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

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

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.     

 

 

V. I.   Lenin

Dead Chauvinism and Living Socialism

HOW THE INTERNATIONAL CAN BE RESTORED

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Published: Sotsial-Demokrat No. 35, December 12, 1914. Published according to the text in Sotsial-Demokrat.
Source: Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, [197[4]], Moscow, Volume 21, pages 94-101.
Translated:
Transcription\Markup: D. Walters and R. Cymbala
Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive 2002 (2005). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.
Other Formats:   Text • README

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For decades, German Social-Democracy was a model to the Social-Democrats of Russia, even somewhat more than to the Social-Democrats of the whole world. It is therefore clear that there can be no intelligent, i.e., critical, attitude towards the now prevalent social-patriotism or “socialist” chauvinism, without a most precise definition of one’s attitude towards German Social-Democracy, What was it in the past? What is it today? What will it be in the future?

A reply to the first of these questions may be found in Der Weg zur Macht, a pamphlet written by K. Kautsky in 1909 and translated into many European languages. Containing a most complete exposition of the tasks of our times, it was most advantageous to the German Social-Democrats (in the sense of the promise they held out), and moreover came from the pen of the most eminent writer of the Second International. We shall recall the pamphlet in some detail; this will be the more useful now since those forgotten ideals are so often barefacedly cast aside.
Social-Democracy is a “revolutionary party” (as stated in the opening sentence of the pamphlet), not only in the sense that a steam engine is revolutionary, but “also in another sense”. It wants conquest of political power by the proletariat, the dictatorship of the proletariat. Heaping ridicule on “doubters of the revolution”, Kautsky writes: “In any important movement and uprising we must, of course, reckon with the possibility of defeat. Prior to the struggle, only a fool can consider himself quite certain of victory.” However, to refuse to consider the possibility of victory   would he “a direct betrayal of our cause”. A revolution in connection with a war, he says, is possible both during and after a war. It is impossible to determine at which particular moment the sharpening of class antagonisms will lead to revolution, but, the author continues, “I can quite definitely assert that a revolution that war brings in its wake, will break out either during or immediately after the war”; nothing is more vulgar, we read further, than the theory of “the peaceful growing into socialism”. “Nothing is more erroneous,” he continues, “than the opinion that a cognition of economic necessity means a weakening of the will ... . The will, as a desire for struggle,” he says, “is determined, first, by the price of the struggle, secondly, by a sense of power, and thirdly, by actual power.” When an attempt was made, incidentally by Vorwärts, to interpret Engels’s famous preface to The Class Struggles in France in the meaning of opportunism, Engels became indignant, and called shameful any assumption that he was a “peaceful worshipper of legality at any price”.^[1] “We have every reason to believe,” Kautsky goes on to say, “that we are entering upon a period of struggle for state power.” That struggle may last for decades; that is something we do not know, but “it will in all probability bring about, in the near future, a considerable strengthening of the proletariat, if not its dictatorship, in Western Europe”. The revolutionary elements are growing, Kautsky declares: out of ten million voters in Germany in 1895, there were six million proletarians and three and a half million people interested in private property; in 1907 the latter grew by 0.03 million, and the former by 1.6 million! “The rate of the advance becomes very rapid as soon as a time of revolutionary ferment comes.” Class antagonisms are not blunted but, on the contrary, grow acute; prices rise, and imperialist rivalry and militarism are rampant. “A new era of revolution” is drawing near. The monstrous growth of taxes would “long ago have led to war as the only alternative to revolution ... had not that very alternative of revolution stood closer after a war than after a period of armed peace...”. “A world war Is ominously imminent,” Kautsky continues, “and war means also revolution.” In 1891 Engels had reason to fear a premature revolution in Germany; since then, however, “the   situation has greatly changed”. The proletariat “can no longer speak of a premature revolution” (Kautsky’s italics). The petty bourgeoisie is downright unreliable and is ever more hostile to the proletariat, but in a time of crisis it is “capable of coming over to our side in masses”. The main thing is that Social-Democracy “should remain unshakable, consistent, and irreconcilable”. We have undoubtedly entered a revolutionary period.
This is how Kautsky wrote in times long, long past, fully five years ago. This is what German Social-Democracy was, or, more correctly, what it promised to be. This was the kind of Social-Democracy that could and had to be respected.
See what the selfsame Kautsky writes today. Here are the most important statements in his article “Social-Democracy in Wartime” (Die Neue Zeit No. 1, October 2, 1914): “Our Party has far more rarely discussed the question of how to behave in wartime than how to prevent war .... Never is government so strong, never are parties so weak, as at the outbreak of war .... Wartime is least of all favourable to peaceful discussion .... Today the practical question is: victory or defeat for one’s own country.” Can there be an understanding among the parties of the belligerent countries regarding anti-war action? “That kind of thing has never been tested in practice. We have always disputed that possibility ....” The difference between the French and German socialists is “not one of principle” (as both defend their fatherlands) .... “Social-Democrats of all countries have an equal right or an equal obligation to take part in the defence of the fatherland: no nation should blame the other for doing so ....” “Has the International turned bankrupt?” “Has the Party rejected direct defence of its party principles in wartime?” (Mehring’s questions in the same issue.) “That is an erroneous conception .... There are no grounds at all for such pessimism .... The differences are not fundamental .... Unity of principles remains .... To disobey wartime laws would simply lead to suppression of our press.” Obedience to these laws “implies rejection of defence of party principles just as little as similar behaviour of our party press under that sword of Damocles—the Anti-Socialist Law.”

We have purposely quoted from the original because it is hard to believe that such things could have been written. It is hard to find in literature (except in that coming from downright renegades) such smug vulgarity, such shameful departure from the truth, such unsavoury subterfuge to cover up the most patent renunciation both of socialism in general and of precise international decisions unanimously adopted (as, for instance, in Stuttgart and particularly in Basic) precisely in view of the possibility of a European war just like the present! It would be disrespectful towards the reader were we to treat Kautsky’s arguments in earnest and try to analyse them: if the European war differs in many respects from a simple “little” anti-Jewish pogrom, the “socialist” arguments in favour of participation in such a war fully resimhle the “democratic” arguments in favour of participation in an anti-Jewish pogrom. One does not analyse arguments in favour of a pogrom; one only points them out so as to put their authors to shame in the sight of all class-conscious workers.
But how could it have come to pass, the reader will ask, that the leading authority in the Second International, a writer who once defended the views quoted at the beginning of this article, has sunk to something that is worse than being a renegade? That will not be understood, we answer, only by those who, perhaps unconsciously, consider that nothing out of the ordinary has happened, and that it is not difficult to “forgive and forget”, etc., i.e., by those who regard the matter from the renegade’s point of view. Those, however, who have earnestly and sincerely professed socialist convictions and have held the views set forth in the beginning of this article will not be surprised to learn that “Vorwdrts is dead” (Martov’s expression in the Paris Gobs) and that Kautsky is “dead”. The political bankruptcy of individuals is not a rarity at turning points in history. Despite the tremendous services he has rendered, Kautsky has never been among those who, at great crises, immediately take a militant Marxist stand (recall his vacillations on the issue of Millerandism^[2]).
It is such times that we are passing through. “You shoot first, Messieurs the Bourgeoisie!”^[3] Engels wrote in 1891, advocating, most correctly, the use of bourgeois legality by   us, revolutionaries, in the period of so-called peaceful constitutional development. Engels’s idea was crystal clear: we class-conscious workers, he said, will be the next to shoot; it is to our advantage to exchange ballots for bullets (to go over to civil war) at the moment the bourgeoisie itself has broken the legal foundation it has laid down. In 1909 Kautsky voiced the undisputed opinion held by all revolutionary Social-Democrats when he said that revolution in Europe cannot now be premature and that war means revolution.
“Peaceful” decades, however, have not passed without leaving their mark. They have of necessity given rise to opportunism in all countries, and made it prevalent among parliamentarian, trade union, journalistic and other “leaders”. There is no country in Europe where, in one form or another, a long and stubborn struggle has not been conducted against opportunism, the latter being supported in a host of ways by the entire bourgeoisie, which is striving to corrupt and weaken the revolutionary proletariat. Fifteen years ago, at the outset of the Bernstein controversy, the selfsame Kautsky wrote that should opportunism turn from a sentiment into a trend, a split would be imminent. In Russia, the old Iskra,^[4] which created the Social-Democratic Party of the working class, declared, in an article which appeared in its second issue early in 1901, under the title of “On the Threshold of the Twentieth Century”, that the revolutionary class of the twentieth century, like the revolutionary class of the eighteenth century—the bourgeoisie, had its own Gironde and its own Mountain.^[5]
The European war is a tremendous historical crisis, the beginning of a new epoch. Like any crisis, the war has aggravated deep-seated antagonisms and brought them to the surface, tearing asunder all veils of hypocrisy, rejecting all conventions and deflating all corrupt or rotting authorities. (This, incidentally, is the salutary and progressive effect of all crises, which only the dull-witted adherents of “peaceful evolution” fail to realise.) The Second International, which in its twenty-five or forty-five years of existence (according to whether the reckoning is from 1870 or 1889) was able to perform the highly important and useful work of expanding the influence of socialism and giving the socialist forces preparatory, initial and elementary   organisation, has played its historical role and has passed away, overcome, not so much by the von Kiucks as by opportunism. Let the dead bury their dead. Let the empty-headed busy-bodies (if not the intriguing lackeys of the chauvinists and the opportunists) labour at the task of bringing together Vandervelde and Sembat with Kautsky and Haase, as though we had another Ivan Ivanovich, who has called Ivan Nikiforovich a “gander”, and has to he urged by his friends to make it up with his enemy.[6] An International does not mean sitting at the same table and having hypocritical and pettifogging resolutions written by people who think that genuine internationalism consists in German socialists justifying the German bourgeoisie’s call to shoot down French workers, and in French socialists justifying the French bourgeoisie’ call to shoot down German workers in the name of the “defence of the fatherland”! The International consists in the coming together (first ideologically, then in due time organisationally as well) of people who, in these grave days, are capable of defending socialist internationalism in deed, i.e., of mustering their forces and “being the next to shoot” at the governments and the ruling classes of their own respective “fatherlands”. This is no easy task; it calls for much preparation and great sacrifices and will be accompanied by reverses. However, for the very reason that it, is no easy task, it must be accomplished only together with those who wish to perform it and are not afraid of a complete break with the chauvinists and with the defenders of social-chauvinism.
Such people as Pannekoek are doing more than anyone else for the sincere, not hypocritical restoration of a socialist, not a chauvinist, International. In an article entitled “The Collapse of the International”, Pannekoek said: “If the leaders get together in an attempt to patch up their differences, that will be of no significance at all.”
Let us frankly state the facts; in any case the war will compel us to do so, if not tomorrow, then the day after. Three currents exist in international socialism: (1) the chauvinists, who are consistently pursuing a policy of opportunism; (2) the consistent opponents of opportunism, who in all countries have already begun to make themselves heard (the opportunists have routed most of them, but   “defeated armies learn fast”), and are capable of conducting revolutionary work directed towards civil war; (3) confused and vacillating people, who at present are following in the wake of the opportunists and are causing the proletariat most harm by their hypocritical attempts to justify opportunism, something that they do almost scientifically and using the Marxist (sic!) method. Some of those who are engulfed in the latter current can be saved and restored to socialism, but only through a policy of a most decisive break and split with the former current, with all those who are capable of justifying the war credits vote, “the defence of the fatherland”, “submission to wartime laws”, a willingness to be satisfied with legal means only, and the rejection of civil war. Only those who pursue a policy like this are really building up a socialist International. For our part, we, who have established links with the Russian Collegium of the Central Committee and with the leading elements of the working-class movement in St. Petersburg, have exchanged opinions with them and become convinced that we are agreed on the main points, are in a position, as editors of the Central Organ, to declare in the name of our Party that only work conducted in this direction is Party work and Social-Democratic work.
The idea of a split in the German Social-Democratic movement may seem alarming to many in its “unusualness”. The objective situation, however, goes to show that either the unusual will come to pass (after all, Adler and Kautsky did declare, at the last session of the International Socialist Bureau^[7] in July 1914, that they did not believe in miracles, and therefore did not believe in a European war!) or we shall witness the painful decomposition of what was once German Social-Democracy. In conclusion, we would like to remind those who are too prone to “trust” the (former) German Social-Democrats that people who have been our opponents on a number of issues have arrived at the idea of such a split. Thus Martov has written in Gobs: “Vorwarts is dead .... A Social-Democracy which publicly renounces the class struggle would do better to recognise the facts as they are, temporarily disband its organisation, and close down its organs.” Thus Plekhanov is quoted by Gobs as having saidin a report: “I am very much against splits,   but if principles are sacrificed for the integrity of the organisation, then better a split than false unity.” Plekhanov was referring to the German radicals: he sees a mote in the eye of the Germans, but not the beam in his own eye. This is an individual feature in him; over the past ten years we have all grown quite used to Plekhanov’s radicalism in theory and opportunism in practice. However, if even persons with such “oddities” begin to talk of a split among the Germans, it is a sign of the times.

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Notes

[1] In its issue of March 30, 1895, Vorwärts published a summary and several extracts from Engels’s preface to Marx’s The Class Struggles   in France, 1848 to 1850, omitting very important propositions on the revolutionary role of the proletariat, which evoked a vehement protest from Engels. In his letter to Kautsky of April 1, 1895, he wrote: “To my astonishment I see in the Vorwärts today an extract from my ‘Introduction’, printed without my prior knowledge and trimmed in such a fashion that 1 appear as a peaceful worshipper of legality at any price” (Marx and Engels, Selected Correspondence, Moscow, 1955, p. 568).

Engels insisted on the “Introduction” being published in full. In 1895 it was published in the journal Die Neue Zeit, but with considerable deletions, these at the instance of the German Social-Democratic Party leadership. Seeking to justify their reformist tactics, the leaders of German Social-Democracy subsequently began to interpret their version of the “Introduction” as Engels’s renunciation of revolution, armed uprisings and barricade fighting. The original text of the “Introduction” was first published in the Soviet Union in 1955 (see Marx and Engels, Selected Works, Moscow, 1962,Vol. I, pp. 118-38).

[2] Millerandtsm—an opportunist trend named after the French "socialist" Millerand, who in 1899 joined the reactionary bourgeois government of France and helped the bourgeoisie in conducting its policy.

The admissibility of socialists’ participation in bourgeois governments was discussed at the Paris Congress of the Second International in 1900. The Congress adopted Kautsky’s conciliatory resolution condemning socialists’ participation in bourgeois governments but permitting it in certain “exceptional” cases. The French socialists used this proviso to justify their joining the bourgeois government at the beginning of the First World War.

[3] See F. Engels, Socialism in Germany, Section I.

[4] Iskra (The Spark)-the first all-Russian illegal Marxist newspaper, founded by Lenin in 1900. It played a decisive part in the establishmeat of the revolutionary Marxist party of the working class. The first issue appeared in Leipzig in December 1900; it was subsequently published in Munich, in London (from July 1902) and in Geneva (from the spring of 1903). On Lenin’s initiative and with his direct participation,the fskra editorial hoard drew up the Party programme, which was published in Iskra No. 21, and prepared the Second Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. which marked the beginning of a revolutionary Marxist party in Russia. Soon after the Congress, the Mensheviks, helped by Plekhanov, gained control of Iskra, so that, beginning with issue No. 52, Iskra ceased being an organ of revolutionary Marxism.

[5] The Mountain (Montagne) and the Gironde-the two political groups of the bourgeoisie during the French bourgeois revolution of 1789. The Montagnards, or Jacobins, was the name given to the more resolute representatives of the bourgeoisie, the revolutionary   class of the time, who stood for the abolition of absolutism and the feudal system. Unlike the Jacobins, the Girondists vacillated between revolution and counter-revolution, and sought agreement with the monarchy.

Lenin called the opportunist trend in Social-Democracy the “socialist Gironde” , and the revolutionary Social-Democrats the “proletarian Jacobins” , “the Mountain”. After the R.S.D.L.P. split into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, Lenin frequently stressed that the Mensheviks epresented the Girondist trend in the working-class movement.

[6] Ivan Ivanovich and Ivan Nikiforovich-characters in Gogol’s Tale of How Ivan Ivanovich Quarrelled with Iran Nikiforovich. The quarrel between these two provincial landowners, whose names have become proverbial, started on a most insignificant pretext, and dragged on endlessly.

[7] The International Socialist Bureau-the executive body of the Second International, established by decision of the ParisCongressof 1900. From 1905 Lenin was member of the LS.B. as representative of the R.S.D.L.P.

 

 

 

30th Annual PDC Holiday Appeal-Free the Class-War Prisoners!

30th Annual PDC Holiday Appeal-Free the Class-War Prisoners! Workers Vanguard No. 1080	11 December 2015

30th Annual PDC Holiday Appeal-Free the Class-War Prisoners!

 

(Class-Struggle Defense Notes)

 

This year’s Holiday Appeal marks the 30th year of the Partisan Defense Committee’s program of sending monthly stipends as an expression of solidarity to those imprisoned for standing up to racist capitalist repression and imperialist depredation. This program revived a tradition initiated by the International Labor Defense under James P. Cannon, its founder and first secretary (1925-1928). This year’s events will pay tribute to two former stipend recipients: Phil Africa of the MOVE 9 who died under suspicious circumstances in January and Hugo Pinell, the last of the San Quentin 6 in prison, who was brutally assassinated in August. We honor the memory of these courageous individuals by keeping up the fight for the freedom of all class-war prisoners. The PDC currently sends stipends to 14 class-war prisoners.

 

Mumia Abu-Jamal is a former Black Panther Party spokesman, a well-known supporter of the MOVE organization and an award-winning journalist known as “the voice of the voiceless.” Framed up for the 1981 killing of a Philadelphia police officer, Mumia was sentenced to death explicitly for his political views. Federal and state courts have repeatedly refused to consider evidence proving Mumia’s innocence, including the sworn confession of Arnold Beverly that he, not Mumia, shot and killed the policeman. In 2011 the Philadelphia district attorney’s office dropped its longstanding effort to legally lynch America’s foremost class-war prisoner. He remains condemned to life in prison with no chance of parole. Mumia now faces a life-threatening health crisis related to an active case of hepatitis C which brought him close to death in March. The Pennsylvania prison authorities adamantly refuse to treat this dangerous but curable condition.

 

Leonard Peltier is an internationally renowned class-war prisoner. Peltier’s incarceration for his activism in the American Indian Movement has come to symbolize this country’s racist repression of its Native peoples, the survivors of centuries of genocidal oppression. Peltier was framed up for the 1975 deaths of two FBI agents marauding in what had become a war zone on the South Dakota Pine Ridge Reservation. Although the lead government attorney has admitted, “We can’t prove who shot those agents,” and the courts have acknowledged blatant prosecutorial misconduct, the 71-year-old Peltier is not scheduled to be reconsidered for parole for another nine years. Peltier suffers from multiple serious medical conditions and is incarcerated far from his people and family.

 

Seven MOVE members—Chuck Africa, Michael Africa, Debbie Africa, Janet Africa, Janine Africa, Delbert Africa and Eddie Africa—are in their 38th year of prison. After the 8 August 1978 siege of their Philadelphia home by over 600 heavily armed cops, they were sentenced to 30-100 years, having been falsely convicted of killing a police officer who died in the cops’ own cross fire. In 1985, eleven of their MOVE family members, including five children, were massacred by Philly cops when a bomb was dropped on their living quarters. After nearly four decades of unjust incarceration, these innocent prisoners are routinely turned down at parole hearings. None have been released.

 

Albert Woodfox is the last of the Angola Three still incarcerated. Along with Herman Wallace and Robert King, Woodfox fought the vicious, racist and dehumanizing conditions in Louisiana’s Angola prison and courageously organized a Black Panther Party chapter at the prison. Authorities framed up Woodfox and Wallace for the fatal stabbing of a prison guard in 1972 and falsely convicted King of killing a fellow inmate a year later. For over 43 years, Woodfox has been locked down in Closed Cell Restricted (CCR) blocks, the longest stretch in solitary confinement ever in this country. His conviction has been overturned three times! According to his lawyers, he suffers from hypertension, heart disease, chronic renal insufficiency, diabetes, anxiety and insomnia—conditions no doubt caused and/or exacerbated by decades of vindictive and inhumane treatment. Albert was ordered released by a federal judge in June, but the vindictive Louisiana state prosecutors are bringing him to trial yet again for a crime he did not commit.

 

Jaan Laaman and Thomas Manning are the two remaining anti-imperialist activists known as the Ohio 7 still in prison, convicted for their roles in a radical group that took credit for bank “expropriations” and bombings of symbols of U.S. imperialism, such as military and corporate offices, in the late 1970s and ’80s. Before their arrests in 1984 and 1985, the Ohio 7 were targets of massive manhunts. The Ohio 7’s politics were once shared by thousands of radicals but, like the Weathermen before them, the Ohio 7 were spurned by the “respectable” left. From a proletarian standpoint, the actions of these leftist activists against imperialism and racist injustice are not crimes. They should not have served a day in prison.

 

Ed Poindexter and Wopashitwe Mondo Eyen we Langa are former Black Panther supporters and leaders of the Omaha, Nebraska, National Committee to Combat Fascism. They are victims of the FBI’s deadly COINTELPRO operation, under which 38 Black Panther Party members were killed and hundreds more imprisoned on frame-up charges. Poindexter and Mondo were railroaded to prison and sentenced to life for a 1970 explosion that killed a cop, and they have now spent more than 40 years behind bars. Nebraska courts have repeatedly denied Poindexter and Mondo new trials despite the fact that a crucial piece of evidence excluded from the original trial, a 911 audio tape long suppressed by the FBI, proved that testimony of the state’s key witness was perjured.

 

Contribute now! All proceeds from the Holiday Appeal events will go to the Class-War Prisoners Stipend Fund. This is not charity but an elementary act of solidarity with those imprisoned for their opposition to racist capitalism and imperialist depredations. Send your contributions to: PDC, P.O. Box 99, Canal Street Station, New York, NY 10013; (212) 406-4252.
 

*****Free Chelsea Manning - President Obama Pardon Chelsea Manning Now!

*****Free Chelsea Manning - President Obama Pardon Chelsea Manning Now!

Amnesty renews call on US govt to free Manning

Join us in urging President Obama to Pardon Chelsea Manning!

July 30, 2014 by the Chelsea Manning Support Network

One year after Chelsea Manning’s conviction, Amnesty International is still calling on the US government to grant her clemency.  Amnesty demands that Chelsea be freed immediately, and for the US government to, “implement a thorough and impartial investigation into the crimes she uncovered.”  Read the full statement from Amnesty International below or click here to view it on amnesty.org:

Exactly one year after Chelsea Manning was convicted of leaking classified government material, Amnesty International is renewing its call on the US authorities to grant her clemency, release her immediately, and to urgently investigate the potential human rights violations exposed by the leaks.

Chelsea Manning has spent the last year as a convicted criminal after exposing information which included evidence of potential human rights violations and breaches of international law. By disseminating classified information via Wikileaks she revealed to the world abuses perpetrated by the US army, military contractors and Iraqi and Afghan troops operating alongside US forces.

“It is an absolute outrage that Chelsea Manning is currently languishing behind bars whilst those she helped to expose, who are potentially guilty of human rights violations, enjoy impunity,” said Erika Guevara Rosas, Americas Director Amnesty International.

“The US government must grant Chelsea Manning clemency, order her immediate release, and implement a thorough and impartial investigation into the crimes she uncovered.”

After being convicted of 20 separate charges Chelsea Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison, much longer than other members of the military convicted of charges such as murder, rape and war crimes.

Before her conviction, Chelsea Manning had already been held for three years in pre-trial detention, including 11 months in conditions which the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture described as cruel and inhumane.

Chelsea Manning has always maintained that her motivation for releasing the documents to Wikileaks was out of concern for the public and to foster a meaningful debate on the costs of war and the conduct of the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Notable amongst the information revealed by Private Manning was previously unseen footage of journalists and other civilians being killed in US helicopter attacks.

Chelsea Manning is now actively engaged with her lawyers in fighting her conviction.

 "The US government appears to have its priorities warped. It is sending a worrying message through its harsh punishment of Chelsea Manning that whistleblowers will not be tolerated. On the other hand, its failure to investigate allegations that arose from Chelsea Manning’s disclosures means that those potentially responsible for crimes under international law, including torture and enforced disappearances, may get away scot-free,” said Erika Guevara.

“One year after the conviction of Chelsea Manning we are still calling on the US government to grant her clemency in recognition of her motives for acting as she did, and the time she has already served in prison.” 

Amnesty International has previously expressed concern that a sentence of 35 years in jail was excessive and should have been commuted to time served. The organization believes that Chelsea Manning was overcharged using antiquated legislation aimed at dealing with treason, and denied the opportunity to use a public interest defence at her trial.

In addition, there is little protection in US law for genuine whistleblowers, and this case underlines the need for the US to strengthen protections for those who reveal information that the public has the right to know.

It is crucial that the US government stops using the Espionage Act to prosecute whistleblowers like Chelsea Manning.

Markin comments (Winter 2014):   

There is no question now that Chelsea Manning’s trial, if one can called what took place down in Fort Meade a trial in the summer of 2013 rather than a travesty, a year after her conviction on twenty plus counts and having received an outrageous thirty-five year sentence essentially for telling us the truth about American atrocities and nefarious actions in Iraq, Afghanistan and wherever else the American government can stick its nose that her case has dropped from view. Although she occasionally gets an Op/Ed opportunity, including in the New York Times, a newspaper which while recoiling at the severity of the sentence in the immediate reaction did not question the justice of the conviction, and has several legal moves going from action to get the necessary hormonal treatments reflecting her real sexual identity (which the Army has stonewalled on and which even the New York Times has called for implementing) to now preparing the first appeal of her conviction to another military tribunal the popular uproar against her imprisonment has become a hush. While the appeals process may produce some results, perhaps a reduction in sentence, the short way home for her is a presidential pardon right now. I urge everybody to Google Amnesty International and sign on to the online petition to put the pressure on President Barack Obama for clemency.                   

I attended some of the sessions of Chelsea Manning’s court-martial in the summer of 2013 and am often asked these days in speaking for her release about what she could expect from the various procedures going forward to try to “spring” her from the clutches of the American government, or as I say whenever I get the chance to “not leave our buddy behind” in the time-honored military parlance. I have usually answered depending on what stage her post-conviction case is in that her sentence was draconian by all standards for someone who did not, although they tried to pin this on her, “aid the enemy.” Certainly Judge Lind though she was being lenient with thirty-five years when the government wanted sixty (and originally much more before some of the counts were consolidated). The next step was to appeal, really now that I think about it, a pro forma appeal to the commanding general of the Washington, D.C. military district where the trial was held. There were plenty of grounds to reduce the sentence but General Buchanan backed up his trial judge in the winter of 2014. Leaving Chelsea supporters right now with only the prospect of a presidential pardon to fight for as the court appeals are put together which will take some time. This is how I put the matter at one meeting:

“No question since her trial, conviction, and draconian sentence of thirty-five years imposed by a vindictive American government heroic Wiki-leaks whistle-blower Chelsea Manning’s has fallen off the radar. The incessant news cycle which has a short life cycle covered her case sporadically, covered the verdict, covered the sentencing and with some snickers cover her announcement directly after the sentencing that she wanted to live as her true self, a woman. (A fact that her supporters were aware of prior to the announcement but agreed that the issue of her sexual identity should not get mixed up with her heroic actions during the pre-trial and trial periods.) Since then despite occasional public rallies and actions her case had tended, as most political prisoner cases do, to get caught up in the appeals process and that keeps it out of the limelight.”            

Over the past year or so Chelsea Manning has been honored and remembered by the Veterans For Peace, Smedley Butler Brigade in Boston in such events as the VFP-led Saint Patrick’s Day Peace Parade, the Memorial Day anti-war observance, the yearly Gay Pride Parade, the Rockport July 4^th parade, the VFP-led Veterans Day Peace Parade, and on December 17^th her birthday. We have marched with a banner calling for her freedom, distribute literature about her case and call on one and all to sign the pardon petitions. The banner has drawn applause and return shouts of “Free Chelsea.” The Smedley Butler Brigade continues to stand behind our sister. We will not leave her behind. We also urge everybody to sign the Amnesty International on-line petition calling on President Obama to use his constitutional authority to pardon Chelsea Manning

http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/usa-one-year-after-her-conviction-chelsea-manning-must-be-released-2014-07-30  

Additional Markin comment on his reasons for supporting Chelsea Manning:

I got my start in working with anti-war GIs back in the early 1970s after my own military service was over. After my own service I had felt a compelling need to fight the monster from the outside after basically fruitless and difficult efforts inside once I got “religion” on the war issue first-hand. That work included helping create a couple of GI coffeehouses near Fort Devens in Massachusetts and down at Fort Dix in New Jersey in order for GIs to have a “friendly” space in which to think through what they wanted to do in relationship to the military.

Some wanted help to apply for the then tough to get discharge for conscientious objection. Tough because once inside the military, at least this was the way things went then, the military argued against the depth of the applying soldier’s convictions and tended to dismiss such applications out of hand. Only after a few civil court cases opened up the application process later when the courts ruled that the military was acting arbitrarily and capriciously in rejecting such applications out of hand did things open up a little in that channel. Others wanted to know their rights against what they were told by their officers and NCOs. But most, the great majority, many who had already served in hell-hole Vietnam, wanted a place, a non-military place, a non-GI club, where they could get away from the smell, taste, and macho talk of war.

Although there are still a few places where the remnants of coffeehouses exist like the classic Oleo Strut down at Fort Hood in Texas the wars of the past decade or so has produced no great GI resistance like against the Vietnam War when half the Army in America and Vietnam seemed to be in mutiny against their officers, against their ugly tasks of killing every “gook” who crossed their path for no known reason except hubris, and against the stifling of their rights as citizens. At one point no anti-war march was worthy of the name if it did not have a contingent of soldiers in uniform leading the thing. There are many reasons for this difference in attitude, mainly the kind of volunteer the military accepts but probably a greater factor is that back then was the dominance of the citizen-soldier, the draftee, in stirring things up, stirring things up inside as a reflection of what was going on out on the streets and on the campuses. I still firmly believe that in the final analysis you have to get to the “cannon fodder,” the grunts, the private soldier if you want to stop the incessant war machine. Since we are commemorating, if that is the right word the 100^th anniversary of the start of World War I check out what happened, for example, on the Russian front when the desperate soldiers left the trenches during 1917 after they got fed up with the Czar, with the trenches, with the landlords, and the whole senseless mess.

Everyone who has the least bit of sympathy for the anti-war struggles of the past decade should admire what Chelsea Manning has done by her actions releasing that treasure trove of information about American atrocities in Iraq and elsewhere. She has certainly paid the price for her convictions with a draconian sentence. It is hard to judge how history will record any particular heroic action like hers but if the last real case with which her action can be compared with is a guide, Daniel Ellsberg and The Pentagon Papers, she should find an honored spot. Moreover Chelsea took her actions while in the military which has its own peculiar justice system. Her action, unlike back in Vietnam War times, when the Army was half in mutiny was one of precious few this time out. Now that I think about she does not have to worry about her honored place in history. It is already assured. But just to be on the safe side let’s fight like hell for her freedom. We will not leave our sister Chelsea behind.              

 
     





    

http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/usa-one-year-after-her-conviction-chelsea-manning-must-be-released-2014-07-30  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Quare Fellow-James Mason’s Odd Man Out

The Quare Fellow-James Mason’s Odd Man Out  

DVD Review

From The Pen Of Sam Lowell

Odd Man Out, starring James Mason, directed by Carol Reed (director of the noir classic The Third Man), 1947

No question being a revolutionary in non-revolutionary times is a tough dollar, or as the case here in the film under review, Odd Man Out, being such a stout-hearted fellow in Belfast (although the city is unnamed in the film but it has the look of that city and the kicker is the Royal Constabulary swarming all over the place in the 1940s), in the North, the North of Ireland after the partition which created a two-state solution in Ireland after the deal when down in the 1920s and the 1940s Irish Republican Army (IRA) partisans were left to swing in the wind. Yeah just ask stand-up IRA partisan Johnnie McQueen (although in the film the designation is simply “the organization” everybody knows what organization), a stand-up guy who did serious time in one His Majesty’s stinking prisons. Yeah, ask Johnny and the boys what’s what when times are tough and dough is tight to fight the fight for a one-state Ireland. A lot of good men, women too, including a quare fellow like Johnny have broken their teeth on that one.            

See in hard times, in times when the general population does not give a rat’s ass about unification (or whatever political program a revolutionary might be espousing) guys like Johnny and the boys have to keep body and soul together, to speak nothing of the organization, by an occasion robbery to refill the coffers. So Johnny and the boys plot and plan (after being given the assignment by that nefarious “organization”) to rob the local mill where the payroll cash will be a very good start on continuing to keep body and soul together. Naturally with stand-up Johnny as the leader. Stand-up or not though Johnny got ground down by prison, wasn’t up to leading this caper and while they grabbed the cash after that everything went to hell in a handbasket. It didn’t help that Johnny got caught up in a battle just before the getaway with some bravo who must have thought the dough being taken was personally his and in the melee got killed, got killed dead as it turned out. Johnny took a bullet too, a bullet wound which would drive the rest of the film.      

And that tells the tale of the rest of the film as Johnny is thrown pillar to post trying to dodge the coppers and get away, far away, from Belfast and the king’s sweet sweated gallows. Capturing the tensions, the mishaps, the poignancy of the streets of the town at night, a night that was filled with forebodings for Johnny, director Carol Reed as he did in The Third Man did a masterful job of cinematography capturing the back alleys and squalor of the “wrong side of the tracks” is really what drives us on to see what happens.

Well you know Johnny could come to no good end, had to take the fall one way or the other. Here is strange beauty of this plotline though. Johnny’s love interest, fellow partisan Kathleen, knowing that her man is going down, is going down hard, on her own makes a private “death pact,” wants to share Johnny’s fate. To insure that common fate as the coppers close in on Johnny Kathleen without flinching draws a pistol from her coat pocket and starts firing. Great noir touch.