From The Labor History Archives -In The 80^th Anniversary Year Of The Great San Francisco, Minneapolis And Toledo General Strikes- A Lesson In The History Of Class Struggle   

 

 

COMMUNISTS AND THE GENERAL STRIKE

By Leon Trotsky

The signal for a review of the international tasks of Communism was given by the March 1921 events in Germany. You will recall what happened. There were calls for a general strike, there were sacrifices by the workers, there was a cruel massacre of the Communist Par­ty, internally there were disagreements on the part of some, and ut­ter treachery on the part of others. But the Comintern said firmly: In Germany the March policy of the Communist Party was a mistake. Why? Because the German Party reckoned that it was directly con­fronted with the task of conquering power. It turned out that the task confronting the party was that of conquering not power, but the working class. What nurtured the psychology of the German Communist Party in 1921 that drove it into the March action? It was nurtured by the circumstances and the moods which crystallis­ed in Europe after the war.

In 1919 the German working class engaged in a number of cruel and bloody battles, the same thing happened in 1920, and during the January and March days of 1920 the German working class became convinced that heroism alone, that readiness to venture and to die, was not enough; that somehow the working class was lack­ing something. It began to take a more watchful and expectant at­titude towards events and facts. It had banked in its time upon the old Social Democracy to secure the socialist overturn.

The Social Democracy dragged the proletariat into the war. When the thunders of the November 1918 revolution rolled, the old Social Democracy begins to talk the language of social revolution and even proclaimed, as you recall, the German republic to be a socialist republic. The proletariat took this seriously, and kept pressing for­ward. Colliding with the bourgeois gangs it suffered crushing defeats once, twice and a third time. Naturally this does not mean that its hatred of the bourgeosie or its readiness to struggle had lessened, but its brains had meanwhile acquired many new convolutions of caution and watchfulness. For new battles it already wants to have guarantees of victory.

And this mood began to grow increasingly stronger among the European working class in 1920-22 after the experiences of the in­itial assault, after the initial semi-victories and minor conquests and the subsequent major defeats. At that moment, in the days when the European working class began after the war to understand clearly, or at least to sense that the business of conquering state power is a very complicated business and that bare hands cannot cope with the bourgeoisie—at that moment the most dynamic section of the working class formed itself into the Communist Party.

But this Communist Party still felt as if it were a shell shot out of a cannon. It appeared on the scene and it seemed to it that it need­ed only shout its battle-cry, dash forward and the working class would rush out to follow. It turned out otherwise. It turned out that the working class had, upon suffering a series of disillusions con­cerning its primitive revolutionary illusions, assumed a watch-and-wait attitude by the time the Communist Party took shape in 1920 (and especially in 1921) and rushed forward. The working class was not accustomed to this party, it had not seen the party in action. Since the working class had been deceived more than once in the past, it has every reason to demand that the party win its confidence, or, to put it differently, the party must still discharge its obligation of demonstrating to the working class that it should follow and is justified in following the party into the fires of battle, when the party issues the summons. During the March days of 1921 in Germany we saw a Communist Party—devoted, revolutionary, ready for struggle—rushing forward, but not followed by the working class. Perhaps one-quarter or one-fifth of the German working class did follow. Because of its revolutionary impatience this most revolu­tionary section came into collision with the other four-fifths; and already tried, so to speak, mechanically and here and there by force to draw them into the struggle, which is of course completely out of the question.

In general, comrades, the International is a wonderful institution. And the training one party gives to another is likewise irreplaceable. But generally speaking, one must say that each working class tends to repeat all the mistakes at the expense of its own back and bones. The International can be of assistance only in the sense of seeing to it that this back receives the minimum number of scars, but in the nature of things scars are unavoidable.

We saw this almost the other day in France. In the port of Havre there occurred a strike of 15,000 workers. This strike of local im­portance attracted the nation-wide attention of the working class by its stubbornness, firmness and discipline. It led to rather large con­tributions for the benefit of the strikers through our party's central organ, L 'Humanite: there were agitational tours, and so on. The French government through its police-chief brought the strike to a bloody clash in which three workers were killed. (It is quite possible that this happened through some assistance by anarchist elements inside the French working class who time and again involuntarily abet reaction.) These killings were of course bound to produce great repercussions among the French working class.

You will recall that the March 1921 events in Germany also started when in Central Germany the chief of police, a Social Democrat, sent military-police gangs to crush the strikers. This fact was at the bottom of our German party's call for a general strike. In France we observe an analogous course of events: a stubborn strike, which catches the interest of the entire working class, followed by bloody clashes. Three strikers are killed. The murders occurred, say, on Fri­day and by Saturday there already convened a conference of the so-called unitarian unions, i.e., the revolutionary trade unions, which maintain close relations with the Communist Party; and at this con­ference it is decided to call the working class to a general strike on the next day. But no general strike came out of it. In Germany dur­ing the (so-called) general strike in March there participated one-quarter, one-fifth or one-sixth of the working class. In France even a smaller fraction of the French proletariat participated in the general strike. If one follows the French press to see how this whole affair was carried out, then, comrades, one has to scratch one's head ten times in recognising how young and inexperienced are the Communist parties of Western Europe. The Comintern had accused the French Communists of passivity. This was correct. And the German Com­munist Party, too, had been accused prior to March of passivity.

Demanded of the party was activity, initiative, aggressive agita­tion, intervention into the day-to-day struggles of the working class. But the party attempted in March to recoup its yesterday's passivity by the heroic action of a general strike, almost an uprising. On a lesser scale, this was repeated the other day in France. In order to emerge from passivity they proclaimed a general strike for a work­ing class which was just beginning to emerge from passivity under the conditions of an incipient revival and improvement in the con­juncture. How did they motivate this? They motivated it by this, that the news of the murder of the three workers had produced a shocking impression on the party's Central Committee and on the Confederation of Labour. How could it have failed to produce such an impression? Of course, it was shocking! And so the slogan of the general strike was raised. If the Communist Party were so strong as to need only issue a call for a general strike then everything would be fine. But a general strike is a component and a dynamic part of the proletarian revolution itself.

Out of the general strike there arise clashes with the troops and the question is posed of who is master in the country. Who controls the army—the bourgeoisie or the proletariat? It is possible to speak of a protest general strike, but this is a question of utmost impor­tance. When a dispatch comes over the wires that three workers have been killed at Havre and when it is known that there is no revolu­tion in France but, instead, a stagnant situation, that the working class is just beginning to stir slightly out of a condition of passivity engendered by events during the war and post-war period—in such a situation to launch the slogan for a general strike is to commit the geatest and crudest blunder which can only undermine for a long time, for many months to come, the confidence of the working masses in a party which behaves in such a manner.

True enough, the direct responsibility in this case was not borne by the party; the slogan was issued by the so-called unitarian, that is, revolutionary trade unions. But in reality what should the party and the trade unions have done? They should have mobilised every party and trade union worker who was qualified and sent them out to read this news from one end of the country to the other. The first thing was to tell the story as it should have been told. We have a daily paper, L'ffumanite, our central organ. It has a circulation of approximately 200,000—a rather large circulation, but France has a population of not less than 40 million. In the provinces there is virtually no circulation of the daily newspaper, consequently, the task was to inform the workers, to tell them the story agitationally, and to touch them to the quick with this story. The -second thing needed was to turn to the Socialist Party, the party of Longuet and Renaudel with a few questions—no occasion could have been more propitious—and say: "In Havre three worker strikers have been kill­ed; we take it for granted that this cannot be permitted to go un­punished. We are prepared to employ the most resolute measures. We ask, what do you propose?"

The very posing of these questions would have attracted a great attention. It was necessary to turn to Jouhaux's reformist trade unions which are much closer to the strikers. Jouhaux feigned sym­pathy for this strike and gave it material aid. It was necessary to put to him the following question: "You of the reformist trade unions, what do you propose? We, the Communist Party, propose to hold tomorrow not a general strike but a conference of the Com­munist Party, of the unitarian revolutionary trade unions and of the reformist trade unions in order to discuss how this aggression of capitalism ought to be answered."

It was necessary to swing the working masses into motion. Perhaps a general strike might have come into it. I do not know; maybe a protest strike, maybe not. In any case it was far too little simply to announce, to cry out that my indignation had been aroused, when I learned over the wires that three workers had been killed. It was instead necessary to touch to the quick the hearts of the working masses. After such an activity the whole working class might not perhaps have gone out on a demonstrative strike but we could, of course, have reached a very considerable section. However, instead there was a mistake, let me repeat, on a smaller scale than the March events. It was a mistake on a two by four scale. With this difference that in France there were no assaults, no sweeping actions, no new bloody clashes, but simply a failure; the general strike was a fiasco and by this token—a minus on the Communist Party's card, not a plus but a minus.

(From the Report on the Fifth Anniversary of the October Revolu­tion and the Fourth World Congress of the Communist International. Moscow, October 20th 1922)

New International, September-October 1934

James P. Cannon

The Strike Wave and the Left Wing

(September 1934)

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Source: New International, Vol.1 No.3, September-October 1934, pp.67-68.
Transcription/Mark-up: Einde O’Callaghan.

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THE wide shift of the American working class to the Left, prepared by the ravages of the five year crisis, found its expression primarily in the two strike waves which swept the country since the inception of the NRA. This shift has been more or less steadily gaining in scope and tempo. All signs point to a deepening of the process of radicalization and stormier manifestations of it in the near future. The fighting energy of the insurgent workers has not been spent, nor have their immediate minimum demands been satisfied. They have not been defeated in a test of strength, but rather tricked and manoeuvred out of their first objectives. The net result is that the dissatisfaction and resentment of the workers is multiplied, the antagonism between them and the leaders who thwarted them is sharpened, and their faith in the Roosevelt administration is more violently shaken.

All this speaks for the assumption that a still mightier strike movement is in the offing and that it will clash more directly with the main agencies which have balked the great majority of the strikes: the Government and the AF of L bureaucracy. Roosevelt’s “truce” – to be arranged by conferences with small groups of those truly representative of large employers of labor and large groups of organized labor – will have far less prospect of success than the Hoover truce of 1929. The workers were passive then; they are moving now.
The second strike wave under the NRA, climaxed by the general strike of the textile workers, went far beyond the wave of 1933, involved many more workers and reflected a more earnest mood. State intervention with armed force, supplementing the mediation machinery of the NRA, became the rule rather than the exception. Violent conflicts occurred; many were killed and injured, more arrested. The cold brutality of these police and military attacks, and the courage with which they were resisted, cannot have failed to leave a deep mark in the working class mind. The experiences of these recent months have been important preconditions for a great political awakening.
The open resistance to the conservative labor bureaucracy at Minneapolis and San Francisco, and the disillusionment ensuing from the systematic treacheries in the other situations – in averting strikes that were due and in wrecking those which could not be prevented – presage a widespread revolt against the reactionary officialdom.
A remarkable feature of the 1934 strike wave has been the popular support of the strikes, manifested by the workers not directly involved, as well as by the “little fellows” of the lower middle class who have been squeezed, first by the crisis and again by the monopoly-aiding features of the NRA cure-all for the crisis. At Toledo and Milwaukee this ardent and demonstrative support of the masses played a decisive role. In Minneapolis, also, public sympathy and the solidarity of the trade unionists proved to be a tremendous reservoir of support for the famous strikes of Local 574.
Public sympathy in nearly every instance has taken an active form. The strike sympathizers picketed, paraded, fought with the scabs, police and militia. This phenomenon undoubtedly has a deep significance. It indicates a deep-seated mass dissatisfaction with things as they are and as they have been in recent times. The spontaneous movement of the masses to the side of striking workers argues for the idea that the workers can find ready allies in the lower middle class when they strike out against capital and lead the way. Fascism begins to make real headway with the aggrieved petty bourgeoisie only when they lose faith in the determination and ability of the workers to lead.
Public sympathy, including the sympathy of other workers, for strikers gave the main impetus to the sentiment for local general strike action in support of the Toledo strike, the May strike in Minneapolis, and the Milwaukee strike. The general strike became a popular slogan. It was looked upon as the certain way to victory. Finally, for the first time in fifteen years, the general strike was realized in San Francisco in sympathy with the marine workers. The disastrous outcome of this action put the damper on general strike agitation, for the time being at least, and impelled the advanced workers to a more sober and critical examination of the possibilities and limitations of general sympathetic strike action. Far from discrediting the idea of the general strike, the ’Frisco struggle revealed that such a radical weapon requires a sure hand to wield it if it is to bite deeply and effectively.
The ’Frisco experience demonstrated with cruel emphasis that the general strike by itself is no magic formula. There, it was a two-edged sword that cut more sharply against the embattled marine workers. The leadership came into the hands of the reactionary officialdom. They transformed it into a weapon against the marine workers and against the “Reds”. Having shifted the center of gravity and control from the marine unions to the general strike committee which they dominated, the reactionaries then deliberately broke the general strike and pulled the marine strike down with it. A wave of reactionary persecution followed as a matter of course. The Stalinists, who advocated the general strike as a panacea and were among the first victims of its tragic result, have not understood to this day what happened and why.
The ’Frisco debacle does not in the least prove the contention of president Green that the general strike, being a challenge to government, is bound to lose. (These dyed-in-the-wool lackeys of capital never even dream of the workers being Victorious in a contest with the capitalist government.) From this example, however, it is necessary to conclude that the general strike is not to be played with carelessly or fired into the air to see what will happen. It must be well organized and prepared. Its limitations must be understood and it must aim at definite, limited objectives. Or, if the aim is really to challenge the government, the general strike cannot be confined to one locality and there must be the conscious aim to supplement the strike with an armed struggle.
The slogan of all the labor traitors, first proclaimed by John L. Lewis in calling off the mine strike in 1919 – “You can’t fight the Government!” – is correct only in one sense: You can’t fight the Government with folded arms. In any case, serious agitation for a general strike should presuppose the possibility of removing the reactionary leadership or, at least, of being able to deprive it of a free hand by means of a well-organized Left wing. That was lacking in San Francisco. The general strike revealed in a glaring light the wide disparity between the readiness of the workers for radical and militant action and the organization of the Left wing.
The same contradiction was to be seen in the general strike of textile workers which marked the peak of the strike wave and ended too abruptly and ingloriously. This was the greatest strike in American labor history in point of numbers, and the equal of any in militancy. Called into being by the pressure of the rank and file at the convention against the resistance of the leadership, it was frankly aimed at the NRA and the whole devilish circle of governmental machination, trickery and fraud. The workers, the majority of them new to the trade union movement, fought like lions only to see the fruits of their struggle snatched from their hands, leaving them bewildered, demoralized and defeated – they knew not how.
But, for all the tragedy of the outcome, the general textile strike was distinguished by an extraordinary vitality, and some distinct features that are fraught with bright promise for the future of the textile workers and the whole working class of the country. Within the framework of one of the most decrepit and reactionary unions, hundreds of thousands of textile workers waged a memorable battle. The “new” proletariat of the South, steeped in age-long backwardness and superstition, came awake, prayed to God and then went out to fight the scabs, the gunmen and the militia. From North to South the battle line extended. The mills were shut down. The big push of the bosses to reopen the mills a few days before the strike was called off came to nothing except a demonstration of the strikers’ dominance of the situation.
With their ranks unbroken, with the universal sympathy of the workers throughout the country, with victory in their grasp – the textile strikers saw the strike called off by their own officers without a single concession from the bosses, and without having a chance to express their own wishes in the matter. And most significant of all – the key to the fatal weakness of the trade union movement today – this monstrous betrayal could be perpetrated without a sign of organized resistance. There was no force in the textile workers’ ranks to organise such resistance.
That is the general story of the second strike wave under the NRA, as of its precursor last year. The workers, awakening from a long apathy and ready for the militant struggle to regain their lost standards, have not yet found a leadership of the same temper. Minneapolis is the one magnificent exception. There a group of determined militants, armed with the most advanced political conceptions, organized the workers in the trucking industry, led them through three strikes within six months and remain today at the head of the union. It was this fusion of the native militancy of the American workers, common to practically all of the strikes of this year, with a leadership equal to its task that made the strikes of a few thousand workers of a single local union events of national, and even international, prominence; a shining example for the whole labor movement. The resources of the workers, restricted and constrained in the other strikes, were freely released and deliberately stimulated by the leadership in Minneapolis. One example, of many: the textile workers, half a million strong, had to depend on the capitalist press for information – Local 574 of Minneapolis published a daily paper of its own! What miracles will the workers in the great industries be capable of when they forge a leadership of the Minneapolis caliber!
The year, approaching its last quarter, has been rich in experience which can and will be transformed into capital for the future. The lessons, once assimilated, will ensure that the future struggles will take place on higher ground and with brighter prospects. The striking workers, and great masses seething with strike sentiment but restrained and out-manoeuvred by the leaders and the politicians of the Roosevelt Administration, have for the most part failed to gain their objectives. But they have not been really defeated; they have not been overwhelmed. The struggles, despite their severity, were only tentative. The real tests are yet to come, and the workers will face them stronger as the result of the experiences of the first nine months of 1934. .
Five years of crisis have done their work. The workers, half-starved on the job, are no longer afraid of risking the job in a strike. It has been demonstrated on a nation-wide scale that the unemployed will not scab if the trade unions establish a proper connection with them. On the contrary, the unemployed can be organized as a powerful ally of the strikers. At Toledo this was first demonstrated effectively by the initiative of the American Workers Party in organizing the unemployed for mass picketing. Taking a leaf from this experience, the Communist League members, the dynamic force in the leadership of the Minneapolis strike, adopted the same policy in regard to the unemployed, with no less telling effect. The members of the MCCW (the Minneapolis organization of the unemployed) played a big part on the heroic picket line of the strike of Local 574. One of them, John Belor, paid for it with his life. The necessity of a close union of the employed and unemployed is one of the big lessons in strike strategy to be derived from the experiences of the recent months.
The political parties and groups have been tested. The advanced, thinking workers can appraise them more accurately now on the basis of their performances in the strike wave. The balance sheet of the Stalinists is zero, symbolized by the abject capitulation of their bankrupt “Red” textile union to the UTW on the eve of the general strike. They wrought a great work of destruction; they strangled the Left wing that had been under their leadership for a decade and left the reactionaries a free field to strangle the strikes. The socialist Militants displayed a considerable activity in the strike movement, offset by a complete silence in the face of the greatest treacheries of the labor bureaucracy. They have not even begun to criticize the labor traitors, to say nothing of organizing a determined struggle against them.
The Communist League and the American Workers party, despite the limited forces at their disposal, took advantage of such opportunities as they had and demonstrated in practise, notably in Minneapolis and Toledo, that they are the bearers of the trade union policies and methods around which the Left wing of tomorrow will crystallize. The fatal weakness in the labor movement today is precisely the lack of a genuine Left wing. This Left wing can come to life only on a new basis, with a new policy that is free from every taint of reformist cowardice and degenerate Stalinism.
The mainspring of the new Left wing can only be a revolutionary Marxian party. Its creation is our foremost task.

Anarchist Report back from Ferguson
by chris irwin Email: christopherscottirwin (nospam) yahoo.com	31 Aug 2014
Went to Ferguson last week, here is what I saw. Several people have asked me to write about what I found in Ferguson today. Here is my brief dehydrated tired scribble before bed. Do not judge me I literally just typed this out. Grief, pride and anger is the short answer.
Click on image for a larger version
This is a community grieving. Not just over the murder of a single unarmed young man, though that was terrible enough. What I learned painting stencils with the children of that neighborhood today was this did not occur in some back alley. Where they shot him 6 times was right in the middle of a street, surrounded by multi level apartment complexes filled with children. If the shots did not get their attention the 4 hours they left the body in the middle of the street did. Several of those children did not have parents home. They had a clear line of sight straight down on the dying body of a young man bleeding on the street. Kids 7,8 and older, and younger. I have no doubt some of them watched uninterrupted. As an afterthought I had brought a stencil I had cut for another rally that was considered to radical at the time. Its of a cop with a club that says “to many cops, to little justice.” I had a couple of cans of spray paint and was painting signs for anyone who wanted them. It made me very popular. Adults wanted me to paint shirts, so I did. They also wanted me to do posters, so I did. But then the kids who lived in the surrounding building wanted some art therapy and dug the idea of spray painting apparently. So we hung out in the sun and I taught them to wear mask and how to do it, I explained many those old school Brooklyn graf artist died of lung cancer and if they were going to use spray paint always mask up. They listened to me like I was a prophet of spray paint. We hung out and I could tell these kids were in shock. But not from the reality that they were hunted cause they were black and poor. They had already gotten that message in the neighborhood from the state loud and clear. Just watching someone die bleeding after hearing 6 loud shots outside your door is a little louder than normal. Watching their faces and how people acted around the altar that had been built, I could see that these people were grieving. Speaking to them I saw that they were not just grieving just over the loss of this one young man, but for decades of being black, being poor, being hunted—knowing that cause of their economic position and color that their kids face this same bitter reality. The loss of potential, the loss of life and the loss of the innocence of their children. I saw grief and mourning today. But also pride. And a high level of political consciousness. Some guys on the main street saw my stencil and asked if they paid me if I would spray their shirts. I refused the money and began cranking them out—they kept wanting to tip me. They offered to buy me more paint, give me money—they could not believe I was doing it for free. I just kept telling them it was the least I could do, and this was my contribution. Finally I heard someone mention beer. “Oh, beer sounds good.” They asked me what kind I would like “the kind with alcohol.” which made them all smile. They invited me into the barber shop, a big deal apparently. We began talking about what was happening, there were about 8 or so folks there. I mentioned that some had tried to talk me out of coming—and the entire shop went quiet. “Why?” one asked. They told me that was terrible advice. They KNOW the world is watching and talking. They were proud that they were the ones that had finally taken a stand. They saw all the people who had come to their neighborhood, the media, everyone—and it told them they were important, they mattered, they had done something that mattered. That they had made a stand for everyone in the nation. I mentioned Aristotle to one of the guys and it was on. There was such lively community and companionship in that black barbershop it made me feel poor that I never had had that sort of... community. Everyone was cutting up and joking. I ended up just giving them the stencil and told them to make good use of it. They told me that the allegations of molitovs were complete bullshit. They had been there from day 1. In all of the conversations I had I heard a high level of political consciousness about the state, the militarization of the police forces, all of it. They knew they had finally made a stand that was heard across the world, and were proud of themselves and their community. As to the anger, that is self explanatory. Anger over the harassment, anger over what the future holds for their children, anger for the police coming in and creating the problems of violence and rioting. And that community, that barbershop—placed the blame squarely on the state for that. The violence was purely a product of the states actions from beginning to end. Coming into this grieving community like an occupying force was so blindingly stupid with predictable results that I am boggled that anyone thought it was a good idea. And of course in the cracks of all this, hope. I got a contact hope just watching how people absent state interference took care of each other. Thousands of bottles of water, bread, food, medical attention—all free, all provided spontaneously from the community everywhere I went. I have never felt so cared for just walking down the street. People constantly offered me food, water, everything. Now for the anarchist analysis of what has gone wrong. Its not the violence—if some cops shot an unarmed man in my neighborhood and my kids saw it I would be furious. If it was combined with decades of abuse and racist behavior—I am just surprised hundreds of molitovs weren't made and thrown. That its taken so long and that the people showed so much restraint in the face of overwhelming state provocation is stunning to me. No, what went wrong was the church and the civil rights leaders who flooded in and pacified people, cut BAD deals with cops they had no right to make—and generally pacified and controlled people more effectively than the national guard ever could. I have seen it before. The NAACP fighting our organizing efforts confronting the Klan telling people not to show up for our wildly successful counter rallies, then showing up to hijack the media at an event they did their best to kill. Neo-liberals screaming at direct action being used at the start of the Mountain Justice campaign. All the effort to keep action from happening, to pacify people, its not a new trend. Those in the radical activist community have dealt with it like a disease for decades where the shrill voices of “you can't do that” have done their best to justify their own fear and inaction by attacking others who dare to act. No, I have seen it before. Just the sheer determination of those voices to gain control this time was a lesson. At the rally a reporter from Peru saw my sign and took me aside an interview me for a South American newspaper. She started by asking me what I thought about how the preachers were acting shouting about Jesus from the stage they had built. A few words out of my mouth and she smiled. “Yes, that exactly what I was hoping you would say. I have been here for a week and watched this go from a revolutionary voice to being nearly killed by the civil rights leadership and religious folks who bent over backward to pacify people. They have nearly train wrecked the movement this has spawned.” She interviewed me and I told her the truth. That we call them peace cops in various movements. They are always the ones who take it on themselves to order people to stay on the sidewalks, to yell at people if they show any righteous anger. To in effect take on the role of the state to pacify people and make them behave like sheep. She pointed out it was ironic that in the week she had been here that a direct observable correlation was clearly evident between their involvement and the numbers dropping. As we spoke most people were literally as far from the preachers and their stage as possible as they shouted they were fighting Satan by telling people to submit to authority and be passive safe little sheep. They did not realize their proselytizing was both offensive and counter productive. Or in their righteous certainty they did not care. They wore shirts that said “clergy” as if it were some badge which gave them authority to walk hand in hand with the state in pacifying people. They were proud at what they had done. They were in control, they were “leaders” and took every opportunity possible to tell the media so. They proved their leadership by pacifying people and ordering people as if they were in charge. Of course this was not all the religious folks, and its not just the Christians. There were Nation folks who had been just as officiously controlling. This need to be the boss, to be the leadership, and to be media whores is almost overwhelming and crosses religious boundaries. Even professed atheist can catch it. But there were religious people, Christians, who apparently took a deeper reading of the gospels and were more in line with the radical spirit of the people in the streets. They just had not done everything they could to seize control and thereby drive the momentum into the dirt. Anarchist and other radical organizers in the future, as they have in the past, can help combat this by forming affinity groups. But how to treat this illness is another essay. As far as myself, I walked away inspired. Despite the obstacle of the states military action against their community. Despite generations of abuse at the hands of the state. Despite the sheer cruel brutality of what they had witnessed, what their children had witnessed...these people were awesome. With no bosses and no state telling them what to do I saw a community inspired today. I saw water provided, food given out, medical attention available—all with with resistance of both the state and interference of disorganized religion. It left me feeling people are fundamentally decent, even in the face of horror and oppression. I am really glad I was here today. Not just to experience the community and kindness. Not just cause I think something historic has happened today. But because it has renewed my faith in humans to a degree I did not come thinking possible. Its been a good trip.

Bpstpm Occupier Tries Being a Democrat, Hates It [A Cautionary Tale]
by Robin Jacks	04 Sep 2014
Another anniversary of Occupy Boston is approaching this month, so I’ve had almost three years to analyze how and why the movement failed.
Click on image for a larger version
Click on image for a larger version
There were major outside influences at play. We endured ridiculous crackdowns over petty items and issues such as tent stakes and at one point a dish sink. These were huge distractions, as was the obsessive, seemingly useless spying on us by police and other agencies. Analyzing these sorts of influences isn’t something I can do in any real depth; they were circumstances beyond my control, and I was way too involved to have any healthy perspective on it other than to feel rage and sadness. What I can think about, however, is why we were unable to ignore the interlopers who eroded our resolve. For better or worse, due to my recent experience in a parallel political universe, I’ve thought about these things a lot over the past few months. FOLLOW THE FOLD I’m not into party politics. Never have been. Although Massachusetts is more progressive than other states, the system feels too rigged for me to make a serious investment. I’m a registered Democrat and have been for a long time, even though I don’t identify as one. I vote in every election not because I feel like it makes a huge difference, if any, but because it only takes about 10 minutes, so why not? On the grassroots side of things, I’ve been an activist since I was a teenager in Mississippi and Tennessee, and have protested on and off in Massachusetts since I moved here almost a decade ago. Whether in Boston or in the South, the most impact I’ve made has always been when I’ve worked outside of the system. In Mass, I’ve done some work with progressive Democrats, most recently on the statewide initiative to raise the minimum wage and number of available paid sick days. It was through this work that I was introduced to an activist who turned me on to something I had never heard of in a local context: caucusing. I always assumed that candidates on a primary ballot had simply gathered enough signatures. That’s not the case; rather, they’re voted on by delegates. Every four years, in the run-up to gubernatorial elections, parties host their statewide nominating conventions for attendees to tap future hopefuls. In a lot of districts, campaign volunteers jockey for said delegate spots, making for one hell of a contentious scrum. It blew my mind that I hadn’t heard about this essential part of the election process. What the hell? I’m active; even if I’m not involved with an issue, I still tend to hear about it. I contacted a few friends to see if any of them had a clue. Crickets. As I would later come to learn, the caucus process is odd and sort of quintessentially Weird Massachusetts. A bunch of party faithfuls huddle in a relatively small room and argue for hours about who is The Best. In my experience, a number of attendees seemed to come from central casting: zombie neoliberal sycophants looking to take selfies with candidates, college Dems in polo shirts and pearls who look “Kennedyesque;” older hippies in ratty skirts who float from event to event carrying wrinkled petitions. As my friend who introduced me to the game explained, there are several ways to approach caucusing. Theoretically, though, anyone can get elected if they show up with a mob of friends. The whole thing seemed shifty, like a certain stacking of the political deck. Still, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. Or maybe I did. GENERAL ASSEMBLY Looking back on fall 2011, I’m certain Occupy Boston’s greatest failure was our General Assembly, the most important tool we had to build some semblance of structure. The ethics behind GAs were so pure, so hopeful, so emblematic of a group of people who believed, however naively, in the best of humanity. But with attendance often in the hundreds, the framework proved disastrous: painfully slow, technical, procedural to a point that it extinguished the fire that delivered us to Dewey Square in the first place. By the end, GAs devolved into screaming matches between a few dozen people. The first time I escaped a GA was during a proposal about what color we should be. Seriously. We couldn’t be blue, because that was too Democrat. Purple was a mix of red and blue, so it was bipartisan, but it was also the “color of monarchy,” which a few didn’t like. Someone wanted a rainbow, and lots of people didn’t want any color at all. Much argument and back and forth ensued, and it didn’t seem like it’d end soon. Finally, a friend from the media working group nudged me and whispered, “Hey. Let’s ditch this and go to the bar.” I was incredulous. Ditch GA? This was unheard of. “Oh my God, are you serious?” My friend laughed. “Yes, I’m completely serious. Fuck this shit. Let’s go to Biddy’s and drink beer.” CAUSING A CAUCUS I wake up at an ungodly hour on a Saturday in March, make some coffee, and walk to my local caucus in a neighborhood nonprofit near my apartment in Jamaica Plain. It feels like the first day of freshman year. I know no one, yet a lot of people are talking to me. And they’re shoving clipboards in my face. I’m not a shy person, but the excessive stimulation kind of freaks me out. I sign a few petitions, then head to the breakfast table. There’s a friendly guy making eggs who I vaguely remember from his failed Boston City Council bid a few years back. He tells me not to be nervous, wishes me luck, and hands me an omelet. The caucus starts with speeches by candidates for various local and statewide offices. After they deliver what I presume are short, far-left versions of their stump speeches to please the JP audience, the caucusing begins. Everyone who wants to be a delegate needs to be nominated, then seconded. To that end, nominees give short speeches about themselves, and note if they’re committed to a candidate. I look around at other caucus folks and note, based on T-shirts, that there are seemingly two gubernatorial camps in the mix: one for Don Berwick, and another for Juliette Kayyem. Having heard good things about him through the activist grapevine, weeks earlier I emailed with a Berwick organizer in my ward, who explained that she was firming up a slate for the progressive candidate. Any potential delegate with definite plans to prop him would go on this slate, so that all Berwick supporters know to vote for one another. I committed. While the Berwick and Kayyem contingencies are organized, the former slate has greater numbers, and both sides know it. It’s clear from the get-go that pro-Berwick candidates will be elected as delegates, and that any additional spots will be given to people who seem as though they can be pushed to vote for Berwick, rather than to those who are more likely to pull for other candidates. Per party rules, male and female delegates are elected in equal numbers. I’m slated to speak at the end of the list of female nominees, so I first sit back and listen to what others are saying. The speeches are underwhelming: “Hi, my name is so-and-so, I live on so-and-so street, I’ve lived in Jamaica Plain for X amount of years, and I will go to the convention and vote for Y candidate.” In my turn, I mostly talk about my love of community and Occupy Boston (which got some woohoos), mention this would be my first time as a delegate, and declare my allegiance to Berwick. But soon after, with all the votes in, a fire alarm starts beeping. Sprinklers go off, and black goo sprays the room. Everyone runs out the door. At some point, the ward leaders round everyone up and head to the Catholic church across the street. It’s now officially a religious experience. Once we settle in the sanctuary to resume caucusing, the Kayyem supporters see their chance to strike. They claim that while the male votes were tabulated before the sprinklers popped, the female votes had not yet been counted. Therefore, the story went, those latter results could have been changed or lost during the dash across the street. Eventually the Kayyem supporters relent and allow the counting to take place. I am unceremoniously elected delegate, and my name is written on a whiteboard. Unfortunately, the caucus is not over. Now we have to elect alternates, and so the process begins all over again. Plus I can’t leave without my delegate paperwork. On top of that I’m having a near-panic attack after learning that I have to pay $75 in fees to participate. Anyone who has ever lived paycheck to paycheck knows this feeling: an unexpected bill can be heart-stopping. After another round of voting, it looks like I’m all set to leave. But nope – we have to elect second alternates. Motherfucker. THEY KEEP ON CALLING Perusing the appropriate delegate forms at home, I note that there’s a low-income fee waiver application. I fill it out, explaining that $75 is a hardship, and that I’ll likely have to skip work to attend the convention, meaning it will cost me even more in the long run. I feel embarrassed, and wonder how many people are too humiliated by the question to bother answering. I have other concerns. If you’re an LGBT person, too bad for you: The convention is taking place on Pride weekend. The next few months are a waiting game. I hear nothing about the fee waiver. Meanwhile, I begin to receive constant phone calls and mailings from candidates; closer to convention time, I receive multiple mailings almost daily. The phone calls are worse, coming at all hours. At dinner one night with friends, I receive no less than 10 calls, all from the same number. I never answer, but they keep coming. You’d think I signed up for a Scientology course. Whenever I mention to anyone in my life that I’m to be a delegate at the state convention, their eyes widen. They congratulate me, telling me what a big deal it is as if I’ve been elected to office. I casually reject the praise, but they invariably contradict me. Nevertheless, I explain that being a delegate is hardly a big deal. Anyone who survives the tedious process –and who has $75 – is free to participate. Weeks after the paperwork submission deadline passes, I finally receive an email saying my credentials will be mailed soon. My fee was waived. Score one for the donkeys for sticking up for a working woman. THE BIG SHOW I skip the convention’s Friday night festivities: speeches from politicians and various parties thrown as last-ditch efforts to sway delegates. Like a lot of regular folks, I work on Friday nights. Besides that, in order for a delegate from Boston to get tanked and stay out all night in Worcester, they have to rent a hotel room. Factor in food, gas, parking: This is a pricey weekend. By the time the big show arrives, my excitement centers around the fact that I will no longer be receiving multiple autodial calls an hour from candidates and their minions. Nevertheless, I wake up at 6am on Saturday and drive out to the DCU center. Inside the building, it’s political pandemonium, with people slipping into campaign shirts and complaining about hangovers. I have my delegate’s credential, but am not sure where to go. I grab a swag bag. Although it contains nothing fancy, it’s a big fucking deal to everyone else. My first impression after scanning the hall: There seem to be equal amounts of men and women, but the crowd is majority white. There’s no way that the cross-section in here accurately represents the kaleidoscopic makeup of Massachusetts. I don’t see a lot of flaming queers walking around either, but perhaps that’s inevitable when the party irresponsibly schedules a convention during Boston Pride. On another note, the crowd leans older. This comes as no surprise, as very few people my age and younger have the patience for the caucus process, much less an entire weekend to spare. I glance around at my fellow ward delegates. There are a lot of presumable add-ons in the mix, as spots are made available for youths, LGBTs, persons with disabilities, and/or people of color who weren’t elected but would like to represent the district. While these folks are clearly psyched to be here and, in my opinion, have become delegates for honorable reasons, it occurs to me that the minority add-on system has its pluses and minuses. While it likely makes the convention more diverse in the long run, it’s also an easily exploitable loophole. For example: I’m queer. If I want to go to convention every year, I can skip my caucus and try to be an add-on based on that aspect of my identity. At center stage, Thomas McGee, state senator and chair of the Mass Democrats, bangs the gavel a bunch of times, then starts into a self-congratulatory spiel about how great Democrats are. There is plenty in the speech that makes me gag, like when he claims that Senate President Therese Murray “ushered Massachusetts out of the Great Recession.” That would be great if it were true, but it never happened. No one with a pulse believes that. Finally, a couple of hours in, the candidates begin to speak. The process of moving through all treasurer, attorney general, and lieutenant governor candidates goes surprisingly quickly, considering that everything else leading up to this has lagged. By the time the gubernatorial candidates speak, I’m hungry and thirsty, and I have to pee. This is never a good combination, and I feel certain that I’m not alone in my misery. Berwick speaks first. His words are incredibly moving, centered around the story of a young leukemia patient who eventually died, not of cancer – Berwick and his team beat that – but on the streets “in despair.” The room loves Berwick, and people all around me chat about changing their votes. There’s just one problem: Some have already committed to another candidate, and fear embarrassment or broken alliances, as voting requires shouting out your choice across a crowded aisle. Instead of selecting in their best interests, they choose to save face. PEE BREAK The bathroom smells like everyone from the convention has been by peeing in adult diapers and discarding them in the stalls. The other accommodations aren’t much better. While outside food is forbidden, the convention guide suggested we bring empty bottles for the water stations inside the arena. I find one such oasis, the kind with a turn-knob common in elementary schools. The sad trickle sends me back to the smelly bathroom to drink from the faucet. Occupy Boston had its problems, but there was always water to be found somewhere on site, and containers of it never cost anything, much less the $3.50 vendors charge at the DCU center. Amidst so much political cacophony, I think of the Sikhs who came to Dewey Square every Sunday during Occupy Boston, commandeered the food tent, and served us tasty lentils. I remember the grandmothers who brought us trays of freshly baked ziti, and the two women who drove up, handed us two large grocery bags full of instant hot chocolate, and drove away. Occupiers, it seemed, were loved and cared for by complete strangers simply because we were standing up for what they believed in when they couldn’t. That kept me going. At the DCU Center, I walk out to the concourse and peruse the concession choices. The options are low-rent, overpriced sports arena fare: wrinkled up hot dogs, nachos with watery liquid cheese sauce. The dumpstered Occu-bagels I once despised would taste great right now. I start conversing with a delegate from Brockton. She is also a first-timer, and feels both over- and under-whelmed by the weekend. She is an expertly coiffed, spray-tanned, and hairsprayed mom. It’s clear that she had dressed to impress, but by this point in the long day, her black eyeliner is creeping down a few millimeters, and her curls are frizzing up. She missed a day of work for this, hired babysitters. She’s certain that she won’t make it home on time, because everything is running so far behind schedule. She tells me that she’ll never do this again, and is on the verge of anger and tears. THE VOTE When I return to my seat, I note that the second round of voting is supposed to begin, even though we haven’t done the first round yet. Overall, the process seems as though it was created several hundred years ago by men in powdered wigs and pantaloons. It works like this: A district’s tellers move through their section as quickly as possible, collecting votes verbally and recording them on paper. They’re accompanied by various campaign volunteers who tally votes on their own in order to make sure everything adds up. While this process was likely hatched with a roundtable type of setup in mind, we’re in a hockey arena. At times the acoustics make it difficult for the tellers to hear what delegates are shouting, while going up and down the rows takes forever. After screaming all my votes to the tellers by 4:30, I ask if I can leave. My seatmates explain that the second vote is yet to come. The follow-up, I’m told, is to make party endorsements for candidates who haven’t garnered a 51 percent majority of votes, but who have enough votes to be on the ballot (15 percent). For any categories in which this is the case, there’s a runoff between the top two candidates. I came to support Berwick, so I stick it out. It’s almost 7pm by the time all of the results are finalized. In the gubernatorial race, Steve Grossman comes out on top with a solid 35.2 percent of the delegate vote. Although it looked at one point as though Berwick might have the momentum to sneak past Attorney General Martha Coakley, he finishes in third at 22.1 percent, just behind Coakley’s 23.3 percent. I’m disappointed, but I also feel a sense of relief. My job is over. I can leave. I say some goodbyes, wade through the mountains of trash in the aisles, and jog out of the DCU center, happy to make the drive down the Pike back to Boston. Throughout all of this, a nagging feeling is burning inside of me, this feeling of bitterness and anger that I can’t really place. It isn’t until later that I realize: With the exception of a few good seeds, for the most part, the really hardcore people at this convention are the same types who constantly lambasted us at Occupy Boston for not being organized enough, for not being open enough, for taking too much time to do everything, for not having our shit together. I am giving the Democrat way of doing things a fair shot, but here I am, bored, hungry, tired, thirsty: and nothing is happening. HINDSIGHT In some ways I believe that the progressive roots of the state Democratic party are invested in having a fair and equitable nominating process. But the negatives, like how lacking the convention is when it comes to representing people of color, and how expensive and time-consuming all this rigmarole is, rub me in awful ways. As invested as I am in improving my community, I know there’s little chance that I will be a delegate again. All of the time and money and phone calls and emails and junk mail aren’t worth it. I ran for delegate in the hopes that I could make some sort of positive impact, however small. In the end, I don’t feel I did that. LAST GA 1 Occupy Boston though? I’ll never do something like that again, but I wouldn’t go back and undo it for anything, either. In the end, the events in and around Dewey Square gave me a space to say what I needed to say, to participate in building a hardworking, devoted community that lasted far beyond the two-and-a-half months we spent sitting in mud and stomping through the streets. I wouldn’t trade that experience for the world. Being a delegate for the Democratic Convention, on the other hand? I wish I’d never set foot in my caucus. The only people who really enjoy stuff like that, I think, are either political wonks or folks who like having their asses kissed by powerful people who make personal calls and approach them in arena aisles. The kicker: the process of Democrats caucusing and the convention itself lasted over four months, and most Massachusetts people probably have no idea that they happened at all. Occupy Boston, on the other hand, lasted only two and a half months but won’t be forgotten anytime soon. LAST GA 2 The last real Occupy Boston General Assembly at Dewey Square went down after we received an eviction notice of sorts from the city, meaning we were to be raided at any moment. Boston was one of the last larger-sized occupations left in the country, and with the presumption that our time would end soon, we had previously devised an evacuation plan. It was the end, and we had no clue what would happen. That night, I stood next to friends who shared my deep sense of grief that this odd thing we’d built together was about to be taken from us. By force. I remember the proposal: “Should we have a goodbye party?” The pitch came from one of the most devoted, animated occupiers. This guy had given every moment of his life, every ounce of his energy to Dewey since he first arrived, and despite his instincts, he was doing his best to support Occupy Boston by “respecting the process,” as we were always so fervently urged to do. The proposal went back and forth for hours. The proposer seemed on the verge of tears; he desperately wanted the opportunity to share in joyful goodbyes, but the facilitators picked over every detail in a cold, almost sociopathic way, at which point a close friend, the same one who lured me out for drinks during the color war a few weeks earlier, said, “Fuck it, let’s have a party.” She didn’t have to convince me. We ran to the other side of camp, pulled out our phones, and began texting and tweeting. We invited a Somerville marching band to bring the noise. They arrived within the hour and began playing, the sounds of their brass instruments echoing off of the empty skyscrapers around us. Others joined in, and within minutes most of the occupiers had moved from the GA to our end of the camp, shimmying and breakdancing and shaking their tails. Before we knew it, Atlantic Avenue was filled with people from all over the Boston area. Some wrote messages of hope in the street lane paint strips with permanent markers; others sent balloons into the sky. A couple was married by a protest chaplain. Everyone danced as though the world was ending the next day, and in some ways it would. We had finally regained the energy that had brought us all there in the first place: this rebellion, this urge to free ourselves, this need to fucking dance. There were more people jammed into Dewey Square than I had seen in months. If there was a raid scheduled on that date, the police didn’t dare follow through. The next night, Occupy Boston was destroyed forever.
See also: http://digboston.com/boston-news-opinions/2014/09/bring-the-caucus-on-the-third-anniversary-of-occupy-boston-a-movement-alumna-

Video-Vets For Peace speaker at Boston weekly peace vigil- 9/11, ISIS, US wars, police violence
by anti-war guy	01 Sep 2014
Click on image for a larger version Sat. weekly Boston peace vigil
Aug. 30, 2014-Boston Common, Mass.- The Committee for Peace and Human Rights, Boston- heading into its 16th year of weekly anti-war vigils at Park St.-Veterans for Peace member James spoke eloquently and informed on a variety of current political subjects-9/11, ISIS in Iraq, US fruitless war on terrorism. James is a very well informed and factual speaker-here is a 10 minute video I took at today's sat. vigil, featuring James' speech(please ignore the ignorant pro-war hecklers in the background): http://youtu.be/wtRQIyZClSo We also spoke in solidarity today on the national march in Ferguson, Missouri, protesting the police murder of Michael Brown. Also, the issues of Labor Day and May Day as workers holidays. solidarity and peace, for the Committee For Peace and Human Rights, Boston Stop The Escalations- Yet Again Obama Sends More Troops- No New U.S. War In Iraq- Immediate Withdrawal Of All U.S. Troops And Mercenaries!  Stop The Bombings! –Stop The Arms Shipments … Frank Jackman comment: As the Nobel Peace Prize Winner, U.S. President Barack Obama, orders more air bombing strikes in the North, sends more “advisers” to “protect” American outposts in Iraq, and sends arms shipments to the Kurds guys who served in the American military during the Vietnam War and who, like me, belatedly, got “religion” on the war issue might very well be excused for disbelief when the White House keeps pounding out the propaganda that these actions are limited when all signs point to the slippery slope of escalation. Now not every event in history gets exactly repeated but given the recent United States Government’s history in Iraq those vets might be on to something. In any case dust off the old banners, placards, and buttons and get your voices in shape- just in case. *** Here is something to think about:   Workers and the oppressed have no interest in a victory by one combatant or the other in the reactionary Sunni-Shi’ite civil war. However, the international working class definitely has a side in opposing imperialist intervention in Iraq and demanding the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops and mercenaries. It is U.S. imperialism that constitutes the greatest danger to the world’s working people and downtrodden.

Victory To The Fast-Food Workers......Fight For $15 Is Just A Beginning-All Labor Must Support Our Sisters And Brothers- Free All The Striking Fast Food Protesters!

Fast Food Workers Strike in 150 Cities to Demand $15 Per Hour Wage

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McDonald’s Protesters Arrested in Detroit

     

Fast food workers demanding “supersized” wages walked off their jobs Thursday morning in dozens of U.S. cities — with protesters in New York and Detroit arrested after sitting in the street. The workers, from fast food giants such as McDonald’s, Wendy’s and Burger King, are calling for at least $15 an hour — what they consider to be a livable wage. The labor unions supporting them say the demonstrations would be peaceful in the estimated 150 cities, including Chicago, Cleveland and Pittsburgh, where protests are occurring.

Workers outside of a Manhattan McDonald’s in Times Square chanted and held signs saying, “On strike to lift my family up.” Police hauled away at least 19 people causing gridlock in the middle of a busy street, according to labor organizers. A similar sit-down in the street was also occurring in Detroit, where several people were arrested, NBC affiliate WDIV reported. Meanwhile, 19 people in Chicago were detained and cited for blocking an intersection, while at least 10 protesters were similarly arrested in San Diego, according to NBC San Diego.

McDonald’s said Thursday that it supports people’s right to peacefully protest, but that the minimum wage would need to be increased over time “so that the impact on owners of small- and medium-sized businesses — like the ones who own and operate the majority of our restaurants — is manageable.”

The “Fight for $15” campaign got a boost this week from President Barack Obama, who mentioned it during a Labor Day appearance in Milwaukee. “If I were busting my butt in the service industry and wanted an honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work, I’d join a union,” Obama said.

Protesters Arrested Outside Times Square McDonald's

NBC News

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IN-DEPTH

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• 'We're a Movement Now': Fast Food Workers Set to Strike in 150 Cities
• Fast-Food Workers Threaten Global Wage Protests Next Week
• McDonald's to Face Ire Over Wages at Shareholder Meeting

SOCIAL

“Workers of The World Unite, You Have Nothing To Lose But Your Chains”-The Struggle For Trotsky's Fourth (Communist) International-From The Archives-Founding Conference of the Fourth International-1938

 

 
Markin comment (repost from September 2010 slightly edited):

Several years ago, when the question of an international, a new workers international, a fifth international, was broached by the International Marxist Tendency (IMT), faintly echoing the call issued during the presidency of the late Venezuelan caudillo, Hugo Chavez, I got to thinking a little bit more on the subject. Moreover, it must have been something in the air at the time (maybe caused by these global climatic changes that are hazarding our collective future) because I had  also seen a spade of then recent commentary on the need to go back to something that looked very much like Karl Marx’s one-size-fits-all First International. Of course in the 21^st century, after over one hundred and fifty years of attempts to create adequate international working-class organizations, just what the doctor by all means, be my guest, but only if the shades of Proudhon and Bakunin can join. Boys and girls that First International was disbanded in the wake of the demise of the Paris Commune for a reason, okay. Mixing political banners (Marxism and fifty-seven varieties of anarchism) was appropriate to a united front, not a hell-bent revolutionary International fighting, and fighting hard, for our communist future. Forward

The Second International, for those six, no seven, people who might care, is still alive and well (at least for periodic international conferences) as a mail-drop for homeless social democrats who want to maintain a fig leaf of internationalism without having to do much about it. Needless to say, one Joseph Stalin and his cohorts liquidated the Communist (Third) International in 1943, long after it turned from a revolutionary headquarters into an outpost of Soviet foreign policy. By then no revolutionary missed its demise, nor shed a tear goodbye. And of course there are always a million commentaries by groups, cults, leagues, tendencies, etc. claiming to stand in the tradition (although, rarely, the program) of the Leon Trotsky-inspired Fourth International that, logically and programmatically, is the starting point of any discussion of the modern struggle for a new communist international.

With that caveat in mind this month, the September American Labor Day month, but more importantly the month in 1938 that the ill-fated Fourth International was founded I am posting some documents around the history of that formation, and its program, the program known by the shorthand, Transitional Program. If you want to call for a fifth, sixth, seventh, what have you, revolutionary international, and you are serious about it beyond the "mail-drop" potential, then you have to look seriously into that organization's origins, and the world-class Bolshevik revolutionary who inspired it. Forward. 
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Founding Conference of the

Fourth International

1938

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World Congress Greetings to Leon Trotsky

Dear Comrade,
The Conference of the Fourth International sends you its warmest greetings.

The barbarous repression which rabidly attacks our movement in general and you in particular prevented you from being with us to bring to our debates the contributions of the former founder of the Red Army, the organizer of the October insurrection, the theoretician of the permanent revolution, and the direct successor of Lenin.
The Stalinist, the fascist, and the imperialist enemies have subjected you to severe trials. Leon Sedoff, Erwin Wolf, Rudolf Klement are dead, fallen victims to the Stalinist counterrevolution. Ta Thu Thau lies suffering in the prisons of French imperialism. Numerous German and Greek comrades are being tortured in fascist prisons. You are the object of constant attempts at assassination. But all these persecutions, though they rain painful blows upon us, have as their final result only the definite strengthening of our conviction of the value of the Marxist program, of which you are in our opinion, since the death of Lenin, the principal interpreter.
That is why our greeting contains more than just affection for the great present-day theoretician of revolutionary Marxism. There is also the certainty that the enemy’s blows, however heavy, will not prevent the doctrine of the socialist revolution from becoming the living reality of tomorrow. The Conference of the Fourth International marks a new spring forward of our movement along the road of unification, of organizational reinforcement, and of the perfecting of its propaganda by the adoption of the transitional program. We express the strong hope that you will long share in its successes as you have shared in its vicissitudes.

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From #Un-Occupied Boston-This Is Class War-We Say No More-Defend Our Unions! - Defend The Working Class! Take The Offensive! - A Five Point Program For Discussion

LeonTrotsky -Lessons Of The Paris Commune-Listen Up

Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!

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A Five-Point Program As Talking Points

*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement going back to the 1930s Great Depression the last time that unemployment, under-employment, and those who have just plain quit looking for work was this high in the American labor force. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay is a formula to spread the available work around. This is no mere propaganda point but shows the way forward toward a more equitable distribution of available work.

The basic scheme, as was the case with the early days of the longshoremen’s and maritime unions, is that the work would be divided up through local representative workers’ councils that would act, in one of its capacities, as a giant hiring hall where the jobs would be parceled out. This would be a simpler task now than when it was when first proposed in the 1930s with the vast increase in modern technology that could fairly accurately, via computers, target jobs that need filling and equitably divide up current work.

Without the key capitalist necessity of keeping up the rate of profit the social surplus created by that work could be used to redistribute the available work at the same agreed upon rate rather than go into the capitalists’ pockets. The only catch, a big catch one must admit, is that no capitalist, and no capitalist system, is going to do any such thing as to implement “30 for 40” so that it will, in the end, be necessary to fight for and win a workers government to implement this demand.

Organize the unorganized is a demand that cries out for solution today now that the organized sectors of the labor movement, both public and private, in America are at historic lows, just over ten percent of the workforce. Part of the task is to reorganize some of the old industries like the automobile industry, now mainly unorganized as new plants come on line and others are abandoned, which used to provide a massive amount of decent jobs with decent benefits but which now have fallen to globalization and the “race to the bottom” bad times. The other sector that desperately need to be organized is to ratchet up the efforts to organize the service industries, hospitals, hotels, hi-tech, restaurants and the like, that have become a dominant aspect of the American economy.

Organize the South-this low wage area, this consciously low-wage area, where many industries land before heading off-shore to even lower wage places cries out for organizing, especially among black and Hispanic workers who form the bulk of this industrial workforce. A corollary to organizing the South is obviously to organize internationally to keep the “race to the bottom” from continually occurring short of being resolved in favor of an international commonwealth of workers’ governments. Nobody said it was going to be easy.

Organize Wal-Mart- millions of workers, thousands of trucks, hundreds of distribution centers. A victory here would be the springboard to a revitalized organized labor movement just as auto and steel lead the industrial union movements of the 1930s. To give an idea of how hard this task might be though someone once argued that it would be easier to organize a workers’ revolution that organize this giant. Well, that’s a thought.

Defend the right of public and private workers to unionize. Simple-No more Wisconsins, no more attacks on collective bargaining the hallmark of a union contract. No reliance on labor boards, arbitration, courts or bourgeois recall elections either. Unions must keep their independent from government interference. Period.

* Defend the independence of the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. In 2008 labor, organized labor, spent around 450 million dollars trying to elect Barack Obama and other Democrats (mainly). The results speak for themselves. For those bogus efforts the labor skates should have been sent packing long ago. The idea then was (and is, as we come up to the 2012 presidential election cycle) that the Democrats (mainly) were “friends of labor.” The past period of cuts-backs, cut-in-the-back give backs should put paid to that notion. Although anyone who is politically savvy at all knows that is not true, not true for the labor skates at the top of the movement.

The hard reality is that the labor skates, not used to any form of class struggle or any kind of struggle, know no other way than class-collaboration, arbitration, courts, and every other way to avoid the appearance of strife, strife in defense of the bosses’profits. The most egregious recent example- the return of the Verizon workers to work after two weeks last summer (2011) when they had the company on the run and the subsequent announcement by the company of record profits. That sellout strategy may have worked for the bureaucrats, or rather their “fathers” for a time back in the 1950s “golden age” of labor, but now we are in a very hard and open class war. The rank and file must demand an end to using their precious dues payments period for bourgeois candidates all of whom have turned out to be sworn enemies of labor from Obama on down.

This does not mean not using union dues for political purposes though. On the contrary we need to use them now more than ever in the class battles ahead. Spent the dough on organizing the unorganized, organizing the South, organizing Wal-Mart, and other pro-labor causes. Think, for example, of the dough spent on the successful November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio. That type of activity is where labor’s money and other resources should go. And not on recall elections, like in Wisconsin, as substitutes for class struggle

*End the endless wars!- As the so-called draw-down of American and Allied troops in Iraq reaches it final stages, the draw- down of non-mercenary forces anyway, we must recognize that we anti-warriors failed, and failed rather spectacularly, to affect that withdrawal after a promising start to our opposition in late 2002 and early 2003 (and a little in 2006).As the endless American-led wars (even if behind the scenes, as in Libya and other proxy wars) continue we had better straighten out our anti-war, anti-imperialist front quickly if we are to have any effect on the troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan!

U.S. Hands Off Iran! Hands Off Syria!- American (and world) imperialists are ratcheting up their propaganda war (right now) and increased economic sanctions that are a prelude to war well before the dust has settled on the now unsettled situation in Iraq and well before they have even sniffed at an Afghan withdrawal of any import. We will hold our noses, as we did with the Saddam leadership in Iraq and on other occasions, and call for the defense of Iran against the American imperial monster. A victory for the Americans (and their junior partner, Israel) in Iran is not in the interests of the international working class. Especially here in the “belly of the beast” we are duty-bound to call not just for non-intervention but for defense of Iran. We will, believe me we will, deal with the mullahs, the Revolutionary Guards, and the Islamic fundamentalist in Iran in our own way in our own time.

U.S. Hands Off The World!- With the number of “hot spots” that the American imperialists, or one or another of their junior allies, have their hands on in this wicked old world this generic slogan would seem to fill the bill.

Down With The War Budget! Not One Penny, Not One Person For The Wars! Honor World War I German Social-Democratic Party MP, Karl Liebknecht, who did just that. The litmus test for every political candidate must be first opposition to the war budgets(let’s see, right now winding up Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran preparations, China preparations, etc. you get my drift). Then that big leap. The whole damn imperialist military budget. Again, no one said it would be simple. Revolution may be easier that depriving the imperialists of their military money. Well….okay.

*Fight for a social agenda for working people! Free Quality Healthcare For All! This would be a no-brainer in any rationally based society. The health and welfare of any society’s citizenry is the simple glue that holds that society together. It is no accident that one of the prime concerns of workers states like Cuba, whatever their other political problems, has been to place health care and education front and center and to provide to the best of their capacity for free, quality healthcare and education for all. Even the hide-bound social-democratic-run capitalist governments of Europe have, until recently anyway, placed the “welfare state” protections central to their programs.

Free, quality higher education for all! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! One Hundred, Two Hundred, Many Harvards!

This would again be a no-brainer in any rationally based society. The struggle to increase the educational level of a society’s citizenry is another part of the simple glue that holds that society together. Today higher education is being placed out of reach for many working-class and minority families. Hell, it is getting tough for the middle class as well.

Moreover the whole higher educational system is increasing skewed toward those who have better formal preparation and family lives leaving many deserving students in the wilderness. Take the resources of the private institutions and spread them around, throw in hundreds of billions from the government (take from the military budget and the bank bail-out money), get rid of the top heavy and useless college administration apparatuses, mix it up, and let students, teachers, and campus workers run the thing through councils on a democratic basis.

Forgive student debt! The latest reports indicate that college student debt is something like a trillion dollars, give or take a few billion but who is counting. The price of tuition and expenses has gone up dramatically while services have not kept pace. What has happened is that the future highly educated workforce that a modern society, and certainly a socialist society, desperately needs is going to be cast in some form of indentured servitude to the banks or other lending agencies for much of their young working lives. Let the banks take a “hit” for a change!

Stop housing foreclosures now! Hey, everybody, everywhere in the world not just in America should have a safe, clean roof over their heads. Hell, even a single family home that is part of the “American dream,” if that is what they want. We didn’t make the housing crisis in America (or elsewhere, like in Ireland, where the bubble has also burst). The banks did. Their predatory lending practices and slip-shot application processes were out of control. Let them take the “hit” here as well.

*We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Karl Marx was right way back in the 19th century on his labor theory of value, the workers do produce the social surplus appropriated by the capitalists. Capitalism tends to beat down, beat down hard in all kinds of ways the mass of society for the benefit of the few. Most importantly capitalism, a system that at one time was historically progressive in the fight against feudalism and other ancient forms of production, has turned into its opposite and now is a fetter on production. The current multiple crises spawned by this system show there is no way forward, except that unless we push them out, push them out fast, they will muddle through, again.

Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Socialism is the only serious answer to the human crisis we face economically, socially, culturally and politically. This socialist system is the only one calculated to take one of the great tragedies of life, the struggle for daily survival in a world that we did not create, and replace it with more co-operative human endeavors.

Build a workers party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed. None of the nice things mentioned above can be accomplished without as serious struggle for political power. We need to struggle for an independent working-class-centered political party that we can call our own and where our leaders act as “tribunes of the people” not hacks. The creation of that workers party, however, will get us nowhere unless it fights for a workers government to begin the transition to the next level of human progress on a world-wide scale.

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As Isaac Deutscher said in his speech “On Socialist Man” (1966):

“We do not maintain that socialism is going to solve all predicaments of the human race. We are struggling in the first instance with the predicaments that are of man’s making and that man can resolve. May I remind you that Trotsky, for instance, speaks of three basic tragedies—hunger, sex and death—besetting man. Hunger is the enemy that Marxism and the modern labour movement have taken on.... Yes, socialist man will still be pursued by sex and death; but we are convinced that he will be better equipped than we are to cope even with these.”

Emblazon on our red banner-Labor and the oppressed must rule!

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From The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archive Website- The Alba Blog

Click below to link to the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archive blog page for all kinds of interesting information about that important historic grouping in the International Brigades that fought for our side, the side of the people in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-39.

http://www.albavolunteer.org/category/blog/

Markin comment:

This blog had gotten my attention for two reasons: those rank and filers who fought to defend democracy, fight the fascists and fight for socialism in Spain for the most part, political opponents or not, were kindred spirits; and, those with first-hand knowledge of those times over seventy years ago are dwindling down to a precious few and so we had better listen to their stories while they are around to tell it. Viva La Quince Brigada!  
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