In Honor Of The 100th Anniversary Of The Founding of The Communist International-From The Archives- *If Drafted I Will Not Run, If Elected I Will Not Serve- Revolutionaries and Running For Executive Offices Of The Capitalist State

Click on title to link to important theoretical article on the question of revolutionaries running for the executive offices of the capitalist state in "Spartacist- English Language Edition, Number 62, Spring 2009. (Yes, isn't it nice to transcend and go forward in time by the 'magic' of technology in the blogosphere.)

Commentary

If drafted, I will not run. If elected, I will not serve- words attributed to William Tecumseh Sherman at the prospect of being nominated for American president in the late 19th century.

Well, the old soldier Billy Sherman has it right, if for different reasons from those of today 's revolutionaries. We want no part in administering the bourgeois state today and therefore, disrespectfully decline to run for its executive offices. However, to show that we are not anti-parliamentary abstentionists like many of our anarchist brethren we, in our role as 'tribunes of the people', will graciously accept any elected legislative posts that come our way-of course running on our program of a workers party fighting for a workers government.

Wait a minute, Markin, haven’t you gone out of your way in previous commentaries to argue that revolutionaries should run for executive office, while also taking the historic revolutionary socialist position of refusing to actually accept the office if elected? Umm......, well yes, and here the writer will have to eat humble pie and accept that the old historic position is indeed wrong and not just wrong on a tactical basis but on principal.

Let’s go into a little background here. As I have developed a socialist worldview I have attempted to ground that position with a sense of history. Part of that history included studying the lives of various revolutionary socialists here and elsewhere. One of the first that I came across was Eugene V. Debs, one of the key early leaders in the American socialist movement. Debs not only ran for president as a socialist in the historic four-way presidential fight of 1912 (you know, the one where Teddy Roosevelt ran as a Bull Moose) but also in 1920 from the Atlanta Penitentiary where he was spending a little time, at government expense, for opposition to American entry into the slaughter of World War I. That fighting stance exemplified for me an ideal way for socialists to get their propaganda out to a hostile world that might be a little less so when confronted during traditional election periods.

That position was fortified further for me by a look at the latter campaigns of the American Communist Party from the time that they placed William Z. Foster and Ben Gitlow on their presidential ticket in the 1920's. To speak nothing of later campaigns by Earl Browder in 1940 and Gus Hall more recently for that same party, as well. Moreover, when I first began sniffing around the Trotskyist movement in the early 1970’s I distinctly remember, as an act of defiance in breaking with the Democratic Party (I had after all, when all the dust was settled, supported Hubert Humphrey in 1968), voting for the Socialist Workers Party candidate in 1972 (and here memory fails for I am not sure whether it was Doug or Linda Jenness who was running for president that year but I believe that it was Linda- someone can correct me on that, please) Moreover, in the harsh reality of American politics since then and the harsher realities of socialist propaganda politics the question of the pitfalls of running for executive office seemed a little exotic, to say the least. In short, nothing really seemed to require that I seriously work through the issue.

Then, a few years ago, entered the International Communist League (ICL) and presumably others to upset the historic applecart. Apparently within that organization some qualms developed over the historic position mentioned above(a position that they themselves utilized back in the 1980’s running a candidate for Mayor of New York City). Researches by the ICL back to the early days of the Communist International concerning various nebulous formulations of the workers government slogan and some unfinished business concerning electoral platforms opened up this can of worms. When I first read of this dispute I dismissed it out of hand as a 'tempest in a teapot' rather than as a serious issue that needed a full airing today among small left-wing propaganda groups and labor militants trying to avoid the pitfalls of opportunism.

Now there are many ways to obtain political enlightenment in the world. One of the most important for me about the nature of the state came from being part one of that state’s armed bodies of men- a member of the American armed forces during the Vietnam War. On the present question my awakening was not nearly so dramatic but as I mentioned in a recent blog entitled "The ‘Woes’ of The British Labor Party" (see May 2008 archives) the defeat of “Red” Ken Livingstone as Mayor of London brought the issues home. The idea that a soft pink leftist, much less a hard Bolshevik would want to administer the bourgeois state for Her Majesty showed me graphically the absurdity of the old historic position. And Livingstone did not even bother with the formality of refusal but accepted that political responsibility, gladly, to boot. Reinforced by a little quick research on my part into the German Social Democratic and French and Italian Communist executive running of municipalities and states and things began to fall into place.

Sometimes old habits die hard though. I still have to think through how critical support to other leftist formations who do run for executive office with some supportable positions would work in connection with this new standard. My question: Are we just maintaining theoretical ‘purity’ by not personally sullying our hands administering the bourgeois state but are more than happy to let others, whom we give critical support to, do that dirty work? In any case I am ‘born again’ on the principal of executive office refusal now and have swore off that childhood dream of becoming president of the American imperial juggernaut- but, hey, how about being a commissar?

On the 16th Anniversary Of The Iraq War-From The Archives- The Dog Days Of The American Anti-war Opposition

Commentary

Here is an unfair question. Who, recently, has been more committed to seeking the withdrawal of American and Allied troops from Iraq- the American anti-war movement or Sheik Sadr’s Madhi Army and his political apparatus in the mosques of Sadr City? Answer: These days it is clearly Sadr and his cohorts. Not only have Sadr’s forces borne the brunt of fighting against American and Iraqi governmental forces this spring but every Friday over the past several weeks after prayers they have gone into the streets to call for the American withdrawal. On the American anti-war side there has been the infinitely harder task of..... breathlessly waiting for the other shoe to drop- the election of non-Bush, presumably Obama, to get America out of its quagmire one way or another.

Yes, I know that this is an unfair comparison but hear me out on this. This street fight that the two supposedly anti-war democrats Obama and Clinton have just completed has taken all the political air out of domestic politics. Such silly things as fighting to deny war funding have taken a back seat to the pressing questions of Obama’s religious affiliation and , my favorite, what does Hillary want. Moreover, I have noted more than once that, historically, the traditional pro-Democratic outfits like United For Peace and Justice and 'progressive' coalitions of that ilk have taken cover when these democratic parliamentary campaigns are in full swing.

Goodness gracious, the Quakers, pacifists and home grown professional radical leftists of every persuasion would not want to spoil the chances of the liberal parliamentary types (read today-Democrats) by filling the air with people and chants denouncing these same do-nothings. Moreover, the much ballyhooed mid-term Congressional elections of 2006 which were suppose to usher in the Golden Age after the turnover to Democratic majorities proves my case rather than theirs. We should now instead be screaming bloody murder in the streets to get the troops withdrawn-over the political corpses of these same Democrats .

When I made the comparison between the activity of Sadr concerning American troops and the American anti-war movement I was, obviously, overdrawing the picture in his favor. Sadr and his pals have their own axes to grind and are responding to their fraction of the Shia base, especially on the national sovereignty question. With the very real likelihood that American bases will be in Iraq for that McCain- predicted 100 years there is no political capital to be lost by leading Iraqi opposition to that move and to opposing the desires of the other Shia faction led by the Malaki government.

Moreover, Sadr's ‘opposition’ to American imperialism has been spotty, at best- he brokered the stand down of the Mahdi Army that has permitted the Iraqi government (and the Americans) some breathing room in order to stabilize their regime (or, at least, stem the daily slaughter on the streets of Iraq). But, even more noteworthy than that is that while Sadr has been our objective ‘ally’, as they say, remember in the final analysis his brand of Islamic fundamentalism is committed to imposing some form of Islamic Republic on Iraq that is counterpoised to our fights. So, when I headlined this commentary 'in the dog days' I was not just talking out of my hat but also expressing our real quandary- except I am not in any quandary about the main task that we still face- Immediate Unconditional Withdrawal From Iraq and Afghanistan of American/ Allied troops and their mercenaries!

*From The Pages Of "Workers Vanguard"- The French Elections

Click on the title to link to an on line copy of the "Workers Vanguard" article on the subject mentioned in the headline.

* From The "In Defense Of Marxism" Website Via "Renegade Eye"- On The British Labour Party- A Guest Commentary

Click on the headline to link to a In Defense Of Marxism Website entry via Renegade Eye- On The British Labour Party.

Markin commentary:

A very interesting article, at least theoretically and historically, especailly on the Fenner Brockway-led Independent Labor Party in the 1930s that gave Leon Trotsky fits as it tried studiously, and with every fiber in its centrist body (I am being polite here), to avoid committing to the Fourth International. I am a little perplexed though as to why the British Labour Party is a "happy hunting ground" for leftists now that it is out of office and is badly mauled which makes me question the IMT's motives for a rush to Labourism (seemingly having been previously "bad children" they want to "come back home" after a long hiatus- back to shades of Ted Grant time). Certainly there is no apparent leftward-motion this early on that I can sense at this remove, a movement which revolutionaries would most certainly try to take advantage of with both hand. On relationships, including "entrism", regroupment, etc. and other tactics within mainstream Labour that will depend on circumstances.

What is clear though is that every militant should belong to the Labour Party, just as in the United States every militant should belong to a trade union, if possible. The British Labour Party, like the German Social Democratic, and in the past the French and Italian Communist Parties, is the mass bourgeois workers party in Britain. In the future it has to be split into its reformist and , hopefully, then revolutionary wings if the class struggle is to go forward. But revolutionaries cannot go around Labour and by this I mean go around the fight for leadership of the unions(or try, as in the 1960s and 70s, to sidestep that task by entry in the "sandbox" plaything of Labour youth leagues or constituency organizations).

Whether one supports Labour (critically, "like a rope supports a hanging man," as Lenin stated in his commentary on the Arthur Hendersen-led Labour Party days of the 1920s) in elections is a open question, depending on the politics at the time. In 2010 there was no reason, no reason at all, to call for a vote for Labour, whether eight or eight million people voted for its candidates. A simple question on that one: How, after those well-defined 13 years of Labour rule, as lap dog for American imperialism, the City of London bankers, and Her Majesty's governmental apparatus, could any self-respecting leftist call for such a vote for Labour , except to create more confusion among the advanced workers. That is our, that is we "sectarians" (read: small propaganda groups), real target right now?

By the way, as a very simple first step, although only a first step in that process, would be weaning those advanced militants away for reformism by calls for the abolition of Her Majesty's monarchy, that moribund House of Lords, and the disestablishment of those state churches. "Speak" Oliver Cromwell to those workers, for openers. To the advanced British and immigrant workers (patiently and soberly, of course) now!

*From The "HistoMat" Blog- An Update On The UK Elections

Click on the headline ot link to a "HistoMat" blog entry, dated April 29, 2010, on the upcoming UK parliamentary elections.

Markin comment:

I have already given my view on the UK elections in this space today. "HistoMat" just gives some nice anecdotal evidence for that view. Thanks- "HistoMat".

*No Vote To New Labor In The United Kingdom (UK) Parliamentary Elections

Click on the headline to link to a "Lenin Internet Archive" online copy of his 1920 classic statement of revolutionary tactics, "Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder-"Left-Wing" Communism In Great Britain"

Markin comment:

For radicals and revolutionaries in America come election time it is, or should be, a no-brainer to call for a NO vote to all the pro-capitalist parties, big or small, donkeys, elephants or greens. Occasionally, at least this has been the case in the span of my political lifetime; we can support one or another socialist or communist candidate depending on their programs. However, for the most part, lacking even a reformist workers party to campaign for, we use the heightened political atmosphere that elections bring to get out our propaganda messages. On such themes as the need to for labor to break from the capitalist parties, in particular its long alliance with the American Democratic Party, the need to build an independent working class party with a class struggle program and the need to deal with questions of special oppression for women, blacks and others.

The tasks for radicals and revolutionaries in the United Kingdom (UK) are slightly different. (I am under the sway of the BBC in this usage as it is their preferred form, and it further recognizes something that should be painful to every revolutionary-that Great Britain is still a monarchy). There, for the past century or so, the working class has had its own party, at least in a formal sense. So the question of whether to support or not support this reformist formation is an open and lively political question. As this entry’s headline indicates there should be no question that New Labor should not be supported by a vote in the upcoming parliamentary elections. After over a decade of hard, bitter, austere administration of the capitalist state against the short and ling term interests of the working class this should be a “no-brainer” as well. The only question then would be support, if any, to the myriad ostensibly socialist organizations that populate the left of the Labor Party, inside or out.

I say that No vote position should be a “no-brainer” but I am beginning to see and hear rumblings from the UK, now that the three-way race seems to be a donnybrook, that those to the left of Labor should give some kind of “critical support” to Labor- the “poodle” party to the Bush/Obama imperial adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan…and who knows where tomorrow. And, of course, those who wish to do so will trot out Lenin, the Lenin of “Left-Wing Communism: An Infantile Disorder”, to argue that New Labor should be supported “like a rope supports a hanging man”, but supported nevertheless. As the linked article above by Lenin demonstrates Arthur Henderson, and his cohorts, seem almost to be bloody "Bolsheviks" by comparison with today's crop of "labor leaders".

Now critical support to reformist parties, of which Old Labor in the UK was a sterling example, can be an important tactic. Old Labor, however, was at least solidly based on the trade unions and was a class party. An argument could easily be made that Old Labor would not have existed without the support, financial or otherwise, from the trade unions. New Labor is increasingly, and consciously, breaking from that path and modeling itself on the American Democratic Party. But, although at some point, the question of being able to support New Labor at all, as a matter of principle, may come up that is not the case today, nor is it the main criterion for calling for a No vote. Critical support is a tactic that revolutionaries use, including old comrades Lenin and Trotsky, to point out the contradictions between the working class base and the actions of the leadership in cases where revolutionaries are not powerful and authoritative enough to lead the working class. Where can one point to any contradiction in New Labor that revolutionaries could use to draw the lessons for the working class base. To pose the question is to give the answer in this case. No Vote To New Labor!

Note: I had a certain amount of sport bringing up the United Kingdom (UK) designation. However there is a point to be made here. The minimum, minimum, minimum program that revolutionaries should thing about on the question of critical support is actually a democratic program from the 17th century, Cromwell’s program. Abolish the monarchy! Abolish the House of Lords! Abolish the state church! Doesn’t Socialist Republics of the British Isles, although a little bulky to say and write, read and sound better than UK? Ya, I thought so.

* From The Anti- War Parliamentary Left - The James McGovern-Russ Feingold Sponsored Exit Strategy Legislation-From "Win Wthout War"

Click on the headline to link to a "Win Without War" Website posting of the Congressional legislation sponsored by Congressman James McGovern and Senator Russ Feingold that would create a date certain exit strategy for Afghanistan.


Markin comment:

This legislation provides an interesting contrast to the consummately legalistic (and really diplomatic language0 that even the most left parliamentary politicians are addicted to and the real thrust of what needs to be addressed. Instead of calling on the imperial president (aka the imperial Commander-in-Chief) to do, or not do, anything we communists would use any Congressional position we held to call on the citizenry and the soldiers to put an end to this Afghan occupation. Now that is an exit strategy I could support. This thing is not worth the paper it is written on, or the cyberspace it takes up.

*From The Pages Of "Workers Vanguard"- A Case Study In Why Revolutionaries Do Not Run For The Executive Offices Of The Bourgeois State

Click on the headline to link to an "American Left History" blog entry concerning the subject discussed below, the attitude of revolutionaries toward running for the executive offices of the bourgeois state.

Markin comment:

Every once in a while in a now rather long political life I get my comeuppance handed to me on a silver platter. That fact has taken on added meaning after reading one of the two parts of the subject matter of this guest commentary below- the parliamentary maneuvering of the bourgeois parties in a recent flare-up in the Canadian Parliament, which, in the final analysis, is still tied to Mother England by a million strands. As the facts of the matter state in the article the British Commonwealth governor –general was asked by the leader of the ruling Tory Party to suspend parliament for his own political reasons. The governor-general complied. That, in the normal course events, is worthy of vociferous protest by your average democratic elements, the parliamentary left, the non-parliamentary left, and even a thoughtful Tory or two . That is not the issue. The issue, driven home in the article, is the rather touching faith of the non-parliamentary left in the preservation of the parliamentary system when that system, their system, in not under attack by some para-military right wing forces. That part they will have to answer politically for in due course.

The real question brought home to this writer is, however, his own previous nonchalant attitude toward the executive offices of the bourgeois state and whether revolutionaries should run for those offices. My struggle over the question, including a confession of seeing it previously as a non-question or not an important question at this time, is linked above. The article below just brings the issue home as to the currency of the question. The question becomes crystal clear here in the case of a rather obscure parliamentary move. Why on this good green earth would we want to administer the bourgeois state, any bourgeois state, and as in the case of Canada have to face and take responsibility for it before Mother England and her monarchist agents? Answer: we don’t. And by the way-whether we defend a parliamentary system at any given point that defense does not hinge on keeping the archaic British monarchy, the House of Lords, or the Church of England. Abolish those institutions. That said, I am still red-faced over my previous stand on executive offices.

A second issue brought up by the article is the question, the burning question, of the national right to self-determination of Quebec. It’s right to separate from English-speaking Canada. There should be no question on the left that Quebec has that right. There is also no question that revolutionaries reserve the right to raise the demand at any particular time, or not raise it. Why? The whole point for revolutionaries, in the long history of struggle over the question of the right to national self-determination within the international working class movement, in raising the demand is to cut across some historic national antagonisms in order to further the class struggle. There is nothing inherently virtuous in the national state and the right of nations to self-determination for revolutionaries, except when it interferes with that goal. Anyone at all familiar with Quebec and its people, especially its at times very militant labor movement, knows that the antagonism with the English-speaking part of Canada today interfere with that goal. Those who want to preserve a unitary Canadian state only add to the problem. Those who know the political thrust of this blog know that I very, very highly regard the martyred revolutionary German Communist leader, Rosa Luxemburg, the Rose Of The Revolution. However, she was wrong on her position on opposition to the right to national self-determination for Poland as against the Tsarist Russian unitary state. Those who oppose Quebec independence today make that same mistake. I need not stand red-faced on this one. Independence For Quebec!

**************

Workers Vanguard No. 955
26 March 2010


Parliamentary Cretinism and Class Collaboration

Canada: A Prorogue’s Gallery

A part of the British Commonwealth, Canada is subordinate to the British monarchy, whose representative, the governor-general, has the power to suspend the Canadian parliament, as happened in December at Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper’s request. The following article about this question originally appeared in Spartacist Canada No. 164 (Spring 2010), newspaper of the Trotskyist League/Ligue trotskyste, Canadian section of the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist).

On January 23, more than 20,000 people in many Canadian cities protested against the suspension (prorogation) of parliament by governor-general Michaëlle Jean at the behest of Tory prime minister Stephen Harper. These protests, called in the name of “Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament” (CAPP), were backed by the capitalist Liberal Party of Canada, the NDP [New Democratic Party] social democrats and a variety of reformist left groups. Prominent among the latter were the International Socialists (I.S.). They helped organize and build the Toronto demo and one of their leading members made CAPP’s money pitch from the platform. While Liberal heavies like Bob Rae worked the Liberal/NDP crowd in Toronto, the Ottawa rally was addressed by both Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff and NDP leader Jack Layton.

A central demand of these protests was that parliament “get back to work.” But the “work” of parliament is to ensure the continued exploitation of the working class and the supremacy of private property. Job one when parliament does “get back to work” will be to continue making the working class pay for the capitalist economic crisis; the Tories are planning massive spending cuts, including an expected assault on the pensions of government workers.

Unlike our reformist opponents, we Marxists do not uphold the “sanctity” of parliament, though we certainly oppose its arbitrary curtailment by the executive power of the capitalist state. We also call for the immediate abolition of the monarchy, the governor-general and the unelected Senate—no mere relics but rallying points for social reaction.

The fake left’s embrace of this “movement” to recall parliament reflects their deeply reformist view that the capitalist state can be administered in the interests of the workers and oppressed, especially if the NDP is helping to run it. In contrast, we recognize that the capitalist state must be smashed through proletarian revolution and replaced with workers councils (soviets), organs of working-class power.

Our defense of bourgeois-democratic rights is closely linked to combatting illusions in the “democratic” trappings of this unjust social system. V.I. Lenin, leader of the 1917 Russian Revolution, captured the essence of capitalist democracy in a scathing attack on the reformist enemies of Soviet Russia, the world’s first workers state: “The working people are barred from participation in bourgeois parliaments (they never decide important questions under bourgeois democracy, which are decided by the stock exchange and the banks) by thousands of obstacles” (The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky [1918]).

We thus do not, on principle, run for or accept executive offices, from mayor to president. In parliaments and other legislative bodies, communist deputies can, as oppositionists, serve as revolutionary tribunes of the working class. But assuming executive office or gaining control of a bourgeois legislative or municipal council, either independently or in coalition, requires taking responsibility for the administration of the machinery of the capitalist state, including its corrupt, violent, racist police forces (see “Down With Executive Offices of the Capitalist State! Marxist Principles and Electoral Tactics,” Spartacist [English-language edition] No. 61, Spring 2009).

The Harper government’s latest suspension of parliament is a very real violation of bourgeois-democratic norms. But consider the history of the parliamentary parties that paraded in the streets. It was the Liberal government of Mackenzie King that interned Japanese Canadians during World War II, a racist atrocity backed by the NDP’s predecessors, the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation. Pierre Trudeau’s Liberals imposed martial law in Quebec in 1970 and Jean Chrétien’s Liberals, backed by the NDP, imposed the Clarity Act, which effectively bans Quebec from exercising its democratic right to self-determination. Federally or provincially; Tory, Liberal or NDP: the bosses’ parliamentary governments wage incessant attacks on workers and the oppressed on behalf of the exploiters.

When Chrétien prorogued parliament (four times), the fake left raised no hue and cry. Now, mired in their typical “fight the right” opportunism, the reformist Communist Party (CP) declared that “this movement to ‘get Parliament back to work’ can help spark a powerful campaign to block and defeat the Harper Tories” (January 7 statement). The CP’s “anybody but Harper” sentiment—shared, if expressed less crudely, by the entire reformist left—can only be read as an endorsement of the bourgeois Liberals or at best the NDP.

In that same “fight the right” spirit, the I.S. begged the NDP to “step it up” so as “to make a difference to the outcome of this fight.” Blaring “Make Harper Pay,” the I.S. pleaded that “the union movement, social justice organizations, anti-war activists, environmentalists and socialists must go all-out to make this movement as big and as militant as possible” (Socialist Worker, January 2010). This is a blatant call on workers to join hands with their capitalist exploiters for the purpose of running the capitalist state. In this the I.S. repeats their bowing to the Liberal-NDP coalition a year earlier. We said that this class-collaborationist alliance was an enemy of the interests of the working class.

Also agonizing over the role of their cherished NDP was Fightback, the Canadian group of Alan Woods’ International Marxist Tendency. Noting the presence of the bourgeois Liberals at the anti-prorogation rallies, Fightback worried that “if the movement continues in its present class collaborationist formation, with demands acceptable to the Liberals, then it will go nowhere.” They recommended fighting “against the dictatorship of the bosses and for a genuine socialist workers’ democracy” (marxist.ca, 26 January). Yet what they mean by this is to call on the NDP, in which they are buried, to take power “on a socialist program.” But the Canadian state is a bourgeois state. Putting the NDP at the helm of this state is the antithesis of a genuine socialist program, i.e., workers revolution to smash the capitalist state and replace it with the dictatorship of the proletariat, the necessary foundation for any regime based on workers democracy.

According to Fightback, “the NDP and the unions need to put themselves at the head of this movement and extend it beyond the issue of prorogation.” The NDP is a bourgeois workers party, based in part on affiliation with workers unions but committed to a thoroughly pro-capitalist program. Contrary to Fightback, the only reason the NDP social democrats “put themselves at the head” of any social struggle is to derail and confine it to what is acceptable to the capitalist rulers.

The “Marxist” pretensions of the I.S., Fightback et al. are an utter fraud. This is best illustrated by their cheering on (and in some cases participating in) the capitalist-restorationist movements which destroyed the bureaucratically deformed/degenerated workers states of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Under cover of defending the same classless (i.e., bourgeois) “democracy” they tout today, they joined in the imperialists’ “human rights” crusade, the sole aim of which was capitalist counterrevolution. They have the same attitude towards China, by far the strongest of the remaining bureaucratically deformed workers states, where the return of capitalism would be a gigantic defeat for China’s worker and peasant masses for whom the 1949 Chinese Revolution has brought tremendous social gains. In contrast, we Trotskyists stand for the unconditional military defense of China, as well as the other deformed workers states—Cuba, North Korea and Vietnam—against imperialism and internal counterrevolution, while calling for the overthrow of the bureaucratic Stalinist misrulers through workers political revolution.

Down With Anglo Chauvinism! Independence for Quebec!

The recent suspension of parliament has its immediate origins in the Tories’ attempts to deflect anger over the well-established fact that the Canadian military in Afghanistan has been routinely handing over prisoners to their Afghan puppet allies for torture. At a more fundamental level, however, the inability of the ruling class to “solve” the Quebec national question has produced a structurally dysfunctional parliamentary system. Variously using military repression and threats, economic blackmail, compromises, cajoling, insults and more threats, the Anglo-chauvinist rulers are dead set on maintaining the French-speaking Québécois as an oppressed nation within a unitary Canadian state. This is the fundamental fault line of the reactionary “Canadian confederation.”

Following the collapse of the 1987 Meech Lake accord and the 1995 referendum which came close to victory for the side of Quebec sovereignty, the Québécois have repeatedly voted for a majority of bourgeois-nationalist Bloc Québécois MPs [Members of Parliament]. Since 2004, this has produced a series of weak minority governments in Ottawa, which worries the anglophone ruling class. Outside Canada, even that haughty mouthpiece of British capital, the Economist, has brooded about Canada’s “deadlocked politics.”

What is decisive for Marxists, though, is the fact that Canada’s protracted split along national lines has created a deep divide within the working class, pitting working people of English Canada and Quebec against one another instead of the capitalist rulers. As we recognized prior to the 1995 referendum, the only foreseeable way forward is for revolutionaries to advocate Quebec independence. By getting the national question off the agenda, workers of both nations will see more clearly that their true enemies are their “own” capitalist bosses, and not one another.

The English Canadian union tops and NDP have long been virulently hostile to Quebec’s national rights. They have lined up behind the Canadian ruling class whenever the Québécois seriously tried to assert their right to self-determination, including in the 1995 referendum. Such Anglo chauvinism has served to drive the once-militant Québécois working class into the arms of their “own” national exploiters, represented by the Bloc and Parti Québécois.

The reformist left capitulates to the Anglo chauvinists of the NDP in English Canada and, in some cases, to the bourgeois nationalists in Quebec, depending on where their immediate opportunist appetites lie. The Communist Party and Fightback oppose independence outright and cover their straight capitulation to Anglo chauvinism with empty “unite-and-fight” rhetoric (see “‘Fightback’ and the Quebec National Question,” SC No. 162, Fall 2009 [reprinted in WV No. 943, 25 September 2009]). Others, such as Socialist Action, favour Quebec independence, but only as a means to ingratiate themselves with “left” Québécois bourgeois nationalists. Today their chosen vehicle for this is the left-nationalist Québec Solidaire, a petty-bourgeois formation that does not even pay lip service to socialism.

Along with Fightback and the CP, the grotesquely misnamed Bolshevik Tendency is another staunch “left” defender of “Canadian unity.” In line with their sneering contempt for all forms of special oppression, the BT openly opposes independence for Quebec. Notoriously, the BT has the dubious distinction of being the “socialists” officially invited to a Montreal “Canadian unity” rally organized by business groups on the eve of the 1995 referendum on Quebec sovereignty! More recently, a BT contingent blended right into the flag-waving January prorogation protest in Toronto—none of their placards breathed a word of criticism against the ruling-class Liberal Party, let alone the social-democratic NDP. The BT is an integral part of the syphilitic chain of pro-capitalist reformism.

While workers and the oppressed must oppose ruling-class attacks on bourgeois-democratic rights, they must do so by their own methods and under their own independent banner. As we said in our 22 December 2008 supplement, “Liberal-NDP Coalition: Tool of the Bosses” (SC No. 160, Spring 2009):

“The Trotskyist League/Ligue trotskyste is fighting to build the nucleus of a revolutionary Marxist party that can root itself in the working class. Taking up the cause of all the oppressed, such a party would give conscious leadership to the struggles of the workers not only to improve their present conditions but to do away with the entire system of capitalist wage slavery. ‘Unity’ with the oppressors, or with their social-democratic political agents, is the road to defeat. The only way to smash the all-sided assault on social programs, to assure free quality medical care, childcare and jobs and decent living standards for all, to end the neocolonial pillage of the Third World, is by ripping the productive forces from the hands of the capitalist class through socialist revolution and putting them in the hands of those whose labour makes society run.”

*From The "HistoMat" Blog- On The Passing Of British Labor Left Leader- Michael Foot

Click on the headline to link to a "HistoMat" blog entry concerning the passing of long time British Labor Party Left Leader, Michael Foot.

Markin comment:

In some senses Michael Foot was the exemplar of what was right and what was wrong with the old parliamentary labor left movement, mostly wrong in the end. In any case, we still need to fight for a workers party that fights for our communist future and that we can call our own, there in Britain and here.

*The 40th Anniversary Of The "Days Of Rage"-October 1969- The Days Of Political Futility

Click on title to link to Wikipedia's entry for the "Days Of Rage".

Markin comment:

I was originally going to make some extended remarks about this 'event' but after thinking about it, given how far we are removed in political time, space and consciousness from even that futile gesture against that version of the American imperial war machine I decided there were other topics that are more pressing and worthy of commentary. Like today where have all the anti-war, anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist protesters gone? Liberal, radical or revolutionary. We are at square one (or maybe one and one-half) and best realize that.

A couple of little, little comments to finish up. The rationale for this entry can be summed up this way- Today I am 'wishing' that the energy of those "days of rage", if not the political confusion behind the events, was stirring the political air. And the disastrous outcome of this event, for a lot of people I knew back in those days and who were sympathetic to its aims, got us thinking not only about the futility of isolated, virtually leaderless actions, but to seriously "hit the books" and go back to look seriously at the work of Karl Marx and fighting for a perspective of a mass movement based on the leadership role of the working class as the way to bring social change. That, my friends, is still a good lesson to remember on these cool, lonely nights.

*A Short Note On The Question Of The Politics Of “To The Streets”

Click on title to link to my blog entry, dated September 21, 2009, concerning the latest talk of of American Afghan troop escalations by chief commander there, General Stanley McChrystal. The Markin commentary there is an example of my "to the streets" perspective.

Markin commentary:

Of late I have been on something of a tear concerning the need for us, that is leftists, labor militants, radicals and the odd, assorted left liberal, to get back on to the streets in opposition to various policies of the Obama administration, especially of the probably endless future troop escalations in Afghanistan(only limited by the shrinking supply of cannon fodder, mainly our working class and minority youth) and the insidious immigration policy of en mass deportations of ‘’illegal’ immigrants that has put the wretched Bush Administration policy in the shade. In response to an inquiry in this space- NO, I do not have a “street” fetish political deviation. Hear me out.

Underlying my political perspective in the various commentaries on “to the streets” politics has been the understanding that we left militants do not, as a practical matter, have very much leverage today, over the political agenda in America. Moreover, Obama, for the most part, still enjoys a “honeymoon" period of unknown duration with the mass of people that we want to get to- labor militants, minority activists, and various other left-leaning constituencies. I have also noted that the Afghan troop escalation question is a wedge that we can use to pry those "folk" away from the Democratic Party. That is the simple politics of my latest my propaganda and agititional proposals.

I pose the question this way to those who offer another perspective. What is it? What is your alternative? Reliance on that slim, very slim parliamentary formal, somewhat half-hearted anti-war opposition? The labor bureaucracy? The “ghost” of Ted Kennedy? You get my drift. Furthermore, that parliamentary opposition to the February Obama Afghan troop escalation while heartening, as any objectively anti-war action is, was very narrow, very narrow indeed. On the real issue, the funding for Afghanistan (and Iraq) there was a very small left Democratic group of Congressional figures who voted the straight up NO vote required on that bill.

And that sad reality points to part of our political problem here in America. We have no independent working class party, we have no worker party representatives to act as “tribunes of the people” on our behalf in the halls of Congress, we, if we are principled, moreover, do not want a workers party executive running this imperialist show so what we have, or don’t have, will be determined by those mean downtown city streets. I will add, under a theme that I have used repeatedly before, that “those streets are not for dreaming now”. But with the hell to come over Afghanistan and other issues we better be there. And this slogan, above all, should be emblazoned on our banners- “Obama- Immediate Unconditional Withdrawal of All U.S./Allied Troops From Afghanistan (and Iraq).


Note: I have railed, endlessly, about the limits of “peace crawl” demonstrations in stopping imperialist war, at the time of Vietnam and Iraq (I&II), that are the total sum of the strategic perspectives of many leftists and left organizations. I stand by those prior polemics, as a general proposition. The point is that politics, including revolutionary politics, has a lot to do with timing. The timing now calls for a turn to the streets. We will yell at the “peace crawl” strategy and those who endlessly advocate it when those who advocate the strategy are an an obstruction to stronger actions. For now –“To The Streets”

The Iraq War Budget-Parliamentary Cretinism, Part 37

Commentary

Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal of U.S. Troops from Iraq and Afghanistan!

Okay, let us go by the numbers on the Iraq War budget question again for about the 37th time. On Thursday May 15, 2008, once again the Democratically led (that is with a capital D) House of Representatives put on its periodic display of what has become an embarrassingly familiar scenario. With a little twist this time though to provide gist for the political humorists. The bulk of Democrats, looking to the fall elections, wanted to be put on record as opposing the current Iraq war appropriations. Fair enough. The Republicans, in a fit of pique, decided that they did not like the set-up for various reasons and many of them abstained on the vote. The long and short of the maneuver is that the bill was defeated. Hooray, right? No, no no.

This is just grandstanding for the folks at home. The bill goes to the much more serious Senate next week where the appropriations will pass. Moreover, hovering over all of this, at least until January 20, 2009, and believe me beyond, well beyond that as well, is the presidential veto for any action that limits in any way the executive branch’s authority to wage war anyway it wants to. Thus, we are back to that proverbial square one from five years ago- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal of all American and Allied Troops and Mercenaries. But, I will be damned if these cretins get it yet.