From The Pages Of The Communist International- In Honor Of The 95th Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Communist International (1919) -Desperately Seeking Revolutionary Intellectuals-Now, And Then

Click below to link to the Communist International Internet Archives"

http://www.marxists.org/history/international/comintern/index.htm

Markin comment from the American Left History blog (2007):

BOOK REVIEW

‘LEFT-WING’ COMMUNISM-AN INFANTILE DISORDER, V.I. LENIN, UNIVERSITY PRESS OF THE PACIFIC, CALIFORNIA, 2001

An underlying premise of the Lenin-led Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in 1917 was that success there would be the first episode in a world-wide socialist revolution. While a specific timetable was not placed on the order of the day the early Bolshevik leaders, principally Lenin and Trotsky, both assumed that those events would occur in the immediate post-World War I period, or shortly thereafter. Alas, such was not the case, although not from lack of trying on the part of an internationalist-minded section of the Bolshevik leadership.

Another underlying premise, developed by the Leninists as part of their opposition to the imperialist First World War, was the need for a new revolutionary labor international to replace the compromised and moribund Socialist International (also known as the Second International) which had turned out to be useless as an instrument for revolution or even of opposition to the European war. The Bolsheviks took that step after seizing power and established the Communist International (also known as the Comintern or Third International) in 1919. As part of the process of arming that international with a revolutionary strategy (and practice) Lenin produced this polemic to address certain confusions, some willful, that had arisen in the European left and also attempted to instill some of the hard-learned lessons of the Russian revolutionary experience in them.

The Russian Revolution, and after it the Comintern in the early heroic days, for the most part, drew the best and most militant layers of the working-class and radical intellectuals to their defense. However, that is not the same as drawing experienced Bolsheviks to that defense. Many militants were anti-parliamentarian or anti-electoral in principle after the sorry experiences with the European social democracy. Others wanted to emulate the old heroic days of the Bolshevik underground party or create a minority, exclusive conspiratorial party.

Still others wanted to abandon the reformist bureaucratically-led trade unions to their then current leaderships, and so on. Lenin’s polemic, and it nothing but a flat-out polemic against all kinds of misconceptions of the Bolshevik experience, cut across these erroneous ideas like a knife. His literary style may not appeal to today’s audience but the political message still has considerable application today. At the time that it was written no less a figure than James P. Cannon, a central leader of the American Communist Party, credited the pamphlet with straightening out that badly confused movement (Indeed, it seems every possible political problem Lenin argued against in that pamphlet had some following in the American Party-in triplicate!). That alone makes it worth a look at.

I would like to highlight one point made by Lenin that has currency for leftists today, particularly American leftists. At the time it was written many (most) of the communist organizations adhering to the Comintern were little more than propaganda groups (including the American party). Lenin suggested one of the ways to break out of that isolation was a tactic of critical support to the still large and influential social-democratic organizations at election time. In his apt expression- to support those organizations "like a rope supports a hanging man".

However, as part of my political experiences in America around election time I have run into any number of ‘socialists’ and ‘communists’ who have turned Lenin’s concept on its head. How? By arguing that militants needed to ‘critically support’ the Democratic Party (who else, right?) as an application of the Leninist criterion for critical support. No, a thousand times no. Lenin’s specific example was the reformist British Labor Party, a party at that time (and to a lesser extent today) solidly based on the trade unions- organizations of the working class and no other. The Democratic Party in America was then, is now, and will always be a capitalist party. Yes, the labor bureaucrats and ordinary workers support it, finance it, drool over it but in no way is it a labor party. That is the class difference which even sincere militants have broken their teeth on for at least the last seventy years. And that, dear reader, is another reason why it worthwhile to take a peek at this book.

Desperately Seeking Revolutionary Intellectuals-Now, And Then

Commentary

No, this is not a Personals section ad, although it qualifies as a Help Wanted ad in a sense. On a number of occasions over past several years, in reviewing books especially those by James P. Cannon the founder of The Socialist Workers Party in America, I have mentioned that building off of the work of the classical Marxists, including that of Marx and Engels themselves, and later that of Lenin and Trotsky the critical problem before the international working class in the early part of the 20th century was the question of creating a revolutionary leadership to lead imminent uprisings. Armed with Lenin’s work on the theory of the imperialist nature of the epoch and the party question and Trotsky’s on the questions of permanent revolution and revolutionary timing the tasks for revolutionaries were more than adequately defined.

The conclusion that I drew from that observation was that the revolutionary socialist movement was not as desperately in need of theoreticians and intellectuals as previously (although having them is always a good thing). It needed leaders steeped in those theories and with a capacity to lead revolutions. We needed a few good day-to-day practical leaders to lead the fight for state power.

In that regard I have always held up, for the early part of the 20th century, the name Karl Liebknecht the martyred German Communist co-leader (along with Rosa Luxemburg) of the aborted Spartacist uprising of 1919 as such an example. In contrast the subsequent leadership of the German Communists in the 1920’s Paul Levi, Henrich Brandler and Ernest Thaelmann did not meet those qualifications. For later periods I have held up the name James P. Cannon, founder of the American Socialist Workers Party (to name only the organization that he was most closely associated with), as a model. That basically carries us to somewhere around the middle of the 20th century. Since I have spend a fair amount of time lately going back to try to draw the lessons of our movement I have also had occasion to think, or rather to rethink my original argument on the need for revolutionary intellectuals. That position stands in need of some amendment now.

Let’s be clear here about our needs. The traditional Marxist idea that in order to break the logjam impeding humankind’s development the international working class must rule is still on the historic agenda. The Leninist notions that, since the early part of the 20th century, we have been in the imperialist era and that a ‘hard’ cadre revolutionary party is necessary to take state power are also in play. Moreover, the Trotskyist understanding that in countries of belated development the working class is the only agency objectively capable of leading those societies to the tasks traditionally associated with the bourgeois revolution continues to hold true. That said, we are seriously in need of revolutionary intellectuals who can bring these understandings into the 21st century.


It is almost a political truism that each generation will find its own ways to cope with the political tasks that confront it. The international working class movement is no exception in that regard. Moreover, although the general outlines of Marxist theory mentioned above hold true such tasks as the updating of the theory of imperialism to take into account the qualitative leap in its globalization is necessary (as is, as an adjunct to that, the significance of the gigantic increases in the size of the ‘third world’ proletariat). Also in need of freshening up is work on the contours of revolutionary political organization in the age of high speed communications, the increased weight that non-working class specific questions play in world politics (the national question, religion, special racial and gender oppressions) and various other tasks that earlier generations had taken for granted or had not needed to consider. All this moreover has to be done in a political environment that sees Marxism, communism, even garden variety reform socialism as failed experiments. To address all the foregoing issues is where my call for a new crop of revolutionary intellectuals comes from.

Since the mid- 20th century we have had no lack of practical revolutionary leaders of one sort or another - one thinks of Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and even Mao in his less rabid moments. We have witnessed any number of national liberation struggles, a few attempts at political revolution against Stalinism, a few military victories against imperialism, notably the Vietnamese struggle. But mainly this has been an epoch of defeats for the international working class. Moreover, we have not even come close to developing theoretical leaders of the statue of Lenin or Trotsky.

As a case in point, recently I made some commentary about the theory of student power in the 1960’s and its eventual refutation by the May 1968 General Strike lead by the working class in France. One of the leading lights for the idea that students were the ‘new’ working class or a ‘new’ vanguard was one Ernest Mandel. Mandel held himself out to be an orthodox Marxist (and Trotskyist, to boot) but that did not stop him from, periodically, perhaps daily, changing the focus of his work away from the idea of the centrality of the working class in social struggle an ideas that goes back to the days of Marx himself.

And Mandel, a brilliant well-spoken erudite scholar probably was not the worst of the lot. The problem is that he was the problem with his impressionistic theories based on , frankly, opportunistic impulses. Another example, from that same period, was the idea of Professor Regis Debray ( in the service of Fidel at the time ) that guerrilla foci out in the hills were the way forward ( a codification of the experience of the Cuban Revolution for which many subjective revolutionary paid dearly with their lives). Or the anti-Marxist Maoist notion that the countryside would defeat the cities that flamed the imagination of many Western radicals in the late 1960’s. I could go on with more examples but they only lead to one conclusion- we are, among other things, in a theoretical trough. This, my friends, is why today I have my Help Wanted sign out. Any takers?

***************

***The Big Cold War Scorch- Mickey Spillane’s Kiss Me Deadly

DVD Review

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Kiss Me Deadly, starring Ralph Meeker, directed by Robert Aldrich, based on the crime novel of the same name by Mickey Spillane, 1955

There was a palpable fear in the land, in this American land, in the post- World War II red scare Cold War night. A fear of commies, some of Uncle Joe’s friends, Joe Stalin, the man of steel for those who don’t remember, were too young or not born, who during the war we were buddy-buddy allies with but in the aftermath when the spoils were divided and who was going to be king of the hill, or rather what system was going to push the humankind rock up the hill got decided they went their way, we went ours. There were other fears as well, some palpable, like the thought going back to those from hunger days just when the car payments and mortgage were due and cash was short and getting restless with the boredom of normalcy, some now seemingly irrational like alien invasions from other planets or various crazes like hula-hoops and Pat Boone white bucks, or just Pat Boone.

Except, rational or not, there was a new factor in the world equation, the new-found man-made capacity to annihilate half the planet, or something like that, with a few high explosive atom/hydrogen-kinked bombs. The USA had them first, had the franchise, had the secrets stored away under lock and key in I don’t know, Los Alamos I guess but Uncle Joe and his boys grabbed onto the fast track very quickly. And people in high places and low were looking to find out how such a travesty happened. So good honest unassumingly American citizens were looking for, were egged on to look for “reds under the beds,” and every good citizen-youth was to turn without question to the proper authorities every “mommy who was a commie.” So some, actually a lot, of people got caught up in the dragnet, got thrown out of their unions (many of which they helped create, had fought tooth and nail for, including beatings and jail time while their persecutors had held back from the fight), got thrown out of colleges and other public institution for wearing tweet jackets and smoking pipes, spouting stuff about critical thinking or something like that, got blacklisted from the great cultural institutions like the movies, the stage, the music hall, got thrown in jail if they got too uppity in front on some yahoo committee, and took the big step-off in the case of the heroic Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Like other times, too many times in American and world history it did not pay to stick your neck out, stick it out at all. Of course the whole operation was oiled by the willingness, in some cases eagerness, of good American citizens to, well let’s call a thing by its right name, fink on their fellows, play stoolie to get out from under whatever Uncle, in this case Uncle Sam had on them. Not a pretty time in those lush black and white 1950s.              

Now what does all of this talk of the red scare Cold War night, the night of the long knives in America, have to do with a film, a classic film noir of its type according to some sources, a film like that under review, Kiss Me Deadly.  A film which had been based strictly on second-rate pulp fiction from the pen of macho he-man crime novel writer Mickey Spillane. Novels known more for the travails of scantily-clad busty come hither forbidden blondes on the paperback book cover. Well threatening jail, threatening the big step-off, threatening the blacklist, and threatening every other form of coercion to create deadly conformity is not the only way to gather in the flock. The cultural institutions, particularly popular cultural institutions, were dragooned into the service of cornering Uncle Joe and his minions as well. Film was a simple way, a didactic way if you will, to do such propaganda work from creating that now seemingly irrational scary addiction to alien sci-fi movies as surrogates for foreign-ness where the good citizens of this country were threatened with being robbed of their person-hood to those the theme in this film of presenting characters crafty enough to see that if you controlled a piece of something like radioactive material you could hold the world hostage, either for cash or power, or both. Who also were ruthless enough to do what it took to gain the edge.    

And aiding that fight against the bad guys of the geo-political world is where Mickey Spillane’s macho detective, Mike Hammer, a guy usually working the low-end night life scene sneaking under the bed scene, working the adultery racket, sometimes on both ends, while feeling up busty comely dames gets to step up in class and work to rid the world of those crafty evil geniuses who would enslave the whole American way of life.  Of course Hammer didn’t go down to his local FBI office and offer up his services but was almost accidently brought into the action by a wooly-headed blonde who desperately tried to hitch a ride away from her troubles and put trouble right on Hammer’s doorstep. Put the trouble there the minute he picked her up. See she knew too much, and she knew she knew too much and that while maybe she was wooly-headed she had been around the block, had been involved with some rough customers who would stop at nothing to protect their interest. She knew about a certain box in a certain suitcase which contained power and the glory and that was enough to get her killed by unknown sources. And drag Hammer down with her when the bad guys decided that the old car over the cliff, Hammer’s, would take care of their problem.

Problem was Hammer lived to tell the tale, lived and got very curious when lots of things did not add up and those near and dear to him started to get dead, very dead, or were in imminent threat of death. And that included his busty brunette assistant, adultery lure, secretary, lover Velma who only had eyes for cad lady-killer Hammer. But that love ‘em and leave ‘em business was  secondary stuff because Hammer had to move mountains to find enough leads to figure out that the Pandora ’s Box he was chasing could fall into the wrong hands, fall into criminal or what amounted to the same thing in those days, wrong political hands. And narrowing down the number of possible beneficiaries and the location of the box took up the rest of his time, his movie time. With the kidnapping of Velma taken as a hostage when he got too close acting as a spur for him to solve the whole thing. In the end, naturally, as dictated by Hollywood film noir ethos the bad guys had to take a tumble. And in this case they took the tumble in a spectacular visual film-ending manner which nevertheless left the original audience wondering how safe they were in this wicked old world. Yeah, the guy who said it was right, classic 1950s film noir stuff.                      

As The 100th Anniversary Of The First Year Of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars) Continues ... Some Remembrances-Poets’ Corner  
 

In say 1912 in the time of the supposedly big deal Basle Socialist Conference which got reflected in more circles than just workingmen, small shopkeepers and small farmers, or 1913 for that matter when the big deal European powers were waging "proxy" war, making ominous moves, but most importantly working three shifts in the munitions plants, oh hell, even in the beginning of 1914 before the war clouds got a full head of steam that summer they all profusely professed their undying devotion to peace, to wage no war for any reason. Reasons: artists who saw the disjointedness of modern industrial society, freaked out at what humankind had produced, was producing to place everybody in an inescapable box and hence their cubic fascinations from which to run, put the pieces to paint; sculptors who put twisted pieces of scrape metal juxtaposed to each other  to get that same effect, an effect which would be replicated on all those foreboding trenched fronts; writers, not all of them socialists either, some were conservatives that saw empire, their particular empire, in grave danger once the blood started flowing  who saw the v   of serious history books proving that, according to their Whiggish theory of progress,  humankind had moved beyond war as an instrument of policy; writers of not so serious novels drenched in platitudes and hidden gabezo love affairs put paid to that notion in their sweet nothing words that man and woman had too much to do to denigrate themselves by crying the warrior’s cry and for the sweet nothing maidens to spent their waking hours strewing flowers on the bloodlust streets; musicians whose muse spoke of delicate tempos and sweet muted violin concertos; and poets, ah, those constricted poets who bleed the moon of its amber swearing, swearing on a stack of seven sealed bibles, that they with all their creative brethren would go to the hells, literary Dante's rings, before touching the hair of another human, that come the war drums they all would resist the siren call, would stick to their Whiggish, Futurist, Constructionist, Cubist, world and blast the war-makers to hell in quotes, words, chords, clanged metal, and pretty pastels.

And then the war drums intensified and they, they made of ordinary human clay as it turned out, they who could not resist the call, could not resist those maidens now busy all day strewing flowers on the bloodlust streets for their soldier boys, those poets, artists, sculptors, writers, serious and not, musicians went sheepishly to the trenches with the rest of the flower of European youth to die deathless deaths in their thousands for, well, for ….            



A MOTHER'S DEDICATION


Dear son of mine, the baby days are over,
I can no longer shield you from the earth;
Yet in my heart always I must remember
How through the dark I fought to give you birth.

Dear son of mine, by all the lives behind you;
By all our fathers fought for in the past;
In this great war to which your birth has brought you,
Acquit you well, hold you our honour fast!

God guard you, son of mine, where'er you wander;
God lead the banners under which you fight;
You are my all, I give you to the Nation,
God shall uphold you that you fight aright.

_Margaret Peterson_




TO A MOTHER


Robbed mother of the stricken Motherland--
  Two hearts in one and one among the dead,
  Before your grave with an uncovered head
I, that am man, disquiet and silent stand
In reverence. It is your blood they shed;
  It is your sacred self that they demand,
  For one you bore in joy and hope, and planned
Would make yourself eternal, now has fled.

But though you yielded him unto the knife
  And altar with a royal sacrifice
Of your most precious self and dearer life--
  Your master gem and pearl above all price--
Content you; for the dawn this night restores
Shall be the dayspring of his soul and yours.

_Eden Phillpotts_




SPRING IN WAR-TIME


I feel the spring far off, far off,
    The faint, far scent of bud and leaf--
Oh, how can spring take heart to come
    To a world in grief,
    Deep grief?

The sun turns north, the days grow long,
    Later the evening star grows bright--
How can the daylight linger on
    For men to fight,
    Still fight?

The grass is waking in the ground,
    Soon it will rise and blow in waves--
How can it have the heart to sway
    Over the graves,
    New graves?

Under the boughs where lovers walked
    The apple-blooms will shed their breath--
But what of all the lovers now
    Parted by Death,
    Grey Death?

_Sara Teasdale_

29th Annual Partisan Defense Committee Holiday Appeal...The Struggle That Passes Through The Prisons-Free the Class-War Prisoners! Workers Vanguard No. 1057	28 November 2014

29th Annual PDC Holiday Appeal

Free the Class-War Prisoners!

 

(Class-Struggle Defense Notes)

 

For nearly three decades, the Partisan Defense Committee has provided stipends to class-war prisoners—those behind bars for opposing varied expressions of racist capitalist oppression. The PDC is now organizing our annual Holiday Appeal fundraisers on behalf of 16 such prisoners. We send them $50 monthly stipends and provide holiday gifts for them and their families. The prisoners generally use the funds for basic necessities, from supplementing the inadequate prison diet to buying stamps and writing materials, or to pursue literary, artistic and musical endeavors that help ameliorate the living hell of prison life.

 

The PDC’s stipend program is modeled on a tradition of the early Communist movement, specifically the International Labor Defense (ILD) under its first secretary, James P. Cannon, from 1925-28. The ILD sent monthly contributions to more than 100 people imprisoned for fighting in the interests of the working people and the oppressed. As Cannon observed: “The procession that goes in and out of the prison doors is not a new one.... All through history those who have fought against oppression have constantly been faced with the dungeons of a ruling class” (“The Cause That Passes Through a Prison,” Labor Defender, September 1926).

 

This past year, we added Albert Woodfox as a stipend recipient. Along with other Black Panther Party members known as the Angola Three, Woodfox stood up against the hideous racism at Louisiana’s notorious Angola prison. In retaliation, prison authorities have subjected him to more than four decades of solitary confinement.

 

Others who had received stipends are now outside prison walls. After months of medical neglect and with thousands demanding her release, Lynne Stewart was finally let out of federal prison last New Year’s Eve. Suffering serious complications from breast cancer, Stewart is undergoing special treatment at Memorial Sloan Kettering hospital in New York City. She reports that she is struggling with drug side effects and is having difficulty walking. Other former PDC stipend recipients are the young anti-fascist activists known as the Tinley Park 5, who were released at various times over the last 12 months or so. They had been tossed into prison for heroically dispersing a Chicago-area meeting of fascists in May 2012.

 

As Cannon said, “The class-conscious worker accords to the class-war prisoners a place of singular honor and esteem.” Join us in this vital work of solidarity. The 16 class-war prisoners receiving stipends from the PDC are listed below.

*   *   *

Mumia Abu-Jamal is a former Black Panther Party spokesman, a well-known supporter of the MOVE organization and an award-winning journalist known as “the voice of the voiceless.” Framed up for the 1981 killing of a Philadelphia police officer, Mumia was sentenced to death explicitly for his political views. Federal and state courts have repeatedly refused to consider evidence proving Mumia’s innocence, including the sworn confession of Arnold Beverly that he, not Mumia, shot and killed the policeman. In 2011 the Philadelphia district attorney’s office dropped its longstanding effort to legally lynch America’s foremost class-war prisoner. Mumia remains condemned to life in prison with no chance of parole.

 

Leonard Peltier is an internationally renowned class-war prisoner. Peltier’s incarceration for his activism in the American Indian Movement has come to symbolize this country’s racist repression of its native peoples, the survivors of centuries of genocidal oppression. Peltier was framed up for the 1975 deaths of two FBI agents marauding in what had become a war zone on the South Dakota Pine Ridge Reservation. Although the lead government attorney has admitted, “We can’t prove who shot those agents,” and the courts have acknowledged blatant prosecutorial misconduct, the 70-year-old Peltier is not scheduled to be reconsidered for parole for another ten years! Peltier suffers from multiple serious medical conditions and is incarcerated far from his people and family.

 

Eight MOVE members—Chuck Africa, Michael Africa, Debbie Africa, Janet Africa, Janine Africa, Delbert Africa, Eddie Africa and Phil Africa—are in their 37th year of prison. After the 8 August 1978 siege of their Philadelphia home by over 600 heavily armed cops, they were sentenced to 30-100 years having been falsely convicted of killing a police officer who died in the cops’ own cross fire. In 1985, eleven of their MOVE family members, including five children, were massacred by Philly cops when a bomb was dropped on their living quarters. After more than three decades of unjust incarceration, these innocent prisoners are routinely turned down at parole hearings. None have been released.

 

Albert Woodfox is the last of the Angola Three still incarcerated. Along with Herman Wallace and Robert King, Woodfox fought the vicious, racist and dehumanizing conditions in Louisiana’s Angola prison and courageously organized a Black Panther Party chapter at the prison. Authorities framed up Woodfox and Wallace for the fatal stabbing of a prison guard in 1972 and falsely convicted King of killing a fellow inmate a year later. For over 42 years, Woodfox has been locked down in Closed Cell Restricted (CCR) blocks, the longest stretch in solitary confinement ever in this country. His conviction has been overturned three times! According to his lawyers, he suffers from hypertension, heart disease, chronic renal insufficiency, diabetes, anxiety and insomnia—conditions no doubt caused and/or exacerbated by decades of vindictive and inhumane treatment.

 

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

 

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

 

Hugo Pinell, the last of the San Quentin 6 still in prison, has been in solitary isolation for more than four decades. He was a militant anti-racist leader of prison rights organizing along with George Jackson, his comrade and mentor, who was gunned down by prison guards in 1971. Despite numerous letters of support and no disciplinary write-ups for over 28 years, Pinell was again denied parole in 2009. Now in his late 60s, Pinell continues to serve a life sentence after having finally been released from the notorious torture chamber Pelican Bay SHU in California, a focal point for hunger strikes against grotesque inhuman conditions.

 

Send your contributions to: PDC, P.O. Box 99, Canal Street Station, New York, NY 10013; (212) 406-4252.

The Latest From The Partisan Defense Committee Website- And A Personal Appeal From The American Left History Blog - Remembering The Class-War Prisoners During The Holiday Appeal     

 

James P. Cannon (center)-Founding leader of The International Labor Defense- a model for labor defense work in the 1920s and 1930s.

Click below to link to the Partisan Defense Committee website.

http://www.partisandefense.org/

Reposted from the American Left History blog, dated December 1, 2010, updated December 2014.

Markin comment:

I like to think of myself as a long-time fervent supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, an organization committed to social and political defense cases and causes in the interests of the international working class. Cases from early on in the 1970s when the organization was founded and the committee defended the Black Panthers who were being targeted by every police agency that had an say in the matter, the almost abandoned by the left Weather Underground (in its various incantations) and Chilean miners in the wake of the Pinochet coup there in 1973 up to more recent times with the Mumia death penalty case, defense of the Occupy movement and the NATO three, and defense of the heroic Wiki-leaks whistle-blower Chelsea Manning (formerly Bradley).

Moreover the PDC is an organization committed, at this time of the year, to raising funds to support the class-war prisoners’ stipend program through the annual Holiday Appeal drive. Unfortunately having to raise these funds in support of political prisoners for many years now, too many years, as the American and international capitalist class and their hangers-on have declared relentless war, recently a very one-sided war, against those who would cry out against the monster. Attempting to silence voices from zealous lawyers like Lynne Stewart, articulate death-row prisoners like Mumia and the late Tookie Williams, anti-fascist street fighters like the Tingsley Five to black liberation fighters like the Assata Shakur, the Omaha Three and the Angola Three and who ended up on the wrong side of a cop and state vendetta and anti-imperialist fighters like the working-class based Ohio Seven and student-based Weather Underground who took Che Guevara’s admonition to wage battle inside the “belly of the beast” seriously. Others, other militant labor and social liberation fighters as well, too numerous to mention here but remembered.

Normally I do not need any prompting in the matter. This year tough I read the 25th Anniversary Appeal article in Workers Vanguard No. 969 where I was startled to note how many of the names, organizations, and political philosophies mentioned there hark back to my own radical coming of age, and the need for class-struggle defense of all our political prisoners in the late 1960s (although I may not have used that exact term at the time).

That recognition included names like black liberation fighter George Jackson’s present class-war prisoner Hugo Pinell’s San Quentin Six comrade; the Black Panthers in their better days, the days when the American state really was out to kill or detain every last supporter, and in the days when we needed, desperately needed, to fight for their defense in places from Oakland to New Haven,  as represented by two of the Omaha Three (Poindexter and wa Langa), in their younger days; the struggle, the fierce struggle, against the death penalty as represented in Mumia’s case today (also Black Panther-connected); the Ohio 7 and the Weather Underground who, rightly or wrongly, were committed to building a second front against American imperialism, and who most of the left, the respectable left, abandoned; and, of course, Leonard Peltier and the Native American struggles from Pine Ridge to the Southwest. It has been a long time and victories few. I could go on but you get the point.

That point also includes the hard fact that we have paid a high price, a very high price, for not winning back in the late 1960s and early 1970s when we last had this capitalist imperialist society on the ropes. Maybe it was political immaturity, maybe it was cranky theory, maybe it was elitism, hell, maybe it was just old-fashioned hubris but we let them off the hook. And have had to fight forty years of rear-guard “culture wars” since just to keep from falling further behind.

And the class-war prisoners, our class-war prisoners, have had to face their “justice” and their prisons. Many, too many for most of that time. That lesson should be etched in the memory of every pro-working class militant today. And this, as well, as a quick glance at the news these days should make every liberation fighter realize; the difference between being on one side of that prison wall and the other is a very close thing when the bourgeois decides to pull the hammer down. The support of class-war prisoners is thus not charity, as International Labor Defense founder James P. Cannon noted back in the 1920s, but a duty of those fighters outside the walls. Today I do my duty, and gladly. I urge others to do the same now at the holidays and throughout the year. The class-war prisoners must not stand alone. 

The Latest From The Partisan Defense Committee Website- And A Personal Appeal From The American Left History Blog - Remembering The Class-War Prisoners During The Holiday Appeal     

 

James P. Cannon (center)-Founding leader of The International Labor Defense- a model for labor defense work in the 1920s and 1930s.

Click below to link to the Partisan Defense Committee website.

http://www.partisandefense.org/

Reposted from the American Left History blog, dated December 1, 2010, updated December 2014.

Markin comment:

I like to think of myself as a long-time fervent supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, an organization committed to social and political defense cases and causes in the interests of the international working class. Cases from early on in the 1970s when the organization was founded and the committee defended the Black Panthers who were being targeted by every police agency that had an say in the matter, the almost abandoned by the left Weather Underground (in its various incantations) and Chilean miners in the wake of the Pinochet coup there in 1973 up to more recent times with the Mumia death penalty case, defense of the Occupy movement and the NATO three, and defense of the heroic Wiki-leaks whistle-blower Chelsea Manning (formerly Bradley).

Moreover the PDC is an organization committed, at this time of the year, to raising funds to support the class-war prisoners’ stipend program through the annual Holiday Appeal drive. Unfortunately having to raise these funds in support of political prisoners for many years now, too many years, as the American and international capitalist class and their hangers-on have declared relentless war, recently a very one-sided war, against those who would cry out against the monster. Attempting to silence voices from zealous lawyers like Lynne Stewart, articulate death-row prisoners like Mumia and the late Tookie Williams, anti-fascist street fighters like the Tingsley Five to black liberation fighters like the Assata Shakur, the Omaha Three and the Angola Three and who ended up on the wrong side of a cop and state vendetta and anti-imperialist fighters like the working-class based Ohio Seven and student-based Weather Underground who took Che Guevara’s admonition to wage battle inside the “belly of the beast” seriously. Others, other militant labor and social liberation fighters as well, too numerous to mention here but remembered.

Normally I do not need any prompting in the matter. This year tough I read the 25th Anniversary Appeal article in Workers Vanguard No. 969 where I was startled to note how many of the names, organizations, and political philosophies mentioned there hark back to my own radical coming of age, and the need for class-struggle defense of all our political prisoners in the late 1960s (although I may not have used that exact term at the time).

That recognition included names like black liberation fighter George Jackson’s present class-war prisoner Hugo Pinell’s San Quentin Six comrade; the Black Panthers in their better days, the days when the American state really was out to kill or detain every last supporter, and in the days when we needed, desperately needed, to fight for their defense in places from Oakland to New Haven,  as represented by two of the Omaha Three (Poindexter and wa Langa), in their younger days; the struggle, the fierce struggle, against the death penalty as represented in Mumia’s case today (also Black Panther-connected); the Ohio 7 and the Weather Underground who, rightly or wrongly, were committed to building a second front against American imperialism, and who most of the left, the respectable left, abandoned; and, of course, Leonard Peltier and the Native American struggles from Pine Ridge to the Southwest. It has been a long time and victories few. I could go on but you get the point.

That point also includes the hard fact that we have paid a high price, a very high price, for not winning back in the late 1960s and early 1970s when we last had this capitalist imperialist society on the ropes. Maybe it was political immaturity, maybe it was cranky theory, maybe it was elitism, hell, maybe it was just old-fashioned hubris but we let them off the hook. And have had to fight forty years of rear-guard “culture wars” since just to keep from falling further behind.

And the class-war prisoners, our class-war prisoners, have had to face their “justice” and their prisons. Many, too many for most of that time. That lesson should be etched in the memory of every pro-working class militant today. And this, as well, as a quick glance at the news these days should make every liberation fighter realize; the difference between being on one side of that prison wall and the other is a very close thing when the bourgeois decides to pull the hammer down. The support of class-war prisoners is thus not charity, as International Labor Defense founder James P. Cannon noted back in the 1920s, but a duty of those fighters outside the walls. Today I do my duty, and gladly. I urge others to do the same now at the holidays and throughout the year. The class-war prisoners must not stand alone. 

The Promise of a Socialist Society

(Quote of the Week)

Workers Vanguard No. 1025	31 May 2013

TROTSKY

LENIN

The Promise of a Socialist Society

(Quote of the Week)

In the selection below, Friedrich Engels makes plain how proletarian revolution opens the road to an emancipated future in which the productive powers of humanity are unleashed for the benefit of all mankind.

Their political and intellectual bankruptcy is scarcely any longer a secret to the bourgeoisie themselves. Their economic bankruptcy recurs regularly every ten years. In every crisis, society is suffocated beneath the weight of its own productive forces and products, which it cannot use, and stands helpless face to face with the absurd contradiction that the producers have nothing to consume, because consumers are wanting. The expansive force of the means of production bursts the bonds that the capitalist mode of production had imposed upon them.

Their deliverance from these bonds is the one precondition for an unbroken, constantly accelerated development of the productive forces, and therewith for a practically unlimited increase of production itself....

With the seizing of the means of production by society, production of commodities is done away with, and, simultaneously, the mastery of the product over the producer. Anarchy in social production is replaced by systematic, definite organisation. The struggle for individual existence disappears.... Man’s own social organisation, hitherto confronting him as a necessity imposed by nature and history, now becomes the result of his own free action. The extraneous objective forces that have hitherto governed history pass under the control of man himself. Only from that time will man himself, with full consciousness, make his own history—only from that time will the social causes set in movement by him have, in the main and in a constantly growing measure, the results intended by him. It is humanity’s leap from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom.

To accomplish this act of universal emancipation is the historical mission of the modern proletariat. To thoroughly comprehend the historical conditions and thus the very nature of this act, to impart to the now oppressed class a full knowledge of the conditions and of the meaning of the momentous act it is called upon to accomplish, this is the task of the theoretical expression of the proletarian movement, scientific socialism.

—Friedrich Engels, Anti-Dühring (1878)

 

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!

 

As The 100th Anniversary Of The First Year Of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars) Continues ... Some Remembrances-The First Christmas In The Trenches  
 

In say 1912 in the time of the supposedly big deal Basle Socialist Conference which got reflected in more circles than just workingmen, small shopkeepers and small farmers, or 1913 for that matter when the big deal European powers were waging "proxy" war, making ominous moves, but most importantly working three shifts in the munitions plants, oh hell, even in the beginning of 1914 before the war clouds got a full head of steam that summer they all profusely professed their undying devotion to peace, to wage no war for any reason. Reasons: artists who saw the disjointedness of modern industrial society, freaked out at what humankind had produced, was producing to place everybody in an inescapable box and hence their cubic fascinations from which to run, put the pieces to paint; sculptors who put twisted pieces of scrape metal juxtaposed to each other  to get that same effect, an effect which would be replicated on all those foreboding trenched fronts; writers, not all of them socialists either, some were conservatives that saw empire, their particular empire, in grave danger once the blood started flowing  who saw the v   of serious history books proving that, according to their Whiggish theory of progress,  humankind had moved beyond war as an instrument of policy; writers of not so serious novels drenched in platitudes and hidden gabezo love affairs put paid to that notion in their sweet nothing words that man and woman had too much to do to denigrate themselves by crying the warrior’s cry and for the sweet nothing maidens to spent their waking hours strewing flowers on the bloodlust streets; musicians whose muse spoke of delicate tempos and sweet muted violin concertos; and poets, ah, those constricted poets who bleed the moon of its amber swearing, swearing on a stack of seven sealed bibles, that they with all their creative brethren would go to the hells, literary Dante's rings, before touching the hair of another human, that come the war drums they all would resist the siren call, would stick to their Whiggish, Futurist, Constructionist, Cubist, world and blast the war-makers to hell in quotes, words, chords, clanged metal, and pretty pastels.

And then the war drums intensified and they, they made of ordinary human clay as it turned out, they who could not resist the call, could not resist those maidens now busy all day strewing flowers on the bloodlust streets for their soldier boys, those poets, artists, sculptors, writers, serious and not, musicians went sheepishly to the trenches with the rest of the flower of European youth to die deathless deaths in their thousands for, well, for ….            

Chistmas in the Trenches -- 1914

       Stories tell of the British and German soldiers playing football together in No Man's Land on Christmas day are true. The Christmas truce of 1914 really happened and on some far greater scale than has been generally realized. Enemy really did meet enemy between the trenches. There was for a time, genuine peace in No Man's Land. Though Germans and British were the main participants, French and Belgians took part as well. Most of those involved agreed it was a remarkable way to spend Christmas. "Just you think," wrote one British soldier, "that while you were eating your turkey, etc, I was out talking and shaking hands with the very men I had been trying to kill a few hours before! It was astounding!"
       "It was a day of peace in war," commented a German participant, "It is only a pity that it was not decisive peace." NCOs and officers often joined in with equal readiness, while others truces were initiated and the terms of armistice agreed at 'parleys' of officers between the trenches. 1
       The situation in the 1914 trenches was very grave! Barely five months after the outbreak of the war, nearly a million soldiers and civilians were already dead. The assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand that June had plunged Europe into its bloodiest war to date, with no end in sight. The armies of the Allied and Central Powers were grimly deadlocked, facing each other across a series of trenches that stretched more than 400 miles from the English Channel to Switzerland. On the Western Front that December, it rained almost every day; in some places, the water was 5 feet deep. Armies of rats and lice shared the trenches. As Christmas approached, millions of mud-covered troops were shivering, frightened, and homesick.
       The starting of this Chistmas truce was very amazing! It bubbled up from the ranks, with both armies making small gestures of good will in the days before Dec. 25. Near Armentières, France, some Germans suggested a brief, local cease-fire, even sweetening the deal with a chocolate cake. Along the Lys River, a battalion of Welsh infantrymen hoisted a banner reading “Merry Christmas,” accompanied by a sketch of Kaiser Wilhelm II. Then, as temperatures dropped below freezing on Christmas Eve, the guns in many sectors fell silent, and thousands of British soldiers heard something they would never forget.



       The British heard the haunting sound of Germans singing “Stille Nacht” (“Silent Night”). Through the gloom, the British could also see the flames of candles dotting the branches of makeshift Christmas trees—“like the footlights of a theater,” said one amazed Tommy. Up and down the line the British, moved by the holiday spirit, responded with carols of their own; following each selection, the other side would cheer and applaud. Soon, greetings of “Happy Christmas!” “You no shoot, we no shoot!” and “Come over here!” echoed across no man’s land. Slowly, cautiously, the two armies crept out into the shell-blasted landscape.
       What both sides found was that the other side had ordinary men like themselves. Once they had broken the ice with greetings and handshakes, they started talking about their homes, their jobs, their families. Many realized that they bore each other no real emnity, that they were merely pawns in a vast struggle beyond their control. Gifts were exchanged; English corned beef and German cigars were particularly popular. “Where they couldn’t talk the language,” wrote Cpl. John Ferguson of the 2nd Battalion, Seaforth Highlanders, “they were making themselves understood by signs. Here we were laughing and chatting to men whom only a few hours before we were trying to kill!”
       The camaraderie for a short time spread. On Christmas Day, thousands of unarmed men from both sides again emerged from the trenches, having agreed to use the daylight to collect their dead. This time, the enemy soldiers swapped pieces of equipment and parts of their uniforms. Many shared photographs of their families and took pictures of themselves with their new friends. “We are at any rate having another truce on New Year’s Day,” Lt. Dougan Chater of the 2nd Battalion, Gordon Highlanders, wrote in a letter, “as the Germans want to see how the photos come out.” In some places, combatants even played soccer with makeshift balls.
       The truce was pretty widespread. Where Britons faced Germans, more than two-thirds of the troops made temporary peace. On the Eastern Front, one group of Austrians and Russians reportedly played leapfrog with one another. The French and Belgians were far less charitable; the Hun, after all, had viciously invaded their homeland. So some French officers defiantly ordered attacks on Christmas Day. “We opened rapid fire on them,” wrote one captain, “which is the only sort of truce they deserve.” Yet in most places, the sound of gunfire was replaced by the sounds of Christmas.
       The Commanders of both sides were not very happy about the truce. When word got back to them, they were appalled. On Boxing Day (Dec. 26), British Gen. Sir Horace Smith-Dorrien ordered that “on no account is intercourse to be allowed between the opposing troops.” On Dec. 29, the German High Command forbade all fraternization, warning that it would be punished as high treason. So with great reluctance, the troops said goodbye and ambled back to their trenches, dreading what was to come. Though many had fantasized that their gestures might lead to an armistice, they knew it was a futile dream. In some cases, a single shot on Dec. 26 was enough to get the war going again. 2

       The informal ceasefire stretched all across the 500-mile western front where more than a million men were encamped, from the Belgian coast as far as the Swiss border. The truce was especially warm along a 30-mile line around the Belgian town of Ypres, Jürgs notes. Not everybody, though, approved. One Austrian soldier billeted near Ypres complained that in wartime such an understanding "should not be allowed". His name was Adolf Hitler. 3

       It was also said that in certain areas when the war resumed that those facing each other at the front had to be sent to the rear because they couldn’t kill each other. This Christmas peace also showed that when enemies really see each other they see each other as brothers and don’t understand why they are killing each other. Certainly this is what Christmas is all about, God’s peace in all of us! This is what happened in the hearts of men on both sides in the trenches on the Christmas of 1914.

1) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/special_report/1998/10/98/world_war_i/197627.stm

2) http://www.theweekmagazine.com/news/articles/news.aspx?ArticleID=1253

3) http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FWWchristmas.htm

       A new European movie portaying this World War I Christmas Truce is entitled "Joyeux Noel" and was made in 2005. It has English subtitles but is well worth watching. One thing I learned from the movie, that I had never heard before, was that when artillery fell on the French and Scotts the Germans invited them on their side and when artillery went the other way the Germans went on the French side.

 

ACLU honors Chelsea on her birthday

December 18th, 2014 by the Chelsea Manning Support Network
On December 17th, 2014, Wikileaks whistleblower Chelsea Manning’s 27th birthday, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) released a statement of support for Chelsea.  The message “honor[s] and thank[s] her for her bravery in coming out as transgender, fighting for her health care, and for speaking out about and making visible the injustice committed in our country’s name.”
The ACLU is also currently leading a lawsuit against the Department of Defense in order to ensure Chelsea will receive constitutionally supported gender-related health care.

Honoring Chelsea Manning on Her 27th Birthday

By Chase Strangio, Staff Attorney ACLU, December 17, 2014
From the United States Disciplinary Barracks in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where she is serving a 35-year prison sentence for convictions related to leaking classified information to Wikileaks, Chelsea Manning continues to speak out against the injustices she experiences and observes.
Over the course of the past four years, Chelsea has faced the death penalty, lived through solitary confinement, told the world she is transgender, and sued the federal government for withholding her medical treatment for gender dysphoria.
And today, on her 27th birthday, we pause to say thank you to Chelsea. We honor her bravery in coming out as transgender, fighting for her health care, and for speaking out about and making visible the injustice committed in our country’s name.
In a birthday message to Chelsea, published in the Guardian along with similar messages from other leaders, poet Saul Williams wrote:

I know that you have been called names like ‘traitor’ and a host of others, but please never forget that for many of us who guard the flame that will one day burn the injustice out of empire you are a hero. Your actions have sparked more than global unrest, they have sparked the imagination of artists, engineers, teachers, and activists. You have given hope, even when those who would punish you for your actions remind you of your oath to God and country, your actions have reminded us that God would not favor countries more than humanity itself. And we applaud you, we buy you dresses and handbags (what size are you now?), pop bottles in your honor, and salute your wayward flag.

The past few weeks have witnessed the further unveiling of the flaws in the roots of our justice system. With the release of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s “Torture Report;” the non-indictments of the white officers who killed Mike Brown and Eric Garner as well as the deaths of Tamir Rice, Akai Gurley, John Crawford III, and too many other black individuals at the hands of police officers; and the seemingly relentless murders of trans women of color in the U.S.; renewed calls for transparency and accountability have taken hold across the country and globe.
In times like these, people like Chelsea can give us hope in the possibility of standing up to make the world better, safer, and more just. But unlike the architects of the United States’ torture program or the police officers who killed unarmed black men, she is spending the next three-and-a-half decades in prison. Chelsea’s actions, as Edward Snowden wrote in his birthday message to her, “came with an unbelievable personal cost.”
Chelsea, we stand behind you and fight with you as you continue to dare to be recognized as a human being.
“The very awareness of you, of your deeds and your fate, makes us free,” Philosopoher Slavoj Žižek writes to Chelsea. “But this freedom is a difficult freedom – it is also an obligation to follow in your steps.”
Chelsea leaked classified documents into the public domain because, in her words, “I want people to see the truth…regardless of who they are…because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public.”
The fights for accountability, transparency, and justice continue. Hopefully through Chelsea’s actions and the brave actions of so many others we can continue to be informed as we craft public narratives of who we are and who we want to be, as individuals, as communities, and as a country. “We should all be able to live as human beings – and to be recognized as such by the societies we live in,” writes Chelsea. “We shouldn’t have to keep defending our right to exist.”
In a year that has brought so much tragedy to so many, let us stand in solidarity with those people, like Chelsea, who are leading us on the path toward justice and self-determination.~

Please help us fight the legal and political battle to free Chelsea, not only for her sake, but for all those she’s helped, and all whistleblowers endangered by her unjust conviction.

Please donate today!

Tue, Nov 25, 2014 02:56 PM

ACTION ITEM: Write letters to DoD authorities! Is this email not displaying correctly? View it in your browser. NEW ACTION: Write letters to DoD authorities supporting Chelsea's plea for clemency! Secretary of the Army John McHugh President Obama has delegated review of Chelsea Manning’s clemency appeal to individuals within the Department of Defense. Please write them to express your support for heroic WikiLeaks’ whistle-blower former US Army intelligence analyst PFC Chelsea Manning’s release from military prison. It is important that each of these authorities realize the wide support that Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning enjoys worldwide. They need to be reminded that millions understand that Manning is a political prisoner, imprisoned for following her conscience. While it is highly unlikely that any of these individuals would independently move to release Manning, a reduction in Manning’s outrageous 35-year prison sentence is a possibility at this stage. Take action TODAY- Write letters supporting Chelsea's clemency petition! This clemency petition is separate from Chelsea Manning’s upcoming appeal before the US Army Court of Criminal Appeals next year, where Manning’s new attorney Nancy Hollander will have an opportunity to highlight the prosecution's—and the trial judge's—misconduct during last year’s court-martial at Ft. Meade, Maryland. Help us continue to cover 100% of Chelsea's legal fees! > > > Please donate today! < < < follow on Twitter | friend on Facebook | forward to a friend unsubscribe from this list| view email in browser