From #Un-Occupied Boston-This Is Class War-We Say No More-Defend Our Unions! - Defend The Working Class! Take The Offensive! - A Five Point Program For Discussion

LeonTrotsky -Lessons Of The Paris Commune-Listen Up

Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!

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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 going back to the 1930s Great Depression the last time that unemployment, under-employment, and those who have just plain quit looking for work was this high in the American labor force. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay is a formula to spread the available work around. This is no mere propaganda point but shows the way forward toward a more equitable distribution of available work.

The basic scheme, as was the case with the early days of the longshoremen’s and maritime unions, is that the work would be divided up through local representative workers’ councils that would act, in one of its capacities, as a giant hiring hall where the jobs would be parceled out. This would be a simpler task now than when it was when first proposed in the 1930s with the vast increase in modern technology that could fairly accurately, via computers, target jobs that need filling and equitably divide up current work.

Without the key capitalist necessity of keeping up the rate of profit the social surplus created by that work could be used to redistribute the available work at the same agreed upon rate rather than go into the capitalists’ pockets. The only catch, a big catch one must admit, is that no capitalist, and no capitalist system, is going to do any such thing as to implement “30 for 40” so that it will, in the end, be necessary to fight for and win a workers government to implement this demand.

Organize the unorganized is a demand that cries out for solution today now that the organized sectors of the labor movement, both public and private, in America are at historic lows, just over ten percent of the workforce. Part of the task is to reorganize some of the old industries like the automobile industry, now mainly unorganized as new plants come on line and others are abandoned, which used to provide a massive amount of decent jobs with decent benefits but which now have fallen to globalization and the “race to the bottom” bad times. The other sector that desperately need to be organized is to ratchet up the efforts to organize the service industries, hospitals, hotels, hi-tech, restaurants and the like, that have become a dominant aspect of the American economy.

Organize the South-this low wage area, this consciously low-wage area, where many industries land before heading off-shore to even lower wage places cries out for organizing, especially among black and Hispanic workers who form the bulk of this industrial workforce. A corollary to organizing the South is obviously to organize internationally to keep the “race to the bottom” from continually occurring short of being resolved in favor of an international commonwealth of workers’ governments. Nobody said it was going to be easy.

Organize Wal-Mart- millions of workers, thousands of trucks, hundreds of distribution centers. A victory here would be the springboard to a revitalized organized labor movement just as auto and steel lead the industrial union movements of the 1930s. To give an idea of how hard this task might be though someone once argued that it would be easier to organize a workers’ revolution that organize this giant. Well, that’s a thought.

Defend the right of public and private workers to unionize. Simple-No more Wisconsins, no more attacks on collective bargaining the hallmark of a union contract. No reliance on labor boards, arbitration, courts or bourgeois recall elections either. Unions must keep their independent from government interference. Period.

* Defend the independence of the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. In 2008 labor, organized labor, spent around 450 million dollars trying to elect Barack Obama and other Democrats (mainly). The results speak for themselves. For those bogus efforts the labor skates should have been sent packing long ago. The idea then was (and is, as we come up to the 2012 presidential election cycle) that the Democrats (mainly) were “friends of labor.” The past period of cuts-backs, cut-in-the-back give backs should put paid to that notion. Although anyone who is politically savvy at all knows that is not true, not true for the labor skates at the top of the movement.

The hard reality is that the labor skates, not used to any form of class struggle or any kind of struggle, know no other way than class-collaboration, arbitration, courts, and every other way to avoid the appearance of strife, strife in defense of the bosses’profits. The most egregious recent example- the return of the Verizon workers to work after two weeks last summer (2011) when they had the company on the run and the subsequent announcement by the company of record profits. That sellout strategy may have worked for the bureaucrats, or rather their “fathers” for a time back in the 1950s “golden age” of labor, but now we are in a very hard and open class war. The rank and file must demand an end to using their precious dues payments period for bourgeois candidates all of whom have turned out to be sworn enemies of labor from Obama on down.

This does not mean not using union dues for political purposes though. On the contrary we need to use them now more than ever in the class battles ahead. Spent the dough on organizing the unorganized, organizing the South, organizing Wal-Mart, and other pro-labor causes. Think, for example, of the dough spent on the successful November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio. That type of activity is where labor’s money and other resources should go. And not on recall elections, like in Wisconsin, as substitutes for class struggle

*End the endless wars!- As the so-called draw-down of American and Allied troops in Iraq reaches it final stages, the draw- down of non-mercenary forces anyway, we must recognize that we anti-warriors failed, and failed rather spectacularly, to affect that withdrawal after a promising start to our opposition in late 2002 and early 2003 (and a little in 2006).As the endless American-led wars (even if behind the scenes, as in Libya and other proxy wars) continue we had better straighten out our anti-war, anti-imperialist front quickly if we are to have any effect on the troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan!

U.S. Hands Off Iran! Hands Off Syria!- American (and world) imperialists are ratcheting up their propaganda war (right now) and increased economic sanctions that are a prelude to war well before the dust has settled on the now unsettled situation in Iraq and well before they have even sniffed at an Afghan withdrawal of any import. We will hold our noses, as we did with the Saddam leadership in Iraq and on other occasions, and call for the defense of Iran against the American imperial monster. A victory for the Americans (and their junior partner, Israel) in Iran is not in the interests of the international working class. Especially here in the “belly of the beast” we are duty-bound to call not just for non-intervention but for defense of Iran. We will, believe me we will, deal with the mullahs, the Revolutionary Guards, and the Islamic fundamentalist in Iran in our own way in our own time.

U.S. Hands Off The World!- With the number of “hot spots” that the American imperialists, or one or another of their junior allies, have their hands on in this wicked old world this generic slogan would seem to fill the bill.

Down With The War Budget! Not One Penny, Not One Person For The Wars! Honor World War I German Social-Democratic Party MP, Karl Liebknecht, who did just that. The litmus test for every political candidate must be first opposition to the war budgets(let’s see, right now winding up Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran preparations, China preparations, etc. you get my drift). Then that big leap. The whole damn imperialist military budget. Again, no one said it would be simple. Revolution may be easier that depriving the imperialists of their military money. Well….okay.

*Fight for a social agenda for working people! Free Quality Healthcare For All! This would be a no-brainer in any rationally based society. The health and welfare of any society’s citizenry is the simple glue that holds that society together. It is no accident that one of the prime concerns of workers states like Cuba, whatever their other political problems, has been to place health care and education front and center and to provide to the best of their capacity for free, quality healthcare and education for all. Even the hide-bound social-democratic-run capitalist governments of Europe have, until recently anyway, placed the “welfare state” protections central to their programs.

Free, quality higher education for all! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! One Hundred, Two Hundred, Many Harvards!

This would again be a no-brainer in any rationally based society. The struggle to increase the educational level of a society’s citizenry is another part of the simple glue that holds that society together. Today higher education is being placed out of reach for many working-class and minority families. Hell, it is getting tough for the middle class as well.

Moreover the whole higher educational system is increasing skewed toward those who have better formal preparation and family lives leaving many deserving students in the wilderness. Take the resources of the private institutions and spread them around, throw in hundreds of billions from the government (take from the military budget and the bank bail-out money), get rid of the top heavy and useless college administration apparatuses, mix it up, and let students, teachers, and campus workers run the thing through councils on a democratic basis.

Forgive student debt! The latest reports indicate that college student debt is something like a trillion dollars, give or take a few billion but who is counting. The price of tuition and expenses has gone up dramatically while services have not kept pace. What has happened is that the future highly educated workforce that a modern society, and certainly a socialist society, desperately needs is going to be cast in some form of indentured servitude to the banks or other lending agencies for much of their young working lives. Let the banks take a “hit” for a change!

Stop housing foreclosures now! Hey, everybody, everywhere in the world not just in America should have a safe, clean roof over their heads. Hell, even a single family home that is part of the “American dream,” if that is what they want. We didn’t make the housing crisis in America (or elsewhere, like in Ireland, where the bubble has also burst). The banks did. Their predatory lending practices and slip-shot application processes were out of control. Let them take the “hit” here as well.

*We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Karl Marx was right way back in the 19th century on his labor theory of value, the workers do produce the social surplus appropriated by the capitalists. Capitalism tends to beat down, beat down hard in all kinds of ways the mass of society for the benefit of the few. Most importantly capitalism, a system that at one time was historically progressive in the fight against feudalism and other ancient forms of production, has turned into its opposite and now is a fetter on production. The current multiple crises spawned by this system show there is no way forward, except that unless we push them out, push them out fast, they will muddle through, again.

Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Socialism is the only serious answer to the human crisis we face economically, socially, culturally and politically. This socialist system is the only one calculated to take one of the great tragedies of life, the struggle for daily survival in a world that we did not create, and replace it with more co-operative human endeavors.

Build a workers party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed. None of the nice things mentioned above can be accomplished without as serious struggle for political power. We need to struggle for an independent working-class-centered political party that we can call our own and where our leaders act as “tribunes of the people” not hacks. The creation of that workers party, however, will get us nowhere unless it fights for a workers government to begin the transition to the next level of human progress on a world-wide scale.

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As Isaac Deutscher said in his speech “On Socialist Man” (1966):

“We do not maintain that socialism is going to solve all predicaments of the human race. We are struggling in the first instance with the predicaments that are of man’s making and that man can resolve. May I remind you that Trotsky, for instance, speaks of three basic tragedies—hunger, sex and death—besetting man. Hunger is the enemy that Marxism and the modern labour movement have taken on.... Yes, socialist man will still be pursued by sex and death; but we are convinced that he will be better equipped than we are to cope even with these.”

Emblazon on our red banner-Labor and the oppressed must rule!

The Latest From The "Jobs With Justice Blog"-The Seemingly One-Sided Struggle Continues-It's High Time To Push Back-Push Back Hard-30 For 40 Is The Slogan Of The Day.

Click below to link to the Jobs With Justice Blog for the latest national and international labor news, and of the efforts to counteract the massively one-sided class struggle against the international working class movement.

http://www.jwjblog.org/

From the American Left History blog-Wednesday, June 17, 2009
 

With Unemployment Too High, Way Too High - The Call "30 For 40"- Now More Than Ever- The Transitional Socialist Program

Click Below To Link To The Full Transitional Program Of The Fourth International Adopted In 1938 As A Fighting Program In The Struggle For Socialism In That Era. Many Of The Points, Including The Headline Point Of 30 Hours Work For 40 Hours Pay To Spread The Work Around Among All Workers, Is As Valid Today As Then.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/tp/index.htm

Guest Commentary
 

From The Transitional Program Of The Fourth International In 1938- Sliding Scale of Wages and Sliding Scale of Hours

Under the conditions of disintegrating capitalism, the masses continue to live the meagerized life of the oppressed, threatened now more than at any other time with the danger of being cast into the pit of pauperism. They must defend their mouthful of bread, if they cannot increase or better it. There is neither the need nor the opportunity to enumerate here those separate, partial demands which time and again arise on the basis of concrete circumstances – national, local, trade union. But two basic economic afflictions, in which is summarized the increasing absurdity of the capitalist system, that is, unemployment and high prices, demand generalized slogans and methods of struggle.

The Fourth International declares uncompromising war on the politics of the capitalists which, to a considerable degree, like the politics of their agents, the reformists, aims to place the whole burden of militarism, the crisis, the disorganization of the monetary system and all other scourges stemming from capitalism’s death agony upon the backs of the toilers. The Fourth International demands employment and decent living conditions for all.

Neither monetary inflation nor stabilization can serve as slogans for the proletariat because these are but two ends of the same stick. Against a bounding rise in prices, which with the approach of war will assume an ever more unbridled character, one can fight only under the slogan of a sliding scale of wages. This means that collective agreements should assure an automatic rise in wages in relation to the increase in price of consumer goods.

Under the menace of its own disintegration, the proletariat cannot permit the transformation of an increasing section of the workers into chronically unemployed paupers, living off the slops of a crumbling society. The right to employment is the only serious right left to the worker in a society based upon exploitation. This right today is left to the worker in a society based upon exploitation. This right today is being shorn from him at every step. Against unemployment,“structural” as well as “conjunctural,” the time is ripe to advance along with the slogan of public works, the slogan of a sliding scale of working hours. Trade unions and other mass organizations should bind the workers and the unemployed together in the solidarity of mutual responsibility. On this basis all the work on hand would then be divided among all existing workers in accordance with how the extent of the working week is defined. The average wage of every worker remains the same as it was under the old working week. Wages, under a strictly guaranteed minimum, would follow the movement of prices. It is impossible to accept any other program for the present catastrophic period.

Property owners and their lawyers will prove the “unrealizability” of these demands. Smaller, especially ruined capitalists, in addition will refer to their account ledgers. The workers categorically denounce such conclusions and references. The question is not one of a “normal” collision between opposing material interests. The question is one of guarding the proletariat from decay, demoralization and ruin. The question is one of life or death of the only creative and progressive class, and by that token of the future of mankind. If capitalism is incapable of satisfying the demands inevitably arising from the calamities generated by itself, then let it perish. “Realizability” or “unrealizability” is in the given instance a question of the relationship of forces, which can be decided only by the struggle. By means of this struggle, no matter what immediate practical successes may be, the workers will best come to understand the necessity of liquidating capitalist slavery.

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From The Pen Of American Communist Party Founder And Trotskyist Leader James P. Cannon

Click below to link to the “James P. Cannon Internet Archives.”

http://www.marxists.org/archive/cannon/works/index.htm

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Markin comment on founding member James P. Cannon and the early American Communist Party taken from a book review, James P. Cannon and the Early American Communist Party, on the “American Left History” blog:

If you are interested in the history of the American Left or are a militant trying to understand some of the past mistakes of our history and want to know some of the problems that confronted the early American Communist Party and some of the key personalities, including James Cannon, who formed that party this book is for you.

At the beginning of the 21st century after the demise of the Soviet Union and the apparent ‘death of communism’ it may seem fantastic and utopian to today’s militants that early in the 20th century many anarchist, socialist, syndicalist and other working class militants of this country coalesced to form an American Communist Party. For the most part, these militants honestly did so in order to organize an American socialist revolution patterned on and influenced by the Russian October Revolution of 1917. James P. Cannon represents one of the important individuals and faction leaders in that effort and was in the thick of the battle as a central leader of the Party in this period. Whatever his political mistakes at the time, or later, one could certainly use such a militant leader today. His mistakes were the mistakes of a man looking for a revolutionary path.

For those not familiar with this period a helpful introduction by the editors gives an analysis of the important fights which occurred inside the party. That overview highlights some of the now more obscure personalities (a helpful biographical glossary is provided), where they stood on the issues and insights into the significance of the crucial early fights in the party.

These include questions which are still relevant today; a legal vs. an underground party; the proper attitude toward parliamentary politics; support to third- party bourgeois candidates;trade union policy; class-war prisoner defense as well as how to rein in the intense internal struggle of the various factions for organizational control of the party. This makes it somewhat easier for those not well-versed in the intricacies of the political disputes which wracked the early American party to understand how these questions tended to pull it in on itself. In many ways, given the undisputed rise of American imperialism in the immediate aftermath of World War I, this is a story of the ‘dog days’ of the party. Unfortunately, that rise combined with the international ramifications of the internal disputes in the Russian Communist Party and in the Communist International shipwrecked the party as a revolutionary party toward the end of this period.

In the introduction the editors motivate the purpose for the publication of the book by stating the Cannon was the finest Communist leader that America had ever produced. This an intriguing question. The editors trace their political lineage back to Cannon’s leadership of the early Communist Party and later after his expulsion to the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party so their perspective is obvious. What does the documentation provided here show? I would argue that the period under study represented Cannon’s apprenticeship. Although the hothouse politics of the early party clarified some of the issues of revolutionary strategy for him I believe that it was not until he linked up with Trotsky in the late 1920’s that he became the kind of leader who could lead a revolution. Of course, since Cannon never got a serious opportunity to lead revolutionary struggles in America this is mainly reduced to speculation on my part. Later books written by him make the case better. One thing is sure- in his prime he had the instincts to want to lead a revolution.

As an addition to the historical record of this period this book is a very good companion to the two-volume set by Theodore Draper - The Roots of American Communism and Soviet Russia and American Communism- the definitive study on the early history of the American Communist Party. It is also a useful companion to Cannon’s own The First Ten Years of American Communism. I would add that this is something of a labor of love on the part of the editors. This book was published at a time when the demise of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe was in full swing and anything related to Communist studies was deeply discounted. Nevertheless, for better or worse, the American Communist Party (and its offshoots) needs to be studied as an ultimately flawed example of a party that failed in its mission to create a radical version of society in America. Now is the time to study this history.

***Damn It- Free Leonard Peltier Now-He Must Not Die In Jail!

 

Click below to link to Leonard Peltier Defense Committee site.

http://www.leonardpeltier.net/

Commentary

This entry is passed on from the Partisan Defense Committee. I need add little except to say that this man, a natural leader of the American Indian Movement (AIM), should never have spent a day in jail. Free him now.

"We, along with millions of others, do not believe that Leonard Peltier should have been incarcerated at all. We demand his unconditional release from prison."

President Obama, Pardon Pvt. Manning

Because the public deserves the truth and whistle-blowers deserve protection.

We are military veterans, journalists, educators, homemakers, lawyers, students, and citizens.

We ask you to consider the facts and free US Army Pvt. Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning.

As an Intelligence Analyst stationed in Iraq, Pvt. Manning had access to some of America’s dirtiest secrets—crimes such as torture, illegal surveillance, and corruption—often committed in our name.

Manning acted on conscience alone, with selfless courage and conviction, and gave these secrets to us, the public.

“I believed that if the general public had access to the information contained within the[Iraq and Afghan War Logs] this could spark a domestic debate on the role of the military and our foreign policy,”

Manning explained to the military court. “I wanted the American public to know that not everyone in Iraq and Afghanistan were targets that needed to be neutralized, but rather people who were struggling to live in the pressure cooker environment of what we call asymmetric warfare.”

Journalists used these documents to uncover many startling truths. We learned:

• Donald Rumsfeld and General Petraeus helped support torture in Iraq.

• Deliberate civilian killings by U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan went unpunished.

• Thousands of civilian casualties were never acknowledged publicly.

• Most Guantanamo detainees were innocent.

For service on behalf of an informed democracy, Manning was sentenced by military judge Colonel Denise Lind to a devastating 35 years in prison.

Government secrecy has grown exponentially during the past decade, but more secrecy does not make us safer when it fosters unaccountability.

Pvt. Manning was convicted of Espionage Act charges for providing WikiLeaks with this information, but  the prosecutors noted that they would have done the same had the information been given to The New York Times. Prosecutors did not show that enemies used this information against the US, or that the releases resulted in any casualties.

Pvt. Manning has already been punished, even in violation of military law.

She has been:

• Held in confinement since May 29, 2010.

• Subjected to illegal punishment amounting to torture for nearly nine months at Quantico Marine Base, Virginia, in violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), Article 13—facts confirmed by both the United Nation’s lead investigator on torture and military judge Col. Lind.

• Denied a speedy trial in violation of UCMJ, Article 10, having been imprisoned for over three years before trial.

• Denied anything resembling a fair trial when prosecutors were allowed to change the charge sheet to match evidence presented, and enter new evidence, after closing arguments.

Pvt. Manning believed you, Mr. President, when you came into office promising the most transparent administration in history, and that you would protect whistle-blowers. We urge you to start upholding those promises, beginning with this American prisoner of conscience.

We urge you to grant Pvt. Manning’s petition for a Presidential Pardon.

FIRST& LAST NAME _____________________________________________________________

STREET ADDRESS _____________________________________________________________

CITY, STATE & ZIP _____________________________________________________________

EMAIL& PHONE _____________________________________________________________

Please return to: For more information: www.privatemanning.org

Private Manning Support Network, c/o Courage to Resist, 484 Lake Park Ave #41, Oakland CA 94610

 

Note that this image is PVT Manning’s preferred photo.

No New War On Iraq

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Even though President Obama said himself that "There is no military solution." to the crisis in Iraq, he ordered the second group of "advisors" into action this week. They join earlier contingents of special forces advisers and troops to defend the Embassy. A U.S. aircraft carrier now lingers off shore.

Take action now. Tell Congress to forcefully oppose any U.S. Military action in Iraq.

The danger of mission creep is underlined by the fact that a new contingent of advisors has already been called for. Too often in the past our dispatch of advisors has grown into full-scale war. Sending the advisors has set US boots on the ground. U.S. personnel are involved in the civil strife and can be attacked or put at risk--situations which, in the past, have served as pretexts for growing military involvement.

We stopped the bombing of Syria because we responded quickly and loudly, and Congress raised a ruckus.  Tell them to act now to prevent any new war in Iraq.

Iraq's Parliament is in the midst of choosing a new government after recent elections. That government will have the responsibility to resolve the current crisis and avert the danger of civil war. There is nothing that U.S. military involvement can do to contribute to a peaceful and lasting solution. This is a lesson we should have learned from the past ten years of involvement. 

Tell Congress to oppose any US military involvement. The President is not authorized to act on his own, the Congress needs to assert its authority for peace. 

For peace, Shelagh Foreman Program Director

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Why Communists Do Not Celebrate July 4th- A Guest Commentary

 

BOOK REVIEW

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

THE RADICALISM OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, GORDON S. WOOD, VINTAGE, NEW YORK, 1993

In the chronology of the history of revolutions, at least the modern ones, each has always been preceded by a struggle over radical/revolutionary ideas which more or less animated the progressive parties to push forward to what is an exceptional circumstance in the historic process, revolution-the going over from the old order to a new order by means of eliminating the old ruling class and installing a new one. Thus, the English Revolution of the 1600’s found plenty of pamphleteers and publicists, especially among the Levelers (the secular democratic wing of the parliamentary forces) in the struggle to gain parliamentary ascendance. The French Revolution was inundated from many sources with ideas about which way society should be run leading up to the famous Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen. And certainly the Russian Revolution, the most conscious party-led effort at revolution known to history, was centrally determined by the titanic struggle of the various liberal and social-democratic parties over ideas.

The book under review here thus takes its place in the debate over the role of such ideas in the American Revolution. Professor Wood is on fertile ground in tracing the history of the prevailing pre-revolutionary ideas that culminated in the Declaration of Independence and the American Constitution, including the crucial Bill of Rights. He also takes on the post- revolutionary ideological struggle between the ideas of a society run as a democracy favored by the more plebian elements or as a republic, particularly a disinterestedly-run republic of letters, favored by the more aristocratic elements which burst forth after the revolution.

Professor Wood is an eminent, if not the contemporary pre-eminent historian of the American Revolution, so what he has to say bears attention. His fundamental premise in this volume is that the struggle for ideas in the pre-revolutionary period determined the nature of the later, essentially parliamentary, struggles after independence was declared and the new frame of government was established. In short, he argues for a much more radical interpretation of the heretofore stodgy American Revolution (in comparison, at least, to the flamboyant French Revolution and the powerful pull of the Russian revolution) at least the events known and commemorated from our childhoods. His central point that this revolution represented an important accrual in the struggle of the forces for enlightenment is something that militant leftists can appreciate whatever other disagreements with Professor Wood’s political conclusions we might entertain.

Professor Wood makes two main points that bear notice. The first- while today rather obvious- bears acknowledgement, that is the struggle from early on in the 1700’s in the colonies to break from the role of subjects of a monarchial regime to independent citizens of a republic fearing no man. That premise was indeed progressive at the time and animated all movements from the late 1600’s on. It is a struggle that, of necessity, continues today. The exception I take to Professor Wood’s worldview is that while he is content with the general outline of current democratic practice I would argue that the road from citizen under capitalism to comrade under socialism is necessary to fulfill the still remaining democratic tasks of the American Revolution and the Second American Revolution, the Civil War.

Professor Wood’s second premise is to note the divergence between the ideals of the leaders of the independence forces concerning the establishment of a government based on disinterested rule and the more plebian (and messy)notion that every cook could be a legislator. The gap between the leadership’s (Washington, John Adams, Hamilton and the usual cast of suspects) high expectations from a Republic of Letters (in essence their own personal republic) issuing forth from the revolution ultimately led to the demise of the elitist Federalist party and the rise of the rule of those claiming the interests of the plebian elements. In that historic fight militant leftists wholeheartedly would have supported the plebian elements. That fight has never really been completed nor has it been expanded in a more socialist direction. Nevertheless Professor Wood’s goal of defining the revolution as animated by more radical ideas that generally realized is an important addition to our historic understanding of the American Revolution. Read on.

Revised September 28, 2006

Guest Commentary:

 

"Why We Don't Celebrate July 4-Marxism and the "Spirit Of '76"- Workers Vanguard, Number 116, July 2, 1976

 

The burned-out tenements of America's decaying slums are plastered with red, white and blue posters celebrating a 200-year-old revolution. From factory bulletin boards and the walls of unemployment offices, patriotic displays urge American working people to join with Gerald Ford and the butchers of Vietnam in commemorating the "Spirit of '76." Class-conscious workers and militant blacks, like the colonial masses ground down under the economic and military heel of arrogant American imperialism, must recoil in revulsion from the U.S. bourgeoisie's hypocritical pieties about "liberty."

The Fourth of July is not our holiday. But the chauvinist ballyhoo of the "People's Bicentennial" does not negate the need for a serious Marxist appreciation of colonial America's war of independence against monarchical/ mercantilist England. Marxists have always stressed the powerful impact of the classic bourgeois-democratic revolutions in breaking feudal-aristocratic barriers to historical progress.

In appealing for support for the Bolshevik Revolution, Lenin in his Letter to American Workers (1918) wrote:

 

"The history of modern, civilized America opened with one of those really great, really liberating, really revolutionary wars of which there have been so few compared to the vast number of wars of conquest which, like the present imperialist war, were caused by squabbles among kings, landowners or capitalists over the division of usurped land or ill-gotten gains. That was the war the American people waged against the British robbers who oppressed America and held her in colonial slavery. "

It is also legitimate for revolutionaries to appeal to the most radical-democratic traditions of the great bourgeois revolutions. Yet the fact remains that the Fourth of July is a fundamentally chauvinist holiday, a celebration of national greatness. In no sense does it commemorate a popular uprising against an oppressive system, or even pay tribute to democratic principles and individual freedom. Attempts to lend the Fourth of July a populist coloration (or the Communist Party's popular-front period slogan that "Communism is 20th century Americanism") only express the capitulation of various fake-socialists to the democratic pretensions of American imperialism.

 

But neither can the traditions of 1776 justly be claimed by the imperialist bourgeoisie. Compared to the leadership of the colonial independence struggle, the present American capitalist class is absolutely degenerate. One has only to think of Franklin or Jefferson, among the intellectual giants of their time, and then consider Gerald Ford or Jimmy Carter. The twentieth-century United States is the gendarme of world reaction, the backer of every torture-chamber regime from Santiago to Tehran.

 

The "founding fathers" would have been revolted by the men who today represent their class. The degeneration of the American bourgeoisie is appropriate to the passing of its progressive mission. The attitude toward religion is a good indicator. Virtually none of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were orthodox Christians; they held a rationalist attitude toward the concept of god. Jefferson would have walked out in protest at today's prayer-intoning presidential inaugurations.

 

The America of 1976 is the contemporary analogue of the tsarist Russia which the "founding fathers" held in contempt as the bastion of world reaction—the tsarist Russia against whose tyranny Lenin and the Bolsheviks organized the proletariat. It is to the world working class that the liberating mission now falls.

 

Was the War of Independence a Social Revolution?

 

Like the Fourth of July, Bastille Day in France is an official, patriotic holiday, replete with military marches and chauvinist speeches. Yet the events Bastille Day commemorates retain a certain revolutionary significance to this day. The French people's understanding of 1789 is as a violent overthrow by the masses of an oppressive ruling class. The French imperialist bourgeoisie's efforts to purge the French revolution of present-day revolutionary significance have not succeeded. A Charles De Gaulle or a Valery Giscard d'Estaing cannot embrace Robespierre or Marat, for the latter stand too close to the primitive communist Gracchus Babeuf, who considered himself a true Jacobin.

 

The American war of independence was also a classic bourgeois-democratic revolution, but it was not really a social revolution which overthrew the existing ruling class. The British loyalists were largely concentrated in the propertied classes and governing elite. However pro-independence forces among the planters and merchants were strong enough to prevent any significant class polarization during the war.

 

The English and French bourgeois-democratic revolutions had to destroy an entrenched aristocratic order. That destruction required a radical, plebeian terrorist phase associated with the figures of Cromwell and Robespierre. For the American colonies, winning independence from England did not require a regime based on plebeian terror. The war of independence did not produce a Cromwell or a Robespierre because it did not need one. Nor did it give rise to radical egalitarian groups like the Levellers and Diggers, or the Enrages and Babouvists. It never remotely threatened the wealthiest, most conservative planters and merchants who supported secession from Britain.

The consolidation of bourgeois rule in the Puritan and French revolutions required a political counterrevolution in which the Cromwellians and Jacobins were overthrown, persecuted and vilified. The radical opposition which sprung up in resistance to this counterrevolution became part—through the Babouvists in France—of the revolutionary tradition which Marx embraced.

 

Because the American war of independence did not experience a plebeian terrorist phase, neither did it experience a conservative bourgeois counterrevolution. The leaders of the independence struggle went on to found and govern the republic; greatly venerated, they died of old age.

 

The men who met in Philadelphia's Convention Hall 200 years ago realized their aims more satisfactorily than any other similarly placed, insurrectionary group in history. This achievement does not bespeak their greatness, but the limited, essentially conservative nature of their goals. The legitimization of black chattel slavery in the Constitution, without significant opposition, demonstrates the bourgeois conservatism of the leaders of the American Revolution. The "founding fathers" had no children who could claim that the principles of 1776 had been betrayed in the interests of the rich and powerful. The era of the war of independence did not give rise to a living revolutionary tradition.

 

John Brown's Body

 

There is a social revolution in American history which troubles the imperialist bourgeoisie to this day. It did not begin in 1776, but in the anti-slavery confrontations. The issue rose by the civil war and particularly the period of Radical Reconstruction—the intimate relationship between capitalism in America and racial oppression—awaits its fundamental resolution in future revolutionary struggle. The wasn't-it-tragic attitude of the bourgeoisie to the civil war era contrasts sharply with their celebratory attitude toward the war of independence. The signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, unlike the Declaration of Independence, will never be a holiday in racist, imperialist America.

 

It is in the civil war era that there are parallels with the plebeian component of the French Revolution. The contemporary bourgeois treatment of John Brown resembles the French ruling class attitude toward Robespierre. They cannot disown the anti-slavery cause outright, but they condemn John Brown for his fanatical commitment and violent methods. The Reconstruction era of 1867-1877 is the only period in U.S. history which the present ruling class rejects an un-American extremism. Two important films, D. W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation and the later Gone With the Wind, are outright apologies for white supremacist terror against the only radical-democratic governments this country has ever experienced. The Compromise of 1877, when the black freedmen were abandoned to the merciless regimes of the ex-slaveholders, was the American bourgeois-democratic revolution betrayed. And the reversal of that historic betrayal awaits the victory of American communism.

 

Because of the American revolution's limited social mobilization, those whose principles ultimately clashed with bourgeois rule—the likes of Tom Paine and Sam Adams—were easily disposed of. The radical abolitionists—John Brown, Sojourner Truth, Frederick Douglass— are the only figures in American history before the emergence of the workers movement whose commitment to democratic principles actually threatened bourgeois rule. For the same reason that the present-day bourgeoisie denounces John Brown as a dangerous extremist, we communists can claim the radical abolitionists as ours. Only a victorious American socialist revolution can give to the heroes and martyrs of Harper's Ferry and the "underground railway" the honor that is their historic right.