In Honor Of The 100th Anniversary Of The Founding of The Communist International-From The Archives- *A Snapshot View Of The Leaders Of The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution- "Nikky" Bukharin

Click on title to link to the Nicolai Bukharin Internet Archive's copy of Bukharin's 1926 classic right-Bolshevik article, "The Tasks Of The Russian Communist Party".

Markin comment:

I want to spend more time on this revolutionary, his early leftism (in some senses ultra-leftism, especially the opposition on the Brest-Litovsk Treaty with the Germans taking Russia, bloody and broken, out of World War I , his subsequent rightist (right Communist, that is, which in agrarian Russia could only mean conciliating some segment of the vast peasantry) bloc with Stalin and his later, post-Moscow Trials, place in Soviet thinking in the 1980s when he, again, became a 'poster child' for accommodation to the forces of "market socialism". The fate of the Soviet Union,and defeat for the international working class in its struggle against capitalism, rather undercuts the 'virtues' of those theories. But, more later

In Honor Of The 100th Anniversary Of The Founding of The Communist International-From The Archives- *A Snapshot View Of The Leaders Of The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution- "Nikky" Bukharin

Click on title to link to the Nicolai Bukharin Internet Archive's copy of Bukharin's 1924 article, "Imperialism And The Accumulation Of Capital".


Markin comment:

I want to spend more time on this revolutionary, his early leftism (in some senses ultra-leftism, especially the opposition on the Brest-Litovsk Treaty with the Germans taking Russia, bloody and broken, out of World War I , his subsequent rightist (right Communist, that is, which in agrarian Russia could only mean conciliating some segment of the vast peasantry) bloc with Stalin and his later, post-Moscow Trials, place in Soviet thinking in the 1980s when he, again, became a 'poster child' for accommodation to the forces of "market socialism". The fate of the Soviet Union,and defeat for the international working class in its struggle against capitalism, rather undercuts the 'virtues' of those theories. But, more later

*A Snapshot View Of The Leaders Of The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution- "Nikky" Bukharin

Click on title to link to the Nicolai Bukharin Internet Archive's copy of Bukharin's 1921 article, "New Economic Policy Of Soviet Russia".

Markin comment:

I want to spend more time on this revolutionary, his early leftism (in some senses ultra-leftism, especially the opposition on the Brest-Litovsk Treaty with the Germans taking Russia, bloody and broken, out of World War I , his subsequent rightist (right Communist, that is, which in agrarian Russia could only mean conciliating some segment of the vast peasantry) bloc with Stalin and his later, post-Moscow Trials, place in Soviet thinking in the 1980s when he, again, became a 'poster child' for accommodation to the forces of "market socialism". The fate of the Soviet Union,and defeat for the international working class in its struggle against capitalism, rather undercuts the 'virtues' of those theories. But, more later

In Honor Of The 100th Anniversary Of The Founding of The Communist International*A Snapshot View Of The Leaders Of The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution- "Nikky" Bukharin

Click on title to link to the Nicolai Bukharin Internet Archive's copy of Bukharin's 1917 article, "The Significance Of The Russian Revolution".

Markin comment:

I want to spend more time on this revolutionary, his early leftism (in some senses ultra-leftism, especially the opposition on the Brest-Litovsk Treaty with the Germans taking Russia, bloody and broken, out of World War I , his subsequent rightist (right Communist, that is, which in agrarian Russia could only mean conciliating some segment of the vast peasantry) bloc with Stalin and his later, post-Moscow Trials, place in Soviet thinking in the 1980s when he, again, became a 'poster child' for accommodation to the forces of "market socialism". The fate of the Soviet Union,and defeat for the international working class in its struggle against capitalism, rather undercuts the 'virtues' of those theories. But, more later

*A Snapshot View Of The Leaders Of The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution- "Nikky" Bukharin

Click on title to link to the Nicolai Bukharin Internet Archive's copy of Bukharin's classic Bolshevik restatement of the Marxist program up until the time of the Russian revolution, "The ABC Of Communism" (written with Eugenii Prebrazhensky).

Markin comment:

I want to spend more time on this revolutionary, his early leftism (in some senses ultra-leftism, especially the opposition on the Brest-Litovsk Treaty with the Germans taking Russia, bloody and broken, out of World War I , his subsequent rightist (right Communist, that is, which in agrarian Russia could only mean conciliating some segment of the vast peasantry) bloc with Stalin and his later, post-Moscow Trials, place in Soviet thinking in the 1980s when he, again, became a 'poster child' for accommodation to the forces of "market socialism". The fate of the Soviet Union,and defeat for the international working class in its struggle against capitalism, rather undercuts the 'virtues' of those theories. But, more later

*A SLICE OF RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONARY HISTORY UP CLOSE

Click on title to link to the Leon Trotsky Internet Archive copy of his 1917 pamphlet "The Struggle For State Power".

BOOK REVIEW


THE BOLSHEVIKS AND THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION: CENTRAL COMMITTEE MINUTES OF THE RUSSIAN SOCIAL-DEMOCRATIC LABOR PARTY, AUGUST 1917-FEBRUARY 1918, PLUTO PRESS, LONDON, 1974

Those readers whose knowledge of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 is through the prism of Stalinism will be surprised to find in this book of the minutes of the Central Committee, leading body of the Bolshevik Party, not the monolithic party of Western perception but a lively and contentious party even at the height of the struggle for revolutionary power. And if one really thinks about it all the great revolutions of history tend to display that same dynamic. I would further argue that revolutions can not succeed otherwise. That said, this is not a book for beginners but for those who know something about the Russian Revolution. For those who do not, Leon Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution- Volume Two can help up until the October Revolution itself. For the period from October 1917 to February 1918 E. H. Carr’s three volume set titled the Bolshevik Revolution is invaluable.

As background, this volume begins at a time when the Bolshevik’s were just coming out of a period, known in history as the “July Days”, when the major leaders, including Lenin, were in hiding, laying low, or in jail and Bolshevik publications had been suppressed. The period continues through the abortive coup attempt by General Kornilov in late August, the various attempts by the Mensheviks and Social Revolutionaries to crib some non-Soviet democratic institutions together in order to put off the convening of a Constituent Assembly in August and September, the fight for the Bolshevik seizure of power in October , and in the aftermath the fight to end Russian participation in World War I and make peace with the Germans through the first part of 1918.

As is to be expected not one of the above-mentioned events was without its effect on Bolshevik policy and led to the creation of different factions and tendencies reflecting different moods, constituencies and personalities within the party. The most famous, and for today’s militants the most important, are the fight within the party over the question of the seizure of power and the more intense fight over how to and on what terms to end Russia’s participation in the war after power was won. To a great extend these various tendencies, in one form or another, existed for the next ten years after the revolution until the final Stalinist clampdown in the late 1920's. Of course, many of the leading personalities who came to the fore here did not have long-term consistent policies. For example, Bukharin a leader of the self-styled Left Communists in the fight over capitulation to German peace demands argued for revolutionary war against that country as act of revolutionary internationalism but later proved to be a key ally of Stalin on the question on the rightist policy of ‘socialism in one country’. If one wants to get a glance at the way revolutionary policy is made in the heat of revolution here’s a good place to start. Read on.

*PROBLEMS OF THE CHINESE REVOLUTION, THE EARLY YEARS, 1925-27

Click on title to link to early Leon Trotsky speech on the then unfolding second Chinese Revolution and the tasks of the Russian Left Opposition. As we approach the 60th anniversary of the 1949 revolution it is worthwhile to go back and see where that revolution first went off the skids.

BOOK REVIEW

PROBLEMS OF THE CHINESE REVOLUTION, LEON TROTSKY, PATHFINDER PRESS, 1967

Recently I reviewed in this space Andre Malraux’s Man’s Fate, a novelistic treatment of the Chinese Revolution of 1925-27, that emphasized the problems at the base of Chinese society in its late phase after the popular front alliance with General Chiang Kai-Shek’s bourgeois nationalist Kuomintang broke down and Chiang began his extermination drive against the Chinese Communists. In Leon Trotsky’s book, under review here, we get a real time, real life analysis of the political questions that led to that catastrophe and what revolutionaries could learn from it.

I have noted elsewhere that the Communist International (hereafter Comintern) evolved in the mid-1920’s , under the impact of Stalinization, from a revolutionary organization that made political mistakes, sometimes grossly so, in pursuit of revolution to an organization that pursued anti-revolutionary aims as it turned primarily into an adjunct of Soviet foreign policy. Prima facie evidence for such a conclusion is the Soviet Communist Party /Commintern policy and its implementation toward the budding Chinese Revolution.

As much as policy toward the Chinese Revolution became a political football in the internal Russian Communist party fights between Stalin’s bloc and Trotsky’s bloc it is impossible to understand the strategy for the Chinese Revolution without an understanding of Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution. No Marxist, at least not openly and honestly, put forth any claim that in the West the national bourgeoisie could be a progressive force in any modern upheaval. Russia, in the early 20th century was, however, still a battleground over this question. This is where Trotsky formulated the advanced Marxist notion that in Russia the national bourgeoisie was too weak, too beholding to foreign capitalist interests and too dependent on the Czarist state and its hangers-on to fulfill the tasks associated with the classic bourgeois revolutions in the West. Thus, for Russia alone at that time Trotsky postulated that the working class had become the heirs of the revolutions in the West. The Revolution of 1905 gave a glimmer of understanding to that proposition and the Revolution of October 1917 cannot be understood except under that premise.

In the aftermath of the Russian Revolution the question of who would lead the revolutions of the countries even less developed that Russia, mainly colonial and semi-colonial regimes, formed one of the new political battlegrounds. And China was the first dramatic test that Trotsky’s originally Russia-only premise applied to underdeveloped ‘third world’ capitalist regimes, as well. However,unlike in Russia, this time Trotsky lost. The necessary independent organization of the working class and the political separation of the communist vanguard were not carried out and, to our regret, the Chinese Revolution was beheaded. As mentioned above this was a conscious Stalinist policy of kowtowing to Chiang by unequivocably ordering the Communist Party to make itself politically and militarily subservient to the Kuomintang as well as providing Comintern military advisers to Chiang.

Today, even a cursory look at countries of belated and uneven development emphasizes the fact that the various tasks associated with the Russian and Chinese Revolutions still need to be carried out. Thus, the political fights that wracked the international communist movement in the 1920’s which under ordinary circumstances would only be of historical interest today take on a more life and death meaning for many of the peoples of the world. That makes this book well worth the read.

I might add that there is a very interesting appendix at the end of this work detailing reports from the field filed by those Communist agents that carried out Comintern policy in China and who as a result of disillusionment with that policy had become oppositionists. These reports give added ammunition to Trotsky’s more theoretical arguments. They also give flesh and bones to the some of the points that Malraux was trying to bring out in Man’s Fate. Read on.

*On Historical Rehabitations- The Case of India's Old Time Cominternist-M.N. Roy (And Myriad Others Incuding Andreas Nin)

Markin comment:

Normally I would not comment on, or post an entry on, such exotic material as an interchange of letters between others over the political rehabilitation of old time Communist International functionaries (read: hack) like M. N. Roy. However not the least effect of the decline in socialist-oriented political consciousness since the demise of the Soviet Union has been an onslaught of, mainly, academic special pleadings for old time communist officials. And a strange lot indeed have been “resurrected.”

This blizzard started, most dramatically, with Princeton Professor Stephen Cohen’s attempts to rehabilitate Moscow Trial victim and Old Bolshevik Nicolas Bukharin in the 1980s. Then the British journal, Revolutionary History, apparently made its reason for existence the rehabilitation of Spanish POUM leader Andreas Nin, 1920s German Communist party leaders Brandler and Thalheimer, and a slew of others who were once out in the political wilderness, including a kind word or three for early German Communist Party leader, Paul Levi. Christ.

What all these figures seemingly have in common is that they were “right” communists; organically linked by numerous ties to European social democracy and its methodologies in the World War I period. In short the perfect candidates for a post-Soviet world in order to show that communists could be reasonable unlike those “crazies” Lenin ad Trotsky. While the apologists all pay lip service to Lenin and Trotsky, as they must, this slippery left (and sometimes not so left) social democratic mismash is what they crave.


Look, Leon Trotsky (and the same is true for Lenin as well but Trotsky serves better here as the example) over a long career made many mistakes, personal and political. But mark this; when the revolutionary clarions calls sounded for his revolutions (1905 and 1917) he was on the right side of the angels. These others, with the partial exception of Bukharin, were clueless, or worst. And these are the exemplars their respective apologists want to impress today’s youth with. I think not. Hell, if you want tot rehabilitate an old revolutionary, pick Gregory Zinoviev. Warts and all he stood way above this tribe. Better yet though read the guys who knew how to make a revolution when the deal went down, not how to blow it or make apologies for not making it, Lenin and Trotsky.
*********
Workers Vanguard No. 969
19 November 2010

An Exchange on M.N. Roy

(Letters)

August 23, 2010

To the editor of Workers Vanguard:

In your article on India, in the July 30th issue of Workers Vanguard [No. 962], you label the pioneer Indian Communist, M.N. Roy, a “pseudo-Marxist adventurer.” That is one-sided, to say the least.

As a young man, Roy joined a group of brave Bengali revolutionaries who were willing to sacrifice their lives to drive the British from India through force of bombs and bullets. Inspired by the Bolshevik Revolution, Roy became a Communist and made his way to Moscow in 1920 for the Second Comintern Congress, where he changed Lenin’s thinking in the debate on the national-colonial question. As his contemporary, Virendranath Chattopadhyaya, noted at that time, “Roy had the support of Trotsky, Zinoviev, Bukharin, Radek.”

Right after the congress, Lenin dispatched his new protege, with two trainloads of weapons, to remote Tashkent, then a dangerous wilderness, to set up a Communist academy to train cadres for future operations inside British India. It was none other than Trotsky, the commander of the Red Army, who had first proposed this “adventure” a year earlier. After his return to Russia, Roy established his credentials as a first-class Marxist theoretician with his book, India in Transition, which Lenin praised as the first Marxist analysis of India.

Having earned the trust and admiration of the top Bolshevik leaders, Roy rose quickly in the Comintern apparatus. He was regarded as a “leftist” in the political spectrum of the Comintern. If you read his writings in the early ’twenties, you’ll be surprised at how “Trotskyist” they sound.

You denounce Roy for advocating the formation of nationalist “Peoples’ Parties” in the colonies in 1926. In fact, Roy first mooted this policy at the Fourth Comintern Congress in 1922. Neither Lenin nor Trotsky objected. Roy developed this thesis jointly with Karl Radek, the secretary of the Comintern who was allied with Trotsky.

As your tendency has pointed out before, there were weaknesses in some of the experimental Comintern policies in the early 1920s. The whole motivation and purpose of the “workers-peasants party” changed qualitatively between 1922 and 1927.

Let me remind you what James P. Cannon, the leader of the American Trotskyist party, once said about flippant denunciations of Grigory Zinoviev, the Soviet leader who led the vicious, self-serving demagogic attack on Leon Trotsky after Lenin’s death: “I have always been outraged by the impudent pretensions of so many little people to deprecate Zinoviev, and I feel that he deserves justification before history. I have no doubt whatever that in all his big actions, including his most terrible errors, he was motivated fundamentally by devotion to the higher interests of the working class of the whole world…In spite of all, Zinoviev deserves restoration as one of the great hero-martyrs of the revolution.”

And so does Manabendra Nath Roy.

Charles Wesley Ervin

WV replies:

M.N. Roy, whom Ervin so rhapsodizes, was briefly a prominent figure in the early Communist movement, having been recruited from the Indian nationalist movement. After falling out of favor in the Stalinized Communist International (CI), he aligned himself with the Right Opposition led by Nikolai Bukharin and was expelled from the CI in 1929. (As Leon Trotsky asserted, the victory of the program of the Right Opposition would have led to capitalist restoration in the Soviet Union in short order.) Roy rapidly reverted to his roots by becoming an increasingly open apologist for bourgeois nationalism, notably as an advocate of class collaboration with the bourgeois Indian National Congress, later the Congress Party. Revolutionary Marxists fight for national liberation of the colonies and neocolonies of imperialism, but we do not support nationalism, a bourgeois ideology which is an obstacle to social revolution.

Charles Wesley Ervin is the author of a recent book on the history of Trotskyism in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and India, Tomorrow Is Ours (2006). Particularly useful from Ervin’s book is the powerful 1942 program of the Bolshevik-Leninist Party of India. While Ervin has cast himself as an apologist for Roy, the BLPI (like us) had a few choice words concerning Roy’s pernicious role. Ervin’s own text is also informative. He quotes Roy as coming out for “a political party representing the workers and peasants” at the Fourth CI Congress in 1922. Ervin adds: “After the Fourth Congress Roy pursued the People’s Party strategy for India. He wrote article after article, and ultimately a whole book, on how to transform the Congress [Party] into ‘a democratic party of the people with a programme of Revolutionary Nationalism’.” To be accurate, even prior to the Fourth Congress Roy was already arguing that workers and peasants have the same class interests.

Contrary to Ervin’s imputations, Trotsky from the start gave no quarter to the notion of a revolutionary party simultaneously representing the class interests of workers and peasants, as we will see. The peasantry consists of petty-bourgeois layers; the poor peasants can be won to following the lead of the revolutionary proletariat, but such an outcome is by no means the only possibility. As an intermediate social layer, the peasantry can also support outright reactionary forces, or it can serve as a cover for the interests of the big bourgeoisie itself.

A major factor propelling Trotsky to found the International Left Opposition and later the Fourth International, which carried forward the struggle for the authentic internationalist program of Lenin and the Bolsheviks, was the betrayal of the Chinese Revolution of 1925-27 by Stalin and his allies in the CI. At the core of Stalin’s policy was looking to the Guomindang, the party of the Chinese bourgeoisie, as the leader of the Chinese national revolutionary struggle, and the complete liquidation of the young Chinese Communist Party (CCP) into the Guomindang. The “workers and peasants party” theory blossomed as the “bloc of four classes,” as the Guomindang was dubbed.

Stalin made use of the opportunism and adventurism of his operatives in China, principally Mikhail Borodin and later M.N. Roy. (This of course does not excuse his making his minions scapegoats after the fact.) Thousands of Communists and pro-Communist workers paid with their lives for Stalin’s criminal opportunism. In April 1927, Guomindang head Chiang Kai-shek, turning on his CP allies, carried out a bloody coup in Shanghai, murdering thousands of Communist cadres and trade unionists; the catastrophe was then repeated in other cities. To conceal the hideous results of his policy of liquidating the CCP into the Guomindang, Stalin launched a series of cynical ultraleft, adventurist uprisings in China that added greatly to the death toll of Communist comrades, pro-Communist workers and revolutionary peasants, completing the beheading of the Chinese proletariat.

History’s verdict on the Chinese debacle was rendered by Trotsky in his 1928 critique, “The Draft Program of the Communist International: A Criticism of Fundamentals” (printed in The Third International After Lenin). In this crucial indictment of the Stalinized CI, Trotsky quoted from Lenin in 1909 concerning the Russian Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs): “The fundamental idea of their program was not at all that ‘an alliance of the forces’ of the proletariat and the peasantry is necessary, but that there is no class abyss between the former and the latter and that there is no need to draw a line of class demarcation between them, and that the social democratic idea of the petty bourgeois nature of the peasantry that distinguishes it from the proletariat is fundamentally false.” Trotsky added:

“In other words, the two-class workers’ and peasants’ party is the central idea of the Russian Narodniks [populists]. Only in the struggle against this idea could the party of the proletarian vanguard in peasant Russia develop. Lenin persistently and untiringly repeated in the epoch of the 1905 revolution that ‘Our attitude towards the peasantry must be distrustful, we must organize separately from it, be ready for a struggle against it, to the extent that the peasantry comes forward as a reactionary or anti-proletarian force’.” [emphasis added by Trotsky]

Trotsky devoted several pages of the section of Third International After Lenin on “Summary and Perspectives of the Chinese Revolution” to the nature of the peasantry. Quoting from Lenin against the anti-Bolshevik idea of workers and peasants parties, he concludes: “This idea reappears in hundreds of Lenin’s major and minor works. In 1908, he explained: ‘The alliance between the proletariat and the peasantry must in no case be interpreted to mean a fusion of the different classes or parties of the proletariat and the peasantry’” (emphasis added by Trotsky).

Trotsky wrote in the same work: “In the West the idea of a workers’ and peasants’ party is simply ridiculous. In the East it is fatal. In China, India, and Japan this idea is mortally hostile not only to the hegemony of the proletariat in the revolution but also to the most elementary independence of the proletarian vanguard. The workers’ and peasants’ party can only serve as a base, a screen, and a springboard for the bourgeoisie.”

Summarizing Roy’s role in the Indian communist movement, Trotsky wrote in “Who Is Leading the Comintern Today?” (September 1928):

“It is doubtful if greater harm could be done to the Indian proletariat than was done by Zinoviev, Stalin, and Bukharin through the medium of Roy. In India, as in China, the work has been and is oriented almost totally toward bourgeois nationalism…. Through the medium of Roy, the leadership of the International is holding the stirrup for the future Indian Chiang Kai-sheks.... In India the catastrophe is being prepared just as methodically as it was in China. Roy has taken the Chinese example as a model.”

In an article on “Trotskyism in India” in Revolutionary History (Winter 1988-89), Ervin fantasized, “Had Roy gone over to the Left Opposition, rather than to the Right, the whole story of Indian Trotskyism might have been quite different.” Trotsky offered a rather different judgment on Roy, writing in his September 1928 essay: “It is not necessary to say that this national democrat, poisoned by an adulterated ‘Marxism,’ is an implacable foe of ‘Trotskyism’.”

M.N. Roy’s most lasting contribution to “Communism” was his attempt to reconcile it with bourgeois nationalism. His “non-doctrinaire” approach to communist theory, so admired by many academic pseudo-Marxists today, consisted in pushing proletarian subordination to the bourgeoisie in the colonial world. As noted above, this was anything but a new approach, owing much to the Narodniks and SRs. Its results in China in 1925-27 were horrific and counterrevolutionary. And we also note, with the benefit of more hindsight than Lenin and Trotsky had, that the results of bourgeois nationalism in power in the former colonies in the last half of the 20th century and today have similarly been horrific and counterrevolutionary.

Throughout the Indian subcontinent, from Kashmir to Jaffna, the imperialist-dependent capitalist rulers have built upon the fratricidal divisions inherited from imperialism, promoting social backwardness of every kind and practicing state-sponsored communalist slaughter of minority peoples. Real national and social liberation of the working class and oppressed Third World masses cannot be accomplished under the rule of the neocolonial bourgeoisie, as Trotsky explained in putting forward the program of permanent revolution. The first condition for the proletariat being able to carry out its revolutionary role is the scrupulous safeguarding of its class independence from the bourgeoisie.

*A Snapshot View Of The Leaders Of The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution- "Nikky" Bukharin

Click on title to link to the Nicolai Bukharin Internet Archive's copy of Bukharin's testimony from the Moscow Trials. This is not pretty reading but old Nikky held up better than many others. The Arthur Koestler novel, "Darkness At Noon" gives a 'fictional' treatment of this event. Bukharin had a lot to answer for, but he was a Bolshevik as were many 'legally' slaughtered in those days. Stalin has a lot to answer for in the court of revolutionary history.


Markin comment:

I want to spend more time on this revolutionary, his early leftism (in some senses ultra-leftism, especially the opposition on the Brest-Litovsk Treaty with the Germans taking Russia, bloody and broken, out of World War I , his subsequent rightist (right Communist, that is, which in agrarian Russia could only mean conciliating some segment of the vast peasantry) bloc with Stalin and his later, post-Moscow Trials, place in Soviet thinking in the 1980s when he, again, became a 'poster child' for accommodation to the forces of "market socialism". The fate of the Soviet Union,and defeat for the international working class in its struggle against capitalism, rather undercuts the 'virtues' of those theories. But, more later

*From The Archives Of The “Revolutionary History” Journal-August Thalheimer-Notes on a Stay in Catalonia

Click on the headline to link to the Revolutionary History journal entry listed in the title.

Markin comment:

This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discover” the work of our forbears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.

**********

Trotsky and the POUM


From Revolutionary History, Vol.1 No.2, Summer 1988. Used by permission.

Despite Trotsky’s trenchant criticism of the political parties in the workers’ camp in Spain there were few people in Spain who were listening to him. A Spanish section of the International Left Opposition had been formed by Andres Nin after his expulsion from the Spanish Communist Party (PCE) in 1927. For two and a half years – from September 1930 to February 1933 – Trotsky corresponded with Nin who was virtually alone in Barcelona. Relations with other supporters in Madrid were slight, a fact which already revealed a chronic provincialism (an adaptation to Catalan nationalism) in Nin’s political make-up.



During these years Nin oriented himself almost exclusively to the Catalan Federation which was a split from the PCE. It was led by Joaquim Maurin who was a right-centrist who only objected to the ultra-leftist excesses of Stalinism. Nin refused to criticise Maurin openly and refused to build a left opposition faction within Maurin’s group. Indeed, Nin went further in his opportunism and even helped to write the Federation’s documents and edit its paper.



Trotsky’s political ties with Nin were effectively broken in 1933 although Nin did not publicly break with Trotsky until 1935 when he joined forces with Maurin to form the Workers Party of Marxist Unification (POUM). In the intervening period Trotsky upbraided Nin for failing to enter the PSOE (the Spanish Socialist Party) and its union (UGT) whose rank and file were undergoing massive radicalisation in 1934 and 1935.



Despite these failings Trotsky recognised that the POUM, small as it was, organised some of the best vanguard elements in the Catalan working class. (Its influence outside this region was negligible.) It was a lone voice in Spain in unmasking the crimes of the Stalinists in the Moscow Trials. Also during 1935 the POUM developed the best formal criticisms of the Popular Front and the Second Republic in the pages of its paper La Batalla. Its leftism earned it the hostility of even the CNT and UGT leaders who sought to exclude POUMists from their unions.



The POUM was small. Before the Civil War estimates of its size vary from 3000 to 8000. Like most of the left groups it grew during the Civil War and by September 1936, it was about 30 000 strong, with l0 000 in its own militia. Yet much more than to contribute to its numerical growth, the Popular Front government and the Civil War cruelly exposed the centrist politics of the POUM leaders. Capable of left criticisms, the POUM consistently refused to carry through a break with the leaders of the CNT and UGT. Fearful above all of ‘isolation’ from these leaders they diplomatically refused to be critical of their practice. Worse still, they acted as a ‘loyal opposition’ in the Popular Front, often arguing against the PCE’s proposals but accepting to abide by them and even taking responsibility for them when they were defeated.



It is for this reason that Trotsky ruthlessly called the POUM ‘the chief obstacle on the road to the creation of a revolutionary party’. Unlike Stalinism, which refused for a second to adapt to the revolutionary impulses of the masses after July 1936 and instead derailed and destroyed all radical initiatives, the POUM wanted revolution, proclaimed its necessity and even on occasion proposed correct tactics. However, it did this alongside covering-up the weaknesses and betrayals of the anarchist, socialist and even Stalinist leaders. For one whole year La Batalla refused to criticise the CNT leadership!



The best example of the POUM’s centrism was to be found in its attitude to the Popular Front itself. Before the February 1936 elections the POUM campaigned against any coalition with the republican bourgeoisie. Then, on the very eve of the elections, they actually entered the Popular Front – only to renounce it again when the elections were over. However, Nin’s criticism of the Popular Front after February was not that it tied the workers’ organisations to the programme of the bourgeoisie but that it was not genuinely a Popular Front. La Batalla of 17 July 1936 on the eve of the Civil War, called for ‘an authentic government of the Popular Front, with the direct participation of the Socialist and Communist parties’.



Yet, when the Civil War erupted and the initiative was with the masses, the POUM shifted direction sharply and gave voice to the demands of the socialist revolution. In those early weeks the POUM exercised the leadership in the Lerida revolutionary committee. It was the only committee in Catalonia to refuse to have a representative of the republican bourgeoisie on it.



But even here the POUM stopped halfway. It could and should have used its revolutionary influence in towns like Lerida and Gerona to agitate for the formation of district and provincial Soviet-type bodies which would have developed into a decisive challenge to the authority of the Generalidad.



Not only did they refuse this road but Nin went out of his way to explain at great length that Soviet-type bodies were unnecessary and ‘alien’ to Spain. This unforgivable rationalisation for the prejudices and libertarian localism of the anarcho-syndicalist masses was typical of the POUM. Instead of ‘saying what is’, the POUM tried at every turn of events to minimise the differences and above all to conciliate with the leaders of the CNT.



Nin was to get his wish for a ‘genuine’ Popular Front in September 1936. Up until 7 September La Batalla denounced ‘bourgeois ministers’, unlike the PCE which heaped praise upon them. But once the Caballero cabinet was formed (ie, the PSOE leader and the leftist face of the bourgeoisie) in Madrid and the offer was made to the POUM of a seat in the provincial government in Catalonia, all this ceased.



In its place Nin assured the readers of La Batalla that a revolutionary orientation was ‘assured’ whenever there was a majority of ‘socialists’ in the government. Nin went so far as to define the dictatorship of the proletariat as a united front of workers’ parties and trade union leaders who assume governmental power! Nin ‘forgot’ the little matter of the democratic control and accountability of the mass of workers and poor peasants!



Once the POUM took its seat in the Catalan government it also took responsibility for the measures of the government. Of course, the POUM proposed radical measures to its Stalinist and bourgeois allies: an industrial and credit bank; no compensation to factory owners, etc. But these were rejected and the POUM remained respectfully silent. Worse, when the government proposed that there should be a government agent in each factory, or that there should be no further elections of factory councils for two years, the POUM agreed.



Worse even than that – indeed criminal – was Nin’s readiness to accompany President Companys on a tour of Lerida to convince the workers that the powers of the revolutionary committees should be dissolved. Nin argued:



These revolutionary committees, whether Popular Executive Committees, or Committees of Public Safety, represent only part of the workers’ organisations, or else represent them in incorrect proportions ... Obviously, the suppression of their revolutionary initiative is to be regretted, but one must recognise the need to codify ... the various municipal organisations, as much with the aim of replacing them uniformly as of setting them under the authority of the new General Council.

After having performed these valuable services for the bourgeoisie, on 16 December 1936 Nin was kicked out of the government. The POUM’s usefulness was at an end. Trotsky commented:



In the heat of the revolutionary war between classes Nin entered a bourgeois government whose goal it was to destroy the workers’ committees, the foundation of proletarian government. When this goal was reached, Nin was driven out of the bourgeois government.



Postscript

Despite the record of Trotsky’s criticism of the POUM it is sad to reflect that the British Trotskyists grouped around Reg Groves, the Marxist League, and their paper the Red Flag tended to obscure these criticisms and parade the POUM as a revolutionary organisation. The September 1936 Red Flag argued that ‘upon the rapid evolution of POUM into a Bolshevik Party depends the fate of the Spanish Revolution’. This does not reflect Trotsky’s own view of the POUM at the time. The Bolshevik-Leninists of Spain were only formed in the spring of l937 but they were formed in opposition to the POUM.



Keith Hassell

*From The Archives Of The “Revolutionary History” Journal- A Brandlerite Militant-Three Months on the Huesca Front (April-June 1937)

Click on the headline to link to the Revolutionary History journal entry listed in the title.

Markin comment:

This is an excellent documentary source for today’s militants to “discover” the work of our forbears, whether we agree with their programs or not. Mainly not, but that does not negate the value of such work done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.

*Books To While Away The Class Struggle By- The God That Failed- Arthur Koestler’s “Darkness At Noon”

Click on the headline ot link to a "Wikipedia" entry for the writer and novelist, Arthur Koestler.

Recently I have begun to post entries under the headline- “Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By” and "Films To While Away The Class Struggle By"-that will include progressive and labor-oriented songs and films that might be of general interest to the radical public. I have decided to do the same for some books that may perk that same interest under the title in this entry’s headline. Markin

Book Review

Darkness At Noon, Arthur Koestler, Bantam Book, 1941

In what seems, politically, a long time ago, and concerning events that today seemingly took place on a different planet for the average reader, the book under review represented one of the first of a long succession of works on the subject of the “god that failed.” For those too young, like me, to remember back to the first wave of such disillusionment or who were not born at the time this subject centered on, in one form or another, of the breaking by a steady stream of Western intellectuals, writers, and other creative figures with an association, as they knew it, of the “communist experiment” in the Soviet Union (and later, as they attached themselves to other revolutions, in places like China and Cuba), Not the worst among them was the author here, Arthur Koestler, who had at least the distinction of having been in Spain when it mattered.

For some, few actually, that disillusionment might have occurred around the notorious Moscow Trials of the late 1930s where Stalin attempted, successfully, to liquidate his political enemies, the remnants of the Bolshevik Old Guard, their supporters in various Soviet state institutions, including the military, and their international allies in the communist movement. For others it was the noxious Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1939, the source of virtually all the subsequent false ideological linking of fascism and communism as twin ideologies. Later, in the post-World War II period, it was the Khrushchev revelations of Stalin’s crimes, or Hungary 1956, of Czechoslovakia, or…Afghanistan 1979. Whatever the pretext, whatever the validity of the outrageous behavior the net effect of the “break” was an overwhelmingly retrenchment back into the arms of the “god that didn’t fail”- Western imperialism. While those of us who have followed the teachings of Stalin’s great revolutionary nemesis, Leon Trotsky, have our own catalogue of crimes, and our own cries for vengeance against the historic legacy of Stalinism we, unconditionally, preferred not to “outsource” that task to world imperialism.

And the thrust of the last sentence is the central political and moral conundrum not only of writers like Arthur Koestler, who supported the Soviet Union and then backed off when the heat got too high, but of the central character in this novel, Nicolas Rubashov. Rubashov, an Old Guard Bolshevik leading figure, who had lost favor with “Number One” (Stalin), for opposing him in the past, and, more importantly, in the present through acts of political opposition, including actions outside the party. The action of the novel, such as it is, centers of Rubashov’s struggle to capitulate to “Number One” during these upheavals of the Moscow Trials period, on his own terms. Of course, there are no “own terms”, as we know from Khrushchev’s later revelations, except abject grovelings and debasement. The real moral query for Rubashov, who after all was no fool and had been at his revolutionary trade for four decades, much long than the younger element that populated the Stalinist bureaucracy and that has no clue to the heroic struggles of the pre-revolutionary period, is whether this capitulation will be of service, even if a last service to the party. In the end, however, he went down to the “killing” cellars for no good purpose.

It is at that last point that this novel, real enough in the facts behind the scenes of the action, is “unreal”. I mentioned above the name of the great Russian revolutionary, Leon Trotsky. In the early Soviet period in the 1920s he, in the heat of a polemic, made a comment that no individual could be right against the party; the historic vehicle for the liberation of humankind. Many political opponents, of various hues, have used that statement, among others, to tar him with a quasi-Stalinist brush. But that is wrong, at least if one looks at his later career of opposition to Stalin and the Stalin regime, unto the death. And that is the contrast to be drawn between his political actions and those of Koestler/Rubashov. They mixed up the notion of duty to some political organizational form over the truths of the Marxist perspective in the struggle for our communist future. They could never resolve their moral dilemma either by a fruitless death or of a meaningless submission to world imperialism, an imperialism that really had other weapons, real weapons, to fight the “god that failed”. Learn that lesson, and learn it well.

*From The Marxist Archives- The Trotsky-Stalin Struggle Over Communist War Policy-The Anglo-Russian Committee In The 1920s

Click on the title to link to a "Leon Trotsky Internet Archive" article, "The Struggle For Peace And The Anglo-Russian Committee".

Markin comment:

As I mentioned some time back in a commentary on the need to study the Trotsky-Stalin controversy as part of our communist and anti-imperialist education, we of the American ostensibly communist anti-war left are in desperate need of learning the lessons of previous communist work against imperialism. (See "On The Front Lines Of The Struggle Against The Afghan War...", dated December 6, 2009.) That learning, of necessity, requires a look back at some of the historic struggles within the communist movement, primarily for our purposes today the struggle between Trotsky and Stalin in the aftermath of Lenin's death and the isolation of the Russian revolution in the early 1920s. The Trotsky polemic here is one of the early examples of the fight of the Russian Left Opposition, that he led, against the increasingly Stalinized Soviet state and Communist International apparatuses that were "trimming their sails" on the questions of peace and the proper communist attitude toward imperial states. Read on.

*A Snapshot View Of The Leaders Of The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution- "Nikky" Bukharin

Click on title to link to Wikipedia's entry for the 1917 Bolshevik revolutionary leader, writer and early Left Communist oppositionist Nicolas Bukharin.

Markin comment:

I want to spend more time on this revolutionary, his early leftism (in some senses ultra-leftism, especially the opposition on the Brest-Litovsk Treaty with the Germans taking Russia, bloody and broken, out of World War I , his subsequent rightist (right Communist, that is, which in agrarian Russia could only mean conciliating some segment of the vast peasantry) bloc with Stalin and his later, post-Moscow Trials, place in Soviet thinking in the 1980s when he, again, became a 'poster child' for accommodation to the forces of "market socialism". The fate of the Soviet Union,and defeat for the international working class in its struggle against capitalism, rather undercuts the 'virtues' of those theories. But, more later

*A Thoughtful Academic Look At The Bolshevik Revolution- The Masterful Work Of Historian Edward Hallet Carr

Click on title to link to Wikipedia's entry for the Bolshevik's post-Russian Civil War turn (retreat?) from "war communism" to the "New Economic Policy" (NEP). As is noted in that entry, and as I have noted previously in this space, there are disputes over the wisdom of pursuing this policy and its implementation, including the question of timing by Trotsky. In any case although this link will give a basic outline of what the arguments were all about it is not provided as a substitute for reading Carr's informative, and painstaking, analysis. The points that he makes in his book is where we should start to argue about this policy.

Book Review

The Bolshevik Revolution 1917-1923, Volume Two, Edward Hallet Carr, The Macmillan Company, New York, 1951

The first couple of paragraphs have been used in other reviews of E.H. Carr’s fourteen volume master work on the consolidation, isolation, stabilization and subsequent Stalinization of the Soviet Union in the early days.

“In early reviews of books on the Russian Revolution, including Leon Trotsky’s seminal study of the revolutionary seizure of power itself, “The History Of The Russian Revolution”, I used the following paragraph to introduce the reviews. I am reposting it here because it is appropriate to place the work of the British master bourgeois historian of the whole early period of that revolution, Edward Hallet Carr:

“This year is the 90th Anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution (2007, Markin). I have endlessly pointed out that the October Revolution in Russia was the definitive political event of the 20th century. The resulting change in the balance of world power with the demise of the Soviet Union in the 1990’s is beginning to look like a definitive political event for the 21st century, as well. I have urged those interested in the fight for socialism to read, yes to read, about the Russian Revolution in order to learn some lessons from that experience. Leon Trotsky’s three volume “History of the Russian Revolution” is obviously a good place to start for a pro-Bolshevik overview. If you are looking for a general history of the revolution or want an analysis of what the revolution meant for the fate of various nations after World War I or its affect on world geopolitics look elsewhere. E.H. Carr’s “History Of The Bolshevik Revolution” offers an excellent multi-volume set that tells that story through the 1920’s. Or if you want to know what the various parliamentary leaders, both bourgeois and Soviet, were thinking and doing in 1917 from a moderately leftist viewpoint read Sukhanov’s “Notes on the Russian Revolution”. For a more journalistic account John Reed’s classic “Ten Days That Shook the World” is invaluable. Forward to new October Revolutions.”

Needless to say E.H. Carr, as noted above, is in some pretty good company and properly belongs there as well. I noted that his work entails a several volume effort. The present review is of Volume One of his three volume “History Of The Bolshevik Revolution 1917-1923”. A review of the other two volumes will follow as will other volumes on the Stalin-Trotsky struggle for the direction of the revolution and the eventual Stalinization of the Bolshevik Party, the Communist International and the Soviet state.

Naturally, Carr in his first volume gave a quick historical narrative of the pre-revolutionary struggles among the socialist and democratic factions and the immediate post- Bolshevik seizure of power period but from there spend most of that volume dealing with the questions of soviet constitutionality and the socialist implementation of the right to national self-determination for the previously subject nations (or wannabe nations) of the former Tsarist Empire. In Volume Two, under review here, he goes into great detail about the various strategies that the Bolsheviks used in order to consolidate the economic foundations of the Soviet state. As this is the first workers state to, at least by the end of the period under discussion, to retain power (unlike the previous but nevertheless still revered experience of the Paris Commune in 1871) this is an important period to learn about.

It would seem needless to say that much of Bolshevik economic policy (and this includes financial policy as well that Carr spends some time on) in the process of taking over a broken, war-ravaged bourgeois/semi-feudal overwhelmingly agrarian state was “by the seat of the pants”. Partly this was by design, as previously Marxist experience had concentrated on the struggle for power and left the outlines of the future socialist and then communist society to the actual conditions at the time of the seizure of power. And part this was due to the expectation that many economic problems would be solved by the successes of revolutions in the more industrially advanced West, especially Germany. This concept, along with some serious idealistic communist-derived notions abut running a broken state (made worst, shortly after the seizure of power, by all manner of civil strife and civil war), colored more than its fair share in the workings of the upper councils of the Soviet financial and economic apparatus.

The central value of this volume is in Carr’s breakdown of the three phases of the early days of the revolution: the immediate post-seizure period when the agrarian question- “land to the tiller”- drove much of economic policy in order to feed the cities, keep industry alive and satisfy that great land hunger of the peasants/soldiers that the Bolsheviks were able to retain the support of against the other political parties contending for poor and middle peasant support; the period of “war communism” driven by the necessities of keeping state power against white counter-revolution and to feed the armies: and, the rudiments of the New Economic Policy (NEP) which followed in the aftermath of victory and was recognized as a necessary “retreat” back to some capitalist activity in order to jump start the economy. Carr fully addresses the various controversies over policy both within the increasingly isolated but still politically robust Bolshevik Party and the various classes and part of classes in society. His strongest presentation is the period of the “retreat” to the NEP where he very carefully puts forth the compelling case for that policy.

Along the way we are also treated to other important controversies like the question of workers control of individual factories; the necessary use of bourgeois economic specialists in those factories in the transition period; the role of the state in the distribution process; the role of trade unions in a workers state; the contrast between the necessity of giving land to the tiller and the socialist perspective of the collectivization of land; the role of money, concessions and the state monopoly on foreign trade; and, many other questions that not only concerned the besieged Bolshevik then but will confront a future workers state. I would only add here what I have written in previous reviews. Carr, more than most historians has attempted to understand what the Bolsheviks were trying to do without letting his own British foreign service background (a plus here for analytical purposes) color his narrative too much. That should be considered high praise coming from this quarter. In any case I have not done justice to Carr’s extensive gathering of materials, his copious use of sources, his plentiful footnotes and bibliography so you are just going to have to read this book (and the other volumes as well).

*From The Marx Archives-"In Defense Of Theory- Or Ignorance Never Yet Helped Anyone"- A Guest Commentary

Click on title to link to Renegade Eye's posting of an entry by Alan Wood concerning-"In Defense Of Theory- Or Ignorance Never Yet Helped Anyone". True enough. Read on.

*Labor's Untold Story- The Twisted Political Career Of Communist Party Leader William Z. Foster

Click on title to link to James P. Cannon's article (in the form of letters in 1954 to historian of the early American Communist Party, Theodore Draper)about the political perspective of William Z. Foster in the early days when they were political associates. Very interesting reading about Foster's political appetites and direction early on.

Every Month Is Labor History Month

This Commentary is part of a series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!

As a first run through, and in some cases until I can get enough other sources in order to make a decent presentation, I will start with short entries on each topic that I will eventually go into greater detail about. Or, better yet, take my suggested topic and run with it yourself.

*IN THE TIME OF THE STALINIST GREAT PURGE TRIALS OF THE 1930s

Click on title to link to the Leon Trotsky Internet Archive's article by Leon Trotsky from March 1936 titled "Stalin Plans Wholesale Persecution".

Commentary

On the 70th Anniversary of the Great Stalinist Purge Trials

An October 5, 2007 Associated Press news item out of Moscow concerning discovery of some long buried bodies that had been shot caught my eye. It seems that some workers on a reconstruction site in that city had unearthed a few dozen bodies buried since the 1930’s, many of them showing signs of having been shot in the head. The newsworthy point is that this building was adjacent to the infamous KGB headquarters at the Lubyianka Prison, site of many political executions during the time of the Stalinist reign of terror at that time. The unearthed bodies are presumed victims of those purges. It brought to my mind that this is the 70th Anniversary of the height of that madness. This is hardly an anniversary occasion for celebration, except for those few unreconstructed Stalinists who are muttering in their mush about Trotskyite conspiracies, agents of Hitler and the Mikado and other such babble. It is an appropriate time, however, to make a few comments about what all that evil time meant politically and on the destructive nature of Stalinism as the ‘face ‘of socialism that still has ramifications for the international working class these many years later.

Many years ago I read British historian Robert Conquest’s study The Great Terror that vividly describes the arbitrariness of the prosecutions and executions, their extent and the chilling atmosphere on the political life, such as it was, of the times. The book is still worthwhile reading, with the following caution, in order to get a partial flavor of the bleakness of the times and the extent of the political freeze placed on Russian society. Conquest had his own axe to grind and was using his study as prima facie evidence that Stalinist ‘socialism in one country’ was a retrograde step in the fight for human progress. He thus comfortably took his place as an active anti-communist agent on behalf of Western imperialism. Alas, he was not alone in such endeavors. A virtual cottage industry grew up around that premise, especially at the height of the Cold War in the 1950’s and especially by the ‘god that failed’ crowd of former Stalinist devotees. I would only add that anti-Stalinist, pro-communist militants, led during the 1930’s by the Bolshevik revolutionary Leon Trotsky and others, did, and today can, quote chapter and verse the crimes, high and low, of Stalinism with the best of the anti-communist cottage artisans. The difference, and no small matter, is that we did not, and do not, ‘outsource’ this fight to international imperialism.

One cannot mention the Stalinist purges without mentioning the name of Leon Trotsky, a central figure in this drama. Yes, there was a general mopping up of any and all previous political oppositions, including a significant number of former Stalinist factionists (particularly from the so-called “Congress of Victors” of 1934). Yes, anyone conceivably political, or who knew anyone conceivably political, or who just ran afoul of the KGB was rounded up. And beyond that anyone who, for the most bizarre and arbitrary reasons, including wrong nationality was suspect. However, in the end it was the three well-known political trials that not only captured the headlines but that can also serve today as an explanation for the rationale, if that is the word, of those events. And at the center was the hated figure of Trotsky, who also faced the Stalinist executioner’s blade later. I might add that the vaunted Western press of the times, notably in America, the "New York Times" and the liberal "Nation" magazine took the accusations at the trials as good coin. They were more than willing to give Vyshinsky, the chief prosecutor, and a passing grade on his outrageous conduct at the trials. Of course, those were the ‘popular front against fascism days’ of blessed liberal memory and they were all good fellows and true- Stalinists included. Oh well, the names, individual and political, change but some things never change.

Let us be clear Zinoviev, Kamenev, Radek, Rykov, Bukharin and the other lesser prisoners in the dock for the most part were at that time political opponents of Trotsky’s and who, for the most part, had capitulated more than once to Stalin. But they also formed the core of the Bolshevik Party that made the revolution in 1917. To suspect that cadre who had spent their whole lives in the service of the revolution to have really spent that time trying to destroy the revolution defies description. Even the editors of the Nation, in their more lucid moments, should have been able to fathom that. But here is the point- those in the dock may not have been our people, but they were our people. It may be not be important today to most people but these cadres were in no need of good conduct medals by a later generation of Stalinists, like Khrushchev and Gorbachev. Particularly not Trotsky, who fought Stalinism to the end.


During much of the Cold War the ‘face’ of Stalinism to the Western public was the Gulags, the labor concentration camps. To those of us with a greater political focus the ‘face’ of Stalinism was the purge trials and political murders of the 1930's. Under either understanding we are very, very far away from the promises held out by the socialist vision. The sad political fact is, however, that Stalinism was never politically defeated by anti-Stalinist, pro-socialist militants. Rather the demise of the Soviet Union and the other Eastern European states run by Stalinist bureaucracies imploded. The various causes of that implosion are beyond the scope of what I want to comment on here. However, we have, and we continue to pay a huge political price for the fact that we were unable to do that task of politically defeating Stalinism. As a result the general political consciousness of the vast majority of the international working class has turned against socialism as a solution to the pressing human problems of the day. In short, we have been left with the Promethean task of putting socialism as a societal solution back on the agenda. If there is one more reason to hate the Stalinist betrayal of socialism that, my friends, says it in a nutshell.

Note: December 13, 2007. A later report from Moscow indicated that these bodies were not victims of the purges in the 1930’s but had been killed sometime in the 19th century. The political points discussed in the commentary, however, are still relevant.