Markin comment:
One of the declared purposes of this space is to draw the lessons of our left-wing past here in America and internationally, especially from the pro-communist wing. To that end I have made commentaries and provided archival works in order to help draw those lessons for today’s left-wing activists to learn, or at least ponder over. More importantly, for the long haul, to help educate today’s youth in the struggle for our common communist future. That is no small task or easy task given the differences of generations; differences of political milieus worked in; differences of social structure to work around; and, increasingly more important, the differences in appreciation of technological advances, and their uses.
There is no question that back in my youth I could have used, desperately used, many of the archival materials available today. When I developed political consciousness very early on, albeit liberal political consciousness, I could have used this material as I knew, I knew deep inside my heart and mind, that a junior Cold War liberal of the American For Democratic Action (ADA) stripe was not the end of my leftward political trajectory. More importantly, I could have used a socialist or communist youth organization to help me articulate the doubts I had about the virtues of liberal capitalism and be recruited to a more left-wing world view. As it was I spent far too long in the throes of the left-liberal/soft social-democratic milieu where I was dying politically. A group like the Young Communist League (W.E.B. Dubois Clubs in those days), the Young People’s Socialist League, or the Young Socialist Alliance representing the youth organizations of the American Communist Party, American Socialist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S.) respectively would have saved much wasted time and energy. I knew they were around but not in my area.
The archival material to be used in this series is weighted heavily toward the youth movements of the early American Communist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S). For more recent material I have relied on material from the Spartacus Youth Clubs, the youth group of the Spartacist League (U.S.), both because they are more readily available to me and because, and this should give cause for pause, there are not many other non-CP, non-SWP youth groups around. As I gather more material from other youth sources I will place them in this series.
Finally I would like to finish up with the preamble to the Spartacist Youth Club’s What We Fight For statement of purpose:
"The Spartacus Youth Clubs intervene into social struggles armed with the revolutionary internationalist program of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. We work to mobilize youth in struggle as partisans of the working class, championing the liberation of black people, women and all the oppressed. The SYCs fight to win youth to the perspective of building the Leninist vanguard party that will lead the working class in socialist revolution, laying the basis for a world free of capitalist exploitation and imperialist slaughter."
This seems to me be somewhere in the right direction for what a Bolshevik youth group should be doing these days; a proving ground to become professional revolutionaries with enough wiggle room to learn from their mistakes, and successes. More later.
***********
Markin comment on this article:
Although right this minute, this 2011 minute, the Nazis/fascists are not publicly raising their hellish ideas, apparently “hiding” just now on the fringes of the tea party movement, this is an eternal question for leftists. The question, in short, of when and how to deal with this crowd of locust. Trotsky, and others, had it right back in the late 1920s and early 1930s-smash this menace in the shell. 1933, when they come to power, as Hitler did in Germany (or earlier, if you like, with Mussolini in Italy) is way too late, as immediately the German working class, including its Social-Democratic and Communist sympathizers found out, and later many parts of the rest of the world. That is the when.
For the how, the substance of this article points the way forward, and the way not forward, as represented by the American Communist Party’s (and at later times other so-called “progressives” as well) attempts to de-rail the street protests and rely, as always, on the good offices of the bourgeois state, and usually, on this issue the Democrats. Sure, grab all the allies you can, from whatever source, to confront the fascists when they raise their heads. But rely on the mobilization of the labor movement on the streets to say what’s what, not rely on the hoary halls of bourgeois government and its hangers-on, ideologues, and lackeys.
*******
From Young Spartacus, Summer 1980,The San Francisco Anti-Nazi Rally: Communist Party/ Young Workers Liberation League Sabotage Foiled.
Many of the recruits to the Young Workers Liberation League (YWLL), youth group of the Moscow-loyal Communist Party (CP), have taken the CP's claim of being the "best fighters against fascism" as good coin. But when a 1,200-strong demonstration organized by the April 19 Committee Against Nazis (ANCAN) prevented the Nazis from celebrating Hitler's birthday in San Francisco, the CP attempted to sabotage that mass action.
After the demonstration April 19 the CP's policy was subjected to a barrage of criticism from within and outside the CP/YWLL. Thus the CP's West Coast People's World (10 May) was forced to reprint a scornful letter from William Mandel, a leftist commentator on KPFA radio, Soviet affairs analyst and participant in the ANCAN demonstration. Mandel wrote "...the PW prefers to know nothing, see nothing, and hear nothing when something happens under leadership it disapproves of." He pointed out that the rally's "organizers were Trotskyists
The CP's role in refusing to join with and actually attempting to sabotage the ANCAN mobilization, in a small way mirrors the history of Stalinism in paralyzing the workers movement before fascist terrorists. ANCAN showed that Trotskyists and class-conscious unionists took the lead in mobilizing a significant section of the labor movement to keep the Nazi scum in their holes, We reprint below a leaflet distributed by the Spartacist League to recent CP election rallies for their vice-presidential candidate Angela Davis. We hope YWLLers will see that the Trotsky-Stalin debate was no literary exercise—what is at stake remains the socialist future of mankind!
******
On April 19, a 1,200-strong labor-centered rally in the SF Civic Center stopped the Nazis from "celebrating" Hitler's birthday. Official contingents from CWA (phone workers) Locals 9410 and 9415 (SF and Oakland) joined Machinists, postal workers, bus drivers, Teamsters and ILWUers. Altogether, demonstrators from 22 unions gathered with residents of the Mission, the Castro, the Fillmore, the Jewish neighborhoods to proclaim "SF is a Labor Town, Not a Nazi Town!"
So where was the Communist Party (CP) on April 19? Why didn't it endorse or participate in this powerful rally against fascism? The Trotskyists of the Spartacist League were among the initiators of the rally and we worked day and night to build it. But the CP, which talks "anti-fascist unity" 365 days a year, refused to unite with the power of labor to stop the fascists on this day, when it was for real.
YWLLers—many of whom must be dismayed at the CP's political cowardice—have been telling us that it was a "mistake" that the CP didn't show up. A member of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression told us there was sentiment in the local branch to participate but "the word came from New York not to." The CP's boycott was no "mistake." The truth is that the CP leadership fought^tooth and nail for weeks against the April 19 mobilization.
The April 19 Committee Against Nazis (ANCAN) demonstration grew out of a struggle inside the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union (ILWU) following the vicious Greensboro, North Carolina Klan/Nazi murders last November. Early on some 500 members of the ILWU signed petitions demanding their union call a Bay Area-wide anti-KKK rally calling for jailing of the killer Klansmen, for union-organized labor/black/ Latino defense guards against fascist violence and to uphold the right of armed self-defense. But the leadership of the traditionally "progressive" ILWU, in
particular the well-known CP spokesmen in the union, tried to channel sentiment into support for a separate rally on April 5, explicitly in order to avoid a confrontation with the Nazis on the 19th. As it turned out, only about 200 people showed up April 5 and fully one-half of these supported ANCAN.
In order to sabotage the April 19 rally, CPers in the ILWU and elsewhere viciously slandered those who were organizing to stop the Nazis. "They're violent, they want a confrontation with the police, stay away!" wailed the CPers trying to discourage participation. But it didn't work. Dozens of local labor leaders and unions, community and gay groups endorsed and helped build the rally. Leaflets and posters kept going into the workplaces and communities. Finally a worried Police Chief Con Murphy announced that he could not protect the Nazis from the large number of anticipated counterdemonstrators and that the Nazis had decided to stay home that day and not protest the revocation of their permit.
Even after the successful anti-fascist organizing and rally, the CP lies about what happened. The 26 April People's World sports an article claiming that it was pressure on the Board of Supervisors which backed the Nazis down... without even mentioning ANCAN's demonstration and well-advertised plans to stop the Nazis on the 19th. The Board of Supes passed a cheap resolution condemning the fascists only after the Nazis had already announced they were not going to rally on the 19th and Police Chief Murphy was more honest than the CP as to why the Nazis turned tail: "The groups that were going to counterdemonstrate, there could be upwards of 5,000 people there and that would severely limit our ability to provide him [Nazi leader Allen Vincent] with protection."
So why did the CP oppose and boycott the April 19 anti-Nazi rally? Because labor demonstrating to stop the Nazis meant bucking City Hall, which had given the Nazis a permit in the first place and promised them police protection. Bucking City Hall meant conflict with the Democratic Party mayor and Supervisors. And for over 45 years, the CP has been tied to the Democrats' cart. Oh, sure, the CP occasionally runs its own election campaigns as a token show of independence. But there are always plenty of Democrats around that the CP ends up supporting.
According to the CP, you see, it is necessary to unite with the progressive, democratic peace-loving sector of the bourgeoisie to defeat the reactionary fascist war-mongering sector. This has been the CP's excuse ever since FDR for tying labor to the Democratic Party and heading off movements toward a workers party. So again in SF on April 19. Since Dianne Feinstein, the Democratic Party, the cops and the bourgeoisie as a whole didn't want to stop the Nazi terrorists, neither did the CP. In the face of a genuine, powerful labor-based united front mass action against the fascists, the CP became the biggest splitters of all.
If you are interested in a program and, a party to fight fascism, you will not find it in the CP. If you are interested in linking the anti-fascist struggle to the overall fight against capitalist exploitation, racial and sexual oppression, if you are for the unconditional military defense of the Soviet Union against Carter's threats of World War III, you will find answers in the Spartacist League.
Keep the Nazi/KKK killers on the run! Fight for a workers party based on the unions to fight for a workers government! Join the Spartacist League and the Spartacus Youth League!
One of the declared purposes of this space is to draw the lessons of our left-wing past here in America and internationally, especially from the pro-communist wing. To that end I have made commentaries and provided archival works in order to help draw those lessons for today’s left-wing activists to learn, or at least ponder over. More importantly, for the long haul, to help educate today’s youth in the struggle for our common communist future. That is no small task or easy task given the differences of generations; differences of political milieus worked in; differences of social structure to work around; and, increasingly more important, the differences in appreciation of technological advances, and their uses.
There is no question that back in my youth I could have used, desperately used, many of the archival materials available today. When I developed political consciousness very early on, albeit liberal political consciousness, I could have used this material as I knew, I knew deep inside my heart and mind, that a junior Cold War liberal of the American For Democratic Action (ADA) stripe was not the end of my leftward political trajectory. More importantly, I could have used a socialist or communist youth organization to help me articulate the doubts I had about the virtues of liberal capitalism and be recruited to a more left-wing world view. As it was I spent far too long in the throes of the left-liberal/soft social-democratic milieu where I was dying politically. A group like the Young Communist League (W.E.B. Dubois Clubs in those days), the Young People’s Socialist League, or the Young Socialist Alliance representing the youth organizations of the American Communist Party, American Socialist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S.) respectively would have saved much wasted time and energy. I knew they were around but not in my area.
The archival material to be used in this series is weighted heavily toward the youth movements of the early American Communist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S). For more recent material I have relied on material from the Spartacus Youth Clubs, the youth group of the Spartacist League (U.S.), both because they are more readily available to me and because, and this should give cause for pause, there are not many other non-CP, non-SWP youth groups around. As I gather more material from other youth sources I will place them in this series.
Finally I would like to finish up with the preamble to the Spartacist Youth Club’s What We Fight For statement of purpose:
"The Spartacus Youth Clubs intervene into social struggles armed with the revolutionary internationalist program of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. We work to mobilize youth in struggle as partisans of the working class, championing the liberation of black people, women and all the oppressed. The SYCs fight to win youth to the perspective of building the Leninist vanguard party that will lead the working class in socialist revolution, laying the basis for a world free of capitalist exploitation and imperialist slaughter."
This seems to me be somewhere in the right direction for what a Bolshevik youth group should be doing these days; a proving ground to become professional revolutionaries with enough wiggle room to learn from their mistakes, and successes. More later.
***********
Markin comment on this article:
Although right this minute, this 2011 minute, the Nazis/fascists are not publicly raising their hellish ideas, apparently “hiding” just now on the fringes of the tea party movement, this is an eternal question for leftists. The question, in short, of when and how to deal with this crowd of locust. Trotsky, and others, had it right back in the late 1920s and early 1930s-smash this menace in the shell. 1933, when they come to power, as Hitler did in Germany (or earlier, if you like, with Mussolini in Italy) is way too late, as immediately the German working class, including its Social-Democratic and Communist sympathizers found out, and later many parts of the rest of the world. That is the when.
For the how, the substance of this article points the way forward, and the way not forward, as represented by the American Communist Party’s (and at later times other so-called “progressives” as well) attempts to de-rail the street protests and rely, as always, on the good offices of the bourgeois state, and usually, on this issue the Democrats. Sure, grab all the allies you can, from whatever source, to confront the fascists when they raise their heads. But rely on the mobilization of the labor movement on the streets to say what’s what, not rely on the hoary halls of bourgeois government and its hangers-on, ideologues, and lackeys.
*******
From Young Spartacus, Summer 1980,The San Francisco Anti-Nazi Rally: Communist Party/ Young Workers Liberation League Sabotage Foiled.
Many of the recruits to the Young Workers Liberation League (YWLL), youth group of the Moscow-loyal Communist Party (CP), have taken the CP's claim of being the "best fighters against fascism" as good coin. But when a 1,200-strong demonstration organized by the April 19 Committee Against Nazis (ANCAN) prevented the Nazis from celebrating Hitler's birthday in San Francisco, the CP attempted to sabotage that mass action.
After the demonstration April 19 the CP's policy was subjected to a barrage of criticism from within and outside the CP/YWLL. Thus the CP's West Coast People's World (10 May) was forced to reprint a scornful letter from William Mandel, a leftist commentator on KPFA radio, Soviet affairs analyst and participant in the ANCAN demonstration. Mandel wrote "...the PW prefers to know nothing, see nothing, and hear nothing when something happens under leadership it disapproves of." He pointed out that the rally's "organizers were Trotskyists
The CP's role in refusing to join with and actually attempting to sabotage the ANCAN mobilization, in a small way mirrors the history of Stalinism in paralyzing the workers movement before fascist terrorists. ANCAN showed that Trotskyists and class-conscious unionists took the lead in mobilizing a significant section of the labor movement to keep the Nazi scum in their holes, We reprint below a leaflet distributed by the Spartacist League to recent CP election rallies for their vice-presidential candidate Angela Davis. We hope YWLLers will see that the Trotsky-Stalin debate was no literary exercise—what is at stake remains the socialist future of mankind!
******
On April 19, a 1,200-strong labor-centered rally in the SF Civic Center stopped the Nazis from "celebrating" Hitler's birthday. Official contingents from CWA (phone workers) Locals 9410 and 9415 (SF and Oakland) joined Machinists, postal workers, bus drivers, Teamsters and ILWUers. Altogether, demonstrators from 22 unions gathered with residents of the Mission, the Castro, the Fillmore, the Jewish neighborhoods to proclaim "SF is a Labor Town, Not a Nazi Town!"
So where was the Communist Party (CP) on April 19? Why didn't it endorse or participate in this powerful rally against fascism? The Trotskyists of the Spartacist League were among the initiators of the rally and we worked day and night to build it. But the CP, which talks "anti-fascist unity" 365 days a year, refused to unite with the power of labor to stop the fascists on this day, when it was for real.
YWLLers—many of whom must be dismayed at the CP's political cowardice—have been telling us that it was a "mistake" that the CP didn't show up. A member of the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression told us there was sentiment in the local branch to participate but "the word came from New York not to." The CP's boycott was no "mistake." The truth is that the CP leadership fought^tooth and nail for weeks against the April 19 mobilization.
The April 19 Committee Against Nazis (ANCAN) demonstration grew out of a struggle inside the International Longshoremen's and Warehousemen's Union (ILWU) following the vicious Greensboro, North Carolina Klan/Nazi murders last November. Early on some 500 members of the ILWU signed petitions demanding their union call a Bay Area-wide anti-KKK rally calling for jailing of the killer Klansmen, for union-organized labor/black/ Latino defense guards against fascist violence and to uphold the right of armed self-defense. But the leadership of the traditionally "progressive" ILWU, in
particular the well-known CP spokesmen in the union, tried to channel sentiment into support for a separate rally on April 5, explicitly in order to avoid a confrontation with the Nazis on the 19th. As it turned out, only about 200 people showed up April 5 and fully one-half of these supported ANCAN.
In order to sabotage the April 19 rally, CPers in the ILWU and elsewhere viciously slandered those who were organizing to stop the Nazis. "They're violent, they want a confrontation with the police, stay away!" wailed the CPers trying to discourage participation. But it didn't work. Dozens of local labor leaders and unions, community and gay groups endorsed and helped build the rally. Leaflets and posters kept going into the workplaces and communities. Finally a worried Police Chief Con Murphy announced that he could not protect the Nazis from the large number of anticipated counterdemonstrators and that the Nazis had decided to stay home that day and not protest the revocation of their permit.
Even after the successful anti-fascist organizing and rally, the CP lies about what happened. The 26 April People's World sports an article claiming that it was pressure on the Board of Supervisors which backed the Nazis down... without even mentioning ANCAN's demonstration and well-advertised plans to stop the Nazis on the 19th. The Board of Supes passed a cheap resolution condemning the fascists only after the Nazis had already announced they were not going to rally on the 19th and Police Chief Murphy was more honest than the CP as to why the Nazis turned tail: "The groups that were going to counterdemonstrate, there could be upwards of 5,000 people there and that would severely limit our ability to provide him [Nazi leader Allen Vincent] with protection."
So why did the CP oppose and boycott the April 19 anti-Nazi rally? Because labor demonstrating to stop the Nazis meant bucking City Hall, which had given the Nazis a permit in the first place and promised them police protection. Bucking City Hall meant conflict with the Democratic Party mayor and Supervisors. And for over 45 years, the CP has been tied to the Democrats' cart. Oh, sure, the CP occasionally runs its own election campaigns as a token show of independence. But there are always plenty of Democrats around that the CP ends up supporting.
According to the CP, you see, it is necessary to unite with the progressive, democratic peace-loving sector of the bourgeoisie to defeat the reactionary fascist war-mongering sector. This has been the CP's excuse ever since FDR for tying labor to the Democratic Party and heading off movements toward a workers party. So again in SF on April 19. Since Dianne Feinstein, the Democratic Party, the cops and the bourgeoisie as a whole didn't want to stop the Nazi terrorists, neither did the CP. In the face of a genuine, powerful labor-based united front mass action against the fascists, the CP became the biggest splitters of all.
If you are interested in a program and, a party to fight fascism, you will not find it in the CP. If you are interested in linking the anti-fascist struggle to the overall fight against capitalist exploitation, racial and sexual oppression, if you are for the unconditional military defense of the Soviet Union against Carter's threats of World War III, you will find answers in the Spartacist League.
Keep the Nazi/KKK killers on the run! Fight for a workers party based on the unions to fight for a workers government! Join the Spartacist League and the Spartacus Youth League!
