Showing posts with label classless society. Show all posts
Showing posts with label classless society. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 01, 2019

*Remember The Haymarket Martyrs- May Day Is Our Workers' Holiday

Click On Title To Link To BAAM Newsletter (local Boston anarchist collective) site for two good introductory articles about the labor struggles of the 19th century and a biographic sketch of the heroic anarchist (and later American Communist Party member) Lucy Parsons, widow of Haymarket martyr Albert Parson and revolutionary fighter in her own right. While my sympathies are clearly with the communist wing on the left wing continuum, especially the struggles led by Leon Trotsky to save the heritage of the Russian Revolution in the 1920’s and 1930’s, the main points of these articles are made by kindred spirits that all labor militants can stand in solidarity with as part of our common labor history.

Commentary

As is always appropriate on international working class holidays and days of remembrance here is the song most closely associated with that movement “The Internationale” in English, French and German. I will not vouch for the closeness of the translations but certainly of the spirit. Workers Of The World Unite!


The Internationale [variant words in square brackets]


Arise ye workers [starvelings] from your slumbers
Arise ye prisoners of want
For reason in revolt now thunders
And at last ends the age of cant.
Away with all your superstitions
Servile masses arise, arise
We'll change henceforth [forthwith] the old tradition [conditions]
And spurn the dust to win the prize.

So comrades, come rally
And the last fight let us face
The Internationale unites the human race.
So comrades, come rally
And the last fight let us face
The Internationale unites the human race.

No more deluded by reaction
On tyrants only we'll make war
The soldiers too will take strike action
They'll break ranks and fight no more
And if those cannibals keep trying
To sacrifice us to their pride
They soon shall hear the bullets flying
We'll shoot the generals on our own side.

No saviour from on high delivers
No faith have we in prince or peer
Our own right hand the chains must shiver
Chains of hatred, greed and fear
E'er the thieves will out with their booty [give up their booty]
And give to all a happier lot.
Each [those] at the forge must do their duty
And we'll strike while the iron is hot.




________________________________________

L'Internationale

Debout les damnés de la terre
Debout les forçats de la faim
La raison tonne en son cratère
C'est l'éruption de la fin
Du passe faisons table rase
Foules, esclaves, debout, debout
Le monde va changer de base
Nous ne sommes rien, soyons tout

C'est la lutte finale
Groupons-nous, et demain (bis)
L'Internationale
Sera le genre humain

Il n'est pas de sauveurs suprêmes
Ni Dieu, ni César, ni tribun
Producteurs, sauvons-nous nous-mêmes
Décrétons le salut commun
Pour que le voleur rende gorge
Pour tirer l'esprit du cachot
Soufflons nous-mêmes notre forge
Battons le fer quand il est chaud

L'état comprime et la loi triche
L'impôt saigne le malheureux
Nul devoir ne s'impose au riche
Le droit du pauvre est un mot creux
C'est assez, languir en tutelle
L'égalité veut d'autres lois
Pas de droits sans devoirs dit-elle
Egaux, pas de devoirs sans droits

Hideux dans leur apothéose
Les rois de la mine et du rail
Ont-ils jamais fait autre chose
Que dévaliser le travail
Dans les coffres-forts de la bande
Ce qu'il a crée s'est fondu
En décrétant qu'on le lui rende
Le peuple ne veut que son dû.

Les rois nous saoulaient de fumées
Paix entre nous, guerre aux tyrans
Appliquons la grève aux armées
Crosse en l'air, et rompons les rangs
S'ils s'obstinent, ces cannibales
A faire de nous des héros
Ils sauront bientôt que nos balles
Sont pour nos propres généraux

Ouvriers, paysans, nous sommes
Le grand parti des travailleurs
La terre n'appartient qu'aux hommes
L'oisif ira loger ailleurs
Combien, de nos chairs se repaissent
Mais si les corbeaux, les vautours
Un de ces matins disparaissent
Le soleil brillera toujours.


________________________________________

Die Internationale

Wacht auf, Verdammte dieser Erde,
die stets man noch zum Hungern zwingt!
Das Recht wie Glut im Kraterherde
nun mit Macht zum Durchbruch dringt.
Reinen Tisch macht mit dem Bedranger!
Heer der Sklaven, wache auf!
Ein nichts zu sein, tragt es nicht langer
Alles zu werden, stromt zuhauf!

Volker, hort die Signale!
Auf, zum letzten Gefecht!
Die Internationale
Erkampft das Menschenrecht

Es rettet uns kein hoh'res Wesen
kein Gott, kein Kaiser, noch Tribun
Uns aus dem Elend zu erlosen
konnen wir nur selber tun!
Leeres Wort: des armen Rechte,
Leeres Wort: des Reichen Pflicht!
Unmundigt nennt man uns Knechte,
duldet die Schmach langer nicht!

In Stadt und Land, ihr Arbeitsleute,
wir sind die starkste Partei'n
Die Mussigganger schiebt beiseite!
Diese Welt muss unser sein;
Unser Blut sei nicht mehr der Raben
und der machtigen Geier Frass!
Erst wenn wir sie vertrieben haben
dann scheint die Sonn' ohn' Unterlass!

Monday, November 08, 2010

*A Snapshot View Of The Leaders Of The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution-Alexandra Kollontai

Click on title to link to the Alexandra Kollontai Internet Archives for the works of 1917 Bolshevik secondary revolutionary leader Alexandra Kollantai.

Markin comment:

No revolution can succeed without men and women of Kollontai's caliber. As Trotsky noted, on more than one occasion, the West, for lots of reasons, in his day had not produced such cadre. I believe that observation, for the most part, still holds today.

Thursday, May 27, 2010

*On Using The "C" Word- "C-------t" In Public- A Note

Click on the headline to link a website that features George Orwell's "Politics and the English Language."

Markin comment:

Politics, including revolutionary politics, has its up and down moments; this one is an up one and moreover is also a “teachable” moment to boot. Recently I received a message from a young leftist militant, or at least that is how I would categorize him politically, asking about the various terms used in our left-wing movement to define sundry political types and trends. He was, not surprisingly, when one thinks about it confused over the common use and interchangeability (whoa!), including by this writer, of terms like left-wing militant, leftist, socialist , revolutionary socialist, workers party, revolutionary labor party, workers government, dictatorship of the proletariat, Bolshevik, and, the holy of holies, Communist, the “C” word of the headline.

Well, frankly, part of the interchangeability is to vary up the usage in an article or series of articles, depending, sometimes, on the subject and to whom the entry is directed. I will, however, let the old socialist writer George Orwell take me to task on this one. For those not familiar with Orwell’s work, “Politics and the English Language”, I have linked that gem above. Now Orwell had many political faults, including that funny little quirk of a touching faith in British imperialism in the early Cold War period of the 1940s shortly before his death in 1949, but he had it exactly right about the virtues of political precision. I can only say, as I have on other occasions, that I have honored that wisdom in the breech more than in the observance on more occasions that I care to recount.

But to address the young militant leftist’s point more fully I will try to draw some differences in terminology starting with the categorization of "militant leftist". I would say today that political designation would include someone against the American imperial wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and other imperial adventures and willing to go into the streets on the question. Someone also, perhaps, vaguely disenchanted with international capitalism but with no particular strategy to change it beyond some “tinkering” with the system. In short, the predicament of the vast majority of those, especially of the young, who are looking for a way out of the impasse posed by capitalism. Today, one may wear the badge “militant leftist” with some honor. Whether that will remain true in the future will depend on not yet known circumstances.

Beyond that general political characterization in order to see whether our fellows fall on “the side of the angels” or not, there is something of real and defining history in the usage of certain terms in the socialist movement. Before World War I, and the overwhelming betrayal by many of the European Social Democratic parties in supporting their own country’s capitalist government's war efforts, that term was in general usage and highly regarded. Even then, as factions developed within these “party of the whole class” organizations, reformist and revolutionary socialist wings were apparent. After the Russian Revolution of 1917 the clear defining line was between the now committed reformist Social Democrats and the equally committed revolutionary Communists. That distinction reflected the Bolshevik “hard” position that it was necessary to overthrow the capitalist governments of the world and create new working class institutions that would serve to put society on the road to socialism. I submit that that distinction is still a good approximation for the differences between ostensibly socialist organizations today.

I want to give special attention to the terms revolutionary labor party, workers party, dictatorship of the proletariat, and workers government, terms that are strewn all over many of the entries in this space. These expressions are terms of art in the revolutionary movement so some clarity is necessary. When I propagandize for a workers party my idea is not some generic version of the old Labor Party in Great Britain that serves at the sufferance of the Queen but of a revolutionary labor party based on a transitional program of demands that require a socialist overturn of society to be implemented. And that overturn is reflected in the idea of a workers government. That, my friends, is nothing less than the old Marxist idea of the “dictatorship of the proletariat.” –the first tentative step to the socialist stage of development and then to communism, the classless society. Now if this information does not help let me put it this way. If I have a preference as to what I want to be called, politically, and would be happy to have etched on my grave marker then inscribe the “C” word please. And you should be too. In the meantime I will,and hopefully you will also, continue to fight for our communist future-the classless society.

Monday, March 15, 2010

*A Snapshot View Of The Leaders Of The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution-Alexandra Kollontai

Click on title to link to the "Alexandra Kollontai Internet Archives" for the works of this 1917 Bolshevik secondary revolutionary leader Alexandra Kollantai, and later Workers Opposition leader.

March Is Women's History Month

Markin comment:

No revolution can succeed without men and women of Kollontai's caliber. As Trotsky noted, on more than one occasion, the West, for lots of reason, in his day had not produced such cadre. I believe that observation, for the most part, is even truer today.

Saturday, February 27, 2010

*Notes From The Old Home Town- On "Now" Photos From Classmates-Ouch!

Click on the headline to link to a "YouTube" film clip of Iris Dement performing "Our Town".

Markin comment:

Okay, okay I know this is not related to the song mentioned at the top of the story but I just wanted an excuse to listen to my "Arkie Angel".

*****

Not all the entries in this space are connected to politics, although surely most of them can be boiled down into some political essence, if you try hard enough. The following is one of those instances where trying to gain any “political traction”, or as I am fond of saying, drawing any “lessons” would be foolhardy. I should also note that this entry is part of a continuing, if sporadic, series of “trips down memory lane” provoked by a fellow high school classmate who has been charged with keeping tabs on old classmates and their doings, even those of old-line communists like this writer. Go figure?

******

This comment was provoked by viewing a number of "now" photos of fellow old geezer classmates. As I noted in the headline-Ouch!

*******

On “Now” Photos- For Robert F.

“’Cause I’ve memorized each line in your face and not even death can ever erase the story they tell to me”-a line from the folksinger/songwriter Iris DeMent’s hauntingly beautiful song, “After You’re Gone”. (You can Google for the rest of the lyrics. Some of her music is on “YouTube but I could not find this one.)

Well, of course, those lyrics only apply to our male classmates. After all Iris is singing about her gone man. I do not, age of sexual equality or not, want to extend their application to our sister classmates because I do not need to have every cyber-stone in the universe thrown at me. But those same lyrics do bring me to the purpose of today’s entry. As part of getting a 'feel’ for writing about the old high school I peruse the class profiles and a number of you have placed your current photos there, although a number of people, including myself, are apparently camera-shy. Some, however, like the, to be polite, bleary-eyed Chase brothers are not at all shy. (By the way, Jimmie and John, and others as well, what is up with the hats? We are Kennedy-era boys and hats were not part of our uniform.) Or like the born-again "muscle man", Bill Cady, formerly mentioned in this space as the slender, silky-strided, gracefully-gaited class star runner. That little fact forms the basis for my comment.

I have to admit that I have been startled by some of the photos. Many of them seem to have been taken by your grandchildren just before their naps. Isn’t the digital age supposed to have made the camera instantly user-friendly? Why all the soft-focus, looking through a fish tank kind of shots. And why does everyone seem to be have been photographed down the far end of some dark corridor or by someone about six miles away? Nobody expects Bachrach-quality photos but something is amiss here.

In contrast, a new arrival on this photo scene, Robert Flame, has found just the right approach. Initially, Robert placed a recent shot of himself on his profile page. Frankly, the old codger looked like he was wanted in about six states for “kiting” checks, and maybe had done a little “time”. More recently, however, his page has been graced with a stock photo provided by the site, a tastefully-shot, resplendent, wide old tree. Wise choice. Automatically I now associate Robert with the tree of life, with oneness with the universe, with solidity, with the root of matter in him, and with bending but not breaking. Moreover, I do not have to suppress a need to dial 911, but rather can think of Robert as one who walks with kings, as a sage for the ages. And nothing can ever erase the story that tells to me.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Sunday, November 08, 2009

*A Snapshot View Of The Leaders Of The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution-Alexandra Kollontai

Click on title to link to the Alexandra Kollontai Internet Archives for the works of 1917 Bolshevik secondary revolutionary leader Alexandra Kollantai. No revolution can succeed without men and women of Kollontai's caliber. As Trotsky noted, on more than one occasion, the West, for lots of reason, in his day had not produced such cadre. I believe that observation, for the most part, still holds today.

Alexandra Kollontai 1909

The Social Basis of the Woman Question

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Source: abstract from Selected Writings of Alexandra Kollontai, Allison & Busby, 1977;
First Published: 1909, as a pamphlet;
Translated and Edited: by Alix Holt;
Transcribed: Andy Blunden for marxists.org;
Proofed: and corrected by Chris Clayton 2006.


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Leaving it to the bourgeois scholars to absorb themselves in discussion of the question of the superiority of one sex over the other, or in the weighing of brains and the comparing of the psychological structure of men and women, the followers of historical materialism fully accept the natural specificities of each sex and demand only that each person, whether man or woman, has a real opportunity for the fullest and freest self-determination, and the widest scope for the development and application of all natural inclinations. The followers of historical materialism reject the existence of a special woman question separate from the general social question of our day. Specific economic factors were behind the subordination of women; natural qualities have been a secondary factor in this process. Only the complete disappearance of these factors, only the evolution of those forces which at some point in the past gave rise to the subjection of women, is able in a fundamental way to influence and change their social position. In other words, women can become truly free and equal only in a world organised along new social and productive lines.

This, however, does not mean that the partial improvement of woman’s life within the framework of the modem system is impossible. The radical solution of the workers’ question is possible only with the complete reconstruction of modem productive relations; but must this prevent us from working for reforms which would serve to satisfy the most urgent interests of the proletariat? On the contrary, each new gain of the working class represents a step leading mankind towards the kingdom of freedom and social equality: each right that woman wins brings her nearer the defined goal of full emancipation. ...

Social democracy was the first to include in its programme the demand for the equalisation of the rights of women with those of men; in speeches and in print the party demands always and everywhere the withdrawal of limitations affecting women; it is the party’s influence alone that has forced other parties and governments to carry out reforms in favour of women. And in Russia this party is not only the defender of women in terms of its theoretical positions but always and everywhere adheres to the principle of women’s equality.

What, in this case, hinders our “equal righters” from accepting the support of this strong and experienced party? The fact is that however “radical” the equal righters may be, they are still loyal to their own bourgeois class. Political freedom is at the moment an essential prerequisite for the growth and power of the Russian bourgeoisie, without it, all the economic welfare of the latter will turn out to have been built upon sand. The demand for political equality is for women a necessity that stems from life itself.

The slogan of “access to the professions” has ceased to suffice; only direct participation in the government of the country promises to assist in raising women’s economic situation. Hence the passionate desire of women of the middle bourgeoisie to gain the franchise, and hence their hostility to the modern bureaucratic system.

However, in their demands for political equality our feminists are like their foreign sisters; the wide horizons opened by social democratic learning remain alien and incomprehensible to them. The feminists seek equality in the framework of the existing class society, in no way do they attack the basis of this society. They fight for prerogatives for themselves, without challenging the existing prerogatives and privileges. We do not accuse the representatives of the bourgeois women’s movement of failure to understand the matter; their view of things flows inevitably from their class position. ...

The Struggle for Economic Independence
First of all we must ask ourselves whether a single united women’s movement is possible in a society based on class contradictions. The fact that the women who take part in the liberation movement do not represent one homogeneous mass is clear, to every unbiased observer.

The women’s world is divided, just as is the world of men, into two camps; the interests and aspirations of one group of women bring it close to the bourgeois class, while the other group has close connections with the proletariat, and its claims for liberation encompass a full solution to the woman question. Thus although both camps follow the general slogan of the “liberation of women”, their aims and interests are different. Each of the groups unconsciously takes its starting point from the interests of its own class, which gives a specific class colouring to the targets and tasks it sets itself. ...

However apparently radical the demands of the feminists, one must not lose sight of the fact that the feminists cannot, on account of their class position, fight for that fundamental transformation of the contemporary economic and social structure of society without which the liberation of women cannot be complete.

If in certain circumstances the short-term tasks of women of all classes coincide, the final aims of the two camps, which in the long term determine the direction of the movement and the tactics to be used, differ sharply. While for the feminists the achievement of equal rights with men in the framework of the contemporary capitalist world represents a sufficiently concrete end in itself, equal rights at the present time are, for the proletarian women, only a means of advancing the struggle against the economic slavery of the working class. The feminists see men as the main enemy, for men have unjustly seized all rights and privileges for themselves, leaving women only chains and duties. For them a victory is won when a prerogative previously enjoyed exclusively by the male sex is conceded to the “fair sex”. Proletarian women have a different attitude. They do not see men as the enemy and the oppressor; on the contrary, they think of men as their comrades, who share with them the drudgery of the daily round and fight with them for a better future. The woman and her male comrade are enslaved by the same social conditions; the same hated chains of capitalism oppress their will and deprive them of the joys and charms of life. It is true that several specific aspects of the contemporary system lie with double weight upon women, as it is also true that the conditions of hired labour sometimes turn working women into competitors and rivals to men. But in these unfavourable situations, the working class knows who is guilty. ...

The woman worker, no less than her brother in misfortune, hates that insatiable monster with its gilded maw which, concerned only to drain all the sap from its victims and to grow at the expense of millions of human lives, throws itself with equal greed at man, woman and child. Thousands of threads bring the working man close. The aspirations of the bourgeois woman, on the other hand, seem strange and incomprehensible. They are not warming to the proletarian heart; they do not promise the proletarian woman that bright future towards which the eyes of all exploited humanity are turned. ...

The proletarian women’s final aim does not, of course, prevent them from desiring to improve their status even within the framework of the current bourgeois system, but the realisation of these desires is constantly hindered by obstacles that derive from the very nature of capitalism. A woman can possess equal rights and be truly free only in a world of socialised labour, of harmony and justice. The feminists are unwilling and incapable of understanding this; it seems to them that when equality is formally accepted by the letter of the law they will be able to win a comfortable place for themselves in the old world of oppression, enslavement and bondage, of tears and hardship. And this is true up to a certain point. For the majority of women of the proletariat, equal rights with men would mean only an equal share in inequality, but for the “chosen few”, for the bourgeois women, it would indeed open doors to new and unprecedented rights and privileges that until now have been enjoyed by men of the bourgeois class alone. But each new concession won by the bourgeois woman would give her yet another weapon for the exploitation of her younger sister and would go on increasing the division between the women of the two opposite social camps. Their interests would be more sharply in conflict, their aspirations more obviously in contradiction.

Where, then, is that general “woman question”? Where is that unity of tasks and aspirations about which the feminists have so much to say? A sober glance at reality shows that such unity does not and cannot exist. In vain the feminists try to assure themselves that the “woman question” has nothing to do with that of the political party and that “its solution is possible only with the participation of all parties and all women”; as one of the radical German feminists has said, the logic of facts forces us to reject this comforting delusion of the feminists. ...



The conditions and forms of production have subjugated women throughout human history, and have gradually relegated them to the position of oppression and dependence in which most of them existed until now.

A colossal upheaval of the entire social and economic structure was required before women could begin to retrieve the significance and independence they had lost. Problems which at one time seemed too difficult for the most talented thinkers have now been solved by the inanimate but all-powerful conditions of production. The same forces which for thousands of years enslaved women now, at a further stage of development, are leading them along the path to freedom and independence. ...



The woman question assumed importance for woman of the bourgeois classes approximately in the middle of the nineteenth century – a considerable time after the proletarian women had arrived in the labour arena. Under the impact of the monstrous successes of capitalism, the middle classes of the population were hit by waves of need. The economic changes had rendered the financial situation of the petty and middle bourgeoisie unstable, and the bourgeois women were faced with a dilemma of menacing proportions, either accept poverty, or achieve the right to work. Wives and daughters of these social groups began to knock at the doors of the universities, the art salons, the editorial houses, the offices, flooding to the professions that were open to them. The desire of bourgeois women to gain access to science and the higher benefits of culture was not the result of a sudden, maturing need but stemmed from that same question of “daily bread”.

The women of the bourgeoisie met, from the very first, with stiff resistance from men. A stubborn battle was waged between the professional men, attached to their “cosy little jobs”, and the women who were novices in the matter of earning their daily bread. This struggle gave rise to “feminism” – the attempt of bourgeois women to stand together and pit their common strength against the enemy, against men. As they entered the labour arena these women proudly referred to themselves as the “vanguard of the women’s movement”. They forgot that in this matter of winning economic independence they were, as in other fields, travelling in the footsteps of their younger sisters and reaping the fruits of the efforts of their blistered hands.

Is it then really possible to talk of the feminists pioneering the road to women’s work, when in every country hundreds of thousands of proletarian women had flooded the factories and workshops, taking over one branch of industry after another, before the bourgeois women’s movement was ever born? Only thanks to the fact that the labour of women workers had received recognition on the world market were the bourgeois women able to occupy the independent position in society in which the feminists take so much pride. ...



We find it difficult to point to even one fact in the history of the struggle of the proletarian women to improve their material conditions to which the general feminist movement has contributed significantly. Whatever the proletarian women have achieved in the sphere of raising their own living standards is the result of the efforts of the working class in general and of themselves in particular. The history of the struggle of the working women for better conditions of labour and for a more decent life is the history of the struggle of the proletariat for its liberation.

What, if not the fear of a dangerous explosion of proletarian dissatisfaction, forces the factory owners to raise the price of labour, reduce hours and introduce better working conditions? What, if not the fear of “labour unrest”, persuades the government to establish legislation to limit the exploitation of labour by capital? ...



There is not one party in the world that has taken up the defence of women as social democracy has done. The working woman is first and foremost a member of the working class, and the more satisfactory the position and the general welfare of each member of the proletarian family, the greater the benefit in the long run to the whole of the working class. ...



In face of the growing social difficulties, the sincere fighter for the cause must stop in sad bewilderment. She cannot but see how little the general women’s movement has done for proletarian women, how incapable it is of improving the working and living conditions of the working class. The future of humanity must seem grey, drab and uncertain to those women who are fighting for equality but who have not adopted the proletarian world outlook or developed a firm faith in the coming of a more perfect social system. While the contemporary capitalist world remains unchanged, liberation must seem to them incomplete and impartial. What despair must grip the more thoughtful and sensitive of these women. Only the working class is capable of maintaining morale in the modem world with its distorted social relations. With firm and measured step it advances steadily towards its aim. It draws the working women to its ranks. The proletarian woman bravely starts out on the thorny path of labour. Her legs sag; her body is torn. There are dangerous precipices along the way, and cruel beasts of prey are close at hand.

But only by taking this path is the woman able to achieve that distant but alluring aim – her true liberation in a new world of labour. During this difficult march to the bright future the proletarian woman, until recently a humiliated, downtrodden slave with no rights, learns to discard the slave mentality that has clung to her, step by step she transforms herself into an independent worker, an independent personality, free in love. It is she, fighting in the ranks of the proletariat, who wins for women the right to work; it is she, the “younger sister”, who prepares the ground for the “free” and “equal” woman of the future.

For what reason, then, should the woman worker seek a union with the bourgeois feminists? Who, in actual fact, would stand to gain in the event of such an alliance? Certainly not the woman worker. She is her own saviour; her future is in her own hands. The working woman guards her class interests and is not deceived by great speeches about the “world all women share”. The working woman must not and does not forget that while the aim of bourgeois women is to secure their own welfare in the framework of a society antagonistic to us, our aim is to build, in the place of the old, outdated world, a bright temple of universal labour, comradely solidarity and joyful freedom. ...



Marriage and the Problem of the Family
Let us turn our attention to another aspect of the woman question, the question of the family. The importance that the solution of this urgent and complex question has for the genuine emancipation of women is well known. The struggle for political rights, for the right to receive doctorates and other academic degrees, and for equal pay for equal work, is not the full sum of the fight for equality. To become really free woman has to throw off the heavy chains of the current forms of the family, which are outmoded and oppressive. For women, the solution of the family question is no less important than the achievement of political equality and economic independence.

In the family of today, the structure of which is confirmed by custom and law, woman is oppressed not only as a person but as a wife and mother, in most of the countries of the civilised world the civil code places women in a greater or lesser dependence on her husband, and awards the husband not, only the right to dispose of her property but also the right of moral and physical dominance over her. ...

Where the official and legal servitude of women ends, the force we call “public opinion” begins. This public opinion is created and supported by the bourgeoisie with the aim of preserving “the sacred institution of property”. The hypocrisy of “double morality” is another weapon. Bourgeois society crushes woman with its savage economic vice, paying for her labour at a very low rate. The woman is deprived of the citizen’s right to raise her voice in defence of her interests: instead, she is given only the gracious alternative of the bondage of marriage or the embraces of prostitution – a trade despised and persecuted in public but encouraged and supported in secret. Is it necessary to emphasise the dark sides of contemporary married life and the sufferings women experience in connection with their position in the present family structure? So much has already been written and said on this subject. Literature is full of depressing pictures of the snares of married and family life. How many psychological dramas are enacted! How many lives are crippled! Here, it is only important for us to note that the modem family structure, to a lesser or greater extent, oppresses women of all classes and all layers of the population. Customs and traditions persecute the young mother whatever the stratum of the population to which she belongs; the laws place bourgeois women, proletarian women and peasant women all under the guardianship of their husbands.

Have we not discovered at last that aspect of the woman question over which women of all classes can unite? Can they not struggle jointly against the conditions oppressing them? Is it not possible that the grief and suffering which women share in this instance will soften the claws of class antagonism and provide common aspirations and common action for the women of the different camps? Might it not be that on the basis of common desires and aims, co-operation between the bourgeois women and the proletarian women may become a possibility? The feminists are struggling for freer forms of marriage and for the “right to maternity”; they are raising their voices in defence of the prostitute, the human being persecuted by all. See how rich feminist literature is in the search for new forms of relationships and in enthusiastic demands for the “moral equality” of the sexes. Is it not true that while in the sphere of economic liberation the bourgeois women lag behind the many-million strong army of proletarian women who are pioneering the way for the “new woman”, in the fight for the solution, of the family question the laurels go to the feminists?

Here in Russia, women of the middle bourgeoisie – that army of independent wage-earners thrown on to the labour market during the 1860s – have long since settled in practice many of the confused aspects of the marriage question. They have courageously replaced the “consolidated” family of the traditional church marriage with more elastic types of relationship that meet the needs of that social layer. But the subjective solution of this question by individual women does not change the situation and does not relieve the overall gloomy picture of family life. If any force is destroying the modern form of the family, it is not the titanic efforts of separate and stronger individuals but the inanimate and mighty forces of production, which are uncompromisingly budding life, on new foundation’s. ...



The heroic struggle of individual young women of the bourgeois world, who fling down the gauntlet and demand of society the right to “dare to love” without orders and without chains, ought to serve as an example for all women languishing in family chains – this is what is preached by the more emancipated feminists abroad and our progressive equal righters at home. The marriage question, in other words, is solved in their view without reference to the external situation; it is solved independently of changes in the economic structure of society. The isolated, heroic efforts of individuals is enough. Let a woman simply “dare”, and the problem of marriage is solved.

But less heroic women shake their heads in distrust. “It is all very well for the heroines of novels blessed by the prudent author with great independence, unselfish friends and extraordinary qualities of charm, to throw down the gauntlet. But what about those who have no capital, insufficient wages, no friends and little charm?” And the question of maternity preys on the mind of the woman who strives for freedom. Is “free love” possible? Can it be realised as a common phenomenon, as the generally accepted norm rather than the individual exception, given the economic structure of our society? Is it possible to ignore the element of private property in contemporary marriage? Is it possible, in an individualistic world, to ignore the formal marriage contract without damaging the interests of women? For the marital contract is the only guarantee that all the difficulties of maternity will not fall on the woman alone. Will not that which once happened to the male worker now happen to the woman? The removal of guild regulations, without the establishment of new rules governing the conduct of the masters, gave capital absolute power over the workers. The tempting slogan “freedom of contract for labour and capital” became a means for the naked exploitation of labour by capital. “Free love”, introduced consistently into contemporary class society, instead of freeing woman from the hardships of family life, would surely shoulder her with a new burden – the task of caring, alone and unaided, for her children.

Only a whole number of fundamental reforms in the sphere of social relations – reforms transposing obligations from the family to society and the state – could create a situation where the principle of “free love” might to some extent be fulfilled. But can we seriously expect the modern class state, however democratic it may be, to take upon itself the duties towards mothers and children which at present are undertaken by that individualistic unit, the modern family? Only the fundamental transformation of all productive relations could create the social prerequisites to protect women from the negative aspects of the “free love” formula. Are we not aware of the depravity and abnormalities that in present conditions are anxious to pass themselves off under this convenient label? Consider all those gentlemen owning and administering industrial enterprises who force women among their workforce and clerical staff to satisfy their sexual whims, using the threat of dismissal to achieve their ends. Are they not, in their own way, practising “free love”? All those “masters of the house” who rape their servants and throw them out pregnant on to the street, are they not adhering to the formula of “free love”?

But we are not talking of that kind of ‘freedom’ object the advocates of free marriage. On the contrary, we demand the acceptance of a ‘single morality’ equally binding for both sexes. We oppose the sexual licence that is current, and view as moral only the free union that is based on true love.” But, my dear friends, do you not think that your ideal of “free marriage”, when practised in the conditions of present society, might produce results that differ little from the distorted practice of sexual freedom? Only when women are relieved of all those material burdens which at the present time create a dual dependence, on capital and on the husband, can the principle of “free love” be implemented without bringing new grief for women in its wake. As women go out to, work and achieve economic independence, certain possibilities for “free love” appear, particularly for the better-paid women of the intelligentsia. But the dependence of women on capital remains, and this dependence increases as more and more proletarian women sell their labour power. Is the slogan “free love” capable of improving the sad existence of these women, who earn only just enough to keep themselves alive? And anyway, is not “free love” already practised among the working classes and practised so widely that the bourgeoisie has on more than one occasion raised the alarm and campaigned against the “depravity” and “immorality” of the proletariat? It should be noted that when the feminists enthuse about the new forms of cohabitation outside marriage that should be considered by the emancipated bourgeois woman, they speak of “free love”, but when the working class is under discussion these relationships are scornfully referred to as “disorderly sexual intercourse”. This sums up their attitude.

But for proletarian women at the present time all relationships, whether sanctified by the church or not, are equally harsh in their consequences. The crux of the family and marriage problem lies for the proletarian wife and mother not in the question of the sacred or secular external form, but in the attendant social and economic, conditions which define the complicated obligations of the working-class woman, of course it matters to her too whether her husband has the right to dispose of her earnings, whether he has the right by law to force her to live with him when she does not want to, whether the husband can forcibly take her children away etc. However, it is not such paragraphs of the civic code that determine the position of woman in the family, nor is it these paragraphs which make for the confusion and complexity of the family problem. The question of relationships would cease to be such a painful one for the majority of women only if society, relieved women of all those petty household cares which are at present unavoidable (given the existence of individual, scattered domestic economies), took over responsibility for the younger generation, protected maternity and gave the mother to the child for at least the first months after birth.

In opposing the legal and sacred church marriage contract, the feminists are fighting a fetish. The proletarian women, on the other hand, are waging war against the factors that are behind the modem form of marriage and family. In striving to change fundamentally the conditions of life, they know that they are also helping to reform relationships between the sexes. Here we have the main difference between the bourgeois and proletarian approach to the difficult problem of the family.

The feminists and the social reformers from the camp of the bourgeoisie, naively believing in the possibility of creating new forms of family and new types of marital relations against the dismal background of the contemporary class society, tie themselves in knots in their search for these new forms. If life itself has not vet produced these forms, it is necessary, they seem to imagine, to think them up whatever the cost. There must, they believe, be modem forms of sexual relationship which are capable of solving the complex family problem under the present social system. And the ideologists of the bourgeois world – the journalists, writers and prominent women fighters for emancipation one after the other put forward their “family panacea”, their new “family formula”.

How utopian these marriage formulas sound. How feeble these palliatives, when considered in the light of the gloomy reality of our modern family structure. Before these formulas of “free relationships” and “free love” can become practice, it is above all necessary that a fundamental reform of all social relationships between people take place; furthermore, the moral and sexual norms and the whole psychology of mankind would have to undergo a thorough evolution, is the contemporary person psychologically able to cope with “free love"? What about the jealousy that eats into even the best human souls? And that deeply-rooted sense of property that demands the possession not only of the body but also of the soul of another? And the inability to have the proper respect for the individuality of another? The habit of either subordinating oneself to the loved one, or of subordinating the loved one to oneself? And the bitter and desperate feeling of desertion, of limitless loneliness, which is experienced when the loved ceases to love and leaves? Where can the lonely person, who is an individualist to the very core of his being, find solace? The collective, with its joys and disappointments and aspirations, is the best outlet for the emotional and intellectual energies of the individual. But is modern man capable of working with this collective in such a way as to feel the mutually interacting influences? Is the life of the collective really capable, at present, of replacing the individual’s petty personal joys? Without the “unique,” “one-and-only” twin soul, even the socialist, the collectivist, is quite alone in the present antagonistic world; only in the working class do we catch the pale glimpse of the future, of more harmonious and more social relations between people. The family problem is as complex and many-faceted as life itself. Our social system is incapable of solving it.

Other marriage formulas have been put forward. Several progressive women and social thinkers regard the marriage union only as a method of producing progeny. Marriage in itself, they hold, does not have any special value for woman – motherhood is her purpose, her sacred aim, her task in life. Thanks to such inspired advocates as Ruth Bray and Ellen Key, the bourgeois ideal that recognises woman as a female rather than a person has acquired a special halo of progressiveness. Foreign literature has seized upon the slogan put forward by these advanced women with enthusiasm. And even here in Russia, in the period before the political storm [of 1905], before social values came in for revision, the question of maternity had attracted the attention of the daily press. The slogan “the right to maternity” cannot help producing lively response in the broadest circles of the female population. Thus, despite the fact that all the suggestions of the feminists in this connection were of the utopian variety, the problem was too important and topical not to attract women.

The “right to maternity” is the kind of question that touches not only women from the bourgeois class but also, to an even greater extent, proletarian women as well. The right to be a mother – these are golden words that go straight to “any women’s heart” and force that heart to beat faster. The right to feed “one’s own” child with one’s own milk, and to attend the first signs of its awakening consciousness, the right to care for its tiny body and shield its tender soul from the thorns and sufferings of the first steps in life – what mother would not support these demands?

It would seem that we have again stumbled on an issue that could serve as a moment of unity between women of different social layers: it would seem that we have found, at last, the bridge uniting women of the two hostile worlds. Let us look closer, to discover what the progressive bourgeois women understand by “the right to maternity”. Then we can see whether, in fact, proletarian women can agree with the solutions to the problem of maternity envisaged by the bourgeois fighters for equal rights. In the eyes of its eager apologists, maternity possesses an almost sacred quality. Striving to smash the false prejudices that brand a woman for engaging in a natural activity – the bearing of a child – because the activity has not been sanctified by the law, the fighters for the right to maternity have bent the stick in the other direction: for them, maternity has become the aim of a woman’s life. ...



Ellen Key’s devotion to the obligations of maternity and the family forces her to give an assurance that the isolated family unit will continue to exist even in a society transformed along socialist lines. The only change, as she sees it, will be that all the attendant elements of convenience or of material gain will be excluded from the marriage union, which will be concluded according to mutual inclinations, without rituals or formalities – love and marriage will be truly synonymous. But the isolated family unit is the result of the modem individualistic world, with its rat-race, its pressures, its loneliness; the family is a product of the monstrous capitalist system. And yet Key hopes to bequeath the family to socialist society! Blood and kinship ties at present often serve, it is true, as the only support in life, as the only refuge in times of hardship and misfortune. But will they be morally or socially necessary in the future? Key does not answer this question. She has too loving a regard for the “ideal family”, this egoistic unit of the middle bourgeoisie to which the devotees of the bourgeois structure of society look with such reverence.

But it is not only the talented though erratic Ellen Key who loses her way in the social contradictions. There is probably no other question about which socialists themselves are so little in agreement as the question of marriage and the family. Were we to try and organise a survey among socialists, the results would most probably be very curious. Does the family wither away? or are there grounds for believing that the family disorders of the present are only a transitory crisis? Will the present form of the family be preserved in the future society, or will it be buried with the modem capitalist system? These are questions which might well receive very different answers. ...



With the transfer of educative functions from the family to society, the last tie holding together the modem isolated family will be loosened; the process of disintegration will proceed at an even faster pace, and the pale silhouettes of future marital relations will begin to emerge. What can we say about these indistinct silhouettes, hidden as they are by present-day influences?

Does one have to repeat that the present compulsory form of marriage will be replaced by the free union of loving individuals? The ideal of free love drawn by the hungry imagination of women fighting for their emancipation undoubtedly corresponds to some extent to the norm of relationships between the sexes that society will establish. However, the social influences are so complex and their interactions so diverse that it is impossible to foretell what the relationships of the future, when the whole system has fundamentally been changed, will he like. But the slowly maturing evolution of relations between the sexes is clear evidence that ritual marriage and the compulsive isolated family are doomed to disappear.

The Struggle for Political Rights
The feminists answer our criticisms by saying: even if the arguments behind our defence of the political rights of women seem to you mistaken, is the importance of the demand itself, which is equally urgent for feminists and for representatives of the working class, thereby reduced? Cannot the women of the two social camps, for the sake of their common political aspirations, surmount the barriers of class antagonism that divide them? Surely they are capable of waging a common struggle against the hostile forces that surround them? Division between bourgeois and proletarian is inevitable as far as other questions are concerned, but in the case of this particular question, the feminists imagine,, the women of the various social classes have no differences.

Feminists keep returning to these arguments with bitterness and bewilderment, seeing preconceived notions of partisan loyalty in the refusal of representatives of the working class to join forces with them in the struggle for women’s political rights. Is this really the case?

Is there a complete identity of political aspirations, or does antagonism hinder the creation of an indivisible, above-class army of women in this instance as in all others? We have to answer this question before we can outline the tactics that proletarian women will employ in winning political rights for their sex.

The feminists declare themselves to be on the side of social reform, and some of them even say they are in favour of socialism – in the far distant future, of course – but they are not intending to struggle in the ranks of the working class for the realisation of these aims. The best of them believe, with a naive sincerity, that once the deputies’ seats are within their reach they will be able to cure the social sores which have in their view developed because men, with their inherent egoism, have been masters of the situation. However good the intentions of individual groups of feminists towards the proletariat, whenever the question of class struggle has been posed they have left the battlefield in a fright. They find that they do not wish to interfere in alien causes, and prefer to retire to their bourgeois liberalism which is so comfortably familiar.

No, however much the bourgeois feminists try to repress the true aim of their political desires, however much they assure their younger sisters that involvement in political life promises immeasurable benefits for the women of the working class, the bourgeois spirit that pervades the whole feminist movement gives a class colouring even to the demand for equal political rights with men, which would seem to be a general women’s demand. Different aims and understandings of how political rights are to be used create an unbridgeable gulf between bourgeois and proletarian women. This does not contradict the fact that the immediate tasks of the two groups of women coincide to a certain degree, for the representatives of all classes which have received access to political power strive above all to achieve a review of the civil code, which in every country, to a greater or lesser extent, discriminates against women. Women press for legal changes that create more favourable conditions of labour for themselves; they stand together against the regulations legalising prostitution etc. However, the coincidence of these immediate tasks is of a purely formal nature. For class interest determines that the attitude of the two groups to these reforms is sharply contradictory. ...

Class instinct – whatever the feminists say – always shows itself to be more powerful than the noble enthusiasms of “above-class” politics. So long as the bourgeois women and their “younger sisters” are equal in their inequality, the former can, with complete sincerity, make great efforts to defend the general interests of women. But once the barrier is down and the bourgeois women have received access to political activity, the recent defenders of the “rights of all women” become enthusiastic defenders of the privileges of their class, content to leave the younger sisters with no rights at all. Thus, when the feminists talk to working women about the need for a common struggle to realise some “general women’s” principle, women of the working class are naturally distrustful.

Sunday, July 05, 2009

From The Archives (2009)-Capitalist America- Give Youth Work, Or Move On Over!

Click On To Title To Link To The Leon Trotsky Archives For 1938 Under The Transitional Program Concerning A Sliding Scale Of Wages (Popularly Known As "30 For 40")As An Example Of The Way To Address The Problem Di cussed Below.

Commentary

Make no mistake this site, as a general proposition, is fiercely and relentlessly dedicated to the propaganda struggle for a socialist future. But sometimes we have to agitate for some immediate and pressing needs. In this case the need to make sure the youth, and particularly minority youth, has meaningful work. In a society that goes on something of a principle of ‘last hired and first fired ‘(except when it is cheaper to keep the new labor) in its labor practices this latest capitalist recession is hitting the youth disproportionately.

That said, I recently heard an interesting, if disturbing, program on National Public Radio’s “Talk Of The Town” where the subject was PBS “Dateline’s” upcoming program, hosted by Judy Woodruff, concerning the various ways today’s 20-somethings are coping with (or not coping with) this, for them, first serious economic downturn. I heard plenty of anecdotal evidence for why this capitalist really has outlived its usefulness and must be replaced. But that is a subject for another day and one can go elsewhere in this space for various commentaries on the general socialist program. What I want to do is make a few points on the struggle of today’s youth for jobs.

Hey, when those of us who are not 20-something were young and carefree we all, or most of us anyhow, had our share of makeshift jobs in order to survive or to keep us off the streets. Some of us, including this writer, almost made a religion out of keeping just this side of “skid row”. Being footloose and fancy free is a youthful rite of passage, after all (and probably would be more so under a socialist regime). That, however, is not what the callers to this talk show were addressing as they related their stories. What they had to say about their survival skills reflects very well one their individual abilities to adjust to a world that they certainly have not made. They are making career changes, taking odd-ball jobs, retuning home to live in order to cut down on expenses and even that old chestnut, going back to school to ‘reinvent’ themselves.

Okay, that is the good part. But here is where I want to reflect on what the irrationality of the capitalist system has begot. From what I heard there is an incredible amount of social value stored up in today’s youth. Moreover, an incredible amount of social capital has been used to produce these very high priced future contributors to society. No rational society could, or would let this go to waste in the way that it seems to be doing in the current crisis. Wouldn’t a slogan like “30 For 40”, the old radical labor movement idea of redistributing the available work among those , employed and unemployed, hat need it with no loss in pay be just about right at this time. As for the future, to all those young callers-in I will tell you right now that a socialist society would certainly know how to use your skills- “to the max”. Join us in that fight.

****

From The Transistional Program

Sliding Scale of Wages
and Sliding Scale of Hours


Under the conditions of disintegrating capitalism, the masses continue to live the meagerized life of the oppressed, threatened now more than at any other time with the danger of being cast into the pit of pauperism. They must defend their mouthful of bread, if they cannot increase or better it. There is neither the need nor the opportunity to enumerate here those separate, partial demands which time and again arise on the basis of concrete circumstances – national, local, trade union. But two basic economic afflictions, in which is summarized the increasing absurdity of the capitalist system, that is, unemployment and high prices, demand generalized slogans and methods of struggle.

The Fourth International declares uncompromising war on the politics of the capitalists which, to a considerable degree, like the politics of their agents, the reformists, aims to place the whole burden of militarism, the crisis, the disorganization of the monetary system and all other scourges stemming from capitalism’s death agony upon the backs of the toilers. The Fourth International demands employment and decent living conditions for all.

Neither monetary inflation nor stabilization can serve as slogans for the proletariat because these are but two ends of the same stick. Against a bounding rise in prices, which with the approach of war will assume an ever more unbridled character, one can fight only under the slogan of a sliding scale of wages. This means that collective agreements should assure an automatic rise in wages in relation to the increase in price of consumer goods.

Under the menace of its own disintegration, the proletariat cannot permit the transformation of an increasing section of the workers into chronically unemployed paupers, living off the slops of a crumbling society. The right to employment is the only serious right left to the worker in a society based upon exploitation. This right today is left to the worker in a society based upon exploitation. This right today is being shorn from him at every step. Against unemployment, “structural” as well as “conjunctural,” the time is ripe to advance along with the slogan of public works, the slogan of a sliding scale of working hours. Trade unions and other mass organizations should bind the workers and the unemployed together in the solidarity of mutual responsibility. On this basis all the work on hand would then be divided among all existing workers in accordance with how the extent of the working week is defined. The average wage of every worker remains the same as it was under the old working week. Wages, under a strictly guaranteed minimum, would follow the movement of prices. It is impossible to accept any other program for the present catastrophic period.

Property owners and their lawyers will prove the “unrealizability” of these demands. Smaller, especially ruined capitalists, in addition will refer to their account ledgers. The workers categorically denounce such conclusions and references. The question is not one of a “normal” collision between opposing material interests. The question is one of guarding the proletariat from decay, demoralization and ruin. The question is one of life or death of the only creative and progressive class, and by that token of the future of mankind. If capitalism is incapable of satisfying the demands inevitably arising from the calamities generated by itself, then let it perish. “Realizability” or “unrealizability” is in the given instance a question of the relationship of forces, which can be decided only by the struggle. By means of this struggle, no matter what immediate practical successes may be, the workers will best come to understand the necessity of liquidating capitalist slavery.

Friday, May 08, 2009

*The Zen Of Golf And The Struggle For Socialism

Click On Title To Link To United States Golf Association web site. That is the golf part. The Zen and Socialism part you are on your own.

Commentary

Has old Markin finally gone off the deep end? Golf, Zen and socialism under the same headline. What gives? What gives is this. It is spring time in New England when a man’s thoughts (or at least this man’s thoughts) turn to the need to get to the great outdoor. To commune with nature. To smell the roses. In short, to get to the local public golf course and tempt fate and incur the ire of the golf gods. For those of a certain age though this thought may seem to place me in the category of “counter-revolutionary” Trotskyites that I have, more than once in my life, been accused of being. Why?

Back in the days, in the late 1960’s, “when to be young was very heaven” those of us who considered ourselves either politically or culturally radical would probably have heartily endorsed the slogan “burn down the country clubs”. And we would not have been too far off then, or now. The late Wobblie folk singer/songwriter Utah Phillips has spun more than one on-target line about the usual denizens of such haunts. Golf and its earliest manifestations in a conservative country club ethos were the stuff of bourgeois life, leisure and status and begged to be made fun of. The novelist John O’Hara made a literary career in the mid-20th century writing of the foibles and follies of the mainly conservative and status conscious American country club set, most notably in “Appointment In Samarra” That book is still a good read to get the feel of being trapped in that world. More recently and vividly the Ponzi artist supreme, Bernard Madoff, worked his financial ‘magic’ among a more contemporary section of that set down in Palm Beach, Florida.

All the above points are very true. As far as they go in our hatred of the ethos of the country club set. There is another aspect, however, that ‘corrects’ our youthful misunderstanding of the aims of socialism, our capacity to fight for it and our staying power in that struggle. I do not know if it was the old, somewhat dour, picture of what a Bolshevik existence was to be like that colored our perceptions, handed down by the old time Stalinists (except, of course, the conduct of the privileged bureaucrats). Or if it was the pressure to seem to be “at one” with the workers by scorning various bourgeois lifestyle traditions but somewhere along the line the sense of the need for more opportunities for rest and relaxation rather than less got thrown by the wayside. To the contrary the idea of socialism, at least any socialism worth fighting for and asking others to fight for as well, is to increase socially useful productive capacity, redistribute goods more equitably and thus allow for greater free time for creative activities. Or just hit golf balls, if one so desires.

Although, admittedly, we are far away from that socialist goal today those who fight under the banner of socialism need to keep some balance in their lives in order to stay with the struggle. Thus, a certified revolutionary leader like Friedrich Engels, Karl Marx’ life long co-thinker, liked to fox hunt while in his British exile. While I fully support Oscar Wilde’s comment about the ‘virtues’ of that endeavor that was Engels’ “thing”. The Russian revolutionary leader Leon Trotsky, after Vladimir Lenin the best and most well-known Bolshevik, liked to hunt, fish and later in life collect cacti. None of those hobbies are particularly associated with strictly proletarian social interests. In short, other than some patently illegal or outrageous activity, one’s personal forms of relaxation are no one’s concern. That, moreover, is probably the secret to the staying power of these great revolutionaries mentioned above. They were in it for the long haul and balanced their personal lives accordingly.

But why golf rather than, let us say, bowling or stamp collecting? Well, go back to that first paragraph about communing with nature. Most golf courses located near urban centers offer interesting natural sites like woods, ponds and sand that one can become very familiar with if one’s golf ball goes astray. Moreover, nobody should object to getting a little walking in and to get out in the sunshine and away from the damn computer for a bit. But here is the Zen part. For this average golfer there is nothing like hitting a golf shot from about 150 yards away and having it land on the green (the target area for the shot for those who do not know the game). That is what now passes for “very heaven”. And then make the putt (put it in the hole). Nirvana.

Saturday, November 08, 2008

*A Snapshot View Of The Leaders Of The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution-Alexandra Kollontai

Click on title to link to the Alexandra Kollontai Internet Archives for the works of 1917 Bolshevik secondary revolutionary leader Alexandra Kollantai. No revolution can succeed without men and women of Kollontai's caliber. As Trotsky noted, on more than one occasion, the West, for lots of reason, in his day had not produced such cadre. I believe that observation, for the most part, still holds today.

Sunday, October 05, 2008

On Workers Asset Liquidation Committees Today

COMMENTARY

On October 1, 2008 I commented in an entry entitled Fantastic Musings On The Financial Meltdown- Are We Prepared To Lead The Struggle For State Power that one of our demand today, a transitional demand if you will, should be to call for the establishment of workers committees to liquidate the assets of bankrupt companies and distribute them to the workers. I have taken a little heat from a couple of comrades over my formulation. I purposefully placed this demand in the context of the need for us to take a more aggressively agitational approach during this period, an exceptional time of capitalist economic chaos when we can get a hearing from working people looking for SOME way out of this nightmare.

The gist of the criticism of my position was that I was “defeatist” in that what is called for today is workers control of the companies. Under a workers government, which by the way is not going to spring forth today, that is the correct demand. Under capitalist conditions with no realistic prospect of a workers government on the horizon- and here I intend to be humorous- workers, take the money and run. Fast.

Look, our whole reason for existence as socialists is that we believe that this capitalist/imperialist system is fundamentally flawed and that it needs to be replaced by a more equitable society based, at the start, on socialist economic planning in the spirit of social solidarity rather than greed. No serious reader of this space should disagree with that general premise. The point is how to get that message out in a way that people can relate to. We, rightly, had (and have) not interest in bailouts, rescues or other remedies that would put a bandage on this broken down financial system. We call for a big NO vote on that issue. Again there should be no dispute on this. But hear me out.

Whether we socialists have developed a propaganda circle mentality or not, as I noted in the above-mentioned previous entry, we still need to deal with today’s social reality as we shift gears and become more agitational in our work as OUR political prospects brighten. The demand for workers committees to take control of liquidation of assets is directly counterposed to what is happening today as larger financial institutions are gobbling up smaller companies at fire sale prices. That is leaving untold workers without jobs, pensions, personal assets, etc. So companies fail- those things happen by hook or by crook under capitalism- we are in no position today to affect that. We ARE in a position to speak on behalf of those who suffer the consequences of this crisis in order to see that they get some minimal relief. Moreover this demand, and here is the real historic point, lets working people get to take things, even if in a negative way, into their own hands. That is worth raising the slogan for by itself.

Lastly, we have no interest in the imperialists’ capitalist nationalization schemes. This, essentially, is what the Freddie Mae and Fannie Mae deals were about. We socialists have all sorts of positions on nationalizations, when we support or call for them as well as, and under what conditions we defend them, depending of who is doing the nationalization and for what purposes. A quick review of recent history, as always, tells the tale. The Cuban Revolution’s nationalizations (and expropriations) of, mainly, American properties, we supported with both hands. Right? The same is true with any such efforts with the oil under Chavez in Venezuela. And we, moreover, defend those actions against attempts by the imperialists to take them back. No question. We neither supported nor called for the nationalizations of the (bankrupt) coal industrial under capitalist control state in Great Britain after World War II. We did, however, defend against Prime Minister Thatcher’s bloody attempts to de-nationalize these mines in the 1980’s. That will give a flavor of what a correct policy should be. Once again this position calls forth not the need for capitalist nationalizations but, in effect, the need to create workers committees to liquidate assets rather than to solidify the capitalists in their current strategies to save THEIR system.

Thursday, November 08, 2007

*A Snapshot View Of The Leaders Of The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution-Alexandra Kollontai

Click on title to link to the Alexandra Kollontai Internet Archives for the works of 1917 Bolshevik secondary revolutionary leader Alexandra Kollantai. No revolution can succeed without men and women of Kollontai's caliber. As Trotsky noted, on more than one occasion, the West, for lots of reason, in his day had not produced such cadre. I believe that observation, for the most part, still holds today.

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

*A Snapshot View Of The Leaders Of The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution-Alexandra Kollontai

Click on title to link to the Alexandra Kollontai Internet Archives for the works of 1917 Bolshevik secondary revolutionary leader Alexandra Kollantai. No revolution can succeed without men and women of Kollontai's caliber. As Trotsky noted, on more than one occasion, the West, for lots of reason, in his day had not produced such cadre. I believe that observation, for the most part, still holds today.

Wednesday, November 09, 2005

*From The Pen Of Bolshevik Leader Alexandra Kollantai-"The Social Basis Of The Woman Question"

Click on title to link to the Alexandra Kollontai Internet Archives for the other works of 1917 Bolshevik secondary revolutionary leader Alexandra Kollantai.

Markin comment:

No revolution can succeed without men and women of Kollontai's caliber. As Trotsky noted, on more than one occasion, the West, for lots of reason, in his day had not produced such cadre. I believe that observation, for the most part, still holds today.

*From The Pen Of Bolshevik Leader Alexandra Kollantai-"Women's Day, February 1913"

Click on title to link to the Alexandra Kollontai Internet Archives for the other works of 1917 Bolshevik secondary revolutionary leader Alexandra Kollantai.

Markin comment:

No revolution can succeed without men and women of Kollontai's caliber. As Trotsky noted, on more than one occasion, the West, for lots of reason, in his day had not produced such cadre. I believe that observation, for the most part, still holds today.

*From The Pen Of Bolshevik Leader Alexandra Kollantai-"The International Proletariat And War"

Click on title to link to the Alexandra Kollontai Internet Archives for the other works of 1917 Bolshevik secondary revolutionary leader Alexandra Kollantai.

Markin comment:

No revolution can succeed without men and women of Kollontai's caliber. As Trotsky noted, on more than one occasion, the West, for lots of reason, in his day had not produced such cadre. I believe that observation, for the most part, still holds today.

Tuesday, November 08, 2005

*A Snapshot View Of The Leaders Of The 1917 Bolshevik Revolution-Alexandra Kollontai

Click on title to link to the Alexandra Kollontai Internet Archives for the works of 1917 Bolshevik secondary revolutionary leader Alexandra Kollantai. No revolution can succeed without men and women of Kollontai's caliber. As Trotsky noted, on more than one occasion, the West, for lots of reason, in his day had not produced such cadre. I believe that observation, for the most part, still holds today.