Markin comment:
Most of the time I do not comment on some organization’s editorial but this one is too good to pass up. In a few paragraphs, via a commentary on an academic sociological work that did more critical analysis than it was suppose to, it explains exactly, concisely, precisely and very other “-ly” the malaise of the American anti-war movement and the shifts and shakes of that movement as the Democrats went for the main chance over the past few years- bourgeois political power. And for its subservient efforts the anti-war movement is now in desperate need of a very, very high-powered microscope to order to find evidence of its presence on the mean streets of America. (As I know from first-hand experience as I run into the same twenty to fifty or so activists wherever I go.) Don’t be shocked then if you “reap what you sow,” as the old biblical phrase goes. Certainly Captain Renault would not be shocked. He would do just as the Democrats did, take the money and run.
******
Workers Vanguard No. 981
27 May 2011
Shocking! There’s Gambling in Rick’s Café
(Editorial Note)
Captain Renault announced that he was “shocked, shocked” to see gambling in Rick’s café in the 1942 film Casablanca, as he pocketed his winnings for the evening. It was about as shocking to learn that the reformist-led “antiwar movement,” which was premised on “Anybody but Bush” politics, plummeted following the Democratic Party’s gains in the 2006 midterm elections and Obama’s victory in 2008. Such were the conclusions of a recent study by Michael Heaney of the University of Michigan and Fabio Rojas of Indiana University titled, “The Partisan Dynamics of Contention: Demobilization of the Antiwar Movement in the United States, 2007-2009.”
The authors conclude that the antiwar movement was essentially a movement of the Democratic Party and was dissolved once the Democrats won office. To readers of Workers Vanguard, these conclusions are hardly news. But at least they’re now documented with numerous tables and graphs, packaged in excruciating acadamese.
Where once hundreds of thousands could be mobilized in protest against “Bush’s war” in Iraq, today it takes a microscope to spot any opposition in the streets. In evaporating such opposition, the Democrats had the help of the reformist left, which promoted the lie that the imperialist rulers can be pressured to make their system more humane, peaceful and democratic. In fact, the bloodthirsty depredations of U.S. imperialism continue apace across the world under the Obama administration. U.S. troops still occupy Iraq; an intensified U.S./NATO war rages against the peoples of Afghanistan; U.S. drone strikes and special operations have escalated in Pakistan; the U.S. and NATO are bombing Libya on behalf of a pro-imperialist “opposition.”
The data used in the Heaney/Rojas study were gleaned from Listservs managed by the now-defunct United for Peace and Justice (UFPJ), the ANSWER Coalition, Code Pink, the World Can’t Wait, MoveOn.org and the Washington Peace Center. The researchers maintained “personal relationships with leading activists,” conducted interviews with some of them and surveyed attendees at some 27 events nationally. The study notes early on that “Obama maintained the occupation of Iraq and escalated the war in Afghanistan” and that the “antiwar movement should have been furious at Obama’s ‘betrayal’ and reinvigorated its protest activity. Instead, attendance at antiwar rallies declined precipitously and financial resources available to the movement dissipated.” The paper’s conclusion reads in part:
“The Democrats and the antiwar movement struck a useful alliance from 2003 to 2006. The antiwar movement helped to demonstrate grassroots support for a key party issue and the party helped to provide activists, resources, and legitimacy for the movement. By early 2009, however, it was abundantly clear that Democrats were no longer interested in this alliance.”
The alliance certainly was useful for the Democrats. But then the authors continue: “Abandonment by the Democrats gave the movement the independence it desired, but also stripped it of its capacity for political influence. While Obama’s election was heralded as a victory for the antiwar movement, Obama’s election, in fact, thwarted the ability of the movement to achieve critical mass.” This greatly prettifies the liberal and reformist left—the UFPJ; the ANSWER Coalition (once sponsored by the Workers World Party and now by its split organization, the Party for Socialism and Liberation); the World Can’t Wait outfit, sponsored by the Revolutionary Communist Party; the International Socialist Organization, which participated in any number of such coalitions. These organizations never desired “independence” from the Democratic Party, whose fortunes they promoted.
Obama did not “betray” the reformist left. Rather, it was the reformists who betrayed the interests of the proletariat by chaining opponents of the Iraq and Afghanistan occupations to the capitalist Democratic Party, the other party of exploitation, oppression and war. From the outset, the Spartacist League/Spartacus Youth Clubs called for the military defense of Afghanistan and Iraq against U.S. imperialism and fought for class struggle at home against America’s capitalist rulers. The bankruptcy of the reformist left was succinctly captured by then-Trotskyist James Burnham in his 1936 piece, “War and the Workers”: “No one can uphold capitalism—whether directly, as an open adherent of the capitalists, or indirectly, from any shade of liberal or reformist position—and fight against war, because capitalism means war.”
Friday, June 03, 2011
From the Archives of Marxism-"Palestinian Trotskyists on the Partition of Palestine and the 1948 Arab-Israel War"
Workers Vanguard No. 981
27 May 2011
From the Archives of Marxism
Palestinian Trotskyists on the Partition of Palestine and the 1948 Arab-Israel War
Each May, as the Zionist rulers celebrate the anniversary of the establishment of the state of Israel, Palestinians across the Near East mark the nakba, or catastrophe: the expulsion in 1948 of more than 700,000 Arabs from their homeland in Palestine. The United Nations General Assembly had voted the previous year in favor of ending the British mandate in Palestine and creating two independent states, one Zionist and the other Palestinian Arab. Through mass killings and terror, the Zionists drove out most of the Palestinian population from their homes and villages. Following the declaration of the founding of the Israeli state in May 1948, a number of bourgeois Arab regimes intervened militarily, not to defend the Palestinians but to seize land that had been allotted to them under the UN partition plan.
The small Palestinian Trotskyist group, the Revolutionary Communist League (RCL), upheld the position of communist internationalism in the 1948 War between Israel and the Arab states. While recognizing the right of both the Hebrew-speaking and Palestinian Arab peoples to national self-determination, the RCL resolutely opposed the imperialist-imposed partition and took a position of revolutionary defeatism toward both sides in the war. That position is today upheld by the International Communist League.
We reprint below an excerpted editorial, titled “Against the Stream,” that was originally published in the RCL’s Hebrew organ Kol Ham’amad (Voice of the Class). The English translation was published by the then-Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party in Fourth International (May 1948). The excerpts refer to Ernest Bevin, who was foreign minister in Britain’s Labour Party government; Chaim Weitzmann (Weizmann), Israel’s first president; and the Husseinis, a clan of Palestinian landowners and political leaders.
* * *
Politicians and diplomats are still trying to find a formula for the disastrous situation into which Palestine has been plunged by the UNO [United Nations Organization] deciding upon partition. Is this a “breach of international peace” or are we dealing with merely “hostile acts”? As far as we are concerned there is no point in this distinction. We are daily witnessing the killing or maiming of men and women, old and young, Jew or Arab. As always, the working masses and the poor suffer most.
Not so very long ago the Arab and Jewish workers were united in strikes against a foreign oppressor. This common struggle has been put to an end. Today the workers are being incited to kill each other. The inciters have succeeded….
“Keeping order” in Palestine costs England over 35 million Pounds a year, an amount which exceeds the profit she can extort from this country. Partition will release her from her financial obligations, enable her to employ her soldiers in the productive process while her source of income will remain intact. — But this is not all. By partition a wedge is driven between the Arab and Jewish worker. The Zionist state with its provocative lines of demarcation will bring about the blossoming forth of irredentist (revenge) movements on either side, there will be fighting for an “Arab Palestine” and for a “Jewish state within the historic frontiers of Eretz Israel (Israel’s Land).” As a result, the chauvinistic atmosphere created thus will poison the Arab world in the Middle East and throttle the anti-imperialist fight of the masses, while Zionists and Arab feudalists will vie for imperialist favors….
If the Anglo-American imperialists had forced this “solution” on Palestine of their own, the rotten game would have been patent in the whole Arab East. However, they dodged: the “problem” was passed on to the UNO. The function of the UNO was to sweeten the bitter dish cooked in the imperialist cuisine, dressing it, in Bevin’s words, with the twaddle of the “conscience of the world that has passed judgment.” Exactly! And the diplomats of the lesser countries danced to the tune of the dollar flute, reiterating the “public opinion of the world.” And the peculiar casts in this performance enabled Great Britain to appear as the Guardian Angel overflowing with sympathy for either side.
And the Soviet Union? Why did not her representatives call the UNO game the swindle it really is?—Apparently, the present foreign policy of the SU is not concerned with the fighting of the colonial masses. And as the Palestine question is a second-rate affair for the “Big,” the Soviet diplomats saw fit to dwell upon what Stalin had said about “the Soviet Union being ready to meet America and Britain halfway, economic and social differences notwithstanding.”…
The Jewish worker having been separated from his Arab colleague and prevented from fighting a common class struggle will be at the mercy of his class enemies, imperialism and the Zionist bourgeoisie. It will be easy to arouse him against his proletarian ally, the Arab worker, “who is depriving him of jobs and depressing the level of wages” (a method that has not failed in the past!). Not in vain has Weitzmann said that “the Jewish state will stem Communist influence.” As a compensation, the Jewish worker is bestowed with the privilege of dying a hero’s death on the altar of the Hebrew state.
And what promises does the Jewish state hold out? Does it really mean a step toward the solution of the Jewish problem?
The partition was not meant to solve Jewish misery nor is it likely ever to do so. This dwarf of a state which is too small to absorb the Jewish masses cannot even solve the problems of its citizens. The Hebrew state can only infest the Arab East with anti-Semitism and may well turn out—as Trotsky said—a bloody trap for hundreds of thousands of Jews.
The leaders of the Arab League reacted to the decision on partition with speeches full of threats and enthusiasm. As a matter of fact, a Zionist state is to them a godsend from Allah. Calling up the worker and fellah [peasant] for the “holy war to save Palestine” is supposed to stifle their cries for bread, land and freedom. Another time-honored method of diverting an embittered people against the Jewish and communist danger.
In Palestine the feudal rule has of late begun to lose ground. During the war the Arab working class has grown in numbers and political consciousness. Jewish and Arab workers stood up against the foreign oppressor, against whom they together went on strikes. A strong leftist trade union had come into existence; and the “Workers’ Association of the Arabs of Palestine” had been well on the way of freeing itself from the influence of the Husseinis. The murder of its leader, Sami Taha, committed by hirelings of the Arab High Committee could not restrain this development. But where the Husseinis failed, the decision of the imperialist agency, the UNO succeeded. The partition decision stifled the class struggle of the Palestine workers. The prospect of being at the hands of the Zionist “conquerors of soil and labor” is arousing fear and anxiety among the Arab workers and fellahs. Nationalist war slogans fall on fertile soil. And feudal murderers see their chance. Thus the policy of partition enables the feudalists to turn back the wheels of history….
The two camps today mobilize the masses under the mask of “self-defense.” “We have been attacked, let us defend ourselves!”—say the Zionists. “Let us ward off the danger of a Jewish conquest!”—declares the Arab Higher Committee. Where does the truth lie?
War is the continuation of politics by other means. The war led by the Arab feudalists is but the continuation of their reactionary war on the worker and the fellah who are striving to shake off oppression and exploitation. For the feudal effendis [lords] “Salvation of Palestine” means safeguarding their revenues at the expense of the fellahin, maintaining their autocratic rule in town and country, smashing the proletarian organizations and international class solidarity.
The war waged by the Zionists is the continuation of their expansionist policy based on discrimination between the two peoples: they defend kibbush avoda (ousting of Arab labor), kibbush adama (ousting of the fellah), boycott of Arab goods, “Hebrew rule.” The military conflict is a direct result of the policy of the Zionist conquerors.
This war can on neither side be said to bear a progressive character. The war does not release progressive forces or do away with social and economic obstacles in the path of development of the two nations. Quite the opposite is true. It is apt to obscure the class antagonism and to open the gate for nationalist excesses. It weakens the proletariat and strengthens imperialism in both camps.
Each side is “anti-imperialist” to the bone, busy detecting the reactionary—in the opposite camp. And imperialism is always seen—helping the other side. But this kind of exposure is oil on the imperialist fire. For the inveigling policy of imperialism is based upon agents and agencies within both camps. Therefore, we say to the Palestine people in reply to the patriotic warmongers: Make this war between Jews and Arabs, which serves the end of imperialism, the common war of both nations against imperialism!
This is the only solution guaranteeing a real peace. This must be our goal which must be achieved without concessions to the chauvinist mood prevailing at present among the masses.
How can that be done?
“The main enemy is in our own country!”—this was what Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg had to say to the workers when imperialists and social democrats were inciting them to the slaughter of their fellow workers in other countries. In this spirit we say to the Jewish and Arab workers: The enemy is in your own camp!
Jewish workers! Get rid of the Zionist provocateurs who tell you to sacrifice yourself on the altar of the Hebrew state.
Arab worker and fellah! Get rid of the chauvinist provocateurs who are getting you into a mess of blood for their own sake and pocket.
Workers of the two peoples, unite in a common front against imperialism and its agents!
27 May 2011
From the Archives of Marxism
Palestinian Trotskyists on the Partition of Palestine and the 1948 Arab-Israel War
Each May, as the Zionist rulers celebrate the anniversary of the establishment of the state of Israel, Palestinians across the Near East mark the nakba, or catastrophe: the expulsion in 1948 of more than 700,000 Arabs from their homeland in Palestine. The United Nations General Assembly had voted the previous year in favor of ending the British mandate in Palestine and creating two independent states, one Zionist and the other Palestinian Arab. Through mass killings and terror, the Zionists drove out most of the Palestinian population from their homes and villages. Following the declaration of the founding of the Israeli state in May 1948, a number of bourgeois Arab regimes intervened militarily, not to defend the Palestinians but to seize land that had been allotted to them under the UN partition plan.
The small Palestinian Trotskyist group, the Revolutionary Communist League (RCL), upheld the position of communist internationalism in the 1948 War between Israel and the Arab states. While recognizing the right of both the Hebrew-speaking and Palestinian Arab peoples to national self-determination, the RCL resolutely opposed the imperialist-imposed partition and took a position of revolutionary defeatism toward both sides in the war. That position is today upheld by the International Communist League.
We reprint below an excerpted editorial, titled “Against the Stream,” that was originally published in the RCL’s Hebrew organ Kol Ham’amad (Voice of the Class). The English translation was published by the then-Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party in Fourth International (May 1948). The excerpts refer to Ernest Bevin, who was foreign minister in Britain’s Labour Party government; Chaim Weitzmann (Weizmann), Israel’s first president; and the Husseinis, a clan of Palestinian landowners and political leaders.
* * *
Politicians and diplomats are still trying to find a formula for the disastrous situation into which Palestine has been plunged by the UNO [United Nations Organization] deciding upon partition. Is this a “breach of international peace” or are we dealing with merely “hostile acts”? As far as we are concerned there is no point in this distinction. We are daily witnessing the killing or maiming of men and women, old and young, Jew or Arab. As always, the working masses and the poor suffer most.
Not so very long ago the Arab and Jewish workers were united in strikes against a foreign oppressor. This common struggle has been put to an end. Today the workers are being incited to kill each other. The inciters have succeeded….
“Keeping order” in Palestine costs England over 35 million Pounds a year, an amount which exceeds the profit she can extort from this country. Partition will release her from her financial obligations, enable her to employ her soldiers in the productive process while her source of income will remain intact. — But this is not all. By partition a wedge is driven between the Arab and Jewish worker. The Zionist state with its provocative lines of demarcation will bring about the blossoming forth of irredentist (revenge) movements on either side, there will be fighting for an “Arab Palestine” and for a “Jewish state within the historic frontiers of Eretz Israel (Israel’s Land).” As a result, the chauvinistic atmosphere created thus will poison the Arab world in the Middle East and throttle the anti-imperialist fight of the masses, while Zionists and Arab feudalists will vie for imperialist favors….
If the Anglo-American imperialists had forced this “solution” on Palestine of their own, the rotten game would have been patent in the whole Arab East. However, they dodged: the “problem” was passed on to the UNO. The function of the UNO was to sweeten the bitter dish cooked in the imperialist cuisine, dressing it, in Bevin’s words, with the twaddle of the “conscience of the world that has passed judgment.” Exactly! And the diplomats of the lesser countries danced to the tune of the dollar flute, reiterating the “public opinion of the world.” And the peculiar casts in this performance enabled Great Britain to appear as the Guardian Angel overflowing with sympathy for either side.
And the Soviet Union? Why did not her representatives call the UNO game the swindle it really is?—Apparently, the present foreign policy of the SU is not concerned with the fighting of the colonial masses. And as the Palestine question is a second-rate affair for the “Big,” the Soviet diplomats saw fit to dwell upon what Stalin had said about “the Soviet Union being ready to meet America and Britain halfway, economic and social differences notwithstanding.”…
The Jewish worker having been separated from his Arab colleague and prevented from fighting a common class struggle will be at the mercy of his class enemies, imperialism and the Zionist bourgeoisie. It will be easy to arouse him against his proletarian ally, the Arab worker, “who is depriving him of jobs and depressing the level of wages” (a method that has not failed in the past!). Not in vain has Weitzmann said that “the Jewish state will stem Communist influence.” As a compensation, the Jewish worker is bestowed with the privilege of dying a hero’s death on the altar of the Hebrew state.
And what promises does the Jewish state hold out? Does it really mean a step toward the solution of the Jewish problem?
The partition was not meant to solve Jewish misery nor is it likely ever to do so. This dwarf of a state which is too small to absorb the Jewish masses cannot even solve the problems of its citizens. The Hebrew state can only infest the Arab East with anti-Semitism and may well turn out—as Trotsky said—a bloody trap for hundreds of thousands of Jews.
The leaders of the Arab League reacted to the decision on partition with speeches full of threats and enthusiasm. As a matter of fact, a Zionist state is to them a godsend from Allah. Calling up the worker and fellah [peasant] for the “holy war to save Palestine” is supposed to stifle their cries for bread, land and freedom. Another time-honored method of diverting an embittered people against the Jewish and communist danger.
In Palestine the feudal rule has of late begun to lose ground. During the war the Arab working class has grown in numbers and political consciousness. Jewish and Arab workers stood up against the foreign oppressor, against whom they together went on strikes. A strong leftist trade union had come into existence; and the “Workers’ Association of the Arabs of Palestine” had been well on the way of freeing itself from the influence of the Husseinis. The murder of its leader, Sami Taha, committed by hirelings of the Arab High Committee could not restrain this development. But where the Husseinis failed, the decision of the imperialist agency, the UNO succeeded. The partition decision stifled the class struggle of the Palestine workers. The prospect of being at the hands of the Zionist “conquerors of soil and labor” is arousing fear and anxiety among the Arab workers and fellahs. Nationalist war slogans fall on fertile soil. And feudal murderers see their chance. Thus the policy of partition enables the feudalists to turn back the wheels of history….
The two camps today mobilize the masses under the mask of “self-defense.” “We have been attacked, let us defend ourselves!”—say the Zionists. “Let us ward off the danger of a Jewish conquest!”—declares the Arab Higher Committee. Where does the truth lie?
War is the continuation of politics by other means. The war led by the Arab feudalists is but the continuation of their reactionary war on the worker and the fellah who are striving to shake off oppression and exploitation. For the feudal effendis [lords] “Salvation of Palestine” means safeguarding their revenues at the expense of the fellahin, maintaining their autocratic rule in town and country, smashing the proletarian organizations and international class solidarity.
The war waged by the Zionists is the continuation of their expansionist policy based on discrimination between the two peoples: they defend kibbush avoda (ousting of Arab labor), kibbush adama (ousting of the fellah), boycott of Arab goods, “Hebrew rule.” The military conflict is a direct result of the policy of the Zionist conquerors.
This war can on neither side be said to bear a progressive character. The war does not release progressive forces or do away with social and economic obstacles in the path of development of the two nations. Quite the opposite is true. It is apt to obscure the class antagonism and to open the gate for nationalist excesses. It weakens the proletariat and strengthens imperialism in both camps.
Each side is “anti-imperialist” to the bone, busy detecting the reactionary—in the opposite camp. And imperialism is always seen—helping the other side. But this kind of exposure is oil on the imperialist fire. For the inveigling policy of imperialism is based upon agents and agencies within both camps. Therefore, we say to the Palestine people in reply to the patriotic warmongers: Make this war between Jews and Arabs, which serves the end of imperialism, the common war of both nations against imperialism!
This is the only solution guaranteeing a real peace. This must be our goal which must be achieved without concessions to the chauvinist mood prevailing at present among the masses.
How can that be done?
“The main enemy is in our own country!”—this was what Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg had to say to the workers when imperialists and social democrats were inciting them to the slaughter of their fellow workers in other countries. In this spirit we say to the Jewish and Arab workers: The enemy is in your own camp!
Jewish workers! Get rid of the Zionist provocateurs who tell you to sacrifice yourself on the altar of the Hebrew state.
Arab worker and fellah! Get rid of the chauvinist provocateurs who are getting you into a mess of blood for their own sake and pocket.
Workers of the two peoples, unite in a common front against imperialism and its agents!
From The Pages Of "Workers Vanguard"-"New York City-Labor: Organize Wal-Mart!"-And Teamsters Organize Those Trucks
Markin comment:
Labor militants-Forget about funding Democratic party campaigns! Forget about pats on the back (really stabs in the back)from Obama! Organize Wal-Mart and raise plenty of dough to do it. And for starters, Teamsters organize those several thousand Wal-Mart trucks that almost endlessly clog up the highways with goods. If you need instruction just go back to your roots in the 1930s when the Trostkyists and other militants organized the over-the-road drivers.
********
Workers Vanguard No. 981
27 May 2011
NYC
Labor: Organize Wal-Mart!
Anti-union colossus Wal-Mart wants to boldly go where it has never gone before: New York City. In response, a coalition led by the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) and including small business owners, bourgeois politicians, community groups and churches is beseeching the Democrat-led City Council to stop the “invasion” with zoning law changes and other legal obstacles. The interests of the working class and poor are not served by agitating over which capitalist retail chain distributes wares in what market. Instead, labor needs to seize the opportunity of the corporate behemoth’s arrival in one of the most heavily unionized cities in the U.S. and finally begin an aggressive campaign to organize Wal-Mart!
Everyone has heard horror stories about this giant retailer, which, originating in Arkansas, brought the racist, anti-union “open shop” of the Southern bourgeoisie with it as it moved into the rest of the country and a large chunk of the world. (It is currently making a bid to buy South African retailer Massmart.) Off-the-clock overtime, employees locked in overnight, violation of child labor laws, flagrant discrimination against women, racist hiring practices—the list of Wal-Mart crimes grows by the day.
These iniquities, however, do not particularly distinguish Wal-Mart from Home Depot, Target, the German grocer Aldi or, for that matter, small independent grocers. Whatever the difference in scale, each is a capitalist enterprise whose profit is based on the exploitation of labor. Squeezing workers dry is what they do.
The average wage for a full-time Wal-Mart worker in the U.S. in 2008 was $10.86 per hour. Many of the workers who might be able to afford the company’s lousy health plan leave Wal-Mart, which is notorious for its high turnover rate, before they are eligible for the program. Wal-Mart’s poverty-level wages have the effect of driving down wages and working conditions for all workers.
Wal-Mart, the largest company in the world, is angling for a space in the Gateway II shopping center in Brooklyn’s East New York ghetto as its entry point into the New York market. Following a well-tested playbook, the company is counting on being positively received by residents, whose access to a variety of goods and lower prices—much less a decent supermarket—is very limited. Unemployment is 13.9 percent in East New York, almost 5 percent higher than the city average, and Wal-Mart is promising jobs to area residents. At the same time, it is appealing to the beleaguered NYC construction trade unions by pledging to build its stores with union labor—before slamming the door on unions once they open.
In the few instances in which local workers have succeeded in organizing a Wal-Mart department or an entire store, the company has picked up its marbles and gone elsewhere. When meat cutters in the Supercenter in Jacksonville, Texas, won union representation, Wal-Mart disbanded its butcher shops nationwide and switched to pre-packaged meats. When workers at the store in Jonquière, Quebec, voted to join the UFCW, the first such success in North America, Wal-Mart closed the store.
In China, a deformed workers state, workers at all Wal-Mart stores are organized by the Stalinist bureaucracy’s trade-union federation. This is doubly ironic. The pro-capitalist labor tops at unions like the UFCW and its Retail, Wholesale and Department store affiliate, who are heading up the “Walmart Free NYC” coalition, have barely lifted a finger to organize the retailer in the U.S. But they sure do blow hard with anti-Communist China-bashing and “America first” protectionist poison (see “Labor: Organize Wal-Mart!” WV No. 851, 8 July 2005).
By focusing on blocking new Wal-Mart stores, in more than one city the labor bureaucracy has found itself opposed by sections of the black and minority population looking for cheaper commodities. But there is a way for the unions to fight for their own interests as well as those of the ghetto and barrio poor: undertaking a massive and combative union organizing drive. Unionizing Wal-Mart will require the kind of hard class struggle that built the country’s CIO unions in the 1930s—mass pickets, occupations and strike action. This militant perspective is utterly counterposed to the “corporate” and “community” campaigns the current labor leadership favors.
What better place to kick off such a drive than New York City, historically a labor stronghold in a state with the highest union membership rate in the country at over 24 percent. Today NYC labor is under attack by a capitalist class that is chalking up one victory after another in its relentless drive to cripple the unions if not destroy them outright. Mayor Bloomberg and the City Council to which “Walmart Free NYC” appeals are busy bashing the teachers and other city workers. A bare-knuckles campaign to organize Wal-Mart combined with vigorous defense of the public employee and construction workers unions now under attack would go a long way to turn this around. Success in the UFCW’s current drive to organize Target stores in the NYC area would be a good start.
Our goal is not just to see WalWal-Mart should be harnessed by a centrally planned economy under workers rule. To this end, there must be a struggle to break the multiracial working class from the capitalist Democratic Party and to build a workers party that fights for a workers government!
Labor militants-Forget about funding Democratic party campaigns! Forget about pats on the back (really stabs in the back)from Obama! Organize Wal-Mart and raise plenty of dough to do it. And for starters, Teamsters organize those several thousand Wal-Mart trucks that almost endlessly clog up the highways with goods. If you need instruction just go back to your roots in the 1930s when the Trostkyists and other militants organized the over-the-road drivers.
********
Workers Vanguard No. 981
27 May 2011
NYC
Labor: Organize Wal-Mart!
Anti-union colossus Wal-Mart wants to boldly go where it has never gone before: New York City. In response, a coalition led by the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) and including small business owners, bourgeois politicians, community groups and churches is beseeching the Democrat-led City Council to stop the “invasion” with zoning law changes and other legal obstacles. The interests of the working class and poor are not served by agitating over which capitalist retail chain distributes wares in what market. Instead, labor needs to seize the opportunity of the corporate behemoth’s arrival in one of the most heavily unionized cities in the U.S. and finally begin an aggressive campaign to organize Wal-Mart!
Everyone has heard horror stories about this giant retailer, which, originating in Arkansas, brought the racist, anti-union “open shop” of the Southern bourgeoisie with it as it moved into the rest of the country and a large chunk of the world. (It is currently making a bid to buy South African retailer Massmart.) Off-the-clock overtime, employees locked in overnight, violation of child labor laws, flagrant discrimination against women, racist hiring practices—the list of Wal-Mart crimes grows by the day.
These iniquities, however, do not particularly distinguish Wal-Mart from Home Depot, Target, the German grocer Aldi or, for that matter, small independent grocers. Whatever the difference in scale, each is a capitalist enterprise whose profit is based on the exploitation of labor. Squeezing workers dry is what they do.
The average wage for a full-time Wal-Mart worker in the U.S. in 2008 was $10.86 per hour. Many of the workers who might be able to afford the company’s lousy health plan leave Wal-Mart, which is notorious for its high turnover rate, before they are eligible for the program. Wal-Mart’s poverty-level wages have the effect of driving down wages and working conditions for all workers.
Wal-Mart, the largest company in the world, is angling for a space in the Gateway II shopping center in Brooklyn’s East New York ghetto as its entry point into the New York market. Following a well-tested playbook, the company is counting on being positively received by residents, whose access to a variety of goods and lower prices—much less a decent supermarket—is very limited. Unemployment is 13.9 percent in East New York, almost 5 percent higher than the city average, and Wal-Mart is promising jobs to area residents. At the same time, it is appealing to the beleaguered NYC construction trade unions by pledging to build its stores with union labor—before slamming the door on unions once they open.
In the few instances in which local workers have succeeded in organizing a Wal-Mart department or an entire store, the company has picked up its marbles and gone elsewhere. When meat cutters in the Supercenter in Jacksonville, Texas, won union representation, Wal-Mart disbanded its butcher shops nationwide and switched to pre-packaged meats. When workers at the store in Jonquière, Quebec, voted to join the UFCW, the first such success in North America, Wal-Mart closed the store.
In China, a deformed workers state, workers at all Wal-Mart stores are organized by the Stalinist bureaucracy’s trade-union federation. This is doubly ironic. The pro-capitalist labor tops at unions like the UFCW and its Retail, Wholesale and Department store affiliate, who are heading up the “Walmart Free NYC” coalition, have barely lifted a finger to organize the retailer in the U.S. But they sure do blow hard with anti-Communist China-bashing and “America first” protectionist poison (see “Labor: Organize Wal-Mart!” WV No. 851, 8 July 2005).
By focusing on blocking new Wal-Mart stores, in more than one city the labor bureaucracy has found itself opposed by sections of the black and minority population looking for cheaper commodities. But there is a way for the unions to fight for their own interests as well as those of the ghetto and barrio poor: undertaking a massive and combative union organizing drive. Unionizing Wal-Mart will require the kind of hard class struggle that built the country’s CIO unions in the 1930s—mass pickets, occupations and strike action. This militant perspective is utterly counterposed to the “corporate” and “community” campaigns the current labor leadership favors.
What better place to kick off such a drive than New York City, historically a labor stronghold in a state with the highest union membership rate in the country at over 24 percent. Today NYC labor is under attack by a capitalist class that is chalking up one victory after another in its relentless drive to cripple the unions if not destroy them outright. Mayor Bloomberg and the City Council to which “Walmart Free NYC” appeals are busy bashing the teachers and other city workers. A bare-knuckles campaign to organize Wal-Mart combined with vigorous defense of the public employee and construction workers unions now under attack would go a long way to turn this around. Success in the UFCW’s current drive to organize Target stores in the NYC area would be a good start.
Our goal is not just to see WalWal-Mart should be harnessed by a centrally planned economy under workers rule. To this end, there must be a struggle to break the multiracial working class from the capitalist Democratic Party and to build a workers party that fights for a workers government!
*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.
*In Honor Of Our Class-War Prisoners- Free All The Class-War Prisoners!- Hands Off Julian Assange!
Click on the headline to link to more information about the class-war prisoner honored in this entry.
Make June Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month
Markin comment (reposted from 2010)
In “surfing” the National Jericho Movement Website recently in order to find out more, if possible, about class- war prisoner and 1960s radical, Marilyn Buck, whom I had read about in a The Rag Blog post I linked to the Jericho list of class war prisoners. I found Marilyn Buck listed there but also others, some of whose cases, like that of the “voice of the voiceless” Pennsylvania death row prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, are well-known and others who seemingly have languished in obscurity. All of the cases, at least from the information that I could glean from the site, seemed compelling. And all seemed worthy of far more publicity and of a more public fight for their freedom.
That last notion set me to the task at hand. Readers of this space know that I am a long time supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a class struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization which supports class war prisoners as part of the process of advancing the international working class’ struggle for socialism. In that spirit I am honoring the class war prisoners on the National Jericho Movement list this June as the start of what I hope will be an on-going attempt by all serious leftist militants to do their duty- fighting for freedom for these brothers and sisters. We will fight out our political differences and disagreements as a separate matter. What matters here and now is the old Wobblie (IWW) slogan - An injury to one is an injury to all.
Note: This list, right now, is composed of class-war prisoners held in American detention. If others are likewise incarcerated that are not listed here feel free to leave information on their cases in the comment section. Likewise any cases, internationally, that come to your attention. I am sure there are many, many such cases out there. Make this June, and every June, a Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month- Free All Class-War Prisoners Now!
Make June Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month
Markin comment (reposted from 2010)
In “surfing” the National Jericho Movement Website recently in order to find out more, if possible, about class- war prisoner and 1960s radical, Marilyn Buck, whom I had read about in a The Rag Blog post I linked to the Jericho list of class war prisoners. I found Marilyn Buck listed there but also others, some of whose cases, like that of the “voice of the voiceless” Pennsylvania death row prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, are well-known and others who seemingly have languished in obscurity. All of the cases, at least from the information that I could glean from the site, seemed compelling. And all seemed worthy of far more publicity and of a more public fight for their freedom.
That last notion set me to the task at hand. Readers of this space know that I am a long time supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a class struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization which supports class war prisoners as part of the process of advancing the international working class’ struggle for socialism. In that spirit I am honoring the class war prisoners on the National Jericho Movement list this June as the start of what I hope will be an on-going attempt by all serious leftist militants to do their duty- fighting for freedom for these brothers and sisters. We will fight out our political differences and disagreements as a separate matter. What matters here and now is the old Wobblie (IWW) slogan - An injury to one is an injury to all.
Note: This list, right now, is composed of class-war prisoners held in American detention. If others are likewise incarcerated that are not listed here feel free to leave information on their cases in the comment section. Likewise any cases, internationally, that come to your attention. I am sure there are many, many such cases out there. Make this June, and every June, a Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month- Free All Class-War Prisoners Now!
*In Honor Of Our Class-War Prisoners-Free All The Class-War Prisoners!- Free Private Bradley Manning!
Click on the headline to link to more information about the class-war prisoner honored in this entry.
Make June Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month
Markin comment (reposted from 2010)
In “surfing” the National Jericho Movement Website recently in order to find out more, if possible, about class- war prisoner and 1960s radical, Marilyn Buck, whom I had read about in a The Rag Blog post I linked to the Jericho list of class war prisoners. I found Marilyn Buck listed there but also others, some of whose cases, like that of the “voice of the voiceless” Pennsylvania death row prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, are well-known and others who seemingly have languished in obscurity. All of the cases, at least from the information that I could glean from the site, seemed compelling. And all seemed worthy of far more publicity and of a more public fight for their freedom.
That last notion set me to the task at hand. Readers of this space know that I am a long time supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a class struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization which supports class war prisoners as part of the process of advancing the international working class’ struggle for socialism. In that spirit I am honoring the class war prisoners on the National Jericho Movement list this June as the start of what I hope will be an on-going attempt by all serious leftist militants to do their duty- fighting for freedom for these brothers and sisters. We will fight out our political differences and disagreements as a separate matter. What matters here and now is the old Wobblie (IWW) slogan - An injury to one is an injury to all.
Note: This list, right now, is composed of class-war prisoners held in American detention. If others are likewise incarcerated that are not listed here feel free to leave information on their cases in the comment section. Likewise any cases, internationally, that come to your attention. I am sure there are many, many such cases out there. Make this June, and every June, a Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month- Free All Class-War Prisoners Now!
Make June Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month
Markin comment (reposted from 2010)
In “surfing” the National Jericho Movement Website recently in order to find out more, if possible, about class- war prisoner and 1960s radical, Marilyn Buck, whom I had read about in a The Rag Blog post I linked to the Jericho list of class war prisoners. I found Marilyn Buck listed there but also others, some of whose cases, like that of the “voice of the voiceless” Pennsylvania death row prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, are well-known and others who seemingly have languished in obscurity. All of the cases, at least from the information that I could glean from the site, seemed compelling. And all seemed worthy of far more publicity and of a more public fight for their freedom.
That last notion set me to the task at hand. Readers of this space know that I am a long time supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a class struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization which supports class war prisoners as part of the process of advancing the international working class’ struggle for socialism. In that spirit I am honoring the class war prisoners on the National Jericho Movement list this June as the start of what I hope will be an on-going attempt by all serious leftist militants to do their duty- fighting for freedom for these brothers and sisters. We will fight out our political differences and disagreements as a separate matter. What matters here and now is the old Wobblie (IWW) slogan - An injury to one is an injury to all.
Note: This list, right now, is composed of class-war prisoners held in American detention. If others are likewise incarcerated that are not listed here feel free to leave information on their cases in the comment section. Likewise any cases, internationally, that come to your attention. I am sure there are many, many such cases out there. Make this June, and every June, a Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month- Free All Class-War Prisoners Now!
*In Honor Of Our Class-War Prisoners- Free All The Class-War Prisoners!- Francisco Torres Of The San Francisco Eight
Click on the headline to link to more information about the class-war prisoner honored in this entry.
Make June Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month
Markin comment (reposted from 2010)
In “surfing” the National Jericho Movement Website recently in order to find out more, if possible, about class- war prisoner and 1960s radical, Marilyn Buck, whom I had read about in a The Rag Blog post I linked to the Jericho list of class war prisoners. I found Marilyn Buck listed there but also others, some of whose cases, like that of the “voice of the voiceless” Pennsylvania death row prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, are well-known and others who seemingly have languished in obscurity. All of the cases, at least from the information that I could glean from the site, seemed compelling. And all seemed worthy of far more publicity and of a more public fight for their freedom.
That last notion set me to the task at hand. Readers of this space know that I am a long time supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a class struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization which supports class war prisoners as part of the process of advancing the international working class’ struggle for socialism. In that spirit I am honoring the class war prisoners on the National Jericho Movement list this June as the start of what I hope will be an on-going attempt by all serious leftist militants to do their duty- fighting for freedom for these brothers and sisters. We will fight out our political differences and disagreements as a separate matter. What matters here and now is the old Wobblie (IWW) slogan - An injury to one is an injury to all.
Note: This list, right now, is composed of class-war prisoners held in American detention. If others are likewise incarcerated that are not listed here feel free to leave information on their cases in the comment section. Likewise any cases, internationally, that come to your attention. I am sure there are many, many such cases out there. Make this June, and every June, a Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month- Free All Class-War Prisoners Now!
Make June Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month
Markin comment (reposted from 2010)
In “surfing” the National Jericho Movement Website recently in order to find out more, if possible, about class- war prisoner and 1960s radical, Marilyn Buck, whom I had read about in a The Rag Blog post I linked to the Jericho list of class war prisoners. I found Marilyn Buck listed there but also others, some of whose cases, like that of the “voice of the voiceless” Pennsylvania death row prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, are well-known and others who seemingly have languished in obscurity. All of the cases, at least from the information that I could glean from the site, seemed compelling. And all seemed worthy of far more publicity and of a more public fight for their freedom.
That last notion set me to the task at hand. Readers of this space know that I am a long time supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a class struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization which supports class war prisoners as part of the process of advancing the international working class’ struggle for socialism. In that spirit I am honoring the class war prisoners on the National Jericho Movement list this June as the start of what I hope will be an on-going attempt by all serious leftist militants to do their duty- fighting for freedom for these brothers and sisters. We will fight out our political differences and disagreements as a separate matter. What matters here and now is the old Wobblie (IWW) slogan - An injury to one is an injury to all.
Note: This list, right now, is composed of class-war prisoners held in American detention. If others are likewise incarcerated that are not listed here feel free to leave information on their cases in the comment section. Likewise any cases, internationally, that come to your attention. I am sure there are many, many such cases out there. Make this June, and every June, a Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month- Free All Class-War Prisoners Now!
Of This And That Out In The North Adamsville Be-Bop Night Circa, 1960
Of This And That Out In The North Adamsville Be-Bop Night Circa, 1960
Markin comment:
I have, on more than one occasion, cursed the Internet to the high heavens for stirring up, or of being the catalyst to stir up ancient memories, ancient memories I was entirely willing to keep back in the deep recesses of my mind. And then the next moment I find that I need to bow down, profusely bow face to the floor, to its ability to make some necessary link information available at the touch of a mouse. The latter is such a moment here.
Recently I received an e-mail via one of the sites that I am linked to from an old high school flame, well, maybe more of a flicker, Betty Ann Kelly (maiden name), who e-mailed me in response to a general question that I had posed to my fellow classmates at old North Adamsville High School, Class of 1964. That question actually involved any memories, such as they were, remembered of those times, more specifically of North Adamsville Junior High days (now, Middle School) since when I posed the question we were in the throes of “celebrating” our fiftieth anniversary of graduation from that school (1960). Her response was simple- as will be noted below she had not actually attended North Adamsville Junior High (Middle School) but rather Adamsville Central Junior High (ditto on the middle school thing).
Needless to say, flame or flicker, I have some egg on my face for not remembering that she was not one of us-a North Adamsville Junior Higher- when the town junior high school rivalries were almost as intense as those of the cross-town rivalry between North Adamsville High and Adamsville High. More to the point I would have gone to my grave believing that she had been a classmate and so I bow down, profusely bow down, to the high tech Internet for making the connections that made that connection possible. My return e-mail is posted below to “enlighten” those of our generation who face some of the same issues-how to turn on the computer, how to deal with forgetfulness (I am being kind to all parties here), and how to “forget” that if one has a 50th middle school graduation anniversary in 2010 then a 50th high school anniversary is on the horizon. Ugh! Damn Internet.
*********
Dear Betty Ann,
Thanks for your note. Before I go on I just have to comment, kiddingly anyway, on this e-mail snafu. [The response e-mail was received about a year after the original one was sent-Markin.] At your expense? Well, yes. I thought, and correct me if I am wrong, that e-mail was supposed to be faster than the regular mails. And if not that, then at least faster than the Pony Express of old, old days. I do note that you are located in up- state New York so that explains a lot, an awful lot. Now for a little fun at my expense. It seems that I did not edit the e-mail that I sent you. I forgot to correct, retype actually, the quotation marks when I went from my word processor to the site e-mail screen. Thus, you got some strange Serbo-Croatian transliterations, or some other forgotten language, in your e-mail. I will take some laughs on that one.
Okay, now down to business. The thing that I requested in that e-mail, information and ideas in order to honor our 50th anniversary since graduation, if you had been a North Adamsville Junior High alumna and not a benighted Adamsville Central alumna I got another way. I actually worked around it and wrote from different angle from what I expected to do. If you look on the Class Wall of the Class Of 1964 homepage you will find it- Entering North-1960. You will also find a couple of other posts, as well. Also if you Google Tales From Old North Adamsville High you will be able to click to a blog I established last year about the old days when we all bled raider red. Such little subjects as summer beach nights, Tri-Hi-Y, Howard Johnson’s ice cream, boys’ and girls’ bowling teams, and some sad, some silly, and some just plain be-bop things as well. Of course, since this is your 50th anniversary of graduating from Adamsville Central Junior High (oops, Middle School) you are duty-bound to write a little something, and we will all meet up in the fall of 1961 to form the North Adamsville Class of 1964.
As for rumors, threats, dreads, and celebrations of our 50th anniversary since graduation from high school I have no particular information right now. Perhaps someone on the site might have some information. I will say this-in 2004 I received an invitation to our 40th reunion, although I did not attend. I have never attended any reunion (although I wrote about old friend, Bill Connolly, going to the fifth reunion in 1969- it is posted on that Tales blog). How about you? The people who put that one together were Linda Paul and Gary Docker. Linda has her name listed on this site so maybe you could check with her. In 2004 I was not bleeding raider red but now I am not sure that I would not attend a 50th reunion if it is organized.
Let me hear from you- soon (within a year, okay). Friendly regards. Peter Paul Markin
Markin comment:
I have, on more than one occasion, cursed the Internet to the high heavens for stirring up, or of being the catalyst to stir up ancient memories, ancient memories I was entirely willing to keep back in the deep recesses of my mind. And then the next moment I find that I need to bow down, profusely bow face to the floor, to its ability to make some necessary link information available at the touch of a mouse. The latter is such a moment here.
Recently I received an e-mail via one of the sites that I am linked to from an old high school flame, well, maybe more of a flicker, Betty Ann Kelly (maiden name), who e-mailed me in response to a general question that I had posed to my fellow classmates at old North Adamsville High School, Class of 1964. That question actually involved any memories, such as they were, remembered of those times, more specifically of North Adamsville Junior High days (now, Middle School) since when I posed the question we were in the throes of “celebrating” our fiftieth anniversary of graduation from that school (1960). Her response was simple- as will be noted below she had not actually attended North Adamsville Junior High (Middle School) but rather Adamsville Central Junior High (ditto on the middle school thing).
Needless to say, flame or flicker, I have some egg on my face for not remembering that she was not one of us-a North Adamsville Junior Higher- when the town junior high school rivalries were almost as intense as those of the cross-town rivalry between North Adamsville High and Adamsville High. More to the point I would have gone to my grave believing that she had been a classmate and so I bow down, profusely bow down, to the high tech Internet for making the connections that made that connection possible. My return e-mail is posted below to “enlighten” those of our generation who face some of the same issues-how to turn on the computer, how to deal with forgetfulness (I am being kind to all parties here), and how to “forget” that if one has a 50th middle school graduation anniversary in 2010 then a 50th high school anniversary is on the horizon. Ugh! Damn Internet.
*********
Dear Betty Ann,
Thanks for your note. Before I go on I just have to comment, kiddingly anyway, on this e-mail snafu. [The response e-mail was received about a year after the original one was sent-Markin.] At your expense? Well, yes. I thought, and correct me if I am wrong, that e-mail was supposed to be faster than the regular mails. And if not that, then at least faster than the Pony Express of old, old days. I do note that you are located in up- state New York so that explains a lot, an awful lot. Now for a little fun at my expense. It seems that I did not edit the e-mail that I sent you. I forgot to correct, retype actually, the quotation marks when I went from my word processor to the site e-mail screen. Thus, you got some strange Serbo-Croatian transliterations, or some other forgotten language, in your e-mail. I will take some laughs on that one.
Okay, now down to business. The thing that I requested in that e-mail, information and ideas in order to honor our 50th anniversary since graduation, if you had been a North Adamsville Junior High alumna and not a benighted Adamsville Central alumna I got another way. I actually worked around it and wrote from different angle from what I expected to do. If you look on the Class Wall of the Class Of 1964 homepage you will find it- Entering North-1960. You will also find a couple of other posts, as well. Also if you Google Tales From Old North Adamsville High you will be able to click to a blog I established last year about the old days when we all bled raider red. Such little subjects as summer beach nights, Tri-Hi-Y, Howard Johnson’s ice cream, boys’ and girls’ bowling teams, and some sad, some silly, and some just plain be-bop things as well. Of course, since this is your 50th anniversary of graduating from Adamsville Central Junior High (oops, Middle School) you are duty-bound to write a little something, and we will all meet up in the fall of 1961 to form the North Adamsville Class of 1964.
As for rumors, threats, dreads, and celebrations of our 50th anniversary since graduation from high school I have no particular information right now. Perhaps someone on the site might have some information. I will say this-in 2004 I received an invitation to our 40th reunion, although I did not attend. I have never attended any reunion (although I wrote about old friend, Bill Connolly, going to the fifth reunion in 1969- it is posted on that Tales blog). How about you? The people who put that one together were Linda Paul and Gary Docker. Linda has her name listed on this site so maybe you could check with her. In 2004 I was not bleeding raider red but now I am not sure that I would not attend a 50th reunion if it is organized.
Let me hear from you- soon (within a year, okay). Friendly regards. Peter Paul Markin
Thursday, June 02, 2011
The Latest From The Private Bradley Manning Website-Rally at Leavenworth June 4, 2011 for Bradley Manning! All Out To Defend Private Bradley Manning!
Click on the headline to link to an American Left History blog entry, dated Sunday, March 20, 2011, Why I Will Be Standing In Solidarity With Private Bradley Manning At Quantico, Virginia On Sunday March 20th At 2:00 PM- A Personal Note From An Ex-Soldier Political Prisoner.
Rally at Leavenworth for Bradley Manning!
Rally to protest the indefinite detention and unconstitutional torture of Bradley Manning.
Saturday, June 4
11:30am – 2:30pm
Leavenworth, Kansas
Contact: jim at indomitus dot net
More info forthcoming!
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=204793382876169
Rally at Leavenworth for Bradley Manning!
Rally to protest the indefinite detention and unconstitutional torture of Bradley Manning.
Saturday, June 4
11:30am – 2:30pm
Leavenworth, Kansas
Contact: jim at indomitus dot net
More info forthcoming!
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=204793382876169
*From The Archives-The Struggle To Win The Youth To The Fight For Our Communist Future-Youth-Party Relations in the Communist Youth International-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.
*********
Youth-Party Relations in the Communist Youth International-Lessons from History
From Young Spartacist, No. 21, January-February 1974
The question of youth-party relations is an important aspect of Leninist organizational traditions. Many of those socialist youth sections that operated autonomously from the Social-Democratic Parties became pro-Bolshevik in WWI and the nuclei for the European Communist Parties. The heated discussion that took place later in the Communist Youth International over youth-party relations brought into question the basic Leninist conception of the vanguard party. Most of this history is today ignored by ostensibly revolutionary youth organizations like the Workers League’s Young Socialists and the Socialist Workers Party’s Young Socialist Alliance because they stand in the tradition of Stalinist or social-democratic conceptions of youth work, unlike the RCY, which stands in the Leninist tradition.
*******
In August 1914 the majorities of the major Western European Social Democratic Parties capitulated to pro-war sentiment, national chauvinism, and the pressures of their respective bourgeoisies. They pledged themselves to national defense, support of the imperialist war—and ultimately joined bourgeois governments. The statements of internationalism and commitments to the struggle against war— from the Amsterdam Conference of 1904 to the Basle Conference of 1912—became a dead letter. However, despite the capitulation of the party leaderships, a significant section of the loosely organized socialist youth retained an internationalist position. Threatened most directly by the imperialist war—for which they were the intended cannon fodder—and maintaining a revolutionary élan foreign to the bureaucracies in countries like Germany, France and Belgium, many sections of the youth refused to accept the Burgfrieden (social peace in a "beleaguered fortress") of the Eberts, Vanderveldes and Guesdes, as well as rejecting the ineffectual petty-bourgeois pacifism of Kautsky, who complained that "the International is founded for the purpose of peace and not for wartime."
This anti-war stance was not universal among the socialist youth. Major sections remained loyal to their reformist organizations—and thus tied themselves to their own imperialist bourgeoisies. Ludwig Frank of the South German Youth Guard became a model and martyr for the German social-patriotic youth by volunteering for the Kaiser’s army, and falling promptly on a French battlefield. The Austrian youth under Dannenberg accepted the Kautskyist stance of passive opposition to the war—and the suspension of internationalism for the duration. (Dannenberg hung a black-bordered sign on the door of the Youth Bureau in Vienna which read, "Temporarily closed on account of war.") But significant sections of the youth did not capitulate.
The political differentiation among the European youth groups can at least partially be laid to differences in historical development. The first socialist youth organization, the Belgian Young Guards (formed in 1886) was formed independently of the Social Democrats, for basically political motives, i.e., the desire to engage in anti-militarist agitation and propaganda.
The socialist youth groups formed in Sweden (1895), Switzerland (1900), Italy (1901), Norway (1902), Spain (1903) and southern Germany (1904) were based on the Belgian model—they were highly political and independent from the adult parties. The youth groups formed in Austria (1894) and northern Germany (1904-05) were concerned, primarily with improving the economic position of young workers and with raising their living standards. The youth organizations formed after 1907, as in Holland, France and the united youth organization in Germany (following Liebknecht’s arrest and removal from the southern German youth leadership by the Social-Democratic Party leadership) were based more on the less political Austrian model than on the Belgian one. The youth groups formed for economic reasons were usually formed and controlled by the socialist parties. During WWI, the youth organizations based on the Belgian model in general upheld their opposition to imperialist war and commitment to internationalism while the German and Austrian youth caved in to social chauvinism along with their parent parties.
The Berne Conference, 1915
After a process of regroupment, led initially by the Swiss, Italian, Swedish and Norwegian youth organizations, the oppositional youth called the first international conference since the outbreak of the war—at Berne, Switzerland from 4-6 April 1915.
The Berne conference represented a confusion of centrist and revolutionary political tendencies, and like the Zimmerwald conference which followed it, its resolution was tainted by social pacifism, i.e., the dominance of pacifist anti-war perspectives over a class-struggle approach. The cutting edge of the difference between the centrists and the left (the Bolsheviks) at the Zimmerwald conference was Lenin’s slogan, "Turn the Imperialist War into a Civil War," whose concrete and immediate agitational demands were for the anti-war general strike and socialist propaganda in the army.
The Berne conference was a step forward of considerable significance. It represented a reaffirmation of internationalism in the face of nationalist war sentiment. It rejected the class collaboration of the social-democratic majorities; and, most significantly, it broke relations with the Bureau of the Second International, which, as Rosa Luxemburg was to remark, had become a "rotting corpse." Further, it established a new bureau of the Youth International, under the leadership of the left-wing German-Swiss, Willi Munzenberg. The Bolshevik organization, intervening in the conference, argued for the position of revolutionary defeatism. (Early on, the Bolshevik delegation had walked out over a dispute on the allotment of votes, but returned on the insistence of Lenin, who wanted to lose no chance of influencing the left-wing socialist youth towards a consistently revolutionary position.) Although the Bolshevik position was not accepted by the conference, it had considerable impact on the young militants.
The conference also established the publication of Die Jugendinternationale (The Youth International), which was to appear for the next three years and carry many articles by the representatives of the revolutionary left. The early issues of The Youth International showed the same political confusion as had characterized the Berne conference, carrying articles by pacifist reformists like Bernstein, as well as articles representing the centrists and the revolutionary left. Setting the tone, however, was the major article by Karl Liebknecht in the first two issues. Liebknecht’s article, "Antimilitarismus," was an impassioned indictment of the war: the militarization of state and factory as well as barracks and trenches; the lies of the imperialists, pandering Illusions of self-determination and self-defense. It was also a call for bitter and decisive opposition on all levels, for the class unity of the proletariat against the war—and for a new, revolutionary international. Although not the only voice raised in the early Youth International, it was the clearest, and soon dominated the rest.
Writing of The Youth International in December 1916, Lenin heralded its struggle for proletarian internationalism:
"With this state of affairs in Europe [the betrayal of the major social democracies], there falls on the League of Socialist Youth Organizations the tremendous, grateful but difficult task of fighting for revolutionary internationalism, for true socialism and against the prevailing opportunism which has deserted to the side of the imperialist bourgeoisie. The Youth International has published a number of good articles in defense of revolutionary internationalism, and the magazine as a whole is permeated with a fine spirit of intense hatred for the betrayers of socialism, the ‘defenders of the fatherland’ in the present war, and with an earnest desire to wipe out the corroding influence of chauvinism and opportunism in the international labor movement."
—Lenin, Works, Vol. 23, p. 163-64.
Lenin did not minimize the political differences lying between the Bolsheviks and the youth leagues and noted their lack of theoretical clarity, but he stressed the difference between this political unclarity and the betrayal of the hardened opportunists:
"Adults who lay claim to lead and teach the proletariat, but actually mislead it, are one thing: against such people a ruthless struggle must be waged. Organizations of youth, however, which openly declare that they are still learning, that their main task is to train party workers for the socialist parties, are quite another thing. We must be patient with their faults and strive to correct them gradually, mainly by persuasion, and not by fighting them."
—Works, Vol. 23, p. 164
Lenin strongly recommended the publication to the attention of Bolshevik cadre.
Lenin Calls for Independence of European Youth Groups
During this period, Lenin called for the "complete independence" of the European youth leagues, while reserving the right of "complete freedom of comradely criticism of their errors" (Works, Vol. 23, p. 64). This position must be viewed in its historical context. Because of the egregious betrayal of the Social Democracy, the first duty of revolutionaries had to be the separation of the proletarian internationalist elements from the "rotting corpse" of the Second International. It was impermissible to accept responsibility for the social chauvinists through the disciplined acceptance of their policies. In the major combatant countries of Western Europe there existed no revolutionary parties (with the exception of revolutionary propaganda groups like the Spartacus League and the Bremen Left in Germany). The discipline of a revolutionary is to the revolutionary movement, its principles and program—and to organizations which embody that program and continuity.
Subordination of the youth leagues to the social chauvinist leaders of the major European parties (with the exception of the Bolsheviks) meant their subjugation to the barracks discipline of their respective imperialist bourgeoisies. Thus Lenin hailed Liebknecht's vote against war credits in the German Reichstag as an act of discipline towards the revolution, although it represented a breach of the formal discipline of the German Social-Democratic Party.
The position of the revolutionary youth was a difficult one. They were forced to substitute themselves to a considerable degree for ‘revolutionary’ parties which did not exist. Substitute, because they generally lacked the experience and political clarity to become such parties themselves, although they helped to provide the nuclei of such parties in the period after 1917. Their "complete independence" was not a virtue in itself—quite the reverse—it was a byproduct of the Second International's betrayal of its leading role in the proletariat. Thus Liebknecht participated in the illegal conference of the oppositional German socialist youth in Jena, on 23-24 April 1916, and wrote the major political document of the conference, "The Tasks of the Proletarian Youth Movement." The document itself was a model of revolutionary fervor and called for "the proletarian youth movement to struggle against the war with all forces and all means, and to utilize the conditions created [by the war] to accelerate the collapse of capitalist class rule" (Liebknecht, Gesammelte Reden und Schriften, VIII, p. 609).
But such cadre were in desperately short supply, and Liebknecht himself was arrested barely a week after the conference (for his call for revolutionary defeatism during the May 1st workers demonstration in Berlin). He remained imprisoned until the November revolution in 1918, and his guiding influence was thus lost to the German—and international—socialist youth for most of the duration of the war.
In the uprisings and revolutions following the October Revolution—in Berlin, Munich, Hungary, Italy and elsewhere—the socialist youth, like the proletariat as a whole, paid a bitter price for the non-existence of experienced and hardened revolutionary parties. But the lack of revolutionary leadership was least of all attributable to the oppositional youth leagues, of whom Liebknecht wrote:
"Its ranks were decimated, its leaders sent to the trenches, imprisoned in ‘protective custody,’ jail and prison. Class justice raged more mercilessly over them than upon the adults, and swept away many a warm young life to the hecatombs of slaughter. The free [oppositional socialist] youth, however, remained undaunted, and defied their enemies."
—Gesammelte Reden und Schriften, VIII, p. 609
Formation of the Communist Youth International
This bitter experience and the Socialist youth’s increasing understanding of the Bolsheviks’ revolutionary program and analysis of the Second International’s collapse led to a coming together, of the European youth and the Russian Communist youth. On 20 November 1919, in the back room of a beer hall In Berlin, guarded by sentinels and pickets of the Berlin youth, the first Congress of the Communist Youth International (CYI) was held. There were present delegates from 12 countries, representing 200,000-300,000 members when the congress was called to order by Willi Munzenberg—recently released from prison. (By 1921, according to Munzenberg’s estimate, the number of affiliated sections rose to 15, with a membership of approximately 800,000.)
However, for some time the nature of the relationship of the CYI to the Communist International (CI) remained undefined. On 20 November 1920, the Russian Young Communist League proposed to the Executive Committee of the CYI the codification of youth-party relations as "political subordination and organizational independence." The majorities of other youth leagues, however, mindful of their recent experience with the betrayal of the Second International, were at first unwilling to accept such a relationship. They had generalized the conjunctural historical role they had played into a conception of an inherently vanguard role for the youth, or, at least, a political watchdog role for the youth in relation to the party.
It was not until the Second Congress of the CYI that the formula supported by the Russian League was adopted. The Congress began on 6 April in Jena (where the conference of the German oppositional youth had taken place in 1916), but was moved on 10 April for security reasons to Berlin. Finally, on the instruction of the Executive Committee of the CI (ECCI), the CYI Congress "continued" in Moscow from 9-23 June, immediately preceding the Third Congress of the CI.
The political struggle was sharp, both over youth-party relations and the "theory of the revolutionary offensive," the position of the left in the CI itself (grouped around Bela Kun, Maslow and Fischer), which was initially supported by the majority of the youth. This conception failed to recognize the relative capitalist restabilization which had ensued after the defeats of the 1918-20 period, and contended that continued frontal assault of the proletarian forces would lead inevitably to the collapse of world capitalism.
CI Resolution on Youth-Party Relations
The questions of "political subordination" and "the revolutionary offensive" were linked, since acceptance of the political supremacy of the CI meant disciplined acceptance of the tactics of regroupment and the united front, the laborious "winning of the masses" demanded by the CI leadership around Lenin and Trotsky. The political debate over the question in the CI itself was to prove very heated, with a large minority supporting the "lefts," and Lenin and Trotsky winning a majority only after a long struggle. The position of the Bolshevik majority and the Russian youth league, however, finally carried the conference. At the Third Congress of the CI, from 22 June to 12 July 1921, the following resolution on youth-party relations was accepted:
"The relation of Communist Youth Organizations to the Communist Parties is fundamentally different from that of the revolutionary youth organizations to the social democratic parties. In the common struggle for the quick accomplishment of the proletarian revolution the greatest unity and strictest centralization is necessary. The political direction and leadership can lie internationally only with the CI, and in the individual countries only with the national sections. It is the duty of the CYO’s to subordinate themselves to this political direction (program, tactics and political directives), and to integrate themselves into the common revolutionary front… The CYO’s, which have begun to organize their own ranks on the principles of the strictest centralization, will exercise iron discipline towards the CI as bearer and leader of the proletarian revolution. The CYO’s shall occupy themselves within its organizations with all political and tactical questions, will take a position, and work for these resolutions within, but never against, the CP of their country. In cases of serious differences of opinion between the CP’s and CYO’s the right of appeal to the ECCI (Executive Committee of the Communist International) shall be utilized. The surrender of their political independence means under no circumstances the renunciation of their organizational independence, which is indispensable on educational grounds."
—Resolution on the Communist International and the Communist Youth Movement
The political subordination of the youth to the party flows from the principle of discipline towards the revolutionary movement, and in the concrete instance the recognition that the CI was the bearer of revolutionary continuity and the revolutionary program. The CI Resolution placed the relationship of youth and party clearly in historical and political context:
"In some countries where the building of the communist parties is still in progress and the youth have just split from the Social Patriot and Centrist parties the slogan of absolute political and organizational independence of the youth movement dominates, and in this situation this slogan is objectively revolutionary. The slogan of absolute independence is wrong in those countries where strong Communist parties already exist and where the slogan of absolute independence is used by the Social Patriots and Centrists for misleading the youth against the communist youth organization. In these cases, the communist youth organization follows the program of the communist party."
—quoted in Richard Cornell, The Origins and Development of the Communist Youth International, 1914-1924 (PhD thesis), p. 316
The Danger of Dual Vanguardism
Whereas it was indispensable for the revolutionary youth organizations in WWI to separate themselves politically from the treacherous and class collaborationist leadership of the Second International, and struggle to develop and implement a revolutionary program, so conversely it was necessary for the youth to subordinate itself to a truly revolutionary international—which genuinely embodied the program of proletarian revolution. To do otherwise would be to engage in dual vanguardism—in the last analysis to challenge the International for the leadership of the class. The CI resolution is quite explicit:
"With the formation of the CI and the CP’s in the individual countries, the role of the proletarian youth organizations changes within the common proletarian movement. The continued existence of the CYO’s as politically independent and leading organizations would lead to the formation of two competing communist parties, differentiated merely by the age of their members."
—Resolution…
The recognition of the necessity of one vanguard, as the consistent revolutionary leadership of the proletariat, and the necessity of this role lying with the most tested, experienced and capable proletarian revolutionaries—i.e., with the CI and the communist parties, also implies the imperative of political differences being fought out internally, should they arise between party and youth. The youth must enjoy full rights of political discussion within its own ranks, and the possibility of influencing the party through its representatives. Conversely, the party must have the opportunity of exercising its guidance at all times upon the youth, of aiding the political maturation of the youth cadre, and maintaining its revolutionary orientation. Should a serious political difference develop, it is imperative that there be channels for its internal political resolution (thus, the right of appeal first to the Executive Committee of the CYI, then to the ECCI and finally to the World Congresses as the highest bodies of the common movement). The party is the concentrated subjective element of the proletarian revolution, and where principled agreement exists no breach is legitimate unless all avenues of internal discussion have been exhausted. Ultimately, of course, the final arbiter of any deep-going dispute is history—and its motor force, the class struggle—thus no organizational mechanism can guarantee that schisms will not develop. However, a split within the revolutionary vanguard—especially between party and youth, where it implies a terrible break in continuity—can only be justified by a deep-going principled counterposition. This was precisely the case with the Second International after 1914, but such an eventuality can only be considered as a last resort.
In order to provide for the requisite reciprocal political influence, the CI resolved:
"The close political co-operation of the CYO’s with the CP’s must also be expressed in a firm organizational connection between the organizations. A constant reciprocal representation of the organization and party leaderships, from the regional, district and local organizations down to the cells of the communist groups in industry and in the unions, as well as a strong reciprocal representation at all conferences and congresses is unconditionally required. In this way it will be possible for the CP’s to continually influence the political line and activity of the youth, and, on the other hand, for the youth to exercise an effective influence on the party."
—Resolution…
Importance of Organizational Independence for the Youth
The political subordination of the youth to the party—the proletarian vanguard—does not, however, invalidate the need for organizational independence for the youth. Lenin had outlined the reasons for this organizational independence long before the Third Comintern Congress, in his review of The Youth International:
"…the youth must of necessity advance to socialism in a different way, by other paths, in other forms, in other circumstances than their fathers. Incidentally, that is why we must decidedly favor organizational independence of the Youth League, not only because the opportunists fear such independence, but because of the very nature of the case. For unless they have complete independence, the youth will be unable either to train good socialists from their midst or prepare themselves to lead socialism forward."
—Works, Vol. 23, p. 164
Each generation faces a unique conjuncture of problems and tasks, which lead by different routes to the development of communist consciousness. While the fundamental causes are essentially identical (the contradictions of a capitalism which has outlived its progressiveness) the unique character of the process for each generation must be recognized and an organizationally flexible context provided for the development of creative revolutionary response. Although the youth needs the guidance of the party, it also needs to develop the initiative, judgment and political experience of its own leadership and cadre, and to do so vis-à-vis the specific problems facing the youth as a specially oppressed group within capitalist society. The primary educative mechanism of the youth is in its own experience of the class struggle.
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.
*********
Youth-Party Relations in the Communist Youth International-Lessons from History
From Young Spartacist, No. 21, January-February 1974
The question of youth-party relations is an important aspect of Leninist organizational traditions. Many of those socialist youth sections that operated autonomously from the Social-Democratic Parties became pro-Bolshevik in WWI and the nuclei for the European Communist Parties. The heated discussion that took place later in the Communist Youth International over youth-party relations brought into question the basic Leninist conception of the vanguard party. Most of this history is today ignored by ostensibly revolutionary youth organizations like the Workers League’s Young Socialists and the Socialist Workers Party’s Young Socialist Alliance because they stand in the tradition of Stalinist or social-democratic conceptions of youth work, unlike the RCY, which stands in the Leninist tradition.
*******
In August 1914 the majorities of the major Western European Social Democratic Parties capitulated to pro-war sentiment, national chauvinism, and the pressures of their respective bourgeoisies. They pledged themselves to national defense, support of the imperialist war—and ultimately joined bourgeois governments. The statements of internationalism and commitments to the struggle against war— from the Amsterdam Conference of 1904 to the Basle Conference of 1912—became a dead letter. However, despite the capitulation of the party leaderships, a significant section of the loosely organized socialist youth retained an internationalist position. Threatened most directly by the imperialist war—for which they were the intended cannon fodder—and maintaining a revolutionary élan foreign to the bureaucracies in countries like Germany, France and Belgium, many sections of the youth refused to accept the Burgfrieden (social peace in a "beleaguered fortress") of the Eberts, Vanderveldes and Guesdes, as well as rejecting the ineffectual petty-bourgeois pacifism of Kautsky, who complained that "the International is founded for the purpose of peace and not for wartime."
This anti-war stance was not universal among the socialist youth. Major sections remained loyal to their reformist organizations—and thus tied themselves to their own imperialist bourgeoisies. Ludwig Frank of the South German Youth Guard became a model and martyr for the German social-patriotic youth by volunteering for the Kaiser’s army, and falling promptly on a French battlefield. The Austrian youth under Dannenberg accepted the Kautskyist stance of passive opposition to the war—and the suspension of internationalism for the duration. (Dannenberg hung a black-bordered sign on the door of the Youth Bureau in Vienna which read, "Temporarily closed on account of war.") But significant sections of the youth did not capitulate.
The political differentiation among the European youth groups can at least partially be laid to differences in historical development. The first socialist youth organization, the Belgian Young Guards (formed in 1886) was formed independently of the Social Democrats, for basically political motives, i.e., the desire to engage in anti-militarist agitation and propaganda.
The socialist youth groups formed in Sweden (1895), Switzerland (1900), Italy (1901), Norway (1902), Spain (1903) and southern Germany (1904) were based on the Belgian model—they were highly political and independent from the adult parties. The youth groups formed in Austria (1894) and northern Germany (1904-05) were concerned, primarily with improving the economic position of young workers and with raising their living standards. The youth organizations formed after 1907, as in Holland, France and the united youth organization in Germany (following Liebknecht’s arrest and removal from the southern German youth leadership by the Social-Democratic Party leadership) were based more on the less political Austrian model than on the Belgian one. The youth groups formed for economic reasons were usually formed and controlled by the socialist parties. During WWI, the youth organizations based on the Belgian model in general upheld their opposition to imperialist war and commitment to internationalism while the German and Austrian youth caved in to social chauvinism along with their parent parties.
The Berne Conference, 1915
After a process of regroupment, led initially by the Swiss, Italian, Swedish and Norwegian youth organizations, the oppositional youth called the first international conference since the outbreak of the war—at Berne, Switzerland from 4-6 April 1915.
The Berne conference represented a confusion of centrist and revolutionary political tendencies, and like the Zimmerwald conference which followed it, its resolution was tainted by social pacifism, i.e., the dominance of pacifist anti-war perspectives over a class-struggle approach. The cutting edge of the difference between the centrists and the left (the Bolsheviks) at the Zimmerwald conference was Lenin’s slogan, "Turn the Imperialist War into a Civil War," whose concrete and immediate agitational demands were for the anti-war general strike and socialist propaganda in the army.
The Berne conference was a step forward of considerable significance. It represented a reaffirmation of internationalism in the face of nationalist war sentiment. It rejected the class collaboration of the social-democratic majorities; and, most significantly, it broke relations with the Bureau of the Second International, which, as Rosa Luxemburg was to remark, had become a "rotting corpse." Further, it established a new bureau of the Youth International, under the leadership of the left-wing German-Swiss, Willi Munzenberg. The Bolshevik organization, intervening in the conference, argued for the position of revolutionary defeatism. (Early on, the Bolshevik delegation had walked out over a dispute on the allotment of votes, but returned on the insistence of Lenin, who wanted to lose no chance of influencing the left-wing socialist youth towards a consistently revolutionary position.) Although the Bolshevik position was not accepted by the conference, it had considerable impact on the young militants.
The conference also established the publication of Die Jugendinternationale (The Youth International), which was to appear for the next three years and carry many articles by the representatives of the revolutionary left. The early issues of The Youth International showed the same political confusion as had characterized the Berne conference, carrying articles by pacifist reformists like Bernstein, as well as articles representing the centrists and the revolutionary left. Setting the tone, however, was the major article by Karl Liebknecht in the first two issues. Liebknecht’s article, "Antimilitarismus," was an impassioned indictment of the war: the militarization of state and factory as well as barracks and trenches; the lies of the imperialists, pandering Illusions of self-determination and self-defense. It was also a call for bitter and decisive opposition on all levels, for the class unity of the proletariat against the war—and for a new, revolutionary international. Although not the only voice raised in the early Youth International, it was the clearest, and soon dominated the rest.
Writing of The Youth International in December 1916, Lenin heralded its struggle for proletarian internationalism:
"With this state of affairs in Europe [the betrayal of the major social democracies], there falls on the League of Socialist Youth Organizations the tremendous, grateful but difficult task of fighting for revolutionary internationalism, for true socialism and against the prevailing opportunism which has deserted to the side of the imperialist bourgeoisie. The Youth International has published a number of good articles in defense of revolutionary internationalism, and the magazine as a whole is permeated with a fine spirit of intense hatred for the betrayers of socialism, the ‘defenders of the fatherland’ in the present war, and with an earnest desire to wipe out the corroding influence of chauvinism and opportunism in the international labor movement."
—Lenin, Works, Vol. 23, p. 163-64.
Lenin did not minimize the political differences lying between the Bolsheviks and the youth leagues and noted their lack of theoretical clarity, but he stressed the difference between this political unclarity and the betrayal of the hardened opportunists:
"Adults who lay claim to lead and teach the proletariat, but actually mislead it, are one thing: against such people a ruthless struggle must be waged. Organizations of youth, however, which openly declare that they are still learning, that their main task is to train party workers for the socialist parties, are quite another thing. We must be patient with their faults and strive to correct them gradually, mainly by persuasion, and not by fighting them."
—Works, Vol. 23, p. 164
Lenin strongly recommended the publication to the attention of Bolshevik cadre.
Lenin Calls for Independence of European Youth Groups
During this period, Lenin called for the "complete independence" of the European youth leagues, while reserving the right of "complete freedom of comradely criticism of their errors" (Works, Vol. 23, p. 64). This position must be viewed in its historical context. Because of the egregious betrayal of the Social Democracy, the first duty of revolutionaries had to be the separation of the proletarian internationalist elements from the "rotting corpse" of the Second International. It was impermissible to accept responsibility for the social chauvinists through the disciplined acceptance of their policies. In the major combatant countries of Western Europe there existed no revolutionary parties (with the exception of revolutionary propaganda groups like the Spartacus League and the Bremen Left in Germany). The discipline of a revolutionary is to the revolutionary movement, its principles and program—and to organizations which embody that program and continuity.
Subordination of the youth leagues to the social chauvinist leaders of the major European parties (with the exception of the Bolsheviks) meant their subjugation to the barracks discipline of their respective imperialist bourgeoisies. Thus Lenin hailed Liebknecht's vote against war credits in the German Reichstag as an act of discipline towards the revolution, although it represented a breach of the formal discipline of the German Social-Democratic Party.
The position of the revolutionary youth was a difficult one. They were forced to substitute themselves to a considerable degree for ‘revolutionary’ parties which did not exist. Substitute, because they generally lacked the experience and political clarity to become such parties themselves, although they helped to provide the nuclei of such parties in the period after 1917. Their "complete independence" was not a virtue in itself—quite the reverse—it was a byproduct of the Second International's betrayal of its leading role in the proletariat. Thus Liebknecht participated in the illegal conference of the oppositional German socialist youth in Jena, on 23-24 April 1916, and wrote the major political document of the conference, "The Tasks of the Proletarian Youth Movement." The document itself was a model of revolutionary fervor and called for "the proletarian youth movement to struggle against the war with all forces and all means, and to utilize the conditions created [by the war] to accelerate the collapse of capitalist class rule" (Liebknecht, Gesammelte Reden und Schriften, VIII, p. 609).
But such cadre were in desperately short supply, and Liebknecht himself was arrested barely a week after the conference (for his call for revolutionary defeatism during the May 1st workers demonstration in Berlin). He remained imprisoned until the November revolution in 1918, and his guiding influence was thus lost to the German—and international—socialist youth for most of the duration of the war.
In the uprisings and revolutions following the October Revolution—in Berlin, Munich, Hungary, Italy and elsewhere—the socialist youth, like the proletariat as a whole, paid a bitter price for the non-existence of experienced and hardened revolutionary parties. But the lack of revolutionary leadership was least of all attributable to the oppositional youth leagues, of whom Liebknecht wrote:
"Its ranks were decimated, its leaders sent to the trenches, imprisoned in ‘protective custody,’ jail and prison. Class justice raged more mercilessly over them than upon the adults, and swept away many a warm young life to the hecatombs of slaughter. The free [oppositional socialist] youth, however, remained undaunted, and defied their enemies."
—Gesammelte Reden und Schriften, VIII, p. 609
Formation of the Communist Youth International
This bitter experience and the Socialist youth’s increasing understanding of the Bolsheviks’ revolutionary program and analysis of the Second International’s collapse led to a coming together, of the European youth and the Russian Communist youth. On 20 November 1919, in the back room of a beer hall In Berlin, guarded by sentinels and pickets of the Berlin youth, the first Congress of the Communist Youth International (CYI) was held. There were present delegates from 12 countries, representing 200,000-300,000 members when the congress was called to order by Willi Munzenberg—recently released from prison. (By 1921, according to Munzenberg’s estimate, the number of affiliated sections rose to 15, with a membership of approximately 800,000.)
However, for some time the nature of the relationship of the CYI to the Communist International (CI) remained undefined. On 20 November 1920, the Russian Young Communist League proposed to the Executive Committee of the CYI the codification of youth-party relations as "political subordination and organizational independence." The majorities of other youth leagues, however, mindful of their recent experience with the betrayal of the Second International, were at first unwilling to accept such a relationship. They had generalized the conjunctural historical role they had played into a conception of an inherently vanguard role for the youth, or, at least, a political watchdog role for the youth in relation to the party.
It was not until the Second Congress of the CYI that the formula supported by the Russian League was adopted. The Congress began on 6 April in Jena (where the conference of the German oppositional youth had taken place in 1916), but was moved on 10 April for security reasons to Berlin. Finally, on the instruction of the Executive Committee of the CI (ECCI), the CYI Congress "continued" in Moscow from 9-23 June, immediately preceding the Third Congress of the CI.
The political struggle was sharp, both over youth-party relations and the "theory of the revolutionary offensive," the position of the left in the CI itself (grouped around Bela Kun, Maslow and Fischer), which was initially supported by the majority of the youth. This conception failed to recognize the relative capitalist restabilization which had ensued after the defeats of the 1918-20 period, and contended that continued frontal assault of the proletarian forces would lead inevitably to the collapse of world capitalism.
CI Resolution on Youth-Party Relations
The questions of "political subordination" and "the revolutionary offensive" were linked, since acceptance of the political supremacy of the CI meant disciplined acceptance of the tactics of regroupment and the united front, the laborious "winning of the masses" demanded by the CI leadership around Lenin and Trotsky. The political debate over the question in the CI itself was to prove very heated, with a large minority supporting the "lefts," and Lenin and Trotsky winning a majority only after a long struggle. The position of the Bolshevik majority and the Russian youth league, however, finally carried the conference. At the Third Congress of the CI, from 22 June to 12 July 1921, the following resolution on youth-party relations was accepted:
"The relation of Communist Youth Organizations to the Communist Parties is fundamentally different from that of the revolutionary youth organizations to the social democratic parties. In the common struggle for the quick accomplishment of the proletarian revolution the greatest unity and strictest centralization is necessary. The political direction and leadership can lie internationally only with the CI, and in the individual countries only with the national sections. It is the duty of the CYO’s to subordinate themselves to this political direction (program, tactics and political directives), and to integrate themselves into the common revolutionary front… The CYO’s, which have begun to organize their own ranks on the principles of the strictest centralization, will exercise iron discipline towards the CI as bearer and leader of the proletarian revolution. The CYO’s shall occupy themselves within its organizations with all political and tactical questions, will take a position, and work for these resolutions within, but never against, the CP of their country. In cases of serious differences of opinion between the CP’s and CYO’s the right of appeal to the ECCI (Executive Committee of the Communist International) shall be utilized. The surrender of their political independence means under no circumstances the renunciation of their organizational independence, which is indispensable on educational grounds."
—Resolution on the Communist International and the Communist Youth Movement
The political subordination of the youth to the party flows from the principle of discipline towards the revolutionary movement, and in the concrete instance the recognition that the CI was the bearer of revolutionary continuity and the revolutionary program. The CI Resolution placed the relationship of youth and party clearly in historical and political context:
"In some countries where the building of the communist parties is still in progress and the youth have just split from the Social Patriot and Centrist parties the slogan of absolute political and organizational independence of the youth movement dominates, and in this situation this slogan is objectively revolutionary. The slogan of absolute independence is wrong in those countries where strong Communist parties already exist and where the slogan of absolute independence is used by the Social Patriots and Centrists for misleading the youth against the communist youth organization. In these cases, the communist youth organization follows the program of the communist party."
—quoted in Richard Cornell, The Origins and Development of the Communist Youth International, 1914-1924 (PhD thesis), p. 316
The Danger of Dual Vanguardism
Whereas it was indispensable for the revolutionary youth organizations in WWI to separate themselves politically from the treacherous and class collaborationist leadership of the Second International, and struggle to develop and implement a revolutionary program, so conversely it was necessary for the youth to subordinate itself to a truly revolutionary international—which genuinely embodied the program of proletarian revolution. To do otherwise would be to engage in dual vanguardism—in the last analysis to challenge the International for the leadership of the class. The CI resolution is quite explicit:
"With the formation of the CI and the CP’s in the individual countries, the role of the proletarian youth organizations changes within the common proletarian movement. The continued existence of the CYO’s as politically independent and leading organizations would lead to the formation of two competing communist parties, differentiated merely by the age of their members."
—Resolution…
The recognition of the necessity of one vanguard, as the consistent revolutionary leadership of the proletariat, and the necessity of this role lying with the most tested, experienced and capable proletarian revolutionaries—i.e., with the CI and the communist parties, also implies the imperative of political differences being fought out internally, should they arise between party and youth. The youth must enjoy full rights of political discussion within its own ranks, and the possibility of influencing the party through its representatives. Conversely, the party must have the opportunity of exercising its guidance at all times upon the youth, of aiding the political maturation of the youth cadre, and maintaining its revolutionary orientation. Should a serious political difference develop, it is imperative that there be channels for its internal political resolution (thus, the right of appeal first to the Executive Committee of the CYI, then to the ECCI and finally to the World Congresses as the highest bodies of the common movement). The party is the concentrated subjective element of the proletarian revolution, and where principled agreement exists no breach is legitimate unless all avenues of internal discussion have been exhausted. Ultimately, of course, the final arbiter of any deep-going dispute is history—and its motor force, the class struggle—thus no organizational mechanism can guarantee that schisms will not develop. However, a split within the revolutionary vanguard—especially between party and youth, where it implies a terrible break in continuity—can only be justified by a deep-going principled counterposition. This was precisely the case with the Second International after 1914, but such an eventuality can only be considered as a last resort.
In order to provide for the requisite reciprocal political influence, the CI resolved:
"The close political co-operation of the CYO’s with the CP’s must also be expressed in a firm organizational connection between the organizations. A constant reciprocal representation of the organization and party leaderships, from the regional, district and local organizations down to the cells of the communist groups in industry and in the unions, as well as a strong reciprocal representation at all conferences and congresses is unconditionally required. In this way it will be possible for the CP’s to continually influence the political line and activity of the youth, and, on the other hand, for the youth to exercise an effective influence on the party."
—Resolution…
Importance of Organizational Independence for the Youth
The political subordination of the youth to the party—the proletarian vanguard—does not, however, invalidate the need for organizational independence for the youth. Lenin had outlined the reasons for this organizational independence long before the Third Comintern Congress, in his review of The Youth International:
"…the youth must of necessity advance to socialism in a different way, by other paths, in other forms, in other circumstances than their fathers. Incidentally, that is why we must decidedly favor organizational independence of the Youth League, not only because the opportunists fear such independence, but because of the very nature of the case. For unless they have complete independence, the youth will be unable either to train good socialists from their midst or prepare themselves to lead socialism forward."
—Works, Vol. 23, p. 164
Each generation faces a unique conjuncture of problems and tasks, which lead by different routes to the development of communist consciousness. While the fundamental causes are essentially identical (the contradictions of a capitalism which has outlived its progressiveness) the unique character of the process for each generation must be recognized and an organizationally flexible context provided for the development of creative revolutionary response. Although the youth needs the guidance of the party, it also needs to develop the initiative, judgment and political experience of its own leadership and cadre, and to do so vis-à-vis the specific problems facing the youth as a specially oppressed group within capitalist society. The primary educative mechanism of the youth is in its own experience of the class struggle.
***Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Night- Ain’t Got No Time For Corner Boys Down In The Street Making All That Noise- When Frankie Was A Corner Boy King Of The North Adamsville Night
***Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Night- Ain’t Got No Time For Corner Boys Down In The Street Making All That Noise- When Frankie Was A Corner Boy King Of The North Adamsville Night
*In Honor Of Our Class-War Prisoners- Free All The Class-War Prisoners!- Free Jaan Laaman And Tom Manning From The Ohio 7
Click on the headline to link to more information about the class-war prisoner honored in this entry.
Make June Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month
Markin comment (reposted from 2010)
In “surfing” the National Jericho Movement Website recently in order to find out more, if possible, about class- war prisoner and 1960s radical, Marilyn Buck, whom I had read about in a The Rag Blog post I linked to the Jericho list of class war prisoners. I found Marilyn Buck listed there but also others, some of whose cases, like that of the “voice of the voiceless” Pennsylvania death row prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, are well-known and others who seemingly have languished in obscurity. All of the cases, at least from the information that I could glean from the site, seemed compelling. And all seemed worthy of far more publicity and of a more public fight for their freedom.
That last notion set me to the task at hand. Readers of this space know that I am a long time supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a class struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization which supports class war prisoners as part of the process of advancing the international working class’ struggle for socialism. In that spirit I am honoring the class war prisoners on the National Jericho Movement list this June as the start of what I hope will be an on-going attempt by all serious leftist militants to do their duty- fighting for freedom for these brothers and sisters. We will fight out our political differences and disagreements as a separate matter. What matters here and now is the old Wobblie (IWW) slogan - An injury to one is an injury to all.
Note: This list, right now, is composed of class-war prisoners held in American detention. If others are likewise incarcerated that are not listed here feel free to leave information on their cases in the comment section. Likewise any cases, internationally, that come to your attention. I am sure there are many, many such cases out there. Make this June, and every June, a Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month- Free All Class-War Prisoners Now!
Make June Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month
Markin comment (reposted from 2010)
In “surfing” the National Jericho Movement Website recently in order to find out more, if possible, about class- war prisoner and 1960s radical, Marilyn Buck, whom I had read about in a The Rag Blog post I linked to the Jericho list of class war prisoners. I found Marilyn Buck listed there but also others, some of whose cases, like that of the “voice of the voiceless” Pennsylvania death row prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, are well-known and others who seemingly have languished in obscurity. All of the cases, at least from the information that I could glean from the site, seemed compelling. And all seemed worthy of far more publicity and of a more public fight for their freedom.
That last notion set me to the task at hand. Readers of this space know that I am a long time supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a class struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization which supports class war prisoners as part of the process of advancing the international working class’ struggle for socialism. In that spirit I am honoring the class war prisoners on the National Jericho Movement list this June as the start of what I hope will be an on-going attempt by all serious leftist militants to do their duty- fighting for freedom for these brothers and sisters. We will fight out our political differences and disagreements as a separate matter. What matters here and now is the old Wobblie (IWW) slogan - An injury to one is an injury to all.
Note: This list, right now, is composed of class-war prisoners held in American detention. If others are likewise incarcerated that are not listed here feel free to leave information on their cases in the comment section. Likewise any cases, internationally, that come to your attention. I am sure there are many, many such cases out there. Make this June, and every June, a Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month- Free All Class-War Prisoners Now!
*In Honor Of Our Class-War Prisoners- Free All The Class-War Prisoners!- Free Leonard Peltier Now!
Click on the headline to link to more information about the class-war prisoner honored in this entry.
Make June Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month
Markin comment (reposted from 2010)
In “surfing” the National Jericho Movement Website recently in order to find out more, if possible, about class- war prisoner and 1960s radical, Marilyn Buck, whom I had read about in a The Rag Blog post I linked to the Jericho list of class war prisoners. I found Marilyn Buck listed there but also others, some of whose cases, like that of the “voice of the voiceless” Pennsylvania death row prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, are well-known and others who seemingly have languished in obscurity. All of the cases, at least from the information that I could glean from the site, seemed compelling. And all seemed worthy of far more publicity and of a more public fight for their freedom.
That last notion set me to the task at hand. Readers of this space know that I am a long time supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a class struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization which supports class war prisoners as part of the process of advancing the international working class’ struggle for socialism. In that spirit I am honoring the class war prisoners on the National Jericho Movement list this June as the start of what I hope will be an on-going attempt by all serious leftist militants to do their duty- fighting for freedom for these brothers and sisters. We will fight out our political differences and disagreements as a separate matter. What matters here and now is the old Wobblie (IWW) slogan - An injury to one is an injury to all.
Note: This list, right now, is composed of class-war prisoners held in American detention. If others are likewise incarcerated that are not listed here feel free to leave information on their cases in the comment section. Likewise any cases, internationally, that come to your attention. I am sure there are many, many such cases out there. Make this June, and every June, a Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month- Free All Class-War Prisoners Now!
Make June Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month
Markin comment (reposted from 2010)
In “surfing” the National Jericho Movement Website recently in order to find out more, if possible, about class- war prisoner and 1960s radical, Marilyn Buck, whom I had read about in a The Rag Blog post I linked to the Jericho list of class war prisoners. I found Marilyn Buck listed there but also others, some of whose cases, like that of the “voice of the voiceless” Pennsylvania death row prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, are well-known and others who seemingly have languished in obscurity. All of the cases, at least from the information that I could glean from the site, seemed compelling. And all seemed worthy of far more publicity and of a more public fight for their freedom.
That last notion set me to the task at hand. Readers of this space know that I am a long time supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a class struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization which supports class war prisoners as part of the process of advancing the international working class’ struggle for socialism. In that spirit I am honoring the class war prisoners on the National Jericho Movement list this June as the start of what I hope will be an on-going attempt by all serious leftist militants to do their duty- fighting for freedom for these brothers and sisters. We will fight out our political differences and disagreements as a separate matter. What matters here and now is the old Wobblie (IWW) slogan - An injury to one is an injury to all.
Note: This list, right now, is composed of class-war prisoners held in American detention. If others are likewise incarcerated that are not listed here feel free to leave information on their cases in the comment section. Likewise any cases, internationally, that come to your attention. I am sure there are many, many such cases out there. Make this June, and every June, a Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month- Free All Class-War Prisoners Now!
*In Honor Of Our Class-War Prisoners- Free All The Class-War Prisoners!- Free The Cuban Five- Defend The Cuban Revolution!
Click on the headline to link to more information about the class-war prisoners honored in this entry.
Make June Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month
Markin comment (reposted from 2010)
In “surfing” the National Jericho Movement Website recently in order to find out more, if possible, about class- war prisoner and 1960s radical, Marilyn Buck, whom I had read about in a The Rag Blog post I linked to the Jericho list of class war prisoners. I found Marilyn Buck listed there but also others, some of whose cases, like that of the “voice of the voiceless” Pennsylvania death row prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, are well-known and others who seemingly have languished in obscurity. All of the cases, at least from the information that I could glean from the site, seemed compelling. And all seemed worthy of far more publicity and of a more public fight for their freedom.
That last notion set me to the task at hand. Readers of this space know that I am a long time supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a class struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization which supports class war prisoners as part of the process of advancing the international working class’ struggle for socialism. In that spirit I am honoring the class war prisoners on the National Jericho Movement list this June as the start of what I hope will be an on-going attempt by all serious leftist militants to do their duty- fighting for freedom for these brothers and sisters. We will fight out our political differences and disagreements as a separate matter. What matters here and now is the old Wobblie (IWW) slogan - An injury to one is an injury to all.
Note: This list, right now, is composed of class-war prisoners held in American detention. If others are likewise incarcerated that are not listed here feel free to leave information on their cases in the comment section. Likewise any cases, internationally, that come to your attention. I am sure there are many, many such cases out there. Make this June, and every June, a Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month- Free All Class-War Prisoners Now!
Make June Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month
Markin comment (reposted from 2010)
In “surfing” the National Jericho Movement Website recently in order to find out more, if possible, about class- war prisoner and 1960s radical, Marilyn Buck, whom I had read about in a The Rag Blog post I linked to the Jericho list of class war prisoners. I found Marilyn Buck listed there but also others, some of whose cases, like that of the “voice of the voiceless” Pennsylvania death row prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, are well-known and others who seemingly have languished in obscurity. All of the cases, at least from the information that I could glean from the site, seemed compelling. And all seemed worthy of far more publicity and of a more public fight for their freedom.
That last notion set me to the task at hand. Readers of this space know that I am a long time supporter of the Partisan Defense Committee, a class struggle, non-sectarian legal and social defense organization which supports class war prisoners as part of the process of advancing the international working class’ struggle for socialism. In that spirit I am honoring the class war prisoners on the National Jericho Movement list this June as the start of what I hope will be an on-going attempt by all serious leftist militants to do their duty- fighting for freedom for these brothers and sisters. We will fight out our political differences and disagreements as a separate matter. What matters here and now is the old Wobblie (IWW) slogan - An injury to one is an injury to all.
Note: This list, right now, is composed of class-war prisoners held in American detention. If others are likewise incarcerated that are not listed here feel free to leave information on their cases in the comment section. Likewise any cases, internationally, that come to your attention. I am sure there are many, many such cases out there. Make this June, and every June, a Class-War Prisoners Freedom Month- Free All Class-War Prisoners Now!
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