Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the crime noir , Pick Up On South Street
DVD Review
Pick Up South Street, starring Richard Widmark, Jean Peters, Richard Kiley, 20th Century-Fox, 1953
I have previously in this space seemingly beaten to death the idea that not all crime noirs are created equal. Here I am again giving a thumbs down to this one based on that elusive standard. And here‘s why. While most of crime noirs , those that have good or bad femme fatales to muddy up the waters or not, have crime, the solving of crime, and the message that crime does not pay built into their plot lines. The film under review here, Pick Up On South Street, however tries to combine crime with a political message, a 1950s Cold War “red scare” political message-don’t mess with the reds or you’ll be dead. Courtesy of one J. Edgar Hoover, and about a million other unnamed, unmourned anti-communists. Moreover, given the year of the film, 1953, it seems to have been specially created to kick dirt on the names of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg who were being executed for their efforts on behalf of the Soviet Union. But argument over that possible link is for another time.
Here’s the plot line to give you an idea of how the two themes mesh (or don’t mesh) in this film. A woman, Candy (played by Jean Peters), while riding a New York subway has her wallet pick-pocketed by one low-life grafter, Skip (played by Richard Widmark). Not big deal in New York City, except that the wallet contained, unknown to Ms. Candy, secret microfilmed documents headed overseas (to Uncle Joe, okay ) through (nefarious, of course) agents working here. Skip is not privy to what he has unleashed until Candy is ordered by one of the agents, someone who has “befriended” her, Joey (played by Richard Kiley), to get the damn thing back. Hence she finally winds up on South Street where in a run-down fishing shack Widmark hangs his hat. Through guile, sexual advance, and anything else she can think of she tries to get the microfilm taking more than her fair share of beatings in the process. No dice, for a while. Of course to tie the red scare theme together agents, and you know what agents, are on the case looking out for the national interest. So the "win" is in the bag.Overall pretty thin gruel, right?
Right, except for Richard Widmark’s self-dramatizing flare as Skip, and his duplicity. See once Skip does become privy to what he has he is ready to sell to the highest bidder, and it takes hell and high water, including some cooing by Ms.Peters to get him on the right side of the angels. And this is where the whole thing falls down a little. No self-respecting criminal (or certified lumpenproletarian to use Marx’s term) is really going to go through hoops out of some patriotic fervor when he has gold right in front of him. Widmark and the cooing been-around-the-block Ms.Peters going off the deep-end for some patriotic reasons just stretches the imagination a little too far. But then you have to reach back to the old stand-by rationale of crime noir-crime, crime crime, or political crime, doesn’t pay to learn the lesson put forth here. Got it.
Showing posts with label working class struggle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label working class struggle. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 29, 2011
Friday, June 03, 2011
*From The Archives-The Struggle To Win The Youth To The Fight For Our Communist Future-The Spartacus Youth League and the Student Upsurge of the 1930’s-Lessons from History (1974)
Markin comment:
One of the declared purposes of this space is to draw the lessons of our left-wing past here in America and internationally, especially from the pro-communist wing. To that end I have made commentaries and provided archival works in order to help draw those lessons for today’s left-wing activists to learn, or at least ponder over. More importantly, for the long haul, to help educate today’s youth in the struggle for our common communist future. That is no small task or easy task given the differences of generations; differences of political milieus worked in; differences of social structure to work around; and, increasingly more important, the differences in appreciation of technological advances, and their uses.
There is no question that back in my youth I could have used, desperately used, many of the archival materials available today. When I developed political consciousness very early on, albeit liberal political consciousness, I could have used this material as I knew, I knew deep inside my heart and mind, that a junior Cold War liberal of the American For Democratic Action (ADA) stripe was not the end of my leftward political trajectory. More importantly, I could have used a socialist or communist youth organization to help me articulate the doubts I had about the virtues of liberal capitalism and be recruited to a more left-wing world view. As it was I spent far too long in the throes of the left-liberal/soft social-democratic milieu where I was dying politically. A group like the Young Communist League (W.E.B. Dubois Clubs in those days), the Young People’s Socialist League, or the Young Socialist Alliance representing the youth organizations of the American Communist Party, American Socialist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S.) respectively would have saved much wasted time and energy. I knew they were around but not in my area.
The archival material to be used in this series is weighted heavily toward the youth movements of the early American Communist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S). For more recent material I have relied on material from the Spartacus Youth Clubs, the youth group of the Spartacist League (U.S.), both because they are more readily available to me and because, and this should give cause for pause, there are not many other non-CP, non-SWP youth groups around. As I gather more material from other youth sources I will place them in this series.
Finally I would like to finish up with the preamble to the Spartacist Youth Club’s What We Fight For statement of purpose:
"The Spartacus Youth Clubs intervene into social struggles armed with the revolutionary internationalist program of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. We work to mobilize youth in struggle as partisans of the working class, championing the liberation of black people, women and all the oppressed. The SYCs fight to win youth to the perspective of building the Leninist vanguard party that will lead the working class in socialist revolution, laying the basis for a world free of capitalist exploitation and imperialist slaughter."
This seems to me be somewhere in the right direction for what a Bolshevik youth group should be doing these days; a proving ground to become professional revolutionaries with enough wiggle room to learn from their mistakes, and successes. More later.
The Spartacus Youth League and the Student Upsurge of the 1930’s-
Lessons from History
From Young Spartacus No. 22, March-April 1974
The Lessons from History series has in the past included articles on the early years of the Communist Youth International and the development of a "Resolution on the Youth" at the founding Conference of the Fourth International. This article on the Spartacus Youth League, the first Trotskyist youth organization in the U.S., focuses on the SYL’s internal debates over a correct orientation to students and on the main aspect of its student work, namely, its intervention in the anti-war student movement, counterposing the Leninist slogans against imperialist war to the predominating petty-bourgeois pacifism and social patriotism.
*******
Today, student groups like the Maoist Revolutionary Union-dominated Attica Brigade and Progressive Labor’s SDS are organized along the same reformist, student-parochialist conceptions as the Stalinist National Student League of the 1930’s. So-called "socialist youth organizations" like the Socialist Workers Party’s Young Socialist Alliance (YSA) made themselves infamous by their consistent petty-bourgeois, single-issue reformism on the Vietnam War. Such anti-Leninist youth work is nothing new; rather, it is the heritage of the Stalinist degeneration of the Third International.
The new recruits to the Attica Brigade, YSA and SDS may not be familiar with the historical traditions of these aspects of youth work and are not aware that old mistakes are being repeated and old betrayals consciously rerun. An examination of these issues in the crisis years of the 1930’s sheds light on current differences between left-wing youth and student organizations.
The development of the Spartacus Youth League (SYL) took place in the context of a growing radical student movement, dominated politically by the National Student League (NSL), which was led by the Stalinist Young Communist League (YCL).
The YCL was changing rapidly in response to events in American society (the Depression, New Deal, renewed militancy in the working class and preparations for imperialist war) and internationally (the further political degeneration of the Soviet Union and the rise of fascism in Germany). The YCL, under the control of the Communist Party, subservient to the dictates of the Soviet bureaucracy, entered a period of crisis in the mid-thirties, losing members and influence, as the line of the sectarian "third period" was abruptly changed to the policy of the People’s Front.
The Stalinist youth liquidated all remnants of independent working-class politics in their program and gave uncritical support to the multi-class American Student Union and American Youth Congress (with the emphasis on the American!), leading them on to the football field to wave pompons and cheer for Roosevelt as he prepared another slaughter for the American workers.
The radical student movement of the early 1930’s, with an even greater percentage of students involved than the protest movements of the 1960’s, was the main battlefield in the political war between the left-wing youth organizations. The sporadic anti-ROTC campaigns and expressions of discontent in 1931 soon developed into a wave of militancy which expressed itself in numerous anti-ROTC and anti-war rallies, conferences on unemployment, fascism and the crisis in education caused by the Depression, and widespread support for striking workers.
In the period since WWI, the Student League for Industrial Democracy (SLID), a bloc of the social-democratic Young People’s Socialist League (who formed its leadership) with liberal Christian "socialists," had been the dominant leftist group on the campuses, while the Young Workers League (previous name of the YCL) had concentrated on work among the young proletariat. The SLID in 1931 was an exhausted and demoralized organization with no enthusiasm to greet the outburst of campus radicalism.
National Student League
The SLID never gained the influence or numbers of the early-thirties National Student League (NSL), the dominant left-wing campus organization throughout this period. The NSL began as a YCL-led split from the SLID in September 1931, a split based on the "third period" line that social democrats were social fascists and on the Stalinists’ organizational appetite for a youth group of their own.
Centered in New York City, the group at first called itself the New York Student League, but the rapid gain in national membership soon justified a name change to National Student League. Publication of a monthly magazine, the Student Review, was begun in December 1931.
At that time the Trotskyist movement held that the Communist Parties were susceptible to reform from within. Consistent with this political orientation, the young Trotskyists considered themselves to be part of the YCL. At first organized into Spartacus Youth Clubs (SYC), sympathizing circles of the Communist League of America (CLA), the young Trotskyists concentrated on education of their membership and periphery in the historical lessons of Marxism and on intervention into YCL activities.
The SYC attempted to introduce resolutions in defense of a revolutionary perspective at YCL meetings and conferences, called on young militants to join the YCL, encouraged Trotskyist sympathizers to remain within the YCL to seek to win over the organization as a whole to Trotskyism, and themselves sought readmission to the organization, from which Trotskyists had been expelled in 1928. The Young Spartacans defended the YCL politically against the YPSL which at that time criticized the Soviet Union from the right and had not even partially broken with the betrayals of the Second International.
Young Spartacus and the Student Movement
The first volume of the paper circulated by the SYC, Young Spartacus, published by the National Youth Committee of the Communist League of America, reflected this strong orientation to the YCL, correct for that period. A real weakness, however, of the early Young Spartacus was a failure to recognize the political importance of certain student protest actions, which it either ignored or gave brief and routine press coverage.
The first two issues contained nothing about the vital and expanding student movement but a one-column editorial which gave a formally correct but abstract analysis of the student’s role in the revolutionary movement. The initial events surrounding the rise of the NSL to popularity such as the student delegation to Harlan County, Kentucky, to demonstrate support for the striking miners and the Columbia University strike in support of expelled liberal student editor Reed Harris, merited only short articles in back pages of Young Spartacus.
With the turning of the YCL more and more to the student arena, however, and the growth of a tremendous anti-war movement within that arena, the Young Spartacus began to devote more space to the student movement, and soon began to publish a monthly column called "Student Notes." The last issue of the paper (December 1935) was devoted exclusively to discussion of the issues surrounding the reunification of the NSL and SLID to form the American Student Union.
The orientation to the student movement necessitated more than just an abstract, formally correct understanding of the student question. Several debates on this question took place in the SYL, reflecting problems experienced in the arena.
Development of Leninist Position on Student Work
While favoring work among students, the SYL held the correct position that separate student self-interest organizations were necessarily reformist dead-ends and that it was not the task of communists to organize front groups for student "economism." Students are a socially heterogeneous group lacking the concentrated social power of the proletariat, which can stop capitalist production by withholding its labor. Therefore students are incapable of playing an independent or consistent political role or of posing a serious threat to the power of the capitalists.
While subordinate to the party’s main work in the class, an orientation by the youth group to students is, however, important in the construction of a vanguard party as—and this was the case in the 1930’s—the student movement, is frequently the arena, for ideological debates within the left. Student work can thus be an important component of the splits, fusions and regroupments that lead to the crystallization of a vanguard nucleus. In the longer view, it will be important in defeating the forces of capitalist reaction to win as large a section of the politically volatile student population as possible, as well as other non-working-class layers, to identify their interests with those of the proletariat.
The SYL sought to build a Leninist youth group which included both students and young workers and to focus its intervention in the student movement on the need to link up with working-class struggles through the class’s political leadership, namely, a Leninist vanguard party. This did not preclude entry or intervention into existing student organizations when principled and tactically advisable. In fact, such work was vital to the growth of the SYL.
Leftism and Rightism on the Student Question
Having overcome its early tendency to abstain from student work, the SYL initially adopted a correct tactical orientation of entry into the NSL with the goal of winning its majority to revolutionary politics. This tactic was arrived at after an internal debate in which sectarian workerist elements advocating a principle of non-entry were defeated.
Nevertheless, a tendency toward sectarianism continued to manifest itself in certain areas of student work, for example, in the SYL’s orientation to the Oxford Pledge movement. This movement originated at Oxford University when the student union voted that "This House will not fight for King and Country in any war." The pledge was picked up by students in other countries, including the U.S., where it was generalized to declarations of refusal to fight for "our government" in any war.
The SYL, correctly noting the pacifist content of the Pledge and narrow, student character of the movement, concluded that a posture of hostility and organizational abstention was therefore appropriate. They thereby cut themselves off from a layer of potential recruits who, while entertaining pacifist illusions, were also motivated by anti-patriotic, implicitly internationalist sentiments (and the movement did take on an international character, at least organizationally). This anti-patriotic sentiment was evident in the declarations’ insistent opposition to participation by "our government" (or "our King and Country") in any war, rather than a general statement of opposition to war.
The retention of the Oxford Pledge became a polarizing issue in the antiwar student movement of the late 1930’s when the social pressures to be patriotic were increasingly felt. The Stalinists opposed the Pledge while the Trotskyist Young People’s Socialist League-Fourth Internationalist (SYL’s successor) argued for its retention, capitalizing on its anti-patriotic, internationalist implications, opposing pacifist interpretations of it, and fighting to link it to anti-imperialist, revolutionary class-struggle demands.
Following the debate in the SYL over a general orientation to students, a rightist minority emerged, advocating abstractly the formation of a national "militant mass student movement" that would be anti-fascist, anti-militarist and anti-imperialist and would "take up the struggles of the students around student issues" (Young Spartacus supplement, October 1934). This centrist formulation failed to put forward a positive socialist program, and instead defined the organization through negatives and as narrowly studentist. It was strikingly similar to Progressive Labor’s 1969 program for SDS (which has since moved from centrism to reformism pure and simple) and the Revolutionary Union’s current program for the Attica Brigade.
The SYL majority counterposed to this the Leninist conception:
"An organization which aims to educate the students in the character of the class struggle, and the duties which result from it can only do so on the basis of a clear program, a communist program. Clarity, which is always essential, is doubly so where different class elements are involved…. organizations, which, like the NSL, move in the direction of organizing the students solely on the problems of the student issues, are…. intolerable. A left-wing group must take sides for and against each of the classes that comprise society. A union, and the NSL contemplates a union, is predicated upon a unity of interests. That unity does not exist among the students; for, they contain representatives of all classes."
—Young Spartacus supplement, October 1934
NSL’s Turn to Popular Frontism
While the rightist minority position was rejected at the SYL Founding Conference, a certain tendency to tail-end the NSL had developed. By 1935, the yearly NSL-led anti-war student strikes had become formations identical to the Socialist Workers Party’s National Peace Action Coalition of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s: subordination of revolutionary politics for the sake of the "movement."
This development coincided with the Stalinists’ turn away from "third period" sectarianism towards the class collaboration of the popular front. The seeds for the capitulation to social patriotism were planted in the "third period," when the Stalinist parties, while following in the main a sectarian policy, zigzagged off into classless "anti-war" actions under the pressure of their role as defenders of the Soviet bureaucracy abroad.
Thus the Stalinists endorsed the infamous 1932 Amsterdam Conference dominated by the wretched politics of the pacifist literary figure Henri Barbusse. Barbusse’s document, which was passed at the Conference, failed to distinguish between reactionary wars of imperialism and revolutionary wars of the proletariat against capitalism. Trotsky denounced the Communist International’s (CI) behavior at the Conference as "monstrous, capitulatory, and criminal crawling of official communism before petty-bourgeois pacifism" ("Declaration to the Antiwar Congress at Amsterdam," Writings of Leon Trotsky, 1932). The Trotskyists’ resolution calling on the Communist International to organize an international anti-war congress of all labor organizations to plan a united front action on a concrete program against war could not even obtain a vote and they were heckled and prevented from getting the floor.
The Stalinists’ pacifism blossomed into open social patriotism in the popular-front period. In the NSL the formerly sectarian and crude but pro-working-class line was totally abandoned in favor of pacifism and social patriotism; the SYL should have recognized this as a qualitative degeneration into a hardened reformism and left the NSL, attempting to take with it any remaining subjectively revolutionary elements.
Instead, the SYL continued to conceive of itself as a left pressure group within the NSL, making formally correct political statements about the NSL’s pacifist anti-war activities, but characterizing such activities as "errors made by the National Student Strike Committee [of the NSL]… [For example,] the failure to include working class youth organizations in the strike committee…. The second error was to allow for unclarity [by omitting] the slogan ‘against imperialist war’…. In certain instances, notably CCNY and New York University, the SYL forced the use of the word ‘imperialist’" (Young Spartacus, May 1935).
The SYL should have denounced the conscious capitulation to the bourgeoisie that these politics represented, rather than creating the illusion of good-willed, but incompetent, opponents of imperialist war. Thus, while the SYL organized support for the anti-war strikes around Leninist slogans, its failure to counterpose itself clearly to the Stalinist NSL undercut its work.
Nevertheless, the SYL continued to recruit from the YCL and its periphery. In Chicago particularly, where several vigorous and active SYL chapters existed, a small but steady trickle sided with the Young Spartacans. The NSL grew so desperate that it attempted to pass a motion barring "Trotskyites" from membership. YCL members attacked SYLers at an NSL meeting against war; Spartacus leader Nathan Gould was attacked by YCLers when attempting to distribute a leaflet, and YCLers issued threats of violence if the Trotskyists did not cease to speak to their members. Such thuggery was the Stalinists’ only "defense" against the SYL’s revolutionary criticism of YCL capitulation. This desperation grew so intense that the Chicago NSL dissolved the organization rather than allow two SYLers to join!
American Youth Congress
This motion from crude pro-working-class radicalism to alliance with the bourgeoisie was repeated in the American Youth Congress (AYC). In August 1934 a Roosevelt supporter by the name of Viola Ilma called upon all youth organizations to "convene and discuss the problems confronting the young people of this country." At the first convention, there was a split between the Ilmaites and the left (predominantly the YCL and YPSL); Ilma withdrew from the Congress, leaving the YCL, YPSL, YMCA-YWCA, the Boy Scouts and a few church organizations.
Despite the protests of the YCL, the SYL was present, although it correctly refused to endorse or join this wretched front for American bourgeois interests in the growing imperialist antagonisms. At the same time, the SYL maintained an active intervention into AYC meetings, sharply counterposing revolutionary class-struggle dethands to the AYC’s class collaborationism.
The AYC adopted a vague program of protest, pointing out the social problems of unemployment, transiency and militarization suffered by American youth. The second Congress, held in January 1935, had no agenda point for discussion. More vague resolutions were adopted—to be brought to Roosevelt and members of the U.S. Congress. Young Spartacus printed a scathing attack on this Congress, which was a pompous facade of fake radical-sounding speeches by Norman Thomas and various liberal Congressmen about the plight of American youth. Since the Congress was a bloc of tendencies representing different classes in society, no concrete program of action that would serve all interests could be adopted; in fact, the program of the bourgeoisie predominated.
The third meeting, in Detroit in July 1935, represented an apt culmination of this motion toward impotent liberalism and moral outrage. The SYL described the meeting in the August 1935 Young Spartacus:
"The congress opened with the singing at an outdoor mass meeting, attended by 2,000, of ‘America.’ In consideration of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, ten o’clock mass was arranged at which Reverend Ward preached a delightful and most interesting sermon.
"Having completed its graduation to pacifism, the congress was no longer dignified by a reluctant opposition to IMPERIALIST war. Resolutions congruous with revolutionary spirit were supplanted entirely by the slogans of the pacifists. Thus, at last, the congress reeked from beginning to end with ‘peace.’
"The Stalinists, chief sponsors of the congress, blocked every formulation, resolution or amendment that stood to the left of the proposed program. Every resolution introduced to the right of the program was carried with passionate enthusiasm and exhilaration…. Every left or semi-left proposal was combatted by a classically opportunist argument: ‘Everybody knows that my organization is heartily in favor of that resolution. However, it must be defeated because its acceptance will narrow the congress to purely labor organizations.’"
The Stalinists thus consciously tried to prevent the drawing of the class line in the Congress.
NSL Rises to FDR’s "Challenge"
The main documents of the Congress, the American Youth Act and the Declaration of Rights of American Youth, were enthusiastically supported by the NSL. The Student Review quoted President Roosevelt’s words—"Therefore to the American youth of all Parties I Submit a Message of Confidence: Unite and Challenge!"—and reprinted the two documents in their entirety. The American Youth Act was the AYC’s version of the New Deal National Youth Administration, and demanded simply a little more money and representatives of "youth" and "education" on the administrative board of the NYA. A campaign was initiated for the passage of this act by the Congress. The Declaration of Rights of American Youth was modeled after the Declaration of Independence and was identical to it in political content. Later in the 1930’s the AYC became the ersatz New Deal youth organization.
The NSL pursued a parallel course. The 7th Congress of the CI adopted the Dimitrov Popular-Front line and extended it to the youth organizations by liquidating the Communist Youth International into the World Federation of Democratic Youth—a fusion of Stalinist and right-wing social-democratic youth groups based on a bourgeois program.
American Student Union Jamborees for ‘Democracy’
In the U.S., after four years of separation, the NSL and SLID were reunited in December 1935 to form the American Student Union (ASU). This unity was initiated by the NSL itself, in accordance with instructions from the CI that "unity at all costs of the young generation against war and fascism" was to be effected immediately. In 1938 the ASU gave up opposition to compulsory ROTC. Roosevelt’s "collective security" was adopted as the ASU line on the war question, with the feeble left cover that support for American imperialism against German fascism was necessary for defense of the Soviet Union. Under the leadership of the YCL, the ASU became a totally social-patriotic organization.
A reporter from the New Republic described a 1939 ASU convention in these words:
"… enthusiasm reached its peak at the jamboree in the huge jumbo jaialai auditorium of the Hippodrome (seating capacity 4,500) which was filled to its loftiest tier. There were a quintet of white flannelled cheerleaders, a swing band and shaggers doing the Campus Stomp (‘everybody’s doing it, ASUing it!’)—confetti. There were ASU feathers and buttons, a brief musical comedy by the Mob Theatre and pretty ushers in academic caps and gowns. All the trappings of a big game rally were present and the difference was that they were cheering, not the Crimson to beat the Blue, but Democracy to beat Reaction."
During the same period, the YCL itself liquidated its 16-year-old paper Young Worker in favor of Champion which featured articles by liberal senators, Farmer-Labor Governor Olson from Minnesota, famous for his savage attempts to crush the 1934 Minneapolis Teamsters strike, and a regular "Miss America" column which gave advice to young female revolutionaries on what kinds of make-up and bathing suits to buy.
The SYL remained intransigent against the growing social chauvinism of the period, directing Leninist antiwar propaganda at students, unemployed youth and young workers:
"How do wars come about? Are they due to ‘bad politicians’?
"We International Communists do not think so. We understand that wars are the logical development of class politics. Capitalist politics have various forms the essence of which is the same: the continuation and development of the system of wage slavery, of exploitation of the many by the few….
"In such a war the working class can gain nothing by the victory of either power. They must fight to defeat their own government so that working class victory can really be the outcome of the war….
"By strikes and demonstrations, fraternization with the ‘enemy’ on the war front, the militant workers’ movement can grow until it is in a position, with the majority of toilers behind it, to turn the imperialist war into a civil war and establish a workers’ dictatorship which will suppress the former master’s class and lead the way for a classless society."
—Young Spartacus, March 1934
While remaining critical of certain tactical mistakes made by the SYL, the Revolutionary Communist Youth, youth section of the Spartacist League, holds up as a model the SYL’s conception of a correct orientation to students and its history of Leninist intervention into the student anti-war movement. An assimilation of this history is important in politically defeating reformist organizations like the Attica Brigade, the Young Socialist Alliance and SDS and winning over their serious militants to Marxism.
One of the declared purposes of this space is to draw the lessons of our left-wing past here in America and internationally, especially from the pro-communist wing. To that end I have made commentaries and provided archival works in order to help draw those lessons for today’s left-wing activists to learn, or at least ponder over. More importantly, for the long haul, to help educate today’s youth in the struggle for our common communist future. That is no small task or easy task given the differences of generations; differences of political milieus worked in; differences of social structure to work around; and, increasingly more important, the differences in appreciation of technological advances, and their uses.
There is no question that back in my youth I could have used, desperately used, many of the archival materials available today. When I developed political consciousness very early on, albeit liberal political consciousness, I could have used this material as I knew, I knew deep inside my heart and mind, that a junior Cold War liberal of the American For Democratic Action (ADA) stripe was not the end of my leftward political trajectory. More importantly, I could have used a socialist or communist youth organization to help me articulate the doubts I had about the virtues of liberal capitalism and be recruited to a more left-wing world view. As it was I spent far too long in the throes of the left-liberal/soft social-democratic milieu where I was dying politically. A group like the Young Communist League (W.E.B. Dubois Clubs in those days), the Young People’s Socialist League, or the Young Socialist Alliance representing the youth organizations of the American Communist Party, American Socialist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S.) respectively would have saved much wasted time and energy. I knew they were around but not in my area.
The archival material to be used in this series is weighted heavily toward the youth movements of the early American Communist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S). For more recent material I have relied on material from the Spartacus Youth Clubs, the youth group of the Spartacist League (U.S.), both because they are more readily available to me and because, and this should give cause for pause, there are not many other non-CP, non-SWP youth groups around. As I gather more material from other youth sources I will place them in this series.
Finally I would like to finish up with the preamble to the Spartacist Youth Club’s What We Fight For statement of purpose:
"The Spartacus Youth Clubs intervene into social struggles armed with the revolutionary internationalist program of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. We work to mobilize youth in struggle as partisans of the working class, championing the liberation of black people, women and all the oppressed. The SYCs fight to win youth to the perspective of building the Leninist vanguard party that will lead the working class in socialist revolution, laying the basis for a world free of capitalist exploitation and imperialist slaughter."
This seems to me be somewhere in the right direction for what a Bolshevik youth group should be doing these days; a proving ground to become professional revolutionaries with enough wiggle room to learn from their mistakes, and successes. More later.
The Spartacus Youth League and the Student Upsurge of the 1930’s-
Lessons from History
From Young Spartacus No. 22, March-April 1974
The Lessons from History series has in the past included articles on the early years of the Communist Youth International and the development of a "Resolution on the Youth" at the founding Conference of the Fourth International. This article on the Spartacus Youth League, the first Trotskyist youth organization in the U.S., focuses on the SYL’s internal debates over a correct orientation to students and on the main aspect of its student work, namely, its intervention in the anti-war student movement, counterposing the Leninist slogans against imperialist war to the predominating petty-bourgeois pacifism and social patriotism.
*******
Today, student groups like the Maoist Revolutionary Union-dominated Attica Brigade and Progressive Labor’s SDS are organized along the same reformist, student-parochialist conceptions as the Stalinist National Student League of the 1930’s. So-called "socialist youth organizations" like the Socialist Workers Party’s Young Socialist Alliance (YSA) made themselves infamous by their consistent petty-bourgeois, single-issue reformism on the Vietnam War. Such anti-Leninist youth work is nothing new; rather, it is the heritage of the Stalinist degeneration of the Third International.
The new recruits to the Attica Brigade, YSA and SDS may not be familiar with the historical traditions of these aspects of youth work and are not aware that old mistakes are being repeated and old betrayals consciously rerun. An examination of these issues in the crisis years of the 1930’s sheds light on current differences between left-wing youth and student organizations.
The development of the Spartacus Youth League (SYL) took place in the context of a growing radical student movement, dominated politically by the National Student League (NSL), which was led by the Stalinist Young Communist League (YCL).
The YCL was changing rapidly in response to events in American society (the Depression, New Deal, renewed militancy in the working class and preparations for imperialist war) and internationally (the further political degeneration of the Soviet Union and the rise of fascism in Germany). The YCL, under the control of the Communist Party, subservient to the dictates of the Soviet bureaucracy, entered a period of crisis in the mid-thirties, losing members and influence, as the line of the sectarian "third period" was abruptly changed to the policy of the People’s Front.
The Stalinist youth liquidated all remnants of independent working-class politics in their program and gave uncritical support to the multi-class American Student Union and American Youth Congress (with the emphasis on the American!), leading them on to the football field to wave pompons and cheer for Roosevelt as he prepared another slaughter for the American workers.
The radical student movement of the early 1930’s, with an even greater percentage of students involved than the protest movements of the 1960’s, was the main battlefield in the political war between the left-wing youth organizations. The sporadic anti-ROTC campaigns and expressions of discontent in 1931 soon developed into a wave of militancy which expressed itself in numerous anti-ROTC and anti-war rallies, conferences on unemployment, fascism and the crisis in education caused by the Depression, and widespread support for striking workers.
In the period since WWI, the Student League for Industrial Democracy (SLID), a bloc of the social-democratic Young People’s Socialist League (who formed its leadership) with liberal Christian "socialists," had been the dominant leftist group on the campuses, while the Young Workers League (previous name of the YCL) had concentrated on work among the young proletariat. The SLID in 1931 was an exhausted and demoralized organization with no enthusiasm to greet the outburst of campus radicalism.
National Student League
The SLID never gained the influence or numbers of the early-thirties National Student League (NSL), the dominant left-wing campus organization throughout this period. The NSL began as a YCL-led split from the SLID in September 1931, a split based on the "third period" line that social democrats were social fascists and on the Stalinists’ organizational appetite for a youth group of their own.
Centered in New York City, the group at first called itself the New York Student League, but the rapid gain in national membership soon justified a name change to National Student League. Publication of a monthly magazine, the Student Review, was begun in December 1931.
At that time the Trotskyist movement held that the Communist Parties were susceptible to reform from within. Consistent with this political orientation, the young Trotskyists considered themselves to be part of the YCL. At first organized into Spartacus Youth Clubs (SYC), sympathizing circles of the Communist League of America (CLA), the young Trotskyists concentrated on education of their membership and periphery in the historical lessons of Marxism and on intervention into YCL activities.
The SYC attempted to introduce resolutions in defense of a revolutionary perspective at YCL meetings and conferences, called on young militants to join the YCL, encouraged Trotskyist sympathizers to remain within the YCL to seek to win over the organization as a whole to Trotskyism, and themselves sought readmission to the organization, from which Trotskyists had been expelled in 1928. The Young Spartacans defended the YCL politically against the YPSL which at that time criticized the Soviet Union from the right and had not even partially broken with the betrayals of the Second International.
Young Spartacus and the Student Movement
The first volume of the paper circulated by the SYC, Young Spartacus, published by the National Youth Committee of the Communist League of America, reflected this strong orientation to the YCL, correct for that period. A real weakness, however, of the early Young Spartacus was a failure to recognize the political importance of certain student protest actions, which it either ignored or gave brief and routine press coverage.
The first two issues contained nothing about the vital and expanding student movement but a one-column editorial which gave a formally correct but abstract analysis of the student’s role in the revolutionary movement. The initial events surrounding the rise of the NSL to popularity such as the student delegation to Harlan County, Kentucky, to demonstrate support for the striking miners and the Columbia University strike in support of expelled liberal student editor Reed Harris, merited only short articles in back pages of Young Spartacus.
With the turning of the YCL more and more to the student arena, however, and the growth of a tremendous anti-war movement within that arena, the Young Spartacus began to devote more space to the student movement, and soon began to publish a monthly column called "Student Notes." The last issue of the paper (December 1935) was devoted exclusively to discussion of the issues surrounding the reunification of the NSL and SLID to form the American Student Union.
The orientation to the student movement necessitated more than just an abstract, formally correct understanding of the student question. Several debates on this question took place in the SYL, reflecting problems experienced in the arena.
Development of Leninist Position on Student Work
While favoring work among students, the SYL held the correct position that separate student self-interest organizations were necessarily reformist dead-ends and that it was not the task of communists to organize front groups for student "economism." Students are a socially heterogeneous group lacking the concentrated social power of the proletariat, which can stop capitalist production by withholding its labor. Therefore students are incapable of playing an independent or consistent political role or of posing a serious threat to the power of the capitalists.
While subordinate to the party’s main work in the class, an orientation by the youth group to students is, however, important in the construction of a vanguard party as—and this was the case in the 1930’s—the student movement, is frequently the arena, for ideological debates within the left. Student work can thus be an important component of the splits, fusions and regroupments that lead to the crystallization of a vanguard nucleus. In the longer view, it will be important in defeating the forces of capitalist reaction to win as large a section of the politically volatile student population as possible, as well as other non-working-class layers, to identify their interests with those of the proletariat.
The SYL sought to build a Leninist youth group which included both students and young workers and to focus its intervention in the student movement on the need to link up with working-class struggles through the class’s political leadership, namely, a Leninist vanguard party. This did not preclude entry or intervention into existing student organizations when principled and tactically advisable. In fact, such work was vital to the growth of the SYL.
Leftism and Rightism on the Student Question
Having overcome its early tendency to abstain from student work, the SYL initially adopted a correct tactical orientation of entry into the NSL with the goal of winning its majority to revolutionary politics. This tactic was arrived at after an internal debate in which sectarian workerist elements advocating a principle of non-entry were defeated.
Nevertheless, a tendency toward sectarianism continued to manifest itself in certain areas of student work, for example, in the SYL’s orientation to the Oxford Pledge movement. This movement originated at Oxford University when the student union voted that "This House will not fight for King and Country in any war." The pledge was picked up by students in other countries, including the U.S., where it was generalized to declarations of refusal to fight for "our government" in any war.
The SYL, correctly noting the pacifist content of the Pledge and narrow, student character of the movement, concluded that a posture of hostility and organizational abstention was therefore appropriate. They thereby cut themselves off from a layer of potential recruits who, while entertaining pacifist illusions, were also motivated by anti-patriotic, implicitly internationalist sentiments (and the movement did take on an international character, at least organizationally). This anti-patriotic sentiment was evident in the declarations’ insistent opposition to participation by "our government" (or "our King and Country") in any war, rather than a general statement of opposition to war.
The retention of the Oxford Pledge became a polarizing issue in the antiwar student movement of the late 1930’s when the social pressures to be patriotic were increasingly felt. The Stalinists opposed the Pledge while the Trotskyist Young People’s Socialist League-Fourth Internationalist (SYL’s successor) argued for its retention, capitalizing on its anti-patriotic, internationalist implications, opposing pacifist interpretations of it, and fighting to link it to anti-imperialist, revolutionary class-struggle demands.
Following the debate in the SYL over a general orientation to students, a rightist minority emerged, advocating abstractly the formation of a national "militant mass student movement" that would be anti-fascist, anti-militarist and anti-imperialist and would "take up the struggles of the students around student issues" (Young Spartacus supplement, October 1934). This centrist formulation failed to put forward a positive socialist program, and instead defined the organization through negatives and as narrowly studentist. It was strikingly similar to Progressive Labor’s 1969 program for SDS (which has since moved from centrism to reformism pure and simple) and the Revolutionary Union’s current program for the Attica Brigade.
The SYL majority counterposed to this the Leninist conception:
"An organization which aims to educate the students in the character of the class struggle, and the duties which result from it can only do so on the basis of a clear program, a communist program. Clarity, which is always essential, is doubly so where different class elements are involved…. organizations, which, like the NSL, move in the direction of organizing the students solely on the problems of the student issues, are…. intolerable. A left-wing group must take sides for and against each of the classes that comprise society. A union, and the NSL contemplates a union, is predicated upon a unity of interests. That unity does not exist among the students; for, they contain representatives of all classes."
—Young Spartacus supplement, October 1934
NSL’s Turn to Popular Frontism
While the rightist minority position was rejected at the SYL Founding Conference, a certain tendency to tail-end the NSL had developed. By 1935, the yearly NSL-led anti-war student strikes had become formations identical to the Socialist Workers Party’s National Peace Action Coalition of the late 1960’s and early 1970’s: subordination of revolutionary politics for the sake of the "movement."
This development coincided with the Stalinists’ turn away from "third period" sectarianism towards the class collaboration of the popular front. The seeds for the capitulation to social patriotism were planted in the "third period," when the Stalinist parties, while following in the main a sectarian policy, zigzagged off into classless "anti-war" actions under the pressure of their role as defenders of the Soviet bureaucracy abroad.
Thus the Stalinists endorsed the infamous 1932 Amsterdam Conference dominated by the wretched politics of the pacifist literary figure Henri Barbusse. Barbusse’s document, which was passed at the Conference, failed to distinguish between reactionary wars of imperialism and revolutionary wars of the proletariat against capitalism. Trotsky denounced the Communist International’s (CI) behavior at the Conference as "monstrous, capitulatory, and criminal crawling of official communism before petty-bourgeois pacifism" ("Declaration to the Antiwar Congress at Amsterdam," Writings of Leon Trotsky, 1932). The Trotskyists’ resolution calling on the Communist International to organize an international anti-war congress of all labor organizations to plan a united front action on a concrete program against war could not even obtain a vote and they were heckled and prevented from getting the floor.
The Stalinists’ pacifism blossomed into open social patriotism in the popular-front period. In the NSL the formerly sectarian and crude but pro-working-class line was totally abandoned in favor of pacifism and social patriotism; the SYL should have recognized this as a qualitative degeneration into a hardened reformism and left the NSL, attempting to take with it any remaining subjectively revolutionary elements.
Instead, the SYL continued to conceive of itself as a left pressure group within the NSL, making formally correct political statements about the NSL’s pacifist anti-war activities, but characterizing such activities as "errors made by the National Student Strike Committee [of the NSL]… [For example,] the failure to include working class youth organizations in the strike committee…. The second error was to allow for unclarity [by omitting] the slogan ‘against imperialist war’…. In certain instances, notably CCNY and New York University, the SYL forced the use of the word ‘imperialist’" (Young Spartacus, May 1935).
The SYL should have denounced the conscious capitulation to the bourgeoisie that these politics represented, rather than creating the illusion of good-willed, but incompetent, opponents of imperialist war. Thus, while the SYL organized support for the anti-war strikes around Leninist slogans, its failure to counterpose itself clearly to the Stalinist NSL undercut its work.
Nevertheless, the SYL continued to recruit from the YCL and its periphery. In Chicago particularly, where several vigorous and active SYL chapters existed, a small but steady trickle sided with the Young Spartacans. The NSL grew so desperate that it attempted to pass a motion barring "Trotskyites" from membership. YCL members attacked SYLers at an NSL meeting against war; Spartacus leader Nathan Gould was attacked by YCLers when attempting to distribute a leaflet, and YCLers issued threats of violence if the Trotskyists did not cease to speak to their members. Such thuggery was the Stalinists’ only "defense" against the SYL’s revolutionary criticism of YCL capitulation. This desperation grew so intense that the Chicago NSL dissolved the organization rather than allow two SYLers to join!
American Youth Congress
This motion from crude pro-working-class radicalism to alliance with the bourgeoisie was repeated in the American Youth Congress (AYC). In August 1934 a Roosevelt supporter by the name of Viola Ilma called upon all youth organizations to "convene and discuss the problems confronting the young people of this country." At the first convention, there was a split between the Ilmaites and the left (predominantly the YCL and YPSL); Ilma withdrew from the Congress, leaving the YCL, YPSL, YMCA-YWCA, the Boy Scouts and a few church organizations.
Despite the protests of the YCL, the SYL was present, although it correctly refused to endorse or join this wretched front for American bourgeois interests in the growing imperialist antagonisms. At the same time, the SYL maintained an active intervention into AYC meetings, sharply counterposing revolutionary class-struggle dethands to the AYC’s class collaborationism.
The AYC adopted a vague program of protest, pointing out the social problems of unemployment, transiency and militarization suffered by American youth. The second Congress, held in January 1935, had no agenda point for discussion. More vague resolutions were adopted—to be brought to Roosevelt and members of the U.S. Congress. Young Spartacus printed a scathing attack on this Congress, which was a pompous facade of fake radical-sounding speeches by Norman Thomas and various liberal Congressmen about the plight of American youth. Since the Congress was a bloc of tendencies representing different classes in society, no concrete program of action that would serve all interests could be adopted; in fact, the program of the bourgeoisie predominated.
The third meeting, in Detroit in July 1935, represented an apt culmination of this motion toward impotent liberalism and moral outrage. The SYL described the meeting in the August 1935 Young Spartacus:
"The congress opened with the singing at an outdoor mass meeting, attended by 2,000, of ‘America.’ In consideration of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, ten o’clock mass was arranged at which Reverend Ward preached a delightful and most interesting sermon.
"Having completed its graduation to pacifism, the congress was no longer dignified by a reluctant opposition to IMPERIALIST war. Resolutions congruous with revolutionary spirit were supplanted entirely by the slogans of the pacifists. Thus, at last, the congress reeked from beginning to end with ‘peace.’
"The Stalinists, chief sponsors of the congress, blocked every formulation, resolution or amendment that stood to the left of the proposed program. Every resolution introduced to the right of the program was carried with passionate enthusiasm and exhilaration…. Every left or semi-left proposal was combatted by a classically opportunist argument: ‘Everybody knows that my organization is heartily in favor of that resolution. However, it must be defeated because its acceptance will narrow the congress to purely labor organizations.’"
The Stalinists thus consciously tried to prevent the drawing of the class line in the Congress.
NSL Rises to FDR’s "Challenge"
The main documents of the Congress, the American Youth Act and the Declaration of Rights of American Youth, were enthusiastically supported by the NSL. The Student Review quoted President Roosevelt’s words—"Therefore to the American youth of all Parties I Submit a Message of Confidence: Unite and Challenge!"—and reprinted the two documents in their entirety. The American Youth Act was the AYC’s version of the New Deal National Youth Administration, and demanded simply a little more money and representatives of "youth" and "education" on the administrative board of the NYA. A campaign was initiated for the passage of this act by the Congress. The Declaration of Rights of American Youth was modeled after the Declaration of Independence and was identical to it in political content. Later in the 1930’s the AYC became the ersatz New Deal youth organization.
The NSL pursued a parallel course. The 7th Congress of the CI adopted the Dimitrov Popular-Front line and extended it to the youth organizations by liquidating the Communist Youth International into the World Federation of Democratic Youth—a fusion of Stalinist and right-wing social-democratic youth groups based on a bourgeois program.
American Student Union Jamborees for ‘Democracy’
In the U.S., after four years of separation, the NSL and SLID were reunited in December 1935 to form the American Student Union (ASU). This unity was initiated by the NSL itself, in accordance with instructions from the CI that "unity at all costs of the young generation against war and fascism" was to be effected immediately. In 1938 the ASU gave up opposition to compulsory ROTC. Roosevelt’s "collective security" was adopted as the ASU line on the war question, with the feeble left cover that support for American imperialism against German fascism was necessary for defense of the Soviet Union. Under the leadership of the YCL, the ASU became a totally social-patriotic organization.
A reporter from the New Republic described a 1939 ASU convention in these words:
"… enthusiasm reached its peak at the jamboree in the huge jumbo jaialai auditorium of the Hippodrome (seating capacity 4,500) which was filled to its loftiest tier. There were a quintet of white flannelled cheerleaders, a swing band and shaggers doing the Campus Stomp (‘everybody’s doing it, ASUing it!’)—confetti. There were ASU feathers and buttons, a brief musical comedy by the Mob Theatre and pretty ushers in academic caps and gowns. All the trappings of a big game rally were present and the difference was that they were cheering, not the Crimson to beat the Blue, but Democracy to beat Reaction."
During the same period, the YCL itself liquidated its 16-year-old paper Young Worker in favor of Champion which featured articles by liberal senators, Farmer-Labor Governor Olson from Minnesota, famous for his savage attempts to crush the 1934 Minneapolis Teamsters strike, and a regular "Miss America" column which gave advice to young female revolutionaries on what kinds of make-up and bathing suits to buy.
The SYL remained intransigent against the growing social chauvinism of the period, directing Leninist antiwar propaganda at students, unemployed youth and young workers:
"How do wars come about? Are they due to ‘bad politicians’?
"We International Communists do not think so. We understand that wars are the logical development of class politics. Capitalist politics have various forms the essence of which is the same: the continuation and development of the system of wage slavery, of exploitation of the many by the few….
"In such a war the working class can gain nothing by the victory of either power. They must fight to defeat their own government so that working class victory can really be the outcome of the war….
"By strikes and demonstrations, fraternization with the ‘enemy’ on the war front, the militant workers’ movement can grow until it is in a position, with the majority of toilers behind it, to turn the imperialist war into a civil war and establish a workers’ dictatorship which will suppress the former master’s class and lead the way for a classless society."
—Young Spartacus, March 1934
While remaining critical of certain tactical mistakes made by the SYL, the Revolutionary Communist Youth, youth section of the Spartacist League, holds up as a model the SYL’s conception of a correct orientation to students and its history of Leninist intervention into the student anti-war movement. An assimilation of this history is important in politically defeating reformist organizations like the Attica Brigade, the Young Socialist Alliance and SDS and winning over their serious militants to Marxism.
Sunday, May 22, 2011
From The "Bob Feldman '68" Blog-Columbia and Barnard Anti-War Students Oppose Return of ROTC To Columbia University Campus In 2011
Monday, April 25, 2011
Columbia and Barnard Anti-War Students Oppose Return of ROTC To Columbia University Campus In 2011
On their "No ROTC" blog, the anti-war students at Columbia University and Barnard College who have been opposing the undemocratically made decision of the Columbia Administration of Washington Post Company board member, Federal Reserve Bank of New York board member and Columbia University President Lee Bollinger to begin training U.S. military officers for the Pentagon's endless war in Iraq-Afghanistan-Pakistan-(and Libya) on Columbia's campus indicated why ROTC and NROTC should still be banned at Columbia University in 2011:
"The Coalition Opposed to ROTC is deeply dismayed to learn of the Senate resolution calling for the return of ROTC to Columbia, which was circulated in campus media on Monday, March 21st. Here, we challenge the primary assumptions used to justify this resolution.
1. `Whereas the Yellow Ribbon program gives veterans opportunities to study at Columbia'
Yes, and this is incredibly valuable. Yet having veterans study in class, as students, is completely different than having military officers trained on campus, where Columbia will allow Armed Forces personnel to equip uniformed students with the relevant skills necessary to lead military units– be this in weapons usage, counterinsurgency tactics, physical prowess, or other forms of training that are markedly different than the classes those who participate in the Yellow Ribbon program attend.
2. 'Whereas Columbia’s military engagement has been commended by the military'
Since when has wining plaudits from the military become something a university should be proud of? But more importantly, “military engagement” as it already exists on campus, with current and former members of the military studying in large numbers at Columbia, is completely separate from ROTC. Such students are valuable members of the Columbia community, but ROTC represents a radically different type of relationship, and embracing of the military as an institution (and not as diverse individuals associated with it).
3. 'Whereas the Task Force discovered broad support on campus for increased military engagement in 2005'
As mentioned above, the overarching phrase “military engagement” does not equate to support for ROTC. To engage with the military can mean anything from organizing classes, seminars, or lectures on the military, to expanding support for the G.I. Bill. Each instantiation of this engagement must be considered in its specificity. Moreover, it is disturbing that the resolution ignores the outcomes of the discussions on campus in 2008, when strong opposition to ROTC was recorded across campus, partly, but certainly not exclusively due to DADT.
4. 'Whereas there is an off-campus ROTC program'
Yes, there is. In fact, the Solomon Amendment prevents Columbia from obstructing participation in ROTC or military recruitment on campus, under threat of the withdrawal of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding, so this is a non-issue. Moreover, for individuals to support an off-campus ROTC program is essentially to think that everyone should have the right to choose what to do with their lives – just as many students pursue jobs, internships and other courses off campus. It is the militarization through ROTC of Columbia, our campus and our community, that we oppose.
5. 'Whereas DADT was repealed'
Yes, it was. The previous existence of DADT is not the reason for our opposition to ROTC. Discrimination (including against transgender individuals), sexual violence, obedience to authority, and the harsh disciplining of those who speak out still characterizes the military. The military, the defensive apparatus of the state, will never be an ideal employer, no matter what changes its internal policy undergoes. A more egalitarian military will not change its fundamental role in asserting American power abroad by force and violence.
6. 'Whereas Obama, a Columbia alumnus, called on college campuses to embrace military recruitment and ROTC'
If every famous Columbia alumnus had some say over Columbia’s decisions, university governance would be in absolute disarray. If the President of this country is a guide for our decisions, this sets a dangerous precedent for the autonomy of academic institutions. And when it comes to the military alone, Obama has seen the expansion of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the escalation of indiscriminate drone attacks in Pakistan, the recent bombardment of Libya, and the incarceration and likely torture of military whistleblower Bradley Manning, among many other things. Surely the White House is not the source of inspiration for Columbia’s policy.
7. 'Whereas the Tien Special Committee in 1976 decided that the Senate will make decisions relevant to military engagement'
This point is indeed entirely accurate. We will wait and see what happens when this goes to vote in the larger Senate body on April 1st. However, it is clear this push is *not* coming from the elected Senate as a whole but a very specific group of people with a clearly biased interest in pushing this decision through as quickly as possible.
8. 'Whereas the Task Force “has conducted a broad and representative process” showing widespread support for expanding Columbia’s ties with the military and ROTC'
This final point amounts to the most egregious statement in the entire resolution put forth by the Executive Committee. Multiple faculty and students, whether proponents of, opponents to, or indifferent over ROTC, have pointed out the numerous procedural flaws in the Task Force process. Not once was information disseminated with regards to the details of what ROTC would mean. It is still not clear how the University expects to maintain the right to control curriculum, faculty appointment, and the provision of space for ROTC training, when this was the precise reason for ROTC leaving Columbia in the first place. It is still not clear whether ROTC will bring increased military recruiters to campus or to the Harlem community. It is still not clear what the details of financial aid will be for students who enroll in the program, what their commitment to service upon graduation will consist of, and what the consequences might be for a student who chooses to drop out part-way. Not once was the military publicly consulted to see whether they would even want to return to Columbia, and if so under what conditions. No one has explained why the urgency and rapid pace with which this decision is moving forward. The public hearings conducted provided no space for discussion, dialogue, or debate, and Task Force members individually refused to answer questions posed to them afterwords. The opening speech of Dean Moody-Adams at the second hearing blatantly advocated for the return of ROTC, and members of the Task Force have previous histories of taking explicit positions in support of ROTC, yet the Task Force purported to maintain some pretense of neutrality. No one was told how the hearings would be weighed in terms of the final report, and those of us who attended each session in fact recorded a small majority of speakers at each hearing voice opposition to ROTC.
As for numbers, the poll conducted by the Task Force was open to less than half of Columbia’s schools, excluding over 50% of the student population (approx. 26,400) including all non-professional Graduate Students, as well as Columbia’s approximately 3,600 faculty members (not to mention 11,000 staff). Out of the 44% of students who were even eligible (11,629), 19% participated (2,252), and 60% (1,351) recorded support for ROTC’s return to campus. This amounts to approximately 5% of Columbia students supporting ROTC’s return. It is as outrageous for the resolution to refer to this proportion as “widespread support” as to claim that the Task Force conducted a “broad and representative process”.
9. 'Be it Resolved that Columbia constructively engage the military and educate future military leaders'
The first conclusion of this resolution simply acknowledges that Columbia currently engages the military in some capacity (and educating American citizens implies educating future military and political leaders both). As noted above, constructive engagement does not necessitate the return of ROTC. In fact, as we have argued, any desire to uphold the integrity of Columbia’s education and the principles of teaching, critical debate, and committed research that characterize this institution must preclude such a partnership.
10. 'Be it further resolved that Columbia welcomes the opportunity to explore further mutually beneficial relationships with the military, including ROTC'
We are greatly concerned that this resolution not only welcomes ROTC back, but attempts to set a precedent for the further entrenchment of the U.S. military at Columbia. It is not incidental that this call is being made at a time when America is engaged in two highly unpopular, deeply violent and costly wars. Columbia should certainly continue an open conversation about what forms of relationship with the military are most beneficial to its values. However, this process must be one that is truly accessible and inclusive, something the recent work of the Task Force was not. Moreover, for whom exactly is this relationship ‘mutually beneficial’? Economically underprivileged students, who rather than accessing unconditional financial aid must sign an advanced contract and be willing to risk both their own lives and the lives of others in order to access a premier education? American students who want to participate in ROTC, and will now be saved a short commute across the city in exchange for what will necessitate a significant restructuring of standard Columbia curriculum, hiring practices, and the use of campus space? International students, many of whom have intimate experiences of or connections to the destruction wrought by the U.S. military around the world in the past century, and others who are grateful to have left countries where the violence of military rule permeates day-to-day life? We are left to wonder.
11. 'Be it further resolved that Provost will maintain control over questions of academic credit, appointment, governance, etc. and nothing will contravene the University’s current policies'
In fact, the U.S. law that governs the ROTC program, most recently updated in February, 2010 states otherwise. In the general military law, part 3, chapter 103, which is the ROTC portion, under section 2012 on establishment of ROTC programs, Part B reads: “No unit may be established or maintained at an institution unless (1) the senior commissioned officer of the armed force concerned who is assigned to the program at that institution is given the academic rank of professor. (2) The institution fulfills the terms of its agreement with the secretary of the military department concerned, and (3) the institution adopts as part of its curriculum a four-year course in military instruction or a two-year course of advanced training of military instruction or both, which the secretary of the military department concerned prescribes and conducts” [1]. If this is the case and Columbia invites ROTC to its campus, the university must adhere to these laws should ROTC decide to enforce them.
12. 'Be it further resolved that any further relationships with the Army will be subject to periodic review'
There is no doubt that such periodic review is important. However, we categorically and unequivocally reject this entire resolution, both flawed and politically biased as it is, and will continue to voice our opposition to the reintroduction of ROTC at Columbia as this highly undemocratic process unfolds before us.'
[1]. 10 U.S.C. § 2102 : US Code – Section 2102: Establishment
Posted by b.f. at 7:17 AM 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: Columbiagate Scandal, ROTC, university complicity, university complicity-darpa, university complicity-ida
Columbia and Barnard Anti-War Students Oppose Return of ROTC To Columbia University Campus In 2011
On their "No ROTC" blog, the anti-war students at Columbia University and Barnard College who have been opposing the undemocratically made decision of the Columbia Administration of Washington Post Company board member, Federal Reserve Bank of New York board member and Columbia University President Lee Bollinger to begin training U.S. military officers for the Pentagon's endless war in Iraq-Afghanistan-Pakistan-(and Libya) on Columbia's campus indicated why ROTC and NROTC should still be banned at Columbia University in 2011:
"The Coalition Opposed to ROTC is deeply dismayed to learn of the Senate resolution calling for the return of ROTC to Columbia, which was circulated in campus media on Monday, March 21st. Here, we challenge the primary assumptions used to justify this resolution.
1. `Whereas the Yellow Ribbon program gives veterans opportunities to study at Columbia'
Yes, and this is incredibly valuable. Yet having veterans study in class, as students, is completely different than having military officers trained on campus, where Columbia will allow Armed Forces personnel to equip uniformed students with the relevant skills necessary to lead military units– be this in weapons usage, counterinsurgency tactics, physical prowess, or other forms of training that are markedly different than the classes those who participate in the Yellow Ribbon program attend.
2. 'Whereas Columbia’s military engagement has been commended by the military'
Since when has wining plaudits from the military become something a university should be proud of? But more importantly, “military engagement” as it already exists on campus, with current and former members of the military studying in large numbers at Columbia, is completely separate from ROTC. Such students are valuable members of the Columbia community, but ROTC represents a radically different type of relationship, and embracing of the military as an institution (and not as diverse individuals associated with it).
3. 'Whereas the Task Force discovered broad support on campus for increased military engagement in 2005'
As mentioned above, the overarching phrase “military engagement” does not equate to support for ROTC. To engage with the military can mean anything from organizing classes, seminars, or lectures on the military, to expanding support for the G.I. Bill. Each instantiation of this engagement must be considered in its specificity. Moreover, it is disturbing that the resolution ignores the outcomes of the discussions on campus in 2008, when strong opposition to ROTC was recorded across campus, partly, but certainly not exclusively due to DADT.
4. 'Whereas there is an off-campus ROTC program'
Yes, there is. In fact, the Solomon Amendment prevents Columbia from obstructing participation in ROTC or military recruitment on campus, under threat of the withdrawal of hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding, so this is a non-issue. Moreover, for individuals to support an off-campus ROTC program is essentially to think that everyone should have the right to choose what to do with their lives – just as many students pursue jobs, internships and other courses off campus. It is the militarization through ROTC of Columbia, our campus and our community, that we oppose.
5. 'Whereas DADT was repealed'
Yes, it was. The previous existence of DADT is not the reason for our opposition to ROTC. Discrimination (including against transgender individuals), sexual violence, obedience to authority, and the harsh disciplining of those who speak out still characterizes the military. The military, the defensive apparatus of the state, will never be an ideal employer, no matter what changes its internal policy undergoes. A more egalitarian military will not change its fundamental role in asserting American power abroad by force and violence.
6. 'Whereas Obama, a Columbia alumnus, called on college campuses to embrace military recruitment and ROTC'
If every famous Columbia alumnus had some say over Columbia’s decisions, university governance would be in absolute disarray. If the President of this country is a guide for our decisions, this sets a dangerous precedent for the autonomy of academic institutions. And when it comes to the military alone, Obama has seen the expansion of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the escalation of indiscriminate drone attacks in Pakistan, the recent bombardment of Libya, and the incarceration and likely torture of military whistleblower Bradley Manning, among many other things. Surely the White House is not the source of inspiration for Columbia’s policy.
7. 'Whereas the Tien Special Committee in 1976 decided that the Senate will make decisions relevant to military engagement'
This point is indeed entirely accurate. We will wait and see what happens when this goes to vote in the larger Senate body on April 1st. However, it is clear this push is *not* coming from the elected Senate as a whole but a very specific group of people with a clearly biased interest in pushing this decision through as quickly as possible.
8. 'Whereas the Task Force “has conducted a broad and representative process” showing widespread support for expanding Columbia’s ties with the military and ROTC'
This final point amounts to the most egregious statement in the entire resolution put forth by the Executive Committee. Multiple faculty and students, whether proponents of, opponents to, or indifferent over ROTC, have pointed out the numerous procedural flaws in the Task Force process. Not once was information disseminated with regards to the details of what ROTC would mean. It is still not clear how the University expects to maintain the right to control curriculum, faculty appointment, and the provision of space for ROTC training, when this was the precise reason for ROTC leaving Columbia in the first place. It is still not clear whether ROTC will bring increased military recruiters to campus or to the Harlem community. It is still not clear what the details of financial aid will be for students who enroll in the program, what their commitment to service upon graduation will consist of, and what the consequences might be for a student who chooses to drop out part-way. Not once was the military publicly consulted to see whether they would even want to return to Columbia, and if so under what conditions. No one has explained why the urgency and rapid pace with which this decision is moving forward. The public hearings conducted provided no space for discussion, dialogue, or debate, and Task Force members individually refused to answer questions posed to them afterwords. The opening speech of Dean Moody-Adams at the second hearing blatantly advocated for the return of ROTC, and members of the Task Force have previous histories of taking explicit positions in support of ROTC, yet the Task Force purported to maintain some pretense of neutrality. No one was told how the hearings would be weighed in terms of the final report, and those of us who attended each session in fact recorded a small majority of speakers at each hearing voice opposition to ROTC.
As for numbers, the poll conducted by the Task Force was open to less than half of Columbia’s schools, excluding over 50% of the student population (approx. 26,400) including all non-professional Graduate Students, as well as Columbia’s approximately 3,600 faculty members (not to mention 11,000 staff). Out of the 44% of students who were even eligible (11,629), 19% participated (2,252), and 60% (1,351) recorded support for ROTC’s return to campus. This amounts to approximately 5% of Columbia students supporting ROTC’s return. It is as outrageous for the resolution to refer to this proportion as “widespread support” as to claim that the Task Force conducted a “broad and representative process”.
9. 'Be it Resolved that Columbia constructively engage the military and educate future military leaders'
The first conclusion of this resolution simply acknowledges that Columbia currently engages the military in some capacity (and educating American citizens implies educating future military and political leaders both). As noted above, constructive engagement does not necessitate the return of ROTC. In fact, as we have argued, any desire to uphold the integrity of Columbia’s education and the principles of teaching, critical debate, and committed research that characterize this institution must preclude such a partnership.
10. 'Be it further resolved that Columbia welcomes the opportunity to explore further mutually beneficial relationships with the military, including ROTC'
We are greatly concerned that this resolution not only welcomes ROTC back, but attempts to set a precedent for the further entrenchment of the U.S. military at Columbia. It is not incidental that this call is being made at a time when America is engaged in two highly unpopular, deeply violent and costly wars. Columbia should certainly continue an open conversation about what forms of relationship with the military are most beneficial to its values. However, this process must be one that is truly accessible and inclusive, something the recent work of the Task Force was not. Moreover, for whom exactly is this relationship ‘mutually beneficial’? Economically underprivileged students, who rather than accessing unconditional financial aid must sign an advanced contract and be willing to risk both their own lives and the lives of others in order to access a premier education? American students who want to participate in ROTC, and will now be saved a short commute across the city in exchange for what will necessitate a significant restructuring of standard Columbia curriculum, hiring practices, and the use of campus space? International students, many of whom have intimate experiences of or connections to the destruction wrought by the U.S. military around the world in the past century, and others who are grateful to have left countries where the violence of military rule permeates day-to-day life? We are left to wonder.
11. 'Be it further resolved that Provost will maintain control over questions of academic credit, appointment, governance, etc. and nothing will contravene the University’s current policies'
In fact, the U.S. law that governs the ROTC program, most recently updated in February, 2010 states otherwise. In the general military law, part 3, chapter 103, which is the ROTC portion, under section 2012 on establishment of ROTC programs, Part B reads: “No unit may be established or maintained at an institution unless (1) the senior commissioned officer of the armed force concerned who is assigned to the program at that institution is given the academic rank of professor. (2) The institution fulfills the terms of its agreement with the secretary of the military department concerned, and (3) the institution adopts as part of its curriculum a four-year course in military instruction or a two-year course of advanced training of military instruction or both, which the secretary of the military department concerned prescribes and conducts” [1]. If this is the case and Columbia invites ROTC to its campus, the university must adhere to these laws should ROTC decide to enforce them.
12. 'Be it further resolved that any further relationships with the Army will be subject to periodic review'
There is no doubt that such periodic review is important. However, we categorically and unequivocally reject this entire resolution, both flawed and politically biased as it is, and will continue to voice our opposition to the reintroduction of ROTC at Columbia as this highly undemocratic process unfolds before us.'
[1]. 10 U.S.C. § 2102 : US Code – Section 2102: Establishment
Posted by b.f. at 7:17 AM 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: Columbiagate Scandal, ROTC, university complicity, university complicity-darpa, university complicity-ida
Thursday, May 05, 2011
All Out In Support- NURSES AT TUFTS (Boston) SET TO STRIKE - MAY 6! -An Injury To One Is An Injury To All
NURSES AT TUFTS SET TO STRIKE - MAY 6!
by peacelabor
(No verified email address) 29 Apr 2011
MNA Set to Strike at Tufts Medical Center on May 6th at 6 am;
Rally at 4 pm
The members of the Massachusetts Nurses Association have voted for a one-day strike at Tufts Medical Center in Boston should a collective bargaining agreement not be reached by Friday May 6th. The nurses rallying cry is ‘Patient Safety’ as hospital management has dug their heels in on the desperately needed improvements in staffing levels that the MNA is seeking to address at the bargaining table.
In response to the MNA’s strike authorization Tufts Hospital has contracted with firms to provide replacement nurses and is threatening to lock the nurses out to prevent them from returning to work after the one-day strike.
Should the Tufts nurses strike it will begin at 6AM on Friday and conclude at 6:45 AM on Saturday May 7th. The nurses will be holding a rally outside Tufts Medical Center, at 4 pm on Friday, May 6th at 800 Washington St. in Boston. Your continued support for and solidarity with the Tufts nurses would be greatly appreciated at this event
For more information contact Jenn at jennifer (at) massjwj.net
See also:
http://www.massjwj.net
by peacelabor
(No verified email address) 29 Apr 2011
MNA Set to Strike at Tufts Medical Center on May 6th at 6 am;
Rally at 4 pm
The members of the Massachusetts Nurses Association have voted for a one-day strike at Tufts Medical Center in Boston should a collective bargaining agreement not be reached by Friday May 6th. The nurses rallying cry is ‘Patient Safety’ as hospital management has dug their heels in on the desperately needed improvements in staffing levels that the MNA is seeking to address at the bargaining table.
In response to the MNA’s strike authorization Tufts Hospital has contracted with firms to provide replacement nurses and is threatening to lock the nurses out to prevent them from returning to work after the one-day strike.
Should the Tufts nurses strike it will begin at 6AM on Friday and conclude at 6:45 AM on Saturday May 7th. The nurses will be holding a rally outside Tufts Medical Center, at 4 pm on Friday, May 6th at 800 Washington St. in Boston. Your continued support for and solidarity with the Tufts nurses would be greatly appreciated at this event
For more information contact Jenn at jennifer (at) massjwj.net
See also:
http://www.massjwj.net
Saturday, April 02, 2011
From Spartacist Canada-Students Must Ally With the Working Class
Markin comment:
I have been placing posts that link the current world-wide student struggles over budgets issues, war, democracy, etc. up with the working class struggle. One of the great lessons learned from the 1960s anti-war struggles was just this point. Learn it students, youths, and, yes, old-timey radicals too!
*****
Spartacist Canada No. 168
Spring 2011
Students Must Ally With the Working Class
SYC Speaker at Toronto Holiday Appeal
(Young Spartacus pages)
The following speech was given by comrade Orlando Martin of the Toronto Spartacus Youth Club at the January 28 Holiday Appeal for Class-War Prisoners in Toronto. It has been slightly edited for publication.
There is a video circulating online of one of many instances of state repression during the G20 summit in Toronto. In it, after forcefully grabbing a young protester, a cop demands to search his backpack. The protester, innocently expecting better treatment, says that as a Canadian, he has the right to refuse the search. So the cop simply says, “This ain’t Canada right now.”
What is Canada but a capitalist state and, as such, a dictatorship of the capitalist class against the working class, against the oppressed, and against anybody who dares to oppose capitalism? The G20 events were just one more example of what the Canadian capitalist state really is. The arrest of 1,100 people, the cop violence, the racist abuse of minorities, the singling out of Québécois protesters, the humiliation of women, gays and lesbians as well as the threats of rape perfectly mirror the racism, chauvinist oppression and violence that are integral to capitalist society, here in Canada and in every capitalist country.
Comrade V.I. Lenin, the great leader of the Russian Revolution, explained in The State and Revolution that “the state is a product and a manifestation of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms.” Its aim is the creation of “order,” which legalizes and perpetuates the oppression of one class by another. Against every other so-called Marxist or leftist group that explicitly or implicitly calls to reform the capitalist state, we emphasize that the working class needs to smash it.
A year has gone by since our last Holiday Appeal—another year of police brutality and repression against leftists. Two years ago the cops killed Fredy Villanueva in Montreal. Last year in Toronto, Junior Manon, an 18-year-old Latino youth, was brutally killed after being stopped by cops for a minor traffic offence. As expected, the Ontario Special Investigations Unit has cleared all officers of any wrongdoing. While minority youth are outraged and demand justice, they need to understand that capitalism cannot deliver justice to the working class and oppressed. Calls to jail killer cops, for the community to control the police, or for independent public inquiries, fool the working class into thinking that the capitalist state can be reformed. Even if these calls were realized they would do nothing to end the police violence that is endemic to capitalism. Junior Manon and other victims of racist cop terror will only get justice when the working class overthrows capitalism.
And then there is the brutal police violence against anti-G20 protesters in Toronto last year. What did the left do in response? Jack Layton, speaking of the smashed windows, railed that “the vandalism is criminal and totally unacceptable.” The radical liberal Naomi Klein called on the cops to “do your goddamn job,” which of course means more police brutality. And how about the fake-Marxists? Here is one example: the group Fightback, which claims to be the Marxist voice of labour and youth and also claims that cops are “workers in uniform,” ran an event on June 30 that featured speakers who actually praised the cops!
Let me tell you what we did. A day after the mass arrests, on June 28, we wrote and widely circulated a protest statement that denounced in the strongest terms the brutal police violence unleashed on protesters and defended all victims of state repression, including the anarchists in the Black Bloc, despite political differences (see “Protest Mass Arrests of G20 Protesters!” SC No. 166, Fall 2010). We wrote: “An injury to one is an injury to all! Free all the protesters—Drop the charges!” This is what Marxists do, and what non-sectarian defense work means.
While smashing bank windows and burning police cars are not crimes from the standpoint of the working class, such isolated acts are counterposed to the Marxist fight to mobilize the social power of a class-conscious proletariat to sweep away capitalism. At bottom, anarchism is a form of radical democratic idealism and has proven to be a class-collaborationist obstacle to the liberation of the oppressed.
State repression against G20 leftists was vivid at the University of Toronto campus. During a major raid on the U of T Graduate Student Union building, at least 50 G20 protesters from Quebec were arrested. Last September, political science student and activist Jaroslava Avila was arrested by ten plainclothes cops on campus. These arrests underline the Spartacus Youth Club’s call to get cops off campus and the necessity for young radicals to take up this demand.
What did the left on campus do after the G20 mass arrests? At the annual Clubs Fair, the U of T student bureaucrats allowed cops to have a table as if nothing had happened a few weeks before. What did we do? As soon as we saw this, we made a placard on the spot that read: “The SYC Says: Cops Off Campus!” We went right in front of the tables of the NDP and the reformists, denounced them for their faith in the capitalist state and sloganeered against state repression. The student bureaucrats and Ontario Public Interest Research Group organized a little rally the month after to appeal to the university administration to renounce the cop presence. The reality is that universities under capitalism are class-biased institutions that play a role that serves the interests of capital, not the interests of workers and the oppressed. No appeal to the administration is going to stop the repression of activists on campus. We call to abolish the administration! For student/teacher/worker control of the universities! Free, quality education for all requires the overthrow of capitalism through a workers revolution.
The Spartacus Youth Club also protests the witchhunting, censorship and repeated intimidation of pro-Palestinian students on campuses. Recently, our comrades in Vancouver issued a protest statement against a vicious campaign by Zionists and student bureaucrats to vilify defenders of Palestinians as “terrorists” and “anti-Semites” (see “Down With Anti-Palestinian Witchhunt at UBC!” page 6). Each spring, organizers of Israeli Apartheid Week also face smears of “anti-Semitism.” We say, Defend the Palestinians! Hands off their supporters!
Our message to the youth is to use their fighting spirit to ally with the working class, the only class able to emancipate itself and all the oppressed. Students by themselves cannot change the material conditions that create their oppression but the working class has the objective interest and power to overthrow capitalism.
In order to build the next Bolshevik party that will smash the capitalist state, end racist cop terror and open the road to an egalitarian communist future, we in the Spartacus Youth Club seek to win a new generation of youth to the fight for world socialist revolution. We are the training ground for future revolutionaries. Join us and be part of the struggle!
I have been placing posts that link the current world-wide student struggles over budgets issues, war, democracy, etc. up with the working class struggle. One of the great lessons learned from the 1960s anti-war struggles was just this point. Learn it students, youths, and, yes, old-timey radicals too!
*****
Spartacist Canada No. 168
Spring 2011
Students Must Ally With the Working Class
SYC Speaker at Toronto Holiday Appeal
(Young Spartacus pages)
The following speech was given by comrade Orlando Martin of the Toronto Spartacus Youth Club at the January 28 Holiday Appeal for Class-War Prisoners in Toronto. It has been slightly edited for publication.
There is a video circulating online of one of many instances of state repression during the G20 summit in Toronto. In it, after forcefully grabbing a young protester, a cop demands to search his backpack. The protester, innocently expecting better treatment, says that as a Canadian, he has the right to refuse the search. So the cop simply says, “This ain’t Canada right now.”
What is Canada but a capitalist state and, as such, a dictatorship of the capitalist class against the working class, against the oppressed, and against anybody who dares to oppose capitalism? The G20 events were just one more example of what the Canadian capitalist state really is. The arrest of 1,100 people, the cop violence, the racist abuse of minorities, the singling out of Québécois protesters, the humiliation of women, gays and lesbians as well as the threats of rape perfectly mirror the racism, chauvinist oppression and violence that are integral to capitalist society, here in Canada and in every capitalist country.
Comrade V.I. Lenin, the great leader of the Russian Revolution, explained in The State and Revolution that “the state is a product and a manifestation of the irreconcilability of class antagonisms.” Its aim is the creation of “order,” which legalizes and perpetuates the oppression of one class by another. Against every other so-called Marxist or leftist group that explicitly or implicitly calls to reform the capitalist state, we emphasize that the working class needs to smash it.
A year has gone by since our last Holiday Appeal—another year of police brutality and repression against leftists. Two years ago the cops killed Fredy Villanueva in Montreal. Last year in Toronto, Junior Manon, an 18-year-old Latino youth, was brutally killed after being stopped by cops for a minor traffic offence. As expected, the Ontario Special Investigations Unit has cleared all officers of any wrongdoing. While minority youth are outraged and demand justice, they need to understand that capitalism cannot deliver justice to the working class and oppressed. Calls to jail killer cops, for the community to control the police, or for independent public inquiries, fool the working class into thinking that the capitalist state can be reformed. Even if these calls were realized they would do nothing to end the police violence that is endemic to capitalism. Junior Manon and other victims of racist cop terror will only get justice when the working class overthrows capitalism.
And then there is the brutal police violence against anti-G20 protesters in Toronto last year. What did the left do in response? Jack Layton, speaking of the smashed windows, railed that “the vandalism is criminal and totally unacceptable.” The radical liberal Naomi Klein called on the cops to “do your goddamn job,” which of course means more police brutality. And how about the fake-Marxists? Here is one example: the group Fightback, which claims to be the Marxist voice of labour and youth and also claims that cops are “workers in uniform,” ran an event on June 30 that featured speakers who actually praised the cops!
Let me tell you what we did. A day after the mass arrests, on June 28, we wrote and widely circulated a protest statement that denounced in the strongest terms the brutal police violence unleashed on protesters and defended all victims of state repression, including the anarchists in the Black Bloc, despite political differences (see “Protest Mass Arrests of G20 Protesters!” SC No. 166, Fall 2010). We wrote: “An injury to one is an injury to all! Free all the protesters—Drop the charges!” This is what Marxists do, and what non-sectarian defense work means.
While smashing bank windows and burning police cars are not crimes from the standpoint of the working class, such isolated acts are counterposed to the Marxist fight to mobilize the social power of a class-conscious proletariat to sweep away capitalism. At bottom, anarchism is a form of radical democratic idealism and has proven to be a class-collaborationist obstacle to the liberation of the oppressed.
State repression against G20 leftists was vivid at the University of Toronto campus. During a major raid on the U of T Graduate Student Union building, at least 50 G20 protesters from Quebec were arrested. Last September, political science student and activist Jaroslava Avila was arrested by ten plainclothes cops on campus. These arrests underline the Spartacus Youth Club’s call to get cops off campus and the necessity for young radicals to take up this demand.
What did the left on campus do after the G20 mass arrests? At the annual Clubs Fair, the U of T student bureaucrats allowed cops to have a table as if nothing had happened a few weeks before. What did we do? As soon as we saw this, we made a placard on the spot that read: “The SYC Says: Cops Off Campus!” We went right in front of the tables of the NDP and the reformists, denounced them for their faith in the capitalist state and sloganeered against state repression. The student bureaucrats and Ontario Public Interest Research Group organized a little rally the month after to appeal to the university administration to renounce the cop presence. The reality is that universities under capitalism are class-biased institutions that play a role that serves the interests of capital, not the interests of workers and the oppressed. No appeal to the administration is going to stop the repression of activists on campus. We call to abolish the administration! For student/teacher/worker control of the universities! Free, quality education for all requires the overthrow of capitalism through a workers revolution.
The Spartacus Youth Club also protests the witchhunting, censorship and repeated intimidation of pro-Palestinian students on campuses. Recently, our comrades in Vancouver issued a protest statement against a vicious campaign by Zionists and student bureaucrats to vilify defenders of Palestinians as “terrorists” and “anti-Semites” (see “Down With Anti-Palestinian Witchhunt at UBC!” page 6). Each spring, organizers of Israeli Apartheid Week also face smears of “anti-Semitism.” We say, Defend the Palestinians! Hands off their supporters!
Our message to the youth is to use their fighting spirit to ally with the working class, the only class able to emancipate itself and all the oppressed. Students by themselves cannot change the material conditions that create their oppression but the working class has the objective interest and power to overthrow capitalism.
In order to build the next Bolshevik party that will smash the capitalist state, end racist cop terror and open the road to an egalitarian communist future, we in the Spartacus Youth Club seek to win a new generation of youth to the fight for world socialist revolution. We are the training ground for future revolutionaries. Join us and be part of the struggle!
Saturday, March 19, 2011
From The Wisconsin War-Zone- Despite The Court Reprieve The Fight For A General Strike Of All Labor In Wisconsin Is Still Directly Posed-And Solidarity Actions By Those Outside The State- Wisconsin State AFL-CIO Get To It
Click on headline to link to online news article -Judge blocks contentious Wisconsin public employee union law.
Markin comment:In the class struggle, and in class struggle-oriented politics, we use every weapon available including their courts in our battles against the class enemy. Still, the courts are an ephemeral thing and we best be prepared to take harder actions before this thing is done. I have reposted my entry on the need to prepare for a general strike below.
*****
Reposted
Monday, March 14, 2011
From The Wisconsin War-Zone- The Lines Are Further Drawn- The Fight For A General Strike Of All Labor In Wisconsin Is Directly Posed-And Solidarity Actions By Those Outside The State- Wisconsin State AFL-CIO Get To It
Markin comment:
Over the past few week as the events concerning the fate of collective bargaining rights, the core of any union’s reason for existence, of Wisconsin’s public workers unions have unfolded I had joined the voices of those who have argued that passage of the anti-union legislation by the Republican Senate majority should trigger the call for a one day general strike of all Wisconsin as the start of a push back. Well that day has arrived and every pro-labor militant from Madison to Cairo (Illinois or Egypt, it matters not) should be joining their voices in that call, and agitating in their unions and other organization to carry it out. The lines could not be more clearly drawn, the survival of the Wisconsin public workers unions are at stake, the survival of all public workers unions are now at stake, and the survival of unionism in the United States as well. This is only the start of the right-wing onslaught. Let Wisconsin’s labor response make it the end. Fight for a one day general strike now!
******
Friday, March 04, 2011
On The Question Of General Strikes In Defense Of The Wisconsin Public Workers Unions- Don't Mourn, Organize- A Short Note
Click on the headline to link to a James P.Cannon Internet Archive online article about the lessons of the Minneapolis Teamsters strikes of 1934 mentioned in the post below.
Markin comment:
Recently, in the wake of the front-line struggle of the Wisconsin public workers unions (now heightened by the latest news that the Ohio Senate has also voted to curb collective bargaining rights in that state), I, along with others, have been agitating for a one day general strike by organized labor, unorganized, but desperately in need of being organized, workers, and other allies, in support of those efforts. I have also placed the propaganda of others, individuals and organizations, who are advocating this same general position in this space, and will continue to do so as I see it come up as I scan the leftist universe. Before I go on, just to make things clear on this issue, I would draw the reader’s attention to the distinction between propagandizing, the general task for communist organizers in this period pushing issues on behalf our communist future, and agitation which requires/requests some immediate action. The events in the public sector labor movement over the past several weeks, as they have rapidly unfolded, call for immediate action whether we can cause any motion on the issue or not.
That said, I would also note that I have framed my call to action in terms of posing the question of a general strike, the objective need for such action. That proposition is the axis of intervention for leftist and trade union militants today. And that is the rub. Of course, right this minute (and as the Ohio situation foretells maybe only this minute), any such one day general strike would, of necessity, have to be centered in Wisconsin, and the tactical choices would have to be made on the ground there ( how to make the strike effective, what unions to call in, what places to shut down, etc.). My original posting did not make a distinction on location(s)though, and I make none now, about whether such a strike would be localized or not. Certainly, given the centrally of the collective bargaining principle to the lifeblood of any union, and the drumbeat of other states like Ohio, it can hardly be precluded that it could not be a wider strike than just in Wisconsin.
And that is the rub, again. I am perfectly aware, after a lifetime of oppositional politics of one sort or another, that it is one thing to call for an action and another to have it heeded by some mass organization that can do something about it, or even have it taken for more than its propaganda value. And it is the somewhat fantastic quality of the proposition to many trade unionists that I have been running up against in my own efforts to present this demand. Now, as I have noted previously, in France this kind of strike is something of an art form, and other European working classes are catching on to the idea. Moreover, in the old days the anarchists, when they had some authority in the working class in places like Spain,thought nothing of calling such strikes. And some Marxists, like the martyred Rosa Luxemburg, saw the political general strike as the central strategic piece in the working class taking state power. However the low level of political consciousness here, or lack of it, or even of solid trade union consciousness, is what the substance of this note is about.
Although the Wisconsin public workers unions have galvanized segments of the American labor movement, particularly the organized sector (those who see what is coming down the road for them-or who have already been the subject of such victimizations in the roller coaster process of the de-industrialization of America) the hard fact is that it has been a very, very long time since this labor movement has seen a general strike. You have to go back to the 1930s and the Minneapolis Teamsters strikes of 1934, or to the San Francisco General Strike of that same year to even been able to provide an example to illustrate how it could take place in this country. That, my friends, is over seventy-five years ago, a long time in anybody’s political book and, more importantly, a couple of generations removed from the actual experience. Hell, it has been as far back as the period immediately after World War II since we have seen massive nation-wide industrial strikes. The closest situation that I can think of that would be widely remembered today, and that was also somewhat successful and well supported, was the UPS strike in the 1990s. All of this points to one conclusion, our class struggle skills are now rather rusty, and it shows.
How? Well, first look at the propaganda of various leftist and socialist groups. They, correctly, call for solidarity, for defense rallies and for more marches in support of the Wisconsin struggle. But I have seen relevantly little open advocacy for a one day general strike. That is damning. But here is the real kicker, the one that should give us all pause. The most recent Wisconsin support rally in Boston was attended by many trade union militants, many known (known to me from struggles over the years) leftist activists, and surprisingly, a significant segment of older, not currently active political ex-militants who either came out for old times sake, or understood that this is a do or die struggle and they wanted to help show their support. In short, a perfect audience before which a speaker could expect to get a favorable response on a call for a political general strike. And that call that day, was made not by me, and not by other socialists or communists, but by a militant from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), a well-known union with plenty of militants in it. The response: a few claps in a crowd of over two thousand.
Time has been, is, and will be our enemy here as we struggle to win these pubic workers union fights. Why? Our sense of leftist legitimacy, our class struggle sense has so atrophied over the past several decades that people, political people, trade union political people and even leftist political people have lost their capacity to struggle to win. Still, the objective situation in Wisconsin, hell, in Boston and Columbus, requires that we continue to fight around a class struggle axis. And central to that fight- Fight for a one day general strike in support of the Wisconsin public workers unions!
posted by Markin at 1:15 PM
2 Comments:
Carol said...
Is there a link to the James P. Cannon article ?
If there is, its not working.
There is alot of talk about a general strike, but nothing happening so far. If they wait too long, then it will look like it was accepted. Like my friend says, " Shut the place down ". There is also talk about an action for April 4, but that would be largely symbolic, a Martin Luther King commemorative.
I also don't understand the Teachers Union concessions ( see the article in the World Socialist Website www.wsws.org ). They shouldn't be making concessions now when they're supposed to be fighting back. It seems like they're fighting to bargain to make concessions.
1:39 PM
Markin said...
Here is the Cannon link.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/cannon/works/1944/ht03.htm
Good comments. The call for the general strike is very time sensitive. And from what I see people are starting to sit on their hands on this-or wait until 2012-Ya, right. Meanwhile the organized working class is being round to dust.
10:32 AM
Markin comment:In the class struggle, and in class struggle-oriented politics, we use every weapon available including their courts in our battles against the class enemy. Still, the courts are an ephemeral thing and we best be prepared to take harder actions before this thing is done. I have reposted my entry on the need to prepare for a general strike below.
*****
Reposted
Monday, March 14, 2011
From The Wisconsin War-Zone- The Lines Are Further Drawn- The Fight For A General Strike Of All Labor In Wisconsin Is Directly Posed-And Solidarity Actions By Those Outside The State- Wisconsin State AFL-CIO Get To It
Markin comment:
Over the past few week as the events concerning the fate of collective bargaining rights, the core of any union’s reason for existence, of Wisconsin’s public workers unions have unfolded I had joined the voices of those who have argued that passage of the anti-union legislation by the Republican Senate majority should trigger the call for a one day general strike of all Wisconsin as the start of a push back. Well that day has arrived and every pro-labor militant from Madison to Cairo (Illinois or Egypt, it matters not) should be joining their voices in that call, and agitating in their unions and other organization to carry it out. The lines could not be more clearly drawn, the survival of the Wisconsin public workers unions are at stake, the survival of all public workers unions are now at stake, and the survival of unionism in the United States as well. This is only the start of the right-wing onslaught. Let Wisconsin’s labor response make it the end. Fight for a one day general strike now!
******
Friday, March 04, 2011
On The Question Of General Strikes In Defense Of The Wisconsin Public Workers Unions- Don't Mourn, Organize- A Short Note
Click on the headline to link to a James P.Cannon Internet Archive online article about the lessons of the Minneapolis Teamsters strikes of 1934 mentioned in the post below.
Markin comment:
Recently, in the wake of the front-line struggle of the Wisconsin public workers unions (now heightened by the latest news that the Ohio Senate has also voted to curb collective bargaining rights in that state), I, along with others, have been agitating for a one day general strike by organized labor, unorganized, but desperately in need of being organized, workers, and other allies, in support of those efforts. I have also placed the propaganda of others, individuals and organizations, who are advocating this same general position in this space, and will continue to do so as I see it come up as I scan the leftist universe. Before I go on, just to make things clear on this issue, I would draw the reader’s attention to the distinction between propagandizing, the general task for communist organizers in this period pushing issues on behalf our communist future, and agitation which requires/requests some immediate action. The events in the public sector labor movement over the past several weeks, as they have rapidly unfolded, call for immediate action whether we can cause any motion on the issue or not.
That said, I would also note that I have framed my call to action in terms of posing the question of a general strike, the objective need for such action. That proposition is the axis of intervention for leftist and trade union militants today. And that is the rub. Of course, right this minute (and as the Ohio situation foretells maybe only this minute), any such one day general strike would, of necessity, have to be centered in Wisconsin, and the tactical choices would have to be made on the ground there ( how to make the strike effective, what unions to call in, what places to shut down, etc.). My original posting did not make a distinction on location(s)though, and I make none now, about whether such a strike would be localized or not. Certainly, given the centrally of the collective bargaining principle to the lifeblood of any union, and the drumbeat of other states like Ohio, it can hardly be precluded that it could not be a wider strike than just in Wisconsin.
And that is the rub, again. I am perfectly aware, after a lifetime of oppositional politics of one sort or another, that it is one thing to call for an action and another to have it heeded by some mass organization that can do something about it, or even have it taken for more than its propaganda value. And it is the somewhat fantastic quality of the proposition to many trade unionists that I have been running up against in my own efforts to present this demand. Now, as I have noted previously, in France this kind of strike is something of an art form, and other European working classes are catching on to the idea. Moreover, in the old days the anarchists, when they had some authority in the working class in places like Spain,thought nothing of calling such strikes. And some Marxists, like the martyred Rosa Luxemburg, saw the political general strike as the central strategic piece in the working class taking state power. However the low level of political consciousness here, or lack of it, or even of solid trade union consciousness, is what the substance of this note is about.
Although the Wisconsin public workers unions have galvanized segments of the American labor movement, particularly the organized sector (those who see what is coming down the road for them-or who have already been the subject of such victimizations in the roller coaster process of the de-industrialization of America) the hard fact is that it has been a very, very long time since this labor movement has seen a general strike. You have to go back to the 1930s and the Minneapolis Teamsters strikes of 1934, or to the San Francisco General Strike of that same year to even been able to provide an example to illustrate how it could take place in this country. That, my friends, is over seventy-five years ago, a long time in anybody’s political book and, more importantly, a couple of generations removed from the actual experience. Hell, it has been as far back as the period immediately after World War II since we have seen massive nation-wide industrial strikes. The closest situation that I can think of that would be widely remembered today, and that was also somewhat successful and well supported, was the UPS strike in the 1990s. All of this points to one conclusion, our class struggle skills are now rather rusty, and it shows.
How? Well, first look at the propaganda of various leftist and socialist groups. They, correctly, call for solidarity, for defense rallies and for more marches in support of the Wisconsin struggle. But I have seen relevantly little open advocacy for a one day general strike. That is damning. But here is the real kicker, the one that should give us all pause. The most recent Wisconsin support rally in Boston was attended by many trade union militants, many known (known to me from struggles over the years) leftist activists, and surprisingly, a significant segment of older, not currently active political ex-militants who either came out for old times sake, or understood that this is a do or die struggle and they wanted to help show their support. In short, a perfect audience before which a speaker could expect to get a favorable response on a call for a political general strike. And that call that day, was made not by me, and not by other socialists or communists, but by a militant from the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), a well-known union with plenty of militants in it. The response: a few claps in a crowd of over two thousand.
Time has been, is, and will be our enemy here as we struggle to win these pubic workers union fights. Why? Our sense of leftist legitimacy, our class struggle sense has so atrophied over the past several decades that people, political people, trade union political people and even leftist political people have lost their capacity to struggle to win. Still, the objective situation in Wisconsin, hell, in Boston and Columbus, requires that we continue to fight around a class struggle axis. And central to that fight- Fight for a one day general strike in support of the Wisconsin public workers unions!
posted by Markin at 1:15 PM
2 Comments:
Carol said...
Is there a link to the James P. Cannon article ?
If there is, its not working.
There is alot of talk about a general strike, but nothing happening so far. If they wait too long, then it will look like it was accepted. Like my friend says, " Shut the place down ". There is also talk about an action for April 4, but that would be largely symbolic, a Martin Luther King commemorative.
I also don't understand the Teachers Union concessions ( see the article in the World Socialist Website www.wsws.org ). They shouldn't be making concessions now when they're supposed to be fighting back. It seems like they're fighting to bargain to make concessions.
1:39 PM
Markin said...
Here is the Cannon link.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/cannon/works/1944/ht03.htm
Good comments. The call for the general strike is very time sensitive. And from what I see people are starting to sit on their hands on this-or wait until 2012-Ya, right. Meanwhile the organized working class is being round to dust.
10:32 AM
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Dispatch from Madison:Governor Walker’s putsch-By Paul Beckett / The Rag Blog / March 11, 2011
Dispatch from Madison:Governor Walker’s putsch
By Paul Beckett / The Rag Blog / March 11, 2011
[This is the second of Paul Beckett's reports from Madison for The Rag Blog.]
MADISON, Wisconson -- In less than 24 hours, in a series of shocking and unprecedented developments, public sector union and collective bargaining rights in Wisconsin have been eviscerated by a Republican legislative majority controlled by Governor Scott Walker.
What seemed to Democratic legislative members and to neutral observers (but there are few of those in Wisconsin now) a putsch, began about 6 p.m. on the evening of Wednesday, March 9. As coups go, this one clearly was carefully -- even brilliantly -- prepared. The surprise was absolute.
Governor Walker spoke to a news conference on Monday, March 7. He referred to meetings at the Illinois border his staff had had with some of the 14 Democratic state senators who had left Wisconsin on February 17 in order to prevent passage of the “union busting” legislation, SB11. (See my article, “Madison and the Revolution at Home," on The Rag Blog, March 8, 2010.)
A compromise was brewing, Walker implied. “The problem,” Walker said, “is Senator [Mark] Miller.” (Miller is the titular leader of the Senate Democrats.) Maybe it is time, Walker went on, for the Democratic caucus to elect a new leader.
All eyes turned to the Group of 14 Democratic senators: were they divided? Would one or more accept some form of compromise and enable the Republicans to complete their passage of SB11? (The presence of only ONE Democratic senator in the chamber would legitimate the vote passing SB11.] (Read the full text of SB11 here.)
Meanwhile, unperceived, Republicans prepared a trap that would snap shut on Wednesday. The complicated, 144-page “Budget Repair Bill” (SB11) was being taken apart by staff and reformulated, ostensibly to strip out everything BUT the collective bargaining provisions.
The result was labeled a conference amendment to SB11, and was only six pages shorter than the original. But the point was that this new version could be labeled as non-fiscal and would not carry the quorum requirement of the original.
A bizarre reversal of positions was now apparent. Incorporation of the collective bargaining provisions within the Budget Repair Bill, very definitely a “fiscal” measure, had been stoutly justified by Governor Walker on the grounds that they were inseparable from the fiscal repair provisions. (Opponents had argued that the provisions had nothing to do with fiscal “repair” and should be taken out of the Budget Repair Bill and debated separately.)
Now, the Republican position was the opposite. The new version was NOT fiscal. With the quorum requirement changed, whether the Group of 14 were in the Chamber or in Illinois was immaterial. The bill could be passed with Republican votes alone.
The ambush worked perfectly. Democrats and protesters remained focused on the hold-out by the 14 Senators and on the possibility of compromise. Word of Walker’s plan leaked out only at the last minute, late on Wednesday afternoon. Beginning about 5:30 p.m. a cluster of emails, most of them billed “emergency,” appeared in my email inbox. The following, from the Dane County Democrats, is typical:
Breaking Update: Tonight at 6:00 pm in the Senate Parlor we are hearing that Senate GOP is going to split the budget repair bill, fiscal from non-fiscal, and ram it through in the dark of night. Given that they're attempting to ram through the bill without any media attention we wanted to let you know that very important developments are likely to occur tonight at 6:00 pm in the Senate Parlor.
Please be at the capital by 6:00PM TONIGHT!
Actually, I did not receive any of the emails until the next day. I was having a quick dinner a block away from the Capitol at Ian’s Pizza (an enterprise that has become known internationally for its role in keeping the protesters in the Capitol Rotunda sustained). I was on the way to a 7 p.m. debate between Madison’s two mayoral candidates.
Suddenly people were shouting, “To the Capitol. They’re going to pass the bill! Tonight!” People in groups of two, four, six, were hurrying up State Street toward the Capitol. I followed. At the top of State Street was a volcano-shaped mountain of snow (some five inches had fallen the night before). On its peak a tall young man stood shouting in an amazing voice: “Everyone to the Capitol! Everyone to the Capitol!” He waved us onward.
The word spread amazingly. By 6 p.m. hundreds were there; very soon thousands. It was dark. Everyone wanted to enter the Capitol. A long line formed at the only entrance that was (in a limited way) open. The line moved glacially. Inside, on the other side of the revolving door, protesters were packed, waiting, apparently, to be taken one-by-one through the security wanding procedure. Noise was deafening: “Whose house? Our house!”
Soon, however, any pretense of an open Capitol was abandoned; the police closed the doors absolutely, leaving some inside and thousands outside. People were angry.
Photo by Paul Beckett / The Rag Blog.
In the meantime, inside the Senate chamber, the deed was already done. In less than half an hour, a “conference committee” had reported out the revised bill. The committee Chair gaveled the meeting closed as the Democratic minority leader, Peter Barca, was shouting out the many ways in which the meeting was improper under the rules of the Legislature or illegal under state law.
The bill was then instantaneously passed (or “passed”) by the Senate Republicans.
By about 6:25 p.m. it was all done. The session was immediately adjourned, and the Republican Members were reportedly smuggled out of the Capitol building and beyond the crowds through a tunnel. (Their escape and removal by a special Madison Metro bus was not as secret as they would have liked.)
The word spread among the protesters and, more than any other time in the three weeks of protest, the mood was one of deep anger and frustration. Later in the evening some of the inside protesters opened an unguarded outside door. Crowds outside pushed in, brushing aside the police, who had raced to stop them. Thousands ended up inside, chanting, commiserating, venting. Most left by 2 or 3 a.m.
The expectation was that the building would open at 8 a.m. Thursday morning and that the Assembly would begin passage of the “conference amendment” by 9 a.m. In fact, the building did not reopen in the morning. The Department of Administration announced that an “assessment of building security requirements” was in progress. By 11 a trickle of protesters was permitted in as the Assembly slowly began to organize itself for the crucial session to pass the Senate version.
The session, billed a “Special Session” to allow more flexibility with rules and the traditions of the “Body” as it is always called, was brought to order at 12:34 p.m. Incongruously (considering he had been refused entry to the Capitol an hour or so earlier), the Reverend Jesse Jackson was allowed to deliver an opening prayer. He took no sides on the issues, and insisted that the legislators join hands (literally) across the aisle. They did, and then a bitter partisan verbal battle began.
A little over three hours of speeches were allowed. Most of these were from Democratic representatives clad in the bright orange T shirts proclaiming workers’ rights that they had adopted three weeks before. The session was broadcast by WisconsinEye and is available for viewing here.
The Democrats argued the illegality of procedures. They asserted that the bill before the Assembly was not the same one that had been before the Senate, and that senators (they were all Republican) had not been informed, had not been given copies of the new legislation, and could not have understood what they were voting for. They cited the shame brought on “this Body,” and on Wisconsin by all that had been done over the recent days and weeks.
More than that, they condemned the loss of workers’ rights and human rights, and the great harm that would be done to Wisconsin families and communities by the bill. Representative Tamara Grigsby, Democrat from the 18th District, delivered a particularly powerful and moving speech. (Had this reporter been a member of the Republican caucus he would have instantly moved across the aisle, sobbing with shame.)
To no avail. At 3:40 in the afternoon, abruptly, with some 20 representatives still to speak, the chair called for the vote (it is electronic and almost instantaneous), announced that the bill was passed, and adjourned the meeting.
The Republicans once again dematerialized mysteriously from the Capitol building.
It was over. Or, perhaps, just begun. The Democratic Party and labor unions are filing complaints and suits challenging the legality of the bill’s passage. The Governor’s use of the State Patrol (now under the direction of the father of Scott Fitzgerald, leader of the Senate Republicans, and his brother Jeff Fitzgerald, leader of the Assembly Republicans) to enforce the Capitol closures is being challenged.
But it has been understood from the beginning that this is less a legislative battle than a long-term political one that will touch every community and involve every important issue. It is not an exaggeration to say that the future of Wisconsin is at stake. And as Michael Moore has been saying so eloquently, the implications for the nation are huge.
Already planned for Saturday, March 12, is a major protest, bringing together farmers (who will mount a “tractorcade” around the Capitol square), labor, educators, students, liberal-progressives from all over the state, and many members of smaller communities that are becoming aware of the hit their schools and local governments are about to take from the Walker budget. Major speakers are invited, and it is reported that the 14 Democratic Senators will return to thank the public for their support.
Recall campaigns are planned on both sides. Under Wisconsin’s recall law almost a year must go by before a campaign to recall Scott Walker can begin. The same is true of Assembly members. So effectively, only senators are presently subject to recall. A bevy of progressive organizations are organizing campaigns directed against at least four of the Republican senators and, so far, there seems to be enormous energy behind these. Success would shift the Senate back to Democratic hands. The Republican recall campaigns, if they are pursued, would be directed against members of the “Group of 14” representing swing districts.
The political fallout of this tempestuous three weeks events will soon begin to be known. It is interesting, already, that one Republican senator and four Republican representatives voted against the “conference amendment.” And there is speculation that one reason that Scott Walker opted for this radical and legally risky legislative maneuver was that he sensed weakening on the part of other of the Republican senators.
[Dr. Paul Beckett lives in Madison, Wisconsin. He can be reached at beckettpa@gmail.com.]
Source
The Rag Blog
Posted by thorne dreyer at 6:00 PM
Labels: Direct Action, Labor Unions, Madison, Paul Beckett, Rag Bloggers, Reactionary Politcs, Scott Walker, Social Protest, Union Busting, Wisconsin
3 Make/read comments:
Extremist to the DHS said...
It is not an exaggeration to say that the future of Wisconsin is at stake.
Doubtful .... It is true that the future of the democratic party in WI, and to some extent elsewhere, is at stake. Without forced collection of union dues by governments, the slush fund to pay off democrat lawmakers with union money takes a hit. That affects both the unions, who get sweetheart deals from the democrat politicians they buy, and the democrat politicians themselves.
Other than that cast of characters, I am doubtful that anyone else is going to give a crap that public employees have to choose to write out a check to pay their union dues and no longer receive special job perks that average workers never see.
Mar 14, 2011 2:26:00 AM
Gaston Cantens said...
The Governor’s use of the State Patrol to enforce the Capitol closures is being challenged.
Mar 15, 2011 4:56:00 AM
Brother Jonah said...
Yeah, Extremist,we workers are just stupid and subhuman. Alle Sieg Heil am der Korporatisch Reich!
Mar 15, 2011 7:20:00 PM
By Paul Beckett / The Rag Blog / March 11, 2011
[This is the second of Paul Beckett's reports from Madison for The Rag Blog.]
MADISON, Wisconson -- In less than 24 hours, in a series of shocking and unprecedented developments, public sector union and collective bargaining rights in Wisconsin have been eviscerated by a Republican legislative majority controlled by Governor Scott Walker.
What seemed to Democratic legislative members and to neutral observers (but there are few of those in Wisconsin now) a putsch, began about 6 p.m. on the evening of Wednesday, March 9. As coups go, this one clearly was carefully -- even brilliantly -- prepared. The surprise was absolute.
Governor Walker spoke to a news conference on Monday, March 7. He referred to meetings at the Illinois border his staff had had with some of the 14 Democratic state senators who had left Wisconsin on February 17 in order to prevent passage of the “union busting” legislation, SB11. (See my article, “Madison and the Revolution at Home," on The Rag Blog, March 8, 2010.)
A compromise was brewing, Walker implied. “The problem,” Walker said, “is Senator [Mark] Miller.” (Miller is the titular leader of the Senate Democrats.) Maybe it is time, Walker went on, for the Democratic caucus to elect a new leader.
All eyes turned to the Group of 14 Democratic senators: were they divided? Would one or more accept some form of compromise and enable the Republicans to complete their passage of SB11? (The presence of only ONE Democratic senator in the chamber would legitimate the vote passing SB11.] (Read the full text of SB11 here.)
Meanwhile, unperceived, Republicans prepared a trap that would snap shut on Wednesday. The complicated, 144-page “Budget Repair Bill” (SB11) was being taken apart by staff and reformulated, ostensibly to strip out everything BUT the collective bargaining provisions.
The result was labeled a conference amendment to SB11, and was only six pages shorter than the original. But the point was that this new version could be labeled as non-fiscal and would not carry the quorum requirement of the original.
A bizarre reversal of positions was now apparent. Incorporation of the collective bargaining provisions within the Budget Repair Bill, very definitely a “fiscal” measure, had been stoutly justified by Governor Walker on the grounds that they were inseparable from the fiscal repair provisions. (Opponents had argued that the provisions had nothing to do with fiscal “repair” and should be taken out of the Budget Repair Bill and debated separately.)
Now, the Republican position was the opposite. The new version was NOT fiscal. With the quorum requirement changed, whether the Group of 14 were in the Chamber or in Illinois was immaterial. The bill could be passed with Republican votes alone.
The ambush worked perfectly. Democrats and protesters remained focused on the hold-out by the 14 Senators and on the possibility of compromise. Word of Walker’s plan leaked out only at the last minute, late on Wednesday afternoon. Beginning about 5:30 p.m. a cluster of emails, most of them billed “emergency,” appeared in my email inbox. The following, from the Dane County Democrats, is typical:
Breaking Update: Tonight at 6:00 pm in the Senate Parlor we are hearing that Senate GOP is going to split the budget repair bill, fiscal from non-fiscal, and ram it through in the dark of night. Given that they're attempting to ram through the bill without any media attention we wanted to let you know that very important developments are likely to occur tonight at 6:00 pm in the Senate Parlor.
Please be at the capital by 6:00PM TONIGHT!
Actually, I did not receive any of the emails until the next day. I was having a quick dinner a block away from the Capitol at Ian’s Pizza (an enterprise that has become known internationally for its role in keeping the protesters in the Capitol Rotunda sustained). I was on the way to a 7 p.m. debate between Madison’s two mayoral candidates.
Suddenly people were shouting, “To the Capitol. They’re going to pass the bill! Tonight!” People in groups of two, four, six, were hurrying up State Street toward the Capitol. I followed. At the top of State Street was a volcano-shaped mountain of snow (some five inches had fallen the night before). On its peak a tall young man stood shouting in an amazing voice: “Everyone to the Capitol! Everyone to the Capitol!” He waved us onward.
The word spread amazingly. By 6 p.m. hundreds were there; very soon thousands. It was dark. Everyone wanted to enter the Capitol. A long line formed at the only entrance that was (in a limited way) open. The line moved glacially. Inside, on the other side of the revolving door, protesters were packed, waiting, apparently, to be taken one-by-one through the security wanding procedure. Noise was deafening: “Whose house? Our house!”
Soon, however, any pretense of an open Capitol was abandoned; the police closed the doors absolutely, leaving some inside and thousands outside. People were angry.
Photo by Paul Beckett / The Rag Blog.
In the meantime, inside the Senate chamber, the deed was already done. In less than half an hour, a “conference committee” had reported out the revised bill. The committee Chair gaveled the meeting closed as the Democratic minority leader, Peter Barca, was shouting out the many ways in which the meeting was improper under the rules of the Legislature or illegal under state law.
The bill was then instantaneously passed (or “passed”) by the Senate Republicans.
By about 6:25 p.m. it was all done. The session was immediately adjourned, and the Republican Members were reportedly smuggled out of the Capitol building and beyond the crowds through a tunnel. (Their escape and removal by a special Madison Metro bus was not as secret as they would have liked.)
The word spread among the protesters and, more than any other time in the three weeks of protest, the mood was one of deep anger and frustration. Later in the evening some of the inside protesters opened an unguarded outside door. Crowds outside pushed in, brushing aside the police, who had raced to stop them. Thousands ended up inside, chanting, commiserating, venting. Most left by 2 or 3 a.m.
The expectation was that the building would open at 8 a.m. Thursday morning and that the Assembly would begin passage of the “conference amendment” by 9 a.m. In fact, the building did not reopen in the morning. The Department of Administration announced that an “assessment of building security requirements” was in progress. By 11 a trickle of protesters was permitted in as the Assembly slowly began to organize itself for the crucial session to pass the Senate version.
The session, billed a “Special Session” to allow more flexibility with rules and the traditions of the “Body” as it is always called, was brought to order at 12:34 p.m. Incongruously (considering he had been refused entry to the Capitol an hour or so earlier), the Reverend Jesse Jackson was allowed to deliver an opening prayer. He took no sides on the issues, and insisted that the legislators join hands (literally) across the aisle. They did, and then a bitter partisan verbal battle began.
A little over three hours of speeches were allowed. Most of these were from Democratic representatives clad in the bright orange T shirts proclaiming workers’ rights that they had adopted three weeks before. The session was broadcast by WisconsinEye and is available for viewing here.
The Democrats argued the illegality of procedures. They asserted that the bill before the Assembly was not the same one that had been before the Senate, and that senators (they were all Republican) had not been informed, had not been given copies of the new legislation, and could not have understood what they were voting for. They cited the shame brought on “this Body,” and on Wisconsin by all that had been done over the recent days and weeks.
More than that, they condemned the loss of workers’ rights and human rights, and the great harm that would be done to Wisconsin families and communities by the bill. Representative Tamara Grigsby, Democrat from the 18th District, delivered a particularly powerful and moving speech. (Had this reporter been a member of the Republican caucus he would have instantly moved across the aisle, sobbing with shame.)
To no avail. At 3:40 in the afternoon, abruptly, with some 20 representatives still to speak, the chair called for the vote (it is electronic and almost instantaneous), announced that the bill was passed, and adjourned the meeting.
The Republicans once again dematerialized mysteriously from the Capitol building.
It was over. Or, perhaps, just begun. The Democratic Party and labor unions are filing complaints and suits challenging the legality of the bill’s passage. The Governor’s use of the State Patrol (now under the direction of the father of Scott Fitzgerald, leader of the Senate Republicans, and his brother Jeff Fitzgerald, leader of the Assembly Republicans) to enforce the Capitol closures is being challenged.
But it has been understood from the beginning that this is less a legislative battle than a long-term political one that will touch every community and involve every important issue. It is not an exaggeration to say that the future of Wisconsin is at stake. And as Michael Moore has been saying so eloquently, the implications for the nation are huge.
Already planned for Saturday, March 12, is a major protest, bringing together farmers (who will mount a “tractorcade” around the Capitol square), labor, educators, students, liberal-progressives from all over the state, and many members of smaller communities that are becoming aware of the hit their schools and local governments are about to take from the Walker budget. Major speakers are invited, and it is reported that the 14 Democratic Senators will return to thank the public for their support.
Recall campaigns are planned on both sides. Under Wisconsin’s recall law almost a year must go by before a campaign to recall Scott Walker can begin. The same is true of Assembly members. So effectively, only senators are presently subject to recall. A bevy of progressive organizations are organizing campaigns directed against at least four of the Republican senators and, so far, there seems to be enormous energy behind these. Success would shift the Senate back to Democratic hands. The Republican recall campaigns, if they are pursued, would be directed against members of the “Group of 14” representing swing districts.
The political fallout of this tempestuous three weeks events will soon begin to be known. It is interesting, already, that one Republican senator and four Republican representatives voted against the “conference amendment.” And there is speculation that one reason that Scott Walker opted for this radical and legally risky legislative maneuver was that he sensed weakening on the part of other of the Republican senators.
[Dr. Paul Beckett lives in Madison, Wisconsin. He can be reached at beckettpa@gmail.com.]
Source
The Rag Blog
Posted by thorne dreyer at 6:00 PM
Labels: Direct Action, Labor Unions, Madison, Paul Beckett, Rag Bloggers, Reactionary Politcs, Scott Walker, Social Protest, Union Busting, Wisconsin
3 Make/read comments:
Extremist to the DHS said...
It is not an exaggeration to say that the future of Wisconsin is at stake.
Doubtful .... It is true that the future of the democratic party in WI, and to some extent elsewhere, is at stake. Without forced collection of union dues by governments, the slush fund to pay off democrat lawmakers with union money takes a hit. That affects both the unions, who get sweetheart deals from the democrat politicians they buy, and the democrat politicians themselves.
Other than that cast of characters, I am doubtful that anyone else is going to give a crap that public employees have to choose to write out a check to pay their union dues and no longer receive special job perks that average workers never see.
Mar 14, 2011 2:26:00 AM
Gaston Cantens said...
The Governor’s use of the State Patrol to enforce the Capitol closures is being challenged.
Mar 15, 2011 4:56:00 AM
Brother Jonah said...
Yeah, Extremist,we workers are just stupid and subhuman. Alle Sieg Heil am der Korporatisch Reich!
Mar 15, 2011 7:20:00 PM
Saturday, February 26, 2011
The Class Lines Are Drawn- Solidarity With The Wisconsin Public Workers Unions- The Question Of A One Day General Strike Is Posed.
Markin comment:
The French workers (and others, like the volatile students, at times) have made an art form out of the one day political general strike (some, including this writer, would say too much of an art form to the exclusion of posing the struggle for power, as in May 1968, but that argument is for another day). The Greek workers are starting to get the hang of it, after the last year or so of episodic efforts. The Spanish, Portuguese and other working classes are not far behind. And, of course, the workers and students (well, better said, young people) of the Middle East have shown that even if it is not called a general strike they know how to use the form, and use it very effectively. So this is not some pipe dream proposition but reflects, or very soon will reflect, a felt need by the today’s front line class struggle fighters –the Wisconsin public workers unions- in order to survive.
Now what I propose is that every militant (proud leftist or just plain trade union proud, or both) go before their union executive boards, central labor councils, or whatever unified labor organizations are at hand and place the idea of a one day general strike before their memberships. For those not in unions start talking this idea up among your co-workers. Students, the unemployed, the retired, and everyone else who is not in that two percent of the population that controls ninety percent of the wealth of this country can go before their respective organizations as well. The lines are drawn, the class struggle is heating up whether we want it to or not, and there are many other states that are ready to emulate Wisconsin’s Governor Walker if he succeeds in his union-busting efforts. An injury to one is an injury to all. Fight for a one day general strike in support of Wisconsin’s (and other states’) public workers unions!
More later.
The French workers (and others, like the volatile students, at times) have made an art form out of the one day political general strike (some, including this writer, would say too much of an art form to the exclusion of posing the struggle for power, as in May 1968, but that argument is for another day). The Greek workers are starting to get the hang of it, after the last year or so of episodic efforts. The Spanish, Portuguese and other working classes are not far behind. And, of course, the workers and students (well, better said, young people) of the Middle East have shown that even if it is not called a general strike they know how to use the form, and use it very effectively. So this is not some pipe dream proposition but reflects, or very soon will reflect, a felt need by the today’s front line class struggle fighters –the Wisconsin public workers unions- in order to survive.
Now what I propose is that every militant (proud leftist or just plain trade union proud, or both) go before their union executive boards, central labor councils, or whatever unified labor organizations are at hand and place the idea of a one day general strike before their memberships. For those not in unions start talking this idea up among your co-workers. Students, the unemployed, the retired, and everyone else who is not in that two percent of the population that controls ninety percent of the wealth of this country can go before their respective organizations as well. The lines are drawn, the class struggle is heating up whether we want it to or not, and there are many other states that are ready to emulate Wisconsin’s Governor Walker if he succeeds in his union-busting efforts. An injury to one is an injury to all. Fight for a one day general strike in support of Wisconsin’s (and other states’) public workers unions!
More later.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
From The "Renegade Eye" Blog- In Defense Of Marxism- "Revolutionary Aftershocks" -The Middle East At Glance
Markin comment:
The key question as posed here in this article is the question of questions, the formations and leadership of a revolutionary communist parties that fights for workers and peasants government (and students too, okay). And to build that party while the revolutionary wave is on the upswing. Such moments do not last forever as we have seen before, including in Barcelona in 1936.
Revolutionary Aftershocks
Written by Alan Woods
Monday, 21 February 2011
In nature an earthquake is followed by aftershocks. These can be as catastrophic in their effects as the original explosion. What we are now witnessing is the same phenomenon in terms of society and politics. The revolutionary earthquake in Egypt and Tunisia has sent seismic shocks to the most distant parts of the Arab speaking world. Algeria, Morocco, Libya, Sudan, Bahrain, Jordan, Iraq, Yemen, Kuwait, Djibouti -- the list is growing longer, not by the day but by the hour.
February 19, Bahrain. Photo: Al Jazeera EnglishIn Bahrain, which is next to both Iran and Saudi Arabia, the desperate attempt of the monarchy to crush the mass movement in blood has failed. The revolutionary people showed immense courage in the face of the bullets of the regime's hired mercenaries. As a result the authorities were forced to retreat and withdraw the thugs in uniform, allowing the masses to retake possession of Pearl Square, which has now become the centre of gravity for the uprising, like Tahrir Square in Cairo.
The upheavals in Bahrain also represents a potential fuse that can ignite a powder keg in neighbouring Saudi Arabia, where there is also a large Shiia minority and an increasingly disaffected population.
The crisis is already beginning to affect the reactionary Saudi regime. Last week the Mufti of Saudi Arabia warned the ruling clique that unless they carried out urgent reforms to improve the living standards of the Saudi people they could face overthrow like the regimes in Tunisia and Egypt. In an unprecedented statement, he criticised the royal family for its extravagance, contrasting it with the poverty of the masses.
It is impossible to understate the importance of this development, since the entire Saudi regime is based on an understanding between the House of Saud and the clergy. A split between them would be a clear harbinger of a revolutionary crisis in this bastion of reaction in the Middle East and the broader Islamic world. It is something that sends shivers up the spine of the US imperialists.
In Iran also there are indications that the mass movement is reviving. There are clear signs of splits in the regime and in the state upon which it rests. According to a document received by The Telegraph, several lower ranking commanders of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards (a professional militia counting 120,000) have signed a document stating that they do not want to shoot on demonstrators. As we have pointed out in Marxist.com, if this document is correct, it marks a very important milestone in the development of the Iranian revolution.
Febraury 21, Bahrain. Photo: Mahmood Al-YousifThe hypocrisy of the imperialists knows no bounds. On the one hand they are obliged to make noises in public expressing their profound sympathy with the pro-democracy movement. But in reality they have backed every reactionary regime in the region, including Bahrain, which is home to the Fifth Fleet, the main US naval force in the Middle East. The British and Americans have armed these regimes for decades against their own populations. The tear gas and rubber bullets and other symbols of western democratic civilization used on the protesters in Pearl Square come from Britain, where the government is currently “reconsidering” its policy on arms sales to places like Bahrain and Libya.
Iraq
For all their economic and military might, the US imperialists are powerless to intervene directly against the revolution. They have already burnt their fingers badly in Iraq. Nine years, hundreds of thousands killed and maimed, and billions of dollars later, Iraq is no closer to “democracy” and “freedom” than when GW Bush toppled the US' former ally in Baghdad. Ironically, the debt incurred during this adventure has laid the foundations for mass unrest in the US itself. Despite this draining of blood and treasure, the US still does not and cannot control Iraq. By contrast, mass mobilizations and the entry of the organized working class has resulted in the overthrow of two dictators, with more to follow. This exposes the lie by the imperialists that only they can bring “civilization” to the “backwards” peoples of the region, which was, lest we forget, the cradle of human civilization.
17 February, Sulaymaniyah. Photo: Karzan KadoziThe revolutionary wave sweeping the region shows that once the masses are mobilized, no force on earth can stop them. Not even the mighty Mubarak could survive. If it can happen in Egypt, it can happen anywhere. Now, in Kurdish Iraq, mass unrest has erupted, threatening the shaky edifice put in place by the imperialists as they try to cut their losses while maintaining influence over the country's affairs – and oil.
Tunisia
In Tunisia tens of thousands marched over the weekend in the main cities against the Gannouchi government and demanding the immediate convening of a Constituent Assembly. “The Tunisian revolution is not over yet” was the common message of these demonstrations. The largest of these demonstrations took place in the capital Tunis on Sunday February 20, where tens of thousands marched to the government building shouting slogans like “Leave – Degage” and “We don't want the friends of Ben Ali”. Most media sources tried to minimise the size of this protest, but Reuters journalists who were present put the number in attendace at a massive 40,000. This video clearly shows there were at least tens of thousands present (Video ). Similar marches took place in Sfax (Video ), Kairouan (Video ), Bizerte (Video ), Monastir and other cities with thousands demonstrating.
Despite heavy police presence and the army firing on the air, the protestors
Libya
The revolutionary wave has reached its latest and bloodiest point of influx in Libya, where the situation has now reached white heat. Sandwiched between Tunisia and Egypt, many commentators (and Gadaffi himself!) imagined Libya could somehow avoid the general conflagration. According to the latest reports the uprising has spread from eastern Libya to the capital of Tripoli. Last night heavy gunfire was heard in central Tripoli and other districts. Al Jazeera puts the number of people killed in Tripoli at 61. Other unconfirmed reports say protesters attacked the headquarters of Al-Jamahiriya Two television and Al-Shababia as well as other government buildings in Tripoli overnight.
The People’s Conference Centre where the General People’s Congress (parliament) meets was set on fire, and police stations and other government buildings were also attacked, ransacked and set on fire. This is now a full-blown armed insurrection. Clashes have been going on between the protesters and security forces in eastern cities of the country and in Benghazi in particular, where opposition to Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi is most intense. But this has spread to the south and wets of the country and to Tripoli itself.
The protests in Tripoli were not pacified but intensified following a televised speech by Gaddafi' s son Seif al-Islam. He promised political, social and economic reforms and said that the killing of demonstrators was a “mistake”, but described the protesters as drunks and drug addicts following orders from foreigners. He promised a conference on constitutional reforms within two days and said Libyans should "forget oil and petrol" and prepare themselves for occupation by "the West" and 40 years of civil war if they failed to agree.
The younger Gaddafi attempted to draw a contrast between the situation in Libya with the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia: “Libya is different, if there is disturbance it will split into several states,” he said. But the same things were said before about Egypt, which was said to be different to Tunisia and therefore immune to revolutionary contagion. Events soon exposed the hollowness of these assertions. There were no pyramids in Tunisia and there are none in Libya. But there is mass discontent in all these countries, which is seeking a way out. The harder it is repressed, the more violent will be the explosion when it finally breaks through.
The speech implied that the army and national guard would crack down on “seditious elements” spreading unrest: “You can say we want democracy and rights, we can talk about it, we should have talked about it before. It's this or war. Instead of crying over 200 deaths, we will cry over hundreds of thousands of deaths.
“We will fight to the last minute, until the last bullet,” Gaddafi said. But the question is: for whom is the last bullet reserved?
Civil War
Saif Gaddafi admitted that some military bases, tanks and weapons had been seized and acknowledged that the army, under stress, opened fire on crowds because it was not used to controlling demonstrations.
Witnesses in Libya have reported that some cities, especially in the east, which is perceived as less loyal to Moammar Gaddafi, have fallen completely into the hands of civilians and protesters. After the speech, the protesters in the street began chanting slogans against Seif al-Islam as well as his father.
There have been reports of army defections in Benghazi and Al Bayda in eastern Libya from February 20, and now spreading unrest to Tripoli on Feb. 21, This suggest that the regime is losing its grip on the the situation.
Marwan Bishara, Al Jazeera's senior political analyst, said Saif Gaddafi's speech appeared “desperate”.
“It sounded like a desperate speech by a desperate son of a dictator who's trying to use blackmail on the Libyan people by threatening that he could turn the country into a bloodbath,” Bishara said.
“That is very dangerous coming from someone who doesn't even hold an official role in Libya -- so in so many ways, this could be the beginning of a nightmare scenario for Libya if a despotic leader puts his son on air in order to warn his people of a bloodbath if they don't listen to the orders or the dictates of a dictators.”
If the Libyan regime tries to cling to power by force it may end up like the regime of Ceaucescu in Romania. Such a prospect is a nightmare scenario for the imperialists and their puppet regimes everywhere. The latest reports indicate that the Libyan air force and navy are firing on rebellious military installations and even civilians. It would now appear that open civil war has erupted as Gaddafi desperately clings to power, but it is a gamble he may well not win.
Wherever one looks, the whole vast expanse of North Africa and the Middle East is in flames. Regimes which were regarded as stable and unassailable only two months ago, are being rocked to their foundations. The Arab masses who were described in contemptuous terms by bourgeois commentators, as passive, ignorant and apathetic, have emerged as the most revolutionary force on the planet. This is a major turning point not only in the history of this region but in world history.
The Bible says “the first shall be last, and the last shall be first”. Those who for so long regarded themselves as the “vanguard” have shown themselves to be completely unprepared and out of step with the real movement of the working class and the youth. Those who were “advanced” have turned out to be the most backward and retrograde elements in the equation. And those who were supposed to be “backward”, now stand in the front line. Thus it is, thus it always was.
In 1917, during the Russian Revolution, Lenin said that the working class is more revolutionary than the most revolutionary party. The events of 1917 proved him to be correct. On the streets of Cairo, Teheran, and Manama, history is being repeated. The revolutionary instincts of the masses have carried the movement forward despite all obstacles. They have brushed aside bullets and truncheons as a man swats a mosquito. The only thing that is lacking here, that guaranteed the final victory in 1917, is the presence of a genuine revolutionary party and leadership.
What is astonishing is the extraordinary degree of revolutionary maturity shown by the workers and youth of these countries. With no party, no real leadership, no preconceived plan of action, they have achieved miracles. They bring to mind the marvelous movement of the workers of Barcelona, who in 1936, armed with just sticks, knives, and old hunting rifles, stormed the barracks and smashed the fascist counterrevolution. They bring to mind the Paris Commune, which in the words of Marx, “stormed heaven”.
It is impossible to predict with accuracy how the revolution will develop. This will depend on a number of factors, both objective and subjective. But in the absence of genuine revolutionary leadership, it is inevitable that the revolution will be prolonged in time. There will inevitably be ups and downs, ebbs and flows, periods of euphoria followed by disappointment, defeats, and even periods of reaction. But it will be impossible to reestablish anything resembling stability as long as the capitalist system exists. One regime of crisis will follow another.
February 11, Tahrir Square. Photo: Ramy RaoofThe most important thing, however, is that the revolution has begun. It is impossible to turn the clock back in any of these countries. And through all the stormy events that are unfolding and will unfold over a period of months and even years, the working class and the youth will learn. They will learn which parties and leaders have betrayed them and which can be trusted. In the end, they will come to understand that the only way forward is a radical break with the past and the complete elimination, not just of this or that leader or regime, but of a fundamentally unjust system of society.
The overthrow of Ben Ali and Mubarak was the work of the revolutionary masses, and in particular the working class and the youth. These are the only genuinely revolutionary forces in society. There can be no solution to the problems of these countries unless and until the working class takes power into its own hands and expropriates the wealth of the oligarchy and imperialism.
When the present wave of fighting is over, when the clouds of teargas and gunpowder is lifted, the workers and youth will look around and see that they are not alone. The revolutionary movement has gone beyond all the artificial frontiers established by imperialism in the past, frontiers that cut across all natural boundaries and divide the living body of the peoples. The power of imperialism over the peoples of North Africa and the Middle East is based on this criminal division. To overcome it is essential if the peoples are ever to achieve their freedom and raise themselves to their true height.
The instinct of the masses is to spread the revolution. It is spreading and will spread further. This poses the question of the unity of the peoples of the region. The only way to achieve this is through a Socialist Federation of the North Africa and the Middle East, not as a utopian and distant aim, but as a burning and urgent necessity.
•Long live the Revolution!
•Down with capitalism and imperialism!
•Workers of the world unite!
The key question as posed here in this article is the question of questions, the formations and leadership of a revolutionary communist parties that fights for workers and peasants government (and students too, okay). And to build that party while the revolutionary wave is on the upswing. Such moments do not last forever as we have seen before, including in Barcelona in 1936.
Revolutionary Aftershocks
Written by Alan Woods
Monday, 21 February 2011
In nature an earthquake is followed by aftershocks. These can be as catastrophic in their effects as the original explosion. What we are now witnessing is the same phenomenon in terms of society and politics. The revolutionary earthquake in Egypt and Tunisia has sent seismic shocks to the most distant parts of the Arab speaking world. Algeria, Morocco, Libya, Sudan, Bahrain, Jordan, Iraq, Yemen, Kuwait, Djibouti -- the list is growing longer, not by the day but by the hour.
February 19, Bahrain. Photo: Al Jazeera EnglishIn Bahrain, which is next to both Iran and Saudi Arabia, the desperate attempt of the monarchy to crush the mass movement in blood has failed. The revolutionary people showed immense courage in the face of the bullets of the regime's hired mercenaries. As a result the authorities were forced to retreat and withdraw the thugs in uniform, allowing the masses to retake possession of Pearl Square, which has now become the centre of gravity for the uprising, like Tahrir Square in Cairo.
The upheavals in Bahrain also represents a potential fuse that can ignite a powder keg in neighbouring Saudi Arabia, where there is also a large Shiia minority and an increasingly disaffected population.
The crisis is already beginning to affect the reactionary Saudi regime. Last week the Mufti of Saudi Arabia warned the ruling clique that unless they carried out urgent reforms to improve the living standards of the Saudi people they could face overthrow like the regimes in Tunisia and Egypt. In an unprecedented statement, he criticised the royal family for its extravagance, contrasting it with the poverty of the masses.
It is impossible to understate the importance of this development, since the entire Saudi regime is based on an understanding between the House of Saud and the clergy. A split between them would be a clear harbinger of a revolutionary crisis in this bastion of reaction in the Middle East and the broader Islamic world. It is something that sends shivers up the spine of the US imperialists.
In Iran also there are indications that the mass movement is reviving. There are clear signs of splits in the regime and in the state upon which it rests. According to a document received by The Telegraph, several lower ranking commanders of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards (a professional militia counting 120,000) have signed a document stating that they do not want to shoot on demonstrators. As we have pointed out in Marxist.com, if this document is correct, it marks a very important milestone in the development of the Iranian revolution.
Febraury 21, Bahrain. Photo: Mahmood Al-YousifThe hypocrisy of the imperialists knows no bounds. On the one hand they are obliged to make noises in public expressing their profound sympathy with the pro-democracy movement. But in reality they have backed every reactionary regime in the region, including Bahrain, which is home to the Fifth Fleet, the main US naval force in the Middle East. The British and Americans have armed these regimes for decades against their own populations. The tear gas and rubber bullets and other symbols of western democratic civilization used on the protesters in Pearl Square come from Britain, where the government is currently “reconsidering” its policy on arms sales to places like Bahrain and Libya.
Iraq
For all their economic and military might, the US imperialists are powerless to intervene directly against the revolution. They have already burnt their fingers badly in Iraq. Nine years, hundreds of thousands killed and maimed, and billions of dollars later, Iraq is no closer to “democracy” and “freedom” than when GW Bush toppled the US' former ally in Baghdad. Ironically, the debt incurred during this adventure has laid the foundations for mass unrest in the US itself. Despite this draining of blood and treasure, the US still does not and cannot control Iraq. By contrast, mass mobilizations and the entry of the organized working class has resulted in the overthrow of two dictators, with more to follow. This exposes the lie by the imperialists that only they can bring “civilization” to the “backwards” peoples of the region, which was, lest we forget, the cradle of human civilization.
17 February, Sulaymaniyah. Photo: Karzan KadoziThe revolutionary wave sweeping the region shows that once the masses are mobilized, no force on earth can stop them. Not even the mighty Mubarak could survive. If it can happen in Egypt, it can happen anywhere. Now, in Kurdish Iraq, mass unrest has erupted, threatening the shaky edifice put in place by the imperialists as they try to cut their losses while maintaining influence over the country's affairs – and oil.
Tunisia
In Tunisia tens of thousands marched over the weekend in the main cities against the Gannouchi government and demanding the immediate convening of a Constituent Assembly. “The Tunisian revolution is not over yet” was the common message of these demonstrations. The largest of these demonstrations took place in the capital Tunis on Sunday February 20, where tens of thousands marched to the government building shouting slogans like “Leave – Degage” and “We don't want the friends of Ben Ali”. Most media sources tried to minimise the size of this protest, but Reuters journalists who were present put the number in attendace at a massive 40,000. This video clearly shows there were at least tens of thousands present (Video ). Similar marches took place in Sfax (Video ), Kairouan (Video ), Bizerte (Video ), Monastir and other cities with thousands demonstrating.
Despite heavy police presence and the army firing on the air, the protestors
Libya
The revolutionary wave has reached its latest and bloodiest point of influx in Libya, where the situation has now reached white heat. Sandwiched between Tunisia and Egypt, many commentators (and Gadaffi himself!) imagined Libya could somehow avoid the general conflagration. According to the latest reports the uprising has spread from eastern Libya to the capital of Tripoli. Last night heavy gunfire was heard in central Tripoli and other districts. Al Jazeera puts the number of people killed in Tripoli at 61. Other unconfirmed reports say protesters attacked the headquarters of Al-Jamahiriya Two television and Al-Shababia as well as other government buildings in Tripoli overnight.
The People’s Conference Centre where the General People’s Congress (parliament) meets was set on fire, and police stations and other government buildings were also attacked, ransacked and set on fire. This is now a full-blown armed insurrection. Clashes have been going on between the protesters and security forces in eastern cities of the country and in Benghazi in particular, where opposition to Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi is most intense. But this has spread to the south and wets of the country and to Tripoli itself.
The protests in Tripoli were not pacified but intensified following a televised speech by Gaddafi' s son Seif al-Islam. He promised political, social and economic reforms and said that the killing of demonstrators was a “mistake”, but described the protesters as drunks and drug addicts following orders from foreigners. He promised a conference on constitutional reforms within two days and said Libyans should "forget oil and petrol" and prepare themselves for occupation by "the West" and 40 years of civil war if they failed to agree.
The younger Gaddafi attempted to draw a contrast between the situation in Libya with the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia: “Libya is different, if there is disturbance it will split into several states,” he said. But the same things were said before about Egypt, which was said to be different to Tunisia and therefore immune to revolutionary contagion. Events soon exposed the hollowness of these assertions. There were no pyramids in Tunisia and there are none in Libya. But there is mass discontent in all these countries, which is seeking a way out. The harder it is repressed, the more violent will be the explosion when it finally breaks through.
The speech implied that the army and national guard would crack down on “seditious elements” spreading unrest: “You can say we want democracy and rights, we can talk about it, we should have talked about it before. It's this or war. Instead of crying over 200 deaths, we will cry over hundreds of thousands of deaths.
“We will fight to the last minute, until the last bullet,” Gaddafi said. But the question is: for whom is the last bullet reserved?
Civil War
Saif Gaddafi admitted that some military bases, tanks and weapons had been seized and acknowledged that the army, under stress, opened fire on crowds because it was not used to controlling demonstrations.
Witnesses in Libya have reported that some cities, especially in the east, which is perceived as less loyal to Moammar Gaddafi, have fallen completely into the hands of civilians and protesters. After the speech, the protesters in the street began chanting slogans against Seif al-Islam as well as his father.
There have been reports of army defections in Benghazi and Al Bayda in eastern Libya from February 20, and now spreading unrest to Tripoli on Feb. 21, This suggest that the regime is losing its grip on the the situation.
Marwan Bishara, Al Jazeera's senior political analyst, said Saif Gaddafi's speech appeared “desperate”.
“It sounded like a desperate speech by a desperate son of a dictator who's trying to use blackmail on the Libyan people by threatening that he could turn the country into a bloodbath,” Bishara said.
“That is very dangerous coming from someone who doesn't even hold an official role in Libya -- so in so many ways, this could be the beginning of a nightmare scenario for Libya if a despotic leader puts his son on air in order to warn his people of a bloodbath if they don't listen to the orders or the dictates of a dictators.”
If the Libyan regime tries to cling to power by force it may end up like the regime of Ceaucescu in Romania. Such a prospect is a nightmare scenario for the imperialists and their puppet regimes everywhere. The latest reports indicate that the Libyan air force and navy are firing on rebellious military installations and even civilians. It would now appear that open civil war has erupted as Gaddafi desperately clings to power, but it is a gamble he may well not win.
Wherever one looks, the whole vast expanse of North Africa and the Middle East is in flames. Regimes which were regarded as stable and unassailable only two months ago, are being rocked to their foundations. The Arab masses who were described in contemptuous terms by bourgeois commentators, as passive, ignorant and apathetic, have emerged as the most revolutionary force on the planet. This is a major turning point not only in the history of this region but in world history.
The Bible says “the first shall be last, and the last shall be first”. Those who for so long regarded themselves as the “vanguard” have shown themselves to be completely unprepared and out of step with the real movement of the working class and the youth. Those who were “advanced” have turned out to be the most backward and retrograde elements in the equation. And those who were supposed to be “backward”, now stand in the front line. Thus it is, thus it always was.
In 1917, during the Russian Revolution, Lenin said that the working class is more revolutionary than the most revolutionary party. The events of 1917 proved him to be correct. On the streets of Cairo, Teheran, and Manama, history is being repeated. The revolutionary instincts of the masses have carried the movement forward despite all obstacles. They have brushed aside bullets and truncheons as a man swats a mosquito. The only thing that is lacking here, that guaranteed the final victory in 1917, is the presence of a genuine revolutionary party and leadership.
What is astonishing is the extraordinary degree of revolutionary maturity shown by the workers and youth of these countries. With no party, no real leadership, no preconceived plan of action, they have achieved miracles. They bring to mind the marvelous movement of the workers of Barcelona, who in 1936, armed with just sticks, knives, and old hunting rifles, stormed the barracks and smashed the fascist counterrevolution. They bring to mind the Paris Commune, which in the words of Marx, “stormed heaven”.
It is impossible to predict with accuracy how the revolution will develop. This will depend on a number of factors, both objective and subjective. But in the absence of genuine revolutionary leadership, it is inevitable that the revolution will be prolonged in time. There will inevitably be ups and downs, ebbs and flows, periods of euphoria followed by disappointment, defeats, and even periods of reaction. But it will be impossible to reestablish anything resembling stability as long as the capitalist system exists. One regime of crisis will follow another.
February 11, Tahrir Square. Photo: Ramy RaoofThe most important thing, however, is that the revolution has begun. It is impossible to turn the clock back in any of these countries. And through all the stormy events that are unfolding and will unfold over a period of months and even years, the working class and the youth will learn. They will learn which parties and leaders have betrayed them and which can be trusted. In the end, they will come to understand that the only way forward is a radical break with the past and the complete elimination, not just of this or that leader or regime, but of a fundamentally unjust system of society.
The overthrow of Ben Ali and Mubarak was the work of the revolutionary masses, and in particular the working class and the youth. These are the only genuinely revolutionary forces in society. There can be no solution to the problems of these countries unless and until the working class takes power into its own hands and expropriates the wealth of the oligarchy and imperialism.
When the present wave of fighting is over, when the clouds of teargas and gunpowder is lifted, the workers and youth will look around and see that they are not alone. The revolutionary movement has gone beyond all the artificial frontiers established by imperialism in the past, frontiers that cut across all natural boundaries and divide the living body of the peoples. The power of imperialism over the peoples of North Africa and the Middle East is based on this criminal division. To overcome it is essential if the peoples are ever to achieve their freedom and raise themselves to their true height.
The instinct of the masses is to spread the revolution. It is spreading and will spread further. This poses the question of the unity of the peoples of the region. The only way to achieve this is through a Socialist Federation of the North Africa and the Middle East, not as a utopian and distant aim, but as a burning and urgent necessity.
•Long live the Revolution!
•Down with capitalism and imperialism!
•Workers of the world unite!
Sunday, January 30, 2011
From Out In "The Projects" Night- A Recent Deadly Case Study
Click on the headline to link to a Sunday Boston Globe article, dated January 30, 2010, that details a story of how "the projects" ran roughshod over yet another family.
Markin comment:
Normally this space does not comment on individual cop-killers, drug addicts, drug pushers and street gangsters straight out of the daily news but this story of the Boston Maverick Square Cinelli brothers rates comment here because it is a classic case study of the what "the projects", the ethos of the projects, and the dead hand that it holds over the lives of too many youth. Of course these guys are responsible for their individual criminal actions but the projects dead hand , as I know from very personal experience, still holds as a factor. The ease of access to drugs, the daily hustle (mainly against fellow denizens of the projects) to keep the habit in check, the easy violence done in many way, many not newsworthy ways, the "cult" of the gun are all very, very familiar. And these guys came from respectable, seemingly caring parents, parents like mine. And like many other parents in the projects who got catch up in the throes of just plain being too poor to afford better digs. Even when this pair, like the Markin family, moved away from the projects the ethos of that place, the way of dealing with life, the expectations of life, still hung over the future.
Let me put this case study in perspective, from my own personal perspective, coming out a similar Massachusetts housing project, with a mainly white ethnic population (Irish and Italian, reflecting key populations in the state and their relative lower social status as well), although we lived in bunched together four-apartment houses (fit in size for one family, maybe two) rather than the Cinnelli brothers high-rise brick structures. Different structural set-up but same ethos. As is always the case, in America and internationally, some people will "survive" any tough situations. And many will make it out enough to survive later.
But let me give a graphic example, although it is seriously only of anecdotal value. In my "the projects"sixth grade elementary school class of the twelve boys that I graduated with only three (including myself, and I only barely so) that I know of made it out without getting in trouble with the law or some other criminal episode (one kid, infamously, got caught up in the Mexican drug trade early, and died early as well). My "home boy " Billie, William James Bradley, whom I have written about in this space humorously, sadly, did not make it either. In my own three brother family only one (me) made it. What a waste of human material even if my numbers are skewed. The failure rate is high, too high. Is there any wonder what I have spent a good part of my life fighting under the banner of organizing a workers party that fights for a workers government? More later on this as I revise a few entries that I wrote a couple of years ago about the old time projects life.
Markin comment:
Normally this space does not comment on individual cop-killers, drug addicts, drug pushers and street gangsters straight out of the daily news but this story of the Boston Maverick Square Cinelli brothers rates comment here because it is a classic case study of the what "the projects", the ethos of the projects, and the dead hand that it holds over the lives of too many youth. Of course these guys are responsible for their individual criminal actions but the projects dead hand , as I know from very personal experience, still holds as a factor. The ease of access to drugs, the daily hustle (mainly against fellow denizens of the projects) to keep the habit in check, the easy violence done in many way, many not newsworthy ways, the "cult" of the gun are all very, very familiar. And these guys came from respectable, seemingly caring parents, parents like mine. And like many other parents in the projects who got catch up in the throes of just plain being too poor to afford better digs. Even when this pair, like the Markin family, moved away from the projects the ethos of that place, the way of dealing with life, the expectations of life, still hung over the future.
Let me put this case study in perspective, from my own personal perspective, coming out a similar Massachusetts housing project, with a mainly white ethnic population (Irish and Italian, reflecting key populations in the state and their relative lower social status as well), although we lived in bunched together four-apartment houses (fit in size for one family, maybe two) rather than the Cinnelli brothers high-rise brick structures. Different structural set-up but same ethos. As is always the case, in America and internationally, some people will "survive" any tough situations. And many will make it out enough to survive later.
But let me give a graphic example, although it is seriously only of anecdotal value. In my "the projects"sixth grade elementary school class of the twelve boys that I graduated with only three (including myself, and I only barely so) that I know of made it out without getting in trouble with the law or some other criminal episode (one kid, infamously, got caught up in the Mexican drug trade early, and died early as well). My "home boy " Billie, William James Bradley, whom I have written about in this space humorously, sadly, did not make it either. In my own three brother family only one (me) made it. What a waste of human material even if my numbers are skewed. The failure rate is high, too high. Is there any wonder what I have spent a good part of my life fighting under the banner of organizing a workers party that fights for a workers government? More later on this as I revise a few entries that I wrote a couple of years ago about the old time projects life.
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