*THE AFL-CIO BUREAUCRACY AND THE 2008 ELECTIONS

Click on the title to link to a "YouTube" film clip of Pete Seeger performing performing the classic coal country song "Which Side Are You On?" That tells the tale on this entry.

Markin commentary:

The headline of a recent news item from the Associated Press reported that the AFL-CIO, one of the two main labor federations in America, was trying to raise 200 million dollars and round up 200, 000 volunteers. At first glance my response was-be still, my heart. Why? I thought the American labor bureaucracy was finally responding to the drastic decline in trade union membership by rolling up its sleeves and going out to organize the unorganized workers who desperately need such collective action. I had visions of the money going a long way to fund the estimated 3000 full time labor organizers that many sources have stated are necessary in order to successfully organize Wal-Mart. Or some cash might go to organize the notoriously anti-union sweat shops in the South, the first stop on the run away shop trail in the global race to the bottom. And maybe a few dollars might be thrown in to defend the masses of immigrant workers against the current governmental onslaught and a fight for a real amnesty program for undocumented workers. I also thought the 200, 000 volunteers might be the ready reserves organized to defend any labor actions that might ensue from the above stated tasks. Silly me.

After reading the fine print what the story detailed was the apparently fervent wish of the AFL-CIO bureaucracy to raise 200 million dollars and find 200,000 volunteers in order to 'support', presumably Democratic Party, candidates and issues in the upcoming 2008 elections- by any means necessary. The article noted rather poignantly that this same labor group raised about 150 million for the ill-fated 2004 presidential and congressional elections. And got no return on that investment. No figure was given for last year’s congressional elections but one can assume that it was substantial. And for all those millions spent, what result? To date- mainly an almost criminally inadequate raise to seven dollars and some change in the federal minimum wage. It does not take a capitalist financial wizard like Warren Buffet to know that this is a poor investment of one’s financial resources. As a unionist I have fought against, and have urged other unionists to fight against, use of COPE money for contributions to political parties and candidates. Organizing the unorganized, organizing Wal-Mart, organizing the South? Yes ,that is where I want my dues money to go.

Below are a few recent commentaries on this subject. As this is being posted the GM autoworkers are on strike. Thus, the first comment.

VICTORY TO THE GENERAL MOTORS AUTO WORKERS!

THE FIGHT AGAINST THE RACE TO THE BOTTOM BEGINS HERE! CALL
OUT THE WHOLE UAW!

As of September 24, 2007, after a break down in negotiations the General Motors autoworkers went out on a nation-wide strike. In the old days, in the 1930 and 1940’s, the United Auto Workers (UAW) union was created and solidified by fierce class battles. This action evokes memories of those times although then the fight was centrally around wages and working conditions. Today, in the age of ‘globalization’ (meaning, in reality, most of the same capitalists like GM fighting it out in the world market rather than in nationally isolated markets) the fight is against the corporation- driven race to the bottom. The issues of health care, pensions, outsourcing and job guarantees are what drive today’s struggles. And the prospects are not pretty.

Take the case of heath care provision. General Motors (and, ultimately, the other auto makers) want to foist that responsibility onto the union with some kind of trust fund arrangement. I think an unidentified UAW local president in Detroit made the most eloquent response to that idea. His response: Why should the union be responsible for cutting off the health benefits to its own membership as health costs continue to spiral or a member reaches the plan maximum. Make no mistake this scheme is not some step in the fight for workers’ control of working conditions. The company is merely trying to bail out from its own mistakes. Ditto on the under- funded pension plans. However, GM is more than happy to try to lock the union into an agreement on outsourcing to their other plants internationally in order to cut costs. This, they know how to do as the decline in membership of the UAW dramatically shows. In the end that means poorer working conditions not only here but also internationally. To mitigate the problem of outsourcing it is not enough to call for job protection. Also necessary is an international organizing drive to unionize all autoworkers.

One of the most compelling pieces of data that I have run across lately on the labor movement is from an article on globalization in which it was stated that today there are as many auto workers as in the past but only about a third of them are organized. Today GM has 73,000 UAW autoworkers. In the past there were several times that number. As we support the current UAW action let us remember this for the future. The same can be said for the other members of the Big 3. And while we are at it since all autoworkers will ultimately be affected by the GM action- extend the picket lines to the other Big 3. Call out the whole UAW to defend this strike. VICTORY TO THE GM AUTO WORKERS!


Labor Scorecard 2007

CONTINUING TOUGH TIMES FOR THE AMERICAN LABOR MOVEMENT- AND THAT IS NO LIE

This writer entered the blogosphere in February 2006 so this is the second Labor Day scorecard giving his take on the condition of American labor as we approach Labor Day. And it is not pretty. That, my brothers and sisters, says it all. There was little strike action this year. The only notable action was among the grossly overworked and underpaid naval shipbuilders down in anti-union bastion Mississippi in the spring and that hard fought fight was a draw, at best. Once again there is little to report in the way of unionization to organize labor’s potential strength. American workers continue to have a real decline in their paychecks. The difference between survival and not for most working families is the two job (or more) household. In short, the average family is working more hours to make ends meet. Real inflation in energy and food costs has put many up against the wall. Moreover the bust in the housing market has wrecked havoc on working people as the most important asset in many a household has taken a beating. Once again forget the Federal Reserve Bank’s definition of inflation- one fill up at the pump confounds that noise. One does not have to be a socialist economist to know that something is desperately wrong when at the beginning of the 21st century with all the technological advances and productivity increases of the past period working people need to work more just to try to stay even. Even the more far-sighted bourgeois thinkers have trouble with that one. In any case, here are some comments on the labor year.

*The key as it was last year, is the unionization of Wal-Mart and the South. The necessary class struggle politics that would make such drives successful would act as a huge impetus for other areas of the labor movement. This writer further argues that such struggles against such vicious enemies as Wal-Mart can be the catalyst for the organization of a workers party. Okay, okay let the writer dream a little, won’t you? What has happened this year on this issue is that more organizations have taken up the call for a consumer boycott of Wal-Mart. That is all to the good and must be supported by militant leftists but it is only a very small beginning shot in the campaign (See archives, dated June 10, 2006). National and local unions have taken monies from their coffers not for such a worthy effort as union organizing at Wal-Mart but to support one or another bourgeois electoral candidate. Some things never change.

*The issue of immigration has surfaced strongly again this year, especially in presidential politics. Every militant leftist was supportive of the past May Day actions of the vast immigrant communities to not be pushed around, although one should also note that they were not nearly as extensive as in 2006. Immigration is a labor issue and key to the struggle against the race to the bottom. While May Day and other events were big moments unless there are links to the greater labor movement this very promising movement could fizzle. A central problem is the role of the Democratic Party and the Catholic Church in the organizing effort. I will deal with this question at a latter time but for now know this- these organizations are an obstruction to real progress on the immigration issue. (See archives, dated May 1, 2006)


*If one needed one more example of why the American labor movement is in the condition it is finds itself then yet another article this summer by John Sweeney, punitive President of the AFL-CIO, and therefore one of the titular heads of the organized labor movement brings that point home in gory detail. The gist of the article is that the governmental agencies, like the National Labor Relations Board, have over the years (and here he means, in reality, the Bush years) bent over backwards to help the employers in their fight against unionization. Well, John, surprise, surprise. Needless to say this year his so-called Democratic friends in Congress were not able to pass simple legislation to formally, at least, protect the right to unionization, the so-called 'employees’ bill of rights'. That was a non-starter from the get-go. No militant leftist, no forget that, no militant trade unionist has believed in the impartiality of governmental boards, agencies, courts, etc. since about 1936. Yes, that is right, since Roosevelt. Wake up. Again this brings up the question of the leadership of the labor movement. And I do not mean to turn it over to Andy Stein and his Change to Win Coalition. We may be, as some theorists imagine, a post-industrial society, but the conditions of labor seem more like the classic age of rapacious capitalist accumulation in the 19th century. We need a labor leadership based on a program of labor independence and struggle for worker rights- and we need it damn soon.

Organize the Coal Miners!

MOURN, BUT THEN ORGANIZE!

In my recent Labor Scorecard 2007 commentary (see September 2007 archives) and elsewhere I have noted that a key to the revitalization of the American labor movement is the unionization of Wal-Mart and the South, two giant tasks that would go a long way to a return of labor militancy. In short, organize the unorganized. Those tasks are still central to recovery however the recent mine disaster at the Crandall Canyon Mines in Utah and last year’s disaster at Sago, West Virginia have brought to mind how precarious conditions are in the mines. And that is not even to speak of the seemingly daily disasters in the Chinese mines and elsewhere. Tunneling deep underground is just not a safe operation under any circumstances. Impelled by the profit motive, as Crandall Canyon so graphically demonstrated, it can be nothing short of industrial murder. I have also read a recent article on the state of unionization in the American automobile industry which was at one time almost totally unionized. The most dramatic statistic that I gathered from that article was that while there are almost as many auto workers as there were at the height of the unions today only one third of that work force is unionized. Thus, an expansion drive for membership of these previously militant unions, in effect a reorganization, is on the agenda today.

Historically some of the most dramatic labor battles in America involved the United Mine Workers and other miners’ unions. One need only think of the “Molly McGuires” in the Pennsylvania coal fields, the names Ludlow, Butte, Coeur d’Alene, the Western Federation of Miners led by the legendary “Big” Bill Haywood and of other lesser known class struggles led by him and the International Workers of the World (IWW, Wobblies). The names roll off the tongue in endless succession. More recently one remembers the great battles in the Eastern mines, especially West Virginia, up to the 1970’s. If one location epitomized theses long labor struggles one need only mention one name Harlan, famous in story and song, in the hills of Kentucky to remember when militant miners knew how to fight (as well as the built-in limitations to a successful fight, as well). My father, before he escaped the coal fields by joining the Marines in World War II, ‘worked the coal’ as a boy and young man around Hazard, Kentucky, another legendary mining name. He had many a story to tell about those experiences and it is a measure of how bad it was that he happily went into the Marines in order to escape that life. One lesson that he imparted to me and one that offers us hope is the tradition, honored more in the breech that the observance now, of the miners-Picket lines mean don’t cross. Every militant needs to have that slogan etched in his or her brain.

That said, today’s coal economics do not make the task any easier than in earlier times. Coal production has had a very stormy and topsy-turvy history and unemployment and abandonment of worked-over mines is only part of the story. Recently, however with the increased price of other fossil fuels, mainly oil, the coal ‘clean or dirty’ has become more valuable. Thus, old unsafe mines and other formerly forgotten fields are being worked today by the same old greedy capitalist investors that we all remember from the ‘age of the robber barons’. Moreover the location of the fields in remote areas and, frankly, the parochialism and localism of the work force make organizing as difficult as it always has been. Add to the mix, as noticeable in Crandall Canyon, the waves of immigrants swarming to the fields in search of desperately needed work and that is a handful. Yes, those are all problems to be confronted during a fight but the most serious problem is the lack of interest of today’s leadership of the Mine Workers and of the AFL-CIO to make this fight. And that is where our fight has to begin.

Lest I be accused of the dreaded sin of ‘dual unionism’ let me make clear that this fight to reorganize the miners has to begin with the current organized union structures as a matter of common sense. Tackling the individual, disparate owners piecemeal with local unions is not the way forward. We want one big industry-wide, nation-wide (or for that matter, world-wide) union. End of story. What we do not want to do is rely on the good graces of governmental agencies, in this case, the Mine Safety and Health Administration. As the results of Crandall Canyon demonstrate reliance on this toothless (for labor) agency is a sure sign of defeat before we start.

A central demand beyond the traditional ones of union recognition, wages and working conditions is the absolute necessity to fight for a workers safety committee controlled by the union that would prohibit work in unsafe mines and address other mine safety issues. Let us be clear again this is not some tripartite (labor, capitalist, government) committee but a union one. If one wants to know what the embryonic stages of workers control of production under capitalism but before socialism should look like that should be our model. It is a life and death struggle. All trade union militants should be demanding that instead of using your hard earned dues to elect one or another of the bourgeois candidates in 2008 that those dues go to organizing the mines. That, my friends, is the beginning of labor wisdom now. As the legendary labor organizer Joe Hill reputedly said before his execution in Utah for the 'sin' of organizing- Don’t mourn, Organize!

IN LIGHT OF BLACKWATER-A NEW SLOGAN

COMMENTARY

A CHANGE OF SLOGANS ON IRAQ

IMMEDIATE UNCONDITIONAL WITHDRAWAL OF ALL U.S. TROOPS-AND MERCENARIES! OUT WITH THE HESSIANS!

Seemingly it is impossible for news coming out of Iraq in an average week to be anything but unrelentingly macabre and mind-boggling. Case in point- Over the weekend of September 15, 2007 a shooting incident occurred resulting in at least several deaths and injuries involving the 'private' security company Blackwater. Blackwater provides ‘support services’ to many American governmental agencies, in this case the U.S. State Department, in Iraq so initially the news seemed like just one more case of these otherwise unemployable cowboys getting out of hand and becoming panicky under ‘fire’. Needless to say Blackwater has denied all responsibility (and liability) for their actions. Moreover, they argue, even if things did get a little out of hand there may have been insurgents within a hundred miles of their employer’s destination so creation of a ‘free-fire zone’ was an appropriate response. When I first read the report I purposefully held off comment because I was not sure which way the thing was heading, if any. Over the last several years there had been occasional reports on the doings of these so-called wildcat ‘service providers’. Now all hell has broken loose over the weekend shootings with the Iraqi government threatening reprisals and suspensions of permits. What gives?

Those of us who oppose this war, and particularly those of us who have fought it under the slogan of immediate withdrawal of all troops from Iraq, have been following the bouncing ball of timetables and ‘official’ troop drawdowns. In the meantime we have either ignored or downplayed the role that mercenaries (and frankly while these Blackwater agents and others may not satisfy that definition under international law that is what they are) have played in the ‘shadow war’. These are not nature’s noblemen (and women) but the dregs dragged from the hills of Arkansas, Idaho and the retirement communities around military bases, among others locales. Moreover, these people provide as much an ‘armed and dangerous’ threat to the Iraqi population as the ‘official’ troops. While the numbers are somewhat in dispute- ranging from 20,000 to 50,000- this is, in effect, a parallel ‘unofficial’ very well paid American army. As the reports have dribbled out of previously unreported (or under-reported) incidents a number of unidentified Iraqi civilians have alleged that they fear the ‘officials’ less than these rogue elements. Nice, right?

It is not as though we have not had our own experiences with these types. In the American Revolution we had to face those damn Hessians that George III (as far as I know not related to the current George, except politically in their joint fetishistic attachment to the prerogatives of the divine right of kings) send over to roust the rustics. By all reports the Hessians were the same kind of cutthroat hell-raisers as these foreign legionnaires who are strutting around in Iraq today. What does all this mean politically? Damn, as if we did not have enough to do in the withdrawal fight we now have to get out the old posters and rewrite our slogan- Immediate Withdrawal of All American Troops and Mercenaries from Iraq! Hessians Out! Oh yes, by the way, it would not be a bad idea to start subscribing to Soldier of Fortune magazine to see what the cowboys are up to these days. Enough said.

FREE UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE FOR ALL!

Commentary

HEALTH CARE IS A RIGHT NOT A PRIVILEGE

Over the past few weeks the leading Democratic presidential contenders, highlighted this week by Hillary Clinton’s plan, have spent time presenting their proposals for health care reform and/or creation of a national health care system. The Republicans simple program, in contrast, seems to follow my late, dearly departed grandmother’s advise- Don’t get sick. Sometimes, and health care is one of those issues, militants get dragged into current controversies where we do not like any of the proposals but we nevertheless have to make some comment to clear the political air on the subject. This seems to be such a time.

Please follow my reasoning on the question of health care. In a civilized society, and for that matter even uncivilized ones, everyone from the tiniest infant to those long of tooth deserves to be healthy. Thus it is a societal obligation to insure that condition. That will moreover still be the case, if not more so, under an advanced socialist society until we get a much better grip on how to handle the still pervasive mysteries of the human body than we have now. Once one assumes that insuring the health of our fellows is a societal task then the solution is practically a ‘no-brainer’. Our underlying slogan in this fight is not just ‘universal’ health coverage for all but free universal health care for all. In short, the real socialized health care solution so dreaded by the likes of the fully health-insured Republican presidential candidate ex-Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. Oddly, when he presided over ‘health care reform’ in Massachusetts he signed off on a plan that is very similar to Senator Clinton’s. Hmmm.

Alas, this society is so driven by the imperatives of the capitalist profit motive in all its social policies, even a fundamental one such as health, that such an eminently reasonable notion as free universal health care today has no pray of being advocated much less fought for in mainstream politics. Thus, others place militants in a position of evaluating any health care proposal on whether it drives us toward that above-stated goal. While recognizing that these proposals are not our program any such steps that take some of the profit motive out of the system and expand both the numbers covered and the quality of coverage are steps in the right direction. If such a system actually came into existence we would defend it against right-wing attempts to eliminate it in the same way we defend Social Security against such attempts. We would also raise propaganda around extending benefits and numbers insured. However realistically speaking, once the big business and AMA guns go after this, it looks like such proposals face the same tough sledding as the last efforts at reform in 1993.

WHEN THE WORLD DID NOT TURN UPSIDE DOWN-THE DEFEATED IN THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION

BOOK REVIEW

THE EXPERIENCE OF DEFEAT-MILTON AND SOME CONTEMPORIES, CHRISTOPHER HILL, PENGUIN BOOKS, NEW YORK, 1984

As I have noted in previous reviews of the work of Professor Hill although both the parliamentary and royalist sides in the English Revolution, the major revolutionary event of the 17th century, quoted the Bible, particularly the newer English versions, for every purpose from an account of the Fall to the virtues of primitive communism that revolution cannot be properly understood except as a secular revolution. The first truly secular revolution of modern times. The late pre-eminent historian of the under classes of the English Revolution Professor Hill has taken the myriad ideas, serious and zany, that surfaced during the period between 1640-60, the heart of the revolutionary period and analyzed their contemporary importance. Moreover, he has given us, as far as the surviving records permit, what happened to those ideas, the people who put them forth and their various reactions to the defeat of their ideas in the late revolutionary period and at the Restoration. And through it all hovers Hill’s ever present muse for the period, John Milton- the poet who tried to explain in verse the 'ways of God' to humankind at the failure of the ‘revolution of the saints’.

As been noted by more than one historian there is sometimes a disconnect between the ideas in the air at any particular time and the way those ideas get fought out in political struggle. In this case secular ideas, or what would have passed for such to us, like the questions of the divinity of the monarch, of social, political and economic redistribution and the nature of the new society (the second coming) were expressed in familiar religious terms. That being the case there is no better guide to understanding the significance of the mass of biblically-driven literary articles and some secular documents produced in the period than Professor Hill. Here we meet up again, as we have in Hill's other numerous volumes of work, with the democratic oppositionists, the Levelers; the Diggers, especially the thoughts of their leader Gerrard Winstanley, in many aspects the forerunner of a modern branch of communist thought; the Ranters, Seekers and Quakers who among them challenged every possible orthodox Christian theory and the usual cast of individual political and religious radicals like Samuel Fisher and, my personal favorite, Abiezer Coppe.

As I have noted elsewhere a key to understanding that plebian entry onto history's stage and that underscores the widespread discussion of many of these trends is Cromwell's New Model Army where the plebian base and the frustrated professional middle class, for a time anyway, had serious input into the direction that society might take. Some fellow historians have criticized Hill on the question of how important this was in the overall scheme of things but the last word on the impact of those ideas and their influence has not been spoken. In any case, as these radicals were moved to the margins of political society they had various reactions familiar as well in later revolutions- passivity, silence, a personally opportunistic acceptance of the new order and, in too few cases, a fight to save the revolutionary gains. In many ways Professor Hill's book is a study of what happened when for lack of a better term, the Thermodorian reaction- the ebb of the revolution set in and a portion of those 'masterless' men had to deal with the consequences of defeat for the plebian masses during the Protectorate and Restoration. The heroic attempts to save the revolution in danger by the Fifth Monarchy uprisings, composed of former soldiers, and the return of Quakers to the Army in 1659 only underscore that point. Those of us on today’s embattled plebian left now know we had some honorable predecessors.

*From The Marxist Archives- Friedrich Engels "On Authority"- A Guest Commentary

Click on the headline to link to "Workers Vanguard", dated September 14, 2007, for the article on the subject noted above.

Markin comment:

I will listen to anything that old Friedrich Engels has to say on almost any subject anytime.

*From The Pages Of "Workers Vanguard" Defend Immigrant Rights!-A Guest Commentary

Click on the headline to link to "Workers Vanguard", dated September 14, 2007, for the article on the subject noted above.

Markin comment:

This issue is a no-brainer for leftists and for trade union militants who must understand that immigrant workers, many times, bring valuable class-struggle experience in their baggage. We need that experience as well in the international struggle we face, and which has become more important with the increased "globalization" of international capitalism.

*WE NEED ANOTHER STRATEGY TO END THIS DAMN WAR

Click on the title to link to an "Under The Hood" (Fort Hood G.I. Coffeehouse)Web site online article about the "Oleo Strut" Coffeehouse, an important development in the anti-Vietnam War struggle. Hats off to those bygone anti-war fighters.

COMMENTARY

SOMETIMES THE BIG ISSUES OF WAR AND PEACE CAN ONLY BE RESOLVED ON THE STREETS

IMMEDIATE UNCONDITIONAL WITHDRAWAL FROM IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN

It is very nice to be able to periodically run old George W. Bush through with a rhetoric spear and Thursday night's speech to the nation has once again taken us nicely down ‘neocon’ memory lane with a certain flourish. Somethings no matter how one packages them defy changing. I will admit I will miss the ‘old boy’ as a target when he is gone. Not as much as I miss his puppet master, Karl Rove, but I will miss him nevertheless. After almost seven years George Bush, however, is just too ‘soft’ a target and it is no longer ‘clever’ as sign of political sophistication to make hay from that source in order to end this damn war. Christ, my mother, a life long ‘bleeding heart’ conservative Republican, is taking potshots at him.If one is looking for parliamentary targets as obstacles in the struggle to immediately end this war the Congressional Democrats are more tempting. And they deserve it because in the end they knew, or should have known, better than to go along with the Bush agenda in Iraq in the early days.

However, after all the parliamentary wrangling and bleeding over the floor of Congress this spring on the war budget it is almost no longer fun to rip the establishment Democrats for their weak-kneed policy either. Even if Senator Reed, in response, last night made the right parliamentary points the sad reality is those policies on not funding the war are not going to happen. Moreover, here is the hard reality. A Democratic Party consensus appears to be forming that in the likelihood of a Democratic presidential victory in 2008 (most likely by a centrist) troop limits will not drop off significantly under that presidency and will remain in Iraq for ….. (Fill in the blank). In capsule form there are three prongs to that strategy 1. Avoid genocide and ‘ethnic cleansing’ in Iraq; 2. Cut off safe havens for Al Queda in the region 3. Counter and contain Iranian influence in the region. That, my friends, is realpolitik, Democratic style. To these eyes that means many troops for many years. End of story.

Well, where the hell does that leave serious anti-war militants? Our slogan is for Immediate Unconditional Withdrawal. That means today (if not yesterday). Does anything said recently by any politician of note even touch on that? They are all backpedaling using the huge logistical problems to, in practice, negate the impact of that slogan. We need another strategy if we are to win this battle against the war. The long and short of it is looking for parliamentary solutions and depending on the ‘good graces’ of anti-war Democrats has had its day. I have been advocating for over a year on my blog site American Left History that we change the axis of our political struggle and form anti-war soldiers and sailors solidarity committees in order to link up with the rank and file troops and lead us to an end of the war. A couple of years ago that would have seemed somewhat far- fetched, and may strike some readers here as far too radical today, however it comes closer to political wisdom for the left than those tired old parliamentary maneuvers. Let me make one historical point in defense of my position. When the deal goes down on the question of war and peace the only time that war stops in the ‘people’s’ interest is when the soldiers themselves put down their arms. In modern times I would refer the reader to World War I, the Russian Revolution and the American experience in the latter parts of the Vietnam War. More, much more on this later.

BATTLING ON THE DAILY KOS

COMMENTARY

AS OF SEPTEMBER 13, 2007 SOME OF MY COMMENTARY WILL ALSO BE POSTED ON THE DAILY KOS. THE RATIONALE FOR THIS IS DISCUSSED IN THE COMMENTARY BELOW.


Note: I am entering the lists of Daily Kos as a matter of taking my own advice. For a long time now I have argued on my American Left History blog at www blogger.com that, unlike in my youth when one could barely walk the streets without running in one or more fellow radical activists, today’s fight against the Iraqi War (and for other progressive causes) demands a fight for the ‘soul’ of young, thoughtful, disenchanted liberals. I have been advised that that means being on this site. So be it. Let the polemical fights begin. However, let the fight against the supporters of this war and this system, their agents, toadies, flaks and hangers-on never end.

A point on style- In order to flesh out this diary a little at the start I am posting some of my more relevant commentary from the above-mentioned blog site. I make no bones about the fact that I am a militant leftist propagandist. I am used to no-holds barred polemical in-fighting within the extreme left. However, I agree with George Orwell’s ideas about style and the English language. One must sense one’s audience and act accordingly. Thus as I get more familiar with this site I will adjust my style accordingly. Style changes-yes. Core politics-no.

*" A PROPHET IN HIS OWN TIME?"

Click on the title to link to an "Under The Hood" (Fort Hood G.I. Coffeehouse)Web site online article about the "Oleo Strut" Coffeehouse, an important development in the anti-Vietnam War struggle. Hats off to those bygone anti-war fighters.

COMMENTARY

THE GRIM REAPERS DESCEND ON WASHINGTON

IMMEDIATE UNCONDITIONAL WITHDRAWAL FROM IRAQ

FORGET REPUBLICANS, DEMOCRATS AND GREENS! BUILD A WORKERS PARTY !

Well, the long awaited, much leaked, media-hyped testimony concerning the effects of the ‘surge’ in Iraq to Congress by lead American General Petreaus and Ambassador Crocker is finally upon us and, as one suspected, there were no surprises. The reality, as I mentioned months ago, is this war will continue at this same basis level at least until the end of the Bush Administration in January 2009. For those of us hardened leftists opposed to Iraq policy from the beginning this was just one more confirmation that American imperialist hubris has no endgame, at least until we can built a strong oppositional force.

Today’s commentary, however, is directed more toward my liberal friends who really believed after the 2006 mid-tern elections that it was only a hop, step and a jump until America pulled out of Iraq completely. You know, Immediate Withdrawal. During those ‘halcyon days’ I took no end of political abuse by these same liberal friends who snidely advised me on my need for various forms of mental therapy in order to get a grip on reality. No more. Over the past few weeks, as it became increasing clear that the grim reaper had descended on Washington and that there was no ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ for liberal illusionists I have been having conversations with and getting calls from those same friends calling me a ‘prophet’. What gives?

What gives is this. Marxism is a very helpful tool in order to understand politics and more importantly the underlying circumstances behind those politics. However, it does not take, although it surely helps, Marxist training to have seen what was coming barreling headlong down the road once the American Iraqi juggernaut was launched. Understanding that the Bush Administration was, and is, in a blind alley being captive to its own imperialist illusions was just the beginning of wisdom. Additionally, one must understand that these are not rational people, not in our sense of the word, and one must treat them with the same care that one approaches a viper. My liberal friends, having become over the years increasing immersed in parliamentary tactics, have forgotten their better instincts. Moreover they have forgotten how to fight 'dirty' or that sometimes the street is the only place to resolve big questions like war and peace. Thus, when I appeared even to friends to be a lunatic arguing that the troops would be staying in Iraq all these liberal friends could think about was how quickly Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid were going to get them out. Well, the results are now in on that little illusion.

Where do we go from here? As part of the build-up to this week's Congressional hearings there has been much chatter about the time frame for a total withdrawal even if it started today. Due to the huge logistical problems various estimates have ranged from nine months to well over a year. On hearing this one friend remarked, echoing others, it is a lot easier to get into a war than to get out of it. As a result of this chatter some have challenged the relevancy of the slogan Immediate Unconditional Withdrawal. At the military logistical level the time frame may be true. However, what we are talking about here is political will, the political will to withdraw. That is what we have to regroup around. Parliamentary maneuvering like last spring’s Congressional tussle over the Iraqi War budget is passé. We have to do things like build those anti-war soldier and sailor solidarity committees I have been propagandizing for over the last year in order to undercut the seemingly endless desire for the current leadership of the anti-war movement to shrift right to accommodate bourgeois leaders or to keep the same passive ‘rational’ strategy they have muddled along with for five years now. I find no virtue in being a ‘prophet’. Prediction without effect is for carnival fortune-tellers. The point is to struggle to change outcomes. We need to win this fight against war, and we badly need it now. Enough said.

THIS IS PART OF A SERIES OF ARTICLES OF COMMENTARY ON THE 2006-2008 ELECTION CYCLE UNDER THE HEADLINE- FORGET THE DONKEYS, ELEPHANTS, GREENS-BUILD A WORKERS PARTY!

A LITERARY LOOK AT THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN

BOOK REVIEW

LIBERTY AGAINST THE LAW, CHRISTOPHER HILL, PENQUIN, NEW YORK, 1998

The late pre-eminent historian of the underclasses of the English Revolution, Christopher Hill, has taken the myriad literary and cultural ideas, serious and zany, that surfaced during the period between 1620-1720, the heart of the conversion of England from an agricultural to an embryonic capitalist economy, and given us his take on some previously understudied and misunderstood notions, many that have not made the conventional history books. I note that he uses as his endpoint John Gay’s Beggar’s Opera, a work later adapted for the stage by Bertolt Brecht, and that I have reviewed elsewhere in this space (see September 2007 archives). One of the points discussed in that review is whether the figure of one MacHealth, the central figure of the work, former imperial soldier and leader of a profitable criminal gang is an incipient capitalist or the relic of an earlier age. Professor Hill’s book would seem to provide ammunition for the proposition that Mac Health, like the legendary Robin Hood, was a representative figure of the ‘freedom’ from the imperatives of capitalist contract, routine and law and harked back to the values of the old pastoral society.

In this expansively footnoted book Mr. Hill, as he has done in his other work, connects the dramatic break up of traditional agrarian English society; the resulting vast increase of 'master less' men not bound to traditional authority and potentially receptive to new ideas; the widespread availability of the protestant Bible brought about by the revolution in printing and thus permitting widespread distribution to the masses; the effects of the Protestant Reformation on individual responsibility; the discrediting of the theology of the divine right of kings; the role of the priesthood of all believers that foreshadow a very modern concept of the validity of individual religious expression; radical interpretations of equality and primitive communism, particularly the work of Gerrard Winstanley ; the Puritan ethic and many more subjects of interests to bring to life what the common people who hitherto had barely entered the stage of history were reading, watching, thinking and doing.

Professor Hill as well, using the extensive prose and poetic literature of the age as a guide, gives us a rudimentary cultural tour of how the under classes responded to the break down of their tradition agrarian lives (and the generally brutal reply of the ruling classes). Elsewhere he has discussed ‘masterless’ men driven out of the villages, forests and fens by the enclosures of the land in the interest of capitalist agricultural production for the market. Here he discusses the literature developed around those men (and women). He tackles, for those who know his work, the now familiar themes of Robin Hood, highwaymen, vagrants, beggars and the like. He moreover, as always, connects trends in biblical interpretation with their effect on the on-going social changes. Furthermore he does an extensive study of the literature of English imperialist expansion during the period connecting up such subjects as the ‘noble savage’, ‘going native’ and the effects of English colonization on both the oppressed and the oppressor. While he brings in his usual cast of characters like the Seekers, Ranters and Quakers and individuals like Abiezer Coppe and others they are more background figures in this exposition. I would also suggest that before one tackles this work that a reading of Professor Hill’s The World Turned Upside Down would be in order.

*ORGANIZE THE COAL MINERS!

Click on the title to link to a "YouTube" film clip of Pete Seeger performing performing the classic coal country song "Which Side Are You On?"

ORGANIZE THE COAL MINERS!

COMMENTARY

MOURN, BUT THEN ORGANIZE!

In my recent Labor Scorecard 2007 commentary (see September 2007 archives) and elsewhere I have noted that a key to the revitalization of the American labor movement is the unionization of Wal-Mart and the South, two giant tasks that would go a long way toward a return of labor militancy. In short, organize the unorganized. Those tasks are still central to such a recovery, however, the recent mine disaster at the Crandall Canyon Mines in Utah and last year’s disaster at Sago, West Virginia have brought to mind how precarious conditions are in the mines. And that is not even to speak of the seemingly daily disasters in the Chinese mines and elsewhere. Tunneling deep underground is just not a safe operation under any circumstances. Impelled by the profit motive, as Crandall Canyon so graphically demonstrated, it can be nothing short of industrial murder. Moreover, I have also read a recent article on the state of unionization in the American automobile industry that was at one time significantly unionized. The most dramatic statistic that I gathered from the article was that while there are almost as many auto workers as there were at the height of the unions today only one third of that work force is unionized. So militant unionists are today confronted with more than the question of organizing previously unorganized workers. Thus, an expansion drive for membership of these previously militant unions, in effect a reorganization, is on the agenda today.

Historically some of the most dramatic labor battles in America involved the United Mine Workers and other miners’ unions. One need only think of the “Molly McGuires” in the Pennsylvania coal fields, the names Ludlow, Butte, Coeur d’Alene, the Western Federation of Miners led by the legendary “Big” Bill Haywood and of other lesser known class struggles led by him and the International Workers of the World (IWW, Wobblies). The names roll off the tongue in endless succession. More recently one remembers the great battles in the Eastern mines, especially West Virginia, up to the 1970’s. If one location epitomized theses long labor struggles one need only mention one name Harlan, famous in story and song, in the hills of Kentucky to remember when militant miners knew how to fight (as well as the built-in limitations to a successful fight, as well). My father, before he escaped the coal fields by joining the Marines in World War II, ‘worked the coal’ as a boy and young man around Hazard, Kentucky, another legendary mining name. He had many a story to tell about those experiences and it is a measure of how bad conditions were that he happily went into the Marines in order to escape that life. One lesson that he imparted to me and one that offers us hope is the tradition, honored more in the breech that the observance now, of the miners-Picket lines mean don’t cross. Every militant needs to have that slogan etched in his or her brain.

That said, today’s coal economics do not make the task any easier than in earlier times. Coal production has had a very stormy and topsy-turvy history and unemployment and abandonment of worked-over mines is only part of the story. Recently, with the increased price of other fossil fuels, mainly oil, coal ‘clean or dirty’ has become more valuable. Thus, old unsafe mines and other formerly forgotten fields are being worked today by the same old greedy capitalist investors that we all remember from the ‘age of the robber barons’. Moreover the location of the fields in remote areas and, frankly, the parochialism and localism of the work force make organizing as difficult as it always has been. Add to the mix, as noticeable in Crandall Canyon, the waves of immigrants swarming to the fields in search of desperately needed work and there is a handful. Yes, those are all problems to be confronted during a fight but the most serious problem is the lack of interest of today’s leadership of the Mine Workers and of the AFL-CIO to make this fight. And that is where our fight has to begin.

Lest I be accused of the dreaded sin of ‘dual unionism’ let me make clear that this fight to reorganize the miners has to begin within the current organized union structures as a matter of common sense. Tackling the individual, disparate owners piecemeal with local unions is not the way forward. We want one big industry-wide, nation-wide (or for that matter, world-wide) union. End of story. What we do not want to do is rely on the good graces of governmental agencies, in this case, the Mine Safety and Health Administration. As the results of Crandall Canyon demonstrate reliance on this toothless (for labor) agency is a sure sign of defeat before we start.

A central demand beyond the tradition ones of union recognition, wages and working conditions is the absolute necessity to fight for a workers safety committee controlled by the union that would prohibit work in unsafe mines and address other mine safety issues. Let us be clear again this is not some tripartite (labor, capitalist, government) committee but a union one. If one wants to know what the embryonic stages of workers control of production under capitalism but before the victory of socialism might look like that should be our model. It is a life and death struggle. All trade union militants should be demanding that instead of using your hard earned dues to elect one or another of the bourgeois candidates in 2008 that those dues go to organizing the mines, auto and the unorganized. That, my friends, is the beginning of labor wisdom now. As the legendary labor organizer Joe Hill reputedly said before his execution in Utah for the 'sin' of union organizing- Don’t mourn, Organize!

***Labor's Untold Story- Remember The Heroic Homestead Steel Strike of 1892

Click on title to link to PBS documentary information about the Homestead Strike of 1892. There are many lessons about the role of the state, whose state it is, how to organize, how not to organize and who to rely on from that class battle that are applicable to day.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/carnegie/peopleevents/pande04.html

Every Month Is Labor History Month


This Commentary is part of a series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!

As a first run through, and in some cases until I can get enough other sources in order to make a decent presentation, I will start with short entries on each topic that I will eventually go into greater detail about. Or, better yet, take my suggested topic and run with it yourself.

*Labor's Untold Story-The Strange Odyssey Of General Coxey

Click on title to link to Wikipedia's entry for Civil War general and sometime labor leader James Coxey (of the expression, old fashioned by now) of Coxey's Army.

Every Month Is Labor History Month

This Commentary is part of a series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!

As a first run through, and in some cases until I can get enough other sources in order to make a decent presentation, I will start with short entries on each topic that I will eventually go into greater detail about. Or, better yet, take my suggested topic and run with it yourself.

*Labor's Untold Story- "Labor Statesman" Samuel Gompers

Click on title to link to Wikipedia's entry for early American Federation Of Labor (AFL)"leader" Samuel Gompers. He spent two minutes as a Marxist devotee in his youth (sound familiar?)and the rest of his life as a labor skate of the first order for which we are still paying for. Hold your nose and read. More, much more on this one later in the series.

Every Month Is Labor History Month

This Commentary is part of a series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!

As a first run through, and in some cases until I can get enough other sources in order to make a decent presentation, I will start with short entries on each topic that I will eventually go into greater detail about. Or, better yet, take my suggested topic and run with it yourself.

*LEON TROTSKY ON KRONSTADT 1921-The Echos Of History

Click on title to link to Wikipedia's entry for the Kronstadt 1921 events. This is linked here for those unfamiliar with the events that form the basic for Leon Trotsky's polemic below. I have made my political position clear in my commentary and I do not vouch for the truth of any statements made in the Wikipedia entry. Needless to say this sis a"hot button" subject of controversy between communists and anarchists.

COMMENTARY

The question of the Kronstadt sailors uprising of 1921 in Russia at the end of the Civil War period has always been controversial both within the communist movement and outside and has come to be seen as THE dividing point by most of the latter day anarchist movement. Below I have posted an article by Leon Trotsky in 1938 which puts paid to his part in the controversy.

As to this writer’s opinion in the controversy I stand with Leon Trotsky’s position as declared as late as 1938 that, all things considered, that he stood by the military decision to suppress the Kronstadt Fortress and took political responsibility for it. I believe that those who discount the importance of the Bolshevik action at that time in defense of the workers state at the tail end of the Civil War have a frivolous attitude toward the conquests of the workers movement. Although it is entirely possible today to be a good revolutionary and have an incorrect, or no, opinion on Kronstadt it is hard to see where such people would fall when the defense of current workers states comes in to operation. Additionally, Kronstadt 1921 and one Nestor Makhno have come to have iconic value for the anarchist movement against all the serious tasks confronting the international workers movement today. I would ask those thoughtful anarchists whom care about that fight is it not about time to move on?


HUE AND CRY OVER KRONSTADT

Written: April 1938

First Published: The New International, Volume 4, No. 4 April 1938, pages 103 - 106.

Translated: By The New International

Transcription/HTML Markup: David Walters

Copyleft: Leon Trotsky Internet Archive (www.marxists.org) 2003. Permission is
granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the GNU Free
Documentation License

A "People's Front" of Denouncers

The campaign around Kronstadt is being carried on with undiminished vigor in certain circles. One would think that the Kronstadt revolt occurred not seventeen years ago, but only yesterday. Participating in the campaign with equal zeal and under one and the same slogan are Anarchists, Russian Mensheviks, left Social Democrats of the London Bureau, individual blunderers, Miliukov's paper, and, on occasion, the big capitalist press. A "People's Front" of its own kind!

Only yesterday I happened across the following lines in a Mexican weekly which is both reactionary Catholic and "democratic": "Trotsky ordered the shooting of 1,500 (?) Kronstadt sailors, these purest of the pure. His policy when in power differed in no way from the present policy of Stalin." As is known, the left Anarchists draw the same conclusion. When for the first time in the press I briefly answered the questions of Wendelin Thomas, member of the New York Commission of Inquiry, the Russian Mensheviks' paper immediately came to the defense of the Kronstadt sailors and ... of Wendelin Thomas. Miliukov's paper came forward in the same spirit. The Anarchists attacked me with still greater vigor. All these authorities claim that my answer was completely worthless. This unanimity is all the more remarkable since the Anarchists defend, in the symbol of Kronstadt, genuine anti-state communism; the Mensheviks, at the time of the Kronstadt uprising, stood openly for the restoration of capitalism; and Miliukov stands for capitalism even now.

How can the Kronstadt uprising cause such heartburn to Anarchists, Mensheviks, and "liberal" counterrevolutionists, all at the same time? The answer is simple: all these groupings are interested in compromising the only genuinely revolutionary current, which has never repudiated its banner, has not compromised with its enemies, and alone represents the future. It is because of this that among the belated denouncers of my Kronstadt "crime" there are so many former revolutionists or semi-revolutionists, people who have lost their program and their principles and who find it necessary to divert attention from the degradation of the Second International or the perfidy of the Spanish Anarchists. As yet, the Stalinists cannot openly join this campaign around Kronstadt but even they, of course, rub their hands with pleasure; for the blows are directed against "Trotskyism," against revolutionary Marxism, against the Fourth International!

Why in particular has this variegated fraternity seized precisely upon Kronstadt? During the years of the revolution we clashed not a few times with the Cossacks, the peasants, even with certain layers of workers (certain groups of workers from the Urals organized a volunteer regiment in the army of Kolchak!). The antagonism between the workers as consumers and the peasants as producers and sellers of bread lay, in the main, at the root of these conflicts. Under the pressure of need and deprivation, the workers themselves were episodically divided into hostile camps, depending upon stronger or weaker ties with the village. The Red Army also found itself under the influence of the countryside. During the years of the civil war it was necessary more than once to disarm discontented regiments. The introduction of the "New Economic Policy" (NEP) attenuated the friction but far from eliminated it. On the contrary, it paved the way for the rebirth of kulaks [ wealthy peasants ] and led, at the beginning of this decade, to the renewal of civil war in the village. The Kronstadt uprising was only an episode in the history of the relations between the proletarian city and the petty-bourgeois village. It is possible to understand this episode only in connection with the general course of the development of the class struggle during the revolution.

Kronstadt differed from a long series of other petty-bourgeois movements and uprisings only by its greater external effect. The problem here involved a maritime fortress under Petrograd itself. During the uprising proclamations were issued and radio broadcasts were made. The Social Revolutionaries and the Anarchists, hurrying from Petrograd, adorned the uprising with "noble" phrases and gestures. All this left traces in print. With the aid of these "documentary" materials (i.e., false labels), it is not hard to construct a legend about Kronstadt, all the more exalted since in 1917 the name Kronstadt was surrounded by a revolutionary halo. Not idly does the Mexican magazine quoted above ironically call the Kronstadt sailors the "purest of the pure."

The play upon the revolutionary authority of Kronstadt is one of the distinguishing features of this truly charlatan campaign. Anarchists, Mensheviks, liberals, reactionaries try to present the matter as if at the beginning of 1921 the Bolsheviks turned their, weapons on those very Kronstadt sailors who guaranteed the victory of the October insurrection. Here is the point of departure for all the subsequent falsehoods. Whoever wishes to unravel these lies should first of all read the article by Comrade J.G. Wright in the New International (February 1938). My problem is another one: I wish to describe the character of the Kronstadt uprising from a more general point of view.

Social and Political Groupings in Kronstadt

A revolution is "made" directly by a minority. The success of a revolution is possible, however, only where this minority finds more or less support, or at least friendly neutrality, on the part of the majority. The shift in different stages of the revolution, like the transition from revolution to counterrevolution, is directly determined by changing political relations between the minority and the majority, between the vanguard and the class.

Among the Kronstadt sailors there were three political layers: the proletarian revolutionists, some with a serious past and training; the intermediate majority, mainly peasant in origin; and finally, the reactionaries, sons of kulaks, shopkeepers, and priests. In czarist times, order on battleships and in the fortress could be maintained only so long as the officers, acting through the reactionary sections of the petty officers and sailors, subjected the broad intermediate layer to their influence or terror, thus isolating the revolutionists, mainly the machinists, the gunners, and the electricians, i.e., predominantly the city workers.

The course of the uprising on the battleship Potemkin in 1905 was based entirely on the relations among these three layers, i.e., on the struggle between proletarian and petty-bourgeois reactionary extremes for influence upon the more numerous middle peasant layer. Whoever has not understood this problem, which runs through the whole revolutionary movement in the fleet, had best be silent about the problems of the Russian revolution in general. For it was entirely, and to a great degree still is, a struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie for influence upon the peasantry. During the Soviet period the bourgeoisie has appeared principally in the guise of kulaks (i.e., the top stratum of the petty bourgeoisie), the "socialist" intelligentsia, and now in the form of the "Communist" bureaucracy. Such is the basic mechanism of the revolution in all its stages. In the fleet it assumed a more centralized, and therefore more dramatic expression.

The political composition of the Kronstadt Soviet reflected the composition of the garrison and the crews. The leadership of the Soviets as early as the summer of 1917 belonged to the Bolshevik Party, which rested on the better sections of the sailors and included in its ranks many revolutionists from the underground movement who had been liberated from the hard-labor prisons. But I seem to recall that even in the days of the October insurrection the Bolsheviks constituted less than one-half of the Kronstadt Soviet. The majority consisted of SRs and Anarchists. There were no Mensheviks at all in Kronstadt. The Menshevik Party hated Kronstadt. The official SRs, incidentally, had no better attitude toward it. The Kronstadt SRs quickly went over into opposition to Kerensky and formed one of the shock brigades of the so-called "left" SRs. They based themselves on the peasant part of the fleet and of the shore garrison. As for the Anarchists, they were the most motley group. Among them were real revolutionists, like Zhuk and Zhelezniakov, but these were the elements most closely linked to the Bolsheviks. Most of the Kronstadt "Anarchists" represented the city petty bourgeoisie and stood upon a lower revolutionary level than the SRs. The president of the soviet was a nonparty man, "sympathetic to the Anarchists," and in essence a peaceful petty clerk who had been formerly subservient to the czarist authorities and was now subservient... to the revolution. The complete absence of Mensheviks, the "left" character of the SRs, and the Anarchist hue of the petty bourgeois were due to the sharpness of the revolutionary struggle in the fleet and the dominating influence of the proletarian sections of the sailors.

Changes During the Years of Civil War

This social and political characterization of Kronstadt which, if desired, could be substantiated and illustrated by many facts and documents, is already sufficient to illuminate the upheavals which occurred in Kronstadt during the years of the civil war and as a result of which its physiognomy changed beyond recognition. Precisely about this important aspect of the question, the belated accusers say not one word, partly out of ignorance, partly out of malevolence.

Yes, Kronstadt wrote a heroic page in the history of the revolution. But the civil war began a systematic depopulation of Kronstadt and of the whole Baltic fleet. As early as the days of the October uprising, detachments of Kronstadt sailors were being sent to help Moscow. Other detachments were then sent to the Don, to the Ukraine, to requisition bread and organize the local power. It seemed at first as if Kronstadt were inexhaustible. From different fronts I sent dozens of telegrams about the mobilization of new "reliable" detachments from among the Petersburg workers and the Baltic sailors. But beginning as early as 1918, and in any case not later than 1919, the fronts began to complain that the new contingents of "Kronstadters" were unsatisfactory, exacting, undisciplined, unreliable in battle, and doing more harm than good. After the liquidation of Yudenich (in the winter of 1919), the Baltic fleet and the Kronstadt garrison were denuded of all revolutionary forces. All the elements among them that were of any use at all were thrown against Denikin in the south. If in 1917-18 the Kronstadt sailor stood considerably higher than the average level of the Red Army and formed the framework of its first detachments as well as the framework of the Soviet regime in many districts, those sailors who remained in "peaceful" Kronstadt until the beginning of 1921, not fitting in on any of the fronts of the civil war, stood by this time on a level considerably lower, in general, than the average level of the Red Army, and included a great percentage of completely demoralized elements, wearing showy bell-bottom pants and sporty haircuts.

Demoralization based on hunger and speculation had in general greatly increased by the end of the civil war. The so called "sack-carriers" (petty speculators) had become a social blight, threatening to stifle the revolution. Precisely in Kronstadt where the garrison did nothing and had everything it needed, the demoralization assumed particularly great dimensions. When conditions became very critical in hungry Petrograd the Political Bureau more than once discussed the possibility of securing an "internal loan" from Kronstadt, where a quantity of old provisions still remained. But delegates of the Petrograd workers answered: "You will get nothing from them by kindness. They speculate in cloth, coal, and bread. At present in Kronstadt every kind of riffraff has raised its head." That was the real situation. It was not like the sugar-sweet idealizations after the event.

It must further be added that former sailors from Latvia and Estonia who feared they would be sent to the front and were preparing to cross into their new bourgeois fatherlands, Latvia and Estonia, had joined the Baltic fleet as "volunteers." These elements were in essence hostile to the Soviet authority and displayed this hostility fully in the days of the Kronstadt uprising. . . . Besides these there were many thousands of Latvian workers, mainly former farm laborers, who showed unexampled heroism on all fronts of the civil war. We must not, therefore, tar the Latvian workers and the "Kronstadters" with the same brush. We must recognize social and political differences.

The Social Roots of the Uprising

The problem of a serious student consists in defining, on the basis of the objective circumstances, the social and political character of the Kronstadt mutiny and its place in the development of the revolution. Without this, "criticism" is reduced to sentimental lamentation of the pacifist kind in the spirit of Alexander Berkman, Emma Goldman, and their latest imitators. These gentlefolk do not have the slightest understanding of the criteria and methods of scientific research. They quote the proclamations of the insurgents like pious preachers quoting Holy Scriptures. They complain, moreover, that I do not take into consideration the "documents," i.e., the gospel of Makhno and the other apostles. To take documents "into consideration" does not mean to take them at their face value. Marx has said that it is impossible to judge either parties or peoples by what they say about themselves. The characteristics of a party are determined considerably more by its social composition, its past, its relation to different classes and strata, than by its oral and written declarations, especially during a critical moment of civil war. If, for example, we began to take as pure gold the innumerable proclamations of Negrin, Companys, Garcia Oliver, and Company, we would have to recognize these gentlemen as fervent friends of socialism. But in reality they are its perfidious enemies.

In 1917-18 the revolutionary workers led the peasant masses, not only of the fleet but of the entire country. The peasants seized and divided the land most often under the leadership of the soldiers and sailors arriving in their home districts. Requisitions of bread had only begun and were mainly from the landlords and kulaks at that. The peasants reconciled themselves to requisitions as a temporary evil. But the civil war dragged on for three years. The city gave practically nothing to the village and took almost everything from it, chiefly for the needs of war. The peasants approved of the "Bolsheviks" but became increasingly hostile to the "Communists." If in the preceding period the workers had led the peasants forward, the peasants now dragged the workers back. Only because of this change in mood could the Whites partially attract the peasants, and even the half-peasants-half-workers, of the Urals to their side. This mood, i.e., hostility to the city, nourished the movement of Makhno, who seized and looted trains marked for the factories, the plants, and the Red Army, tore up railroad tracks, shot Communists, etc. Of course, Makhno called this the Anarchist struggle with the "state." In reality, this was a struggle of the infuriated petty property owner against the proletarian dictatorship. A similar movement arose in a number of other districts, especially in Tambovsky, under the banner of "Social Revolutionaries." Finally, in different parts of the country so-called "Green" peasant detachments were active. They did not want to recognize either the Reds or the Whites and shunned the city parties. The "Greens" sometimes met the Whites and received severe blows from them, but they did not, of course, get any mercy from the Reds. Just as the petty bourgeoisie is ground economically between the millstones of big capital and the proletariat, so the peasant partisan detachments were pulverized between the Red Army and the White.

Only an entirely superficial person can see in Makhno's bands or in the Kronstadt revolt a struggle between the abstract principles of Anarchism and "state socialism." Actually these movements were convulsions of the peasant petty bourgeoisie which desired, of course, to liberate itself from capital but which at the same time did not consent to subordinate itself to the dictatorship of the proletariat. The petty bourgeoisie does not know concretely what it wants, and by virtue of its position cannot know. That is why it so readily covered the confusion of its demands and hopes, now with the Anarchist banner, now with the populist, now simply with the "Green." Counterposing itself to the proletariat, it tried, flying all these banners, to turn the wheel of the revolution backwards.

The Counterrevolutionary Character of the Kronstadt Mutiny

There were, of course, no impassable bulkheads dividing the different social and political layers of Kronstadt. There were still at Kronstadt a certain number of qualified workers and technicians to take care of the machinery. But even they were identified by a method of negative selection as politically unreliable and of little use for the civil war. Some "leaders" of the uprising came from among these elements. However, this completely natural and inevitable circumstance, to which some accusers triumphantly point, does not change by one iota the anti-proletarian character of the revolt. Unless we are to deceive ourselves with pretentious slogans, false labels, etc., we shall see that the Kronstadt uprising was nothing but an armed reaction of the petty bourgeoisie against the hardships of social revolution and the severity of the proletarian dictatorship.

That was exactly the significance of the Kronstadt slogan, "Soviets without Communists," which was immediately seized upon, not only by the SRs but by the bourgeois liberals as well. As a rather farsighted representative of capital, Professor Miliukov understood that to free the Soviets from the leadership of the Bolsheviks would have meant within a short time to demolish the Soviets themselves. The experience of the Russian Soviets during the period of Menshevik and SR domination and, even more clearly, the experience of the German and Austrian Soviets under the domination of the Social Democrats, proved this. Social Revolutionary-Anarchist Soviets could serve only as a bridge from the proletarian dictatorship to capitalist restoration. They could play no other role, regardless of the "ideas" of their participants. The Kronstadt uprising thus had a counterrevolutionary character.

From the class point of view, which—without offense to the honorable eclectics— remains the basic criterion not only for politics but for history, it is extremely important to contrast the behavior of Kronstadt to that of Petrograd in those critical days. The whole leading stratum of the workers had also been drawn out of Petrograd. Hunger and cold reigned in the deserted capital, perhaps even more fiercely than in Moscow. A heroic and tragic period! All were hungry and irritable. All were dissatisfied. In the factories there was dull discontent. Underground organizers sent by the SRs and the White officers tried to link the military uprising with the movement of the discontented workers.

The Kronstadt paper wrote about barricades in Petrograd, about thousands being killed. The press of the whole world proclaimed the same thing. Actually the precise opposite occurred. The Kronstadt uprising did not attract the Petrograd workers. It repelled them. The stratification proceeded along class lines. The workers immediately felt that the Kronstadt mutineers stood on the opposite side of the barricades—and they supported the Soviet power. The political isolation of Kronstadt was the cause of its internal uncertainty and its military defeat.

The NEP and the Kronstadt Uprising

Victor Serge, who, it would seem, is trying to manufacture a sort of synthesis of anarchism, POUMism, and Marxism, has intervened very unfortunately in the polemic about Kronstadt. In his opinion, the introduction of the NEP one year earlier could have averted the Kronstadt uprising. Let us admit that. But advice like this is very easy to give after the event. It is true, as Victor Serge remembers, that I had proposed the transition to the NEP as early as 1920. But I was not at all sure in advance of its success. It was no secret to me that the remedy could prove to be more dangerous than the malady itself. When I met opposition from the leaders of the party, I did not appeal to the ranks, in order to avoid mobilizing the petty bourgeoisie against the workers. The experience of the ensuing twelve months was required to convince the party of the need for the new course. But the remarkable thing is that it was precisely the Anarchists all over the world who looked upon the NEP as ... a betrayal of communism. But now the advocates of the Anarchists denounce us for not having introduced the NEP a year earlier.

In 1921 Lenin more than once openly acknowledged that the party's obstinate defense of the methods of Military Communism had become a great mistake. But does this change matters? Whatever the immediate or remote causes of the Kronstadt rebellion, it was in its very essence a mortal danger to the dictatorship of the proletariat. Simply because it had been guilty of a political error, should the proletarian revolution really have committed suicide to punish itself?

Or perhaps it would have been sufficient to inform the Kronstadt sailors of the NEP decrees to pacify them? Illusion! The insurgents did not have a conscious program and they could not have had one because of the very nature of the petty bourgeoisie. They themselves did not clearly understand that what their fathers and brothers needed first of all was free trade. They were discontented and confused but they saw no way out. The more conscious, i.e., the rightist elements, acting behind the scenes, wanted the restoration of the bourgeois regime. But they did not say so out loud. The "left" wing wanted the liquidation of discipline, "free Soviets," and better rations. The regime of the NEP could only gradually pacify the peasant, and, after him, the discontented sections of the army and the fleet. But for this time and experience were needed.

Most puerile of all is the argument that there was no uprising, that the sailors had made no threats, that they "only" seized the fortress and the battleships. It would seem that the Bolsheviks marched with bared chests across the ice against the fortress only because of their evil characters, their inclination to provoke conflicts artificially, their hatred of the Kronstadt sailors, or their hatred of the Anarchist doctrine (about which absolutely no one, we may say in passing, bothered in those days). Is this not childish prattle? Bound neither to time nor place, the dilettante critics try (seventeen years later!) to suggest that everything would have ended in general satisfaction if only the revolution had left the insurgent sailors alone. Unfortunately, the world counterrevolution would in no case have left them alone. The logic of the struggle would have given predominance in the fortress to the extremists, that is, to the most counterrevolutionary elements. The need for supplies would have made the fortress directly dependent upon the foreign bourgeoisie and their agents, the White emigres. All the necessary preparations toward this end were already being made. Under similar circumstances only people like the Spanish Anarchists or POUMists would have waited passively, hoping for a happy outcome. The Bolsheviks, fortunately, belonged to a different school. They considered it their duty to extinguish the fire as soon as it started, thereby reducing to a minimum the number of victims.

The "Kronstadters" without a Fortress

In essence, the venerable critics are opponents of the dictatorship of the proletariat and by that token are opponents of the revolution. In this lies the whole secret. It is true that some of them recognize the revolution and the dictatorship—in words. But this does not help matters. They wish for a revolution which will not lead to dictatorship or for a dictatorship which will get along without the use of force. Of course, this would be a very "pleasant" dictatorship. It requires, however, a few trifles: an equal and, moreover, an extremely high, development of the toiling masses. But in such conditions the dictatorship would in general be unnecessary. Some Anarchists, who are really liberal pedagogues, hope that in a hundred or a thousand years the toilers will have attained so high a level of development that coercion will prove unnecessary. Naturally, if capitalism could lead to such a development, there would be no reason for overthrowing capitalism. There would be no need either for violent revolution or for the dictatorship which is an inevitable consequence of revolutionary victory. However, the decaying capitalism of our day leaves little room for humanitarian-pacifist illusions.

The working class, not to speak of the semi-proletarian masses, is not homogeneous, either socially or politically. The class struggle produces a vanguard that absorbs the best elements of the class. A revolution is possible when the vanguard is able to lead the majority of the proletariat. But this does not at all mean that the internal contradictions among the toilers disappear. At the moment of the highest peak of the revolution they are of course attenuated, but only to appear later at a new stage in all their sharpness. Such is the course of the revolution as a whole. Such was the course of Kronstadt. When parlor pinks try to mark out a different route for the October Revolution, after the event, we can only respectfully ask them to show us exactly where and when their great principles were confirmed in practice, at least partially, at least in tendency? Where are the signs that lead us to expect the triumph of these principles in the future? We shall of course never get an answer.

A revolution has its own laws. Long ago we formulated those "lessons of October" which have not only a Russian but an international significance. No one else has even tried to suggest any other "lessons." The Spanish revolution is negative confirmation of the "lessons of October." And the severe critics are silent or equivocal. The Spanish government of the "People's Front" stifles the socialist revolution and shoots revolutionists. The Anarchists participate in this government, or, when they are driven out, continue to support the executioners. And their foreign allies and lawyers occupy themselves meanwhile with a defense ... of the Kronstadt mutiny against the harsh Bolsheviks. A shameful travesty!

The present disputes around Kronstadt revolve around the same class axis as the Kronstadt uprising itself, in which the reactionary sections of the sailors tried to overthrow the proletarian dictatorship. Conscious of their impotence on the arena of present-day revolutionary politics, the petty-bourgeois blunderers and eclectics try to use the old Kronstadt episode for the struggle against the Fourth International, that is, against the party of the proletarian revolution. These latter-day "Kronstadters" will also be crushed—true, without the use of arms since, fortunately, they do not have a fortress.

ON "POTEMKIN VILLAGES" IN IRAQ

COMMENTARY

IMMEDIATE UNCONDITIONAL WITHDRAWAL OF U.S. TROOPS FROM IRAQ!!!

Amid all the furor and maneuvering, seemingly by every governmental agency that is even marginally connected with the conflict, over the long awaited upcoming reports by General Petreaus and Ambassador Crocker concerning the effects of the Bush ‘surge’ strategy in Iraq a little story about the real effects of the troop increases drew my attention recently (Weighing the Surge:putting troops among the people by Sudarsan Raghavan of the Washington Post, The Boston Globe, September 5, 2007). Honestly, with all the bureaucratic paper ‘infighting’ it is hard to tell what the real military situation is on the ground. However, just as a matter of military tactics if you add 30,000 fairly well-trained troops into a situation as nebulous as Iraq and as a result force a lesser trained enemy either to drop away or lurk in hiding until the coast is clear then yes, the security situation would almost have to be better-ON THE SURFACE. And that contradiction is the real point of this commentary.

As part of the justification for his troop increase last January President Bush cited an increased need for on-going security (essentially implementation of the Petreaus Plan) especially in sectarian–torn Baghdad. Well, what the President saith, the military giveth. The recent article mentioned above , however, pointed to the soft underbelly of what the ‘real’ increased security looks like on the ground. Those familiar with the military, and even those not familiar with that organization but who know the expression “covering your ass”, know that military commanders are famous for their little pet projects that serve to rationale all their actions. Well, head honcho Petreaus and his subalterns are not a different breed in that respect.

One of the gauges of the effectiveness of the increased security ploy has been the well-published attempt ‘reopen’ the various marketplaces key to Iraqi daily life, and a favorite target of sectarian suicide bombers and others, in and around Baghdad. The story I am recounting highlighted the famous Dora market. Well, yes it is open. Before the war started in 2003 there were some 800 plus stalls and shops there. At a low point in recent times there were less than 300 open. With the heightened security of the 'surge' that number has jumped to over three hundred and plans to have over five hundred on line in the near future are in progress. By many definitions that qualifies as a success. But here is the catch. In order for a shop to qualify as open, basically, an open door is all that is necessary. If your business has no or few things to sell that does not matter the military ‘counts’ that business as ‘open’. Moreover, call me jaded but by American norms one would think that a major market, as here, would be open early and close late. Not so. A couple of hours a day qualifies for a good day. Furthermore, as an inducement to open- come hell or high water- ‘cash grants’ are generously supplied. A little suspect, but not that unusual coming from this administration.

But here is the real kicker. Those whose work in the market, own the shops and, most importantly, those American soldiers who guard the highly fortified market quoted in the story know and have expressed their opinions that this ‘success’ is less than meets the eye. This, however, does not divert the military from bringing every congressional delegation, governmental agency or NGO tourist to this showcase. The air these days is filled with the comparisons between Iraq and Vietnam. If one thinks back to that era and another project nicknamed the ‘strategic hamlet’ program (in its various guises, depending on authorship and administration in power) one will not be surprised to see that these guys are up to their old tricks. But remember in the end all those “Potemkin Villages" turned to dust when the real situation became apparent after the withdrawal of American troops. That said, we better take the advise of an unnamed soldier guarding the Dora market and ‘skedaddle’. Immediate Unconditional Withdrawal from Iraq.

INDEPENDENCE FOR KOSOVO NOW!

COMMENTARY

SUPPORT THE RIGHT OF NATIONAL SELF-DETERMINATIONS FOR THE KOSOVARS –UNITED NATIONS, NATO-OUT OF KOSOVO. SERBIA HANDS OFF KOSOVO!


In an irony that is probably wasted on both Democratic and Republican bourgeois politicians caught up in the midst of an Iraq War the justification for which the Bush Administration has declared as its objectives ‘peace, freedom, democracy’ and all kinds of other good things' the question of Kosovo rates nothing but space on the back pages, if that. For those with short political memories a few years ago that was the American-led NATO air war against Serbia in ‘support’ of the besieged Kosovo Albanians. That too was supposedly fought under the democratic banner – yet today it still has not produced the national right to self-determination for the Kosovars that it was allegedly fought for. And the Kosovars are rightly mad as hell about it. If one will recall Serbia claimed (and still claims) Kosovo as part of historic Serbia. Like many another oppressor nation it plunged its jack boot into the predominantly Albanian province of Kosovo in an attempt to ‘ethnically cleanse’ that little trouble spot. The professed goal of the American-led NATO air war, a goal that was unquestioningly supported by these same Kosovar, was to ‘stop’ the genocide. Of course in that attempt NATO tried to bomb Serbia back to the Stone Age, and came close. Now almost eight years later the province is still part of Serbia, still administered by the United Nations and defended by NATO and the Kosovars are still no closer to real independence. If the Kosovars think that they were the witting or unwitting pawns in an international con game they are, of course, right. However, there is a lesson for leftists to be learned here, as well.

Let us be clear, socialists support the democratic right to national self-determination where the basis for a nation exists not as some supra-historical advance for humankind but as a way to take the national question off the agenda and place the class question to the fore. There are thus occasions where we do not raise that demand just as on other occasions we not only support the demand but call for independence. We call, for example, today for independence for Quebec. Kosovo calls for the same slogan as well. However, during the NATO air war, as I mentioned above, the main political organization of the time- the Kosovo Liberation Front- acted as direct military agents for those same NATO forces therefore subordinating themselves to an arm of international imperialism. At that point to invoke, as many on the international left did, the Kosovars’ right to self-determination, as the rationale for supporting the war against Serbia war was incorrect. As witnessed by subsequent history that support moreover did not advance the Kosovo cause a step. An analogous situation to that of Kosovo then applies today in Kurdish Iraq. The Iraqi Kurds have voluntarily placed themselves and their militias under direct American military power and thus in Iraq we do not raise the call for the formation of an independent Kurdish state. But, as an indication of how complicated the dispersed Kurdish nation’s national self-determination question is (to speak nothing of other situations like the almost intractable Palestinian question) we certainly would today call for the right to national self-determination to a separate Kurdish state in places like Turkey and Iran. More later. But for now- Independence for Kosovo! Serbia Hands Off!

A SMALL VICTORY FOR GAY RIGHTS IN IOWA, MAYBE

COMMENTARY

SUPPORT GAY MARRIAGE RIGHTS

Those of us on the embattled left side of the "cultural wars" of the past forty or so years have had few enough occasions to cheer, even momentarily. Thus, the very recent decision during the week of August 28, 2007 by a state judge in Des Moines Iowa, of all places, declaring an Iowa statue banning gay marriage unconstitutional gives us a moment’s breathing space. Legally, that decision is not as good as overturning a constitutional amendment but we will take whatever we can. In the aftermath of the decision apparently every gay and lesbian couple that had not abandoned the Iowa heartland for either of the more congenial coasts and could get to Des Moines with the required $35 marriage license fee sought to do so. But alas, remember this is Iowa after all, that same judge placed a stay on his ruling thus halting the issuance of marriage licenses pending appellate action to the Iowa Supreme Court. If that court does not act one way or another, which is unlikely, then the judge’s ruling stands.

Naturally, as the presidential nomination contests heat up and focus on the early Iowa caucuses, the ramifications of this decision were immediately felt in the various presidential campaigns. On the Republican side- ‘home’ of family values where marriage means heterosexual one male, one female ones- the outrage and easy scoring points were immediate by the likes of ex-Massachusetts Governor Mitt “Flip-Flop” Romney. The more equivocal leading Democratic candidates, like Hillary and Obama, who virtually all support some form of ‘civil union’ or other less than legal marriage status as their stunted interpretation of democratic equal rights for gays and lesbians are going to feel the heat on this a little. They will try to juggle to be able to pander to the not inconsiderable gay and lesbian vote while keeping an eye on the fact that the polls (and past concrete state votes for banning gay marriage where the issue has been presented ) show that most Americans are hostile or otherwise unsupportive to gay marriage. The bourgeois Democratic party candidates may be equivocal on this issue but we of the left are not. Unfortunately, in the year 2007 it is still necessary to fight around the slogan- Equal Marriage Rights for Gays and Lesbians. That is where our fight is.

ON PARALLELS BETWEEN VIETNAM AND IRAQ

COMMENTARY

IMMEDIATE UNCONDITIONAL WITHDRAWAL OF U.S. TROOPS FROM IRAQ

As anyone who writes a political blog probably has become aware of sometimes you get drawn into a discussion that you really do not want to get involved in. Until very, very recently I have tried NOT to draw parallels between the American experience in the Vietnam War of my youth and the Iraq War of my old age. I broke that policy slightly over the last couple of weeks in comparing the fate of Nguyen Diem in Vietnam in 1963 and the possible fate of al-Maliki today in Iraq. In Diem’s case once the Kennedy Administration got disenchanted with him coup planning began full time. Do not the tom toms out of Iraq drum that same siren song today?

Strangely, one George W. Bush, the President of the United States, had until very, very recently observed the same policy as I had of not drawing parallels with Vietnam. For his own reasons, of course. Now that his Iraq policy is clearly on the ropes he wants to invoke the supposed horrors of the ‘cut and run’ American policy in Vietnam as a reason to not 'cut and run' in Iraq. And that, dear reader, is why a couple of brief comments are in order about those parallels.

Although the parallels between Vietnam and Iraq have absolutely nothing to do with the overwhelming American military capacity to return either of those societies back to the Stone Age (as the Americans almost succeeded in doing with their various relentless bombing strategies in Vietnam) it does have everything to do with the hubris behind that assumption. Is there really a hell of a lot of different between the assumptions of one War Secretary Robert McNamara and his “Whiz Kids” in Vietnam and one War Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his “Neo-Cons”? I think not. The military capacity to level cities, either Hanoi then or Fallujah now, in order to create a security zone for the government is nevertheless a house of cards. Does anyone today think that once the American troops either turns over military responsibly to the Iraqis after long-term training or straight-out withdraw that the situation will be stable? Hell, no. As in Vietnam, the forces in play are just waiting for the Americans leave in order to return. And seemingly, unlike Americans, they are patient. Know this- If the American troops stay ten more years they will wait. Moreover, one only has to take a cursory glance at the history of the Vietnam conflict to find that same phenomena. There was an apt old army expression for it- ‘the night belongs to Charlie’ (the Viet Cong). In Iraq 'the night belongs to al-Sadr' and others.

American bourgeois politicians have the seemingly willful capacity to refuse to learn the lessons of history either from the European experiences or their own. Here I will pass over the little things like Ronald Reagan's 1980's invasion of Grenada, covert support to the mujahedeen in Afghanistan and the not so covert aid to the contras in Nicaragua. I will brush aside Bush Senior’s 1990's little Iraq escapade. And this writer would not dream of impinging on the liberal Clinton's (Bill) little air war against Serbia over Kosovo. Hell, nobody could learn lessons from those experiences and no bourgeois politician needed to because these were essentially walkovers. So it really is back to Vietnam if you want to see the full panoply of imperialist hubris in action. And the blowback. That is the point. The assumption is that the timetables are determined to suit American conveniences and predilections. Al-Maliki’s situation is a case in point. He has run as an inept and corrupt crony-serving operation as Diem did in Vietnam. That he is a lapdog of American imperialism is a given. However, he has to respond, as every politician must, to his base. And that base is nationalistic and patriotic, as well as sectarian, and by its own lights will do what it can to seem independent from the Americans. ‘Cut and run’ now is the beginning of wisdom in order to cut larger losses later. That is just sensible. But since we know after five long years of war that this administration is NOT sensible we had better keep fighting to build those anti-war soldier and sailor solidarity committees and get those troop transports revved up- Immediate Unconditional Withdrawal from Iraq, come hell or high water.

*ANOTHER LOOK AT THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN-Professor Christopher Hill's Look At The Great English Revolution Of The 1600s

Click on title to link to Wikipedia's entry for Professor Christopher Hill.

BOOK REVIEW

THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN, CHRISTOPHER HILL, PENGUIN BOOKS, 1972

Although both the parliamentary and royalist sides in the English Revolution, the major revolutionary event of the 17th century, quoted the Bible, particularly the newer English versions, for every purpose from an account of the Fall to the virtues of primitive communism that revolution cannot be properly understood except as a secular revolution. The first truly secular revolution of modern times. The late pre-eminent historian of the under classes of the English Revolution, Christopher Hill, has taken the myriad ideas, serious and zany, that surfaced during the period between 1640-60, the heart of the revolutionary period, and given us his take on some previously understudied and misunderstood notions that did not make the conventional history books.

As has been noted by more than one Marxist historian, including Leon Trotsky in his history of the Russian Revolution, there is sometimes a disconnect between the ideas in the air at any particular time and the way those ideas get fought out in political struggle. In this case secular ideas, or what would have passed for such to us, like the questions of the divinity of the monarch, of social, political and economic redistribution and the nature of the new society (the second coming) were expressed in familiar religious terms. That being the case there is no better guide to understanding the significance of the mass of biblically-driven literary articles and some secular documents produced in the period than Professor Hill. Here we meet up again, as we have in Hill's other numerous volumes of work, with the democratic oppositionists the Levelers; the Diggers, especially the thoughts of their leader Gerrard Winstanley, in many aspects the forerunner of a modern branch of communist thought; the Ranters, Seekers and Quakers who among them challenged every possible orthodox Christian theory and the usual cast of individual political and religious radicals like Samuel Fisher and, my personal favorite, Abiezer Coppe.

In this expansively footnoted book Mr. Hill, as he has elsewhere, connects the dramatic break up of traditional agrarian English society; the resulting vast increase of 'masterless' men not bound to traditional authority and potentially receptive to new ideas; the widespread availability of the protestant Bible brought about by the revolution in printing and thus permitting widespread distribution to the masses; the effects of the Protestant Reformation on individual responsibility; the discrediting of the theology of the divine right of kings and the concept of the man of blood exemplified by Charles I; the role of the priesthood of all believers that foreshadow a very modern concept of the validity of individual religious expression; radical interpretations of equality and primitive communism, particularly the work of the afore-mentioned Gerrard Winstanley ; the Puritan ethic and many more subjects of interests to bring to life what the common people who hitherto had barely entered the stage of history were thinking and doing.

As I have noted elsewhere a key to understanding that entry onto history's stage and that underscores the widespread discussion of many of these trends is Oliver Cromwell's New Model Army where the plebeian base, for a time anyway, had serious input into the direction that society might take. In many ways Professor Hill's book is a study of what happened when the, for lack of a better term, the Thermodorian reaction- the ebb of the revolution set in and a portion of those 'masterless' men had to deal with the consequences of defeat for the plebeian masses during the Protectorate and Restoration. I might also add that some of the ideas presented here seem very weird even for that time but some seem so advanced, especially in the case of Winstanley, that they put many a modern thinker to shame. Hell, in American society some of those Levelers and Diggers would be standing with us in the left wing of political society fighting today's 'royalists and reactionaries'. Thanks, Professor Hill.