instead of fighting to finish off the mujahedin, a prospect that was within reach by the mid 1980s, the Kremlin bureaucrats temporized, hoping to appease the U.S. By the end of the 1980s, the bureaucracy had withdrawn the Soviet Army, leaving Afghanistan to revert to the benighted and tribal-riven slaughterhouse it is to this day and helping to pave the way to the destruction of the Soviet degenerated workers state itself.

The final overturn of the Russian Revolution was a shattering defeat for working people in the former Soviet Union and everywhere else, including in the U.S. The U.S. ruling class proclaimed itself the sole “superpower,” swaggering and slaughtering its way around the globe, while bleeding dry the working class at home and grinding the black and Latino poor into the dirt.

Washington’s Near East Quagmire

Since then the U.S. has extended its tentacles ever farther across the Near East. In 1991, Bush the Elder launched a punitive war against the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq. A hallmark of that war was the dropping of two 2,000-pound “bunker buster” precision “smart bombs” on a civilian air raid shelter in Baghdad. Our headline read, “Hundreds Killed as U.S. Deliberately Bombs Civilian Shelter: George Bush—Baby Killer” (WV No. 521, 1 March 1991).

A decade later, with the Soviet Union gone, Bush’s son invaded Afghanistan in the wake of the criminal World Trade Center attack, ostensibly to get the Taliban regime that was harboring Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Scion of a wealthy Saudi family and veteran of the CIA anti-Soviet operation in Afghanistan, bin Laden had by then turned his attention to other “infidels,” including his former imperialist benefactors. The U.S.-led 2003 invasion of Iraq, which had nothing to do with bin Laden or the twin towers attack, followed in short order.

The bloody toppling by the U.S. of Saddam Hussein, whose bonapartist regime was based on the Sunni minority, had a huge impact not only on Iraq but on the region as a whole. The destruction of the social fabric of Iraq has threatened to upset the intricate and fragile structure erected by the British and French imperialists when they took over the Near East from the defunct Ottoman Empire following World War I. This imperialist carve-up amalgamated different pre-national peoples in artificial colonial or semicolonial states under the precept of divide and rule. Short of workers revolutions that could have channeled widespread anti-imperialist sentiment into the struggle for a socialist federation of the Near East, this ramshackle system could only be maintained through brutal imperial or bonapartist rule. Today, the prospect of a new carve-up of the region is increasingly posed.

Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, etc. were not nation-states but patchwork entities created by the imperialists (as is the case in much of sub-Saharan Africa as well). The rulers of the arrogant American Empire seem to “learn nothing and forget nothing.” They decapitated the Iraqi state, unleashing a chaotic and bloody free-for-all among the Sunni, Shi’ite and Kurdish populations. In so doing, they ended up benefiting Iran, which for decades the Western imperialists have sought to weaken and isolate. Iran now influences the rump Iraqi regime that is dominated by the Shi’ite majority, incurring the wrath of embittered Iraqi Sunnis and in turn fueling the growth of ISIS and other Sunni forces which target not only Shi’ites but also the U.S. and the West in general.

Even as he was trying to extricate the U.S. from the Iraqi quagmire, Obama embarked on the NATO bombing of Libya in 2011 that overthrew the regime of strongman Muammar el-Qaddafi and set the stage for the current bloody chaos in that country. Moreover, the hell unleashed by the U.S. imperialists and their allies across the entire region has forced millions of people to flee from their homes, to neighboring countries and to Europe.

In Syria, Obama sought to undermine the regime of Bashar al-Assad, throwing Washington’s weight behind an insurgent opposition to the Assad regime, a key ally of Iran and a client of Russia going back to the Soviet era. Based on the relatively small Alawite sect, the Assad regime could only stay in power by wielding an iron fist against all opponents. Meanwhile, the “moderate” opposition bankrolled by the U.S. was nothing but a conduit for U.S. money and arms to various Sunni fundamentalist militias, including the Syrian branch of Al Qaeda and its later offshoot, ISIS. Marxists have no side in the ethnic/sectarian civil war in Syria. Of course the working class of the entire world does have a side against the U.S. imperialists and their allies in the Near East.

After ISIS seized huge chunks of Iraq and Syria last year, the U.S. intervened militarily in the Syrian civil war, bombing ISIS forces in coordination with its spotters and foot soldiers on the ground, particularly the Kurdish nationalists. At that point we declared: “revolutionary Marxists have a military side with ISIS when it targets the imperialists and their proxies, including the Syrian Kurdish nationalists, the [Iraqi Kurdish] pesh merga, the Baghdad government and its Shi’ite militias” (“Down With U.S. War Against ISIS!”, WV No. 1055, 31 October 2014).

The U.S.-led “coalition” against ISIS includes Saudi Arabia, a hideously reactionary theocracy rooted in Wahhabi Sunni fundamentalism. The Saudi regime is waging a vicious and bloody war against Houthi-led forces in Yemen, continues to fund all manner of anti-Western Islamist groups in Syria (and elsewhere) and has much in common with the social strictures of ISIS. The Kingdom is notorious for the barbaric practice of public beheadings—over 100 people were executed in the first half of this year. Another U.S. coalition partner is Turkey, whose main target is not ISIS but the Kurdish nationalists. The Erdogan regime in Turkey has re-launched and escalated a murderous reign of terror against the Kurds.

Our central opposition is to the U.S., its imperialist allies and regional coalition partners. The recent military intervention by Vladimir Putin’s capitalist Russia, which has been met with hostility by the U.S. and its allies, does not change our position. Russia’s main concern lies in propping up its Syrian client regime and in maintaining its only foothold in the Near East, especially its sole naval facility on the Mediterranean. Capitalist Russia has a huge nuclear arsenal, inherited from the Soviet Union, and a large military, but it is not imperialist and it is not a contender for global domination; it is, for now, simply another player in the squalid civil war in Syria in which the international working class has no side. While our main opposition is to the imperialists, we also oppose all the other capitalist powers involved (including Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Turkey) and call for them to leave.

Socialism or Barbarism

Ghoulish atrocities such as the Kunduz hospital bombing are intrinsic to imperialist wars and occupations, which seek to instill terror in the civilian population. During World War II, the U.S. and its British imperialist ally were no more hesitant than their Nazi counterparts to carry out mass murder, albeit under a “democratic” facade. Intense Allied bombing of the industrial city of Dresden in Germany and of Tokyo and Osaka in Japan resulted in upwards of 300,000 deaths, as civilian (and particularly working-class) areas were turned into infernos (see “The Hidden History of U.S. Terror Bombing,” WV No. 521, 1 March 1991). This was capped by the nuclear incineration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The imperialists employ a particularly vengeful brutality against those who challenge their rule. In its counterrevolutionary wars against the forces of the North Korean deformed workers state in the early 1950s and the Stalinist-led workers and peasants of Vietnam in the 1960s and early ’70s, the U.S. and its allies were responsible for the deaths of some six million people in total. We hailed the victory of the Vietnamese revolutionary fighters in 1975 over the U.S. and its local puppet forces.

In the intervening decades, U.S. imperialism has grown only more barbaric and irrational, having lost its economic hegemony while still dominating the world militarily. It must be brought down by a re-awakened proletariat, the multiracial U.S. working class that is its Achilles’ heel. Socialism or barbarism—those are the alternatives that have confronted humanity since the emergence of the imperialist system over a century ago. Either the conquest of power by the international proletariat and the creation of a global egalitarian order or the downfall of civilization. The task of building revolutionary Marxist parties molded in the image of the Bolshevik Party of Lenin and Trotsky and subject to the discipline of a reforged democratic-centralist Fourth International remains as urgent as ever.

Remembrances Of Things Past-With Jeff Higgins’ Class Of 1964 In Mind

Remembrances Of Things Past-With Jeff Higgins’ Class Of 1964 In Mind

 

From The Pen Of Bart Webber

 

There was always something, some damn thing to remind Jeff Higgins, Class of 1964, a fateful year in his life and not just because that was the year that he graduated from North Quincy High School down in the Southeastern corner of Massachusetts. He had recently (2014, and if you did the math you would know that represented the fiftieth anniversary of the his graduation) gone through something of a serious traumatic experience which left him numb every time something came up about that year, some remembrance. If you knew Jeff, with his three divorces and several affairs along with scads of children and grandchildren now from the marriages not the affairs, you would know that it was about a woman, always about a woman, he eternally afflicted as old as he was.

 

About a woman this time, this eternal time  named Elizabeth Drury (not Liz or Betty no way she was not anything but a proper Elizabeth-type, who held maybe Queen Elizabeth I as her model, even in high school) whom he had had a brief puff of air affair with in that same 2014 but which had seemingly vanished in his dust of memory until he went up in the attic to clean up some stuff, get rid of most of it in anticipation of selling his house and moving to a more manageable condo, down-sizing they call it in the real estate trade, and found a faded tattered copy of his class’ remembrance card. You know those time vault cards that card companies like Hallmark, the source of this one, put out so that people, or this case the whole class by some tabulations, can put down favorite films, people, records, who was President, and other momentous events from some important year like a graduation to be looked at in later years and ahhed over. That yellowed sheet brought back not just memories of that faded long ago year but of Elizabeth in the not so faded past. So, yes, it was always some damn thing.      

 

But maybe we had better take you back to the beginning, back to how 1964 and Elizabeth Drury had been giving one Jeffery Higgins late of North Quincy nothing but pains. Jeff had been for many, many years agnostic about attending class reunions, had early on after graduation decided that he needed to show his back to the whole high school experience and to the town. A lot of that teenage angst having to do with his humble beginnings as a son of a “bogger,” a father who worked in the cranberry bogs when there was work for which the town was then famous and which represented the low-end of North Quincy society. The low-end which others in the town including his fellow classmates in high school who were as socially class conscious as any Mayfair swells made him feel like a nobody and a nothing for no known reason except that he was the son of a bogger which after all he could not help. (Of course those social exclusions played themselves out under the veil of his not dressing cool, living off the leavings of his older brothers, living off of Bargain Center rejected materials not even cool when purchased, you know, white shirts with stripes when that was not cool, black chinos with cuffs like some farmer, ditto, dinky Thom McAn shoes with buckles for Chrissake, just as his younger brothers lived off his in that tight budget world of the desperate working poor, of his not having money for dates even with fellow bogger’s daughters, and hanging corner dough-less, girl-less corners with fellow odd-ball bogger outcasts). So Jeff had no trouble drifting away from that milieu, had no trouble putting dust on his shoes to get out and head west when the doings out west were drawing every iterant youth to the flame, to the summers of love.

 

And there things stood in Jeff’s North Quincy consciousness for many years until maybe 2012, 2013 when very conscious that a hallmark 50^th class reunion would be in the works and with more time on his hands as he had cut back on the day to day operation of his small law practice in Cambridge he decided that he would check out the preparations, and perhaps offer his help to organize the event. He had received notification of his class’ fortieth reunion (which he had dismissed out of hand only wondering how the reunion committee had gotten his address for while he was not hiding from anything he was also not out there publicly since he did not have clients other than other lawyers whom he wrote motions, briefs, appeals and the like for, until he realized that as a member of the Massachusetts bar he would have that kind of information on his bar profile page) so via the marvels of modern day technology through the Internet he was able to get hold of Donna Marlowe (married name Rossi) who had set up a Facebook page to advertise the event.

 

That connection led to Jeff drafting himself onto the reunion committee and lead directly to the big bang of pain that he would subsequently feel. Naturally in a world filled with social media and networking those from the class who either knew Donna or the other members of the committee or were Internet savvy joined the class’ Facebook page and then were directed to a class website (as he found out later his generation unlike later ones was on the borderline of entering the “information superhighway” and so not all classmates, those still alive anyway, were savvy that way). On that website set up by tech savvy Donna (she had worked in the computer industry at IBM during her working career) each classmate who joined the site had the ability to put up a personal profile next to their class photograph like many other such sites and that is where Sam saw Elizabeth Drury’s profile and a flood of memories and blushes.            

 

In high school Jeff had been smitten by Elizabeth, daughter of a couple of school teachers who worked in Marshfield and therefore stationed well above the boggery of the town. But in things of the heart things like class distinctions, especially in democratically-etched America, are forgotten and sometime make one foolhardy. That had almost happened to Jeff, except his corner boy Jack Callahan put him wise. Jeff and Elizabeth had several classes together senior year and sat across from each other in English class and since both loved literature and were school-recognized as such they had certain interests in common. So they talked, talked in what Jeff thought was very friendly and somewhat flirty manner (or as he thought later after the flame had burned out maybe he just hoped that was the case) and he formed an intention to ask her out even if only to Doc’s Drugstore for an after school soda and a listen to the latest platters on Doc’s jukebox which had all the good stuff that kids were dancing to in those days. He figured from there he could work up to a real date. But sometimes the bumps and bruises of the bogger life left a little sense and so before making attempts at such a conquest Jeff consulted with Jack Callahan to see if Elizabeth was “spoken for” (Jeff’s term if you can believe that). See Jack, a star football player even if a bogger’s son got something of an exemption from the rigid routine of the social structure of the Senior class just by being able to run through defensive lines on any given granite grey autumn afternoon and had excellent “intelligence” on the whole school system’s social network, in other words who was, or was not, spoken for. (By the way that “grapevine” any high school grapevine, maybe middle school too would put the poor technicians at the CIA and the spooks at NSA to shame with the accuracy of the information. It had to be that resourceful otherwise fists would fly.) The word on Elizabeth, forget it, off-limits, an “ice queen.” So Jeff saved himself plenty of anguish and he moved on with his small little high school life.

 

Seeing her name and profile though that many years later made him curious, made him wonder what had happened to her and since he was now “single” he decided he would write her a private e-mail to her profile page something which the website was set up to perform and which the reunion committee was recommending alumnus to do. That “single” a condition that he now considered the best course after three shifts of alimony, child support and college tuitions made him realize that it was infinitely cheaper to just live with a woman and be done with it. Jeff wrote a short message asking whether she remembered him and she replied that she very well did remember him and their “great” (her term) conversations about Thomas Hardy, Ernest Hemingway and Edith Wharton. That short message and reply “sparked” something and they began a flurry of e-mails giving outlines of their subsequent history, including the still important one to Sam whether she was “spoken for.” She was not having had two divorces although no kids in her career as a professor at the State University. Somehow these messages led Jeff to tell her about his talk with Jack Callahan. And she laughed not at the “intelligence” which was correct but not for the reasons that Jack gave (her father was an abusive “asshole,” her term for her standoffishness and reputation as an “ice queen”). She laughed because despite her being flirty, at least that was what she thought she was attempting to do because she certainly was interested when they would talk Jeff had never asked her out and then one day just stopped talking to her for no known reason. Damn.                    

 

They say, or at least Thomas Wolfe did in the title of one of his novels-you can’t go home again but neither Jeff nor Elizabeth after that last exchange of e-mails about the fateful missing chance would heed the message. They decided to meet in Cambridge one night to see if that unspoken truth had any substance. They did meet, got along great, had many stories to exchange and it turned out many of the same interests (except golf a sport which relaxed Jeff when he was all wound up but which Elizabeth’s second husband had tried to teach her to no avail). And so their little affair started, started with great big bursts of flames but wound up after a few months smoldering out and being blown away like so much dust in the wind once Elizabeth started talking about marriage. Jeff was willing to listen to living together but his own strange marital orbit had made him very strongly again any more marriages. So this pair could not go home again, not at all, and after some acrimonious moments they parted.           

 

Jeff knew that was the best course, knew he had to break it off but it still hurt enough that any reference to 1964 made him sad. As he took a look at the sentiment expressed in that tattered yellowed document he had a moment reprieve as he ahh-ed over the information presented. Had he really forgotten that there was not Vice-Presidential succession then when Lyndon Johnson became President after the assassination of home state Irish Jack Kennedy. That My Fair Lady was popular then as now. That the Beatles had appeared on Ed Sullivan’s Show and done a film, that Chapel of Love had been a hit that year as well. That 1964 was the year the Mustang that he would have died for came out into the world. That gas was only about thirty cent a gallon, and that another Elizabeth, Elizabeth Taylor, married one Richard Burton for the first time (although not the last). And on the note he put the yellowed tattered document in the trash pile. He would remember things past in his own way. 

John Brown’s Body Lies A Moldering In The Grave-With The Massachusetts 54th Black Volunteer Regiment In Mind.

John Brown’s Body Lies A Moldering In The Grave-With The Massachusetts 54^th Black Volunteer Regiment In Mind.

 

Every time I pass the frieze honoring the heroic Massachusetts 54^th Black Volunteer Regiment across from the State House on Beacon Street in Boston, a unit that fought in the American Civil War, a war which we have just finished commemorating the 150^th anniversary of its formal ending (April 1865) I am struck by one figure who I will discuss in a minute. For those who do not know the 54^th Regiment the unit had been recruited and made up of all volunteers, former slaves, freedmen, maybe a current fugitive slave snuck in there, those were such times for such unheralded personal valor, the recruitment a task that the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass, himself an ex-slave had been central in promoting (including two of his sons). All knew, or soon became aware that if they did not fight to the finish they would not be treated as prisoners of war but captured chattel subject to re-enslavement or death.  The regiment fought with ferocious valor before Fort Wagner down in South Carolina and other hot spots where an armed black man, in uniform or out, brought red flashes of deep venom, if venom is red, but hellfire hatred in any case to the Southern plantation owners and their hangers-on (that armed black men acting in self-defense of themselves and theirs still bringing hellfire hatred among some whites to this day, no question).

I almost automatically focus in on that old hard-bitten grizzled erect bearded soldier who is just beneath the head of the horse being ridden by Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, the white commander of the regiment who from a family of ardent abolitionists fell with his men before Fort Wagner and was buried with them, an honor. (See above) I do not know the details of the model Saint-Gauden’s used when he worked that section (I am sure that specific information can be found although it is not necessary to this sketch) but as I grow older I appreciate that old man soldier even more, as old men are supposed to leave the arduous duty of fighting for just causes, arms in hand, to the young.

I like to think that that old grizzled brother who aside from color looks like me when he heard the call from Massachusetts wherever he was, maybe had read about the plea in some abolitionist newspaper, had maybe even gotten the message from Frederick Douglass himself through his newspaper, The North Star, calling Sable Brother to Arms or on out the stump once Lincoln unleashed him to recruit his black brothers for whatever reason although depleting Union ranks reduced by bloody fight after bloody fight as is the nature of civil war when the societal norms are broken  as was at least one cause, he picked up stakes leaving some small farm or trade and family behind and volunteered forthwith. Maybe he had been born, like Douglass, in slavery and somehow, manumission, flight, something, following the Northern Star, got to the North. Maybe learned a skill, a useful skill, got a little education to be able to read and write and advance himself and had in his own way prospered.

But something was gnawing at him, something about the times, something about tow-headed white farm boys, all awkward and ignorant from the heartland of the Midwest, sullen Irish and other ethnic immigrants from the cities where it turned out the streets were not paved with gold and so took the bounty for Army duty, took some draft-dodger’s place for pay, hell, even high-blown Harvard boys were being armed to defend the Union (and the endless names of the fallen and endless battles sites on Memorial Hall at Harvard a graphic testament to that solemn sense of duty then. And more frequently as the days and months passed about the increasing number of white folk who hated, hated with a red-hot passion, slavery and if that passion meant anything what was he a strong black man going to do about it, do about breaking the hundreds of years chains. Maybe he still had kindred under the yolk down South in some sweated plantation, poorly fed, ill-treated, left to fester and die when not productive anymore, the women, young and old subject to Mister’s lustful appetites and he had to do something.

Then the call came, Governor Andrews of Massachusetts was raising a “sable” armed regiment (Douglass’ word) to be headed by a volunteer Harvard boy urged on by his high abolitionist parents, Colonel Shaw, the question of black military leadership of their own to be left to another day, another day long in the future as it turned out but what was he to know of that, and he shut down his small shop or farm, said good-bye to kin and neighbors and went to Boston to join freedom’s fight. I wonder if my old bearded soldier fell before Fort Wagner fight down in heated rebel country, or maybe fell in some other engagement less famous but just as important to the concept of disciplined armed black men fighting freedom’s fight. I like to think thought that the grizzled old man used every bit of wit and skill he had and survived to march into Charleston, South Carolina, the fire-breathing heart of the Confederacy, then subdued at the end of war with his fellows in the 54^th stepping off to the tune of John Brown’s Body Lies A-Moldering In The Grave. A fitting tribute to Captain Brown and his band of brother, black and white, at Harper’s Ferry fight and to an old grizzled bearded man’s honor.             

From The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archive Website- The Alba

From The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archive Website- The Alba
Blog

 

 

 

 

Click below to link to the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archive blog page for all kinds of interesting information about that important historic grouping in the International Brigades that fought for our side, the side of the people in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-39.

http://www.albavolunteer.org/category/blog/

 

 

As everybody probably knows by now who has following this blog for a time Ralph Morris and I, Sam Eaton, met down in Washington, D.C. on May Day 1971 on the football field at then RFK Stadium while being held by the D.C. police (although Ralph was picked off by a National Guard soldier who transferred him to D.C. hands as the division of labor played out that day) for having tried to shut down the government if it did not shut down the war, that war being the Vietnam War that tore our generation, our nation asunder. I had gone down to Washington that weekend before May Day with a group of radicals from Cambridge who were part of an larger affinity group which had planned to “capture” the White House and Ralph had joined a group of anti-war Vietnam veterans who had planned to surround the Pentagon, a less exciting but more possible task.

Inevitably we had been arrested well before achieving either of our objectives along with thousands of others who were outraged by that endless war and committed to shutting it down, shutting it down some damn way so don’t smirk when you read this (“endless war,” sound familiar?). Ralph had noticed me wearing a button on my shirt indicating that I was a supporter of Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) and had asked me if I had served in Vietnam. Having been exempted from military service by a hardship deferment due to my being the sole surviving supporter of my mother and four much younger sisters after my father had died of a massive heart attack in 1965 I rather sheepishly told Ralph the story of how my best buddy, my closest “corner boy,” Jeff Mullins, had been blown away in some God forsaken village up in the Central Highlands of Vietnam and that had spurred me who had been really indifferent to the war before to get involved as an anti-war activist a couple of years before doing civil disobedience actions leading up to the big action in D.C. in 1971. Ralph that afternoon (and late into the night since we wound up being held for three days before we figured that some side exits were unguarded and scooted out of the place) had told me his story of how he had come out of the Army after serving eighteen months with a unit up in that same Central Highlands where Jeff had been blown away and had been so angry at the government for making him and his Army buddies what he called “animals” that on discharge he had lined up with VVAW (through a fellow soldier in him in whom he had kept in touch with while stationed at Fort Devens in Massachusetts before he time was up).

After many hours of talking and getting a feel for each other we thereafter joined forces, did a number of actions later over the next couple of years until the high tide of the 1960s ebbed and faded. We have remained friends throughout, although some years sporadically,   and up until 2003 with the big invasion of Iraq would “do our duty” when some anti-war or social justice issue hit us between the eyes. Since then we have been on a steady diet of fighting the endless wars the last two American governments have immersed the country in without being any closer to the end than when we started.    

After May Day 1971, and for a while after the high tide ebbed through about 1976 I think (and Ralph thinks that is about the right time frame as well) he and I would attend various study groups run by radicals and “reds” to find out about the earlier history of the left-wing movement in America and internationally to see if we could learn any lessons that might help us in our social struggles. The whole summer of 1972 was spent in one such group when I was living in a commune in Cambridge and invited Ralph to stay with me and get involved in one of the “red collective” study groups that were sprouting up then as people despaired over the old strategies and tactics that had ground us to a standstill.

One of the big events that we studied which held us in thrall, especially since neither of us were history buffs or knew much from our high school history classes was the fierce battle between the fascists and republicans in the Spanish Civil War of the late 1930s. Particularly the exploits of the International Brigades and the Abraham Lincoln Battalion of the 15^th Brigade that fought valiantly if forlornly on the Republican side. Many a night we would ask ourselves the question of whether we would have fought, fought honorably in Spain (assuming that the Stalinists who controlled entry, controlled the “politically reliable elements” that they vetted into the Abraham Lincoln would have let us in). We hoped we would have. As Ralph and I have been fighting the good fight against the endless wars this time around (everyone will agree that over a dozen years and counting with no end in sight qualifies for such a designation) we have taken advantage of the Internet to see what other organizations and individuals have been up to. One day when I was Googling I came up upon this Abraham Lincoln Brigade website and was intrigued by its offerings. I made some comments about it and about Spain in the 1930s on the site. Here is what I had to say (I wrote this but Ralph put in his fair share of ideas so it is a two person commentary):            

This blog had gotten my attention for two reasons: those rank and filers who fought to defend democracy, fight the fascists and fight for socialism in Spain for the most part, political opponents or not, were kindred spirits; and, those with first-hand knowledge of those times over seventy years ago are dwindling down to a precious few and so we had better listen to their stories while they are around to tell it. Viva La Quince Brigada!  

*******

I have been interested, as a pro-Republican partisan, in the Spanish Civil War since I was in my twenties. What initially perked my interest, and remains of interest, is the passionate struggle of the Spanish working class to create its own political organization of society, its leadership of the struggle against Spanish fascism and the romance surrounding the entry of the International Brigades, particularly the American Abraham Lincoln Battalion of the 15th Brigade, into the struggle.

Underlying my interests has always been a nagging question of how that struggle could have been won by the working class. The Spanish proletariat (okay, okay working class) certainly was capable of both heroic action and the ability to create organizations that reflected its own class interests i.e. the worker militias and factory committees. Of all modern working class revolutions after the Russian revolution of 1917 Spain showed the most promise of success. Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky who had helped lead the successful October revolution and then led the military fight to defend the gains against the Whites arms in hands noted that the political class consciousness of the Spanish proletariat at that time was higher than that of the Russian proletariat in 1917. Yet it failed in Spain. Trotsky's writings on this period represent a provocative and thoughtful approach to an understanding of the causes of that failure. Moreover, with all proper historical proportions considered, his analysis has continuing value as the international working class struggles against the seemingly one-sided class war being waged by the international bourgeoisie today.

The Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939 has been the subject of innumerable works from every possible political and military perspective possible. A fair number of such treatises, especially from those responsible for the military and political policies on the Republican side, are merely alibis for the disastrous policies that led to defeat. Trotsky's complication of articles, letters, pamphlets, etc. which were made into a volume for publication is an exception. Trotsky was actively trying to intervene in the unfolding events in order to present a program of socialist revolution that most of the active forces on the Republican side were fighting, or believed they were fighting for. Thus, Trotsky's analysis brings a breath of fresh air to the historical debate. That in the end Trotsky could not organize the necessary cadres to carry out his program or meaningfully impact the unfolding events in Spain is one of the ultimate tragedies of that revolution. Nevertheless, Trotsky had a damn good idea of what forces were acting as a roadblock to revolution. He also had a strategic conception of the road to victory. And that most definitely was not through the Popular Front.

The central question Trotsky addresses throughout the whole period under review here was the crisis of revolutionary leadership of the proletarian forces. That premise entailed, in short, a view that the objective conditions for the success of a socialist program for society had ripened. Nevertheless, until that time, despite several revolutionary upheavals elsewhere, the international working class had not been successful anywhere except in backward Russia. Trotsky thus argued that it was necessary to focus on the question of forging the missing element of revolutionary leadership that would assure victory or at least put up a fight to the finish.

This underlying premise was the continuation of an analysis that Trotsky developed in earnest in his struggle to fight the Stalinist degeneration of the Russian Revolution in the mid-1920's. The need to learn the lessons of the Russian Revolution and to extend that revolution internationally was thus not a merely a theoretical question for Trotsky. Spain, moreover, represented a struggle where the best of the various leftist forces were in confusion about how to move forward. Those forces could have profitably heeded Trotsky's advice. I further note that the question of the crisis of revolutionary leadership still remains to be resolved by the international working class.

Trotsky's polemics in that volume are highlighted by the article ‘The Lessons of Spain-Last Warning’, his definitive assessment of the Spanish situation in the wake of the defeat of the Barcelona uprising in May 1937. Those polemics center on the failure of the Party of Marxist Unification (hereafter, POUM) to provide revolutionary leadership. That party, partially created by cadre formerly associated with Trotsky in the Spanish Left Opposition, failed on virtually every count. Those conscious mistakes included, but were not limited to, the creation of an unprincipled bloc between the former Left Oppositionists and the former Right Oppositionists (Bukharinites) of Maurin to form the POUM an organization which almost consciously limited itself to organizing in vanguard Catalonia in 1935; political support to the Popular Front including entry into the government coalition by its leader; creation of its own small trade union federation instead of entry in the anarchist led-CNT; creation of its own militia units reflecting a hands-off attitude toward political struggle with other parties; and, fatally, an at best equivocal role in the Barcelona uprising of 1937.

Trotsky had no illusions about the roadblock to revolution of the policies carried out by the old-time Anarchist, Socialist and Communist Parties. Unfortunately the POUM did. Moreover, despite being the most honest revolutionary party in Spain it failed to keep up an intransigent struggle to push the revolution forward. The Trotsky - Andreas Nin (key leader of the POUM and former Left Oppositionist) correspondence in the Appendix makes that problem painfully clear.

The most compelling example of this failure - As a result of the failure of the Communist Party of Germany to oppose the rise of Hitler in 1933 and the subsequent decapitation and the defeat of the Austrian working class in 1934 the European workers, especially the younger workers, of the traditional Socialist Parties started to move left. Trotsky observed this situation and told his supporters to intersect that development by an entry, called the ‘French turn,’ into those parties. Nin and the Spanish Left Opposition, and later the POUM failed to do that. As a result the Socialist Party youth were recruited to the Communist Party en masse. This accretion formed the basis for its expansion as a party and the key cadre of its notorious security apparatus that would, after the Barcelona uprising, suppress the more left-wing organizations like the POUM, the left-anarchists around Durrutti and so on. For more such examples of the results of the crisis of leadership in the Spanish Revolution read this book which is available on-line at the Leon Trotsky Archives section of the Marxist Internet Archives for the year 1939.

"Viva La Quince Brigada"- The Abraham Lincoln Battalion In The Spanish Civil War (2006)

BOOK REVIEW

THE ODYSSEY OF THE ABRAHAM LINCOLN BRIGADE: AMERICANS IN THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR, Peter N. Carroll, Stanford University Press, Stanford, California, 1994.I have been interested, as a pro-Republican partisan, in the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39 since I was in my twenties. My first paper for a study group presentation sponsored by one of the “red collectives” that were sprouting forth in the early 1970s as disoriented and disheartened radicals and “reds” were seriously and studiously searching for ways to fight the American monster government after years of failure was on this subject. What initially perked my interest, and remains of interest, is the passionate struggle of the Spanish working class to create its own political organization of society, its leadership of the struggle against Spanish fascism and the romance surrounding the entry of the International Brigades, particularly the American Abraham Lincoln Battalion of the 15th Brigade, into the struggle.

Underlying my interests has always been a nagging question of how that struggle could have been won by the working class. The Spanish proletariat certainly was capable of both heroic action and the ability to create organizations that reflected its own class interests i.e. the worker militias and factory committees. Of all modern working class uprisings after the Russian revolution Spain showed the most promise of success. Russian Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky noted in one of his writings on Spain that the Spanish proletariat at the start of its revolutionary period had a higher political consciousness than the Russian proletariat in 1917. That calls into question the strategies put forth by the parties of the Popular Front, including the Spanish Communist Party- defeat Franco first, and then make the social transformation of society. Mr. Carroll’s book while not directly addressing that issue nevertheless demonstrates through the story of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion how the foreign policy of the Soviet Union and through it the policy of the Communist International in calling for international brigades to fight in Spain aided in the defeat of that promising revolution.

Mr. Carroll chronicles anecdotally how individual militants were recruited, transported, fought and died as ‘premature anti-fascists’ in that struggle. No militant today, or ever, can deny the heroic qualities of the volunteers and their commitment to defeat fascism- the number one issue for militants of that generation-despite the fatal policy of the various party leaderships. Such individuals were desperately needed then, as now, if revolutionary struggle is to succeed. However, to truly honor their sacrifice we must learn the lessons of that defeat through mistaken strategy as we fight today. Interestingly, as chronicled here, and elsewhere in the memoirs of some veterans, many of the surviving militants of that struggle continued to believe that it was necessary to defeat Franco first, and then fight for socialism. This was most dramatically evoked by the Lincolns' negative response to the Barcelona uprising of 1937-the last time a flat out fight for leadership of the revolution could have galvanized the demoralized workers and peasants for a desperate struggle against Franco.

Probably the most important part of Mr. Carroll’s book is tracing the trials and tribulations of the volunteers after their withdrawal from Spain in late 1938. Their organization-the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade- was constantly harassed and monitored by the United States government for many years as a Communist “front” group. Individuals also faced prosecution and discrimination for their past association with the Brigades. He also traces the aging and death of that cadre. In short, this book is a labor of love for the subjects of his treatment. Whatever else this writer certainly does not disagree with that purpose. If you want to read about what a heroic part of the vanguard of the international working class looked like in the 1930’s, look here. Viva la Quince Brigada!!

As The 100th Anniversary Of World War I Enters Its Second Year-The Anti-War Resistance Begins- Karl Liebknecht

As The 100^th Anniversary Of World War I Enters Its Second Year-The Anti-War Resistance Begins-   

The events leading up to World War I (known as the Great War before the world got clogged up with expansive wars in need of other numbers and names and reflecting too in that period before World War II a certain sense of “pride” in having participated in such an epic adventure even if it did mow down the flower of European youth from all classes) from the massive military armament of almost all the capitalist and imperialist parties in Europe and elsewhere in order to stake their claims to their unimpeded share of the world’s resources had all the earmarks of a bloodbath early on once the industrial-sized carnage set in with the stalemated fronts (as foretold by the blood-letting in the American Civil War and the various “small” wars in Asia, Africa, and, uh, Europe in the mid to late 19^th century once war production on a mass scale followed in the train of other industrial production). Also trampled underfoot in the opposing trenches, or rather thrown in the nearest trash bin of the their respective parliamentary buildings were the supposedly eternal pledges against war in defense of one’s own capitalist-imperialist  nation-state against the working masses and their allies of other countries by most of the Social-Democrats and other militant leftist formations (Anarchists, Syndicalists and their various off-shoots)representing the historic interest of the international working-class to stop those imperialist capitalist powers and their hangers-on in their tracks at the approach of war were decisive for 20^th century history. All those beautifully written statements and resolutions that clogged up the international conferences with feelings of solidarity were some much ill-fated wind once bullet one came out of gun one.

Other than isolated groups and individuals, mostly like Lenin and Trotsky in exile or jail, and mostly in the weaker lesser capitalistically developed countries of Europe the blood lust got the better of most of the working class and its allies as young men rushed to the recruiting stations to “do their duty” and prove their manhood. (When the first international conference of anti-war socialists occurred in Switzerland in 1915 one wag pointed out that they could all fit in one tram [bus].) Almost all parties assuming that the damn thing would be over by Christmas and everyone could go back to the eternal expressions of international working-class solidarity after the smoke had settled (and the simple white-crossed graves dug). You see, and the logic is beautiful on this one, that big mail-drop of a Socialist International, was built for peace-time but once the cannon roared then the “big tent” needed to be folded for the duration. Jesus.  

Decisive as well as we head down the slope to the first months of the second year of the war although shrouded in obscurity early in the war in exile was the soon to be towering figure of one Vladimir Lenin (a necessary nom de guerre in the hell broth days of the Czar’s Okhrana ready to send one and all to the Siberian frosts and that moniker business, that nom de guerre not a bad idea in today’s NSA-driven frenzy to know all, to peep at all), leader of the small Russian Bolshevik Party ( a Social-Democratic Party in name anyway adhering to the Second International under the sway of the powerful German party although not for long because “Long Live The Communist International,”  a new revolutionary international, would become the order of the day in the not distant future), architect of the theory of the “vanguard party” building off of many revolutionary experiences in Russia and Europe in the 19^th century (including forbears Marx and Engels), and author of an important, important to the future communist world perspective, study on the monopolizing tendencies of world imperialism, the ending of the age of “progressive” capitalism (in the Marxist sense of the term progressive in a historical materialist sense that capitalism was progressive against feudalism and other older economic models which turned into its opposite at this dividing point in history), and the hard fact that it was a drag on the possibilities of human progress and needed to be replaced by the establishment of the socialist order. But that is the wave of the future as 1914 turns to 1915 in the sinkhole trenches of Europe that are already a death trap for the flower of the European youth.  

Lenin also has a "peace" plan, a peace plan of sorts, a way out of the stinking trench warfare stalemate eating up the youth of the Eurasian landmass. Do what should have been done from the beginning, do what all the proclamations from all the beautifully-worded socialist manifestos called on the international working-class to do. Not a simple task by any means especially in that first year when almost everybody on all sides thought a little blood-letting would be good for the soul, the individual national soul, and in any case the damn thing would be over by Christmas and everybody could start producing those beautifully worded-manifestos against war again. (That by Christmas peace “scare” turned out to be a minute “truce” from below by English and German soldiers hungry for the old certainties banning the barbed wire and stinking trenches for a short reprieve in the trench fronts in France and played soccer before returning to drawn guns-a story made into song and which is today used as an example of what the lower ranks could do-if they would only turn the guns around. Damn those English and German soldiers never did turn the damn things around until too late and with not enough resolve and the whole world has suffered from that lack of resolve ever since.)

Lenin’s hard-headed proposition: turn the bloody world war among nations into a class war to drive out the war-mongers and bring some peace to the blood-soaked lands. But that advanced thinking is merely the wave of the future as the rat and rain-infested sinkhole trenches of Europe were already churning away in the first year as a death trap for the flower of the European youth.   

The ability to inflict industrial-sized slaughter and mayhem on a massive scale first portended toward the end of the American Civil War once the Northern industrial might tipped the scales their way as did the various German-induced wars attempting to create one nation-state out of various satraps almost could not be avoided in the early 20^th century once the armaments race got serious, and the technology seemed to grow exponentially with each new turn in the war machine. The land war, the war carried out by the “grunts,” by the “cannon fodder” of many nations was only the tip of the iceberg and probably except for the increased cannon-power and range and the increased rapidity of the machine-guns would be carried out by the norms of the last wars. However the race for naval supremacy, or the race to take a big kink out of British supremacy, went on unimpeded as Germany tried to break-out into the Atlantic world and even Japan, Jesus, Japan tried to gain a big hold in the Asia seas.

The deeply disturbing submarine warfare wreaking havoc on commerce on the seas, the use of armed aircraft and other such technological innovations of war only added to the frenzy. We can hundred years ahead, look back and see where talk of “stabs in the back” by the losers and ultimately an armistice rather than decisive victory on the blood-drenched fields of Europe would lead to more blood-letting but it was not clear, or nobody was talking about it much, or, better, doing much about calling a halt before they began the damn thing among all those “civilized” nations who went into the abyss in July of 1914. Sadly the list of those who would not do anything, anything concrete, besides paper manifestos issued at international conferences, included the great bulk of the official European labor movement which in theory was committed to stopping the madness.

A few voices, voices like Karl Liebknecht (who against the party majority bloc voting scheme finally voted against the Kaiser’s war budget, went to the streets to get rousing anti-war speeches listened to in the workers’ districts, lost his parliamentary immunity and wound up honorably in the Kaiser’s  prisons) and Rosa Luxemburg ( the rose of the revolution also honorably prison bound) in Germany, Lenin and Trotsky in Russia (both exiled at the outbreak of war and just in time as being on “the planet without a passport” was then as now, dangerous to the lives of left-wing revolutionaries), some anti-war anarchists like Monette in France and here in America “Big Bill” Haywood (who eventually would controversially flee to Russia to avoid jail for his opposition to American entry into war), many of his IWW (Industrial Workers Of the World) comrades and the stalwart Eugene V. Debs (who also went to jail, “Club Fed” for speaking the truth about American war aims in a famous Cleveland speech and, fittingly, ran for president in 1920 out of his Atlanta Penitentiary jail cell),  were raised and one hundred years later those voices have a place of honor in this space.

Those voices, many of them in exile, or in the deportations centers, were being clamped down as well when the various imperialist governments began closing their doors to political refugees when they were committed to clapping down on their own anti-war citizens. As we have seen in our own times, most recently in America in the period before the “shock and awe” of the decimation of Iraq in 2002 and early 2003 the government, most governments, are able to build a war frenzy out of whole cloth. Even my old anti-war amigo from my hometown who after I got out of the American Army during the Vietnam War marched with me in countless rallies and parades trying to stop the madness got caught in the bogus information madness and supported Bush’s “paper war” although not paper for the benighted Iraqi masses ever since (and plenty of other “wise” heads from our generation of ’68 made that sea-change turn with him).

At those times, and in my lifetime the period after 9/11 when we tried in vain to stop the Afghan war in its tracks is illustrative, to be a vocal anti-warrior is a dicey business. A time to keep your head down a little, to speak softly and wait for the fever to subside and to be ready to begin the anti-war fight another day. “Be ready to fight” the operative words.

So imagine in the hot summer of 1914 when every nationality in Europe felt its prerogatives threatened how the fevered masses, including the beguiled working-classes bred on peace talk without substance, would not listen to the calls against the slaughter. Yes, one hundred years later is not too long or too late to honor those ardent anti-war voices as the mass mobilizations began in the countdown to war, began four years of bloody trenches and death.                  

Over the next period as we continue the long night of the 100^th anniversary of World War I and beyond I will under this headline post various documents, manifestos and cultural expressions from that time in order to give a sense of what the lead up to that war looked like, the struggle against its outbreak before the first frenzied shots were fired, the forlorn struggle during and the massive struggles after it in places like Russia, Germany, Hungary, Bulgaria, and the hodge-podge colonies all over the world map, in order to create a newer world out of the shambles of the battlefields.     

The First Days

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ON August 3rd and 4th, 1914, the Social-Democratic members of the Reichstag called a special meeting in order to decide what stand the party should take on the War.

At the first vote taken, ninety-four members were for voting for the budget and only fourteen against. At the last there were only three who held out to the end – Liebknecht, Ledebour, and Haase.
The officials of the party tried to give the impression that there were no differences of opinion in the party, but Liebknecht wrote the following letter, which was published in the Bürger Zeitung, Bremen, September 18, 1914.
"I understand that several members of the Socialist Party have written all manner of statements to the press with regard to the deliberations of the Socialist Party in the Reichstag on August 3rd and 4th.
"According to these reports, there were no serious differences of opinion in our party in regard to the political situation and our own position, and decisions to assent to war credits are alleged to have been arrived at unanimously. In order to prevent the dissemination of an inadmissible fiction I feel it to be my duty to put on record the fact that the issues involved gave rise to diametrically opposite views within our party parliament, and these opposing views found expression with a violence hitherto unknown in our deliberations.
"It is also entirely untrue to say that assent to the war credits was given unanimously."