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Saturday, November 03, 2012
The Class Struggle and the Fight Against Reformism
From The Pages Of Workers Vangaurd-Elections 2012:Wall Street Democrat vs. Wall Street Republican
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Workers Vanguard No. 1011
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26 October 2012
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Elections 2012:Wall Street Democrat vs. Wall Street Republican
For a Workers Party That Fights for a Workers Government!
Part One
The following is a presentation, edited for publication, by
Spartacist League spokesman Paul Cone at an October 13 forum in Los
Angeles.
As revolutionary Marxists, our approach to the elections is the
same as our approach to all our work and especially our interventions into class
and social struggle. We seek to break the workers from illusions that the
Democrats, Republicans or any capitalist party can be relied on to
promote their interests, or that any lasting improvement of their lot can be
achieved under capitalism. At bottom, the belief that any fundamental change for
workers and the oppressed can be achieved through the ballot represents a
utopian belief in the reformability of the bourgeois state.
We seek to instill in the working class, as well as radicalized
youth, the recognition of the unique social power the proletariat possesses as
the collective producers of most of the wealth of this society. Such social
power needs to be realized through a party of their own, a workers party. What
we mean by that is not an electoral vehicle but a party that leads the working
class and oppressed in a fight for workers rule: the expropriation of the
capitalist class through workers revolution and the formation of a workers
government. In a society under workers rule, the productive capacity and
resources are owned in common and production is based on human need—not the mad
chase after profits.
I want to also point out that we communists would run for elective
office and serve in the Congress and other legislative bodies as revolutionary
tribunes of the working class—i.e., as oppositionists to the
capitalist order. But we would not run for executive offices such as president,
governor, mayor. Holding executive office means taking responsibility for the
administration of the machinery of the capitalist state. Running for such
offices can only reinforce illusions that the capitalist state, under the right
leadership, can be made to serve the interests of the exploited and oppressed.
Although the working class here has historically waged some of the
fiercest battles against the bosses and their state, the U.S. stands out as the
only advanced capitalist country where the working class has not attained even a
minimal level of political class consciousness. In its mass, the American
working class has never supported a party whose declared ultimate goal is the
replacement of the capitalist system with a socialist society, or which even
claims to stand simply for workers’ interests in their day-to-day struggles
against the employers. The two primary, and interrelated, obstacles have been
illusions in the Democrats and the racial and ethnic divisions promoted by the
capitalists, both of which are purveyed by the pro-capitalist labor bureaucracy.
Capitalist Crisis: Workers Pay
This year’s elections come in the context of four years of the most
severe economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. We’ve seen the
continued hemorrhaging of jobs, home foreclosures and massive indebtedness along
with a massive bolstering of the forces of state repression under the pretext of
the wars against terrorism and drugs.
To the tune of trillions of dollars, first Bush and then, even more
so, Obama bailed out the con men on Wall Street whose financial swindles were
central to this collapse. The working class, black people, Latinos, the poor,
the sick and the aged have been made to foot the bill. Alongside large-scale and
long-term unemployment, corporate profits have, on the average, risen at an
annual rate of 4.8 percent over the past three years. Over the past year, the
net worth of the 400 richest Americans grew by $200 billion—an average of $50
million each. In that same period, median household income fell by 4 percent. In
New York City, the center of American finance capital, nearly 1.7 million people
are officially classified as poor, the highest figure in more than a decade.
Officially, the homeless population of the city is 46,000.
The national jobs report issued on September 7 disclosed that only
69.8 percent of men over the age of 16 were either working or looking for
work—an all-time low. With one-quarter of jobs paying below the poverty line for
a family of four, 58 percent of all job growth since what they like to call the
“recovery” is in low-wage occupations, earning less than $14 an hour. Six
million people have no income other than food stamps. Some 2.8 million children
live in households with incomes of less than $2 per person a day—a benchmark
generally associated with the impoverished Third World.
In racist America, it’s all the worse for black people and Latinos,
who were among the main victims of the banks’ subprime mortgage scams. One-third
of black and Latino households have no net worth, with many underwater in debt.
Over 25 percent of blacks and Latinos are officially recorded as living in
poverty.
Periodic economic crises, such as the one we are in now, are
inherent in the capitalist system of production for profit. In the 1930s, the
one country that not only wasn’t ravaged by the Great Depression but experienced
great economic development was the Soviet Union, where the working class in 1917
had taken state power, which was maintained despite the subsequent bureaucratic
degeneration under Stalin. Today in the Chinese deformed workers state, where
capitalism was overthrown by the peasant army led by Mao in 1949, state control
of the economy has greatly offset the effects of the worldwide economic crisis.
Short of the working class taking power, there is no crisis that
cannot be surmounted by the bourgeoisie. In “The Death Agony of Capitalism and
the Tasks of the Fourth International,” better known as the Transitional
Program, which was written in 1938 during the Great Depression, revolutionary
leader Leon Trotsky put forward a series of demands that are applicable today.
These demands address the economic catastrophe facing the working class,
“unalterably leading to one final conclusion: the conquest of power by the
proletariat.”
In the face of mass unemployment, Trotsky called for a shorter
workweek at no loss in pay to spread the available work, for a massive program
of public works and for wages to rise with prices to guard against the ravages
of inflation. To unmask the exploitation, robbery and fraud of the capitalist
owners and the swindles of the banks, he argued that the workers should demand
that the capitalists open their books. He also raised the call for the
expropriation of branches of industry vital for national existence and of the
most parasitic of the capitalist owners. He underlined that such a demand must
be linked to the fight for the seizure of power by the working class, as against
the Stalinist and social-democratic misleaders for whom the call for
nationalization was merely a prescription for bailing out capitalist
enterprises.
Trotsky bluntly put it: “If capitalism is incapable of satisfying
the demands inevitably arising from the calamities generated by itself, then let
it perish.” In opposition to the capitalists and their reformist agents, Trotsky
argued that “‘realizability’ or ‘unrealizability’” would be “decided only by the
struggle,” by means of which, “no matter what its immediate practical successes
may be, the workers will best come to understand the necessity of liquidating
capitalist slavery.”
Obama at Helm of U.S. Imperialism
Our opposition to Obama and the Democrats, no less than our
opposition to the Republicans, is a class opposition. It’s not a
protest against the Democrats’ failure to live up to expectations—they did
exactly what we expected. It is not a search for some alternative within the
capitalist electoral framework—a formation like the Greens or the Peace and
Freedom Party that would supposedly break the two-party monopoly with a
bourgeois third party. Nor is it an exercise of political coquetry: “Oh, if you
know we always vote for you Democrats, what would compel you to carry out our
political wishes?” All of these are how the radical liberals and reformist
socialists approach the question of the Democratic Party. No less than open
support to the Democrats, these do nothing to advance class consciousness but
rather keep the working class enthralled to the capitalist order. They are all
obstacles to building the revolutionary workers party necessary to end this
nightmare of capitalism once and for all.
As we wrote four years ago (“Obama: Commander-in-Chief of Racist
U.S. Imperialism,” WV No. 925, 21 November 2008):
“The election of Barack Obama as the first black president of the
United States has aroused great expectations among working people and the
oppressed around the world. Black people and others celebrated on streets
throughout the country the election of the next Commander-in-Chief of bloody
U.S. imperialism.... Amid fears of a new Great Depression...hopes for ‘change’
center on the incoming Democratic Obama administration. These hopes will be
brutally dashed.”
We also pointed out: “As America’s next top cop, Obama will
preside over the racist capitalist system, which is based on the exploitation
of working people at home and abroad.”
That prognosis was verified—and then some. But we didn’t need a
crystal ball. V.I. Lenin, who founded the Bolshevik Party and together with
Trotsky led the October 1917 Russian Revolution—the only successful workers
revolution in history—aptly described the choice in elections under capitalism
as a process “to decide once every few years which member of the ruling class is
to repress and crush the people.”
This time around, the reality show to become America’s next top war
criminal pits the two rich white guys, Romney and Ryan—who look like a walking
ad for khakis, hair gel and Pearl Drops tooth polish and who promise to
eliminate just about all of the remaining government social services that are a
lifeline to a large bulk of the population, while promising greater riches to
the capitalists—against the hoops-playing, change-promising Obama, who stuffed
his administration with a Wall Street all-star team, such as Timothy Geithner,
Lawrence Summers and Jacob Lew. The Obama administration has handed out lucre to
just about every industrialist and banker that came, hat in hand, knocking on
the White House door—and not even spare change for the rest.
A lot has happened in the last four years. Mass unemployment has
provided a more fertile climate for the decades-long attacks on the basic
organizations of defense of the working class—unions. The current attacks were
kicked off by the 2009 auto contracts forced upon workers at General Motors,
Ford and Chrysler by the United Auto Workers’ Ron Gettelfinger and the newly
elected Obama—part of the bailout of the auto bosses. This opened the floodgates
for extending two-tier agreements to other union contracts throughout the
country, and threw thousands of auto workers on the scrap heap.
We’ve seen the emergence of the Tea Party crazies, launched and
funded by some of the fattest of fat cats in the conservative Republican
establishment. They seem to have consolidated a great deal of control of
the Republican Party, peddling religious obscurantism, anti-women bigotry,
nativist hatred of anyone who wasn’t born in the U.S.—that is, born with white
skin and speaking English. Their not so thinly veiled racism is expressed, among
other ways, in the hallucinogenic belief that Obama is forcing socialism on the
U.S., the only basis for which is his black skin. To defend the purity of
elections, they have been on a drive to purge blacks and Latinos from voting,
imbibing so much of the “voter fraud” Kool-Aid they have begun to visualize
magic buses full of “illegal” voters pouring into polling places across the
country.
After decades of massive redistribution of wealth to the richest
sliver of the population under both Democratic and Republican administrations,
even the bourgeois press has noted the gaping inequality between the haves and
have-nots. The populist Occupy phenomenon burst across the scene with an impact
reminiscent of the 1973 comet Kouhoutek.
Earlier this year Charles Murray, author of the racist screed
The Bell Curve (1994), turned his attention to poor white people in a new
book, Coming Apart. According to Murray, poor people are poor
because they make poor choices—usually citing what he considers “moral” ones,
like smoking, drinking, a little pot, having sex at a young age. As if the
well-heeled don’t do exactly the same—and probably to a greater extent since
they have the money to burn. (This is the same drivel that Bill Cosby, Obama and
others have been handing down to poor black people to blame them for their
oppression.) Obviously the poor “choices” begin with choosing to be born into a
poor family. Although the book overwhelmingly represents the view of the
capitalist class, it didn’t get that much play thanks to its inopportune
timing—both political parties are fighting over precisely that demographic in
the key swing states.
The right to abortion has been further eroded. Obama promised to
ease the Republicans’ war on immigrants only to have his administration shatter
prior records for deportations by such a wide margin it is a wonder they weren’t
called before a Congressional committee investigating steroid use. Obama also
promised to reverse much of the decimation of civil liberties under the “war on
terror” only to expand government spying to a level that would make George
Orwell’s Big Brother envious. Meanwhile we have seen authorized assassinations
of U.S. citizens, indefinite detention and persecution of leftist opponents of
government policies.
Two-Party Electoral Circus
In his September 25 lecture to the United Nations, Obama told this
gathering of imperialist thieves and their victims that Americans “have fought
and died around the globe to protect the right of all people to express their
view.” No. Since its emergence as an imperialist power with the Spanish-American
War of 1898, the U.S., like its imperialist rivals, has sent its young men, and
now some women, to fight and kill in its quest for world domination, to secure
markets and resources and geopolitical military advantage. For over a century,
Washington has placed in power and/or propped up just about every military
dictatorship around the world.
This Nobel Peace Prize recipient initiated a surge of troops for
the occupation of Afghanistan and supplied the firepower for NATO’s devastation
of Libya. He has bolstered U.S. military forces in Asia directed against the
Chinese deformed workers state, declaring the Pacific to be the Pentagon’s
number one priority, and the U.S. also maintains the embargo against the Cuban
deformed workers state. Obama has also implemented starvation sanctions against
Iran as punishment for their purported program of developing nuclear arms. U.S.
drones regularly rain death and destruction from Pakistan to Somalia. DEA narcs
help terrorize Latin American farmers and workers in the name of the “war on
drugs,” and when the U.S.’s puppet rulers meekly suggest decriminalizing some
controlled substances they get slapped down from Washington. U.S. imperialism,
hands off the world!
Obama promised nothing to black people. He kept that promise. In
the supposedly “post-racial” utopia ushered in by his election, we have the
continued mass incarceration of black people and the escalating terrorization by
cops of black and Latino youth in ghettos and barrios, which in turn fuels
vigilante terror like the racist killing of Trayvon Martin.
Yes, Obama has done just about everything the capitalist masters
asked and so much more. Yet from the day he took office, a core component of the
Republican Party took to the streets demanding “Take our country back!” Back
from whom? No secret there. Even as the Commander-in-Chief of U.S. imperialism,
Obama is marked by his black skin and African heritage. Newt Gingrich called him
the “Food Stamp President.” Romney, not unexpectedly, has even charged, falsely,
that Obama is undoing Clinton’s signature law eviscerating welfare by removing
the work requirements, resurrecting Reagan’s “welfare queen” chimera that
impoverished black women are sucking up the government dollars of hard-working,
tax-paying white people.
Add to these the likes of abortion opponent Todd Akin, the
Republican candidate for Senator from Missouri, who said that a woman who gets
pregnant following a rape wasn’t really raped; the spectacle at the Republican
Convention, where a black woman working for CNN was pelted with peanuts while
one of the Republican faithful screamed at her, “This is how we feed the
animals”; the efforts across the country to destroy unions; draconian
immigration laws enacted in Arizona, Georgia, Alabama and elsewhere. You get a
sense of why workers, blacks, immigrants, women, gays, who have nothing to show
for their past support, are going to again vote Democrat as a lesser evil.
How to account for a significant portion of the American
bourgeoisie being so mentally unhinged? Did a Klingon warship pass over the U.S.
30 years ago firing some form of brain-destroying phaser? Maybe the answer is
buried in the UFO museum in Roswell, New Mexico. But I don’t think so. After the
counterrevolutionary destruction of the Soviet Union in 1991-92, it appeared
that the U.S. imperialists had finally become masters of the world. But even as
the U.S. achieved unrivalled military supremacy, its industrial base continued
to decline. To some in the ruling class, this decline of the country’s economic
might defies explanation—besides being contrary to “God’s will.” In consequence,
a wing of the bourgeoisie has seemingly gone totally insane.
The massive redistribution of wealth to the top, the increasing
segregation of black people, shredding of the social “safety net,” embrace of
“Christian family values,” rollback of democratic rights, imperialist wars and
occupations: all have been bipartisan policies. The Republicans may explicitly
announce that it is open season on workers and oppressed minorities; the
Democrats instead offer a pat on the back, maybe a little consolation that we
“share your pain,” while enforcing capitalist misery and social reaction, often
more effectively.
Yet at the same time that the differences between these two
capitalist parties have increasingly narrowed, the vitriol between them has
grown. This is not a unique development. Writing about the 1912 presidential
election won by the Democrat Woodrow Wilson, in an article titled “The Results
and Significance of the U.S. Presidential Elections,” Lenin observed:
“Since the Civil War over slavery in 1860-65—two
bourgeois parties have been distinguished there by remarkable solidity and
strength. The party of the former slave-owners is the so-called Democratic
Party. The capitalist party, which favoured the emancipation of the Negroes, has
developed into the Republican Party.
“Since the emancipation of the Negroes, the distinction between
the two parties has been diminishing. The fight between these two parties has
been mainly over the height of customs duties. Their fight has not
had any serious importance for the mass of the
people. The people have been deceived and diverted from their vital interests by
means of spectacular and meaningless duels between the two
bourgeois parties.”
Centrality of Black Oppression
Shortly after the Republican Ronald Reagan’s 1980 election victory,
Richard Viguerie, a key conservative fund-raiser and organizer, said, “It was
the social issues that got us this far, and that’s what will take us into the
future. We never really won until we began stressing issues like busing,
abortion, school prayer and gun control.” Reagan aide Lee Atwater made clear
what that meant. For obvious reasons I’m going to paraphrase here: “You start
out in 1954 by saying the ‘N’ word. By 1968 you can’t say the ‘N’ word—that
hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights.
You’re getting so abstract now you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these
things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them
is blacks get hurt worse than whites.”
In fanning the flames of racist reaction, the Republicans are
implementing the “Southern Strategy” that has served them well for the past 40
years. The shape of bourgeois politics in America was fundamentally altered by
the civil rights movement. The New Deal alliance between labor, Northern
liberals and Southern segregationists cemented by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in
the 1930s was blown apart. The 1964 Republican presidential candidate Barry
Goldwater, who voted against the Civil Rights Act, was the one who authored the
“Southern Strategy,” persuading racist Southern Democrats—the Dixiecrats—to
defect.
The bourgeoisie, which was willing to permit the gradual abolition
of legal segregation and provide avenues for the upward social
mobility of a small layer of black people, at the same time unleashed a campaign
of white backlash which eventually took the form of opposition to “big
government”—identified as forcing white children to go to school with blacks,
giving tax money to black welfare mothers and poverty bureaucrats, and giving
jobs to blacks and women under affirmative action. While most black people were
no better off, the government created a layer of black middle-class
professionals. Racist politicians began deliberately stoking white resentment.
All this underscores that the oppression of black people, a
race-color caste overwhelmingly segregated at the bottom of society, remains at
the core of American capitalism. The forcible segregation, stigmatization and
vilification of those whose ancestors were dragged here in chains as slaves
serves to maximize profits, regulate labor and divide the working class. As
historic American Trotskyist Richard Fraser noted of segregation some 60 years
ago:
“Prejudice is the product of this complex social relation. But
although it is directed immediately against the Negro, its object is the working
class as a whole. Through discrimination and segregation, Negro labor is
degraded and its wage falls to the bare subsistence level. But this sets the
pattern and controls the conditions of labor as a whole.”
— “The Negro Struggle and the Proletarian Revolution” (1953),
reprinted in “In Memoriam—Richard S. Fraser: An Appreciation and Selection of
His Work,” Prometheus Research Series No. 3, August 1990
Fraser added: “Without racial separation in the United States,
there would be no possibility of maintaining the discriminatory social and
economic practices which are fundamental to the economic and social well-being
of American capitalism, and its role in the world today.”
The fight for black equality remains the strategic question of the
American revolution. We fight for black freedom on the program of revolutionary
integrationism. In fighting for the working class to oppose all instances of
racist discrimination, we have supported scatter-site public housing in
opposition to residential segregation; defended school busing as part of our
fight for free, quality integrated education; initiated mobilizations centered
on the multiracial labor movement against KKK and Nazi terror. At the same time,
we stress that genuine equality for black people in the U.S. will only come
about through the smashing of capitalism, preparing the road to an egalitarian
socialist order. This perspective is counterposed to liberal integration, which
is premised on the utopian notion that equality for black people can be attained
within this capitalist society founded on black oppression. Our perspective is
counterposed as well to go-it-alone black nationalism—a petty-bourgeois ideology
of despair which at bottom accepts the racist status quo.
There will be no effective resistance to the immiseration of
American working people without the unity in struggle between the trade unions
and the black and Latino poor. Despite the destruction of industrial jobs and
erosion of union strength, black workers, who have a significantly higher rate
of trade-union membership than white workers, continue to be integrated into
strategic sectors of the proletariat, which alone has the power to shatter this
racist capitalist system. Won to a revolutionary program, black workers will be
the living link fusing the anger of the dispossessed ghetto masses with the
social power of the multiracial proletariat under the leadership of a Leninist
vanguard party.
[TO BE CONTINUED]
Friday, November 02, 2012
From The International Communist League Press
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Le Bolchévik nº 201
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Septembre 2012
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Débat à la fête de LO
Guerre d’Algérie : Voix ouvrière et la lutte pour
l’indépendance
Lutte ouvrière (LO) avait décidé cette année, à l’occasion du
50e anniversaire de l’indépendance de l’Algérie, de mettre l’accent
lors de sa fête sur cet anniversaire. Elle avait invité plusieurs auteurs de
livres et elle a organisé la projection de films importants sur la guerre
d’Algérie, y compris le précieux film de Jacques Panijel sur le massacre des
Algériens à Paris le 17 octobre 1961. De plus, LO a publié une nouvelle brochure
spéciale de plus de 100 pages, un recueil de textes qu’elle avait publiés à
l’époque.
L’un des principaux meetings de la fête, avec quelques centaines de
personnes, était également consacré à la guerre d’Algérie. L’une des
porte-parole de LO, Farida Megdoud, a introduit le débat en présentant
longuement la position de l’Internationale communiste (IC), du temps de Lénine
et de Trotsky, sur la question coloniale. Elle a particulièrement insisté sur le
devoir pour le prolétariat des pays colonisateurs de soutenir
inconditionnellement, un mot qu’elle a abondamment souligné avec une certaine
solennité, la lutte des peuples coloniaux pour leur émancipation contre le joug
colonial. Elle a bien sûr aussi mentionné, à juste titre également, la nécessité
pour les communistes de préserver leur indépendance politique par rapport à la
bourgeoisie ou à la petite bourgeoisie des pays coloniaux. Elle est revenue sur
la lutte de l’Internationale communiste de Lénine et Trotsky pour forger la
jeune section française de l’Internationale communiste (« la SFIC, pas le
“PCF” », a-t-elle précisé) contre le chauvinisme colonial de la vieille
SFIO, la social-démocratie de Jean Jaurès.
Megdoud a parlé de la lutte contre la guerre du Rif au Maroc au
milieu des années 1920 et elle a mis en relief le soutien apporté par le
PCF/SFIC à Abd el-Krim, le dirigeant de la lutte anticoloniale. Elle a dressé le
contraste frappant entre cette politique et celle du PCF pendant la guerre
d’Algérie : alors que certains de ses militants s’étaient mobilisés en soutien à
la lutte pour l’indépendance, le PCF a trahi cette lutte, votant y compris les
pouvoirs spéciaux pour la répression coloniale sous l’égide du gouvernement
SFIO.
Megdoud tenait là des propos remarquables et dans l’ensemble très
justes – mais qui n’ont rien à voir avec les positions réelles de Voix ouvrière
(predécesseur de LO) à l’époque ni de Lutte ouvrière aujourd’hui. Il suffit de
relever l’absence complète de LO l’année dernière de toute les manifestations
parisiennes contre l’agression coloniale de l’impérialisme français pour déposer
le président ivoirien Laurent Gbagbo et le remplacer par un laquais plus docile.
LO craignait de se retrouver côte à côte dans la rue avec des militants
nationalistes bourgeois pro-Gbagbo, ce qui montre que son « soutien
inconditionnel » à la lutte des peuples coloniaux n’est qu’un sermon pour le
dimanche de Pentecôte, pendant que le reste de l’année LO fait exactement le
contraire.
A peine quelques minutes avant le discours de Farida Megdoud
s’était en fait tenu un meeting de Lutte ouvrière sur les interventions
françaises en Côte d’Ivoire, en Libye et en Afghanistan. Nous étions intervenus
pour expliquer la position marxiste notamment en Libye : nous avions dans un
premier temps dénoncé tant le gouvernement capitaliste sanglant de Kadhafi que
les rebelles pro-impérialistes et tout aussi réactionnaires du « Conseil
national de transition » (CNT), alors que ces derniers étaient promus par le NPA
de Besancenot et ses multiples factions « oppositionnelles » ainsi que par
Bernard-Henri Lévy, le « philosophe » impérialiste ami de Sarkozy. Mais lorsque
la France et l’OTAN avaient commencé à bombarder la Libye, nous
avions évidemment pris la défense de la Libye néocoloniale contre l’agression
impérialiste, sans donner le moindre soutien politique à Kadhafi.
LO a eu une position inverse : d’abord la sympathie pour les
rebelles islamistes contre le méchant dictateur Kadhafi, puis une neutralité à
peine déguisée par des discours platoniques contre les bombardements
impérialistes : LO a refusé de soutenir la Libye, « inconditionnellement » ou
pas, contre les bombardements de Sarkozy. Roland Szpirko, l’un des principaux
cadres de LO, a rappelé cette position de LO en réponse à notre intervention
dans ce meeting. Szpirko faisait ainsi fi du rectificatif adopté subrepticement
par LO lors de son congrès de décembre 2011 : LO, sans doute embarrassée
d’avoir été prise la main dans le sac à exhiber de la sympathie pour le CNT, ce
ramassis de réactionnaires islamistes anti-femmes, de racistes anti-Noirs, de
monarchistes et d’agents impérialistes, avait adopté une résolution soulignant
que « les aspects tribaux » dominaient dès le début les affrontements en
Libye (Lutte de classe n° 140).
Pour en revenir au meeting sur la guerre d’Algérie, un camarade de
la Ligue trotskyste est intervenu en ouvrant le débat :
« Le prolétariat a toutes raisons de saluer la défaite qu’a subie
l’impérialisme français en Algérie il y a 50 ans. Il fallait soutenir la lutte
pour l’indépendance sans donner le moindre soutien politique au FLN
petit-bourgeois.
« La théorie de la révolution permanente, c’est la perspective d’une révolution ouvrière : seul un gouvernement ouvrier et paysan en Algérie peut véritablement lutter pour éradiquer l’oppression coloniale du pays et lutter pour l’extension de la révolution socialiste à la métropole impérialiste.
« Lutte ouvrière distribue donc une nouvelle brochure avec des dizaines de textes sur la guerre d’Algérie et les positions qu’avait Voix ouvrière. Je conseille vivement à tout le monde de la lire, car cela donne un tableau très révélateur de la politique de LO, à l’époque et aujourd’hui, à la fois pour ce qu’il y a dans la brochure et pour ce qui n’y figure pas.
« VO se contentait de revendiquer la fin de la guerre en disant qu’elle coûtait cher aux ouvriers français ; ils parlaient du rationnement de l’essence pour les ouvriers français, etc. VO n’a commencé à revendiquer explicitement l’indépendance qu’en septembre 1958, le mois où de Gaulle s’était prononcé pour l’autodétermination ! La première fois que VO mentionnait la torture c’était en mai 1959, plus de quatre ans après le début de la guerre.
« C’est toute la méthodologie économiste de LO qui s’exprimait pendant la guerre. VO refusait de soutenir activement la grève de huit jours des travailleurs algériens en 1957 pour l’indépendance (c’est là-dessus que commence la brochure), mais par contre elle pensait que la lutte économique des travailleurs contre le coût de la guerre allait transformer par elle-même la conscience des ouvriers. Il n’était donc nul besoin d’avancer un programme trotskyste révolutionnaire. Tout au plus VO pouvait-elle ainsi jeter les travailleurs dans les bras du défaitisme bourgeois représenté en fin de compte par de Gaulle qui a été finalement obligé d’organiser le retrait français d’Algérie.
« Lénine expliquait déjà en 1902 dans Que faire ? que l’économisme, c’est la politique bourgeoise de la classe ouvrière, c’était un pendant russe du réformisme graduel de Bernstein en Allemagne. Nous nous plaçons au contraire dans la tradition de Lénine et cherchons à construire un parti révolutionnaire d’avant-garde, un parti léniniste. Dès ses origines VO était au contraire sur une voie de garage opposée à la lutte pour la Quatrième Internationale. Celle-ci sera reforgée contre le réformisme syndical et municipaliste à la LO. C’est la perspective de la Ligue communiste internationale, qui en France publie le Bolchévik. »
« La théorie de la révolution permanente, c’est la perspective d’une révolution ouvrière : seul un gouvernement ouvrier et paysan en Algérie peut véritablement lutter pour éradiquer l’oppression coloniale du pays et lutter pour l’extension de la révolution socialiste à la métropole impérialiste.
« Lutte ouvrière distribue donc une nouvelle brochure avec des dizaines de textes sur la guerre d’Algérie et les positions qu’avait Voix ouvrière. Je conseille vivement à tout le monde de la lire, car cela donne un tableau très révélateur de la politique de LO, à l’époque et aujourd’hui, à la fois pour ce qu’il y a dans la brochure et pour ce qui n’y figure pas.
« VO se contentait de revendiquer la fin de la guerre en disant qu’elle coûtait cher aux ouvriers français ; ils parlaient du rationnement de l’essence pour les ouvriers français, etc. VO n’a commencé à revendiquer explicitement l’indépendance qu’en septembre 1958, le mois où de Gaulle s’était prononcé pour l’autodétermination ! La première fois que VO mentionnait la torture c’était en mai 1959, plus de quatre ans après le début de la guerre.
« C’est toute la méthodologie économiste de LO qui s’exprimait pendant la guerre. VO refusait de soutenir activement la grève de huit jours des travailleurs algériens en 1957 pour l’indépendance (c’est là-dessus que commence la brochure), mais par contre elle pensait que la lutte économique des travailleurs contre le coût de la guerre allait transformer par elle-même la conscience des ouvriers. Il n’était donc nul besoin d’avancer un programme trotskyste révolutionnaire. Tout au plus VO pouvait-elle ainsi jeter les travailleurs dans les bras du défaitisme bourgeois représenté en fin de compte par de Gaulle qui a été finalement obligé d’organiser le retrait français d’Algérie.
« Lénine expliquait déjà en 1902 dans Que faire ? que l’économisme, c’est la politique bourgeoise de la classe ouvrière, c’était un pendant russe du réformisme graduel de Bernstein en Allemagne. Nous nous plaçons au contraire dans la tradition de Lénine et cherchons à construire un parti révolutionnaire d’avant-garde, un parti léniniste. Dès ses origines VO était au contraire sur une voie de garage opposée à la lutte pour la Quatrième Internationale. Celle-ci sera reforgée contre le réformisme syndical et municipaliste à la LO. C’est la perspective de la Ligue communiste internationale, qui en France publie le Bolchévik. »
La réponse de Megdoud à cette intervention, évitant soigneusement
de répondre à nos critiques sur l’appel à l’indépendance et sur la question de
la torture, n’a fait que confirmer la justesse de nos critiques. Elle a d’abord
expliqué que leur brochure était un recueil de positions prises à chaud sur le
vif en cherchant à s’adresser aux travailleurs alors que VO était encore une
petite organisation avec moins de 30 camarades – comme si la faible taille de
l’organisation avait été une excuse pour le fait que Voix ouvrière avait refusé
de se prononcer pour l’indépendance. Ensuite elle a dit que dès 1945 VO se
prononçait contre la répression (il faut remarquer à ce sujet que le groupe de
Barta qui existait à l’époque, antécédent de Lutte ouvrière et autodissous en
1947, s’était prononcé pour l’indépendance de l’Algérie, une position que
précisément n’avait pas reprise le groupe VO refondé par Robert Barcia au milieu
des années 1950).
Farida Megdoud a aussi insisté qu’à l’époque il n’était pas
si évident d’être pour l’indépendance dans la mesure où la cause
algérienne était loin d’être populaire dans la classe ouvrière – encore une
excuse pour la capitulation de LO face au chauvinisme présent parmi de nombreux
travailleurs. Elle a insisté également sur l’atmosphère répressive de l’époque,
l’hostilité du PCF – comme si cela justifiait de ne pas s’être opposé
frontalement au sabotage par le PCF de la lutte pour l’indépendance. Elle est
revenue une nouvelle fois sur l’insistance de l’IC à défendre le droit des
peuples à disposer d’eux-mêmes.
La réponse de Megdoud était en train de se transformer
involontairement en véritable réquisitoire contre les positions de VO pendant la
guerre d’Algérie. Elle a essayé de se reprendre avec sa dernière planche de
salut : l’ouvriérisme. Elle a déclaré que leurs positions étaient précieuses car
ils étaient les seuls à s’adresser à la classe ouvrière. Quelle pirouette
ridicule ! Toutes les organisations de la classe ouvrière se sont
adressées sous de multiples aspects à la classe ouvrière à propos de la guerre
d’Algérie à cette époque : la SFIO pour justifier la répression coloniale, le
PCF pour excuser son propre rôle traître dans cette trahison (y compris le
cassage des grèves contre la guerre en 1956 – voir notre article paru dans le
Bolchévik n° 152, printemps 2000), les ancêtres du NPA de Besancenot pour
soutenir politiquement les nationalistes petits-bourgeois du FLN, et ceux du POI
de Gérard Schivardi et Daniel Gluckstein pour soutenir politiquement les
nationalistes petits-bourgeois du MNA, rival du FLN.
La question n’est donc pas de se tourner vers la classe ouvrière,
mais de le faire avec quel programme ? La conception qu’avait
Lénine du parti révolutionnaire, et grâce à laquelle le parti bolchévique a pu
mener les ouvriers russes à la victoire en Octobre 1917, c’est un parti ouvrier
d’avant-garde présentant à la classe ouvrière un programme pour la
mobiliser vers la lutte pour le pouvoir, et, s’adressant au-delà de la classe
ouvrière aussi, présentant un programme pour l’émancipation de tous les opprimés
sous le capitalisme. LO prétend au contraire qu’ils étaient trop petits à
l’époque pour pouvoir dire la vérité aux travailleurs (et ils reprennent encore
cet argument aujourd’hui à l’occasion quand ils disent que de toutes façons leur
influence est marginale dans la classe ouvrière, comme si du coup ce qu’ils y
font n’avait pas d’importance). En l’occurrence, il fallait mobiliser la classe
ouvrière pour soutenir activement la lutte pour l’indépendance de l’Algérie,
dans le cadre d’un programme pour la révolution socialiste des deux côtés de la
Méditerranée. C’est un tel parti que nous cherchons à construire.
VO, au contraire, s’adaptait à la conscience du moment des
travailleurs, alors influencés par le stalinisme. Au lieu de chercher à
mobiliser politiquement les travailleurs en solidarité avec le peuple algérien
en lutte pour son indépendance, elle cherchait à ramener les
travailleurs vers la lutte économique. Elle disait par exemple dans un éditorial
du 24 avril 1957, typique de ses écrits d’alors : « Nous pouvons nous battre
pour défendre notre niveau de vie. C’est seulement si nous nous laissons
appauvrir que Mollet [le chef du gouvernement, SFIO] pourra continuer la
guerre. C’est notre seul moyen de pression, mais c’est aussi le plus efficace :
refuser de faire les frais de la guerre, refuser de payer. »
VO faisait croire que la lutte économique contre le coût de la
guerre, contre son impact sur le panier de la ménagère, etc., ferait par
elle-même progresser la compréhension politique des travailleurs. En escamotant
la lutte dans la classe ouvrière française pour l’indépendance de l’Algérie,
elle s’est retrouvée à la remorque du PCF à un moment où celui-ci trahissait
cette lutte. LO est bien plus à droite aujourd’hui qu’à l’époque, elle participe
même à des coalitions avec la bourgeoisie et le PCF pour gérer des municipalités
capitalistes, mais elle n’a pas changé fondamentalement de méthode. Comme nous
le disions dans le dernier numéro du Bolchévik, leur conception, c’est
celle d’un parti anti-léniniste d’arrière-garde. C’est en détruisant l’influence
politique de ces économistes, comme l’avait fait Lénine au début des années
1900, que l’on construira le parti ouvrier révolutionnaire dont ont besoin les
travailleurs pour en finir une bonne fois pour toutes avec ce système
capitaliste d’exploitation et d’oppression.
On Howard Zinn
For Immediate Release
Contact
Jim Plank
“To hear him speak was like listening to music that you
loved: lyrical, uplifting, honest.” --Michael Moore
"Wise, humorous,
serious, without one moment of hesitation in tackling who we are as a people, a
country, and a world." --Alice Walker
HOWARD ZINN SPEAKS
Collected
Speeches 1963-2009 | From the Author of A People's History of the United
States | Available for the first time
Edited
by Anthony Arnove |
Pub date:
Nov. 19 | Haymarket Books, Simultaneous release in
Trade Cloth, $26.95, 320 pp, ISBN
978-1-60846-223-0 | Trade Paper, $18.95, 320 pp, ISBN
978-1-60846-259-9
Enhanced E-book, $12.99, 320 pp, ISBN
978-1-60846-260-5 | E-book, $9.99, 320 pp, ISBN 978-1-60846-228-5
HOWARD ZINN
(1922-2010) illuminated our history like no other with his classic, A
People's History of the United States. A lifelong activist, WWII veteran,
and professor, he was also one of the great
orators of the twentieth century.
Howard Zinn Speaks: Collected Speeches 1963-2009
spans five decades of Zinn's thought, covering
topics on
war, racism, social
movements and more. Praise:
"I hesitate to comment on Howard Zinn
Speaks because of my unshakable and overt bias for anything Zinn. But then
again having a Zinn bias just means you favor truth and justice over lies and
oppression." --Lupe Fiasco
“Always enlightening, often stirring, an
amalgam of insight, critical history, and wit, blended with charm and appeal.”
--Noam Chomsky
“Howard Zinn’s speeches, beautifully gathered
together here by Anthony Arnove, are a joy and an inspiration.” --Marisa
Tomei
“These speeches are righteous songs filled
with the boldness, vision, humor, depth and urgings of his profoundly human
voice.” --Eve Ensler
“Howard Zinn was one of us, the best part of
us. Enjoy these speeches. Hear his voice. Then hear your own, closely.” --Josh
Brolin
"Great reading for students and
teachers—especially when read aloud." --Rethinking Schools
HOWARD ZINN
(1922–2010) was a historian, playwright, and activist. He wrote the classic A People's History of
the United States, “a brilliant
and moving history of the American people from the point of view of those whose plight has been
largely omitted from most
histories.”
The book, which has sold more than two
million copies, has been featured on The
Sopranos and Simpsons, and in the film Good
Will Hunting. In 2009, HISTORY aired The People Speak, an acclaimed documentary co-directed by Zinn, based on A
People's History and a companion
volume, Voices of a People's History of the United States.
Zinn grew up in Brooklyn in a
working-class, immigrant household. At 18
he became a shipyard worker and then flew bomber missions during World War II. These experiences
helped shape his opposition to war and
passion for history. After attending college under the GI Bill and earning a Ph.D. in history
from Columbia, he taught at Spelman, where
he became active in the civil rights
movement. After being fired by Spelman for his support for student protesters, Zinn became a professor of Political
Science at Boston University, were he
taught until his retirement in 1988. Zinn
was the author of many books, including an autobiography, You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train, the play
Marx in Soho, and
Passionate Declarations. He received the Lannan Foundation Literary Award for Nonfiction and the Eugene
V. Debs award for his writing and political
activism.
ANTHONY
ARNOVE wrote, directed, and produced The People Speak with Howard Zinn, Chris Moore, Josh Brolin,
and Matt Damon; and co-edited with Howard
Zinn, Voices of a People’s History. Arnove’s writing has appeared in The Financial Times, The Nation, Mother Jones, and more. He has appeared on BBC, Democracy Now!, Sky News, and
public radio programs across the
country.
PUBLICITY
REQUESTS
Please contact Jim Plank, Publicity,
Haymarket Books, at jim@haymarketbooks.org or 773-583-7884 for review
copy and interview requests. Anthony Arnove
is available for select interviews to
discuss Howard Zinn Speaks.
ADDITIONAL
INFO
Collected Speeches, 1963-2009
Edited by Anthony Arnove
Published by Haymarket Books
Pub date: Oct. 26 | Haymarket Books,
Simultaneous release in
Trade Cloth, $26.95, 320 pp, ISBN
978-1-60846-223-0 | Trade Paper, $18.95, 320 pp, ISBN
978-1-60846-259-9
Enhanced E-book, $12.99, 320 pp, ISBN
978-1-60846-260-5 | E-book, $9.99, 320 pp, ISBN
978-1-60846-228-5
Haymarket
Books
Workers Struggles
|
TOMORROW! URGENT ACTION!
Immigrant Workers Continue Their Fight for Justice
The workers have brought their demand for payment of $183,500 in
non-payment of wages and overtime to U.S. District Court in Massachusetts!
What: With the legal support of Greater Boston Legal Services a group of
Latino immigrant workers and members of Centro Presente have brought their
demand for payment of $183,500 in non-payment of wages and overtime to U.S.
District Court in Massachusetts. "We have been fighting this case for nearly a
year and now finally we've had enough and we're going to court to get what we
earned," stated Marcos Che Cucul one of the affected workers.
The workers were employed by Mumbai Chopstix located on Newbury Street in
Boston, Bukhara in Jamaica Plain, Diva Indian Bistro in Somerville's Davis
Square and Cafe of India in Cambridge. These restaurants are part of Amrik S.
Pabla's One World Cuisine restaurant group. The workers first came to Centro
Presente almost a year ago with their case and have since been managing their
public campaign to get their rightfully earned wages through negotiating with
the owners. In the process they learned about their labor rights and educated
the general public about immigrant labor exploitation.
Where: Diva Indian Bistro, 246 Elm Street, Somerville, MA.
When: Tomorrow, Friday, November 2nd at 6:00 p.m.
For more info please contact: Patricia Montes at 617.959.3108
COME DOWN TO DAVIS SQUARE TOMORROW NIGHT AND SUPPORT IMMIGRANT WORKERS IN
STANDING UP FOR THEIR LABOR RIGHTS!!
¡UNION! ¡PODER! ¡JUSTICIA!
# # #
Centro Presente is a state-wide, membership-based Latino immigrant
organization that advocates for immigrant rights and for economic and social
justice through the integration of community organizing, leadership development
and basic services.
Join Our Mailing List!
Centro Presente
17 Inner Belt Road
Somerville, Massachusetts 02143
|
COME TO A PLANNING MEETING FOR PEACE AND
JUSTICE ORGANIZATIONS TO LEARN
MORE AND TO ORGANIZE FURTHER ACTIONS
AGAINST THE ILLEGAL SURVEILLANCE
OF THE BPD AND THE BRIC
OPERATIONS
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 1:30-3:30
PM
HARVARD LAW SCHOOL
WASSERSTEIN-CASPERSEN HALL, RM
1010
6 EVERETT ST., OFF MASS. AVE., NORTH OF
HARVARD SQ.
There is a long history of the
police and FBI targeting peace and social justice groups, unions, and minority
communities for surveillance, disruption and even worse. These assaults on our
civil rights and liberties have intensified since 9/11 and the unleashing of the
so-called ‘War on Terror’.
in spite of their attempts to
cover up their unlawful actions, thanks to the National Lawyers Guild and the
ACLU of Massachusetts, they got caught:
From ACLU/NLG press
release: Boston Police
officers make video recordings of peaceful demonstrations and track activists as
well as the internal workings of political groups--even when there is no
indication of criminal activity or a threat to public safety. The documents
reveal that officers assigned to the BPD's regional domestic spying center, the
Boston Regional Intelligence Center (BRIC), file so-called "intelligence
reports" mischaracterizing peaceful groups such as Veterans for Peace, United
for Justice with Peace and CodePink as "extremists," and peaceful protests as
domestic "homeland security" threats and civil disturbances. These searchable
records are retained for years, in violation of federal regulations, and were
turned over to the ACLU and NLG only after they sued for access on behalf of
local peace groups and activists.
The activist community is
justifiably outraged and many wish to take more action. We know that the files
that were released are just the tip of the iceberg and involve many more
organizations and constituencies than involved in the recent lawsuit.
This is not a public meeting
for wide publicity – it is an organizational meeting to discuss our options and
to plan additional action.
Lawyers and representatives of
the NLG and the ACLU will be there to put the current findings in context and
discuss what further legal actions, if any, can be taken. Other suggestions
that have been made for actions include: legislative action, petition campaign,
demonstrations, letter writing, educational forums. We can decide to do any or
all of these and set the goals for what we want to achieve.
For more information and to
watch a video: www.aclum.org http://www.nlgmass.org
In the meantime, you
are encouraged to send letters to the news media and to Mayor Menino and Police
Commissioner Ed Davis.
Mayor
Menino
One City Hall
Square, Suite 500
Boston, MA
02201-2013
Commissioner Ed
Davis
One Schroeder
Plaza
Boston, MA
02120
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Respectable Murderers: An Open Letter to Dan Ellsberg
Dear Dan,You and I are getting ready to tape a debate on the question of whether to vote for Obama (in "swing states"). It will air on Lila Garrett's "Connect the Dots" show on KPFK next Monday. I'm looking forward to it, if for no other reason, because I think our public discourse lacks much serious debate between people who respect each other's intentions. I have nothing but respect for you and believe you mean nothing but the best in advocating votes for Obama. You honestly believe I was catastrophically wrong to vote for Jill Stein in Virginia, as I've done, and I honestly believe you are horrendously misguided to be expending your valuable energy trying to get others to vote for Obama. And yet we'll be friends through this and regardless of whether one or both of us ever change our minds.
An hour debate will also be a refreshing change from the usual sound byte simplification of the media, and yet not necessarily sufficient. So, let me tell you a couple of stories.
I wandered over to the Obama campaign office here in Charlottesville, Va., on Wednesday when former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was scheduled to visit. She showed up, in fact, and told everyone how terrific Obama is.
I asked Albright whether she still believed that killing a half a million young Iraqi children was "worth it." She said that she very much regretted having made that remark. But did she regret having enacted the sanctions that killed those children? I asked if she opposed the current "crippling sanctions" on Iran, and she said that she did not.
Here's video: http://youtu.be/gdmix60ajmA
I'm not so much troubled by Albright's sanctioning of mass murder, as by the agreement with her on the part of the many people gathered to applaud her comments. Not a single person present expressed the slightest concern over Albright's having taken part in the murder of so many young lives and many more older ones. Not a single person expressed an interest in learning about a history they were perhaps ignorant of. Not a single person offered an argument for what the positive "it" was that could have made such slaughter "worth it." Not a single person offered a claim that George Bush Sr. or Bob Dole would have killed even more children.
I don't mean to give the impression that Albright's audience was comatose. On the contrary, numerous individuals began grabbing me, shouting at me, pushing me, grabbing my camera, twisting my arm, and spitting out the most vicious hatred. In theory they would all, no doubt, agree that in a system of self-governance people should be able to question their elected officials, former elected officials, and at-large mass-murdering former elected officials. But in this case, this official was playing for the Good Team. The proper role, they believed, therefore, was that of cheerleaders, the highest value deferential respect.
Do they believe the wholesale slaughter of human beings, whether by sanctions or bombs, is sometimes justified by some mysterious "national interest"? Do they believe I was a raving lunatic and that Albright would never have hurt a fly? Do they just believe it's most appropriate not to ask, because that would involve disrespect toward someone on the Good Team? No matter which way you slice it, you come back to a room full of well-dressed polite supporters of mass-murder. That's far more worrying to me than the individual sociopath speaking to them.
Now, present in that room were TV cameras and newspaper reporters. The purpose of the event was to generate positive news about the reasons to vote for Obama and the stature of the people supporting Obama's reelection. Clearly, from that point of view, the staffers in the office did the absolute right thing in chasing me out of the building and making sure that not another inconvenient question was posed. As I'm sure you realize, voting for Obama in a swing state as a single secretive individual can hardly be called rational. A single vote makes no difference. To be the rational strategic voter you envision, each person must also strive to recruit others.
On the other hand, you say that you agree with me that independent policy-driven activism is more valuable than elections. You agree that we don't have legitimate elections offering a wide range of choices, that we need a movement to demand changes we cannot vote for, changes to strip out the money, open up the debates and the media, undo the gerrymandering, do away with the electoral college, provide automatic registration, and on and on and on. You probably agree that women did not vote themselves the right to vote, that the labor movement grew when it struggled and sacrificed by striking and has shrunk while funding the Democratic Party asking nothing in return, that major changes for peace and justice and civilization have been driven primarily by independent movements and often movements that have mobilized third and fourth party campaigns before winning over the Big Two. You may agree with Howard Zinn that it's not so much who's sitting in the White House as who's doing the sitting in. You might even agree with Emma Goldman that if elections alone changed anything, they'd be banned. In any event, during certain non-election years, I see you doing as much useful activism for this country and the world as anyone I know.
Presumably you place some value on spreading awareness of what sanctions did to Iraq. Presumably you see what value there could be in halting the sanctions on Iran. But what would you have done in that Obama campaign office in this swing state on Wednesday? You are a remarkable person, but still only one person. Would you have ruined the entire publicity stunt by pressing Albright further on her record of genocide? Or would you have thrown her a softball about what sort of evil lawyer Mitt Romney might be expected to nominate to the Supreme Court? Let's accept that both would have been good questions. But you could not have asked both. There was not time, and asking the first would have negated the purpose of the second -- not to mention getting you thrown out of the event.
Even you cannot follow your advice, and you are Daniel Ellsberg. Imagine how hard following your advice is for other people. Most people, to one degree or another, identify with candidates and parties. They talk about "us" winning when their candidate wins. To various degrees they avoid becoming aware of their team's flaws. To various degrees, they censor their opposition to their party or politician, before, during, and after elections. What is your time calculation? Do you prioritize campaigning for a month, six months, a year? How much time out of each four-year period do you sacrifice from independent activism of the sort that has always changed the world? And how much time out of every two-year term of those legislators who Constitutionally are supposed to be running the country?
I'm convinced that you personally do an excellent job of avoiding lesser-evil team cheerleading in between elections. But, most people do not. Our RootsAction petition on "strategic voting" got a response several times lower than any other action we've ever sent to our list. Some people do hold their noses and vote, but they have no idea how tightly they should be holding their noses, and they do not act appropriately post-election. All the activists running around knocking on doors and making phone calls for candidates will not do so for peace or justice in December. They'd look at you like you were crazy if you suggested it. Their work is done. Their energy is drained. Their role as spectators is established. And the promise is contained in any activism that they, or even you, muster: We will attempt to inconvenience you, but we will never ever vote against you.
In between elections, as we move from having voted for the less evil party toward the inevitable contest four years hence between two parties that are both more evil than the time before, our activism is neutered by a system of unions, PACs, and nonprofit clicktivist and media complexes that seek their funding, power, and sense of importance from one half of the government. It has become routine for grassroots or astroturf activist leaders to head into the veal pen and ask the elected officials of the Good Party or of the "Progressive" wing of the good party what they should ask their members to demand. This is an inversion of representative government. You'll recall groups that favored single-payer healthcare forbidding their members from mentioning it, asking instead for a "public option" because so-called public servants had instructed the public to ask for that. The point is not that legislators should never compromise, but that we should leave it to the legislators, because when we pre-compromise, we end up with even less in the end.
When Obama was in Charlottesville, hundreds of people waited in line for hours for the chance to cheer anything he said. Some of us went to talk to the people waiting in line. We wanted to get a sense of how they felt about all the policies that had produced such outrage under Bush and been expanded under Obama. Under Obama, as you may know, wealth is concentrating faster, the environment is deteriorating faster, the military has spread further and cost more, the warrantless spying has spread and been firmly established as without criminal penalty, rendition and torture have become policy choices rather than crimes, imprisonment without charge or trial has been "legalized" (although Obama is still fighting for that power in court), an assassination program has been created and openly advertised, wars have been launched without the courtesy of lying to Congress, the CIA has been given major war powers, "special" forces are in 70 nations on any given day and raiding a dozen homes to kill on any given night, drones have raised to new heights the percentage of war victims who are civilians and the percentage of the people in certain nations who hate our government, secrecy has mushroomed, and retribution against whistleblowers has exploded. You are aware of all of this. We couldn't find a single person in that crowd who had ever heard of any of it. Major news stories that would have put people into the streets in outrage if the president were a Republican did not exist to this crowd.
Sure, you know the facts. But are you devoting every ounce of energy to spreading the word and building resistance? Of course not. You're investing your time in campaigning for Obama votes (in swing states). You may understand that there's been no step back from Bush's policies, that Obama has advanced them further. Yes, Romney could advance them even further even faster than Obama would in the next four years -- even in the face of the public opposition that would likely materialize for a President Romney. But we need a reversal of course, not a slightly slower death, not even a significantly slower death. The environment is collapsing. Weaponry and hostility are spreading. We're dealing with a need for survival, not a desire for utopia. What we need for survival is a credible independent movement.
When a labor union today says "Reform NAFTA and push for the Employee Free Choice Act, or else," the "or else" is empty and everyone knows it. When Bill McKibben says "The tar sands pipeline is your test," nobody believes that when Obama fails the test McKibben will oppose his reelection. Compare this battered-spouse relationship with that of Latinos who posed a credible threat to desert Obama and thereby won some modest immigration rights.
You know that we had a significant (pitiably weak but significant) peace movement in 2005 and 2006. Why? Because opponents of war and opponents of Republican presidents' wars were teamed up together. That fell apart as Democrats took power in Congress in 2007 and as 2008 turned out to be the year of one of those endlessly recurring "most important elections of our lifetime." The movement was temporarily shut down, never to be restored. We went from Mitch McConnell secretly warning Bush to get out of Iraq to Obama getting credit for withdrawing from Afghanistan even as the troops there were double the number deployed when Obama entered the White House.
How in the world can anyone have spent the last many years in the peace movement and not noticed this partisan-based electoral-based collapse? I'm sure you've seen and were likely surveyed during the study done by the University of Michigan's Michael Heaney and Indiana University's Fabio Rojas. They documented this collapse and its partisan basis.
Would I object to people voting for a less-evil but still evil candidate if they could continue organizing for justice? Of course not. I do not fail to understand the power of your argument. I'm sure you'll do me the courtesy of not simply repeating it. A more evil candidate is more evil than a less evil candidate. A greater warmonger and bigger destroyer of the environment is worse than a lesser warmonger and lesser destroyer of the environment. I think the case for Obama's superiority to Romney is vastly overblown. I think, in fact, that Obama has been able to get away with much that we would never have allowed McCain to achieve. We stood up against Bush's attack on Social Security. But China is to Nixon as humanitarian goods are to Obama. Let's grant, however, that Obama is better than Romney. Let's grant it because it is not the central argument and may very well be right. That is, if you compare their platforms as presented, guesstimate how much of each is outright lies, and factor in the likely public resistance to each, Obama may come out ahead. My argument is not that he doesn't. My argument is not that he doesn't do so meaningfully. My argument is not that this isn't a question of life and death. And my position involves complete awareness that I will not be the first to die, someone else will.
Here, in contrast, is my actual argument: It is vastly more important that we have an independent movement based on policy changes rather than personality changes. In theory we could have that with lesser-evil-swing-state voting. In reality, we cannot. We cannot build a national movement in the 38 states from which all candidates and journalists have fled, and on the condition that we avoid building it large enough to have any impact whatsoever (which would ruin the whole strategy by transforming a non-swing state into a swing state). We cannot keep a movement from shutting down for each election cycle as long as most people see their jobs as followers of politicians rather than as the true sovereigns of this land.
I don't care about my purity. If I wanted to be pure I would avoid thinking about these matters at all. I wouldn't subject myself to a room full of well-dressed polite backers of mass-murder at all if I wanted to be pure. And I would hold my nose and work with them shoulder-to-shoulder if I thought that would lead to the greater good. I would have voted for Captain Peace Prize if I believed it would save the most lives. I do not. I believe that building an activist movement that depends on rejecting support for a party of mass murderers will save the most lives, and will do so in the relative near term -- or we will all perish.
As
you know, I've spent months trying to avoid this discussion because I believe
that our so-called elections drain energy away from activism. They also serve to
divide us. We all want peace and justice. But we drop everything to debate or,
more often, quarrel with each other over electoral matters -- something the
powers in Washington must have great laughs over. But the election is this week,
and this debate must be had. I enter it with a great deal of respect for that
small group of people on the other side of it who understand the need for a real
mass movement and believe a mass movement is compatible with lesser-evilism. I'm
simply not persuaded.
The election is now just weeks
away, and I want to urge those whose values are generally in line with mine --
progressives, especially activists -- to make this goal one of your priorities
during this period.
An activist colleague recently said
to me: "I hear you're supporting Obama."
I was startled, and took offense.
"Supporting Obama? Me?!"
"I lose no opportunity publicly," I
told him angrily, to identify Obama as a tool of Wall Street, a man who's
decriminalized torture and is still complicit in it, a drone assassin, someone
who's launched an unconstitutional war, supports kidnapping and indefinite
detention without trial, and has prosecuted more whistleblowers like myself than
all previous presidents put together. "Would you call that support?"
My friend said, "But on Democracy
Now you urged people in swing states to vote for him! How could you say that? I
don't live in a swing state, but I will not and could not vote for Obama under
any circumstances."
My answer was: a Romney/Ryan
administration would be no better -- no different -- on any of the serious
offenses I just mentioned or anything else, and it would be much worse, even
catastrophically worse, on a number of other important issues: attacking Iran,
Supreme Court appointments, the economy, women's reproductive rights, health
coverage, safety net, climate change, green energy, the environment.
I told him: "I don't 'support
Obama.' I oppose the current Republican Party. This is not a contest between
Barack Obama and a progressive candidate. The voters in a handful or a dozen
close-fought swing states are going to determine whether Mitt Romney and Paul
Ryan are going to wield great political power for four, maybe eight years, or
not."
As Noam Chomsky said recently, "The
Republican organization today is extremely dangerous, not just to this country,
but to the world. It's worth expending some effort to prevent their rise to
power, without sowing illusions about the Democratic alternatives."
Following that logic, he's said to an interviewer what
my friend heard me say to Amy Goodman: "If I were a person in a swing state, I'd
vote against Romney/Ryan, which means voting for Obama because there is no other
choice."
The election is at this moment a
toss-up. That means this is one of the uncommon occasions when we progressives
-- a small minority of the electorate -- could actually have a significant
influence on the outcome of a national election, swinging it one way or the
other.
The only way for progressives and
Democrats to block Romney from office, at this date, is to persuade enough
people in swing states to vote for Obama: not stay home, or vote for someone
else. And that has to include, in those states, progressives and disillusioned
liberals who are at this moment inclined not to vote at all or to vote for a
third-party candidate (because like me they've been not just disappointed but
disgusted and enraged by much of what Obama has done in the last four years and
will probably keep doing).
They have to be persuaded to vote,
and to vote in a battleground state for Obama not anyone else, despite the
terrible flaws of the less-bad candidate, the incumbent. That's not easy. As I
see it, that's precisely the "effort" Noam is referring to as worth expending
right now to prevent the Republicans' rise to power. And it will take
progressives -- some of you reading this, I hope -- to make that effort of
persuasion effectively.
It will take someone these
disheartened progressives and liberals will listen to. Someone manifestly
without illusions about the Democrats, someone who sees what they see when they
look at the president these days: but who can also see through candidates Romney
or Ryan on the split-screen, and keep their real, disastrous policies in
focus.
It's true that the differences
between the major parties are not nearly as large as they and their candidates
claim, let alone what we would want. It's even fair to use Gore Vidal's metaphor
that they form two wings ("two right wings," as some have put it) of a single
party, the Property or Plutocracy Party, or as Justin Raimondo says, the War
Party.
Still, the political reality is
that there are two distinguishable wings, and one is reliably even worse than
the other, currently much worse overall. To be in denial or to act in neglect of
that reality serves only the possibly imminent, yet presently avoidable, victory
of the worse.
The traditional third-party mantra,
"There's no significant difference between the major parties" amounts to saying:
"The Republicans are no worse, overall." And that's absurd. It constitutes
shameless apologetics for the Republicans, however unintended. It's crazily
divorced from present reality.
And it's not at all harmless to be
propagating that absurd falsehood. It has the effect of encouraging progressives
even in battleground states to refrain from voting or to vote in a close
election for someone other than Obama, and more importantly, to influence others
to act likewise. That's an effect that serves no one but the Republicans, and
ultimately the 1 percent.
It's not merely understandable,
it's entirely appropriate to be enraged at Barack Obama. As I am. He has often
acted outrageously, not merely timidly or "disappointingly." If impeachment were
politically imaginable on constitutional grounds, he's earned it (like George W.
Bush, and many of his predecessors!) It is entirely human to want to punish him,
not to "reward" him with another term or a vote that might be taken to express
trust, hope or approval.
But rage is not generally conducive
to clear thinking. And it often gets worked out against innocent victims, as
would be the case here domestically, if refusals to vote for him resulted in
Romney's taking key battleground states that decide the outcome of this
election.
To punish Obama in this particular
way, on Election Day -- by depriving him of votes in swing states and hence of
office in favor of Romney and Ryan -- would punish most of all the poor and
marginal in society, and workers and middle class as well: not only in the U.S.
but worldwide in terms of the economy (I believe the Republicans could still
convert this recession to a Great Depression), the environment and climate
change. It could well lead to war with Iran (which Obama has been creditably
resisting, against pressure from within his own party). And it would spell, via
Supreme Court appointments, the end of Roe v. Wade and of the occasional five to
four decisions in favor of the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
The reelection of Barack Obama, in
itself, is not going to bring serious progressive change, end militarism and
empire, or restore the Constitution and the rule of law. That's for us and the
rest of the people to bring about after this election and in the rest of our
lives -- through organizing, building movements and agitating.
In the eight to twelve close-fought
states -- especially Florida, Ohio, and Virginia, but also Colorado, Iowa,
Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia and
Wisconsin -- for any progressive to encourage fellow progressives and others in
those states to vote for a third-party candidate is, I would say, to be
complicit in facilitating the election of Romney and Ryan, with all its
consequences.
To think of that as urging people
in swing states to "vote their conscience" is, I believe, dangerously misleading
advice. I would say to a progressive that if your conscience tells you on
Election Day to vote for someone other than Obama in a battleground state, you
need a second opinion. Your conscience is giving you bad counsel.
I often quote a line by Thoreau
that had great impact for me: "Cast your whole vote: not a strip of paper
merely, but your whole influence." He was referring, in that essay, to civil
disobedience, or as he titled it himself, "Resistance to Civil
Authority."
It still means that to me. But this
is a year when for people who think like me -- and who, unlike me, live in
battleground states -- casting a strip of paper is also important. Using your
whole influence this month to get others to do that, to best effect, is even
more important.
That means for progressives in the
next couple of weeks -- in addition to the rallies, demonstrations, petitions,
lobbying (largely against policies or prospective policies of President Obama,
including austerity budgeting next month), movement-building and civil
disobedience that are needed all year round and every year -- using one's voice
and one's e-mails and op-eds and social media to encourage citizens in swing
states to vote against a Romney victory by voting for the only real alternative,
Barack Obama.
Daniel Ellsberg is a former
State and Defense Department official who has been arrested for acts of
non-violent civil disobedience over eighty times, initially for copying and
releasing the top secret Pentagon Papers, for which he faced 115 years in
prison. Living in a non-swing state, he does not intend to vote for President
Obama.
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Formar para el desfile al mediodía en la esquina de la calle Beacon Street y Charles (justo arriba de Cheers en la entrada para el Boston Common).
VFP Pavilion at Faneuil Market (Samuel Adams Park) desde las 11 AM PM -4. Se necesitan voluntarios para configurar el pabellón y el personal durante el desfile.
Programa de VFP en el Mercado Faneuil se inicia después de acabado desfile (aproximadamente a las 2:00 pm, pero está supeditada a la llegada del desfile oficial) con oradores, cantantes y bandas (entre 30 y 45 minutos, el más corto es el mejor)-Este-temas destacados del año No a la guerra contra Irán, Freedom For Private Bradley Manning.
Estaremos repartiendo panfletos durante el día en varios lugares del centro de la ciudad de Boston (incluyendo la oficina de reclutamiento de las Fuerzas Armadas en la calle Tremont y otros sitios TBA) repartiendo volantes que destacan nuestro dos principales cuestiones e Irán y Manning Bradley.
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