From The Marxist Archives -The Revolutionary History Journal-Liborio Justo and Argentinian Trotskyism

 

Click below to link to the Revolutionary History Journal index.

http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/revhist/backissu.htm

Peter Paul Markin comment on this series:

This is an excellent documentary source for today’s leftist militants to “discover” the work of our forebears, particularly the bewildering myriad of tendencies which have historically flown under the flag of the great Russian revolutionary, Leon Trotsky and his Fourth International, whether one agrees with their programs or not. But also other laborite, semi-anarchist, ant-Stalinist and just plain garden-variety old school social democrat groupings and individual pro-socialist proponents.

Some, maybe most of the material presented here, cast as weak-kneed programs for struggle in many cases tend to be anti-Leninist as screened through the Stalinist monstrosities and/or support groups and individuals who have no intention of making a revolution. Or in the case of examining past revolutionary efforts either declare that no revolutionary possibilities existed (most notably Germany in 1923) or alibi, there is no other word for it, those who failed to make a revolution when it was possible.

 

The Spanish Civil War can serve as something of litmus test for this latter proposition, most infamously around attitudes toward the Party Of Marxist Unification's (POUM) role in not keeping step with revolutionary developments there, especially the Barcelona days in 1937 and by acting as political lawyers for every non-revolutionary impulse of those forebears. While we all honor the memory of the POUM militants, according to even Trotsky the most honest band of militants in Spain then, and decry the murder of their leader, Andreas Nin, by the bloody Stalinists they were rudderless in the storm of revolution. But those present political disagreements do not negate the value of researching the POUM’s (and others) work, work moreover done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.

Finally, I place some material in this space which may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. Off hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these entries from the Revolutionary History journal in which they have post hoc attempted to rehabilitate some pretty hoary politics and politicians, most notably August Thalheimer and Paul Levy of the early post Liebknecht-Luxemburg German Communist Party. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts. So read, learn, and try to figure out the
wheat from the chaff. 
******** 

Liborio Justo and Argentinian Trotskyism

From Revolutionary History, Vol.2, No.2, Summer 1989. Used with permission.
 

A look at Justo’s major works: Estrategia Revolucionaria: Lucha por la unidad y por la liberacion nacional y social de la America latina (1957) and Leon Trotsky y el fracaso mundial del Trotskismo (1959).

Argentine Trotskyism arose in a political culture very different to that of either Europe or of the much less developed countries to its north. While working class immigrants brought the organisational forms of Syndicalism and Social Democracy with them from Spain, Italy and Russia, the workers’ movement, which emerged at the end of the nineteenth century, had to operate in a vastly different social context to that of their countries of origin. Although Argentina had won independence from Spain in the 1830s the state was not really consolidated until the 1880s.

Until 1916 the country was ruled by an oligarchy of landowners who operated a parliament on a restricted suffrage. The economic boom which followed the development of refrigerated shipping in the 1880s and 1890s made Argentina a magnet for immigrant workers comparable to the United States or Australia, but it did not produce an industrial bourgeoisie, using wage labour to accumulate capital by the export of manufactured goods on the European model. Yet the country was clearly capitalist, as were the great landowners. The oligarchy had a very harmonious relationship with the imperial powers, particularly Britain, but was not so concerned to aid native manufacturers to develop an industrial base by excluding goods from the countries to which its meat was exported. Later, nationalists were to argue that Argentina was a semi-colony and that other concerns must be subordinated to the struggle for national independence.

Fraction

The first challenge to oligarchic rule came from the misleadingly named Radical Party, originally a fraction of the landlords excluded from the spoils of office, who organised the middle class, particularly in Buenos Aires, to claim a share of the wealth, power and patronage. Hipolito Yrigoyen, who led the Radicals from the 1890s till 1930, had a policy of demanding genuine elections and promoting insurrections to encourage the oligarchy to grant them. The party developed a municipal machine similar to the Democratic Party in the United States, which distributed patronage. The Radicals finally were elected to office in 1916 on a programme with little social or economic content. Though they did not have the oligarchy’s family and business links with the foreign interests which dominated economic life, they had no plans to challenge their role or to restructure Argentina’s economy.

The Socialist Party, founded by Juan B. Justo in 1896, was hardly more of a challenge to Argentina’s rulers. Formally modelled on European Social Democracy, it was in fact an extremely moderate body, which resembled Australia’s Socialists in being more a cross-class alliance than a working class party. It had less influence on the trade unions than the Anarchists or Syndicalists, and it merely demanded a fairer distribution of wealth rather than a transformation of the economy. It was strongly committed to free trade, and the Radicals saw it as an ally of the oligarchy. The inability of any political force to offer a way forward was reflected in the University Reform movement of 1919, which was to have an influence outside the universities, both in the Argentine and elsewhere in Latin America.
The Bolshevik revolution had its effect on the Argentina. The Anarchists, some Syndicalists and Left Socialists were inspired by it and a Communist Party was formed in 1921. However, the revolution had an even stronger effect on the right. Upper class circles imagined that the country was overrun by Bolshevik agitators. A strike early in 1919 was followed by bloody police repression and the formation of an ultra-right nationalist organisation, the Liga Patriotica, which launched pogroms against Russian Jews, whom they alleged were plotting a revolution. Radical Party activists joined in the pogroms and the Radical Party panicked and gave support to what was, effectively, a proto-Fascist movement. The Radical Party survived the events, which became known as the ‘Semana Tragica’, and even retained a base in the working class. As the later recession weakened the unions, the Radicals, using tactics later adopted by Peron, were able to form groups aimed at getting worker support based on dispensing charity.
The Stock Exchange Crash of 1929 and the subsequent depression was more catastrophic for the Argentine than for most other countries. Its narrowly based economy was terribly vulnerable to protectionist measures, particularly by Britain. The military, led by generals Uriburu and Augustin P. Justo, removed Yrigoyen in September 1930 and implemented a policy of spending cuts which hurt the workers and the middle classes, while securing the position of the landed oligarchy by preferential trade deals with Britain. These deals in turn hurt local industry. The Radicals were never to recover from their failure in office, the oligarchy had lost the ability to manipulate a parliamentary system, and the weak and divided working class movement was unable to offer significant resistance. Justo, who was installed as President from 1932 to 1938 as the result of rigged elections, was far from sharing the taste for Fascist ceremony of later dictators. His mission was to defend the position of the oligarchy. If a civilian government could have done that he would have left it in place. His attachment to Britain and the USA, and his desire that Argentina should enter the Second World War on the side of the Allies, was demonstrated in August 1942, when Vargas the Brazilian dictator joined the war: Justo flew to Rio to volunteer as a soldier in the Brazilian army.

Reaction

Anarchists and Syndicalists were unable to fashion a political strategy adequate for the Argentine. The Communist Party was very weak to start with and was soon destroyed as a revolutionary force by its subservience to Stalinism. As elsewhere, Trotskyism arose as a reaction, by a handful of Communist Party members, to the lunacies imposed on the party by the Communist International. After a number of years with constant splits and very few members or influence, they were joined by Liborio Justo, a most colourful figure, and the most prominent Trotskyist in the Argentine for a number of years. During an eight-month stay in the United States in 1934, he was in contact with the American Trotskyists, but appears to have been a sympathiser of Oehler’s ultra-left organisation. Surprisingly, on his return, he joined the Argentine Communist Party, which he left in 1937, opposing its Popular Front policies. Within Argentine Trotskyism he was in a minority in arguing that the first task of revolutionaries was to achieve national liberation, rather than to proceed to a Socialist revolution. He argued that those, then the majority of Argentine Trotskyists, who said otherwise, were not merely mistaken, but agents of Wall Street. Justo’s style of argument relied heavily on personal abuse and his advocacy of the Stalinists’ theory of stages seems a curious basis for joining the Trotskyists. However, Argentine’s Communist Party had an impossible task at this time in trying to construct a Popular Front in support of Stalin’s alliance with Britain and the USA. The people who were likely to support such a front, and its concrete expression, which was Roosevelt’s ‘good neighbour’ policy, were conservatives such as Justo senior and the very pro-British Argentinian upper classes. Middle class radicals were more likely to be attracted to Fascism.

Justo, correctly, points out that his ideas of a two stage revolution were eventually adopted by his factional opponents. Ramos became a Peronist theoretician, while Moreno accepted most of the Peronist ideology while maintaining a certain organisational independence. Curiously, Justo himself never did accept Peron. Justo’s importance in the development of Argentine Trotskyism can hardly be denied, yet European Marxists might find it difficult to come to grips with this exasperating figure. Sherry Mangan, the delegate of the Fourth International, thought Justo was insane, a view that must have been common. His adherence to his version of Trotskyism was fairly brief (1937-43), yet almost all the Trotskyist tendencies which had originally opposed his political line later adopted it.
The problems facing Marxists in Latin America differed in important respects from those in Europe, Asia or Africa. It would be fascinating to read an examination of the specific problems which confront Marxists in a continent where state and society developed in a very different way from those in the areas described by Marx, Engels and Lenin. Those interested in the nature of Argentine capitalism, or the relationship between the bourgeoisie and the state, will find little of interest in Justo’s ideas, as expounded in Estrategia Revolucionoria, published in 1957, but largely composed of articles and factional documents written in the early 1940s. Justo thought that, as the bourgeoisie had failed to win genuine independence, the working class was the force which would carry out national liberation. He made no analysis of the specific conditions of Argentina, nor of how it differed from a country like India, with a mainly peasant population and precapitalist social relationships. Justo never deals with the relationship between democratic rights, land reform, etc, which form the background to most discussions on the question of national independence.

Abuse

Much of the book consists, not of analysis, but of abuse of the comrades who disagreed with him. Factional opponents are routinely described as crooks, idiots, pinheads, monkeys and agents of Wall Street or the FBI (Estrategia Revolucionoria, pp.82, 86, 138). It is not clear whether he believes that those who disagree with him are actually being paid by the FBI or Wall Street, and he would probably have regarded such a distinction between police agents and political opponents as unnecessary hairsplitting. Sherry Mangan is described as a fat fool, ‘Oliver Hardy’, and of being a direct agent of imperialism (pp.105, 138, 187). Marc Loris (Jean van Heijenoort), the Secretary of the Executive Committee of the Fourth International, is ‘a professor of vulgar Marxism’ (p.154) and is pictured as writing from a centrally heated office, heedless of the dangers endured by revolutionaries in the Argentine (p 153). Justo’s abusive tone is particularly obnoxious when polemicising with Marc Loris, where this spoilt son of the Argentine dictator is clearly fighting above his weight. The American Socialist Workers Party is described as ‘...a rachitic, routinist, centrist organisation, essentially petty bourgeois, led by a fossilised bureaucracy, discredited among the proletariat, having social democratic political positions, lacking Bolshevik organisation, without roots in the American population (according to Clarke 40 per cent of its members are Jews) whose existence is confined to two or three districts of New York and Minneapolis’ (p.216).

In Leon Trotsky, written in 1959 and republished by Peruvian Maoists in 1974, Justo had moved towards a more consistent theory of Trotskyism as an imperialist plot, and Trotsky as an agent of Wall Street. The substance of his argument is composed of the allegations common to Stalinists and accepted by most of the left intelligentsia up to the time of Khrushchev’s speech denouncing Stalin. Trotsky wrote for the bourgeois press, offered to give evidence before the Dies Committee of the American Congress and set up a commission, which included people such as the American philosopher Dewey, to investigate Stalin’s allegations that he, and the other old Bolsheviks, were agents of imperialism: therefore he was an imperialist agent. Justo’s allegations are familiar, but there are two variations which differentiate his case from the orthodox Stalinist one. The most surprising is his use of arguments drawn from the ultra-left groups, with which he had been involved prior to his adherence to the Communist Party. Such groupings were, of course, more vehemently opposed to the concepts of national liberation than were the Trotskyists. Justo’s second variation on the Stalinist theme was because LDT was supposed to serve Wall Street exclusively, Trotsky thus remained free to attack rival imperialisms and this at least lightened for him the crushing labour of simultaneously serving British, French, German and Japanese imperialisms which the orthodox Stalinists maintained.
Therefore Trotsky’s stay in Mexico was probably arranged by US imperialism as a strategy to derail the Mexican revolution (p.125). An unnamed Mexican bourgeois told Justo that the country’s rulers had brought Trotsky there to help them combat Communism. He had become ‘the guard dog of Yankee imperialism’ (p.177). The case for this is based on his support for Mexico’s nationalisation of its oil fields. The nationalised concerns had belonged to British companies, so Trotsky could hardly fail to support a measure which would benefit US interests by weakening one of its competitors. Those Fourth Internationalists in Mexico who thought Trotsky too conciliatory to Cardenas, the Mexican President, pointed out that Mexico remained capitalist and that Cardenas attacked the workers’ movement, did not adopt Justo’s theory: their criticism of Trotsky on the question of ‘national liberation’ was precisely the opposite of his.
Curiously, Justo says little about Peronism, which was, after all, the specific form which Argentinian anti-imperialism took, except to note that several of his factional opponents ended up as supporters of Peron. He complains justifiably that such people stole his ideas without acknowledgement. However, his reaction to attempts to make amends was typically ungenerous. In 1955, when a former opponent, Nahuel Moreno, and Miliciades Pena, a pair of ‘political petty thieves’, asked him to join an editorial board, Justo refused; Moreno and Pena did not, he believed, have the talent to make the careers to which they aspired by serving the bourgeoisie (Estrategia, pp.137-8).

Difficult

Justo’s ideas anticipated Maoism in his stress on an undefined ‘national liberation’ and on his hostility to what he regarded as the capitulation to imperialism of the traditional labour movement, particularly the Socialist Party. It is difficult to draw general conclusions from a writer who concentrated on personal abuse of those who rejected a position, which, perhaps because he regarded it as self-evident, he did not expound coherently. It would be interesting to read how a programme derived from Justo’s ideas would differ from that of the Left Peronists, and how it would avoid the dangers of subordinating working class interests to those of native capitalists. What did ‘anti-imperialism’ mean in the absence of a peasantry? If the authoritarian labour relations prevailing on large ranches made the Argentine pre-capitalist, would not that also be true for areas of North America? If the coup by Uriburu and Justo had put the clock back to the situation prevailing before 1916, when the oligarchy monopolised political power, then, in that case, an alliance with a broad spectrum of society to overthrow a stratum, might have had some potential. In reality the Argentine had entered the area of mass politics where middle class nationalist aspirations were expressed by factions of the army, and where upper class politicians were abandoning cosmopolitanism in favour of portraying immigrants as the scum of Europe, infecting the Argentine with the poison of Socialism. The most likely partners in an anti-imperialist alliance were consistently hostile to Socialism, and eventually went to Peron. Justo’s position would have made more sense in Peru or Paraguay. His dilemma was the opposite of those who seek forces other than the working class to carry out the Socialist revolution. Justo needed a force to wry out ‘national liberation’. The working class would have to stand in for the peasantry.

J. Posadas’ (Homero Cristalli) place as Argentina’s most colourful leftist is so firmly established that he will never be displaced, but Justo must surely have a good claim as a runner up. The curious mixture of ultra-leftism, Stalinism and nationalism left him with no followers in the Argentine by 1943, but 20 years later when that mixture produced Maoism, the latter had a considerable following in some parts of Latin America, though not in Argentina, cursed by the absence of a peasantry and thoroughly saturated with an urban working class culture.

John Sullivan

 

***From Out In The 1960s Folk Minute Night- Live At Caffe Lena 

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

DVD Review

Live at Caffe Lena: Music From America’s Legendary Coffeehouse, 1967-2013, various artists, three CD set plus booklet, Tompkins Square Records, 2013

Everybody, or almost everybody, from the Generation of ’68, the generation that grew up in the Cold War red scare 1950s and came of age in the turbulent 1960s has heard of the folk music minute that exploded onto the youth scene in the very early 1960s in places like Harvard Square in Cambridge, North Beach out in Frisco town and down in the Village in New York City. Maybe even other outposts in college towns like Ann Arbor, Old Town Chicago and Seattle. Less well known at least to the general youth public although very well- known to folk aficionados then and now is the out- of- the-way Caffe Lena in Saratoga Springs in winter-driven upstate New York. That spot, a haven for many of the artists featured on this three CD set, was run by the legendary and eccentric Lena Spencer for many years before her death.  The club still is running touted as the oldest continuing coffeehouse in America.       

In its heyday on any given night, the likes of the young (all those named here will be young and hungry looking for some venue to show their stuff) Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Tom Paxton, Rosalie Sorrels, Utah Phillips (Jesus, was he ever young), Ramblin’ Jack Eliott, and Dave Von Ronk could be seen gracing the stage of that small establishment. In those days between the struggle to keep the place afloat, the smallness of the room, the state of recording technology and just plain hubris not many thought to record the shows for posterior, at least not systematically. Therefore it took many years of effort and pluck to gather in the 47 tracks presented here which represent a historic treasure trove of folk music from that era to now.

Caffe Lena outlasted, survived the folk minute and Lena later opened her doors to many young talents that also grace this set; Patty Griffin, Woody’s son,  Arlo Guthrie, subsequently Arlo’s  daughter, Sarah, David Bromberg all the way up to those today who represent the folk tradition like Greg Brown, Rory Block, Chris Smither and Tom Chapin. For those who want a thumbnail sketch of what the folk lineage has been for the past half century or so and who have a sense of  the importance of archival musical history this is for you. Included is an informative booklet about the doings in this set and a plethora of rare photographs of Lena Spencer and her café from period covered by the set. Enough said.             

 

CELEBRATE MARTIN LUTHER KING's 85th BIRTHDAY IN BOSTON:

 

 

 

Join the Committee for Peace and Human Rights at our Saturday January 18th peace vigil from 1-2pm tomorrow outside Park St. station, Boston-

 

we will observe the

MLK holiday by playing some of his powerful speeches

over our sound system and talk about his legacy and

how we definitely need his voice today.

Bring signs, banners, yourself.

info: nosanctions@yahoo.com

SUNDAY 1/19, 8 PM, BENEFIT SHOW FOR BANGLADESHI WORKERS & FAMILIES!

From : Geoff Carens <geoff.carens@gmail.com> Sender : everyone-bounces@lists.people-link.net Subject : SUNDAY 1/19, 8 PM, BENEFIT SHOW FOR BANGLADESHI WORKERS & FAMILIES! To : act-ma@act-ma.org Cc : Boston GMB list <Bostgmb-l@lists.iww.org>, workersSolidarityList <workersolidaritybangladesh@lists.riseup.net>, OB Everyone <everyone@lists.people-link.net>, massaction-boston@googlegroups.com, slam-talk@googlegroups.com, misu-solidarity <misu-solidarity@yahoogroups.com>, slamplanning <slamplanning@lists.riseup.net>, slamplanning <slamplanning@googlegroups.com>, reformhuctw@googlegroups.com, Common Struggle - Boston List <redwingblackbird@googlegroups.com>, bostonsolidarity <bostonsolidarity@googlegroups.com>, alliancesouthasia@lists.riseup.net Sat, Jan 18, 2014 11:26 AM 1 attachment Occupy Boston Announcement Dear All, Please join members of the Industrial Workers of the World at a Benefit Concert for Bangladeshi workers and their families. The show will take place on Sunday, January 19, starting at 8 pm, at O'Brien's Pub in Allston, at 3 Harvard Ave. A flyer is attached. The concert will feature original folk and punk music performed by IWW members. All proceeds will benefit the education fund for children of workers killed in the Tazreen fire and Rana Plaza factory collapse (the fund is a project of the Bangladesh Workers' Solidarity Network). In Solidarity, Geoff http://iwwboston.org/

WED 1/22, 7 PM, FUND-RAISER FOR INSOMNIA COOKIES STRIKE & ORGANIZING CAMPAIGN! To : act-ma@act-ma.org Cc : Boston GMB list <Bostgmb-l@lists.iww.org>, cookiecrumbles@lists.riseup.net, OB Everyone <everyone@lists.people-link.net>, massaction-boston@googlegroups.com, no-layoffs-wg@googlegroups.com, blackrose-rosanegra@googlegroups.com, BMDC Working Group <bmdc@lists.riseup.net>, slam-talk@googlegroups.com, misu-solidarity <misu-solidarity@yahoogroups.com>, slamplanning <slamplanning@lists.riseup.net>, slamplanning <slamplanning@googlegroups.com>, reformhuctw@googlegroups.com, Common Struggle - Boston List <redwingblackbird@googlegroups.com>, common-struggle@googlegroups.com, bostonsolidarity <bostonsolidarity@googlegroups.com>, baamannounce@lists.riseup.net, iww-list@lists.iww.org

Occupy Boston Announcement Dear All, In August, employees of Cambridge's Insomnia Cookies struck, and joined the IWW. They were fed up with lousy pay and conditions. Their demands included $15/hr, health care, and a union, and they were swiftly terminated. Ever since, workers have stayed strong  and maintained their struggle, which has grown into an organizing drive at the boutique cookie business. Insomnia pays rock-bottom wages, charges $1.35 for cookies that cost the company .10 to make, and refuses to pay workers' compensation. Bike delivery workers report that if they get hurt in traffic, the boss' response is, "Why are you late?"  In response to a series of protests against the company's labor practices, Insomnia falsely reported picketers were blocking the sidewalk in front of the Cambridge store, giving Harvard and Cambridge cops an excuse to bring police violence, and phony charges of assaulting cops, down on a union member. Undeterred, the workers and their allies are keeping up pressure on the company with continuing pickets of local stores. Students at Harvard, BU and elsewhere have called for a boycott of the company. The National Labor Relations Board issued a Complaint against Insomnia for illegally firing workers for union activity. Recently SEIU Local 509 donated $1,000 to the campaign, a magnificent act of solidarity. You can help too! Please join Insomnia strikers and their supporters at the Strike & Organizing Campaign Fund-raiser, Wednesday January 22, starting at 7 pm, at the Center for Marxist Education, 550 Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge (2nd floor), steps from the Central Square MBTA stop. If you can't come to the event, please consider making a donation to the Insomnia Cookies Workers' Organizing Fund, which is fueling the union drive.  In Solidarity, Geoff http://iwwboston.org/

A Voice From The GI Anti-War Front-

I helped destroy Falluja in 2004. I won't be complicit again

 

The media accepts the overly simple narrative that al-Qaida took over. The reality is Maliki is crushing dissent with US-made arms

• Ross Caputi
• theguardian.com, Friday 10 January 2014

I am having flashbacks to my time as a marine during the second siege of Falluja in 2004. Again, claims are being published that al-Qaida has taken over the city and that a heavy-handed military response is needed to take the city back from the control of terrorists.
 
The first time around, this claim proved to be false. The vast majority of the men we fought against in Falluja were locals, unaffiliated with al-Qaida, who were trying to expel the foreign occupiers from their country. There was a presence of al-Qaida in the city, but they played a minimal and marginal role in the fighting. The stories about Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the alleged leader of al-Qaida in Iraq who was said to be recruiting an army in Falluja, were wildly exaggerated. There is no evidence that Zarqawi ever even set foot in Falluja.
 
This week, the Iraqi Ministry of Interior's assertion that al-Qaida's affiliate, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, has taken over half of Falluja is being parroted in headlines by almost every major media network. But again, it appears that the role of al-Qaida in Falluja is being exaggerated and used as a justification for a military assault on the city.
 
The violence began just over a week ago, when Iraqi security forces disbursed a protest camp in Falluja and arrested a politician who had been friendly to the protestors' goals. This camp was part of a non-violent protest movement – which took place mostly in Sunni cities, but was also receiving some support from the Shia community – that began a year ago. Iraqi security forces have attacked protestors in Falluja and other Sunni cities on several occasions, the most egregious example taking place in Hawija, when over 50 protestors were killed.
 
One of the results of the US occupation was that Sunnis came out feeling like a targeted community, with Falluja being more marginalized than most Sunni cities because of its history as a center of resistance. These feelings have only been exacerbated over the past year of protests and government repression.
The Iraqi government's recent actions in Falluja turned the non-violent movement violent. When the protest camp in Falluja was cleared, many of the protestors picked up arms and began fighting to expel the state security forces from their city. It was local, tribal people – people not affiliated with transnational jihadist movements – who have taken the lead in this fight against the Iraqi government.
 
However, it is being reported that Falluja has "fallen", that it was "captured" by ISIS, who has now raised their flag over the city, declaring Falluja an Islamic emirate. The Iraqi Ministry of Interior's claim that half of Falluja is controlled by Isis (the Islamic State of Iraq in Syria) has been accepted as fact and has framed all discussion of these events.
 
Feurat Alani, a French-Iraqi journalist with family ties in Falluja, has reported that Isis is not playing a significant role in the fighting in Falluja. Much has been said and written about Isis raising their flag over a building in Falluja. This has been taken to be a sign of their power in the city. But Alani told me:

They took the flag down five minutes later when ordered to by tribal leaders. This shows that the tribes control Falluja.

Already over 100 civilians have been killed in this violence, violence that has been facilitated by US weapons. The Independent reported that Iraqi security forces are bombing Falluja with Hellfire missiles sold to them by the US. But the US has supplied the Iraqi state with far more than this single weapon system. Recently, Congress has shown some reluctance to continue arms trade with the Maliki government, for fear that it would use the weapons for internal repression, a fear that appears to have some justification.
 
It is being reported that Falluja has fallen, but the voices from inside Falluja insist that their city is standing up, once again. Undoubtedly, Fallujans are being harmed because of how the outside world perceives their struggle. Too much of the world has been satisfied with the overly simple narrative of al-Qaida capturing Falluja (twice), and of government forces battling for freedom and security.
 
As Falluja relives a nightmare, once inflicted by my own hand, I find myself in a very different position from before. Today, I hope I can say that I am somewhat wiser, more responsible, more morally engaged than I was when I helped destroy Falluja in 2004. This time around, I cannot sit back and do nothing as the unreliable and self-serving claims of the government are reported without question, and repeated until they become conventional wisdom. I cannot just watch as Fallujans are again forced to flee from their homes, and as their bodies are again shredded by weapons made in my homeland. I do not want to feel complicit in their suffering anymore.

UN Weapons’ Inspector: Syria Chemical Weapons Were Fired from Rebel Held Territoryhttp://www.globalresearch.ca/un-weapons-inspector-syria-chemical-weapons-were-fired-from-rebel-held-territory/5365228By Washington's Blog
Global Research, January 17, 2014
Washington's Blog

 But U.S. Is Still Calling for Regime ChangeThe head of the UN weapons inspectors said that the American case for Syrian government firing chemical weapons was weak, because the rockets can only go 2 miles … but government-held territory is much further away.

Similarly, McClatchy reported yesterday:

A team of security and arms experts, meeting this week in Washington to discuss the matter, has concluded that the range of the rocket that delivered sarin in the largest attack that night was too short for the device to have been fired from the Syrian government positions where the Obama administration insists they originated.

***

The authors of a report released Wednesday said that their study of the rocket’s design, its likely payload and its possible trajectories show that it would have been impossible for the rocket to have been fired from inside areas controlled by the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad.

 





 

In the report, titled “Possible Implications of Faulty U.S. Technical Intelligence,” Richard Lloyd, a former United Nations weapons inspector, and Theodore Postol, a professor of science, technology and national security policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, argue that the question about the rocket’s range indicates a major weakness in the case for military action initially pressed by Obama administration officials.

***

To emphasize their point, the authors used a map produced by the White House that showed which areas were under government and rebel control on Aug. 21 and where the chemical weapons attack occurred. Drawing circles around Zamalka to show the range from which the rocket could have come, the authors conclude that all of the likely launching points were in rebel-held areas or areas that were in dispute. The area securely in government hands was miles from the possible launch zones.

In an interview, Postol said that a basic analysis of the weapon – some also have described as a looking like a push pop, a fat cylinder filled with sarin atop a thin stick that holds the engine – would have shown that it wasn’t capable of flying the 6 miles from the center of the Syrian government-controlled part of Damascus to the point of impact in the suburbs, or even the 3.6 miles from the edges of government-controlled ground.

He questioned whether U.S. intelligence officials had actually analyzed the improbability of a rocket with such a non-aerodynamic design traveling so far before Secretary of State John Kerry declared on Sept. 3 that “we are certain that none of the opposition has the weapons or capacity to effect a strike of this scale – particularly from the heart of regime territory.”

“I honestly have no idea what happened,” Postol said. “My view when I started this process was that it couldn’t be anything but the Syrian government behind the attack. But now I’m not sure of anything. The administration narrative was not even close to reality. Our intelligence cannot possibly be correct.”

Lloyd, who has spent the past half-year studying the weapons and capabilities in the Syrian conflict, disputed the assumption that the rebels are less capable of making rockets than the Syrian military.

“The Syrian rebels most definitely have the ability to make these weapons,” he said. “I think they might have more ability than the Syrian government.” [He's right.]

***

They said that Kerry’s insistence that U.S. satellite images had shown the impact points of the chemical weapons was unlikely to be true. The charges that detonate chemical weapons are generally so small, they said, that their detonations would not be visible in a satellite image.

The report also raised questions whether the Obama administration misused intelligence information in a way similar to the administration of President George W. Bush in the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.  [Correct, indeed.] Then, U.S. officials insisted that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had an active program to develop weapons of mass destruction. Subsequent inspections turned up no such program or weapons.

“What, exactly, are we spending all this money on intelligence for?” Postol asked.

***

 

 Even the New York Times – one of the main advocates for the claims that the rockets came from a Syrian government base – has quietly dropped the claim.

But the U.S. is still taking the position that the only acceptable outcome for the coming Syria negotiations is for Assad to be replaced by the US-backed transitional government.

As with Iraq, the “facts” are being fixed around the policy.

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New Iran agreement includes secret side deal, Tehran official saysBY PAUL RICHTER

Tribune Washington BureauJanuary 13, 2014

WASHINGTON ­ Key elements of a new nuclear agreement between Iran and six world powers are contained in an informal, 30-page text not yet publicly acknowledged by Western officials, Iran's chief negotiator said Monday.

Abbas Araqchi disclosed the existence of the document in a Persian-language interview with the semiofficial Iranian Students News Agency.

The new agreement, announced over the weekend, sets out a timetable for how Iran and the six nations, led by the United States, will implement a deal reached in November that is aimed at restraining Iran's nuclear ambitions.

When officials from Iran and the world powers announced that they had completed the implementing agreement, they didn't release the text of the deal, nor did they acknowledge the existence of an informal addendum.

In the interview, Araqchi referred to the side agreement using the English word "nonpaper," a diplomatic term used for an informal side agreement that doesn't have to be disclosed publicly.

The nonpaper deals with such important details as the operation of a joint commission to oversee how the deal is implemented and Iran's right to continue nuclear research and development during the next several months, he said.

Araqchi described the joint commission as an influential body that will have authority to decide disputes. U.S. officials have described it as a discussion forum rather than a venue for arbitrating major disputes.

White House press secretary Jay Carney said Monday that the text of the implementing agreement would be released to lawmakers. He said the six parties were weighing how much of the text they could release publicly.

Asked late Monday about the existence of the informal nonpaper, White House officials referred the question to the State Department. A State Department comment wasn't immediately available.

Ray Takeyh, an Iran specialist at the Council on Foreign Relations, said Iran and the other six countries may have written the nonpaper to record understandings that they didn't want to release publicly. The governments may plan to release "just a short text, with broad principles and broad strokes," Takeyh said.

The Nov. 24 deal between Iran and the six powers - the U.S., Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany - aims to freeze Iran's nuclear progress for six months. During that period, the two sides will try to negotiate a longer-term deal aimed at ensuring that Tehran's nuclear program remains peaceful. The agreement has come under fire in Iran and the United States from critics who contend it is harmful to their side.

In his interview, Araqchi touched on the sensitive issue of how much latitude Iran will have to continue its nuclear research and development.

U.S. officials said Sunday that Iran would be allowed to continue existing research and development projects and with pencil-and-paper design work, but not to advance research with new projects. Araqchi, however, implied that the program would have wide latitude.

"No facility will be closed; enrichment will continue, and qualitative and nuclear research will be expanded," he said. "All research into a new generation of centrifuges will continue."

The research and development issue has been an important one for many U.S. lawmakers, who fear that Iran will try to forge ahead with its nuclear program while the negotiations are underway. At an administration briefing for senators Monday, members of both parties raised concerns about the centrifuge research issue, aides said.

President Barack Obama on Monday again hailed the implementing agreement and appealed to Congress not to impose new sanctions on Iran, for fear of driving the country from the bargaining table.

"My preference is for peace and diplomacy, and this is one of the reasons why I've sent the message to Congress that now is not the time for us to impose new sanctions; now is the time for us to allow the diplomats and technical experts to do their work," Obama said. "What we want to do is give diplomacy a chance and give peace a chance."

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/01/13/214365/new-iran-agreement-includes-secret.html#emlnl=World_Newsletter#storylink=cpy

---

Washington Post
January 17, 2014
Iraq’s Maliki says he has asked for weapons from U.S., will also seek training for troopsLoveday Morris and Ernesto Londoño

b Iraq has asked the United States for new arms to beat back the dramatic resurgence of al-Qaeda-linked militants in a western province and would like U.S. troops to train its counter­terrorism forces, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said in an interview Thursday.

The Iraqi leader said he provided the wish list after a phone call with Vice President Biden on Tuesday. U.S. officials said it might be easy to deliver those weapons, which include assault rifles and artillery, to Baghdad soon.

“Some is on hand, and we can supply it quickly,” a senior American diplomat said Thursday, speaking on the condition of anonymity to be candid.

The request for stepped-up U.S. assistance is adding urgency to a debate over the types of weapons that Washington ought to provide to Maliki’s government and the leverage that aid could give the United States.

Despite the stunning revival of the Sunni insurgency, with militants carrying out an intense wave of attacks over the past year and seizing control of key cities in Anbar province, Maliki said he had no regrets that his administration did not reach a deal with Washington that would have kept some U.S. troops in Iraq after the 2011 pullout.

“Since the American withdrawal, we’ve had a friendly relationship, but this strong bilateral relationship doesn’t mean we need American forces here,” a weary-looking Maliki said in the interview, conducted in his office in Baghdad’s heavily barricaded Green Zone.

U.S. officials have watched Iraq’s soaring violence with alarm over the past year, as an insurgency that the American military took credit for decimating has reemerged as a powerful regional force. But they also have come to see the crisis as an opportunity to retain influence in Iraq, and they worry that if they’re unable to meet its urgent needs, Baghdad will increasingly turn to other countries for materiel.

“We’re at a point where there is an opportunity to reinvigorate the partnership,” said retired Lt. Gen. James M. Dubik, who led the command that trained and equipped Iraq’s security forces in 2008. “We ought to take that opportunity.”

The weapons Maliki has requested are a small piece of the massive list of defense items that Iraq is trying to buy from the United States. Baghdad is also seeking Apache helicopters, but the prospective sale has been snarled in Congress, where lawmakers have sought assurances that Iraqi security forces won’t use the aircraft to crush political opponents or crack down on dissent in Sunni communities.

Dubik said that such concerns are legitimate but that they also provide Washington with an opportunity to nudge Maliki to govern more inclusively, an objective that the Obama administration regards as vital in the run-up to parliamentary elections scheduled for spring. “I think we’re right in trying to get assurances that the equipment will be used properly,” he said. “Therein lies part of the opportunity.”

Since 2005, the Pentagon has processed military orders for the Iraqi government worth nearly $10.5 billion. Iraq has initiated other orders that, if approved, could raise that sum to nearly $25 billion, according to a recent report by the Congressional Research Service.

U.S. military officials say that keeping the Iraqi armed forces reliant on American weapons systems would give Washington leverage for decades and foster a relationship built during the Iraq war.

Because the U.S. defense export system is slow and sometimes stymied by politics, Iraq in recent years has begun to turn to Russia, South Korea and other countries that have more nimble military sales programs.

“Iraq has needs, and it also has resources,” a senior U.S. official told reporters in a recent briefing conducted on the condition of anonymity. “We don’t actually gain leverage over the Iraqis by withholding these systems. We tend to cede that leverage to our strategic competitors.”

Maliki said during the interview that he would support a new U.S. military training mission for Iraqi counterterrorism troops in Jordan, marking the first time he has expressed support for a plan that the Pentagon has been contemplating in recent months. U.S. military officials have not provided details on the scope or timing of such a training mission.

The Iraqi leader said he is “satisfied that we will achieve victory against al-Qaeda.” But he cautioned that the situation is complicated and intertwined with the sectarian conflict in next-door Syria.

“The whole region’s events are connected,” he said. “To solve the problem in Iraq, we cannot look at it in isolation from the other events in the region.”

Maliki deflected blame for the ongoing crisis in his country, saying the Sunni violence has been “exported” to Iraq by another Arab country,

_______________________________________________

***From The Archives Of The Generation Of '68-

...we were, those of us males who refused to be drafted, burned our draft cards, faced or actually went to prison, probably politically wrong to do so rather that take the draft notice when our numbers were called in order to spread the anti-war word to the GIs who were fighting the damn Vietnam War and really "bring them home" but a quick look at these fetching women and their plaintive plea should maybe give pause... 

 

A Plea From Guantanamo -President Obama Close The Damn Place Down!

 

***The Roots Is The Toots- The Music That Got Them Through The Great Depression And World War II…

 

…she had not been home, back to her hometown, since he passed away. Passed away after some kind of hellish battle against the war wounds incurred in the Anzio beach landing where from all accounts he had acquitted himself with honor. Acquitted himself after he had spent some wasted time kicking and screaming about ho w he should have been deferred since he had been an expert welder and then when his number came up had grouse his way through basic training before being shipped oversea. Passed away just after he had sent for her to come down to Walter Reed to be near him in his time of trial. It was only after he passed on that she realized that he had sent for her knowing that he was mortally wounded and that the hospital visits would be their last stance together. She smiled at that thought. And smiled a more forced smile now that she was back home, back to their young love hometown, to honor his last request that she go by and throw a kiss to all of their “spots.” 

Since those spots were close together, within longish walking distance, she decided to do the whole thing in one trip to ease the pain of several separate trips that she might not be able to cope with. Might not be able to toss those painful kisses once she got her hurting habits on and would betray her love. So there she stood before her first stop, the old high school, old blessed North Adamsville High. Now that that war was over a busy beehive of kid activity once again, and the scene of their first encounter senior year when he popped into her life after they danced and danced at the Fall Frolic and became an “item”, no, “the item” of the senior year. Scene too of many a Monday morning in the girls’ “lav” talking with her brethren classmates about what did or did not happen that previous weekend among the tribe (and all lying like crazy either because they had said they had “done it” when they hadn’t or hadn’t when they had). He and she had but she lied, lied like crazy because she was very concerned about her reputation, or that her parents, strict Baptists full of fire and brimstone, might get wind of that information and crush their young love.

As she passed the far end of the building she blew a kiss over her shoulder on her way to Adamsville Beach about a mile down the road to a scene of many a weekend tryst. He would get his father’s car and they would go down to the far end, the lovers’ lane end, Squaw Rock,  and steam up the windshield with their kisses (and other acts but you know what she meant, that “doing it” part that she lied about on Monday morning girls’ “lav” talk time). After she passed their spot on the beach watching several young mothers, kids in tow, complete with picnic basket and beach toys meandering down to the low-tide shoreline she shed a tear knowing that she would never have his child, maybe anyone’s child the way she felt just then. Although he told her, made her promise, just before the end to go and live a happy full life, to do that for him.    

She then walked about a mile along the seawall up to Elm Street and after a short rest on the beach-side  seawall  to Doc’s, Doc’s Drugstore, the first place that she knew she loved him after they had blown the crowd at Doc’s away with their jitter-bugging, Benny, Tommy, Jimmy, Les, Duke, stuff.  Doc’s was the hang-out for all the Jacks and Jills after school (and weekends) because he had the best jukebox in town, and a soda fountain for the hungry and thirsty. Another blown kiss as she could hear some Andrews Sisters song bellowing out into the street just then. Then on to their final spot, or rather his, his corner boy spot, Salducci’s Diner, where only girls that guys were serious about were allowed to hang with a guy’s corner boys. She crossed the street just before she came upon the store-front because she could see the next generation of corner boys with their serious girls hanging in front and she did not think she could make it pass that scene without breaking down. Blew that last kiss from across the street and done. She was glad after all the trauma of the past few hours that she had done the task in one trip. Now she just had to go and have a happy full life, for him…     

 

HONOR THE THREE L’S-LENIN, LUXEMBURG, LIEBKNECHT-Honor An Historic Leader Of The Russian Revolution-Leon Trotsky

 

 EVERY JANUARY WE HONOR LENIN OF RUSSIA, ROSA LUXEMBURG OF POLAND, AND KARL LIEBKNECHT OF GERMANY AS THREE LEADERS OF THE INTERNATIONAL WORKING CLASS MOVEMENT. DURING THE MONTH WE ALSO HONOR OTHER HISTORIC LEADERS AS WELL ON THIS SITE.

BOOK REVIEW

THIS IS A REVIEW OF LEON TROTSKY’S HISTORY OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION, ORIGINALLY WRITTEN IN 1930-32, (EDITION USED HERE-THREE VOLUMES, PATHFINDER PRESS, NEW YORK, 1980) BY AN UNREPENTANT DEFENDER OF THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION OF 1917. HERE’S WHY.
Leon Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution is partisan history at its best. One does not and should not, at least in this day in age, ask historians to be ‘objective’. One simply asks that the historian present his or her narrative and analysis and get out of the way. Trotsky meets that criterion. Furthermore, in Trotsky’s case there is nothing like having a central actor in the drama he is narrating, who can also write brilliantly and wittily, give his interpretation of the important events and undercurrents swirling around Russia in 1917.

If you are looking for a general history of the revolution or want an analysis of what the revolution meant for the fate of various nations after World War I or its affect on world geopolitics look elsewhere. E.H. Carr’s History of the Russian Revolution offers an excellent multi-volume set that tells that story through the 1920’s. Or if you want to know what the various parliamentary leaders, both bourgeois and Soviet, were thinking and doing from a moderately leftist viewpoint read Sukhanov’s Notes on the Russian Revolution. For a more journalistic account John Reed’s classic Ten Days That Shook the World is invaluable. Trotsky covers some of this material as well. However, if additionally, you want to get a feel for the molecular process of the Russian Revolution in its ebbs and flows down at the base in the masses where the revolution was made Trotsky’s is the book for you.

The life of Leon Trotsky is intimately intertwined with the rise and decline of the Russian Revolution in the first part of the 20th century. As a young man, like an extraordinary number of talented Russian youth, he entered the revolutionary struggle against Czarism in the late 1890’s. Shortly thereafter he embraced what became a lifelong devotion to a Marxist political perspective. However, except for the period of the 1905 Revolution when Trotsky was Chairman of the Petrograd Soviet and later in 1912 when he tried to unite all the Russian Social Democratic forces in an ill-fated unity conference, which goes down in history as the ‘August Bloc’, he was essentially a free lancer in the international socialist movement. At that time Trotsky saw the Bolsheviks as “sectarians” as it was not clear to him time that for socialist revolution to be successful the reformist and revolutionary wings of the movement had to be organizationally split. With the coming of World War I Trotsky drew closer to Bolshevik positions but did not actually join the party until the summer of 1917 when he entered the Central Committee after the fusion of his organization, the Inter-District Organization, and the Bolsheviks. This act represented an important and decisive switch in his understanding of the necessity of a revolutionary workers party to lead the socialist revolution.

As Trotsky himself noted, although he was a late-comer to the concept of a Bolshevik Party that delay only instilled in him a greater understanding of the need for a vanguard revolutionary workers party to lead the revolutionary struggles. This understanding underlined his political analysis throughout the rest of his career as a Soviet official and as the leader of the struggle of the Left Opposition against the Stalinist degeneration of the Russian Revolution. After his defeat at the hands of Stalin and his henchmen Trotsky wrote these three volumes in exile in Turkey from 1930 to 1932. At that time Trotsky was not only trying to draw the lessons of the Revolution from an historian’s perspective but to teach new cadre the necessary lessons of that struggle as he tried first reform the Bolshevik Party and the Communist International and then later, after that position became politically untenable , to form a new, revolutionary Fourth International. Trotsky was still fighting from this perspective in defense of the gains of the Russian Revolution when a Stalinist agent cut him down. Thus, without doubt, beyond a keen historian’s eye for detail and anecdote, Trotsky’s political insights developed over long experience give his volumes an invaluable added dimension not found in other sources on the Russian Revolution.

As a result of the Bolshevik seizure of power the so-called Russian Question was the central question for world politics throughout most of the 20th century. That central question ended (or left center stage, to be more precise) with the demise of the Soviet Union in the early 1990’s. However, there are still lessons, and certainly not all of them negative, to be learned from the experience of the Russian Revolution. Today, an understanding of this experience is a task for the natural audience for this book, the young alienated radicals of Western society. For the remainder of this review I will try to point out some issues raised by Trotsky which remain relevant today.

The central preoccupation of Trotsky’s volumes reviewed here and of his later political career concerns the problem of the crisis of revolutionary leadership of the international labor movement and its national components. That problem can be stated as the gap between the already existing objective conditions necessary for beginning socialist construction based on the current level of capitalist development and the immaturity or lack of revolutionary leadership to overthrow the old order. From the European Revolutions of 1848 on, not excepting the heroic Paris Commune, until his time the only successful working class revolution had been in led by the Bolsheviks in Russia in 1917. Why? Anarchists may look back to the Paris Commune or forward to the Spanish Civil War in 1936 for solace but the plain fact is that absent a revolutionary party those struggles were defeated without establishing the prerequisites for socialism. History has indicated that a revolutionary party that has assimilated the lessons of the past and is rooted in the working class, allied with and leading the plebeian masses in its wake, is the only way to bring the socialist program to fruition. That hard truth shines through Trotsky’s three volumes. Unfortunately, this is still the central problem confronting the international labor movement today.

Trotsky makes an interesting note that despite the popular conception at the time, reinforced since by several historians, the February overthrow of the Czarist regime was not as spontaneous as one would have been led to believe in the confusion of the times. He noted that the Russian revolutionary movement had been in existence for many decades before that time, that the revolution of 1905 had been a dress rehearsal for 1917 and that before the World War temporarily halted its progress another revolutionary period was on the rise. If there had been no such experiences then those who argue for spontaneity would have grounds to stand on. The most telling point is that the outbreak occurred in Petrograd, not exactly unknown ground for revolutionary activities. Moreover, contrary to the worshipers of so-called spontaneity, this argues most strongly for a revolutionary workers party to be in place in order to affect the direction of the revolution from the beginning.

All revolutions, and the Russian Revolution is no exception, after the first flush of victory over the overthrown old regime, face attempts by the more moderate revolutionary elements to suppress counterposed class aspirations, in the interest of unity of the various classes that made the initial revolution. Thus, we see in the English Revolution of the 17th century a temporary truce between the rising bourgeoisie and the yeoman farmers and pious urban artisans who formed the backbone of Cromwell’s New Model Army. In the Great French Revolution of the 18th century the struggle from the beginning depended mainly on the support of the lower urban plebian classes. Later other classes, particularly the peasantry through their parties, which had previously remained passive enter the arena and try to place a break on revolutionary developments.

Their revolutionary goals having been achieved in the initial overturn- for them the revolution is over. Those elements most commonly attempt to rule by way of some form of People’s Front government. This is a common term of art in Marxist terminology to represent a trans-class formation of working class and capitalist parties which have ultimately counterposed interests. The Russian Revolution also suffered under a Popular Front period under various combinations and guises supported by ostensible socialists, the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries, from February to October. One of the keys to Bolshevik success in October was that, with the arrival of Lenin from exile in April, the Bolsheviks shifted their strategy and tactics to a position of political opposition to the parties of the popular front. Later history has shown us in Spain in the 1930’s and more recently in Chile in the 1970’s how deadly support to such popular front formations can be for revolutionaries and the masses influenced by them. The various parliamentary popular fronts in France, Italy and elsewhere show the limitations in another less dramatic but no less dangerous fashion. In short, political support for Popular Fronts means the derailment of the revolution or worst. This is a hard lesson, paid for in blood, that all manner of reformist socialists try deflect or trivialize in pursuit of being at one with the ‘masses’. Witness today’s efforts, on much lesser scale, by ostensible socialists to get all people of ‘good will, etc.’, including liberal and not so liberal Democrats under the same tent in the opposition to the American invasion of Iraq.

One of Trotsky’s great skills as a historian is the ability to graphically demonstrate that within the general revolutionary flow there are ebbs and flows that either speed up the revolutionary process or slow it down. This is the fate of all revolutions and in the case of failed revolutions can determine the political landscape for generations. The first definitive such event in the Russian Revolution occurred in the so-called "April Days" after it became clear that the then presently constituted Provisional Government intended to continue participation on the Allied side in World War I and retain the territorial aspirations of the Czarist government in other guises. This led the vanguard of the Petrograd working class to make a premature attempt to bring down that government. However, the vanguard was isolated and did not have the authority needed to be successful at that time. The most that could be done was the elimination of the more egregious ministers. Part of the problem here is that no party, unlike the Bolsheviks in the events of the "July Days" has enough authority to hold the militants back, or try to. Theses events only underscore, in contrast to the anarchist position, the need for an organized revolutionary party to check such premature impulses. Even then, the Bolsheviks in July took the full brunt of the reaction by the government with the jailing of their leaders and suppression of their newspapers supported wholeheartedly by the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionary Parties.


The Bolsheviks were probably the most revolutionary party in the history of revolutions. They certainly were the most consciously revolutionary in their commitment to political program, organizational form and organizational practices. Notwithstanding this, before the arrival in Petrograd of Lenin from exile the Bolshevik forces on the ground were, to put it mildly, floundering in their attitude toward political developments, especially their position on so-called critical support to the Provisional Government (read, Popular Front). Hence, in the middle of a revolutionary upsurge it was necessary to politically rearm the party. This political rearmament was necessary to expand the party’s concept of when and what forces would lead the current revolutionary upsurge. In short, mainly through Lenin’s intervention, the Party needed to revamp its old theory of "the democratic dictatorship of the working class and the peasantry" to the new conditions which placed the socialist program i.e. the dictatorship of the proletariat on the immediate agenda. Informally, the Bolsheviks, or rather Lenin individually, came to the same conclusions that Trotsky had analyzed in his theory of Permanent Revolution prior to the Revolution of 1905. This reorientation was not done without a struggle in the party against those forces who did not want to separate with the reformist wing of the Russian workers and peasant parties, mainly the Mensheviks and the Social Revolutionaries.

This should be a sobering warning to those who argue, mainly from an anarchist or anarcho-syndicalist position, that a revolutionary party is not necessary. The dilemma of correctly aligning strategy and tactics even with a truly revolutionary party can be problematic. The tragic outcome in Spain in the 1930’s abetted by the confusion on this issue by the Party of Marxist Unification (POUM) and the Durrutti-led left anarchists, the most honestly revolutionary organizations at the time, painfully underscores this point. This is why Trotsky came over to the Bolsheviks and why he drew that lesson on the organization question very sharply for the rest of his political career.


The old-fashioned, poorly trained, inadequately led peasant-based Russian Army took a real beating at the hands of the more modern, mechanized and disciplined German armies on the Eastern Front in World War I. The Russian Army, furthermore, was at the point of disintegration just prior to the February Revolution. Nevertheless, the desperate effort on the part of the peasant soldier, essentially declassed from his traditional role on the land by the military mobilization, was decisive in overthrowing the monarchy. Key peasant reserve units placed in urban garrisons, and thus in contact with the energized workers, participated in the struggle to end the war and get back to the take the land while they were still alive. Thus from February on, the peasant army through coercion or through inertia was no longer a reliable vehicle for any of the various combinations of provisional governmental ministries to use. In the Army’s final flare-up in defense, or in any case at least remaining neutral, of placing all power into Soviet hands it acted as a reserve, an important one, but nevertheless a reserve. Only later when the Whites in the Civil War came to try to take the land did the peasant soldier again exhibit a willingness to fight and die. Such circumstances as a vast peasant war are not a part of today’s revolutionary strategy, at least in advanced capitalist society. In fact, today only under exceptional conditions would a revolutionary socialist party support, much less advocate the popular Bolshevik slogan-‘land to the tiller’ to resolve the agrarian question. The need to split the armed forces, however, remains.

Not all revolutions exhibit the massive breakdown in discipline that occurred in the Russian army- the armed organ that defends any state- but it played an exceptional role here. However, in order for a revolution to be successful it is almost universally true that the existing governmental authority can no longer rely on normal troop discipline. If this did not ocassionally occur revolution generally would be impossible as untrained plebeians are no match for trained soldiers. Moreover, the Russian peasant army reserves were exceptional in that they responded to the general democratic demand for "land to the tiller" that the Bolsheviks were the only party to endorse and, moreover, were willing to carry out to the end. In the normal course of events the peasant, as a peasant on the land, cannot lead a modern revolution in even a marginally developed industrial state. It has more often been the bulwark for reaction; witness its role in the Paris Commune and Bulgaria in 1923, for examples, more than it has been a reliable ally of the urban masses. However, World War I put the peasant youth of Russia in uniform and gave them discipline, for a time at least, that they would not have otherwise had to play even a a subordinate role in the revolution. Later revolutions based on peasant armies, such as China, Cuba and Vietnam, confirm this notion that only exceptional circumstances, mainly as part of a military formation, permit the peasantry a progressive role in a modern revolution.


Trotsky is politically merciless toward the Menshevik and Social Revolutionary leaderships that provided the crucial support for the Provisional Governments between February and October in their various guises and through their various crises. Part of the support of these parties for the Provisional Government stemmed from their joint perspectives that the current revolution was a limited bourgeois one and so therefore they could no go further than the decrepit bourgeoisie of Russia was willing to go. Given its relationships with foreign capital that was not very far. Let us face it, these allegedly socialist organizations in the period from February to October betrayed the interest of their ranks on the question of immediate peace, of the redistribution of the land, and a democratic representative government.

This is particularly true after their clamor for the start of the ill-fated summer offensive on the Eastern Front and their evasive refusal to convene a Constituent Assembly to ratify the redistribution of the land. One can chart the slow but then rapid rise of Bolsheviks influence in places when they did not really exist when the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries, formerly the influential parties of those areas, moved to the right. All those workers, peasants, soldiers, whatever political organizations they adhered to formally, who wanted to make a socialist revolution naturally gravitated to the Bolsheviks. Such movement to the left by the masses is always the case in times of crisis in a period of revolutionary upswing. The point is to channel that energy for the seizure of power.

The ‘August Days’ when the ex-Czarist General Kornilov attempted a counterrevolutionary coup and Kerensky, head of the Provisional Government, in desperation asked the Bolsheviks to use their influence to get the Kronstadt sailors to defend that government points to the ingenuity of the Bolshevik strategy. A point that has been much misunderstood since then, sometimes willfully, by many leftist groups is the Bolshevik tactic of military support- without giving political support- to bourgeois democratic forces in the struggle against right wing forces ready to overthrow democracy. The Bolsheviks gave Kerensky military support while at the same time politically agitating, particularly in the Soviets and within the garrison, to overthrow the Provisional Government.

Today, an approximation of this position would take the form of not supporting capitalist war budgets, parliamentary votes of no confidence, independent extra-parliamentary agitation and action, etc. Granted this principled policy on the part of the Bolsheviks is a very subtle maneuver but it is miles away from giving blanket military and political support to forces that you will eventually have to overthrow. The Spanish revolutionaries in the 1930’s, even the most honest grouped in the Party of Marxist Unification (POUM) learned this lesson the hard way when that party, despite its equivocal political attitude toward the popular front, was suppressed and the leadership jailed by the Negrin government despite having military units at the front in the fight against Franco.

As I write this review we are in the fourth year of the American-led Iraq war. For those who opposed that war from the beginning or have come to oppose it the victory of the Bolshevik Revolution shows the way to really end a fruitless and devastating war. In the final analysis if one really wants to end an imperialist war one has to overthrow the imperialist powers. This is a hard truth that most of even the best of today’s anti-war activists have been unable to grasp. It is not enough to plead, petition or come out in massive numbers to ask politely that the government stop its obvious irrational behavior. Those efforts are helpful for organizing the opposition but not to end the conflict on just terms. The Bolsheviks latched onto and unleashed the greatest anti-war movement in history to overthrow a government which was still committed to the Allied war effort against all reason. After taking power in the name of the Soviets, in which it had a majority, the Bolsheviks in one of its first acts pulled Russia out of the war. History provides no other way for us to stop imperialist war. Learn this lesson.

The Soviets, or workers councils, which sprang up first in the Revolution of 1905 and then almost automatically were resurrected after the February 1917 overturn of the monarchy, are merely a convenient and appropriate organization form for the structure of workers power. Communists and other pro-Communist militants, including this writer, have at times made a fetish of this organizational form because of its success in history. As an antidote to such fetishism a good way to look at this form is to note, as Trotsky did, that a Soviet led by Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries does not lead to the seizure of power. That tells the tale. This is why Lenin, in the summer of 1917, was looking to the factory committees as an alternative to jump-start the second phase of the revolution.

Contrary to the anarchist notion of merely local federated forms of organization or no organization, national Soviets are the necessary form of government in the post- seizure of power period. However, they may not be adequate for the task of seizing power. Each revolution necessarily develops its own forms of organization. In the Paris Commune of 1871 the Central Committee of the National Guard was the logical locus of governmental power. In the Spanish Civil War of 1936 the Central Committee of the Anti-Fascist Militias and the factory committees could have provided such a focus. Enough said.

For obvious tactical reasons it is better for a revolutionary party to take power in the name of a pan-class organization, like the Soviets, than in the name of a single party like the Bolsheviks. This brings up an interesting point because, as Trotsky notes, Lenin was willing to take power in the name of the party if conditions warranted it. Under the circumstances I believe that the Bolsheviks could have taken it in their own name but, and here I agree with Trotsky, that it would have been harder for them to keep it. Moreover, they had the majority in the All Russian Soviet and so it would be inexplicable if they took power solely in their own name. That, after a short and unsuccessful alliance with the Left Social Revolutionary Party in government, it came down to a single party does not negate this conclusion. Naturally, a pro-Soviet multi-party system where conflicting ideas of social organization along socialist lines can compete is the best situation. However, history is a cruel taskmaster at times. That, moreover, as the scholars say, is beyond the scope this review and the subject for further discussion.

The question of whether to seize power is a practical one for which no hard and fast rules apply. An exception is that it important to have the masses ready to go when the decision is made. In fact, it is probably not a bad idea to have the masses a little overeager to insurrect. One mistaken assumption, however, is that power can be taken at any time in a revolutionary period. As the events of the Russian Revolution demonstrate this is not true because the failure to have a revolutionary party ready to roll means that there is a fairly short window of opportunity. In Trotsky’s analysis this can come down to a period of days. In the actual case of Russia he postulated that that time was probably between late September and December. That analysis seems reasonable. In any case, one must have a feel for timing in revolution as well as in any other form of politics. The roll call of unsuccessful socialist revolutions in the 20th century in Germany, Hungary, Finland, Bulgaria, Spain, etc. only painfully highlights this point.

Many historians and political commentators have declared the Bolshevik seizure of power in October a coup d’etat. That is facile commentary. If one wants to do harm to the notion of a coup d’etat in the classic sense of a closed military conspiracy a la Blanqui this cannot stand up to examination. First, the Bolsheviks were an urban civilian party with at best tenuous ties to military knowledge and resources. Even simple military operations like the famous bank expropriations after the 1905 Revolution were mainly botched and gave them nothing but headaches with the leadership of the pre- World War I international social democracy. Secondly, and decisively, Bolshevik influence over the garrison in Petrograd and eventually elsewhere precluded such a necessity. Although, as Trotsky noted, conspiracy is an element of any insurrection this was in fact an ‘open’ conspiracy that even the Kerensky government had to realize was taking place. The Bolsheviks relied on the masses just as we should.

With almost a century of hindsight and knowing what we know now it is easy to see that the slender social basis for the establishment of Soviet power by the Bolsheviks in Russia was bound to create problems. Absent international working class revolution, particularly in Germany, which the Bolsheviks factored into their decisions to seize power, meant, of necessity, that there were going to be deformations even under a healthy workers regime. One, as we have painfully found out, cannot after all build socialism in one country. Nevertheless this begs the question whether at the time the Bolsheviks should have taken power. A quick look at the history of revolutions clearly points out those opportunities are infrequent. You do not get that many opportunities to seize power and try to change world history for the better so you best take advantage of the opportunities when they present themselves.

As mentioned above, revolutionary history is mainly a chronicle of failed revolutionary opportunities. No, the hell with all that. Take working class power when you can and let the devil take the hinder post. Let us learn more than previous generations of revolutionaries, but be ready. This is one of the political textbooks you need to read if you want to change the world. Read it.

 

 

 

 

League of Revolutionary Black Workers online

Saturday, January 18, 2014

League of Revolutionary Black Workers online

Material on the League of Revolutionary Black Workers at the Marxist Internet Archive - well worth checking out.

Labels: America, Black Power, class struggle, race, socialism