Click on the headline to link to the article described in the title.
Markin comment:
Earlier this month I started what I anticipate will be an on-going series, From The Archives Of The Socialist Workers Party (America), starting date October 2, 2010, where I will place documents from, and make comments on, various aspects of the early days of the James P. Cannon-led Socialist Worker Party in America. As I noted in the introduction to that series Marxism, no less than other political traditions, and perhaps more than most, places great emphasis on roots, the building blocks of current society and its political organizations. Nowhere is the notion of roots more prevalent in the Marxist movement that in the tracing of organizational and political links back to the founders, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the Communist Manifesto, and the Communist League.
After mentioning the thread of international linkage through various organizations from the First to the Fourth International I also noted that on the national terrain in the Trotskyist movement, and here I was speaking of America where the Marxist roots are much more attenuated than elsewhere, we look to Daniel DeLeon’s Socialist Labor League, Eugene V. Deb’s Socialist Party( mainly its left-wing, not its socialism for dentists wing), the Wobblies (IWW, Industrial Workers Of The World), the early Bolshevik-influenced Communist Party and the various formations that led up to the Socialist Workers Party, the section that Leon Trotsky’s relied on most while he was alive. Further, I noted that beyond the SWP that there were several directions to go in but that those earlier lines were the bedrock of revolutionary Marxist continuity, at least through the 1960s.
Today I am starting what I also anticipate will be an on-going series about one of those strands past the 1960s when the SWP lost it revolutionary appetite, what was then the Revolutionary Tendency (RT) and what is now the Spartacist League (SL/U.S.), the U.S. section of the International Communist League (ICL). I intend to post materials from other strands but there are several reasons for starting with the SL/U.S. A main one, as the document below will make clear, is that the origin core of that organization fought, unsuccessfully in the end, to struggle from the inside (an important point) to turn the SWP back on a revolutionary course, as they saw it. Moreover, a number of the other organizations that I will cover later trace their origins to the SL, including the very helpful source for posting this material, the International Bolshevik Tendency.
However as I noted in posting a document from Spartacist, the theoretical journal of ICL posted via the International Bolshevik Tendency website that is not the main reason I am starting with the SL/U.S. Although I am not a political supporter of either organization in the accepted Leninist sense of that term, more often than not, and at times and on certain questions very much more often than not, my own political views and those of the International Communist League coincide. I am also, and I make no bones about it, a fervent supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a social and legal defense organization linked to the ICL and committed, in the traditions of the IWW, the early International Labor Defense-legal defense arm of the Communist International, and the early defense work of the American Socialist Workers Party, to the struggles for freedom of all class-war prisoners and defense of other related social struggles.
******************
Markin comment on Cuba and Marxist Theory:
Scenario One: A Russian-centered, European-leaning political party based on the working class, and infused with Marxist doctrine, in 1917 leads a socialist revolution in the aftermath of a democratic upheaval caused by the dislocations of World War in a war-torn, war-weary, bread hungry, land hungry country that is predominantly peasant. That party, a Bolshevik vanguard-type party led by professional revolutionaries takes power base on previously established soviets, legislative and executive bodies composed of workers, peasants, and soldier (mainly from that same peasantry) on an immediate program of land to the tiller, peace (an immediate armistice), and bread. In the wake of its victory it is required to establish a worker-centered red army to defend itself against bourgeois and feudal counter-revolution in a bloody civil war. The regime also established a Communist International explicitly created in order to guide and create further communist revolutions and soviet regimes (particularly in the more advanced sectors of Europe) required to bring about an international socialist division of labor. Its continual isolation for an extended period turns that initial impulse into its opposite, a Stalin-led “night of the long knives” regime based on generation of soviet bureaucracy that continues to distort socialist prospects until the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991-92.
Scenario Two: A Cuban-based political party based on students, ex-student, landless and serf-like peasants, middle class urban elements and a sliver of the working class leads a democratic, anti-imperialist revolution in 1959 based on the victory of a rural-based guerilla army that is militarily victorious against a hated American-backed dictatorship. The rebel army takes power based on a democratic program of land reform, civil rights and undefined economic changes. In the wake of counter-revolutionary efforts, spearheaded by some defeated elements of the old regime and backed by American imperialism, the new revolutionary regime is forced to turn toward extensive nationalizations and long-term links to the Soviet-led bloc. After the demise of the Soviet Union it continued (and continues) to adhere to Stalinist conceptions of economic and political rule.
The above scenarios are rather broad sweeps of what both the Russian and Cuban revolutions meant in terms of Marxist theory, and more importantly, in practice for working class revolutionaries in the struggle for world socialism in the early 1960s. As the documentation put forth in the linked post indicates this “new” Cuban model for revolutionary action upset the apple cart not only in the world Stalinist and third world movement but in its Trotskyist tendencies as well. Two things stick out in 2010 as one reads (or rather re-reads) this material; both revolutionary models have had only one “chemically pure” occurrence; and, whatever, other differences both states created in the wake of their respective revolutions required working class revolutionaries to defend them against internationalism imperialism and internal counter-revolution until the bitter end. In the case of the Soviet Union until 1992 and in the case of Cuba, a continuing duty.
******************
In Honor of Anniversary Of The July 26th
Movement
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman (2015)
Every leftist, hell,
everybody who stands on the democratic principle that each nation has the right
to self-determination should cautiously rejoice at the “defrosting” of the
long-time diplomatic relations between the American imperial behemoth and the
island of Cuba (and the freedom of the remaining Cuban Five in the bargain).
Every leftist militant should understand that each non-capitalist like Cuba
going back to the establishment of the now defunct Soviet Union has had the
right (maybe until we win our socialist future the duty) to make whatever
advantageous agreements they can with the capitalist world. That despite
whatever disagreements we have with the political regimes ruling those
non-capitalist states. That is a question for us to work out not the
imperialists.
For those who have
defended the Cuban Revolution since its victory in 1959 under whatever political
rationale (pro-socialist, right to self-determination, or some other hands off
policy) watching on black and white television the rebels entering Havana this
day which commemorates the heroic if unsuccessful efforts at Moncada we should
affirm our continued defense of the Cuban revolution. Oh yes, and tell the
American government to give back Guantanamo while we are at it.
Markin comment:
Earlier this month I started what I anticipate will be an on-going series, From The Archives Of The Socialist Workers Party (America), starting date October 2, 2010, where I will place documents from, and make comments on, various aspects of the early days of the James P. Cannon-led Socialist Worker Party in America. As I noted in the introduction to that series Marxism, no less than other political traditions, and perhaps more than most, places great emphasis on roots, the building blocks of current society and its political organizations. Nowhere is the notion of roots more prevalent in the Marxist movement that in the tracing of organizational and political links back to the founders, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the Communist Manifesto, and the Communist League.
After mentioning the thread of international linkage through various organizations from the First to the Fourth International I also noted that on the national terrain in the Trotskyist movement, and here I was speaking of America where the Marxist roots are much more attenuated than elsewhere, we look to Daniel DeLeon’s Socialist Labor League, Eugene V. Deb’s Socialist Party( mainly its left-wing, not its socialism for dentists wing), the Wobblies (IWW, Industrial Workers Of The World), the early Bolshevik-influenced Communist Party and the various formations that led up to the Socialist Workers Party, the section that Leon Trotsky’s relied on most while he was alive. Further, I noted that beyond the SWP that there were several directions to go in but that those earlier lines were the bedrock of revolutionary Marxist continuity, at least through the 1960s.
Today I am starting what I also anticipate will be an on-going series about one of those strands past the 1960s when the SWP lost it revolutionary appetite, what was then the Revolutionary Tendency (RT) and what is now the Spartacist League (SL/U.S.), the U.S. section of the International Communist League (ICL). I intend to post materials from other strands but there are several reasons for starting with the SL/U.S. A main one, as the document below will make clear, is that the origin core of that organization fought, unsuccessfully in the end, to struggle from the inside (an important point) to turn the SWP back on a revolutionary course, as they saw it. Moreover, a number of the other organizations that I will cover later trace their origins to the SL, including the very helpful source for posting this material, the International Bolshevik Tendency.
However as I noted in posting a document from Spartacist, the theoretical journal of ICL posted via the International Bolshevik Tendency website that is not the main reason I am starting with the SL/U.S. Although I am not a political supporter of either organization in the accepted Leninist sense of that term, more often than not, and at times and on certain questions very much more often than not, my own political views and those of the International Communist League coincide. I am also, and I make no bones about it, a fervent supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a social and legal defense organization linked to the ICL and committed, in the traditions of the IWW, the early International Labor Defense-legal defense arm of the Communist International, and the early defense work of the American Socialist Workers Party, to the struggles for freedom of all class-war prisoners and defense of other related social struggles.
******************
Markin comment on Cuba and Marxist Theory:
Scenario One: A Russian-centered, European-leaning political party based on the working class, and infused with Marxist doctrine, in 1917 leads a socialist revolution in the aftermath of a democratic upheaval caused by the dislocations of World War in a war-torn, war-weary, bread hungry, land hungry country that is predominantly peasant. That party, a Bolshevik vanguard-type party led by professional revolutionaries takes power base on previously established soviets, legislative and executive bodies composed of workers, peasants, and soldier (mainly from that same peasantry) on an immediate program of land to the tiller, peace (an immediate armistice), and bread. In the wake of its victory it is required to establish a worker-centered red army to defend itself against bourgeois and feudal counter-revolution in a bloody civil war. The regime also established a Communist International explicitly created in order to guide and create further communist revolutions and soviet regimes (particularly in the more advanced sectors of Europe) required to bring about an international socialist division of labor. Its continual isolation for an extended period turns that initial impulse into its opposite, a Stalin-led “night of the long knives” regime based on generation of soviet bureaucracy that continues to distort socialist prospects until the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991-92.
Scenario Two: A Cuban-based political party based on students, ex-student, landless and serf-like peasants, middle class urban elements and a sliver of the working class leads a democratic, anti-imperialist revolution in 1959 based on the victory of a rural-based guerilla army that is militarily victorious against a hated American-backed dictatorship. The rebel army takes power based on a democratic program of land reform, civil rights and undefined economic changes. In the wake of counter-revolutionary efforts, spearheaded by some defeated elements of the old regime and backed by American imperialism, the new revolutionary regime is forced to turn toward extensive nationalizations and long-term links to the Soviet-led bloc. After the demise of the Soviet Union it continued (and continues) to adhere to Stalinist conceptions of economic and political rule.
The above scenarios are rather broad sweeps of what both the Russian and Cuban revolutions meant in terms of Marxist theory, and more importantly, in practice for working class revolutionaries in the struggle for world socialism in the early 1960s. As the documentation put forth in the linked post indicates this “new” Cuban model for revolutionary action upset the apple cart not only in the world Stalinist and third world movement but in its Trotskyist tendencies as well. Two things stick out in 2010 as one reads (or rather re-reads) this material; both revolutionary models have had only one “chemically pure” occurrence; and, whatever, other differences both states created in the wake of their respective revolutions required working class revolutionaries to defend them against internationalism imperialism and internal counter-revolution until the bitter end. In the case of the Soviet Union until 1992 and in the case of Cuba, a continuing duty.
******************
Marxist Bulletin No. 8
Cuba and Marxist Theory
http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/icl-spartacists/cuba/index.htm
Published: 1966/1973
Source: Cuba and Marxist Theory, Marxist Bulletin No. 8, New York.
Transcription/Markup/Proofing: John Heckman.
Public Domain: Encyclopedia of Trotskyism On-Line 2006. You can freely copy, display and otherwise distribute this work. Please credit the Marxists Internet Archive as your source, include the url to this work, and note the transcribers & editors above.
Source: Cuba and Marxist Theory, Marxist Bulletin No. 8, New York.
Transcription/Markup/Proofing: John Heckman.
Public Domain: Encyclopedia of Trotskyism On-Line 2006. You can freely copy, display and otherwise distribute this work. Please credit the Marxists Internet Archive as your source, include the url to this work, and note the transcribers & editors above.
Table of Contents
The Cuban Revolution and Marxist Theory by Mage, Wohlforth and Robertson, 17 August 1960
Introductory Note (to “Cuba and the Deformed Workers States”) by JR, 9 June 1966
Cuba and the Deformed Workers States by Tim Wohlforth, 20 July 1961
The Cuban Revolution, Minority resolution to the YSA Convention, by Shane Mage, 21 December 1961
Notes on the Cuban Discussion within the Revolutionary Tendency by James Robertson, 30 April 1963
Theoretical Clarification, a section from the remarks to the International Committee Conference in London, by James Robertson, 6 April 1966
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