For Class Struggle Defense Of Our Political Prisoner Brothers And Sisters In Prison

Workers Vanguard No. 1025 31 May 2013   Remember the MOVE Massacre May 1985 Bombing: Racist State Terror On 13 May 1985, the Philadelphia police, with the cooperation of Pennsylvania State Police and the FBI, consciously carried out racist state murder. Acting on the orders of black Democratic mayor Wilson Goode and the Reagan White House, the cops dropped a satchel with C-4 explosives onto the MOVE organization’s Osage Avenue home. The explosion and ensuing firestorm killed eleven black people, including five children, and destroyed an entire city block, leaving hundreds homeless. The bombing capped a 12-hour cop siege during which over 10,000 rounds of ammunition were fired into the house. Firefighters were prevented by police from tackling the blaze for more than an hour, and the cops shot at anyone trying to escape the inferno. There were only two survivors: 13-year-old Birdie Africa and Ramona Africa, who was sent to prison for seven years for the “crime” of still being alive. This massacre was the culmination of years of police harassment, beatings and hundreds of arrests of members of this mostly black back-to-nature commune known for denouncing “the system” and defending its right to armed self-defense. In August 1978, 600 Philly cops had surrounded and attacked MOVE’s Powelton Village compound, unleashing a barrage of gunfire. Nine MOVE members were framed up and sentenced to between 30 and 100 years in prison after a cop was killed in the ferocious police crossfire. Merle Africa died in prison in 1998; the others are still locked away in Pennsylvania’s prison hellholes. While covering the trial of the MOVE 9, Mumia Abu-Jamal became a MOVE supporter. A former Black Panther and Philadelphia journalist known as the “Voice of the Voiceless,” Mumia was framed for the December 1981 killing of police officer Daniel Faulkner and sentenced to death for his political views. Mumia was confined to death row for 30 years before his sentence was overturned two years ago, but his conviction still stands. For him it is now the “slow death row” of life in prison. Free all the MOVE prisoners! Free Mumia Abu-Jamal! Abolish the racist death penalty! A new documentary about the MOVE bombing, Let the Fire Burn, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York in April, winning a Special Jury mention for a first documentary. The filmmaker, Jason Osder, watched the bombing live on television as a child and was spurred to make the documentary because he was horrified that people of his generation didn’t remember the events of 13 May 1985. Although Osder’s film is a welcome exposé, it makes an unwelcome attempt at being evenhanded. There are no two sides to an atrocity. In a Q&A with the filmmaker at the screening, a supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee stressed that the bombing was “not a confrontation between extremists and authority but between the oppressed and the oppressors.” The MOVE bombing belongs to the long history of murderous capitalist state repression against workers, the oppressed and groups deemed “deviant.” We will not forget the 1921 aerial bombing of the black neighborhood in Tulsa, Oklahoma, or the 1993 massacre of the integrated Branch Davidian movement in Waco, Texas. These and other atrocities evoke the terror meted out by U.S. imperialism in its wars far from home. The state branded MOVE “terrorist” to justify its mass murder, the signature of the Reagan years. With the “war on terror,” this pretext has become a fixture in the arsenal targeting those who stand up against the depredations of the capitalist rulers, not least black people. In this society, the entire state apparatus is racist to the core, as witnessed by “stop and frisk” and the massive numbers of black men in prison. Anti-black oppression has been the very bedrock of American capitalism since its foundation on the backs of chattel slaves seized from Africa. On the 28th anniversary of the MOVE bombing, we again seek to etch this atrocity into the collective memory of the working class and oppressed. Workers revolution will avenge the MOVE martyrs. For black liberation through socialist revolution!

For Class Struggle Defense Of Our Political Prisoner Brothers And Sisters In Prison

Workers Vanguard No. 1028	9 August 2013

Convicted for Revealing Crimes of U.S. Imperialism

Free Bradley Manning!

Bradley Manning, the courageous and self-sacrificing truth-teller who further revealed the exploitative everyday workings of U.S. imperialism as well as its heinous war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, was found guilty by a military judge on charges carrying a possible 136-year sentence. Imprisoned for more than three years before trial, including torture in solitary confinement, Manning persevered, aiming to change U.S. policy through exposure and public debate.

Manning’s conviction in this court-martial was a foregone conclusion. Indeed, he pleaded guilty to lesser charges that could put him away for 20 years. That was not good enough for the vindictive U.S. government. Now in the sentencing phase, this show trial is a government experiment in political cryogenics to see how deeply it can freeze free speech and dissent by making an example of Manning. It is intended to set the stage for prosecution of WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange, still sheltered in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, while U.S. lawmakers scream for his blood. Throwing the book at Bradley Manning also foreshadows what the U.S. would like to do to Edward Snowden, who was just granted temporary asylum in Russia. Fundamentally, the prosecution of Manning is intended to frighten everyone else into passive acceptance of U.S. outrages at home and abroad.

Manning was not convicted of aiding the enemy. This not-insignificant development was widely applauded by the capitalist press, which felt directly threatened by the prosecution’s assertion that publication of documents constitutes direct or indirect aid to the enemy because someone, somewhere, sometime might use that information against the U.S. government. However, the judge left open the future use of this ominous catchall by denying a defense motion to throw out the charge. In the end, the court merely found that the prosecution had not proved its case on that count.

Manning’s defense team eventually got the government to name two of the three enemies Manning allegedly aided (Al Qaeda and Al Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula), but the third remained classified information. A July 27 posting on the ProPublica investigative journalism Web site reports that the Pentagon told them that “revealing who we’re actually at war with would do serious damage to national security.” ProPublica added: “The main reason? They think those groups would use the info as good publicity and allow them to recruit more.”

Whether targeted by the CIA or the Pentagon, the people being shot at and bombed are aware that they are being shot and bombed. Some elements in the American ruling class are uncomfortable with the Pentagon’s “logic.” The Obama administration’s fanatical prosecution of whistle-blowers alarms some. Even more are aghast at the revelations by Edward Snowden et al. of the boundless domestic spying on the population, which includes them too. This disquiet in ruling circles no doubt had an impact on the judge.

Among other charges, Manning was convicted of six counts under the 1917 Espionage Act. The prosecution reached into a Cold War-era tool kit to construct a red scare and portray Manning as an “anarchist.” Civil libertarians complain that “whistle-blowing” is not spying, and they’re right. But in fact, the draconian Espionage Act has historically been wielded to repress domestic political opposition to imperialist war.

John Reed, a journalist and founding member of the American Communist Party, was prosecuted under the Espionage Act for articles against World War I published in the radical journal, The Masses. Reed and others associated with the journal defeated the government in court, but the Feds then yanked the publication’s mailing permit because it “skipped” an issue—the one seized by the government as allegedly seditious! Reed aptly summed up the workings of capitalist “justice”: “In America law is merely the instrument for good or evil of the most powerful interest, and there are no Constitutional safeguards worth the powder to blow them to hell” (“One Solid Month of Liberty,” The Masses, September 1917).

It is urgently necessary to continue to fight in defense of Bradley Manning. The organized labor movement, minorities, all opponents of the depredations of U.S. imperialism have an interest in this fight. As we wrote in “Truth-Teller on Trial: Free Bradley Manning,” (WV No. 1026, 14 June): “Lifting the veil on the U.S. war machine was a gutsy act of conscience that objectively helps the victims and opponents of the imperialist system.” Key information from the government’s own sources that Manning provided to WikiLeaks included:

• Iraq war logs, including a civilian death count, showing that for every dead Iraqi officially classified as a combatant, two civilian men, women or children were killed

• U.S. military support to repression of political dissidents in Iraq and Afghanistan and tolerance of torture as policy toward political prisoners

• Guantánamo detainee files showing the innocence of prisoners and their torture by the U.S. military

• FBI training of torturers for the deposed Mubarak regime in Egypt

• State Department-led opposition to raising the minimum wage in Haiti, the poorest country in the Western hemisphere

• the Obama administration’s drone bombing campaigns in Yemen

• Hillary Clinton’s authorization of theft of the U.N. Secretary General’s DNA [!]

• the notorious “collateral damage” video showing the military’s blood lust in gunning down Reuters reporters and Iraqi civilians

In publicizing this material, and more, Bradley Manning and Julian Assange have helped open the eyes of the working class to the systematic workings of the state run by and for the capitalist class. But as Marxists, we understand that the whole system of capitalist exploitation cannot be changed by simply providing information. This system is based on the exploitation of labor for private profit, buttressed in the U.S. by systematic racial oppression. Imperialist war and subjugation of the Third World are inherent outgrowths of capitalism and will continue until politically conscious workers sweep away the whole system and replace it with an egalitarian socialist society.

Frame-Ups and Omissions by the Capitalist Press

The prosecution of Bradley Manning has provided a diagnostic X-ray of the capitalist media. The New York Times, which flatters itself with the motto “All the news that’s fit to print,” did not initially find the hugely valuable and unassailable evidence of U.S. war crimes that Manning offered them “fit to print.” Neither did the Washington Post. So Manning submitted the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs and a trove of diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks. The Times did not find the lengthy pre-trial detention and torture of Bradley Manning fit to print either; indeed, the paper barely covered the case until its own public editor lodged a protest. Then the coup de grace: upon his conviction, the Times ran a creepy, character-assassinating portrait of Manning as a psychologically unstable social misfit on the front page.

There is a purpose driven by big economic interests that dictates the behavior of the so-called “free press.” As Bolshevik leader V.I. Lenin wrote, “Under capitalism, a newspaper is a capitalist enterprise, a means of enrichment, a medium of information and entertainment for the rich, and an instrument for duping and cheating the mass of working people” (“Work of People’s Commissariat for Education,” 7 February 1921). In defense of the interests of their class, the government and its mouthpieces in the bourgeois press portray their opponents as criminal and/or of unsound mind. By its own perverse standards, what the ruling class considers normal is dropping atomic weapons, ordering drone attacks on civilians and unleashing the Lieutenant Calleys who burned down entire villages in Vietnam, and later the kill-crazy mercenaries in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The government’s need to conduct its dirty work in secret and the subservience of the capitalist media to their masters made it a massive struggle simply to get the news about Manning’s court-martial. Hundreds of journalists were denied media credentials by the Army, including those from Workers Vanguard who managed anyway to get into the Fort Meade courtroom to cover the initial part of the trial.

We are indebted to a few politically committed independent journalists, without whom little to nothing would be known about the dirty war against Manning. For a year and a half, Alexa O’Brien published the only available transcripts of the pre-trial proceedings. Her daily reports from the court-martial punctured the “managed obscurity” (her term), despite intimidation by armed soldiers snooping over her shoulder in Fort Meade’s media pit. Daily trial reports by Nathan Fuller on the Bradley Manning Support Network’s Web site and by Kevin Gosztola on the Firedoglake Web site have also been invaluable. Since the U.S. military refuses to release transcripts of the pre-trial hearings and court-martial, the Freedom of the Press Foundation raised funds to hire court stenographers for those sessions that were open to the public.

The Fraud of Bourgeois Democracy

In the wake of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the U.S. vastly increased its security apparatuses to spy on, well, almost everyone. This created its own security nightmare for the ruling class. The Augean stables of classified information require armies of employees with digital trowels to move the crap around. Close to five million people have security clearances, of which more than 1.4 million are cleared for “top secret” material. Bradley Manning was one with the moral and political conscience to oppose what he discovered U.S. imperialism does every day all over the world, and he had the rare courage to act on his convictions, at great personal sacrifice. His act encouraged Edward Snowden to reveal PRISM—the National Security Agency’s vacuuming of metadata from virtually everyone’s e-mails and Web searches, in cahoots with corporations like Google, Microsoft and Facebook.

Snowden flew to Hong Kong to reveal the nefarious workings of the U.S. intelligence net and then spent more than a month in the transit zone of a Moscow airport while fighting for asylum, which Russia has granted him for one year. The spectacle of Attorney General Eric Holder, who presides over a justice system that massively incarcerates black people and railroads many to death row, promising Moscow that Snowden would not be tortured (like Bradley Manning) or face the death penalty, was a hoot. Here in the “belly of the beast,” it is delightful to see U.S. imperialism get a black eye and have its pretensions to rule the world on behalf of “democracy” further exposed for the lie it is.

There has been vastly more outrage expressed by bourgeois “public opinion” over Snowden’s revelations than Bradley Manning’s because the former hits the wealthy where they live: their e-mails, their Internet search histories, the GPS data on their smart phones. By contrast, Manning was the lowly working-class soldier who was supposed to protect their class privileges by enforcing U.S. domination of the globe.

In These Times, a social-patriotic journal described by the Democratic Socialists of America as “DSA-ish,” defended NSA spying and denounced Snowden. A July 2 article by Louis Nayman headlined “In Defense of PRISM” railed that a government contractor who runs with classified data to “regimes who fine, imprison and rub out public critics” is not a “People’s Hero.” This was a bit much even for the Democratic Party stalwarts of the DSA, which subsequently printed a polite rebuttal to Nayman, who is described as a longtime union organizer. We suggest that Mr. Nayman register as an agent of a foreign power in the labor movement—the capitalist class.

Daniel Ellsberg, who more than 40 years ago leaked the Pentagon Papers, exposing the lies designed to cover up what the U.S. was really doing in Vietnam, has laudably and energetically defended Bradley Manning. He expresses the views of civil libertarians who think that the prosecution of whistle-blowers damages U.S. prestige in the world and feel embarrassed by the protests of rival imperialist powers. Cold War liberal anti-Communism dripped from Ellsberg’s article in the London Guardian (10 June), which, alluding to the East German state spy agency, was titled: “Edward Snowden: Saving Us from the United Stasi of America.” Ellsberg has no fundamental problem with NSA spying; he just wants an informed public to pressure Congress to keep U.S. imperialism’s bloodhounds on a somewhat shorter leash.

Liberals who uphold the fraud of U.S. “democracy” against Soviet-era and Stasi “totalitarianism” prettify the brutally violent rule of the rapacious U.S. ruling class that Bradley Manning exposed. As Marxists, we value and fight hard for democratic rights, which make it easier for labor and the oppressed to fight in their own interests. What the liberals will not tell you is that democratic rights are extended to the working class and poor as gains of arduous class and social struggles; they are not granted from on high by an enlightened ruling class. Moreover, democratic rights in capitalist society are ephemeral and can be taken away in an instant.

Liberal darling Franklin Delano Roosevelt interned Japanese Americans during World War II, adopting the racist argument that this “enemy race” would soon commit sabotage because they had not done so yet. Black Panther Party members Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were gunned down in Hampton’s apartment in Chicago in 1969 for challenging systematic racist oppression. The same state persecution of anti-racist, anti-capitalist fighters continues today in the frame-up and life sentence of award-winning black journalist and MOVE supporter Mumia Abu-Jamal and the unspeakably cruel imprisonment of leftist attorney Lynne Stewart, who is dying of cancer. The prosecution of Bradley Manning and the drive to capture Edward Snowden and Julian Assange form part of this larger picture.

As opposed to Ellsberg, who argues that U.S. government overreach carries a whiff of Stalinist rule, we argue that the worst crimes of Stalinism were not ham-fisted repression, of which we Trotskyists were the first and foremost victims, but its appeasement of capitalist rule worldwide by abandoning the proletarian, revolutionary and internationalist goals of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. This led, ultimately, to capitalist counterrevolution and economic immiseration in the former Soviet Union and across East Europe. We Trotskyists fought for the unconditional military defense of the Soviet degenerated workers state against imperialist attack and internal counterrevolution. Now, without Soviet power to check the hand of Washington, American imperialism is riding unbridled over most of the world. On the domestic front, a prostrate labor officialdom and low tide of class and social struggle help enable the government to get away with rampant surveillance and shredding of democratic rights.

The Spartacist League seeks to win opponents of this system to an understanding that it will take a series of socialist revolutions around the world to overturn the capitalist order and establish an internationally planned and collectivized economy based on human need, not private profit. Indeed, communism is America’s and the world’s last best hope. 

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Donate to Bradley Manning’s Legal Defense!

 

The Partisan Defense Committee has donated to Bradley Manning’s defense and encourages others to do the same. Send checks or money orders earmarked “Manning defense” and payable to: The Courage to Resist, 484 Lake Park Avenue #41, Oakland, CA 94610.

From The Archives-The Voice Of The West Coast Branch Of The American Communist Party

The Voice Of Historical Trotskyism In America (long since relinquished) -The Socialist Workers Party

 

 

 

Songs Of Struggle From May Day 2014 In Boston ...

***Out In The Be-Bop Be-Bop 1960s Night- Save The Last Dance For Me

 

A YouTube film clip of The Drifters performing their classic Save The Last Dance For Me

 

Back in the 1960s, probably now too, one of the great coming-of-age events, if you could stand the gaff, was figuring out how you stood in the high school pecking order (hell junior high too it started that far back). One of the determining factors was your ability, male or female, to garner a date for one of the myriad school dances that took part at various intervals during the year. Topping off that conquest was the last dance, the last dance of the evening, a slow one to allow the heat of sixty-seven rock and roll fast dances to die down and get you ready for the “real” night (if you were lucky) down at the old beach (or wherever the locale was if you were not ocean-worthy) and its subsequent finish at some all-night diner. But you had to get some vibe going on that last dance or else you were going to be home early watching the late shows on television. That last dance thought and what would, or would not happen, came into my mind recently when I saw a YouTube film clip of the Drifters singing their classic last dance song, well, Save The Last Dance For Me with a bunch of kids dancing in front. Some who looked like they were going to make the beach, others ready to reach for that television knob.

Recently I told all who would listen a little heart-rendering story about a girl I knew back at North Adamsville High, a girl who went on to gain some fame as a torch singer fronting for jazz bands (and an occasional rock group as well), Diana Nelson. Needless to say I had a “crush” on her in ninth grade and she in turn would not give me the time of day (or so I thought since I was so girl-shy that I did not pick any signals and just daydreamed watching his ass). I mentioned, in detailing some of the events surrounding the North Adamsville Class of 1962-sponsored version of the traditional late September Falling Leaves Dance in that sketch was that one of the perks that year was getting to hear the vocals of local singer and classmate that Diana Nelson, backed up by local rock band favorite, The Rockin’ Ramrods.

I also mentioned that her selection to front for the group at the dance had been the result of a singing competition held by the town fathers and that I would relate some of the details of that competition at a later date. At the time of the above-mentioned dance she was “going steady” with some college joe, and had not given me the time of day, flirting or encouraging-wise, since about tenth grade, although we always talked about stuff, music and political stuff, two of my passions, and hers too. Here’s the “skinny.”

******

No question that about 1960, maybe into 1961, girl vocalists were the cat’s meow. (Okay, young women, but we didn’t call them that then, no way.) Also no way as well is what we called them, called them among we corner boys at Salducci’s Pizza Parlor, especially when we got “no action.” I don’t have to draw you a diagram on what that meant, right? You can, if you were around then, reel off the names just as well as I can, Connie Francis, Carla Thomas, Patsy Cline, and the sparkplug Brenda Lee. I won’t even mention wanna-bes like Connie Stevens and Sandra Dee, Christ. See, serious classic rock by guys like Elvis, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis was, well, passé, in that musical counter-revolution night. But music, like lots of other things abhors a vacuum and while guys were still singing, I guess, the girl singers (read young women, okay, and we will leave it at that) “spoke” to us more. Especially to record- buying girls who wanted to hear about teen romance, teen alienation, lost love, unstoppable hurts, betrayal (usually by the girl’s best friend and the sobbing girl’s boyfriend) stuff that teenagers, boys and girls equally, have been mulling over, well, since they invented teenagers a long time ago.

So it was natural for the musically-talented girls around North Adamsville, and maybe around the country for all I know, to test themselves against the big name talents and see what they had. See if they could make teen heaven- a record contract with all that entailed. In North Adamsville that was actually made easier by the town fathers if you can believe that (and they were all men, mostly old men in those days so fathers is right). Why? Because for a couple of years in the early 1960s, maybe longer, they had been sponsoring a singing contest, a female vocalist, singing contest. I heard later, and maybe it was true, that what drove them was that, unlike those mid-1950s evil male rockers mentioned above, the women vocalist models had a “calming effect” on the hard-bitten be-bop teen night. And calm was what the town fathers cared about most of all. That, and making sure that everything was in preparedness for any Soviet missile strike, complete with periodic air raid drills, Christ again.

In 1962 this contest, as it was in previous years, was held in the spring in the town hall auditorium. And among the contestants, obviously, was that already "spoken for" Diana Nelson who was by even the casual music listener the odds-on favorite. She had prepped a few of us with her unique rendition of Brenda Lee’s I’m Sorry so I knew she was a shoo-in. And she was. What was interesting about the competition was not her victory as much as the assorted talents, so-called, that entered this thing. If I recall there were perhaps fifteen vocalists in all. The way the thing got resolved was a kind of sing-off. A process of elimination sing-off.

Half a dozen, naturally, were some variation of off-key and dismissible out of hand. These girls fought the worst when they got the hook. Especially one girl, Elena G., if anyone remembers her who did one of the worst versions of Connie Francis’ Who’s Sorry Now I had (and have) ever heard. The more talented girls took their lost with more grace, probably realizing as Diana got into high gear that they were doomed. But here is the funny part. One of the final four girls was not a girl at all. Jimmy C. from right down the end of my street dressed himself up as girl (and not badly either although none of us knew much about “drag queen” culture then) and sang a great version of Mary Wells’ Two Lovers. Like I said we knew from nothing about different sexual preferences and thought he just did it as a goof. (I heard a couple of years later that he had finally settled in Provincetown and that fact alone “hipped” me to what he was about, sexually.)

I probably told you before that one part of winning was a one thousand dollar scholarship. That was important, but Diana, when she talked to me about it a couple of days later just before class, said she really wanted to win so she could be featured at the Falling Leaves Dance. Now, like I said, I had a big crush on her, no question, so I was amazed that she also said that she wanted me to be sure to be at the dance that next late September. Well, if you have been paying attention at all then you know I was there. I went alone, because just then I didn’t have a girlfriend, a girlfriend strong enough for me to want to go to the dance with anyway. But I was having a pretty good time. I even danced with Chrissie McNamara, a genuine fox, who every guy had the “hots” for since she, just the night before, had busted up with Johnny Callahan, the football player. And Diana sang great, especially on Brenda Lee’s I Want To Be Wanted. She reached somewhere deep for that one.

Toward the end of the evening, while the Rockin’ Ramrods were doing some heavy rock covers, Chuck Berry’s Sweet Little Sixteen I think, and she was taking a break, Diana came over to me and said, I swear she said it exactly like this- “save the last dance for me.” I asked her to repeat herself. She said Bobby (her college joe) was not there that evening for some reason I do not remember and that she wanted to dance the last dance with someone she liked. Well, what’s a guy to do when someone like Diana gives her imperial command? I checked my dance card and said “sure.” Now this last dance thing has been going on ever since they have had dances and ever since they have had teenagers at such events so no big deal, really. Oh, except this, as we were dancing that last dance to the Ramrod’s cover of The Dubs Could This Be Magic Diana, out of the blue, said this. “You know if you had done more than just stared at my ass in class (and in the corridors too, she added) in ninth grade maybe I wouldn’t have latched onto Bobby when he came around in tenth grade.” No, a thousand times no, no, no, no…

From the Marxist Archives -ALL OUT TO MADISON SQUARE ON MAY DAY (1934)

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James P. Cannon The Militant April 28, 1934

ALL OUT TO MADISON SQUARE ON MAY DAY

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Written: 1934
Source: The Militant. Original bound volumes of The Militant and microfilm provided by the Holt Labor Library, San Francisco, California.
Transcription\HTML Markup:Andrew Pollack

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On May Day this year New York will witness the most imposing demonstration of the workers and the most tangible advances toward their united struggle against the common enemy that has been seen for many years. The participating workers’ organizations will march together in a single parade and hold a common demonstration at Madison Square. The Communist League (International Communists) will march in the parade under its own banner and will be represented by its own speakers at the demonstration.
The idea that the political and economic organizations of the workers, regardless of their differences of principle, must form a united front of action against the class enemy—this idea, which was rejected with such fatal consequences in Germany, has brought a host of organizations together and governs their practice in carrying out all the arrangements of the united front May Day parade and demonstration. The no less important condition—that each organization shall preserve its own identity and march under its own banner—is likewise respected and observed by the participants.
The features of the demonstration signify a victory for the idea of a workers’ united front and the beginning of its realization in action. For these reasons alone, the Communist League, which insistently fights for the united front of the workers’ organizations, would be duty bound to take part in the work and actions of the May Day Labor Conference which culminate in the parade and demonstrations on May Day. But there are other reasons of no less weight and importance which make the course we have taken mandatory upon us as communists.
The Stalinist party (CP) and the organizations under its control are conducting a separate parade and demonstration at the same hour. Thus, although the preponderant weight of forces is with the Labor Day Conference; a serious element of division remains in the workers’ ranks. Such a division is not of our making. We stand for the united front of all the workers’ organizations and will continue to fight for it in the future. Nevertheless, the division, and the holding of the demonstrations at the same hour, compel each organization and each individual militant to make a choice.
We have made our choice in this matter with full deliberation, and our decision is not an isolated one, applicable only to a single occasion. It corresponds, rather, to the trend of developments in the labor movement. And this, in turn, determines the tactical course of the revolutionary Marxist.
The Stalinists, who reject the united front with all organizations not under their direct control, demand that the workers demonstrate on May Day only under Stalinist auspices. This ultimatum is repeated by their camp followers of various kinds in varying stages of confusion and demoralization.
The ultimatums of the Stalinists have no interest for us. We reject the “leadership” of these political hooligans and condemn them as a menace to the labor movement. But to the conscientious left-wing workers who may have the mistaken impression that the May Day demonstrations present a choice between communism and reformism, we owe a frank explanation of the course we have taken. Our remarks on the question are addressed especially to them.
It is argued by the Stalinists and their camp followers that the parade and demonstration at Madison Square, organized by the Labor Conference, will be composed predominantly of the Socialist political organizations and reformist trade unions, while the Union Square demonstration represents the revolutionary workers. The workers who want a united front of action and defense are called upon to choose between the Socialist Party and the Communist Party. This ultimatum contains three propositions which have to be dealt with separately.
It is quite true that the Madison Square demonstration will be predominantly Socialist and trade unionist and that these organizations have by far the main weight in the conference. But that is not a reason for communists to stay away from the demonstration. On the contrary, it is the duty of the communists to march with the Socialist workers and the trade unionists and to raise the banner of communism in their midst. As long as the communists are permitted to march with their own banner and to be represented by their own speakers at the demonstration—and these rights have been expressly provided for all the participating organizations by the joint arrangements committee—they have no need and no right to present any other demands as a condition for a united action. March separately, strike together—this is the fundamental basis for the united front of the workers.
We do not demand that the Socialist workers leave their own organizations as a condition for common action with us. We do not demand that they cease to be Socialists in order to make the united front with communists. We do not demand that our leadership be recognized beforehand, and we do not repeat the insane gibberish about the “united front from below.” It is such ultimatums, which the Stalinist bureaucrats are in the habit of laying down to the workers, which negate the very idea of the united front and make it impossible. We hope to convince the workers, in the course of common action, of the inadequacy of reformism and the necessity for revolutionary policy and leadership. But we do not demand that they be convinced of this in advance. Therein lies the fundamental difference between the Stalinist and the revolutionary communist conception of the united front.
The second false assumption in the ultimatum of the Stalinists and their ideological captives is the argument that the Union Square demonstration is a demonstration of the “revolutionary workers,” that the Stalinist leaders are the representatives of communism. This contention, false to the core, is especially repugnant today in the face of the cynical united front of Stalinism with world reaction in hounding the organizer of the Russian revolution.
Many workers with the impulse to be revolutionists will undoubtedly participate in the Stalinist demonstration. But Stalinism as a political current contributes nothing to the labor movement but ideological disorientation, demoralization, and defeat. The Stalinist hooligans corrupt every principle of communism and defile its very name. They always subordinate the interests of the working class to the special interests of a bureaucratic apparatus. The Stalinists disrupt and sabotage every attempt of the workers to unite their forces for a common fight against the class enemy. Stalinism is a poison in the veins of the labor movement, and its harmful influence derives precisely from the assumption by many workers that it represents communism.
It is necessary to attack this illusion in deed as well as in word and to put the question as it really stands: Stalinism is a reactionary force in the labor movement of the whole world.
The Madison Square demonstration will be predominantly reformist, in composition and leadership. That is true. But revolutionary internationalism will be represented there this May Day, and only there. Not the banner of Stalinism, splotched with crimes and treacheries, but the banner of the International Communists—this is the banner of communism. Every revolutionary worker ought to march behind it and no other.
The third fallacy in the ultimatum of the Stalinists and their apologists consists in the posing of the question of a united front on May Day as a rivalry and conflict between the Socialist Party and the Communist Party, and the demand that the workers choose between the two parties. “March with the Communist Party, not with the Socialist Party” is the formula of this ultimatum. For our part, if it is a question of party preference, we choose neither the CP nor the SP and follow neither. If the May Day meetings are to be construed simply as meetings of different parties then the revolutionary workers supporting the Communist League would have no choice but to abstain from both demonstrations and to organize their own, however small it might be.
But this is not how the question presents itself to us. Quite the contrary. General political meetings of the parties can be conducted apart from the demonstrations under the auspices of the respective parties—the Communist League, for example, will hold its own meeting in the evening. But the demonstration and purpose on May Day ought to represent a united front of all the parties and workers’ organizations in a single demonstration against war and fascism and for the immediate needs of the workers.
It is precisely the inability of the Stalinists even to comprehend the question in this sense, their shopkeeper’s conception of the special interest of their own party apparatus and their fear of “competition,” that impelled them to organize the Union Square demonstration as a demonstration for the Communist Party. Their stubborn refusal to merge their party interest for a single occasion, on May Day of all days, with the general class interest, condemns the demonstration to isolation as an affair of the CP and its auxiliaries, despite all the crooked ballyhoo about “unity” and the “united front. ”
And by the same token this policy of the Stalinists and the whole line of conduct flowing from it, not forgetting the Madison Square Garden affair—this policy and conduct make it easy for the Socialist leaders, who are no more in favor of an all-inclusive fighting united front than the Stalinists, to counteract the pressure of their own members for a single, united demonstration.
The fact that the Socialist leaders felt obliged to agree to joint action with every other group and organization except the Stalinists, to give up their original demand that the May Day Labor Conference be labeled as “Socialist and Labor,” their agreement that all the participating organizations be represented with their banners at the head of the parade as well as on the arrangements committee and on the speakers’ platform—all this is powerful testimony to the deep-rooted sentiments of the Socialist workers for a genuine united front.
The Communist League fought in the conference and arrangements committee for an invitation to the Stalinists, but without success. We also sent delegates to the Stalinist conference to propose that a direct approach be made to the May Day Labor Conference for a single demonstration. Our proposal was rejected with the usual barrage of epithets and slander. Nevertheless, it can be asserted, so pressing is the need for unity and so powerful the sentiment of the rank-and-file workers for it, that if our proposal had been adopted and carried out honestly and consistently, it would have been extremely difficult, if not impossible, for the Socialist leaders to refuse.
We shall continue to fight for this policy as we have fought consistently for it in the past. For years, as a faction working for the reform of the CP, we continuously advocated the adoption by the party of the policy of the united front in the same sense that we present it today. The victory of fascism in Germany is directly due to the rejection by the Stalinist leadership of the united front with the Social Democracy and the reformist trade unions, which the Left Opposition insistently demanded. The weakness and disorganization of the working-class movement in this country, after four and one-half years of the unprecedented crisis, is in large part also the result of the same fatal mistakes, systematically repeated.
Breaking with the Comintern because of its obvious and irremediable bankruptcy, and taking the path toward new parties and the Fourth International, the International Communists (formerly the Left Opposition) in no way alter or modify the principles, strategy, and tactics with regard to the broad labor movement which they formerly proposed for the adoption of the official Communist parties. The only difference is that we carry out in practice now, as a completely independent organization, the tactics which we previously recommended to the CP. This is the meaning of our decision to participate in the Madison Square demonstration and parade with the Socialist Party, the trade unions, and other political groups and tendencies.
The parade and demonstration organized by the May Day Labor Conference, lacking the inclusion of the Stalinist organizations, is obviously not a complete united front and should not be represented as such. But this is not a reason to abstain from participation. After all the divisions and demoralization, it is utopian to expect that the idea of the united front will take hold everywhere with the same force and that it can be realized organizationally overnight.
The building of the united front of the workers is a process. This process involves agitation for the idea, experiments in cooperation, and tests in action. Including all the tendencies of the more or less progressive section of the labor movement, with the single exception of the Stalinists and their satellites, the May Day Labor Conference represents a tremendous step forward. From this point of view it must be hailed and supported by the revolutionary workers. At the same time efforts must be made to broaden out its composition and extend it to other fields of activity in the class struggle.
Needless to say, our participation at Madison Square does not imply in any way the slightest reconciliation with the Socialist Party. The united front of action on concrete questions does not signify political collaboration. No blurring of principled issues. No mixing of banners.
Our principled differences with social reformism remain. We shall fight them out to the end. Not by lies and slanders, not by hooligan violence, but through argument and example, we shall endeavor to convince the Socialist workers of the necessity of a revolutionary policy and leadership. In intransigent principled struggle against social reformism we shall work for the new party and the new International.
Meantime, now as always, we shall stand for the united front in concrete struggles of the day: with the Socialist workers through the medium of their chosen organization.

***Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By-The Doors

Peter Paul Markin comment December 2013:

A while back, maybe a few years ago, I started a series presented under the headline Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By where I posted some songs that I thought would get us through the “dog days” of the struggle for our socialist future. Posted at a time, 2009, when it was touch and go whether there would be some kind of uprising against the economic royalists (chastised under the popular sobriquet “the one-percent”) who had just dealt the world a blow to the head through their economic machinations. Subsequently, while there were momentary uprisings, the response from the American and world working classes has if anything entrenched those interests. So as the dog days continue I have resumed the series. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs selected; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this kind of formation would mean political death for any serious revolutionary upheaval and would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here. Markin.

**********

WE WANT THE WORLD AND WE WANT IT NOW!

From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin

My old friend from the summer of love 1967 days, Peter Paul Markin, always used to make a point of answering, or rather arguing with anybody who tried to tell him back in the day that “music was the revolution.”  Meaning, of course that contrary to the proponents (including many mutual friends who acted out on that idea and got burned by the flame) that eight or ten Give Peace A Chance, Kumbaya, Woodstock songs would not do the trick, would not change this nasty, brutish, old short-life world into the garden, into some pre-lapsian Eden. Meaning that the gathering of youth nation unto itself out in places like Woodstock, Golden Gate Park, Monterrey, hell, the Boston Common, or even once word trickled down, Olde Saco Park, would not feed on itself and grow to such a critical mass that the enemies of good, kindness, and leave us alone would sulk off somewhere, defeated or at least defanged.

Many a night, many a dope-blistered night before some seawall ocean front Pacific Coast campfire I would listen to Markin blast forth against that stuff, against that silliness. As for me, I was too into the moment, too into finding weed, hemp, mary jane and some fetching women to share it with to get caught up in some nebulous ideological struggle. It was only later, after the music died, after rock and roll turned in on itself, turned into some exotic fad of the exiles on Main Street that I began to think through the implications of what Markin, and the guys on the other side, were arguing about.

Now it makes perfect sense that music or any mere cultural expression would be unable to carry enough weight to turn us back to the garden. Although I guess that I would err on the side of the angels and at least wish they could have carried the day against the monsters of the American imperium we confronted back in the day.                 

Thinking about what a big deal was made of such arguments recently (arguments carried deep into the night, deep in smoke dream nights, and sometimes as the blue–pink dawn came rising to smite our dreams) I thought back to my own musical appreciations. In my jaded youth I developed an ear for roots music, whether I was conscious of that fact or not. Perhaps it initially started as a reaction to my parents’ music, the music that got them through the Great Depression of the 1930s and later waiting for other shoe to drop (either in Normandy or at home waiting in Olde Saco), and that became a habit, a wafting through the radio of my childhood home habit. You know who I mean Frank (Sinatra for the heathens), Harry James, the Andrews Sisters, Peggy Lee, Doris Day and the like. Or, maybe, and this is something that I have come closer to believing was the catalyst, my father’s very real roots in the Saturday night mountain barn dance, fiddles blazing, music of his growing up poor down in Appalachia.   

The origin of my emergence into roots music first centered on the blues, country and city with the likes of Son House , Skip James, Mississippi John Hurt, Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf and Elmore James, then early rock and roll, you know the rockabillies and R&B crowd, Elvis, Jerry Lee, Chuck, Roy, Big Joe and Ike, and later, with the folk revival of the early 1960’s, folk music, especially the protest to high heaven sort, Bob Dylan, Dave Von Ronk, Joan Baez, etc. As I said I have often wondered about the source of this interest.

I am, and have always been a city boy, and an Eastern city boy at that. Meaning rootless or not meaningfully or consciously rooted in any of the niches mentioned above. Nevertheless, over time I have come to appreciate many more forms of roots music than in my youth. Cajun, Tex-Mex, old time dust bowl ballads a la Woody Guthrie, cowboy stuff with the likes of Bob Wills and Milton Brown, Carter Family-etched mountain music (paying final conscious tribute to the mountain DNA in my bone) and so on.

And all those genres are easily classified as roots music but I recall one time driving Markin crazy, driving him to closet me with the “music is the revolution” heads when I mentioned in passing that The Doors, then in their high holy mantra shamanic phase epitomized roots music. That hurt, a momentary hurt then, but thinking about it more recently Markin was totally off base in his remarks.

The Doors are roots music? Well, yes, in the sense that one of the branches of rock and roll derived from early rhythm and blues and in the special case of Jim Morrison, leader of The Doors, the attempt to musically explore the shamanic elements in the Western American Native- American culture that drove the beat of many of his trance-like songs like The End. More than one rock critic, professional rock critic, has argued that on their good nights when the dope and booze were flowing, Morrison was in high trance, and they were fired up The Doors were the best rock and roll band ever created. Those critics will get no argument here, and it is not a far stretch to classify their efforts as in the great American roots tradition.  I argued then and will argue here almost fifty years later when that original statement of mine was more prophetic the Doors put together all the stuff rock critics in one hundred years will be dusting off when they want to examine what it was like when men (and women, think Bonnie Raitt, Wanda Jackson, et. al) played rock and roll for keeps.

So where does Jim Morrison fit in an icon of the 1960s if he was not some new age latter day cultural Lenin/Trotsky. Jim was part of the trinity – Morrison, Janis Joplin, and Jimi Hendrix who lived fast, lived way too fast, and died young. The slogan of the day (or hour) - Drugs, sex, and rock and roll. And we liked that idea however you wanted to mix it up. Then.

Their deaths were part of the price we felt we had to pay if we were going to be free. And be creative. Even the most political among us, including Markin in his higher moments, felt those cultural winds blowing across the continent and counted those who espoused this alternative vision as part of the chosen. The righteous headed to the “promise land.” Unfortunately those who believed that we could have a far-reaching positive cultural change via music or “dropping out” without a huge societal political change proved to be wrong long ago. But, these were still our people.

Know this as well if you are keeping score. Whatever excesses were committed by the generation of ’68, and there were many, were mainly made out of ignorance and foolishness. Our opponents, exemplified by one Richard Milhous Nixon, President of the United States and common criminal, spent every day of their lives as a matter of conscious, deliberate policy raining hell down on the peoples of the world, the minorities in this country, and anyone else who got in their way. Forty plus years of “cultural wars” in revenge by his protégés, hangers-on and their descendants has been a heavy price to pay for our youthful errors. And Markin would surely endorse this sentiment. Enough.

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

The Class Struggle Continues... May Day 2014 In Boston

 

 

 

From The Marxist Archives -The Revolutionary History Journal-Provisional European Secretariat of the Fourth International-Manifesto to the Italian Workers,  Peasants and Soldiers (1943)

 

From The Pen Of Leon Trotsky- On The 70th Anniversary Of His Death (2010)-

Markin comment:

The name Leon Trotsky hardly needs added comment from this writer. After Marx, Engels and Lenin, and in his case it is just slightly after, Trotsky is our heroic leader of the international communist movement. I would argue, and have in the past, that if one were looking for a model of what a human being would be like in our communist future Leon Trotsky, warts and all, is the closest approximation that the bourgeois age has produced. No bad, right?

Note: For this 70th anniversary memorial I have decided to post articles written by Trotsky in the 1930s, the period of great defeats for the international working class with the rise of fascism and the disorientations of Stalinism beating down on it. This was a time when political clarity, above all, was necessary. Trotsky, as a simple review of his biographical sketch will demonstrate, wore many hats in his forty years of conscious political life: political propagandist and theoretician; revolutionary working class parliamentary leader; razor-sharp journalist ( I, for one, would not have wanted to cross swords with him. I would still be bleeding); organizer of the great October Bolshevik revolution of 1917; organizer of the heroic and victorious Red Army in the civil war against the Whites in the aftermath of that revolution; seemingly tireless Soviet official; literary and culture critic: leader of the Russian Left Opposition in the 1920s; and, hounded and exiled leader of the International Left Opposition in the 1930s.

I have decided to concentrate on some of his writings from the 1930s for another reason as well. Why, with such a resume to choose from? Because, when the deal went down Leon Trotsky’s work in the 1930s, when he could have taken a political dive, I believe was the most important of his long career. He, virtually alone of the original Bolshevik leadership (at least of that part that still wanted to fight for international revolution), had the capacity to think and lead. He harnessed himself to the hard, uphill work of that period (step back, step way back, if you think we are “tilting at windmills” now). In that sense the vile Stalinist assassination in 1940, when Trotsky could still project years of political work ahead, is not among the least of Stalin’s crimes against the international working class. Had Trotsky lived another ten years or so, while he could not have “sucked” revolutions out of the ground, he could have stabilized a disoriented post-World War communist movement and we would probably have a far greater living communist movement today. Thanks for what you did do though, Comrade Trotsky.

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. 
******** 

Provisional European Secretariat of the Fourth International-Manifesto to the Italian Workers,  Peasants and Soldiers

This text, dated 8 August 1943, was composed by the clandestine organisation set up by the European Trotskyists living under Nazi occupation, without the opportunity of conferring with the International Secretariat based in New York. It was first published in a special number of La Vérité issued on 30 July 1943, and afterwards in Quatrième Internationale, new series, no. 1, August 1943, pp. 9–13. It is most conveniently consulted today in Rodolphe Prager’s edition of Les Congrés de la quatrième internationale, Volume 2, L’Internationale dans la guerre (1940–1946), Paris, 1981, pp. 167–72. The same book also includes an analysis of the Italian situation by the clandestine European conference of February 1944, La crise et l’experience italienne’ in the Thèses sur la liquidation de la deuxième guerre impérialiste et la montée révolutionnaire (pp. 202–7), which first saw the light in Quatrième Internationale, nos. 4–5, February–March 1944. Our translation of the Manifesto has been kindly produced for this magazine by Paolo Casciola. The Italian Revolution also had a deep impact upon the International Secretariat and those Trotskyists outside Europe who were in contact with it, for such figures as Jean van Heijenoort, Felix Morrow and Albert Goldman in the USA, and Jock Haston and Ted Grant in Britain were influenced by it to raise the question of applying transitional politics to the countries emerging from occupation. Much of the controversy was fought out first in the Internal Bulletin of the American SWP, but its main lines can be followed in the public articles of Felix Morrow, Washington’s Plans for Italy, Fourth International, Volume 4, no. 6, June 1943; Italy: The First Phase of the Revolution, Fourth International, Volume 4, no. 8, August 1943, pp. 227–9; Workers International News, Volume 5, no- 4, October–November 1943, pp. 9–12; and The Italian Revolution, Fourth International, Volume 5, no. 9, September 1943, pp. 263–73; Workers International News, Volume 5, no. 5, January 1945, pp. 1–8; of Ted Grant, Italian Revolution and the Tasks of the British Workers, Workers International News, Volume 5, no. 12, August 1943, pp. 1–5; of Albert Goldman, Was There a Revolution in Italy?, Fourth International, Volume 5, no. 1, January 1944, pp. 11–4; of E.R. Frank (Bert Cochran), Nine Months of Allied Rule in Italy, Fourth International, Volume 5, no. 4, April 1944, pp. 105–12; and of Daniel Logan (Jean Van Heijenoort), The Italian Revolution and the Slogan “For a Republic!”, New International, Volume 9, no. , October 1945, pp. 212–5. They are most conveniently summarised in P. Jenkins, Where Trotskyism Got Lost, Spokesman Pamphlet no. 59, Nottingham, n.d.

---

THE HATED regime of the Blackshirts has just departed from the Italian scene. This is the greatest event that has happened since the outbreak of the slaughter of the Second World War. The first link of the capitalist chain has been broken, thus opening up splendid prospects for the Italian, European and world proletariat.

After having oppressed, exploited, harassed, despoiled and bled the Italian people for 20 years, after having led Italy into imperialist war and military disaster, on the verge of economic bankruptcy, Fascism, the last hope of a decaying capitalism, shows by its pitiful fall all the frailty of the society that it served, as well as its own inability to give people anything more than misery, wars, crises and slavery.
Faced with the terrible consequences of a military defeat and an impending economic disaster, and above all fearful of the awakening of the exploited masses, of which the heroic struggles of the workers in Turin, Milan and Genoa were a foretaste, the bourgeoisie got rid of Fascism in 24 hours. This shows that Fascism was no more than a instrument in its hands. All talk about a new state, about Mussolini’s Socialism, and about the ‘fourth Italy’ is shown to mean nothing. But at the same time it shows that it was ready to get rid of a servant who had become an embarrassment and to repudiate the Fascist super-gendarme on condition that it should continue to reign and to oppress and exploit as a class. As long as the rule of the bourgeoisie exists, as long as the Montecatinis, Ansaldos, Fiats and the landlords remain the owners of Italy, as long as generals and bourgeois politicians govern in their name, nothing is going to change for the Italian people. It is in their interests that the monarchy’s puppet calls for Italian unity, it is for their benefit that Badoglio, who until yesterday was a faithful servant of Mussolini, proclaims martial law and sends policemen to shoot down striking workers.
But the events which are now shaking the Italian peninsula can in no way be halted before a government of military braggarts, which is as reactionary as the one that preceded it, and is as faithful a servant of capitalism as was Mussolini.
The masses who have just entered the political arena for the first time are not interested in the problems of the Italian bourgeoisie. The workers, soldiers and peasants ask first of all for peace, an immediate peace. Every hour and every minute that the war continues means that workers’ and peasants’ blood is shed for the benefit of the exploiters. Mothers want their sons back, wives want their husbands back, and children want their fathers back. Peace, bread and freedom – these are their aspirations and the aims of their struggle. And the masses will carry on this struggle against Badoglio today and against any other ‘liberal’ government that the financial oligarchy attempts to put in its place tomorrow. They will carry it on against Churchill and Roosevelt and their ‘liberating’ armies, whose task is to preserve capitalist order by drowning the Italian revolution, the vanguard of the new world proletarian revolution, in blood. On this point Churchill was careful not to foster any illusions amongst the Italian workers, peasants and soldiers. He defined the Allied mission as a huge police operation. He explained that the British and Americans would brutally suppress incitement to anarchy and disorder, that is, the discontent of the people, and would act against them, and through pressure and blackmail would create a strong government to put Italy’s resources at their own disposal and to continue the war against Germany under the most favourable conditions.
Listen carefully: continue the war, maintain order and guarantee policing. It is the language of Mussolini which continues to be spoken. In Sicily, did not General Alexander ask the Fascists to come under his protection? The precious troops of reaction and capitalist order must be preserved.
In Algiers the Anglo-Americans have already shown how they intend to liberate the people. They only opened up the prisons to drain off the political prisoners into the labour battalions of the army. They replaced the Vichy regime with another Vichy regime in which the same reactionaries, generals and agents of big business reign. Rationing, starvation wages and the black market – all that continues to go on.
But this is not what the mass of the people want. They want to end their hunger, to be free to speak, to read and to sing. The soldiers want to return home, the peasants want to get rid of the landlords, and the workers to put an end to their shameless exploitation and to get back their right to use trade union action and strikes to make wage claims and defend themselves.
But the Italian workers will achieve this only by their own actions. The war, whether it be Badoglio’s or Churchill’s, is not theirs. The only war they want is a war against capitalism, the landlords and the Fascists, a war against all those who want to defend the gendarmes and profiteers of order, a war which is being waged in the factories, in the cities and in the villages against the boss, the landowner and the Blackshirts. Twenty years of suffering, humiliation and terror must and will be avenged.
Italian workers, peasants and soldiers, you must prepare for action.
Only your organised force and your coordinated struggle will bury Fascism decisively and allow your complete emancipation. Demand an immediate peace, and oppose any direct or indirect part by Italy in an imperialist war.
The workers of Europe with fight with you to demand a peace without indemnities or penalties.

• Demand an immediate demobilisation of the army, repatriation of all PoWs, and the immediate disarmament and dismissal of all Fascist police and militia. Replace them with your own armed forces, a workers’ and peasants’ militia.
   
• Call for Mussolini, Ciano and all leaders of the Fascist party, militia and police to be brought before a people’s court.
   
• Call for an immediate increase in wages and a cut in working hours.
   
• Gain the right of assembly, trade union rights and the right to strike.
   
• Call for freedom for the working class press to publish without control or censorship.
   
• Get the people to control victualling, supplies and markets, and close luxury restaurants.

Badoglio promises you elections. He is trying to fool you. He expects that you will put all your hopes in a new bourgeois parliament like the one which, 20 years ago, paved the way for Mussolini.

The Italian toilers must have no confidence or illusions about the actual rôle played by a bourgeois parliament in which the representatives of the class of Ansaldo and Fiat will be predominant.
Through elections and parliamentarianism the Italian bourgeoisie wants to give a democratic form to its own class rule, a fiction of popular representation which apparently expresses the ‘peoples’ will’.
It wants to turn you away from direct action in the factories, in the streets and in the villages, which is the only way to solve your problems.
But at the same time Badoglio wants to prevent you from expressing your real desire for peace and freedom, and your hatred of capitalism. He wants to hold back your agitation as much as possible. He promises to hold elections four months after the end of the war in order to gain time to solve all the various problems for the benefit of the rich and of reaction.
Demand immediate free elections for all men and women over 18 with the exception of the old dignitaries of the Fascist regime.
Tear down the hypocritical veil of class harmony which only serves reaction and war.
These demands are those of the entire mass of the Italian toilers, not those of the capitalist exploiters, the generals, the landlords and the clerics. Nor are they those of Churchill and Roosevelt, who are waging an imperialist war against Italy, and not a war of liberation against the capitalist plague. To win there must be a ruthless fight.
There must be preparations now for a general strike with these aims in every factory, city district and village, and for the highest possible number of workers, agricultural workers, urban toilers and soldiers to meet to discuss their ideas and opinions, close ranks and prepare for joint action. They must select the best among them, the most committed and boldest elements, to work out a concrete plan of action and coordinate their efforts.
Action committees must cover the whole country, and contacts between factories, city districts, villages, towns and provinces must be established.
A powerful alliance of all workers, toiling peasants and soldiers must be created throughout the country.
If you do this you will not only have to fight the senile politicians of a decaying bourgeoisie and the armed force of the police and reaction, but you will also have to face the British and American armies. Do not give up your weapons when you welcome them. But remember that, even if Churchill and Roosevelt are your enemies, the rank and file English and American soldiers should be your friends. Fraternise both with them and the German soldiers, and show them that by becoming tools of reaction in Europe they will prepare a triumph of reaction in their own country. Call on them to fight beside you against the capitalist exploiters and oppressors. Above the battlefields and over all frontiers hold out your hands to the proletarians of Europe and the world.
Show them the way forward. Let Italy raise the torch of a real Socialist revolution since, in the last analysis, this is the issue – to start the struggle again which has been interrupted since 1923, and to continue the fight until victory is achieved.
Italian workers, peasants and soldiers, the experience of your past struggles teaches you that only your own seizure of power can ensure peace, bread and freedom.
Since you did not have the strength at the height of your heroic efforts in 1920 to seize power, the bourgeoisie succeeded for a short time in crushing you and in establishing its own bloody dictatorship. This time let us dare to finish the job.
While struggling for democratic liberties you should move towards occupations, the control of production, and the expropriation and nationalisation of capitalist property whenever there is an opportunity.
Move towards a revolutionary seizure of power with resolution and with the formation of a workers’ and peasants’ government which should come from a national congress of workers’, peasants’ and soldiers’ action committees.
Only such a government would expropriate the expropriators, nationalise the factories, give land to the peasants, manage production not for the sake of capitalist profit, but for the benefit of everyone, give power to the toiling masses, and hold out its hands to the world proletariat so that the United Socialist States of the World may arise.
Italian proletarians! To wage this struggle successfully you cannot trust the parties of liberal democracy, nor the Socialist phrasemongers who were only able to capitulate shamefully before Fascism. Nor can you trust the Communist Party, whose rôle today is to use the working class always to defend the rule of the bureaucracy in the USSR which has usurped the heritage of October there, and betrayed the interests of the proletarian revolution.
Trust only yourselves and the revolutionary forces that will emerge from your ranks in the heat of the coming struggle which will forge the new Italian revolutionary party. The ideas of Marx, Lenin and Trotsky will be your guide. The progress of the Fourth International will illuminate your path.
Italian proletarians, you have nothing to lose but your chains. And you have a world to win. The road of Socialist revolution opens up before you. March along it, for the proletarians of the whole world are awaiting your example. The Fourth International will mobilise them on your side.

Long Live the Italian Revolution!

Long Live the Socialist United States of Europe!

Long Live the Fourth International!