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/
Jackman 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!
*******
From The Pen Of Frank Jackman
Sam Lowell knew in his blood-stained heart, his Vietnam War blood-stained heart that as much as he had come to hate and oppose that war as a participant, as an unwilling and unwitting tool of forces in the government who were clueless about ‘Nam, about people who had done them, and him no harm, about people with which he had no quarrel he could never go all the way in his opposition to wars. Although after the fact, after his service, he had spent a fair amount of time in the streets with fellow veterans trying to get the word out that a monster was on the loose, the American government, a government that had made him, made his war buddies nothing but savages, trying to work the anti-war veteran point of view which had some “cred” to all who would listen, half-listen anyway, he would never really be able to fully make himself a pacifist. Never make himself a solid almost biblical in the wilderness turning the other cheek man of peace for all seasons. Go the distance on some “Gandhi trip” as he called it talking to his old high school friend Bart Webber one night years later when they were mulling over the question of how far they were willing to go in the search for what the Quakers called the “peace witness.” Not when in his head he knew there were causes, just causes that could not be resolved short of blood and iron if humankind was to roll the rock of progress up the hill a little, hell, to even get a little justice in this wicked old world. He favored not that “Gandhi trip” but an idea of some long-bearded robe sheet-clothed Jehovah all fire and brimstone come seeking vengeance against the night-takers until the world was gotten rid of night-takers.
That is why Sam, despite his misgivings about the Vietnam War had never really opposed it personally via some application for conscientious objector status. Never saw himself as the friendly Quaker, Mennonite, Amish man of good cheer and no grudges. Never had been around such people when it counted as he was growing up although he had heard about their gentility and had seen it in action down in Pennsylvania Amish country. Even a serious attempt later after Vietnam had taken so much out of him, had depleted his abstract hates, to become more Quakerly when he had had a Quaker girlfriend, Susan Rich, failed to his own hubris and sense that fixing even the small woes of the world required more fire that the “inner light.” (They would quarrel endlessly if civilly about such matters to no good end and they eventually kind of drifted apart once each realized that there was no longer enough glue holing them together.)
What Sam came to believe, or maybe believed all along and Vietnam and that lovely quiet Quaker girl just brought his notions to a head, was that his whole blessed life was stacked against such gentility. He asked himself, and asked Bart as well since they came from the same poor as church mice neighborhood although Bart had not faced the ultimate induction crisis since due to a severe childhood injury to his right leg he was declared by his friends and neighbors at the local draft board to be 4-F, unfit for military duty, where in his, their growing up ethos was their room for such thoughts having grown up in working class Carver. Carver a town where guys volunteered for military service in droves if for no other reason than to get out of the hick town, get away from being boggers, cranberry bog workers when Carver was something like the cranberry capital of the world or else accepted quietly and without rancor induction if drafted. He would have received no support, from family, friends, including Bart who held all the same support the government without question at the time and had only come around when their corner boy friend Jeff Mullins was killed in the Central Highlands and after Sam had come back to the “real” world to give the real story of the murderous assault on human dignity he had taken part in, and neighbors. Neighbors who had, as he recalled to Bart, looked askance at him when in 1966 he had expressed some reservations about the carpet-bombing of Vietnam back to the Stone Age which was the effective policy of the military doctrine of the day. Sam frankly said to Bart that talking night that he would not have known even how to go about doing such a thing as filing an application for CO status. And if he had known under the conditions existing in 1966 to obtain CO status, although not a few years later when though court decisions and changes in draft board policy such applications were not denied out of hand except for historically recognized objectors, he would not have been granted that status since he had been raised a Catholic, a church organization which held to a just war theology rather than an absolute opposition to war like the Quakers and Mennonites, people who held such historic pacifist positions.
Although after Vietnam Sam went through a crisis on the question of war and peace in which he came to err on the “side of the angels” and he abandoned the Catholic Church and its version of the just war theory which seemed to more often, much more often than not, justify all of Caesar’s wars without fail, he still held to a secular version of that just war theory. When thinking about the matter of just wars then in the late 1960s and early 1970s the Spanish Civil War had come to mind since he had been something of a buff about that event as far back as freshman year in high school when he had written a term paper for a history class on the subject. In that desperate 1930s conflict which pre-figured World War III whose struggles enflamed his dreams he saw himself obviously fighting, arms in hand, whatever arms they had which at times were scanty, for the Republican side against the Nazi-backed Franco forces. He had dreamed as well that he would have, if he had been around then, signed up as a volunteer for the Abraham Lincoln Battalion of the International Brigades, the famous Abraham Lincolns who did heroic battle around the Jarama and in other tough spots when it counted.
Sam knew from his readings that those organizations were controlled by the Communists of that age but while in high school he was as fervent an anti-communist as anybody in town he would give them a pass for the duration of the war, would have joined the united front even if he was not sure that he would have supported the “revolution and war” ideas expressed by those to the left of the Communists and Socialists, mostly Trotskyists and anarchists of one stripe or another. He was still bitter, always would be, when the U.S. under the liberal oligarch Roosevelt called for hands-off, for neutrality in the conflict and the British and French sat on their hands while Spain died a thousand deaths. It would not be until later when he had to deal with the American progeny of Joe Stalin in the anti-Vietnam War movement that he would come to curse Uncle Joe’s withdrawal of the International Brigades while there was still some fight left in the Republican forces. No, Sam would not have sat on his hands on that one.
Later, several years later in the late 1970s when the turmoil which had beset America had settled down and an ebb tide had taken over in the land postponing to the indefinite future the question of whether a 1960s-type “new breeze” was going to come again, a time when he was beginning to make a small name for himself in the legal profession around the South Shore of Boston he developed a strong interest in the American Civil War, a strong interest in the importance of the Union victory and the abolition of slavery. This interest had been kick-started one day as a result of his going into Boston on a legal matter at the Suffolk County Courthouse on Beacon Hill and passing what was then a much neglected frieze of the heroic Colonel Robert Gould Shaw-led Massachusetts 54th Black Volunteers in front of the State House who did themselves proud down before Fort Wagner and later in 1865 would march into the citadel of the Confederacy Charleston, South Carolina singing the John Brown song.
Sam had in high school based on admittedly sketchy information rather grudgingly admired that Captain John Brown, late of Harper’s Ferry, and the exploits of his small multi-racial band of brothers in trying to break the back of slavery by a military expedition to free the slave and create an insurrection. Once Sam delved into Civil War history, read more in depth about Brown and what history would have looked like if he had had a modicum of success Sam saw Brown as the Calvinist “avenging angel” high Jehovah scourge of the night-takers of his day. In short, that same thought that he had long held in his mind concerning the righteous agents of just wars like his Lincolns in Spain. [Interesting to Sam then the cosmic link of Brown in the 19th century and the Lincolns in the 20th as the epitome of American just causes revolving around key Civil War names.] While Sam held such thoughts about Brown and men of action like Brown in ante-bellum times who were not afraid to rankle feathers he admitted to himself that he would, unlike with the Internationals, not have very likely joined such an expedition.
As Sam studied the military situations, the military strategy and tactics that one must invariable do to catch any idea of why men, brothers and cousins in many cases, would get their blood lusts rising so savagely, he did find himself drawn to the General William Tecumseh Sherman-led march through Georgia to the seas. A relentless organized march to break the will, break the communications, break the supply routes, to deny the Confederacy the capacity to produce much of anything. So in his imagination he could see himself as one of “Billy’s bummers” marching sore-footed through Georgia, making Jeff Davis squeal, making Robert E. Lee reach for the white flag. Make old Captain Brown a man ahead of his times. Yeah, Sam would not have sat on his hands on that freedom fight either.
Still Sam could never quite get that imagine of himself as a Lincoln Battalion rank and filer out of his mind, could never quite forget Pete Seeger’s version of Viva La Quince Brigada heard long ago when he had listened to a folk radio station out of Boston as after a girl, a folkie girl he called her, recommended that he listen to the station if he wanted to get anywhere with her (which he did, listen to, and did get somewhere with her) and of the plight of the veterans of the Lincoln Battalion when the American government pulled the red scare Cold War hammer down on them as “commies.” Bart, a few years ago knowing of his interest, had asked Sam to write something for his grandson, Sean, who as fate would have it also was interested in the Spanish Civil War and was, in his turn, doing a term paper on it for his history class and wanted Sam to give Sean some personal reflections to aid his own understanding of the conflict as he wrote his paper. Not do the paper, no way, but give a feel for the need for blood and iron, and for men and women to be willing to lay down their heads as “pre-mature anti-fascists” in that conflict. Here is what Sam had to say:
Sean,
Your grandfather and my friend of many, many years going back to high school down there in Carver where we grew up asked me to give you a little leg up, a little flavor of what I thought about the Spanish Civil War since he knew that I was interested in the subject and that you were too. At least enough to decide to use that magnificent struggle as a subject worthy of your first serious term paper (the first of many I hope). A few years ago when I was writing a little something about the 70th anniversary of the start of the Spanish Civil War I wrote a short review of a book by Leon Trotsky about the possibilities of revolution, of successful revolution in Spain in those days. The book entitled THE SPANISH REVOLUTION, 1931-39 (LEON TROTSKY, PATHFINDER PRESS, NEW YORK, 1973) while written from an extreme left-wing position while Trotsky was in exile from the Soviet Union whose revolution of 1917 he was a central participant looks at lots of issues that might interest you as you prepare your paper. I know I got a lot out of it although personally I am not as sure as Trotsky was that a successful revolution could have held its ground given the international situation where Spain would be isolated from the rest of West Europe when the Nazis and Fascists were pulling their respective hammers down and the rest of Europe looked away while Spain died a thousand deaths.
“I have been interested, as a pro-Republican partisan, in the Spanish Civil War since I was a teenager. What initially perked my interest, and remains of interest, is the passionate struggle of the Spanish working class to create its own political organization of society, its leadership of the struggle against Spanish fascism and the romance surrounding the entry of the International Brigades, particularly the American Abraham Lincoln Battalion of the 15th Brigade, into the struggle.
Underlying my interests has always been a nagging question of how that struggle could have been won by the working class. The Spanish proletariat certainly was capable of both heroic action and the ability to create organizations that reflected its own class interests i.e. the worker militias and factory committees. Of all modern working class revolutions after the Russian revolution Spain showed the most promise of success. Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky noted that the political class consciousness of the Spanish proletariat at that time was higher than that of the Russian proletariat in 1917. Yet it failed in Spain. Trotsky's writings on this period represent a provocative and thoughtful approach to an understanding of the causes of that failure. Moreover, with all proper historical proportions considered, his analysis has some continuing value as the international working class struggles against the seemingly one-sided class war being waged by the international bourgeoisie today.
The Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939 has been the subject of innumerable works from every possible political and military perspective possible. A fair number of such treatises, especially from those responsible for the military and political policies on the Republican side, are merely alibis for the disastrous policies that led to defeat. Trotsky's complication of articles, letters, pamphlets, etc. which make up the volume reviewed here is an exception. Trotsky was actively trying to intervene in the unfolding events in order to present a program of socialist revolution that most of the active forces on the Republican side were fighting, or believed they were fighting for. Thus, Trotsky's analysis brings a breath of fresh air to the historical debate. That in the end Trotsky could not organize the necessary cadres to carry out his program or meaningfully impact the unfolding events in Spain is one of the ultimate tragedies of that revolution. Nevertheless, Trotsky had a damn good idea of what forces were acting as a roadblock to revolution. He also had a strategic conception of the road to victory. And that most definitely was not through the Popular Front.
The central question Trotsky addresses throughout the whole period under review here was the crisis of revolutionary leadership of the proletarian forces. That premise entailed, in short, a view that the objective conditions for the success of a socialist program for society had ripened. Nevertheless, until that time, despite several revolutionary upheavals elsewhere, the international working class had not been successful anywhere except in backward Russia. Trotsky thus argued that it was necessary to focus on the question of forging the missing element of revolutionary leadership that would assure victory or at least put up a fight to the finish.
This underlying premise was the continuation of an analysis that Trotsky developed in earnest in his struggle to fight the Stalinist degeneration of the Russian Revolution in the mid-1920's. The need to learn the lessons of the Russian Revolution and to extend that revolution internationally was thus not a merely a theoretical question for Trotsky. Spain, moreover, represented a struggle where the best of the various leftist forces were in confusion about how to move forward. Those forces could have profitably heeded Trotsky's advice.
Trotsky's polemics in this volume are highlighted by the article ‘The Lessons of Spain-Last Warning’, his definitive assessment of the Spanish situation in the wake of the defeat of the Barcelona uprising in May 1937. Those polemics center on the failure of the Party of Marxist Unification (hereafter, POUM) to provide revolutionary leadership. That party, partially created by cadre formerly associated with Trotsky in the Spanish Left Opposition, failed on virtually every count. Those conscious mistakes included, but were not limited to, the creation of an unprincipled bloc between the former Left Oppositionists and the former Right Oppositionists (Bukharinites) of Maurin to form the POUM in 1935; political support to the Popular Front including entry into the government coalition by its leader; creation of its own small trade union federation instead of entry in the anarchist led-CNT; creation of its own militia units reflecting a hands-off attitude toward political struggle with other parties; and, fatally, an at best equivocal role in the Barcelona uprising of 1937.
Trotsky had no illusions about the roadblock to revolution of the policies carried out by the old-time Anarchist, Socialist and Communist Parties. Unfortunately the POUM did. Moreover, despite being the most honest revolutionary party in Spain it failed to keep up an intransigent struggle to push the revolution forward. The Trotsky - Andreas Nin (key leader of the POUM and former Left Oppositionist) correspondence in the Appendix makes that problem painfully clear.
The most compelling example of this failure - As a result of the failure of the Communist Party of Germany to oppose the rise of Hitler in 1933 and the subsequent decapitation and the defeat of the Austrian working class in 1934 the European workers, especially the younger workers, of the traditional Socialist Parties started to move left. Trotsky observed this situation and told his supporters to intersect that development by an entry, called the ‘French turn’, into those parties. Nin and the Spanish Left Opposition, and later the POUM failed to do that. As a result the Socialist Party youth were recruited to the Communist Party en masse. This accretion formed the basis for its expansion as a party and the key cadre of its notorious security apparatus that would, after the Barcelona uprising, suppress the more left ward organizations.”
I hope this little review gives you a couple of ideas to speculate on although you have to be careful with history in the alternative and only suggest the trends that were most probable not every possible “what if.”
In thinking about the Trotsky review I also came back to some thoughts about the American Abraham Lincoln Battalion of the International Brigades of workers and leftist militants who went from many countries to fight, and if necessary die to defend the Spanish Republic under assault from the Nazi-backed Franco forces which as a kid reading about their heroic if doomed exploits in Spain enflamed my imagination. I have added a short review I also did several years ago by Peter Carroll who probably knows more about the battalion than anybody else, anybody else now. The title of the book is THE ODYSSEY OF THE ABRAHAM LINCOLN BRIGADE: AMERICANS IN THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR, (Peter N. Carroll, Stanford University Press, Stanford, California, 1994). As happens when a person reviews several books on the same general subject especially in the age of easy cut and paste I have used the introductory paragraph in several Spanish Civil War items I have reviewed and have eliminated them here:
“…Of all modern working class uprisings after the Russian revolution Spain showed the most promise of success. Russian Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky noted in one of his writings on Spain that the Spanish proletariat at the start of its revolutionary period had a higher political consciousness than the Russian proletariat in 1917. That calls into question the strategies put forth by the parties of the Popular Front, including the Spanish Communist Party- defeat Franco first, and then make the social transformation of society. Mr. Carroll’s book while not directly addressing that issue nevertheless demonstrates through the story of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion how the foreign policy of the Soviet Union and through it the policy of the Communist International in calling for international brigades to fight in Spain aided in the defeat of that promising revolution.
“Mr. Carroll chronicles anecdotally how individual militants were recruited, transported, fought and died as ‘premature anti-fascists’ in that struggle. No militant today, or ever, can deny the heroic qualities of the volunteers and their commitment to defeat fascism- the number one issue for militants of that generation-despite the fatal policy of the the various party leaderships. Such individuals were desperately needed then, as now, if revolutionary struggle is to succeed. However, to truly honor their sacrifice we must learn the lessons of that defeat through mistaken strategy as we fight today. Interestingly, as chronicled here, and elsewhere in the memoirs of some veterans, many of the surviving militants of that struggle continued to believe that it was necessary to defeat Franco first, and then fight for socialism. This was most dramatically evoked by the Lincolns' negative response to the Barcelona uprising of 1937-the last time a flat out fight for leadership of the revolution could have galvanized the demoralized workers and peasants for a desperate struggle against Franco.
“Probably the most important part of Mr. Carroll’s book is tracing the trials and tribulations of the volunteers after their withdrawal from Spain in late 1938. Their organization-the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade- was constantly harassed and monitored by the United States government for many years as a Communist 'front' group. Individuals also faced prosecution and discrimination for their past association with the Brigades. He also traces the aging and death of that cadre. In short, this book is a labor of love for the subjects of his treatment. Whatever else this writer certainly does not disagree with that purpose. If you want to read about what a heroic part of the vanguard of the international working class looked like in the 1930’s, look here. Viva la Quince Brigada!!”
No comments:
Post a Comment