Click on the headline to link to the archives of the Occupy Boston General Assembly minutes from the Occupy Boston website. Occupy Boston started at 6:00 PM, September 30, 2011. The General Assembly is the core political institution of the Occupy movement. Some of the minutes will reflect the growing pains of that movement and its concepts of political organization. Note that I used the word embryo in the headline and I believe that gives a fair estimate of its status, and its possibilities.
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An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend All The Occupation Sites And All The Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Protesters Everywhere!
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Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It, It’s Ours! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
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Below I am posting, occasionally, comments on the Occupy movement as I see or hear things of interest, or that cause alarm bells to ring in my head. The first comment directly below from October 1, which represented my first impressions of Occupy Boston, is the lead for all further postings.
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Markin comment October 1, 2011:
There is a lot of naiveté expressed about the nature of capitalism, capitalists, and the way to win in the class struggle by various participants in this occupation. Many also have attempted to make a virtue out of that naiveté, particularly around the issues of effective democratic organization (the General Assembly, its unrepresentative nature and its undemocratic consensus process) and relationships with the police (they are not our friends, no way, when the deal goes down). However, their spirit is refreshing, they are acting out of good subjective anti-capitalist motives and, most importantly, even those of us who call ourselves "reds" (communists), including this writer, started out from liberal premises as naive, if not more so, than those encountered at the occupation site. We can all learn something but in the meantime we must defend the "occupation" and the occupiers. More later as the occupation continues.
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In the recent past as part of my one of my commentaries I noted the following:
“… The idea of the General Assembly with each individual attendee acting as a “tribune of the people” is interesting and important. And, of course, it represents, for today anyway, the embryo of what the ‘new world’ we need to create might look like at the governmental level.”
A couple of the people that I have talked to lately were not quite sure what to make of that idea. The idea that what is going on in Occupy Boston at the governmental level could, should, would be a possible form of governing this society in the “new world a-borning” with the rise of the Occupy movement. Part of the problem is that there was some confusion on the part of the listeners that one of the possible aims of this movement is to create an alternative government, or at least provide a model for such a government. I will argue here now, and in the future, that it should be one of the goals. In short, we need to take power away from the Democrats and Republicans and their tired old congressional/executive/judicial doesn’t work- checks and balances-form of governing and place it at the grassroots level and work upward from there rather than, as now, have power devolve from the top. (And stop well short of the bottom.)
I will leave aside the question (the problem really) of what it would take to create such a possibility. Of course a revolutionary solution would, of necessity, have be on the table since there is no way that the current powerful interests, Democratic, Republican or those of the "one percent" having no named politics, is going to give up power without a fight. What I want to pose now is the use of the General Assembly as a deliberative executive, legislative, and judicial body all rolled into one.
Previous historical models readily come to mind; the short-lived but heroic Paris Commune of 1871 that Karl Marx tirelessly defended against the reactionaries of Europe as the prototype of a workers government; the early heroic days of the Russian October Revolution of 1917 when the workers councils (soviets in Russian parlance) acted as a true workers' government; and the period in the Spanish Revolution of 1936-39 where the Central Committee of the Anti-Fascist Militias acted, de facto, as a workers government. All the just mentioned examples had their problems and flaws, no question. However, merely mentioning the General Assembly concept in the same paragraph as these great historic examples should signal that thoughtful leftists and other militants need to investigate and study these examples.
In order to facilitate the investigation and study of those examples I will, occasionally, post works in this space that deal with these forbears from several leftist perspectives (rightist perspectives were clear- crush all the above examples ruthlessly, and with no mercy- so we need not look at them now). I started this Lessons Of History series with Karl Marx’s classic defense and critique of the Paris Commune, The Civil War In France and today’s presentation noted in the headline continues on in that same vein.
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A Five-Point Program As Talking Points
*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay to spread the available work around. Organize the unorganized- Organize the South- Organize Wal-Mart- Defend the right of public and private sector workers to unionize.
* Defend the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. Spent the dues on organizing the unorganized and other labor-specific causes (example, the November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio).
*End the endless wars!- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan! Hands Off Iran! Hands Off The World!
*Fight for a social agenda for working people!. Quality Healthcare For All! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! Forgive student debt! Stop housing foreclosures!
*We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Build a workers party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed.
Emblazon on our red banner-Labor and the oppressed must rule!
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Charles Fourier (1772-1837)
“Politics and Poverty”
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Source: The Utopian Vision of Charles Fourier. Selected Texts on Work, Love, and Passionate Attraction. Translated, Edited and with an Introduction by Jonathan Beecher and Richard Bienvenu. Published by Jonathan Cape, 1972;
First Published: Manuscrits de Charles Fourier. Année 1851.
Transcribed: by Andy Blunden.
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By dint of compiling the reveries of classical antiquity, modern philosophers have come to espouse the prejudices of their forefathers, and notably the most ridiculous prejudice, the conviction that the good can be established by governmental action. Neither the ancient nor the modern civilisations have ever conceived of a measure which did not rely on government. Are they unaware that any civilised administration, however organised, prefers its own good to that of the people? What has been the result of the theories designed to curb the powers of government? What has been the use of ministerial responsibility, the balance of powers, and other notions equally devoid of sense? Experiments with these scientific visions have only served to convince us that the nature of the civilised mechanism imposes the prompt re-establishment of the abuses that we try to banish. Civilisation is a social plague on the planet, and vices are just as necessary to it as is a virus to disease. The reforms that you seek to impose by governmental action only serve to confirm existing abuses. After much effort you bow under their yoke, and all you gain for your efforts is the conviction of an inexorable bondage.
What fatal circumstance has caused the modern sciences to attain gigantic stature in physics and the arts and to remain dwarfs in the subalternate science of politics? Civilised genius, even in its most brilliant periods, has never created anything for the happiness of the common people. At Athens as at Paris, the beggar standing at the palace gate has always served to demonstrate the nullity of your political wisdom and the reprobation of nature against your social theories. You have not even managed to accomplish half of the reforms which were possible in civilisation. Although you could not have rooted out the vices which degrade civilisation, you could have mitigated them. You could have given civilisation a polish of splendour and unity which would have made its present situation seem like a state of ruin. All you can do is to look backwards in politics; you praise yourself for the avoidance of evil before attaining the good. Like the child who thinks himself a mighty man at the age of four because he has beaten up a three year old, you think yourself wise for having banished from your societies a few of the horrors which reduce the barbarian to an even lower condition than your own. But just how much progress have you made toward the good when mendacity and thievery, venality and bribery, reign perpetually in your disgusting civilisation?
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
Sunday, May 13, 2012
Victory To The Saint James Street (Boston) Janitors-Remarks made by a member of Veterans For Peace at the May 9th 31 Saint James Street Boston rally in solidarity with our embattled SEIU sister and brother janitors.
Click on headline to link ot Boston.com articel about the Saint James Street janitors.
Remarks made by a member of Veterans For Peace at the May 9th 31 Saint James Street Boston rally in solidarity with our embattled SEIU sister and brother janitors.
Sisters and brothers, hermanas y hermanos, we of Veterans for Peace stand in solidarity with our hard-working fellow workers trying to get some justice in this wicked old world and not let them lose their jobs to some faceless corporation seeking to play “the race to the bottom” for their own profits.
I, personally, stand in solidarity as well, because back in the day I too worked for a time as a janitor right over here at Emerson College in the dark of night. That was just to earn some dough. Later, when I got more politically savvy, I was a janitor in a unionized automobile plant. So I KNOW that the brother and sister janitors working at 31 Saint James Street are hard-working. Buffing the floors, vacuuming the rugs, dusting this and that, emptying wastepaper baskets, and, well, cleaning the restrooms, and no offense to the mujeres, in the audience, theirs were the worst to clean. You janitors know what I mean, right? The office buildings, the factories, the industrial and high tech parks don’t just clean themselves. It takes honest work by the forgotten and unseen obreros to do it. And they should be paid well and have job security for their efforts.
Now Veterans for Peace is best known for its militant anti-war work, especially in these days of permanent war just now centered in Afghanistan but next year who knows where once the imperial government rears its hind legs. But VFP has also participated in the anti-capitalist struggles around Bank of America and home foreclosures and the like. Think about it though, the struggle against war, the struggle against the profit-gouged banks and their predatory practices and the struggle against the race to the bottom capitalists for labor dignity and some social and economic justice. Mi amigos they are all the same struggle, the same fight. So as the old time militant labor slogan goes- an injury to one is an injury to all. Venceramos.
Remarks made by a member of Veterans For Peace at the May 9th 31 Saint James Street Boston rally in solidarity with our embattled SEIU sister and brother janitors.
Sisters and brothers, hermanas y hermanos, we of Veterans for Peace stand in solidarity with our hard-working fellow workers trying to get some justice in this wicked old world and not let them lose their jobs to some faceless corporation seeking to play “the race to the bottom” for their own profits.
I, personally, stand in solidarity as well, because back in the day I too worked for a time as a janitor right over here at Emerson College in the dark of night. That was just to earn some dough. Later, when I got more politically savvy, I was a janitor in a unionized automobile plant. So I KNOW that the brother and sister janitors working at 31 Saint James Street are hard-working. Buffing the floors, vacuuming the rugs, dusting this and that, emptying wastepaper baskets, and, well, cleaning the restrooms, and no offense to the mujeres, in the audience, theirs were the worst to clean. You janitors know what I mean, right? The office buildings, the factories, the industrial and high tech parks don’t just clean themselves. It takes honest work by the forgotten and unseen obreros to do it. And they should be paid well and have job security for their efforts.
Now Veterans for Peace is best known for its militant anti-war work, especially in these days of permanent war just now centered in Afghanistan but next year who knows where once the imperial government rears its hind legs. But VFP has also participated in the anti-capitalist struggles around Bank of America and home foreclosures and the like. Think about it though, the struggle against war, the struggle against the profit-gouged banks and their predatory practices and the struggle against the race to the bottom capitalists for labor dignity and some social and economic justice. Mi amigos they are all the same struggle, the same fight. So as the old time militant labor slogan goes- an injury to one is an injury to all. Venceramos.
Ancient dreams, dreamed-Last Chance To Glance- Magical Realism 101
Main street walked, a brand new just off the assembly line wild dream 1964 Mustang just passed by (dark green, complete with sally, sassy blonde-haired sally from down the street, with big breasts and no brains, according to shawlie grapevine lore, but still with that green devil of a mustang paid for by some smitten man out for her midnight romp of local manhood, or men-hood according to Frankie Larkin school boy corner boy lore, and he should know). Cursed no car night shade walked, no dough for car walked, no dough for nothing walked, poor Pa out of work again. Out of work as the ships that keep North Adamsville afloat are now being built in more exotic locales, foreign places like Taiwan and Malta, wherever that is, and so he, unskilled, last hired, first fired, and built for hills and hollows coalmine childhoods and no waterlogged ocean belts, has no dough to spare. Nada.
So I walked, and only dreamed of cars, not some big deal car like Sally’s Mustang or the “boss” ’57 Chevy of my dreams (nothing but a girl magnet car, and choices too, take a number, girls), and the stuff of hard corner boy chieftain Billy Bradley’s reality but just something to get around in, something to make the girls raise their heads when I pass by, and not keep them pavement-bound while I flannel-shirted in all climes, black chinos un-cuffed in all climes, Chuck Taylor sneakers in all weathers, and midnight faux- beatnik sunglasses at all hours pass them walking by (by my lonesome, except when Frankie decides he has had enough of main squeeze Joann, or corners).
And not something, some car not girl, too complicated, mechanically complicated, either so that I would have to spent my time and no dough down the street at Stewball Stu’s homegrown garage waiting on his lordship to fix some silly thing in about one second like tightening something loose with the flick of a wrench, endlessly talk about his latest conquests (plural is correct, girl conquests, of course, what else could Stu talk about, and for real, I know because they, the girls, and not dogs either, talk about it at school, and giggle, giggle that giggle that means more than tender smooches, jesus), smell his stinking whiskey breathe (rotgut Johnny Walker something but not top shelf but more live Adams River streaked water, and his oil stained, oil-stained everything (clothes, tee-shirt, kitchen table, Christ, how can a guy live like that. Some girl magnet, who knows how or why but they take numbers to ride the curve with Stu, but that is just me being jealous because a couple of times I got his “left-overs.” So thanks, Stu, for the favors.
But see Pa out of work means no telephone, and no dough to put in a telephone or keep it at the ready that is how close to the vest we have to play it when Pa gets his slip, not even a cheapjack two-party line that they, AT&T, practically give away. So this night I am not just walking, Main Street walking for the hell of it, but to rub a few dimes together and find the nearest public telephone to do my talking into. What it’s about, the talking, I will get to in a minute but let me tell you that this nearest phone is located right next to the Minute Motel. Come on, don’t you get it, that is not the real name of the place but do I have to draw you a picture? This is strictly for the “high society” crowd that does their business by the hour, or less. Day and night it seems, there are always cars pulling in and out. Not ‘57 Chevies, those and their Billy Bradley corner boy owners are down at Adamsville Beach or a t Squaw Rock down across from the far end of the beach watching the “submarine races” at midnight for free but more old guy cars. Buicks and Pontiacs. And seeing the traffic going and out of that joint, and why, what goes on, only makes my “job” for this evening that much harder.
See I have been walking this night for a while, a couple of hours, trying to get up enough courage to call this Diana, a girl classmate for a date. Diana, a greek goddess wholesale (although I don’t think she is greek or wholesale but I have her headed that way, that pedestal way), on this atlantic ocean strictly from hunger working class town means streets is who has me walking (and truth to tell kind of muttering to myself, she was that kind of girl). Naturally, Diana is not her real name just like that hotel, motel, no tell was not really called the Minute Motel, I don’t want any trouble okay, and I will tell you why as I get along with what I want to talk to her about. Don’t worry it won’t be long.
This Diana and I have been talking, hard and kind of deep talking in school about world issues, music, poets, crazed poets like mad monk Allen Ginsburg and not so crazed T.S. Eliot (we read Wasteland together in class, wow). Hard talking about the big break-out we know is coming, about how things are going to be totally different for us when our time comes with no Pa out of work and always no dough, or not enough, and we want to be part of it. (See, she told me in confidence, her Pa was on the chopping block down at the shipyards too so she knows about no dough, and sniffed dreams too.) So I take her seriously, and she, I think, takes me seriously although she never has had anything good to say about Frankie, Frankie Larkin, my corner boy, but that is because he tried to give her a tumble, I think, and she knew he was always ball and chain to Joann, or corners. That part isn’t important anyway. What is important is that I dream of her, no, I’d better say she disturbs my sleep and be closer to the truth.
And here is why. Diana, blonde, naturally blonde, Diana, fills out a cashmere-sweater nicely thank you, white tennis –shoed like every other girl in town but showing off some very nice, well-turned legs, thank you. So you can see where she might disturb my sleep because usually I go for girls who want to be part of the great breakout, just like me, but who well, since I am trying to keep my emotions in check before I make this call are only “cute,” at best. Although they too wear those white tennis shoes while reading their James Joyce or Albert Camus (ya, it’s that kind of crowd I run with over in Harvard Square when I have had my fill of North Adamsville squares, excepting Diana). See I am making this call, this midnight big time call to ask Diana to go on over to the Square with me, just as friends, see.
Right now as you can sense I bet I am only talking to stall, stall having to do this call, cold call really, because I don’t know that much about her personally and my intelligence network (Sunday night corner boy guys hanging around the boys’ lav on Monday morning speaking of conquests, and other lies) has run cold to the ground. All I really know about her is that she wants to break-out and that is good enough for me, and good enough to disturb my sleep lately until I play my hand out.
So I am seeking this public telephone, or rather courage-seeking, nickel and dime courage as it turns out; nickel and dime courage when due to no fault of my own (or Pa’s really when I thought about it) home provided no sanctuary for snuggle-eared delights. Maybe a date, maybe just a swirl at midnight drift, maybe a view of local lore submarine races, ah, to dream, no more than to dream, walking down friendly aisles, arm and arm along with myriad other arm and arm walkers on high school senior errands. Diana
I drop the dime in ring, ring, ring. Hi, Diana, hi spiel, and then, and then nothingness. No way, no way, damn intelligence no way, see she has a boyfriend, a college guy, probably all done up in plaid shirts, slacks, be serious, slack, and pennied loafers, and that is where her dream break-out was running. And then dead of night red-face right away, sorry, I didn’t know, alas, red-faced the next day, red faced until parted june freedom fly-out.
And red-faced even forty years later. Wow.
So I walked, and only dreamed of cars, not some big deal car like Sally’s Mustang or the “boss” ’57 Chevy of my dreams (nothing but a girl magnet car, and choices too, take a number, girls), and the stuff of hard corner boy chieftain Billy Bradley’s reality but just something to get around in, something to make the girls raise their heads when I pass by, and not keep them pavement-bound while I flannel-shirted in all climes, black chinos un-cuffed in all climes, Chuck Taylor sneakers in all weathers, and midnight faux- beatnik sunglasses at all hours pass them walking by (by my lonesome, except when Frankie decides he has had enough of main squeeze Joann, or corners).
And not something, some car not girl, too complicated, mechanically complicated, either so that I would have to spent my time and no dough down the street at Stewball Stu’s homegrown garage waiting on his lordship to fix some silly thing in about one second like tightening something loose with the flick of a wrench, endlessly talk about his latest conquests (plural is correct, girl conquests, of course, what else could Stu talk about, and for real, I know because they, the girls, and not dogs either, talk about it at school, and giggle, giggle that giggle that means more than tender smooches, jesus), smell his stinking whiskey breathe (rotgut Johnny Walker something but not top shelf but more live Adams River streaked water, and his oil stained, oil-stained everything (clothes, tee-shirt, kitchen table, Christ, how can a guy live like that. Some girl magnet, who knows how or why but they take numbers to ride the curve with Stu, but that is just me being jealous because a couple of times I got his “left-overs.” So thanks, Stu, for the favors.
But see Pa out of work means no telephone, and no dough to put in a telephone or keep it at the ready that is how close to the vest we have to play it when Pa gets his slip, not even a cheapjack two-party line that they, AT&T, practically give away. So this night I am not just walking, Main Street walking for the hell of it, but to rub a few dimes together and find the nearest public telephone to do my talking into. What it’s about, the talking, I will get to in a minute but let me tell you that this nearest phone is located right next to the Minute Motel. Come on, don’t you get it, that is not the real name of the place but do I have to draw you a picture? This is strictly for the “high society” crowd that does their business by the hour, or less. Day and night it seems, there are always cars pulling in and out. Not ‘57 Chevies, those and their Billy Bradley corner boy owners are down at Adamsville Beach or a t Squaw Rock down across from the far end of the beach watching the “submarine races” at midnight for free but more old guy cars. Buicks and Pontiacs. And seeing the traffic going and out of that joint, and why, what goes on, only makes my “job” for this evening that much harder.
See I have been walking this night for a while, a couple of hours, trying to get up enough courage to call this Diana, a girl classmate for a date. Diana, a greek goddess wholesale (although I don’t think she is greek or wholesale but I have her headed that way, that pedestal way), on this atlantic ocean strictly from hunger working class town means streets is who has me walking (and truth to tell kind of muttering to myself, she was that kind of girl). Naturally, Diana is not her real name just like that hotel, motel, no tell was not really called the Minute Motel, I don’t want any trouble okay, and I will tell you why as I get along with what I want to talk to her about. Don’t worry it won’t be long.
This Diana and I have been talking, hard and kind of deep talking in school about world issues, music, poets, crazed poets like mad monk Allen Ginsburg and not so crazed T.S. Eliot (we read Wasteland together in class, wow). Hard talking about the big break-out we know is coming, about how things are going to be totally different for us when our time comes with no Pa out of work and always no dough, or not enough, and we want to be part of it. (See, she told me in confidence, her Pa was on the chopping block down at the shipyards too so she knows about no dough, and sniffed dreams too.) So I take her seriously, and she, I think, takes me seriously although she never has had anything good to say about Frankie, Frankie Larkin, my corner boy, but that is because he tried to give her a tumble, I think, and she knew he was always ball and chain to Joann, or corners. That part isn’t important anyway. What is important is that I dream of her, no, I’d better say she disturbs my sleep and be closer to the truth.
And here is why. Diana, blonde, naturally blonde, Diana, fills out a cashmere-sweater nicely thank you, white tennis –shoed like every other girl in town but showing off some very nice, well-turned legs, thank you. So you can see where she might disturb my sleep because usually I go for girls who want to be part of the great breakout, just like me, but who well, since I am trying to keep my emotions in check before I make this call are only “cute,” at best. Although they too wear those white tennis shoes while reading their James Joyce or Albert Camus (ya, it’s that kind of crowd I run with over in Harvard Square when I have had my fill of North Adamsville squares, excepting Diana). See I am making this call, this midnight big time call to ask Diana to go on over to the Square with me, just as friends, see.
Right now as you can sense I bet I am only talking to stall, stall having to do this call, cold call really, because I don’t know that much about her personally and my intelligence network (Sunday night corner boy guys hanging around the boys’ lav on Monday morning speaking of conquests, and other lies) has run cold to the ground. All I really know about her is that she wants to break-out and that is good enough for me, and good enough to disturb my sleep lately until I play my hand out.
So I am seeking this public telephone, or rather courage-seeking, nickel and dime courage as it turns out; nickel and dime courage when due to no fault of my own (or Pa’s really when I thought about it) home provided no sanctuary for snuggle-eared delights. Maybe a date, maybe just a swirl at midnight drift, maybe a view of local lore submarine races, ah, to dream, no more than to dream, walking down friendly aisles, arm and arm along with myriad other arm and arm walkers on high school senior errands. Diana
I drop the dime in ring, ring, ring. Hi, Diana, hi spiel, and then, and then nothingness. No way, no way, damn intelligence no way, see she has a boyfriend, a college guy, probably all done up in plaid shirts, slacks, be serious, slack, and pennied loafers, and that is where her dream break-out was running. And then dead of night red-face right away, sorry, I didn’t know, alas, red-faced the next day, red faced until parted june freedom fly-out.
And red-faced even forty years later. Wow.
From The “The King Of Broadway"- The Stories Of Damon Runyon On Film- “Big Street”- A Review
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the film adaptation of Damon Runyon’s Big Street.
Big Street, starring Lucille Ball, Henry Fonda, produced by Damon Runyon, RKO, 1942
Every working class neighborhood has produced (and produces), if those that I have lived in are indicative, its fair share of drifters, grifters, lamsters, short moneymen, wise guys and just plain big talkers. In classical Marxist speak this element is called the lumpenproletariat and in political terms is a drag on the class struggle and the feeding grounds for fueling reactionary and counter-revolutionary movements. In short, bad news.
I am willing to bet, and make that bet 6/5, that any interested reader looking at this review to get the 'skinny' on Damon Runyon's short stories of film, here “Big Street,” probably did not bargain for the above analysis. Fair enough. Okay, we will suspend disbelief about the true nature of these types for as long as it takes to get through this collection. Damon Runyon has taken that collection of drifters, grifters and con artists and their `dolls' and headquartered them, mainly in one place, New York's Broadway, the Great White Way of the 1920's and 1930's, and given us some very memorable stories about the sometimes hilarious, sometimes poignant as here, trials and tribulations of this motley crew.
Runyon's great art is to have an ear for the kind of dialogue that those on the hustle would produce if such a rogue's gallery of lumpen types as the Hot Horse Herbies, Skys, Sam the Gonolphs, Bookie Bobbies and the rest of the cock-eyed tribe ever had time to talk to each other. It is no secret that every little sub-culture has its own mores, language and sense of what passes for honor. Runyon takes this and exaggerates the effect but also in many cases puts an edge on it. “The Big Street” has a tragic- comedic starting off as a goof on café society busboy Henry Fonda’s off-beat ‘crush” on torch singer Lucille Ball. And Ms. Ball is nothing but a, well, nothing but… The story line is driven by her gold-digger crazed desires to hit the Mayfair swells big time, her fall (literally) and her dreams of grandeur (small-sized) which our boy Henry, against his usual strong and sturdy type-casting, raises heaven and earth (and maybe the Holland Tunnel) to carry out. And in the end he cannot do more than see that her last wish is carried out.
Some commentators have argued that Runyon was just a cynic and had contempt for his characters (or for the real life characters that he based them on). Maybe, so. But if you want to look at a time and place that never really existed, except as caricature, then this is your stop. By the way- Buddy, can you spare a dime?
Big Street, starring Lucille Ball, Henry Fonda, produced by Damon Runyon, RKO, 1942
Every working class neighborhood has produced (and produces), if those that I have lived in are indicative, its fair share of drifters, grifters, lamsters, short moneymen, wise guys and just plain big talkers. In classical Marxist speak this element is called the lumpenproletariat and in political terms is a drag on the class struggle and the feeding grounds for fueling reactionary and counter-revolutionary movements. In short, bad news.
I am willing to bet, and make that bet 6/5, that any interested reader looking at this review to get the 'skinny' on Damon Runyon's short stories of film, here “Big Street,” probably did not bargain for the above analysis. Fair enough. Okay, we will suspend disbelief about the true nature of these types for as long as it takes to get through this collection. Damon Runyon has taken that collection of drifters, grifters and con artists and their `dolls' and headquartered them, mainly in one place, New York's Broadway, the Great White Way of the 1920's and 1930's, and given us some very memorable stories about the sometimes hilarious, sometimes poignant as here, trials and tribulations of this motley crew.
Runyon's great art is to have an ear for the kind of dialogue that those on the hustle would produce if such a rogue's gallery of lumpen types as the Hot Horse Herbies, Skys, Sam the Gonolphs, Bookie Bobbies and the rest of the cock-eyed tribe ever had time to talk to each other. It is no secret that every little sub-culture has its own mores, language and sense of what passes for honor. Runyon takes this and exaggerates the effect but also in many cases puts an edge on it. “The Big Street” has a tragic- comedic starting off as a goof on café society busboy Henry Fonda’s off-beat ‘crush” on torch singer Lucille Ball. And Ms. Ball is nothing but a, well, nothing but… The story line is driven by her gold-digger crazed desires to hit the Mayfair swells big time, her fall (literally) and her dreams of grandeur (small-sized) which our boy Henry, against his usual strong and sturdy type-casting, raises heaven and earth (and maybe the Holland Tunnel) to carry out. And in the end he cannot do more than see that her last wish is carried out.
Some commentators have argued that Runyon was just a cynic and had contempt for his characters (or for the real life characters that he based them on). Maybe, so. But if you want to look at a time and place that never really existed, except as caricature, then this is your stop. By the way- Buddy, can you spare a dime?
When The Frame Won’t Fit- Won’t Fit Big Time- Jimmy Stewart’s “Call Northside 777- A Film Review
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Call Northside 777.
DVD Review
Call Northside 777, starring Jimmy Stewart, Lee J. Cobb, Richard Conte, directed by Henry Hathaway, 20th Century Fox, 1948.
Hey, I ‘m just like the next guy I don’t want to see a right gee step off, step off big time, on a murder one rap and maybe a quick jolt, although in this case he caught 99 years (99 years of hell by the way) but these crime noir film noir police procedurals leave me cold. No guy wronged by some wicked femme fatale or some wrong gee getting his just desserts for being a blight on the community leaves me decidedly chilled.
Worst is a story where the right gee wronged is championed by the fourth estate (ya, the press for the clueless) in order to see that some rough justice (and an increased circulation) is done in that aforementioned wicked old world. And then to have mild-mannered, intrepid, if off-handedly seen-it-all (at first anyway), Jimmy Stewart come out of left field to save the day, save the gee, save motherhood, save apple pies and save the American way of life, well, like I say give me a wrong gee or a wicked femme to chew on anything.
Here is the skinny on this one though for those who like this kind of crime noir plot line (and there must be plenty given the large number of film and television police procedurals far more sophisticated that this slightly soapy one). Frank nobody from nowhere 1932 high-wire “wet” Chicago steps into a frame, a frame set just for him, when a copper is killed in the “line of duty.” He gets that quick 99 and that is the end of it, right? No, Ma has to see that her boy, her innocent boy, is set free after she has scrubbed floor for eleven years to buy a little piece of mind. So she ponies up some dough for information about the murder, the press (in the person of Stewart and Editor Lee J. Cobb) takes an interest and bing bang bing (added no little by modern photo enhancement technology) an hour or so later Frank nobody from nowhere Chicago 1944 is free, free as a bird, And likes it, likes on the outside just fine. Yawn, I wonder what femme fatale Gilda is up to these days.
DVD Review
Call Northside 777, starring Jimmy Stewart, Lee J. Cobb, Richard Conte, directed by Henry Hathaway, 20th Century Fox, 1948.
Hey, I ‘m just like the next guy I don’t want to see a right gee step off, step off big time, on a murder one rap and maybe a quick jolt, although in this case he caught 99 years (99 years of hell by the way) but these crime noir film noir police procedurals leave me cold. No guy wronged by some wicked femme fatale or some wrong gee getting his just desserts for being a blight on the community leaves me decidedly chilled.
Worst is a story where the right gee wronged is championed by the fourth estate (ya, the press for the clueless) in order to see that some rough justice (and an increased circulation) is done in that aforementioned wicked old world. And then to have mild-mannered, intrepid, if off-handedly seen-it-all (at first anyway), Jimmy Stewart come out of left field to save the day, save the gee, save motherhood, save apple pies and save the American way of life, well, like I say give me a wrong gee or a wicked femme to chew on anything.
Here is the skinny on this one though for those who like this kind of crime noir plot line (and there must be plenty given the large number of film and television police procedurals far more sophisticated that this slightly soapy one). Frank nobody from nowhere 1932 high-wire “wet” Chicago steps into a frame, a frame set just for him, when a copper is killed in the “line of duty.” He gets that quick 99 and that is the end of it, right? No, Ma has to see that her boy, her innocent boy, is set free after she has scrubbed floor for eleven years to buy a little piece of mind. So she ponies up some dough for information about the murder, the press (in the person of Stewart and Editor Lee J. Cobb) takes an interest and bing bang bing (added no little by modern photo enhancement technology) an hour or so later Frank nobody from nowhere Chicago 1944 is free, free as a bird, And likes it, likes on the outside just fine. Yawn, I wonder what femme fatale Gilda is up to these days.
From Archives Of Boston Occupier” –Newspaper Of “Occupy Boston” (OB)-Issue Number 7 (April 2012)
Click on the headline to link to the Boston Occupier Archives.
Markin comment:
Defend the Occupy movement! Hands Off All Occupy Protestors!
Markin comment:
Defend the Occupy movement! Hands Off All Occupy Protestors!
From Archives Of Boston Occupier” –Newspaper Of “Occupy Boston” (OB)-Issue Number 6 (March 2012)
Click on the headline to link to the Boston Occupier Archives.
Markin comment:
Defend the Occupy movement! Hands Off All Occupy Protestors!
Markin comment:
Defend the Occupy movement! Hands Off All Occupy Protestors!
From The May 9th Saint James Street (Boston) Janitors (SEIU) Rally
Click on headline to link ot the May 9th Saint James Street (Boston) Janitors (SEIU) Rally.
Markin comment:
Victory to the janitors. Venceramos!
Markin comment:
Victory to the janitors. Venceramos!
Saturday, May 12, 2012
On The 100th Anniversary Of The 1912 Presidential Election- From The Pen Of Early American Socialist Leader Eugene V. Debs- John Brown: History’s Greatest Hero
Click on the headline to link to the Eugene V. Debs Marxist Internet Archive website article listed in the headline..
Markin comment on this From The Pen Of Eugene V. Debs series:
The Political Evolution of Eugene V. Debs
For many reasons, the most important of which for our purposes here are the question of the nature of the revolutionary party and of revolutionary leadership, the Russian Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 was a turning point in the international labor movement. In its aftermath, there was a definitive and I would argue, necessary split, between those leftists (and here I use that term generically to mean socialists, communists, anarchists, syndicalists and the like) who sought to reform the capitalist state from within and those who saw that it needed to be destroyed “root and branch” and new institutions established to create a more just society. This division today continues, in truncated form to be sure, to define the contours of the question. The heroic American pre- World War II socialist labor leader and icon, Eugene V. Debs, contained within his personal political trajectory all the contradictions of that split. As will be described below in more detail we honor Debs for his generosity of socialist spirit while at the same time underscoring that his profile is, in the final analysis, not that of something who could have led a proletarian revolution in the earlier part of the 20th century.
Debs was above all others except, perhaps, “Big Bill” Haywood in the pre-World War I movement. For details of why that was so and a strong biographic sketch it is still necessary to go Ray Ginger’s “The Bending Cross: A Biography of Eugene V. Debs”. I will review that effort in this space at a later time. For now though let me give the highlights I found that every serious labor militant or every serious student of socialism needs to think through.
If history has told us anything over the past one hundred and fifty years plus of the organized labor movement it is that mere trade union consciousness under conditions of capitalist domination, while commendable and necessary, is merely the beginning of wisdom. By now several generations of labor militants have passed through the school of trade unionism with varying results; although precious few have gone beyond that to the class consciousness necessary to “turn the world upside down” to use an old expression from the 17th century English Revolution. In the late 19th when American capitalism was consolidating itself and moving onto its industrial phases the landscape was filled with pitched class battles between labor and capital.
One of those key battles in the 1890’s was led by one Eugene V. Debs and his American Railway Union against the mammoth rail giant, The Pullman Company. At that time the rails were the key mode of transportation in the bustling new industrial capitalist commerce. At that time, by his own reckoning, Debs saw the struggle from a merely trade unionist point of view, that is a specific localized economic struggle for better wages and conditions rather than taking on the capitalist system and its state. That strike was defeated and as a result Debs and others became “guests” of that state in a local jail in Illinois for six months or so. The key conclusion drawn from this ‘lesson’, for our purposes, was that Debs personally finally realized that the close connection between the capitalists and THEIR state (troops, media, jails, courts) was organic and needed to be addressed.
Development of working class political class consciousness comes in many ways; I know that from my own personal experiences running up against the capitalist state. For Debs this “up close and personal” confrontation with the capitalist drove him, reluctantly at first and with some reservations, to see the need for socialist solutions to the plight of the workingman (and women). In Debs’ case this involved an early infatuation with the ideas of cooperative commonwealths then popular among radicals as a way to basically provide a parallel alternative society away from capitalism. Well again, having gone thorough that same kind of process of conversion myself (in my case 'autonomous' urban communes, you know, the “hippie” experience of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s); Debs fairly quickly came to realize that an organized political response was necessary and he linked up his efforts with the emerging American Socialist Party.
Before World War I the major political model for politically organizing the working class was provided by the Marxist-dominated German Social Democratic Party. At that time, and in this period of pre-imperialist capitalist development, this was unquestionably the model to be followed. By way of explanation the key organizing principle of that organization, besides providing party discipline for united action, was to create a “big tent” party for the social transformation of society. Under that rubric the notion was to organize anyone and everyone, from socialist-feminists, socialist vegetarians, pacifists, municipal reformers, incipient trade union bureaucrats, hard core reformists, evolutionary socialists and- revolutionaries like Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg who we honor to this day. The American Social Party that Debs joined exhibited all those tendencies (and some even more outlandish) of the German model. And as long as no great events acted to disrupt the “unity” of this amorphous formation the various tensions within the organization concerning reform or revolution were subdued for a time. Not forever though.
Various revolutionary tendencies within the workers’ movement have historically had opposing positions concerning parliamentary politics: what to do politically while waiting for the opportune moment to take political power. The controversy centered (and today centers around) whether to run for elective executive and/or legislative offices. Since World War I a very strong argument has developed that revolutionaries should not run for executive offices of the capitalist state on the principle that we do not want to be responsible for the running of the capitalist state. On the other hand running for legislative office under the principle of acting as “tribunes of the people” continues to have validity. The case of the German revolutionary social democrat Karl Liebknecht using his legislative office to denounce the German war effort DURING the war is a very high-level expression of that position. This question, arguably, was a little less clears in the pre-war period.
If Eugene V. Debs is remembered politically today it is probably for his five famous runs for the American presidency (one, in 1920, run from jail) from 1900 to 1920 (except 1916). Of those the most famous is the 1912 four- way fight (Teddy Roosevelt and his “Bull Moose” Party providing the fourth) in which he got almost a million votes and something like 5 percent of the vote- this is the high water mark of socialist electoral politics then and now. I would only mention that a strong argument could be made here for support of the idea of a revolutionary (and, at least until the early 1920’s Debs considered himself, subjectively, a revolutionary) running for executive office- the presidency- without violating political principle (of course, with the always present proviso that if elected he would refuse to serve). Certainly the issues to be fought around- the emerging American imperial presence in the world, the fierce wage struggles, the capitalist trustification and cartelization of industry, the complicity of the courts, the struggle for women’s right to vote, the struggle against the emerging anti- black Jim Crow regime in the South would make such a platform a useful propaganda tool. Especially since Debs was one of the premier socialist orators of the day, if perhaps too flowery and long-winded for today’s eye or ear.
As the American Socialist Party developed in the early 20th century, and grew by leaps and bounds in this period, a somewhat parallel development was occurring somewhat outside this basically parliamentary movement. In 1905, led by the revolutionary militant “Big Bill” Haywood and with an enthusiastic (then) Debs present probably the most famous mass militant labor organization in American history was formed, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, Wobblies). As it name denotes this organization stood as, in effect, the nucleus of the industrial unionism that would win the day among the unorganized in the 1930’s with the efforts of the CIO. But it also was, as James P. Cannon an early IWW organizer noted in one of his books, the nucleus of a revolutionary political party. One of the reasons, among others, for its demise was that it never was able to resolve that contradiction between party and union. But that is an analysis for another day.
What is important to note here is that organization form fit in, very nicely indeed, with Debs’ notions of organizing the unorganized, the need for industrial unionization (as opposed to the prevailing narrow craft orientation of the Samuel Gompers-led AFL). Nevertheless Debs, to his credit, was no “dual unionist”, that is, committed to ignoring or going around the AFL and establishing “revolutionary” unions. This question of “boring from within” organized labor or “dual unions” continues to this day, and historically has been a very thorny question among militants faced with the bureaucratic inertia of the trade union bureaucracy. Debs came down on the side of the angels on this one (even if he later took unfavorable positions on IWW actions).
Although Debs is probably best known for his presidential runs (including that one from Atlanta prison in 1920 that I always enjoy seeing pictures of the one where he converses with his campaign staff in his cell) he really should be, if he is remembered for only one thing, remembered for his principled opposition to American war preparedness and eventual entry into World War I in 1917. Although it is unclear in my mind how much of Debs’ position stemmed from personal pacifism, how much from Hoosier isolationism (after all he was the quintessential Midwestern labor politician, having been raised in and lived all his life in Indiana) and how much was an anti-imperialist statement he nevertheless, of all major socialist spokesmen to speak nothing of major politicians in general , was virtually alone in his opposition when Woodrow Wilson pulled the hammer down and entered American forces into the European conflict.
That, my friends, should command respect from almost everyone, political friend or foe alike. Needless to say for his opposition he was eventually tried and convicted of, of all things, the catch-all charge of sedition and conspiracy. Some things never change. Moreover, that prison term is why Debs had to run from prison in 1920.
I started out this exposition of Debs’ political trajectory under the sign of the Russian Revolution and here I come full circle. I have, I believe, highlighted the points that we honor Debs for and now to balance the wheel we need to discuss his shortcomings (which are also a reflection of the shortcomings of the internationalist socialist movement then, and now). The almost universal betrayal of its anti- war positions of the pre-war international social democracy, as organized in the Second International and led by the German Party, by its subordination to the war aims of its respective individual capitalist governments exposed a deep crevice in the theory and practice of the movement.
As the experiences of the Russian revolution pointed out it was no longer possible for reformists and revolutionaries to coexist in the same party. Literally, on more than one occasion, these formally connected tendencies were on opposite sides of the barricades when the social tensions of society exploded. It was not a pretty sight and called for a splitting and realignment of the revolutionary forces internationally. The organizational expression of this was the formation, in the aftermath of the Russian revolution, of the Communist International in 1919. Part of that process, in America, included a left-wing split (or purge depending on the source read) and the creation, at first, of two communist organizations. As the most authoritative left-wing socialist of the day one would have thought that Debs would have inclined to the communists. That was not to be the case as he stayed with the remnant of the American Socialist Party until his death in the late 1920’s.
No one would argue that the early communist movement in America was not filled with more than its share of political mistakes, wild boys and just plain weirdness but that is where the revolutionaries were in the 1920’s. And this brings us really to Debs’ ultimate problem as a socialist leader and why I made that statement above that he could not lead a proletarian revolution in America, assuming that he was his desire. Debs had a life-long aversion to political faction and in-fighting. I would agree, as any rational radical politician would, that faction and in-fighting are not virtuous in and of themselves and are a net drain on the tasks of propaganda, recruitment and united front actions that should drive left-wing political work. However, as critical turning points in the international socialist movement have shown, sometimes the tensions between the political appetites of supposed like-minded individuals cannot be contained in one organization. This question is most dramatically posed, of course, in a revolutionary period when the tensions are whittled down to choices for or against the revolution. One side of the barricade or the other.
That said, Debs’ personality, demeanor and ultimately his political program of trying to keep “big tent” socialist together tarnished his image as a socialist leader. Debs’ positions on convicts, women, and blacks, education, religion and government. Debs was no theorist, socialist or otherwise, and many of his positions would not pass muster among radicals today. I note his economic determinist argument that the black question is subsumed in the class question. I have discussed this question elsewhere and will not address it here. I would only note, for a socialist, his position is just flat out wrong. I also note that, outside his support for women’s suffrage and working women’s rights to equal pay his attitude toward women was strictly Victorian. As was his wishy-washy attitude toward religion. Eugene V. Debs, warts and all, nevertheless deserves a fair nod from history as the premier American socialist of the pre-World War I period.
***********
E. V. Debs
John Brown: History’s Greatest Hero
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Written: 1907
First Published: 1907
Source: Appeal to Reason, November 23, 1907
Online Version: E.V. Debs Internet Archive, 2001
Transcribed/HTML Markup: John Metz for the Illinois Socialist Party Debs Archive & David Walters for the Marxists Internet Archive Debs Archive
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Appeal to Reason, November 23, 1907
The most picturesque character, the bravest man and most self-sacrificing soul in American history, was hanged at Charleston, Va., December 2, 1859.
On that day Thoreau said: “Some eighteen hundred years ago Christ was crucified. This morning, perchance, Captain Brown was hung. These are the two ends of a chain which is not without its links. He is not ‘Old Brown’ any longer; he is an Angel of Light… I foresee the time when the painter will paint that scene, no longer going to Rome for a subject; the poet will sing it, the historian record it, and with the landing of the Pilgrims and the Declaration of Independence it will be the ornament of some future national gallery, when at least the present form of slavery shall be no more here. We shall then be at liberty to weep for Captain Brown.’
Few people dared on that fateful day to breathe a sympathetic word for the grizzled old agitator. For years he had carried on his warfare against chattel slavery. He had only a handful of fanatical followers to support him. But to his mind his duty was clear, and that was enough. He would fight it out to the end, and if need be alone.
Old John Brown set an example of moral courage and of single-hearted devotion to an ideal for all men and for all ages.
With every drop of his honest blood he hated slavery, and in his early manhood he resolved to lay his life on Freedom’s alter in wiping out that insufferable affliction. He never faltered. So God-like was his unconquerable soul that he dared to face the world alone.
How perfectly sublime!
He did not reckon the overwhelming numbers against him, nor the paltry few that were on his side. This grosser aspect of the issue found no lodgment in his mind or heart. He was right and Jehovah was with him. His was not to reckon consequences, but to strike the immortal blow and step from the gallows to the throne of God.
Not for earthly glory did John Brown wage his holy warfare; not for any recognition or reward the people had it in their power to bestow. His great heart was set upon a higher goal, animated by a loftier ambition. His grand soul was illuminated by a sublimer ideal. A race of human beings, lowly and despised, were in chains, and this festering crime was eating out the heart of civilization.
In the presence of this awful plague logic was silent, reason dumb, pity dead.
The wrath of retibutive justice, long asleep, awakened at last and hurled its lurid bolt. Old John Brown struck the blow and the storm broke. That hour chattel slavery was dead.
In the first frightful convulsion the slave power seized the grand old liberator by the throat, put him in irons and threw him into a dungeon to await execution.
Alas! it was too late. His work was done. All Virginia could do was to furnish the crown for his martyrdom.
Victor Hugo exclaimed in a burst of reverential passion: “John Brown is grander than George Washington!”
History may be searched in vain for an example of noble heroism and sublime self-sacrifice equal to that of Old John Brown.
From the beginning of his career to its close he had but one idea and one ideal, and that was to destroy chattel slavery; and in that cause he sealed his devotion with his noble blood. Realizing that his work was done, he passed serenely, almost with joy, form the scenes of men.
His calmness upon the gallows was awe-inspiring; his exaltation supreme.
Old John Brown is not dead. His soul still marches on, and each passing year weaves new garlands for his brow and adds fresh lustre to his deathless glory.
Who shall be the John Brown of Wage-Slavery?
Markin comment on this From The Pen Of Eugene V. Debs series:
The Political Evolution of Eugene V. Debs
For many reasons, the most important of which for our purposes here are the question of the nature of the revolutionary party and of revolutionary leadership, the Russian Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 was a turning point in the international labor movement. In its aftermath, there was a definitive and I would argue, necessary split, between those leftists (and here I use that term generically to mean socialists, communists, anarchists, syndicalists and the like) who sought to reform the capitalist state from within and those who saw that it needed to be destroyed “root and branch” and new institutions established to create a more just society. This division today continues, in truncated form to be sure, to define the contours of the question. The heroic American pre- World War II socialist labor leader and icon, Eugene V. Debs, contained within his personal political trajectory all the contradictions of that split. As will be described below in more detail we honor Debs for his generosity of socialist spirit while at the same time underscoring that his profile is, in the final analysis, not that of something who could have led a proletarian revolution in the earlier part of the 20th century.
Debs was above all others except, perhaps, “Big Bill” Haywood in the pre-World War I movement. For details of why that was so and a strong biographic sketch it is still necessary to go Ray Ginger’s “The Bending Cross: A Biography of Eugene V. Debs”. I will review that effort in this space at a later time. For now though let me give the highlights I found that every serious labor militant or every serious student of socialism needs to think through.
If history has told us anything over the past one hundred and fifty years plus of the organized labor movement it is that mere trade union consciousness under conditions of capitalist domination, while commendable and necessary, is merely the beginning of wisdom. By now several generations of labor militants have passed through the school of trade unionism with varying results; although precious few have gone beyond that to the class consciousness necessary to “turn the world upside down” to use an old expression from the 17th century English Revolution. In the late 19th when American capitalism was consolidating itself and moving onto its industrial phases the landscape was filled with pitched class battles between labor and capital.
One of those key battles in the 1890’s was led by one Eugene V. Debs and his American Railway Union against the mammoth rail giant, The Pullman Company. At that time the rails were the key mode of transportation in the bustling new industrial capitalist commerce. At that time, by his own reckoning, Debs saw the struggle from a merely trade unionist point of view, that is a specific localized economic struggle for better wages and conditions rather than taking on the capitalist system and its state. That strike was defeated and as a result Debs and others became “guests” of that state in a local jail in Illinois for six months or so. The key conclusion drawn from this ‘lesson’, for our purposes, was that Debs personally finally realized that the close connection between the capitalists and THEIR state (troops, media, jails, courts) was organic and needed to be addressed.
Development of working class political class consciousness comes in many ways; I know that from my own personal experiences running up against the capitalist state. For Debs this “up close and personal” confrontation with the capitalist drove him, reluctantly at first and with some reservations, to see the need for socialist solutions to the plight of the workingman (and women). In Debs’ case this involved an early infatuation with the ideas of cooperative commonwealths then popular among radicals as a way to basically provide a parallel alternative society away from capitalism. Well again, having gone thorough that same kind of process of conversion myself (in my case 'autonomous' urban communes, you know, the “hippie” experience of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s); Debs fairly quickly came to realize that an organized political response was necessary and he linked up his efforts with the emerging American Socialist Party.
Before World War I the major political model for politically organizing the working class was provided by the Marxist-dominated German Social Democratic Party. At that time, and in this period of pre-imperialist capitalist development, this was unquestionably the model to be followed. By way of explanation the key organizing principle of that organization, besides providing party discipline for united action, was to create a “big tent” party for the social transformation of society. Under that rubric the notion was to organize anyone and everyone, from socialist-feminists, socialist vegetarians, pacifists, municipal reformers, incipient trade union bureaucrats, hard core reformists, evolutionary socialists and- revolutionaries like Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg who we honor to this day. The American Social Party that Debs joined exhibited all those tendencies (and some even more outlandish) of the German model. And as long as no great events acted to disrupt the “unity” of this amorphous formation the various tensions within the organization concerning reform or revolution were subdued for a time. Not forever though.
Various revolutionary tendencies within the workers’ movement have historically had opposing positions concerning parliamentary politics: what to do politically while waiting for the opportune moment to take political power. The controversy centered (and today centers around) whether to run for elective executive and/or legislative offices. Since World War I a very strong argument has developed that revolutionaries should not run for executive offices of the capitalist state on the principle that we do not want to be responsible for the running of the capitalist state. On the other hand running for legislative office under the principle of acting as “tribunes of the people” continues to have validity. The case of the German revolutionary social democrat Karl Liebknecht using his legislative office to denounce the German war effort DURING the war is a very high-level expression of that position. This question, arguably, was a little less clears in the pre-war period.
If Eugene V. Debs is remembered politically today it is probably for his five famous runs for the American presidency (one, in 1920, run from jail) from 1900 to 1920 (except 1916). Of those the most famous is the 1912 four- way fight (Teddy Roosevelt and his “Bull Moose” Party providing the fourth) in which he got almost a million votes and something like 5 percent of the vote- this is the high water mark of socialist electoral politics then and now. I would only mention that a strong argument could be made here for support of the idea of a revolutionary (and, at least until the early 1920’s Debs considered himself, subjectively, a revolutionary) running for executive office- the presidency- without violating political principle (of course, with the always present proviso that if elected he would refuse to serve). Certainly the issues to be fought around- the emerging American imperial presence in the world, the fierce wage struggles, the capitalist trustification and cartelization of industry, the complicity of the courts, the struggle for women’s right to vote, the struggle against the emerging anti- black Jim Crow regime in the South would make such a platform a useful propaganda tool. Especially since Debs was one of the premier socialist orators of the day, if perhaps too flowery and long-winded for today’s eye or ear.
As the American Socialist Party developed in the early 20th century, and grew by leaps and bounds in this period, a somewhat parallel development was occurring somewhat outside this basically parliamentary movement. In 1905, led by the revolutionary militant “Big Bill” Haywood and with an enthusiastic (then) Debs present probably the most famous mass militant labor organization in American history was formed, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, Wobblies). As it name denotes this organization stood as, in effect, the nucleus of the industrial unionism that would win the day among the unorganized in the 1930’s with the efforts of the CIO. But it also was, as James P. Cannon an early IWW organizer noted in one of his books, the nucleus of a revolutionary political party. One of the reasons, among others, for its demise was that it never was able to resolve that contradiction between party and union. But that is an analysis for another day.
What is important to note here is that organization form fit in, very nicely indeed, with Debs’ notions of organizing the unorganized, the need for industrial unionization (as opposed to the prevailing narrow craft orientation of the Samuel Gompers-led AFL). Nevertheless Debs, to his credit, was no “dual unionist”, that is, committed to ignoring or going around the AFL and establishing “revolutionary” unions. This question of “boring from within” organized labor or “dual unions” continues to this day, and historically has been a very thorny question among militants faced with the bureaucratic inertia of the trade union bureaucracy. Debs came down on the side of the angels on this one (even if he later took unfavorable positions on IWW actions).
Although Debs is probably best known for his presidential runs (including that one from Atlanta prison in 1920 that I always enjoy seeing pictures of the one where he converses with his campaign staff in his cell) he really should be, if he is remembered for only one thing, remembered for his principled opposition to American war preparedness and eventual entry into World War I in 1917. Although it is unclear in my mind how much of Debs’ position stemmed from personal pacifism, how much from Hoosier isolationism (after all he was the quintessential Midwestern labor politician, having been raised in and lived all his life in Indiana) and how much was an anti-imperialist statement he nevertheless, of all major socialist spokesmen to speak nothing of major politicians in general , was virtually alone in his opposition when Woodrow Wilson pulled the hammer down and entered American forces into the European conflict.
That, my friends, should command respect from almost everyone, political friend or foe alike. Needless to say for his opposition he was eventually tried and convicted of, of all things, the catch-all charge of sedition and conspiracy. Some things never change. Moreover, that prison term is why Debs had to run from prison in 1920.
I started out this exposition of Debs’ political trajectory under the sign of the Russian Revolution and here I come full circle. I have, I believe, highlighted the points that we honor Debs for and now to balance the wheel we need to discuss his shortcomings (which are also a reflection of the shortcomings of the internationalist socialist movement then, and now). The almost universal betrayal of its anti- war positions of the pre-war international social democracy, as organized in the Second International and led by the German Party, by its subordination to the war aims of its respective individual capitalist governments exposed a deep crevice in the theory and practice of the movement.
As the experiences of the Russian revolution pointed out it was no longer possible for reformists and revolutionaries to coexist in the same party. Literally, on more than one occasion, these formally connected tendencies were on opposite sides of the barricades when the social tensions of society exploded. It was not a pretty sight and called for a splitting and realignment of the revolutionary forces internationally. The organizational expression of this was the formation, in the aftermath of the Russian revolution, of the Communist International in 1919. Part of that process, in America, included a left-wing split (or purge depending on the source read) and the creation, at first, of two communist organizations. As the most authoritative left-wing socialist of the day one would have thought that Debs would have inclined to the communists. That was not to be the case as he stayed with the remnant of the American Socialist Party until his death in the late 1920’s.
No one would argue that the early communist movement in America was not filled with more than its share of political mistakes, wild boys and just plain weirdness but that is where the revolutionaries were in the 1920’s. And this brings us really to Debs’ ultimate problem as a socialist leader and why I made that statement above that he could not lead a proletarian revolution in America, assuming that he was his desire. Debs had a life-long aversion to political faction and in-fighting. I would agree, as any rational radical politician would, that faction and in-fighting are not virtuous in and of themselves and are a net drain on the tasks of propaganda, recruitment and united front actions that should drive left-wing political work. However, as critical turning points in the international socialist movement have shown, sometimes the tensions between the political appetites of supposed like-minded individuals cannot be contained in one organization. This question is most dramatically posed, of course, in a revolutionary period when the tensions are whittled down to choices for or against the revolution. One side of the barricade or the other.
That said, Debs’ personality, demeanor and ultimately his political program of trying to keep “big tent” socialist together tarnished his image as a socialist leader. Debs’ positions on convicts, women, and blacks, education, religion and government. Debs was no theorist, socialist or otherwise, and many of his positions would not pass muster among radicals today. I note his economic determinist argument that the black question is subsumed in the class question. I have discussed this question elsewhere and will not address it here. I would only note, for a socialist, his position is just flat out wrong. I also note that, outside his support for women’s suffrage and working women’s rights to equal pay his attitude toward women was strictly Victorian. As was his wishy-washy attitude toward religion. Eugene V. Debs, warts and all, nevertheless deserves a fair nod from history as the premier American socialist of the pre-World War I period.
***********
E. V. Debs
John Brown: History’s Greatest Hero
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Written: 1907
First Published: 1907
Source: Appeal to Reason, November 23, 1907
Online Version: E.V. Debs Internet Archive, 2001
Transcribed/HTML Markup: John Metz for the Illinois Socialist Party Debs Archive & David Walters for the Marxists Internet Archive Debs Archive
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Appeal to Reason, November 23, 1907
The most picturesque character, the bravest man and most self-sacrificing soul in American history, was hanged at Charleston, Va., December 2, 1859.
On that day Thoreau said: “Some eighteen hundred years ago Christ was crucified. This morning, perchance, Captain Brown was hung. These are the two ends of a chain which is not without its links. He is not ‘Old Brown’ any longer; he is an Angel of Light… I foresee the time when the painter will paint that scene, no longer going to Rome for a subject; the poet will sing it, the historian record it, and with the landing of the Pilgrims and the Declaration of Independence it will be the ornament of some future national gallery, when at least the present form of slavery shall be no more here. We shall then be at liberty to weep for Captain Brown.’
Few people dared on that fateful day to breathe a sympathetic word for the grizzled old agitator. For years he had carried on his warfare against chattel slavery. He had only a handful of fanatical followers to support him. But to his mind his duty was clear, and that was enough. He would fight it out to the end, and if need be alone.
Old John Brown set an example of moral courage and of single-hearted devotion to an ideal for all men and for all ages.
With every drop of his honest blood he hated slavery, and in his early manhood he resolved to lay his life on Freedom’s alter in wiping out that insufferable affliction. He never faltered. So God-like was his unconquerable soul that he dared to face the world alone.
How perfectly sublime!
He did not reckon the overwhelming numbers against him, nor the paltry few that were on his side. This grosser aspect of the issue found no lodgment in his mind or heart. He was right and Jehovah was with him. His was not to reckon consequences, but to strike the immortal blow and step from the gallows to the throne of God.
Not for earthly glory did John Brown wage his holy warfare; not for any recognition or reward the people had it in their power to bestow. His great heart was set upon a higher goal, animated by a loftier ambition. His grand soul was illuminated by a sublimer ideal. A race of human beings, lowly and despised, were in chains, and this festering crime was eating out the heart of civilization.
In the presence of this awful plague logic was silent, reason dumb, pity dead.
The wrath of retibutive justice, long asleep, awakened at last and hurled its lurid bolt. Old John Brown struck the blow and the storm broke. That hour chattel slavery was dead.
In the first frightful convulsion the slave power seized the grand old liberator by the throat, put him in irons and threw him into a dungeon to await execution.
Alas! it was too late. His work was done. All Virginia could do was to furnish the crown for his martyrdom.
Victor Hugo exclaimed in a burst of reverential passion: “John Brown is grander than George Washington!”
History may be searched in vain for an example of noble heroism and sublime self-sacrifice equal to that of Old John Brown.
From the beginning of his career to its close he had but one idea and one ideal, and that was to destroy chattel slavery; and in that cause he sealed his devotion with his noble blood. Realizing that his work was done, he passed serenely, almost with joy, form the scenes of men.
His calmness upon the gallows was awe-inspiring; his exaltation supreme.
Old John Brown is not dead. His soul still marches on, and each passing year weaves new garlands for his brow and adds fresh lustre to his deathless glory.
Who shall be the John Brown of Wage-Slavery?
From The Archives-The Struggle To Win The Youth To The Fight For Our Communist Future-May Day 2012: Celebrate Working Class History and Fight for New Victories! — International Workers’ Day and the Socialist Alternative to Austerity and Barbarism
Markin comment on this series:
One of the declared purposes of this space is to draw the lessons of our left-wing past here in America and internationally, especially from the pro-communist wing. To that end I have made commentaries and provided archival works in order to help draw those lessons for today’s left-wing activists to learn, or at least ponder over. More importantly, for the long haul, to help educate today’s youth in the struggle for our common communist future. That is no small task or easy task given the differences of generations; differences of political milieus worked in; differences of social structure to work around; and, increasingly more important, the differences in appreciation of technological advances, and their uses.
There is no question that back in my youth I could have used, desperately used, many of the archival materials available today. When I developed political consciousness very early on, albeit liberal political consciousness, I could have used this material as I knew, I knew deep inside my heart and mind, that a junior Cold War liberal of the American For Democratic Action (ADA) stripe was not the end of my leftward political trajectory. More importantly, I could have used a socialist or communist youth organization to help me articulate the doubts I had about the virtues of liberal capitalism and be recruited to a more left-wing world view. As it was I spent far too long in the throes of the left-liberal/soft social-democratic milieu where I was dying politically. A group like the Young Communist League (W.E.B. Dubois Clubs in those days), the Young People’s Socialist League, or the Young Socialist Alliance representing the youth organizations of the American Communist Party, American Socialist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S.) respectively would have saved much wasted time and energy. I knew they were around but not in my area.
The archival material to be used in this series is weighted heavily toward the youth movements of the early American Communist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S). For more recent material I have relied on material from the Spartacus Youth Clubs, the youth group of the Spartacist League (U.S.), both because they are more readily available to me and because, and this should give cause for pause, there are not many other non-CP, non-SWP youth groups around. As I gather more material from other youth sources I will place them in this series.
Finally I would like to finish up with the preamble to the Spartacist Youth Club’s What We Fight For statement of purpose:
"The Spartacus Youth Clubs intervene into social struggles armed with the revolutionary internationalist program of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. We work to mobilize youth in struggle as partisans of the working class, championing the liberation of black people, women and all the oppressed. The SYCs fight to win youth to the perspective of building the Leninist vanguard party that will lead the working class in socialist revolution, laying the basis for a world free of capitalist exploitation and imperialist slaughter."
This seems to me be somewhere in the right direction for what a Bolshevik youth group should be doing these days; a proving ground to become professional revolutionaries with enough wiggle room to learn from their mistakes, and successes. More later.
*************
May Day 2012: Celebrate Working Class History and Fight for New Victories! — International Workers’ Day and the Socialist Alternative to Austerity and Barbarism Printer-Friendly
E-Mail This
May 1, 2012
By Committee for a Workers International
May Day (International Workers’ Day) is an opportunity for celebrating the militant internationalist traditions of the working class movement, converging with the explosive struggles of today. 1st May this year is as a key date in the calendar of living struggles and movements. The CWI believes that these struggles - from Greece to Chile, Nigeria to Tunisia - not only represent the inevitable explosive response to the current crisis. They also signal the emergence of a social force capable of reducing to rubble the plans of the international ruling class to pauperize workers and young people. The organized working class, mobilized in the fight for a genuinely socialist alternative, can transform society.
In Spain, the crucible today of the European crisis, 1st May will see new mobilizations against the labour reform and cutbacks. In the USA, the ‘Occupy’ movement is building towards another huge day of protest, including attempts to incorporate workers’ class action. In Africa, Asia and Latin America, this year’s May Day mobilizations take place against the background of increasing instability. The spreading of the effects of the world economic crisis, and the impact of the Maghreb and Middle Eastern revolutions, have ushered in new upheavals and a consequent increase in state repression, often bloody and brutal. These factors will also undoubtedly be reflected as workers, youth and the poor take to the streets on 1st May.
Europe - Epicenter of Economic Crisis, Austerity and Resistance: For a Socialist Workers’ Alternative to the Capitalist EU!
Europe remains the area in which the capitalist crisis finds its most concentrated expression. It reveals the dead end on offer from the capitalist system for workers, the unemployed and youth. The repeated and desperate attempts of European governments and financial and economic elites to draw a line under the chaos of the Eurozone debt crisis, quickly give way to repeated and devastating episodes of crisis and failure. The epicenter of the crisis is constantly shifting and expanding, now towards Spain, but also increasingly towards the previously "stable" core countries, such as France and the Netherlands. The partial default and second "bailing out" of Greece, along with the growing confirmation that similar bailout projects in Portugal and Ireland have failed to meet their stated objectives, are crushing reminders, not only to the ruling class but also to the majority of people, of the depth of the current crisis. Countries outside the Eurozone also face massive cuts and the risk of “contagion,” such as the UK and Czech Republic. On a world scale, any "recovery" is shaky and unstable. There is the beginning of a downturn in those countries seen as exceptions to the crisis (such as China and India). This will have profound economic and political effects worldwide.
We see soaring "risk premiums" and the "no mercy" approach of the financial markets and international and European institutions. The capitalist governments’ attempt to satisfy them through imposing austerity budgets and anti-worker reforms and they respond with demands for more blood to be drawn from the welfare state and workers’ living standards. Despite this, and the clearly depressionary effects of such policies, the entire capitalist political establishment maintains the propaganda that "There is no alternative."
But this cozy consensus has been broken again and again on the streets and across the workplaces of Europe. So far in 2012, powerful general strikes have rocked Belgium, Portugal, Spain and Greece, bringing the economies to a halt and millions onto the streets. They give a glimpse of the power of the working class to halt the attacks upon it, through a serious sustained struggle armed with political alternatives to cuts and capitalism.
Even in those countries until now lauded as an example of peace and tranquility, the specter of mass struggle is emerging. Ireland had been held up by the capitalist establishment everywhere as an example of a people who knew how to sit back and "swallow the medicine." It is currently experiencing a mass revolt against the government and the Troika-imposed "Household tax." The Socialist Party (CWI in Ireland) is playing a leading role in this defiance movement. In France, the likely defeat of Sarkozy, following the first round of elections, will have far-reaching consequences both in France and beyond, with at least a limited shaking up of the agenda of the "Merkozy" axis.
A Hollande government will be immediately put to the test in the heat of the crisis and events. Its policies, including welcome reforms which it may introduce, such as the increase in taxes on the wealthy etc, will unfortunately be limited to austerity as a solution to the crisis. The experience of this "Socialist" government will undoubtedly push many people to search for genuinely socialist answers and policies, following the last period of attacks and ridicule heaped on the ideas of Socialism and Marxism, exacerbated by the experience of so-called "Socialist" governments worldwide which continued and deepened neo-liberal policies. Political instability and volatility are on the order of the day, with important swings in the political outlook of millions towards both left and right wing formations. This has been recently demonstrated on the electoral plane and in opinion polls in France and also in the Netherlands, where the government is in the process of falling. In the absence of mass fighting socialist parties and organizations capable of uniting opposition around a consistent anti-capitalist program, the danger of increasing social division and advances for far-right and reactionary forces are growing. This demands a serious and united response from the left and labor movement. Splits and discord are also emerging within governments and regimes, as witnessed recently in the UK ConDem coalition and in the deep splits that have opened up in the Chinese ruling elite.
The workers’ struggles in the majority of countries, come up against the obstacle of the right-wing "yellow" bureaucracies in the leadership of many trade unions. They pursue a strategy of demobilization and policies limited to only slightly limiting the austerity measures being imposed. It is essential to build mass opposition to such leaders from below, with demands for leaders to be regularly elected, subject to recall and to live on no more than the average workers’ wage. The National Shop Stewards’ Network in the UK is an inspiring example of how to build a combative workers’ organization. It was a key force for bringing about a public sector general strike on 30 November last year - the most significant action since 1926 and something on which an escalating fight-back can be built.
Build an International Fightback! For Co-Ordinated Strikes and Protests in Europe!
It was a feature in the revolutions of 2011 and the Indignados/Occupy movement that big similarities between the situations in different countries showed the possibility of struggles spreading on an international scale. This is now a real possibility in the case of the countries on the European ‘periphery’, under the boot of the markets, credit agencies, the Troika and governments. To an astonishing degree, the same questions: of fighting back, of general strike action as part of a strategy to win, of the need for viable alternative policies to capitalism, are all placed onto the table simultaneously.
Portugal and then Spain were convulsed by general strikes in the same week, between 22 and 29 March. What would it have cost the trade union leaders to coordinate these strikes, in a simultaneous and powerful expression of workers’ power across borders? A continuation of largely token protests by the European trade unions is insufficient. The CWI continues to demand and fight for the urgent development of plans for coordinated strikes and protests in the peripheral countries and beyond, as steps towards an all-European general strike. This demand deserves to be given a wide hearing on 1st May, a celebration of working class internationalism. Such a struggle is where the fight for a socialist alternative to the capitalist EU begins.
Solidarity Against Repression! Middle East/Maghreb: Towards a Second Revolution! No to Imperialist Interventions!
In Tunisia, where the so-called "Arab Spring" began, May Day celebrations and protests will take place in the aftermath of brutal episodes of repression. The new government installed following the removal of Ben Ali, has been trying to firmly establish itself, sending a clear message to the left and trade union movement not to stand in its way. The CWI has organized, and continues to organize, workers’ solidarity in word and deed, with these and other movements.
In Tunisia and Egypt, the incomplete character of the revolutions has led to a growing sentiment of the need for a "second revolution" to sweep away the economic and political systems responsible for the misery of the region. The building of the forces or Marxism in these countries in order to organize around a program capable of completing the revolution, is a key task which the CWI is engaged in.
In such situations, only the power of the organized working class and poor, in their millions throughout the planet, can be relied upon. In Syria, as in Libya before, only the mobilization of these forces, not an imperialist intervention, can begin to lay the basis for a way out of the bloodshed and dictatorship of Assad and imperialist interests. The false status of imperialism’s "friendship" with the peoples of Syria is revealed by its astonishing hypocrisy in the case of its ally, the Bahrain dictatorship, which received only a mild "wringing of hands" by imperialism when it crushed pro-democracy protests last year. It also displays a cozy relationship with the murderous dictatorship of Nazarbayev in Kazakhstan, which CWI comrades play a key role in opposing.
In Asia, state repression has also been hiked up, with the "disappearances" of leading socialist activists in Sri Lanka, and the wave of arrests, including the forced exile of comrades of the CWI, in China. Again, these developments follow an upturn in struggle as the laboring hundreds of millions of this mighty continent take steps forward in the organization of often successful struggles, as seen recently in Sri Lanka. In February this year, India witnessed a general strike of more than a hundred million workers, exposing the lies of the boom in "Shining India" benefiting the majority.
Africa has also seen general strikes - in South Africa and Nigeria. CWI comrades have played a crucial role in organizing support for a strategy of struggle linked to a pro-working class and poor program to break with capitalism. In Latin America, the recent summit of the Americas reflected growing division and instability despite the best efforts of Obama and co. In the mass movements in Chile, we have seen a glimpse of what is to come in the continent. Even in countries lauded for their economic growth, such as Brazil and Chile, serious developments in the class struggle have been seen, exposing the unequal character of capitalist "growth."
Support the "Occupy" and "Indignados" Movements with Class Policies
This is also the first May Day since the magnificent movement of the "indignados" exploded in Spain, then across Europe and the world. In the U.S., where the "Occupy" movement has seen an outpouring of anti-capitalist sentiments, May Day this year sees a new stage in this movement, reflecting important advances made towards basing itself on workers’ action, including calls for strikes. In a year dominated by the presidential election - a debate from which the concerns of the working and unemployed majority have been without a voice - this movement continues to play a key role. The indignados and occupy movements are calling international mobilizations on 12 May and 15 May in which the CWI will continue to stress the need to "unite the generations" in a class movement against capitalism.
There is an Alternative! Build the Struggle for a Socialist World!
The events of the last year have confirmed again and again that working and poor people will not take the destruction of living standards lying down. Both this year and next, May Day will reflect the period of class battles and revolutions which capitalism has opened up. Whether these battles will result in a way out from the crisis of capitalism in the interests of the overwhelming majority – the 99% - depends on the level of preparedness of our class, both organizationally and politically. The absence of a widely understood alternative to capitalism and austerity is the central problem.
Only the building of mass political parties to popularize a socialist alternative of nationalization under democratic workers’ control and management and a socialist planned economy on a world scale, can help to solve it and end the spiral of crises. A key task of the hour is the re-popularization of genuine ideas of revolutionary socialism - of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky and of the Russian revolution (before the Stalinist counter-revolution) - which have enjoyed support throughout the working class movement historically. This is a task which the CWI enthusiastically embraces. This could open the way for a new historical epoch, in which after the disaster which capitalist governments, of and by the 1%, have administered, new governments of and by the working people can develop the economy and society. The CWI appeals to workers, unemployed, young and poor people around the globe to join the struggle for the building of such organizations, and to begin to make possible a socialist world.
Socialist Alternative, P.O. Box 45343, Seattle WA 98145
Phone: (206)526-7185
Comments? Suggestions for improving our web page? Please email info@SocialistAlternative.org
One of the declared purposes of this space is to draw the lessons of our left-wing past here in America and internationally, especially from the pro-communist wing. To that end I have made commentaries and provided archival works in order to help draw those lessons for today’s left-wing activists to learn, or at least ponder over. More importantly, for the long haul, to help educate today’s youth in the struggle for our common communist future. That is no small task or easy task given the differences of generations; differences of political milieus worked in; differences of social structure to work around; and, increasingly more important, the differences in appreciation of technological advances, and their uses.
There is no question that back in my youth I could have used, desperately used, many of the archival materials available today. When I developed political consciousness very early on, albeit liberal political consciousness, I could have used this material as I knew, I knew deep inside my heart and mind, that a junior Cold War liberal of the American For Democratic Action (ADA) stripe was not the end of my leftward political trajectory. More importantly, I could have used a socialist or communist youth organization to help me articulate the doubts I had about the virtues of liberal capitalism and be recruited to a more left-wing world view. As it was I spent far too long in the throes of the left-liberal/soft social-democratic milieu where I was dying politically. A group like the Young Communist League (W.E.B. Dubois Clubs in those days), the Young People’s Socialist League, or the Young Socialist Alliance representing the youth organizations of the American Communist Party, American Socialist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S.) respectively would have saved much wasted time and energy. I knew they were around but not in my area.
The archival material to be used in this series is weighted heavily toward the youth movements of the early American Communist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S). For more recent material I have relied on material from the Spartacus Youth Clubs, the youth group of the Spartacist League (U.S.), both because they are more readily available to me and because, and this should give cause for pause, there are not many other non-CP, non-SWP youth groups around. As I gather more material from other youth sources I will place them in this series.
Finally I would like to finish up with the preamble to the Spartacist Youth Club’s What We Fight For statement of purpose:
"The Spartacus Youth Clubs intervene into social struggles armed with the revolutionary internationalist program of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. We work to mobilize youth in struggle as partisans of the working class, championing the liberation of black people, women and all the oppressed. The SYCs fight to win youth to the perspective of building the Leninist vanguard party that will lead the working class in socialist revolution, laying the basis for a world free of capitalist exploitation and imperialist slaughter."
This seems to me be somewhere in the right direction for what a Bolshevik youth group should be doing these days; a proving ground to become professional revolutionaries with enough wiggle room to learn from their mistakes, and successes. More later.
*************
May Day 2012: Celebrate Working Class History and Fight for New Victories! — International Workers’ Day and the Socialist Alternative to Austerity and Barbarism Printer-Friendly
E-Mail This
May 1, 2012
By Committee for a Workers International
May Day (International Workers’ Day) is an opportunity for celebrating the militant internationalist traditions of the working class movement, converging with the explosive struggles of today. 1st May this year is as a key date in the calendar of living struggles and movements. The CWI believes that these struggles - from Greece to Chile, Nigeria to Tunisia - not only represent the inevitable explosive response to the current crisis. They also signal the emergence of a social force capable of reducing to rubble the plans of the international ruling class to pauperize workers and young people. The organized working class, mobilized in the fight for a genuinely socialist alternative, can transform society.
In Spain, the crucible today of the European crisis, 1st May will see new mobilizations against the labour reform and cutbacks. In the USA, the ‘Occupy’ movement is building towards another huge day of protest, including attempts to incorporate workers’ class action. In Africa, Asia and Latin America, this year’s May Day mobilizations take place against the background of increasing instability. The spreading of the effects of the world economic crisis, and the impact of the Maghreb and Middle Eastern revolutions, have ushered in new upheavals and a consequent increase in state repression, often bloody and brutal. These factors will also undoubtedly be reflected as workers, youth and the poor take to the streets on 1st May.
Europe - Epicenter of Economic Crisis, Austerity and Resistance: For a Socialist Workers’ Alternative to the Capitalist EU!
Europe remains the area in which the capitalist crisis finds its most concentrated expression. It reveals the dead end on offer from the capitalist system for workers, the unemployed and youth. The repeated and desperate attempts of European governments and financial and economic elites to draw a line under the chaos of the Eurozone debt crisis, quickly give way to repeated and devastating episodes of crisis and failure. The epicenter of the crisis is constantly shifting and expanding, now towards Spain, but also increasingly towards the previously "stable" core countries, such as France and the Netherlands. The partial default and second "bailing out" of Greece, along with the growing confirmation that similar bailout projects in Portugal and Ireland have failed to meet their stated objectives, are crushing reminders, not only to the ruling class but also to the majority of people, of the depth of the current crisis. Countries outside the Eurozone also face massive cuts and the risk of “contagion,” such as the UK and Czech Republic. On a world scale, any "recovery" is shaky and unstable. There is the beginning of a downturn in those countries seen as exceptions to the crisis (such as China and India). This will have profound economic and political effects worldwide.
We see soaring "risk premiums" and the "no mercy" approach of the financial markets and international and European institutions. The capitalist governments’ attempt to satisfy them through imposing austerity budgets and anti-worker reforms and they respond with demands for more blood to be drawn from the welfare state and workers’ living standards. Despite this, and the clearly depressionary effects of such policies, the entire capitalist political establishment maintains the propaganda that "There is no alternative."
But this cozy consensus has been broken again and again on the streets and across the workplaces of Europe. So far in 2012, powerful general strikes have rocked Belgium, Portugal, Spain and Greece, bringing the economies to a halt and millions onto the streets. They give a glimpse of the power of the working class to halt the attacks upon it, through a serious sustained struggle armed with political alternatives to cuts and capitalism.
Even in those countries until now lauded as an example of peace and tranquility, the specter of mass struggle is emerging. Ireland had been held up by the capitalist establishment everywhere as an example of a people who knew how to sit back and "swallow the medicine." It is currently experiencing a mass revolt against the government and the Troika-imposed "Household tax." The Socialist Party (CWI in Ireland) is playing a leading role in this defiance movement. In France, the likely defeat of Sarkozy, following the first round of elections, will have far-reaching consequences both in France and beyond, with at least a limited shaking up of the agenda of the "Merkozy" axis.
A Hollande government will be immediately put to the test in the heat of the crisis and events. Its policies, including welcome reforms which it may introduce, such as the increase in taxes on the wealthy etc, will unfortunately be limited to austerity as a solution to the crisis. The experience of this "Socialist" government will undoubtedly push many people to search for genuinely socialist answers and policies, following the last period of attacks and ridicule heaped on the ideas of Socialism and Marxism, exacerbated by the experience of so-called "Socialist" governments worldwide which continued and deepened neo-liberal policies. Political instability and volatility are on the order of the day, with important swings in the political outlook of millions towards both left and right wing formations. This has been recently demonstrated on the electoral plane and in opinion polls in France and also in the Netherlands, where the government is in the process of falling. In the absence of mass fighting socialist parties and organizations capable of uniting opposition around a consistent anti-capitalist program, the danger of increasing social division and advances for far-right and reactionary forces are growing. This demands a serious and united response from the left and labor movement. Splits and discord are also emerging within governments and regimes, as witnessed recently in the UK ConDem coalition and in the deep splits that have opened up in the Chinese ruling elite.
The workers’ struggles in the majority of countries, come up against the obstacle of the right-wing "yellow" bureaucracies in the leadership of many trade unions. They pursue a strategy of demobilization and policies limited to only slightly limiting the austerity measures being imposed. It is essential to build mass opposition to such leaders from below, with demands for leaders to be regularly elected, subject to recall and to live on no more than the average workers’ wage. The National Shop Stewards’ Network in the UK is an inspiring example of how to build a combative workers’ organization. It was a key force for bringing about a public sector general strike on 30 November last year - the most significant action since 1926 and something on which an escalating fight-back can be built.
Build an International Fightback! For Co-Ordinated Strikes and Protests in Europe!
It was a feature in the revolutions of 2011 and the Indignados/Occupy movement that big similarities between the situations in different countries showed the possibility of struggles spreading on an international scale. This is now a real possibility in the case of the countries on the European ‘periphery’, under the boot of the markets, credit agencies, the Troika and governments. To an astonishing degree, the same questions: of fighting back, of general strike action as part of a strategy to win, of the need for viable alternative policies to capitalism, are all placed onto the table simultaneously.
Portugal and then Spain were convulsed by general strikes in the same week, between 22 and 29 March. What would it have cost the trade union leaders to coordinate these strikes, in a simultaneous and powerful expression of workers’ power across borders? A continuation of largely token protests by the European trade unions is insufficient. The CWI continues to demand and fight for the urgent development of plans for coordinated strikes and protests in the peripheral countries and beyond, as steps towards an all-European general strike. This demand deserves to be given a wide hearing on 1st May, a celebration of working class internationalism. Such a struggle is where the fight for a socialist alternative to the capitalist EU begins.
Solidarity Against Repression! Middle East/Maghreb: Towards a Second Revolution! No to Imperialist Interventions!
In Tunisia, where the so-called "Arab Spring" began, May Day celebrations and protests will take place in the aftermath of brutal episodes of repression. The new government installed following the removal of Ben Ali, has been trying to firmly establish itself, sending a clear message to the left and trade union movement not to stand in its way. The CWI has organized, and continues to organize, workers’ solidarity in word and deed, with these and other movements.
In Tunisia and Egypt, the incomplete character of the revolutions has led to a growing sentiment of the need for a "second revolution" to sweep away the economic and political systems responsible for the misery of the region. The building of the forces or Marxism in these countries in order to organize around a program capable of completing the revolution, is a key task which the CWI is engaged in.
In such situations, only the power of the organized working class and poor, in their millions throughout the planet, can be relied upon. In Syria, as in Libya before, only the mobilization of these forces, not an imperialist intervention, can begin to lay the basis for a way out of the bloodshed and dictatorship of Assad and imperialist interests. The false status of imperialism’s "friendship" with the peoples of Syria is revealed by its astonishing hypocrisy in the case of its ally, the Bahrain dictatorship, which received only a mild "wringing of hands" by imperialism when it crushed pro-democracy protests last year. It also displays a cozy relationship with the murderous dictatorship of Nazarbayev in Kazakhstan, which CWI comrades play a key role in opposing.
In Asia, state repression has also been hiked up, with the "disappearances" of leading socialist activists in Sri Lanka, and the wave of arrests, including the forced exile of comrades of the CWI, in China. Again, these developments follow an upturn in struggle as the laboring hundreds of millions of this mighty continent take steps forward in the organization of often successful struggles, as seen recently in Sri Lanka. In February this year, India witnessed a general strike of more than a hundred million workers, exposing the lies of the boom in "Shining India" benefiting the majority.
Africa has also seen general strikes - in South Africa and Nigeria. CWI comrades have played a crucial role in organizing support for a strategy of struggle linked to a pro-working class and poor program to break with capitalism. In Latin America, the recent summit of the Americas reflected growing division and instability despite the best efforts of Obama and co. In the mass movements in Chile, we have seen a glimpse of what is to come in the continent. Even in countries lauded for their economic growth, such as Brazil and Chile, serious developments in the class struggle have been seen, exposing the unequal character of capitalist "growth."
Support the "Occupy" and "Indignados" Movements with Class Policies
This is also the first May Day since the magnificent movement of the "indignados" exploded in Spain, then across Europe and the world. In the U.S., where the "Occupy" movement has seen an outpouring of anti-capitalist sentiments, May Day this year sees a new stage in this movement, reflecting important advances made towards basing itself on workers’ action, including calls for strikes. In a year dominated by the presidential election - a debate from which the concerns of the working and unemployed majority have been without a voice - this movement continues to play a key role. The indignados and occupy movements are calling international mobilizations on 12 May and 15 May in which the CWI will continue to stress the need to "unite the generations" in a class movement against capitalism.
There is an Alternative! Build the Struggle for a Socialist World!
The events of the last year have confirmed again and again that working and poor people will not take the destruction of living standards lying down. Both this year and next, May Day will reflect the period of class battles and revolutions which capitalism has opened up. Whether these battles will result in a way out from the crisis of capitalism in the interests of the overwhelming majority – the 99% - depends on the level of preparedness of our class, both organizationally and politically. The absence of a widely understood alternative to capitalism and austerity is the central problem.
Only the building of mass political parties to popularize a socialist alternative of nationalization under democratic workers’ control and management and a socialist planned economy on a world scale, can help to solve it and end the spiral of crises. A key task of the hour is the re-popularization of genuine ideas of revolutionary socialism - of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky and of the Russian revolution (before the Stalinist counter-revolution) - which have enjoyed support throughout the working class movement historically. This is a task which the CWI enthusiastically embraces. This could open the way for a new historical epoch, in which after the disaster which capitalist governments, of and by the 1%, have administered, new governments of and by the working people can develop the economy and society. The CWI appeals to workers, unemployed, young and poor people around the globe to join the struggle for the building of such organizations, and to begin to make possible a socialist world.
Socialist Alternative, P.O. Box 45343, Seattle WA 98145
Phone: (206)526-7185
Comments? Suggestions for improving our web page? Please email info@SocialistAlternative.org
From The Pages Of The Socialist Alternative Press-In Calculated Move, Obama Supports Gay Marriage – Step up the Struggle for Equality
Click on the headline to link to the Socialist Alternative (CWI) website.
In Calculated Move, Obama Supports Gay Marriage – Step up the Struggle for Equality
May 10, 2012
By Ramy Khalil
Yesterday, in a historic victory for the gay and lesbian rights movement, President Obama came out in favor of same-sex marriage rights. This is the first time that a President of the United States has publicly stated his support for equal marriage rights for gays and lesbians, and comes on the heels of a number of other legislative victories for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people.
With Obama and other leading figures in the Democratic Party now openly embracing same-sex marriage rights, popular support for LGBTQ equality is set to increase further. However, this should not be a moment for the activist movement to sit back and wait for the politicians to act on their newfound convictions. Instead, it’s vital that activists seize this moment to urgently press forward the struggle full legal quality for LGBTQ people at the federal, state, and local levels. We must make clear that words are not enough, and step up our calls for real policy changes to end the continuing violence and legalized persecution facing LGBTQ people.
The Democratic Party and leaders of affiliated organizations, such as the Human Rights Campaign and MoveOn, are attempting to portray Obama's change in his public position as a true act of political courage. It is clear, however, that this change is a politically calculated move designed to boost his own re-election campaign and those of other Democratic politicians this election year.
Public support for equal rights for LGBTQ people has been surging in recent years. In 2004, a Pew Poll showed 60% opposition to same-sex marriage, but this week Pew released a new poll showing only 43% in opposition. Crucially, a new Gallup poll from May 3-6, 2012, shows that independent swing voters favor same-sex marriage rights by a huge 17% margin.
Obama and the Democratic Party leadership have trailed, not led, shifts in public opinion and the struggle for LGBTQ equality. On the contrary, changing public attitudes are overwhelmingly due to the grassroots organizing, militant activism, and greater visibility of LGBTQ people in society. In the past, and often to this day, LGBTQ people who came out of the closet would be disowned by their families, fired from their jobs, arrested, bullied, beaten up, and sometimes even killed. Despite this intense persecution, millions of LGBTQ have defied dominant social norms by coming out of the closet.
Most importantly, the movement organized itself politically, building rallies, boycotts, and protests to demand full equality immediately. In October 2009, for example, activists organized a National Equality March on Washington demanding same-sex marriage rights and full equality under all aspects of the law, which drew at least 150,000 people.
For millions of ordinary people, gay and straight, it has been clear for years, decades in fact, that any couple who wants to get married should have the legal right to do so, regardless of their sexual preference. But it has taken until now, 2012, for the leading Democratic Party politicians to finally say they support marriage equality, only after a majority of Americans came to that conclusion first! Until yesterday, President Obama supported "back of the bus" civil unions rather than full same-sex marriage rights, and many Democratic politicians still refuse to take a stand in favor of full marriage equality.
Both political parties, the Democrats and the Republicans, are also exploiting this wedge issue from different angles for their own electoral gain. While Republican and Democratic politicians argue with each over same-sex marriage and other cultural wedge issues such as abortion and immigration, they are both attempting to divert working-class anger away from unpopular economic policies, such as high gas prices, tax breaks for millionaires, and budget cuts in social programs.
No, President Obama and the Democratic Party have not played a leadership role. LGBTQ activists have led, and Obama and the Democratic Party have followed for their own cynical reasons.
***************
Same-Sex Marriage Battles Heat Up in 2012
Mar 16, 2012
By Ramy Khalil and Kate Devlin
(Note: This article was published in March 2012.)
The legalization of same-sex marriage is shaping up to be a major battleground in the 2012 elections.
Due to the activism and greater visibility of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people, support for LGBTQ rights has been surging. As of a year ago according to a May 2011 Gallup poll, 53% of Americans now believe “same-sex marriage should be recognized by the law as valid, with the same rights as traditional marriage.”
In 2004 when President Bush was running for re-election, Republican strategists increased the turnout of conservative voters by placing initiatives to ban same-sex marriage on the ballot in 11 mostly rural states, where the initiatives passed by 60-70%. But now that a majority of Americans support same-sex marriage rights, not only the Republican Party but also the Democratic Party is exploiting this wedge issue in states where they think it will benefit them.
In Washington State the Democratic Party has held the governor’s seat and a majority of both chambers of the state legislature for years. In order to divert attention away from their unpopular budget cuts to social services, on February 13, 2012 they finally legalized granting same-sex marriage licenses starting in June. Right-wing groups have vowed to try to reinstate the marriage ban through a ballot initiative in November.
Democratic Party leaders haven’t supported same-sex marriage rights until now that a majority of Americans support it. Even now the Democratic Party is only supporting equal marriage rights in certain states where they calculate it will work to their political advantage. President Obama and many Democratic politicians still advocate “back-of-the-bus” civil unions instead of full marriage equality.
The Democratic Party has never used their authority and access to the media to play a leadership role in the struggle for LGBTQ rights. The LGBTQ rights movement has always led, and the Democratic Party has always followed, often apologetically. Democratic politicians have even attacked LGBTQ rights at times. It was President Clinton, for instance, who implemented “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” and eagerly supported the Defense of Marriage Act.
But this year both corporate parties are exploiting this wedge issue from different angles for their own electoral gain and to divert working-class anger away from unpopular economic policies, such as layoffs, home foreclosures, tax breaks for millionaires, and budget cuts in social programs.
On March 1 the Democratic-majority Maryland legislature and the Democratic governor legalized same-sex marriage. On February 16, the Democratic-majority New Jersey legislature also approved same-sex marriage, but the Republican Governor Christie vetoed it.
Right-wing groups have placed a measure on the ballot in Minnesota this November to enshrine the ban on same-sex marriage into the state constitution. The Republican-majority New Hampshire legislature is considering repealing its 2009 same-sex marriage law. In May 2012, citizens in North Carolina will vote on a ballot measure referred to them by the Republican-majority legislature to ban same-sex marriage AND civil unions.
On February 7, a Federal appeals court in California ruled Proposition 8 is unconstitutional. Proposition 8 amended California’s constitution in 2008 to ban same-sex marriage after it had been legal for six months. This new ruling could open the way for the resumption of same-sex marriage in California, though the ruling could also be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
So far, eight states and the District of Columbia have legalized same-sex marriage, and ten states have legalized civil unions. This year may be the first year when voters approve same-sex marriage by a state popular referendum. However, given the large war chests that right-wing religious groups have and the fickle support of the Democratic Party, there is absolutely no guarantee of victory.
In order to win these battles, we need to demand nothing less than full marriage equality from all politicians – Republicans and Democrats. In October 2009 there was a march on Washington, DC demanding full equality which drew at least 150,000 people. Now younger, uncompromising activists are arguing for another mass march on Washington in May or October. However, more traditional established groups favor focusing resources on lobbying corporate-controlled politicians instead.
LGBTQ activist Robin Tyler defended the march idea, saying, “massive street actions historically have made a difference in the U.S. and elsewhere in prodding political leaders and governments to take action they would otherwise be unwilling to take. If you think mass actions do not work, look at what is happening in Egypt.” (Washington Blade, 2/18/11)
To win our rights, we clearly need to build a determined grassroots movement through marches on Washington, massive educational outreach campaigns, and student walk-outs. We can multiply our power by building coalitions with unions, Occupy, and civil rights groups to demand passage of the Employee Non-Discrimination Act and living-wage jobs and healthcare for all.
We will get the results faster, though, when we break with the Democratic Party and join with our allies to run independent, anti-corporate candidates and build a new working-class party that fights unequivocally for the interests of LGBTQ people, workers, and all oppressed groups.
==========================================================================================================
Correction: A sentence about North Carolina above was corrected so it now reads: "In May 2012, citizens in North Carolina will vote on a ballot measure referred to them by the Republican-majority legislature to ban same-sex marriage AND civil unions." The print edition mistakenly says "In November the Republican-majority North Carolina legislature will vote on referring a measure to ban civil unions to the voters as a ballot initiative."
Socialist Alternative, P.O. Box 45343, Seattle WA 98145
Phone: (206)526-7185
Comments? Suggestions for improving our web page? Please email info@SocialistAlternative.org
In Calculated Move, Obama Supports Gay Marriage – Step up the Struggle for Equality
May 10, 2012
By Ramy Khalil
Yesterday, in a historic victory for the gay and lesbian rights movement, President Obama came out in favor of same-sex marriage rights. This is the first time that a President of the United States has publicly stated his support for equal marriage rights for gays and lesbians, and comes on the heels of a number of other legislative victories for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people.
With Obama and other leading figures in the Democratic Party now openly embracing same-sex marriage rights, popular support for LGBTQ equality is set to increase further. However, this should not be a moment for the activist movement to sit back and wait for the politicians to act on their newfound convictions. Instead, it’s vital that activists seize this moment to urgently press forward the struggle full legal quality for LGBTQ people at the federal, state, and local levels. We must make clear that words are not enough, and step up our calls for real policy changes to end the continuing violence and legalized persecution facing LGBTQ people.
The Democratic Party and leaders of affiliated organizations, such as the Human Rights Campaign and MoveOn, are attempting to portray Obama's change in his public position as a true act of political courage. It is clear, however, that this change is a politically calculated move designed to boost his own re-election campaign and those of other Democratic politicians this election year.
Public support for equal rights for LGBTQ people has been surging in recent years. In 2004, a Pew Poll showed 60% opposition to same-sex marriage, but this week Pew released a new poll showing only 43% in opposition. Crucially, a new Gallup poll from May 3-6, 2012, shows that independent swing voters favor same-sex marriage rights by a huge 17% margin.
Obama and the Democratic Party leadership have trailed, not led, shifts in public opinion and the struggle for LGBTQ equality. On the contrary, changing public attitudes are overwhelmingly due to the grassroots organizing, militant activism, and greater visibility of LGBTQ people in society. In the past, and often to this day, LGBTQ people who came out of the closet would be disowned by their families, fired from their jobs, arrested, bullied, beaten up, and sometimes even killed. Despite this intense persecution, millions of LGBTQ have defied dominant social norms by coming out of the closet.
Most importantly, the movement organized itself politically, building rallies, boycotts, and protests to demand full equality immediately. In October 2009, for example, activists organized a National Equality March on Washington demanding same-sex marriage rights and full equality under all aspects of the law, which drew at least 150,000 people.
For millions of ordinary people, gay and straight, it has been clear for years, decades in fact, that any couple who wants to get married should have the legal right to do so, regardless of their sexual preference. But it has taken until now, 2012, for the leading Democratic Party politicians to finally say they support marriage equality, only after a majority of Americans came to that conclusion first! Until yesterday, President Obama supported "back of the bus" civil unions rather than full same-sex marriage rights, and many Democratic politicians still refuse to take a stand in favor of full marriage equality.
Both political parties, the Democrats and the Republicans, are also exploiting this wedge issue from different angles for their own electoral gain. While Republican and Democratic politicians argue with each over same-sex marriage and other cultural wedge issues such as abortion and immigration, they are both attempting to divert working-class anger away from unpopular economic policies, such as high gas prices, tax breaks for millionaires, and budget cuts in social programs.
No, President Obama and the Democratic Party have not played a leadership role. LGBTQ activists have led, and Obama and the Democratic Party have followed for their own cynical reasons.
***************
Same-Sex Marriage Battles Heat Up in 2012
Mar 16, 2012
By Ramy Khalil and Kate Devlin
(Note: This article was published in March 2012.)
The legalization of same-sex marriage is shaping up to be a major battleground in the 2012 elections.
Due to the activism and greater visibility of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people, support for LGBTQ rights has been surging. As of a year ago according to a May 2011 Gallup poll, 53% of Americans now believe “same-sex marriage should be recognized by the law as valid, with the same rights as traditional marriage.”
In 2004 when President Bush was running for re-election, Republican strategists increased the turnout of conservative voters by placing initiatives to ban same-sex marriage on the ballot in 11 mostly rural states, where the initiatives passed by 60-70%. But now that a majority of Americans support same-sex marriage rights, not only the Republican Party but also the Democratic Party is exploiting this wedge issue in states where they think it will benefit them.
In Washington State the Democratic Party has held the governor’s seat and a majority of both chambers of the state legislature for years. In order to divert attention away from their unpopular budget cuts to social services, on February 13, 2012 they finally legalized granting same-sex marriage licenses starting in June. Right-wing groups have vowed to try to reinstate the marriage ban through a ballot initiative in November.
Democratic Party leaders haven’t supported same-sex marriage rights until now that a majority of Americans support it. Even now the Democratic Party is only supporting equal marriage rights in certain states where they calculate it will work to their political advantage. President Obama and many Democratic politicians still advocate “back-of-the-bus” civil unions instead of full marriage equality.
The Democratic Party has never used their authority and access to the media to play a leadership role in the struggle for LGBTQ rights. The LGBTQ rights movement has always led, and the Democratic Party has always followed, often apologetically. Democratic politicians have even attacked LGBTQ rights at times. It was President Clinton, for instance, who implemented “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” and eagerly supported the Defense of Marriage Act.
But this year both corporate parties are exploiting this wedge issue from different angles for their own electoral gain and to divert working-class anger away from unpopular economic policies, such as layoffs, home foreclosures, tax breaks for millionaires, and budget cuts in social programs.
On March 1 the Democratic-majority Maryland legislature and the Democratic governor legalized same-sex marriage. On February 16, the Democratic-majority New Jersey legislature also approved same-sex marriage, but the Republican Governor Christie vetoed it.
Right-wing groups have placed a measure on the ballot in Minnesota this November to enshrine the ban on same-sex marriage into the state constitution. The Republican-majority New Hampshire legislature is considering repealing its 2009 same-sex marriage law. In May 2012, citizens in North Carolina will vote on a ballot measure referred to them by the Republican-majority legislature to ban same-sex marriage AND civil unions.
On February 7, a Federal appeals court in California ruled Proposition 8 is unconstitutional. Proposition 8 amended California’s constitution in 2008 to ban same-sex marriage after it had been legal for six months. This new ruling could open the way for the resumption of same-sex marriage in California, though the ruling could also be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
So far, eight states and the District of Columbia have legalized same-sex marriage, and ten states have legalized civil unions. This year may be the first year when voters approve same-sex marriage by a state popular referendum. However, given the large war chests that right-wing religious groups have and the fickle support of the Democratic Party, there is absolutely no guarantee of victory.
In order to win these battles, we need to demand nothing less than full marriage equality from all politicians – Republicans and Democrats. In October 2009 there was a march on Washington, DC demanding full equality which drew at least 150,000 people. Now younger, uncompromising activists are arguing for another mass march on Washington in May or October. However, more traditional established groups favor focusing resources on lobbying corporate-controlled politicians instead.
LGBTQ activist Robin Tyler defended the march idea, saying, “massive street actions historically have made a difference in the U.S. and elsewhere in prodding political leaders and governments to take action they would otherwise be unwilling to take. If you think mass actions do not work, look at what is happening in Egypt.” (Washington Blade, 2/18/11)
To win our rights, we clearly need to build a determined grassroots movement through marches on Washington, massive educational outreach campaigns, and student walk-outs. We can multiply our power by building coalitions with unions, Occupy, and civil rights groups to demand passage of the Employee Non-Discrimination Act and living-wage jobs and healthcare for all.
We will get the results faster, though, when we break with the Democratic Party and join with our allies to run independent, anti-corporate candidates and build a new working-class party that fights unequivocally for the interests of LGBTQ people, workers, and all oppressed groups.
==========================================================================================================
Correction: A sentence about North Carolina above was corrected so it now reads: "In May 2012, citizens in North Carolina will vote on a ballot measure referred to them by the Republican-majority legislature to ban same-sex marriage AND civil unions." The print edition mistakenly says "In November the Republican-majority North Carolina legislature will vote on referring a measure to ban civil unions to the voters as a ballot initiative."
Socialist Alternative, P.O. Box 45343, Seattle WA 98145
Phone: (206)526-7185
Comments? Suggestions for improving our web page? Please email info@SocialistAlternative.org
From The Pages Of The Socialist Alternative Press-Greece: Political earthquake sees pro-austerity parties’ support collapse — Left presented with big opportunities
Click on the headline to link to the Socialist Alternative (CWI) website.
Greece: Political earthquake sees pro-austerity parties’ support collapse — Left presented with big opportunities
May 9, 2012
By socialistworld.net
Following the recent elections in Greece, which saw two out of three voters vote against pro-austerity parties and a big swing to left parties, Niall Mulholland spoke to Andros Payiatsos, from Xekinima (CWI in Greece).
What do the election results represent?
The parliamentary election results in Greece were a political earthquake, a crushing repudiation of the pro-austerity parties and the ‘Troika’ (International Monetary Fund, European Union and European Central Bank). This follows years of austerity measures that have led to a collapse in living standards, 51% youth unemployment and mass poverty.
The outgoing government coalition parties suffered a massive collapse in support. The traditional conservative party, New Democracy, fell from just over 33% in 2009 to 18.85% (108 MPs, which includes the 50 seat bonus received by the first party, according to Greek electoral law). Pasok, the traditional social democratic party, crashed from 43.9 percent in the last elections to 13.18% (41 seats). In the past three decades, the combined vote of the two “ruling” parties varied between 75% and 85% of the vote. Laos, the small right wing party that joined New Democracy and Pasok in the austerity coalition for a few months, lost all its MPs.
The biggest gains went to the broad left, Syriza (Coalition of the Radical Left), which rose from 4.6% to 16.78% (52 seats). The communist party (KKE) won 8.48% (26 MPs). The Democratic Left, which split from Syriza in 2010 on a more right wing path, but which also attacked austerity cuts, won 6.1%.
This major swing to the left by Greek voters shows the huge potential for a bold socialist alternative to the capitalist crisis and austerity cuts.
However, serving as a warning to the workers’ movement, the neo-fascist Golden Dawn, exploiting the anti-cuts mood and issues over immigration, picked up 6.97%. For the first time, this far right party entered parliament, with 21 MPs. The Independent Greeks, a recent right wing nationalist split from New Democracy, also entered parliament, with 10.6% (33 MPs).
While the election results revealed a polarisation along left and right lines, many workers and youth saw no viable alternative on offer and simply did not vote for any party. Abstention was much higher than predicted, at a record 35%, and ‘blank’ and invalid votes stood at 2.4%.
Leader of Democratic Left party, Fotis Kouvelis, (left) and leader of the Left Coalition party Alexis Tsipras, Athens 8 May 2012
Why did Syriza gain so many votes?
Syriza gained support over the last two weeks of the election campaign mainly by appealing for a ‘Left government’ against the Troika’s ‘memorandum’.
The supporters of Xekinima pioneered the call for a Left ‘united front’ and for a vote for the parties of the left, over the last months. Unlike Syriza leaders, Xekinima did not call for a ‘renegotiation’ of the crushing austerity measures, but for a Left government to carry out a programme to defend working people. This would include repudiating the debt, stopping all cuts, nationalising the main banks and industries, under democratic workers’ control and management, and fighting for a socialist Europe, as opposed to the bosses’ EU - breaking with the diktat of the Troika and capitalism, in general.
The other main forces on the Left in Greece, the communist party (KKE) and Antarsya (the Anti-capitalist Left Cooperation) both took a sectarian attitude and rejected Syriza’s ‘left unity’ proposal. Yet if the left had formed an electoral bloc, they would probably now be in a position to form a government! With millions of workers yearning for an anti-cuts left government, the KKE and Antarsya paid for their approach in the polls. Their votes remain virtually stagnant: the KKE rose by just 1% (under 19,000) to 8.48% (26 MPs) and Antarsya finished on 1.19%, with no MPs.
Can a new government be formed?
Under the Greek constitution, New Democracy, as the largest party, was given three days to try to form a new government. But its leader, Antonis Samaras, announced on Monday after just a few hours that his party had failed in its bid to create a “national salvation” government.
Given the unambiguous anti-austerity verdict of the electorate, no parties entering a coalition government can do so without at least pledging to renegotiate the ‘memorandum’ with the Troika.
The Troika may be prepared to re-negotiate over aspects of the memoranda and to make some minor concessions. But the Troika will not agree to end its central demands for huge debt repayments from Greece, which can only come at the cost of yet more enormous cuts to welfare, jobs and living standards. The question of Greek membership of the eurozone and even the EU will, most probably, quickly be placed on the agenda.
Greek politics is entering very stormy waters. The invitation to form a government fell to Syriza, the second biggest party. If it fails, the initiative goes to Pasok, and if that fails, to the Greek president, who can try to assemble a coalition.
The combined strength of the Syriza and the KKE, even together with the Democratic Left, in parliament is not enough to form a majority government and, to date, the KKE has refused to accept Syriza’s proposal.
Failure to form a new government would eventually lead to new elections. The ruling class has additional reasons to dread this prospect, as most probably it will lead to Syriza becoming the largest party.
What must the left do now?
Alexis Tsipras, the Syriza leader, said he will strive to form a “left-wing coalition” to reject the "barbaric" measures associated with the EU/IMF bailout deal.
Xekinima (CWI Greece) supports the call for a left government coalition but it must be a government fully committed to opposing all austerity cuts and the bosses’ EU, rejecting the debt repayments and carrying out pro-worker policies, not ‘renegotiating’ for ‘milder’ cuts and ‘more generous’ loan repayments, which still means a lowering of Greek living standards. The Syriza leadership must oppose any coalition or co-operation with the bosses’ parties, which would be a disastrous trap.
Celebration after the election: Alexis Tsipras, the head of Greece’s Syriza party
There is now a great opportunity for Syriza to publicly put forward a programme for a workers’ government. It is true that according to parliamentary arithmetic the left do not have enough MPs to form such a government. Furthermore, the KKE leadership has, so far, refused to co-operate with Syriza. But huge pressure needs to come from trade unionists, social movement activists and the rank and file of the KKE and Syriza, to insist that both parties reject sectarianism and any ‘cuts-lite’ policies based on ‘re-negotiated’ austerity. The workers’ movement activists want genuine left unity, preparing the ground to form a new left government in the near future.
A programme to unite Syriza and the KKE around opposition to all austerity measures and the EU diktats, for cancellation of the debt and nationalisation of the main banks and industries under democratic workers’ control and for socialist change, as the basis of a workers’ government, would win widespread support from the working class, youth and ruined middle class. It would inspire a resurgence of mass action in the workplaces and communities.
If an attempt is made to form yet another cuts-making coalition, based around Pasok and ND, the left and workers’ movement needs to organise mass opposition, including general strikes and workplace occupations, to stop such attempts, which have no mandate.
Last weekend’s election makes clear that a majority government of the left is possible. If new elections take place in June, the left parties will have a great opportunity to win a majority. This requires the left parties adopting socialist policies – a rejection of the debt repayments and a struggle to break with the bosses’ EU and the profit-system. It also means a strong united front of the left and workers’ movement against the threat of the neo-fascist and far right.
If the left fails to offer a viable socialist alternative, the far right can partially fill the space and grow, and the ruling class will also seek to deploy more authoritarian measures against the workers’ movement resisting cuts.
Socialist Alternative, P.O. Box 45343, Seattle WA 98145
Phone: (206)526-7185
Comments? Suggestions for improving our web page? Please email info@SocialistAlternative.org
Greece: Political earthquake sees pro-austerity parties’ support collapse — Left presented with big opportunities Printer-Friendly
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May 9, 2012
By socialistworld.net
Following the recent elections in Greece, which saw two out of three voters vote against pro-austerity parties and a big swing to left parties, Niall Mulholland spoke to Andros Payiatsos, from Xekinima (CWI in Greece).
What do the election results represent?
The parliamentary election results in Greece were a political earthquake, a crushing repudiation of the pro-austerity parties and the ‘Troika’ (International Monetary Fund, European Union and European Central Bank). This follows years of austerity measures that have led to a collapse in living standards, 51% youth unemployment and mass poverty.
The outgoing government coalition parties suffered a massive collapse in support. The traditional conservative party, New Democracy, fell from just over 33% in 2009 to 18.85% (108 MPs, which includes the 50 seat bonus received by the first party, according to Greek electoral law). Pasok, the traditional social democratic party, crashed from 43.9 percent in the last elections to 13.18% (41 seats). In the past three decades, the combined vote of the two “ruling” parties varied between 75% and 85% of the vote. Laos, the small right wing party that joined New Democracy and Pasok in the austerity coalition for a few months, lost all its MPs.
The biggest gains went to the broad left, Syriza (Coalition of the Radical Left), which rose from 4.6% to 16.78% (52 seats). The communist party (KKE) won 8.48% (26 MPs). The Democratic Left, which split from Syriza in 2010 on a more right wing path, but which also attacked austerity cuts, won 6.1%.
This major swing to the left by Greek voters shows the huge potential for a bold socialist alternative to the capitalist crisis and austerity cuts.
However, serving as a warning to the workers’ movement, the neo-fascist Golden Dawn, exploiting the anti-cuts mood and issues over immigration, picked up 6.97%. For the first time, this far right party entered parliament, with 21 MPs. The Independent Greeks, a recent right wing nationalist split from New Democracy, also entered parliament, with 10.6% (33 MPs).
While the election results revealed a polarisation along left and right lines, many workers and youth saw no viable alternative on offer and simply did not vote for any party. Abstention was much higher than predicted, at a record 35%, and ‘blank’ and invalid votes stood at 2.4%.
Leader of Democratic Left party, Fotis Kouvelis, (left) and leader of the Left Coalition party Alexis Tsipras, Athens 8 May 2012
Why did Syriza gain so many votes?
Syriza gained support over the last two weeks of the election campaign mainly by appealing for a ‘Left government’ against the Troika’s ‘memorandum’.
The supporters of Xekinima pioneered the call for a Left ‘united front’ and for a vote for the parties of the left, over the last months. Unlike Syriza leaders, Xekinima did not call for a ‘renegotiation’ of the crushing austerity measures, but for a Left government to carry out a programme to defend working people. This would include repudiating the debt, stopping all cuts, nationalising the main banks and industries, under democratic workers’ control and management, and fighting for a socialist Europe, as opposed to the bosses’ EU - breaking with the diktat of the Troika and capitalism, in general.
The other main forces on the Left in Greece, the communist party (KKE) and Antarsya (the Anti-capitalist Left Cooperation) both took a sectarian attitude and rejected Syriza’s ‘left unity’ proposal. Yet if the left had formed an electoral bloc, they would probably now be in a position to form a government! With millions of workers yearning for an anti-cuts left government, the KKE and Antarsya paid for their approach in the polls. Their votes remain virtually stagnant: the KKE rose by just 1% (under 19,000) to 8.48% (26 MPs) and Antarsya finished on 1.19%, with no MPs.
Can a new government be formed?
Under the Greek constitution, New Democracy, as the largest party, was given three days to try to form a new government. But its leader, Antonis Samaras, announced on Monday after just a few hours that his party had failed in its bid to create a “national salvation” government.
Given the unambiguous anti-austerity verdict of the electorate, no parties entering a coalition government can do so without at least pledging to renegotiate the ‘memorandum’ with the Troika.
The Troika may be prepared to re-negotiate over aspects of the memoranda and to make some minor concessions. But the Troika will not agree to end its central demands for huge debt repayments from Greece, which can only come at the cost of yet more enormous cuts to welfare, jobs and living standards. The question of Greek membership of the eurozone and even the EU will, most probably, quickly be placed on the agenda.
Greek politics is entering very stormy waters. The invitation to form a government fell to Syriza, the second biggest party. If it fails, the initiative goes to Pasok, and if that fails, to the Greek president, who can try to assemble a coalition.
The combined strength of the Syriza and the KKE, even together with the Democratic Left, in parliament is not enough to form a majority government and, to date, the KKE has refused to accept Syriza’s proposal.
Failure to form a new government would eventually lead to new elections. The ruling class has additional reasons to dread this prospect, as most probably it will lead to Syriza becoming the largest party.
What must the left do now?
Alexis Tsipras, the Syriza leader, said he will strive to form a “left-wing coalition” to reject the "barbaric" measures associated with the EU/IMF bailout deal.
Xekinima (CWI Greece) supports the call for a left government coalition but it must be a government fully committed to opposing all austerity cuts and the bosses’ EU, rejecting the debt repayments and carrying out pro-worker policies, not ‘renegotiating’ for ‘milder’ cuts and ‘more generous’ loan repayments, which still means a lowering of Greek living standards. The Syriza leadership must oppose any coalition or co-operation with the bosses’ parties, which would be a disastrous trap.
Celebration after the election: Alexis Tsipras, the head of Greece’s Syriza party
There is now a great opportunity for Syriza to publicly put forward a programme for a workers’ government. It is true that according to parliamentary arithmetic the left do not have enough MPs to form such a government. Furthermore, the KKE leadership has, so far, refused to co-operate with Syriza. But huge pressure needs to come from trade unionists, social movement activists and the rank and file of the KKE and Syriza, to insist that both parties reject sectarianism and any ‘cuts-lite’ policies based on ‘re-negotiated’ austerity. The workers’ movement activists want genuine left unity, preparing the ground to form a new left government in the near future.
A programme to unite Syriza and the KKE around opposition to all austerity measures and the EU diktats, for cancellation of the debt and nationalisation of the main banks and industries under democratic workers’ control and for socialist change, as the basis of a workers’ government, would win widespread support from the working class, youth and ruined middle class. It would inspire a resurgence of mass action in the workplaces and communities.
If an attempt is made to form yet another cuts-making coalition, based around Pasok and ND, the left and workers’ movement needs to organise mass opposition, including general strikes and workplace occupations, to stop such attempts, which have no mandate.
Last weekend’s election makes clear that a majority government of the left is possible. If new elections take place in June, the left parties will have a great opportunity to win a majority. This requires the left parties adopting socialist policies – a rejection of the debt repayments and a struggle to break with the bosses’ EU and the profit-system. It also means a strong united front of the left and workers’ movement against the threat of the neo-fascist and far right.
If the left fails to offer a viable socialist alternative, the far right can partially fill the space and grow, and the ruling class will also seek to deploy more authoritarian measures against the workers’ movement resisting cuts.
Socialist Alternative, P.O. Box 45343, Seattle WA 98145
Phone: (206)526-7185
Comments? Suggestions for improving our web page? Please email info@SocialistAlternative.org
Greece: Political earthquake sees pro-austerity parties’ support collapse — Left presented with big opportunities
May 9, 2012
By socialistworld.net
Following the recent elections in Greece, which saw two out of three voters vote against pro-austerity parties and a big swing to left parties, Niall Mulholland spoke to Andros Payiatsos, from Xekinima (CWI in Greece).
What do the election results represent?
The parliamentary election results in Greece were a political earthquake, a crushing repudiation of the pro-austerity parties and the ‘Troika’ (International Monetary Fund, European Union and European Central Bank). This follows years of austerity measures that have led to a collapse in living standards, 51% youth unemployment and mass poverty.
The outgoing government coalition parties suffered a massive collapse in support. The traditional conservative party, New Democracy, fell from just over 33% in 2009 to 18.85% (108 MPs, which includes the 50 seat bonus received by the first party, according to Greek electoral law). Pasok, the traditional social democratic party, crashed from 43.9 percent in the last elections to 13.18% (41 seats). In the past three decades, the combined vote of the two “ruling” parties varied between 75% and 85% of the vote. Laos, the small right wing party that joined New Democracy and Pasok in the austerity coalition for a few months, lost all its MPs.
The biggest gains went to the broad left, Syriza (Coalition of the Radical Left), which rose from 4.6% to 16.78% (52 seats). The communist party (KKE) won 8.48% (26 MPs). The Democratic Left, which split from Syriza in 2010 on a more right wing path, but which also attacked austerity cuts, won 6.1%.
This major swing to the left by Greek voters shows the huge potential for a bold socialist alternative to the capitalist crisis and austerity cuts.
However, serving as a warning to the workers’ movement, the neo-fascist Golden Dawn, exploiting the anti-cuts mood and issues over immigration, picked up 6.97%. For the first time, this far right party entered parliament, with 21 MPs. The Independent Greeks, a recent right wing nationalist split from New Democracy, also entered parliament, with 10.6% (33 MPs).
While the election results revealed a polarisation along left and right lines, many workers and youth saw no viable alternative on offer and simply did not vote for any party. Abstention was much higher than predicted, at a record 35%, and ‘blank’ and invalid votes stood at 2.4%.
Leader of Democratic Left party, Fotis Kouvelis, (left) and leader of the Left Coalition party Alexis Tsipras, Athens 8 May 2012
Why did Syriza gain so many votes?
Syriza gained support over the last two weeks of the election campaign mainly by appealing for a ‘Left government’ against the Troika’s ‘memorandum’.
The supporters of Xekinima pioneered the call for a Left ‘united front’ and for a vote for the parties of the left, over the last months. Unlike Syriza leaders, Xekinima did not call for a ‘renegotiation’ of the crushing austerity measures, but for a Left government to carry out a programme to defend working people. This would include repudiating the debt, stopping all cuts, nationalising the main banks and industries, under democratic workers’ control and management, and fighting for a socialist Europe, as opposed to the bosses’ EU - breaking with the diktat of the Troika and capitalism, in general.
The other main forces on the Left in Greece, the communist party (KKE) and Antarsya (the Anti-capitalist Left Cooperation) both took a sectarian attitude and rejected Syriza’s ‘left unity’ proposal. Yet if the left had formed an electoral bloc, they would probably now be in a position to form a government! With millions of workers yearning for an anti-cuts left government, the KKE and Antarsya paid for their approach in the polls. Their votes remain virtually stagnant: the KKE rose by just 1% (under 19,000) to 8.48% (26 MPs) and Antarsya finished on 1.19%, with no MPs.
Can a new government be formed?
Under the Greek constitution, New Democracy, as the largest party, was given three days to try to form a new government. But its leader, Antonis Samaras, announced on Monday after just a few hours that his party had failed in its bid to create a “national salvation” government.
Given the unambiguous anti-austerity verdict of the electorate, no parties entering a coalition government can do so without at least pledging to renegotiate the ‘memorandum’ with the Troika.
The Troika may be prepared to re-negotiate over aspects of the memoranda and to make some minor concessions. But the Troika will not agree to end its central demands for huge debt repayments from Greece, which can only come at the cost of yet more enormous cuts to welfare, jobs and living standards. The question of Greek membership of the eurozone and even the EU will, most probably, quickly be placed on the agenda.
Greek politics is entering very stormy waters. The invitation to form a government fell to Syriza, the second biggest party. If it fails, the initiative goes to Pasok, and if that fails, to the Greek president, who can try to assemble a coalition.
The combined strength of the Syriza and the KKE, even together with the Democratic Left, in parliament is not enough to form a majority government and, to date, the KKE has refused to accept Syriza’s proposal.
Failure to form a new government would eventually lead to new elections. The ruling class has additional reasons to dread this prospect, as most probably it will lead to Syriza becoming the largest party.
What must the left do now?
Alexis Tsipras, the Syriza leader, said he will strive to form a “left-wing coalition” to reject the "barbaric" measures associated with the EU/IMF bailout deal.
Xekinima (CWI Greece) supports the call for a left government coalition but it must be a government fully committed to opposing all austerity cuts and the bosses’ EU, rejecting the debt repayments and carrying out pro-worker policies, not ‘renegotiating’ for ‘milder’ cuts and ‘more generous’ loan repayments, which still means a lowering of Greek living standards. The Syriza leadership must oppose any coalition or co-operation with the bosses’ parties, which would be a disastrous trap.
Celebration after the election: Alexis Tsipras, the head of Greece’s Syriza party
There is now a great opportunity for Syriza to publicly put forward a programme for a workers’ government. It is true that according to parliamentary arithmetic the left do not have enough MPs to form such a government. Furthermore, the KKE leadership has, so far, refused to co-operate with Syriza. But huge pressure needs to come from trade unionists, social movement activists and the rank and file of the KKE and Syriza, to insist that both parties reject sectarianism and any ‘cuts-lite’ policies based on ‘re-negotiated’ austerity. The workers’ movement activists want genuine left unity, preparing the ground to form a new left government in the near future.
A programme to unite Syriza and the KKE around opposition to all austerity measures and the EU diktats, for cancellation of the debt and nationalisation of the main banks and industries under democratic workers’ control and for socialist change, as the basis of a workers’ government, would win widespread support from the working class, youth and ruined middle class. It would inspire a resurgence of mass action in the workplaces and communities.
If an attempt is made to form yet another cuts-making coalition, based around Pasok and ND, the left and workers’ movement needs to organise mass opposition, including general strikes and workplace occupations, to stop such attempts, which have no mandate.
Last weekend’s election makes clear that a majority government of the left is possible. If new elections take place in June, the left parties will have a great opportunity to win a majority. This requires the left parties adopting socialist policies – a rejection of the debt repayments and a struggle to break with the bosses’ EU and the profit-system. It also means a strong united front of the left and workers’ movement against the threat of the neo-fascist and far right.
If the left fails to offer a viable socialist alternative, the far right can partially fill the space and grow, and the ruling class will also seek to deploy more authoritarian measures against the workers’ movement resisting cuts.
Socialist Alternative, P.O. Box 45343, Seattle WA 98145
Phone: (206)526-7185
Comments? Suggestions for improving our web page? Please email info@SocialistAlternative.org
Greece: Political earthquake sees pro-austerity parties’ support collapse — Left presented with big opportunities Printer-Friendly
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May 9, 2012
By socialistworld.net
Following the recent elections in Greece, which saw two out of three voters vote against pro-austerity parties and a big swing to left parties, Niall Mulholland spoke to Andros Payiatsos, from Xekinima (CWI in Greece).
What do the election results represent?
The parliamentary election results in Greece were a political earthquake, a crushing repudiation of the pro-austerity parties and the ‘Troika’ (International Monetary Fund, European Union and European Central Bank). This follows years of austerity measures that have led to a collapse in living standards, 51% youth unemployment and mass poverty.
The outgoing government coalition parties suffered a massive collapse in support. The traditional conservative party, New Democracy, fell from just over 33% in 2009 to 18.85% (108 MPs, which includes the 50 seat bonus received by the first party, according to Greek electoral law). Pasok, the traditional social democratic party, crashed from 43.9 percent in the last elections to 13.18% (41 seats). In the past three decades, the combined vote of the two “ruling” parties varied between 75% and 85% of the vote. Laos, the small right wing party that joined New Democracy and Pasok in the austerity coalition for a few months, lost all its MPs.
The biggest gains went to the broad left, Syriza (Coalition of the Radical Left), which rose from 4.6% to 16.78% (52 seats). The communist party (KKE) won 8.48% (26 MPs). The Democratic Left, which split from Syriza in 2010 on a more right wing path, but which also attacked austerity cuts, won 6.1%.
This major swing to the left by Greek voters shows the huge potential for a bold socialist alternative to the capitalist crisis and austerity cuts.
However, serving as a warning to the workers’ movement, the neo-fascist Golden Dawn, exploiting the anti-cuts mood and issues over immigration, picked up 6.97%. For the first time, this far right party entered parliament, with 21 MPs. The Independent Greeks, a recent right wing nationalist split from New Democracy, also entered parliament, with 10.6% (33 MPs).
While the election results revealed a polarisation along left and right lines, many workers and youth saw no viable alternative on offer and simply did not vote for any party. Abstention was much higher than predicted, at a record 35%, and ‘blank’ and invalid votes stood at 2.4%.
Leader of Democratic Left party, Fotis Kouvelis, (left) and leader of the Left Coalition party Alexis Tsipras, Athens 8 May 2012
Why did Syriza gain so many votes?
Syriza gained support over the last two weeks of the election campaign mainly by appealing for a ‘Left government’ against the Troika’s ‘memorandum’.
The supporters of Xekinima pioneered the call for a Left ‘united front’ and for a vote for the parties of the left, over the last months. Unlike Syriza leaders, Xekinima did not call for a ‘renegotiation’ of the crushing austerity measures, but for a Left government to carry out a programme to defend working people. This would include repudiating the debt, stopping all cuts, nationalising the main banks and industries, under democratic workers’ control and management, and fighting for a socialist Europe, as opposed to the bosses’ EU - breaking with the diktat of the Troika and capitalism, in general.
The other main forces on the Left in Greece, the communist party (KKE) and Antarsya (the Anti-capitalist Left Cooperation) both took a sectarian attitude and rejected Syriza’s ‘left unity’ proposal. Yet if the left had formed an electoral bloc, they would probably now be in a position to form a government! With millions of workers yearning for an anti-cuts left government, the KKE and Antarsya paid for their approach in the polls. Their votes remain virtually stagnant: the KKE rose by just 1% (under 19,000) to 8.48% (26 MPs) and Antarsya finished on 1.19%, with no MPs.
Can a new government be formed?
Under the Greek constitution, New Democracy, as the largest party, was given three days to try to form a new government. But its leader, Antonis Samaras, announced on Monday after just a few hours that his party had failed in its bid to create a “national salvation” government.
Given the unambiguous anti-austerity verdict of the electorate, no parties entering a coalition government can do so without at least pledging to renegotiate the ‘memorandum’ with the Troika.
The Troika may be prepared to re-negotiate over aspects of the memoranda and to make some minor concessions. But the Troika will not agree to end its central demands for huge debt repayments from Greece, which can only come at the cost of yet more enormous cuts to welfare, jobs and living standards. The question of Greek membership of the eurozone and even the EU will, most probably, quickly be placed on the agenda.
Greek politics is entering very stormy waters. The invitation to form a government fell to Syriza, the second biggest party. If it fails, the initiative goes to Pasok, and if that fails, to the Greek president, who can try to assemble a coalition.
The combined strength of the Syriza and the KKE, even together with the Democratic Left, in parliament is not enough to form a majority government and, to date, the KKE has refused to accept Syriza’s proposal.
Failure to form a new government would eventually lead to new elections. The ruling class has additional reasons to dread this prospect, as most probably it will lead to Syriza becoming the largest party.
What must the left do now?
Alexis Tsipras, the Syriza leader, said he will strive to form a “left-wing coalition” to reject the "barbaric" measures associated with the EU/IMF bailout deal.
Xekinima (CWI Greece) supports the call for a left government coalition but it must be a government fully committed to opposing all austerity cuts and the bosses’ EU, rejecting the debt repayments and carrying out pro-worker policies, not ‘renegotiating’ for ‘milder’ cuts and ‘more generous’ loan repayments, which still means a lowering of Greek living standards. The Syriza leadership must oppose any coalition or co-operation with the bosses’ parties, which would be a disastrous trap.
Celebration after the election: Alexis Tsipras, the head of Greece’s Syriza party
There is now a great opportunity for Syriza to publicly put forward a programme for a workers’ government. It is true that according to parliamentary arithmetic the left do not have enough MPs to form such a government. Furthermore, the KKE leadership has, so far, refused to co-operate with Syriza. But huge pressure needs to come from trade unionists, social movement activists and the rank and file of the KKE and Syriza, to insist that both parties reject sectarianism and any ‘cuts-lite’ policies based on ‘re-negotiated’ austerity. The workers’ movement activists want genuine left unity, preparing the ground to form a new left government in the near future.
A programme to unite Syriza and the KKE around opposition to all austerity measures and the EU diktats, for cancellation of the debt and nationalisation of the main banks and industries under democratic workers’ control and for socialist change, as the basis of a workers’ government, would win widespread support from the working class, youth and ruined middle class. It would inspire a resurgence of mass action in the workplaces and communities.
If an attempt is made to form yet another cuts-making coalition, based around Pasok and ND, the left and workers’ movement needs to organise mass opposition, including general strikes and workplace occupations, to stop such attempts, which have no mandate.
Last weekend’s election makes clear that a majority government of the left is possible. If new elections take place in June, the left parties will have a great opportunity to win a majority. This requires the left parties adopting socialist policies – a rejection of the debt repayments and a struggle to break with the bosses’ EU and the profit-system. It also means a strong united front of the left and workers’ movement against the threat of the neo-fascist and far right.
If the left fails to offer a viable socialist alternative, the far right can partially fill the space and grow, and the ruling class will also seek to deploy more authoritarian measures against the workers’ movement resisting cuts.
Socialist Alternative, P.O. Box 45343, Seattle WA 98145
Phone: (206)526-7185
Comments? Suggestions for improving our web page? Please email info@SocialistAlternative.org
From The Pages Of The Socialist Alternative Press-Vote No to Austerity in Irish referendum
Click on the headline to link to the Socialist Alternative (CWI) website.
From The Pages Of The Socialist Alternative Press-Obama's War in Afghanistan is a Disaster
Click on the headline to link to the Socialist Alternative (CWI) website.
Obama's War in Afghanistan is a Disaster
Apr 27, 2012
By Patrick Darby
In January 2012, a video published on websites such as Youtube revealed four U.S. Marines urinating on dead Taliban fighters. On February 20, U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan incinerated several Qur’ans, leading to weeks of protest that left six U.S. military personnel and 30 Afghans dead. Three weeks later, U.S. Staff Sergeant Robert Bales went on an unprovoked killing spree that left 17 Afghan civilians dead, mostly children. On April 18, the L.A. Times published photos of U.S. soldiers playing with Afghan corpses and laughing.
Ultimately, Obama, as the Commander in Chief, is responsible for these atrocities. Without the continued presence of the U.S. in Afghanistan, these incidents – just two among hundreds – would not have occurred. According to a March 12 study by The Guardian, Afghan civilian deaths rose from 2,038 in 2010 to 2,332 in 2011, a clear manifestation of Obama’s deadly policies.
Bales was on his fourth tour of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Iraq, he had possibly suffered a minor traumatic brain injury after a roadside bomb detonated. He also was suffering from possible PTSD symptoms.
This begs the question of why a possibly brain-damaged man with psychological issues was forced into a fourth tour of duty and given a gun. The military, however, has claimed it didn’t know about those issues. The question, then, is how did such symptoms go unnoticed?
Both incidents have heavily strained U.S. relations with Afghanistan, and calls for the U.S. to speed up its withdrawal have intensified. Afghan President Hamid Karzai called for an accelerated U.S. withdrawal. A March 21-25 NY Times/CBS poll found that 69% of Americans think the U.S. should withdraw from Afghanistan, a sharp increase from the 53% who wanted to end the decade-old war four months ago. 1,974 American soldiers have been killed during operations, and over 13,000 Afghan civilians were killed between 2006 and 2011.
As long as the U.S. continues to occupy Afghanistan, atrocities will continue, and the death toll will continue to rise. Bales’ killing spree is the symptom of a larger problem – an overstrained, overstressed U.S. military. The horrors of war take an incredible toll on the mind, but with a shortage of soldiers and two wars spanning a decade, the military has sent and will continue to send soldiers unfit for duty back to the war zone.
Another underlying cause of the recent U.S. atrocities is the dehumanization of the Afghan people. Afghans are often referred to with racial slurs or sometimes ignored altogether. The idea that Muslims are not people, but “terrorists” or “towelheads,” has infiltrated not just U.S. society, but the military as well.
It is not an accident, either. Historically, “enemies” have always been dehumanized. In the Vietnam War, the Vietnamese were “Charlies” or “gooks.” In World War II, the Japanese were “Japs” and regarded as subhuman. This pattern of dehumanization is not limited to the United States, of course, nor to recent history. As long as there is systemic racism prevalent in our society and in the military, atrocities are not just likely, but inevitable. And as long as we live in a global capitalist system where governments have to compete to control resources and increase corporate profits, wars and the systemic racism that comes with them are also inevitable.
The war in Afghanistan was launched after 9/11 under the stated goal of ending Al Qaeda’s terrorism. Ten years later, it is clear that the real U.S. motive behind continuing the war is to expand U.S. imperialism into the energy- and resource-rich region. The U.S. government hopes not to leave until it constructs a reliable pro-U.S. government, police, and military in Afghanistan. It has, however, utterly failed to do so.
The U.S. puppet Hamid Karzai and his central government are intensely corrupt, supported by various brutal warlords and drug traffickers. The war-torn country is still mired in wretched poverty and crumbling infrastructure. Seventy-seven percent of the population has no access to safe drinking water, around 9 million Afghans are living in utter destitution (another 9 million live barely above poverty), and the literacy rate is around 24% (http://csis.org/publication/agriculture-food-and-poverty-afghanistan).
The war has been and will continue to be a catastrophic failure, not just for the Afghan people, but for the United States. Obama tripled the number of troops in Afghanistan, and despite the presence of about 90,000 U.S. soldiers, the mightiest military in the world, backed by the most advanced technology in the world, has failed to achieve any sort of concrete victory against the rag-tag insurgency.
President Obama has also dramatically increased the number of drone strikes into Pakistan, despite their repeated protests. These strikes have killed thousands, including civilians and children. President Bush may have begun the war in Afghanistan and the drone strikes, but Obama has continued them enthusiastically.
The war in Afghanistan alone has cost over $500 billion. Instead of using that money to continue an unpopular war that has killed tens of thousands and ravaged the country, we could be implementing universal health care for every American and rebuilding crumbling infrastructure, fighting poverty, or switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources. Instead of bombing Afghanistan, we could be rebuilding schools and hospitals in the war-ravaged country. All of those uses would be far more productive and humane than continuing to spend hundreds of billions on war and death.
Socialist Alternative, P.O. Box 45343, Seattle WA 98145
Phone: (206)526-7185
Comments? Suggestions for improving our web page? Please email info@SocialistAlternative
Obama's War in Afghanistan is a Disaster
Apr 27, 2012
By Patrick Darby
In January 2012, a video published on websites such as Youtube revealed four U.S. Marines urinating on dead Taliban fighters. On February 20, U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan incinerated several Qur’ans, leading to weeks of protest that left six U.S. military personnel and 30 Afghans dead. Three weeks later, U.S. Staff Sergeant Robert Bales went on an unprovoked killing spree that left 17 Afghan civilians dead, mostly children. On April 18, the L.A. Times published photos of U.S. soldiers playing with Afghan corpses and laughing.
Ultimately, Obama, as the Commander in Chief, is responsible for these atrocities. Without the continued presence of the U.S. in Afghanistan, these incidents – just two among hundreds – would not have occurred. According to a March 12 study by The Guardian, Afghan civilian deaths rose from 2,038 in 2010 to 2,332 in 2011, a clear manifestation of Obama’s deadly policies.
Bales was on his fourth tour of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Iraq, he had possibly suffered a minor traumatic brain injury after a roadside bomb detonated. He also was suffering from possible PTSD symptoms.
This begs the question of why a possibly brain-damaged man with psychological issues was forced into a fourth tour of duty and given a gun. The military, however, has claimed it didn’t know about those issues. The question, then, is how did such symptoms go unnoticed?
Both incidents have heavily strained U.S. relations with Afghanistan, and calls for the U.S. to speed up its withdrawal have intensified. Afghan President Hamid Karzai called for an accelerated U.S. withdrawal. A March 21-25 NY Times/CBS poll found that 69% of Americans think the U.S. should withdraw from Afghanistan, a sharp increase from the 53% who wanted to end the decade-old war four months ago. 1,974 American soldiers have been killed during operations, and over 13,000 Afghan civilians were killed between 2006 and 2011.
As long as the U.S. continues to occupy Afghanistan, atrocities will continue, and the death toll will continue to rise. Bales’ killing spree is the symptom of a larger problem – an overstrained, overstressed U.S. military. The horrors of war take an incredible toll on the mind, but with a shortage of soldiers and two wars spanning a decade, the military has sent and will continue to send soldiers unfit for duty back to the war zone.
Another underlying cause of the recent U.S. atrocities is the dehumanization of the Afghan people. Afghans are often referred to with racial slurs or sometimes ignored altogether. The idea that Muslims are not people, but “terrorists” or “towelheads,” has infiltrated not just U.S. society, but the military as well.
It is not an accident, either. Historically, “enemies” have always been dehumanized. In the Vietnam War, the Vietnamese were “Charlies” or “gooks.” In World War II, the Japanese were “Japs” and regarded as subhuman. This pattern of dehumanization is not limited to the United States, of course, nor to recent history. As long as there is systemic racism prevalent in our society and in the military, atrocities are not just likely, but inevitable. And as long as we live in a global capitalist system where governments have to compete to control resources and increase corporate profits, wars and the systemic racism that comes with them are also inevitable.
The war in Afghanistan was launched after 9/11 under the stated goal of ending Al Qaeda’s terrorism. Ten years later, it is clear that the real U.S. motive behind continuing the war is to expand U.S. imperialism into the energy- and resource-rich region. The U.S. government hopes not to leave until it constructs a reliable pro-U.S. government, police, and military in Afghanistan. It has, however, utterly failed to do so.
The U.S. puppet Hamid Karzai and his central government are intensely corrupt, supported by various brutal warlords and drug traffickers. The war-torn country is still mired in wretched poverty and crumbling infrastructure. Seventy-seven percent of the population has no access to safe drinking water, around 9 million Afghans are living in utter destitution (another 9 million live barely above poverty), and the literacy rate is around 24% (http://csis.org/publication/agriculture-food-and-poverty-afghanistan).
The war has been and will continue to be a catastrophic failure, not just for the Afghan people, but for the United States. Obama tripled the number of troops in Afghanistan, and despite the presence of about 90,000 U.S. soldiers, the mightiest military in the world, backed by the most advanced technology in the world, has failed to achieve any sort of concrete victory against the rag-tag insurgency.
President Obama has also dramatically increased the number of drone strikes into Pakistan, despite their repeated protests. These strikes have killed thousands, including civilians and children. President Bush may have begun the war in Afghanistan and the drone strikes, but Obama has continued them enthusiastically.
The war in Afghanistan alone has cost over $500 billion. Instead of using that money to continue an unpopular war that has killed tens of thousands and ravaged the country, we could be implementing universal health care for every American and rebuilding crumbling infrastructure, fighting poverty, or switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources. Instead of bombing Afghanistan, we could be rebuilding schools and hospitals in the war-ravaged country. All of those uses would be far more productive and humane than continuing to spend hundreds of billions on war and death.
Socialist Alternative, P.O. Box 45343, Seattle WA 98145
Phone: (206)526-7185
Comments? Suggestions for improving our web page? Please email info@SocialistAlternative
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