Click on the headline to link to a review of the early life of Leon Trotsky in his political memoir, My Life.
Markin comment:
Every year at this time we honor the memory of the great Russian revolutionary leader, Leon Trotsky, a man who not only was able theoretically to articulate the arc of the Russian Revolution of 1917 (the theory of permanent revolution) but personally led the defend of that revolution against world imperialism and its internal Russian White Guard agents. Oh yes, and also wrote a million pro-communist articles, did a little turn at literary criticism, acted in various Soviet official capacities, led the Communist International, led the opposition first in Russia and then internationally to the Stalinist degeneration of that revolution, and created a new revolutionary international (the Fourth International) to rally the demoralized international working class movement in the face of Hitlerite reaction. To speak nothing of hunting, fishing, raising rabbits, collecting cactii and chasing Frida Kahlo around Mexico (oops, on that last one). In short, as I have characterized him before, the closest that this sorry old world has come to producing a complete communist man within the borders of bourgeois society (except that last thing, that skirt-chasing thing, although maybe not). All honor to his memory. Forward to new Octobers!
Usually on this anniversary I place a selection of Trotsky’s writings on various subjects in this space. This year, having found a site that has material related to his family life, the effect of his murder on that family, and other more personal details of his life I am placing that material here in his honor. The forward to new Octobers still goes, though.
******
Joseph Hansen
With Trotsky to the End
(October 1940)
Source: Fourth International, Vol.1 No.5, October 1940, pp.115-123.
Public Domain: Joseph Hansen Internet Archive 2005; This work is completely free. In any reproduction, we ask that you cite this Internet address and the publishing information above.
Since the May 24 machine-gun attack by the GPU on Trotsky’s bedroom, the house at Coyoacan had been converted into a virtual fortress. The guard was increased, more heavily armed. Bullet proof doors and windows were installed. A redoubt was constructed with bomb-proof ceilings and floors. Double steel doors, controlled by electric switches, replaced the old wooden entrance where Robert Sheldon Harte had been surprised and kidnapped by the GPU assailants. Three new bullet-proof towers dominated not only the patio but the surrounding neighborhood. Barbed wire entanglements and bomb-proof nets were being prepared.
All this construction had been made possible through the sacrifices of the sympathizers and members of the Fourth International, who did their utmost to protect Trotsky, knowing that it was absolutely certain that Stalin would attempt another and more desperate assault after the failure of the May 24 attack. The Mexican government, which alone of all the nations on the earth had offered asylum to Trotsky in 1937, tripled the number of police guards on duty outside the house, doing everything in its power to safeguard the life of the world’s most noted exile.
Only the form of the coming attack was unknown. Another machine gun assault with an increased number of assailants? Bombs? Sapping? Poisoning?
August 20, 1940
I was on the roof near the main guard tower with Charles Cornell and Melquiades Benitez. We were connecting a powerful siren with the alarm system for use when the GPU attacked again. Late in the afternoon, between 5:20 and 5:30, Jacson, known to us as a sympathizer of the Fourth International and as the husband of Sylvia Ageloff, former member of the Socialist Workers Party, drove up in his Buick sedan. Instead of parking it with the radiator facing the house, as was his usual custom, he made a complete turn in the street, parking the car parallel to the wall, nose pointed towards Coyoacan. When he got out of the car, he waved to us on the roof and shouted, “Has Sylvia arrived yet?”
We were somewhat surprised. We did not know that Trotsky had made an appointment with Sylvia and Jacson, but ascribed our lack of knowledge of such an appointment to an oversight by Trotsky, something not uncommon on his part in such matters.
“No.” I responded to Jacson: “wait a moment.” Cornell then operated the electrical controls on the double doors and Harold Robins received the visitor in the patio. Jacson won a raincoat across his arm. It was the rainy season, and although the sun was shining, heavy clouds massed over the mountains to the southwest threatened a downpour.
Trotsky was in the patio feeding the rabbits and chickens—his way of obtaining light exercise in the confined life he was forced to follow. We expected that as was his usual custom, Trotsky would not enter the house until he had finished with the feeding or until Sylvia had arrived. Robins was in the patio. Trotsky was not in the habit of seeing Jacson alone.
Melquiades, Cornell and I continued with our work. During the next ten or fifteen minutes I sat in the main tower writing the names of the guards on white labels to be affixed to the switches connecting their rooms with the alarm system.
A fearful cry wrent the afternoon calm—a cry prolonged and agonized, half scream, half sob. It dragged me to my feet, chilled to the bone. I ran from the guard-house out onto the roof. An accident to one of the ten workers who were remodeling the house? Sounds of violent struggle came from the Old Man’s study, and Melquiades was pointing a rifle at the window below. Trotsky, in his blue work jacket became visible there for a moment, fighting body to body with someone.
“Don’t shoot!” I shouted to Melquiades, “you might hit the Old Man!” Melquiades and Cornell stayed on the roof, covering the exits from the study. Switching on the general alarm, I slid down the ladder into the library. As I entered the door connecting the library with the dining room the Old Man stumbled out of his study a few feet away blood streaming down his face.
“See what they have done to me!” he said.
At the same moment Harold Robins came through the north door of the dining room with Natalia following. Throwing her arms frantically about him, Natalia took Trotsky out on to the balcony. Harold and I had made for Jacson, who stood in the study gasping, face knotted, arms limp, automatic pistol dangling in his hand. Harold was closer to him. “You take care of him,” I said, “I’ll see what’s happened to the Old Man.” Even as I turned, Robins brought the assassin down to the floor.
Trotsky staggered back into the dining room, Natalia sobbing, trying to help him. “See what they have done.” she said. As I put my arm about him, the Old Man collapsed near the dining room table.
The wound on his head appeared at first glance to be superficial. I had heard no shot. Jacson must have struck with some instrument. “What happened?” I asked the Old Man.
“Jackson shot me with a revolver; I am seriously wounded ... I feel that this time it is the end.” “It’s only a surface wound. You will recover,” I tried to reassure him.
“We talked about French statistics,” responded the Old Man.
“Did he hit you from behind?” I asked.
Trotsky did not answer.
“No he did not shoot you,” I said; “we didn’t hear any shot. He struck you with something.”
Trotsky looked doubtful; pressed my hand. Between the sentences we exchanged, he talked with Natalia in Russian. He touched her hand continually to his lips.
I scrambled back up to the roof, shouted to the police across the wall; “Get an ambulance!” I told Cornell and Melquiades: “it’s an assault—Jacson ...” MY wrist watch read at that moment ten minutes to six.
Again I was at the Old Man’s side, Cornell with me. Without waiting for the ambulance from the city, we decided that Cornell should go for Dr. Dutren, who lived nearby, and who had attended the family on previous occasions. Since our car was locked up in the garage behind double doors, Cornell decided to take Jacson’s car standing in the street.
As Cornell left the room, sounds of renewed struggle came from the study where Robins was holding Jacson.
“Tell the boys not to kill him,” the Old Man said, “he must talk”.
I left Trotsky with Natalia, and entered the study. Jacson was trying desperately to escape from Robins. His automatic pistol lay on the table nearby. On the floor was a bloodspattered instrument which looked to me like a prospector’s pick, but with the backside hammered out like a pick-axe. I joined in the struggle with Jacson, hitting him in the mouth and on the jaw below the ear, breaking my hand.
As Jacson regained consciousness, he moaned; “They have imprisoned my mother ... Sylvia Ageloff had nothing to do with this ... No, it was NOT the GPU; I have NOTHING to do with the GPU ...” He placed heavy stress on the words which would separate him from the GPU, as if he had suddenly remembered that the script of his role called here for a loud voice. But he had already betrayed himself. When Robins brought the assassin down, Jacson had evidently believed it was his last moment. He had writhed in terror; words he could not control had escaped from his lips: “They MADE me do it.” He had told the truth. The GPU had made him do it.
Cornell burst into the study. “The keys aren’t in his car.” He tried to find the keys in Jacson’s clothing but without success. While he searched, I ran out to open the garage doors. In a few seconds Cornell was on his way with our car.
We waited for Cornell to return—Natalia and I kneeling at the Old Man’s side, holding his hands. Natalia had wiped the blood from his face and placed a block of ice against his head, which was already swelling.
“He hit you with a pick,” I told the Old Man. “He did not shoot you. I am sure it is only a surface wound.”
“No,” he responded, “I feel here ”(indicating his heart) “that this time they have succeeded.”
I tried to reassure him, “No, it’s only a surface wound; you’ll get better.
But the Old Man only smiled faintly with his eyes. He understood ...
“Take care of Natalia. She has been with me many, many years.” He pressed my hand as he gazed at her. He seemed to be drinking in what her features were like, as if he were leaving her forever—in these fleeting seconds compressing all the past into a last glance.
“We will,” I promised. My voice seemed to flash among the three of us the understanding that this was really the end. The Old Man pressed our hands convulsively, tears suddenly in his eyes. Natalia cried brokenly, bending over him, kissing his hand.
When Dr. Dutren arrived, the reflexes on the Old Man’s left side were already failing. A few moments later the ambulance came and the police entered the study to drag out the assassin.
Natalia did not wish to let the Old Man be taken to a hospital—it was in a hospital in Paris that their son, Leon Sedov, was killed only two years ago. For a moment or two Trotsky himself, lying stricken on the floor, felt doubtful.
“We will go with you,” I told him.
“I leave it to your decision,” he told me, as if he were now turning everything over to those about him, as if all the days of making decisions were now gone.
Before we placed the Old Man on a stretcher, he again whispered: “I want everything I own to go to Natalia.” Then with a voice that tugged unendurably at all the deepest and most tender feelings in the friends kneeling at his side ... “You will take care of her ...”
Natalia and I made the sad ride with him to the hospital. His right hand wandered over the sheets covering him, touched the water basin near his head, found Natalia. Already the streets were jammed with people, all the workers and the poor lining the way as the ambulance sirened behind a squadron of motorcycle police through the traffic on its way to the center of the city. Trotsky whispered, pulling me down insistently near his lips so that I should not fail to hear:
“He was a political assassin. Jacson was a member of the GPU or a fascist. Most likely the GPU.” Impressions of Jacson were going through the Old Man’s mind. In the few words left to him, he was telling me the course he thought should be followed in our analysis of the assault, on the basis of the facts already in our possession:—Stalin’s GPU is guilty but we must leave open the possibility that they were aided by Hitler’s Gestapo. He did not know that Stalin’s calling card in the form of a “confession” was in the assassin’s pocket.
The Last Hours
At the hospital, the most prominent doctors in Mexico gathered in consultation.
The Old Man, exhausted, wounded to death, eyes almost closed, looked in my direction from the narrow hospital bed, moved his right hand feebly. “Joe, you ... have ... notebook?” How many times he had asked me this same question!—but in vigorous tones, with the subtle innuendo he enjoyed at our expense about “American efficiency.” Now his voice was thick, words scarcely distinguishable. He spoke with great effort, fighting against the encroaching darkness. I leaned against the bed. His eyes seemed to have lost all that quick flash of mobile intelligence so characteristic of the Old Man. His eyes were fixed, Is if no longer aware of the outside world, and yet I felt his enormous will power holding away the extinguishing darkness, refusing to concede to his foe until he had accomplished one last task. Slowly, haltingly, he dictated, choosing the words of his last message to the working class painfully in English, a language that was foreign to him. On his death-bed he did not let himself forget that his secretary spoke no Russian!
“I am close to death from the blow of a political assassin ... struck me down in my room. I struggled with him ... we ... entered ... talk about French statistics ... he struck me ... Please say to our friends ... I am sure ... of the victory ... of the Fourth International ... Go forward.”
He tried to talk more; but the words were incomprehensible. His voice died away, the tired eyes closed. He never regained consciousness. This was about two and a half hours after the blow was struck.
An x-ray picture was taken of the wound and the doctors decide that an immediate operation was necessary. The surgeon in charge of the hospital performed the delicate work of trepanning in the presence of leading Mexican specialists and the family doctors. They discovered that the pick-axe had penetrated seven centimeters, destroying considerable brain tissue. Some of these doctors declared the case absolutely hopeless. Others gave the Old Man a fighting chance.
For more than twenty-two hours after the operation, despair alternated with the desperate hope that he would survive. In the United States friends arranged to send a world famous brain specialist, Dr. Walter E. Dandy of Johns Hopkins, by airplane. Hour after agonized hour we listened to the Old Man’s heavy breathing as he lay on the hospital bed. With his head shaved and bandaged he bore a startling resemblance to Lenin. We thought of the days when they had led the first victorious working class revolution. Natalia refused to leave the room, refused food, watched dry-eyed, hands clenched, knuckles white, as the hours passed one by one during that long, horrible night and the endless following day. The reports of the doctors noted favorable signs, an occasional improvement, and up until the very last, we still felt that somehow this man who had survived the Czar’s prisons, exiles, three revolutions, the Moscow trials, would survive this unspeakably treacherous blow of Stalin.
But the Old Man was over sixty years old. He had been in ill health for a number of months. At 7:25 p.m. on August 21, he entered the final crisis. The doctors worked for twenty minutes, utilizing all the scientific methods at their disposal, but not even adrenalin could revive the great heart and mind which Stalin had destroyed with a pick-axe.
What Happened in the Study
On August 17 Jacson showed Trotsky a draft of an article he intended to write on the recent dispute in the Fourth International over the Russian question. Trotsky invited Jacson to come into his study while he read the draft. This was the first time Jacson was alone there with Trotsky. To Jacson it meant that the time was ripe. It was a dress rehearsal for what the GPU had ordered him to do.
Trotsky offered a few suggestions to the author, but told Natalia that the draft showed confusion and was without particular interest.
On August 20, Jacson came to the house with the finished article. Under the title The Third Camp and the Popular Front, it ostensibly dealt with the Burnham-Shachtman theory of a “Third Camp” in the World War. The idea of the article, a comparison of the class basis of the “Third Camp” with that of the French Popular Front was not Jacson’s, but an idea first expressed to my knowledge by Otto Schuesler, one of the secretaries of Trotsky. Jacson picked up the idea in conversation with the guards and wrote some kind of an article for no other purpose than to cause Trotsky to sit down at his desk in a helpless position while he raised the pickaxe from behind.
It was Jacson’s plan, apparently, to kill Trotsky with one blow, silently, and then to leave the house as he had come, without arousing attention—with his revolver gripped in his pocket in case it was necessary to shoot his way out. He carried a large sum of money in his pocket—$890—indicating that he hoped to escape. Besides this, he carried a letter of “confession”, obviously dictated by the GPU – planted on him for discovery by the police in the event he was shot by the guards. He expected either to escape or be killed.
Jacson met Trotsky near the rabbit hutches, told him that he had brought the finished article, that he and Sylvia were leaving for New York the following day. Trotsky responded with his typical cordiality, but continued placing dried alfalfa in the feed troughs.
Catching sight of Natalia on the balcony between the kitchen and the dining room, Jacson left Trotsky. He wore his hat, kept his raincoat pressed close to his body as he advanced to make his greeting.
To Natalia he appeared nervous and absent minded, as if he were in deep abstraction. Jacson asked her for a glass of water; he was very “thirsty” he explained. Natalia offend him tea, as she and Trotsky had just finished their customary afternoon cup and there was still some left in the pot. Jacson refused, however, saying that he had eaten but a short while before—”the food is still sticking in my throat.”
After drinking the glass of water, he returned with Natalia to Trotsky’s side at the rabbit hutches. “You know that Jacson and Sylvia are returning to New York tomorrow?” asked Trotsky. “They have come to say goodbye.” Then in Russian: “We should prepare something for them.”
A few minutes conversation passed before Trotsky without enthusiasm asked, “You wish me to read your article?”
“Yes.”
“Good, we can go into the study.”
Without notifying any of his guards, Trotsky took Jacson into his room. Natalia parted from them at the door and went into the kitchen.
Later, as he lay bleeding on the dining room floor, Trotsky told Natalia that it flashed across his mind as he entered the room, “This man could kill me.” But he did not listen to the intuitive warning from the subconscious layers of his mind. As a proletarian revolutionist, Trotsky had carried his life in his hands for too many years.
Trotsky seated himself at the wide table, scattered with books, newspapers, manuscripts. Near an ink-well a few inches from his hand lay his .25 calibre automatic—it had been oiled and reloaded just a few days before. He began reading Jacson’s article. Jacson sat behind and to the left of Trotsky, near the switch that would set off the alarm system.
“The opportunity was too good to be lost,” Jacson told the police afterward. “I took the ’piolet’. I raised it up high. I shut my eyes and struck with all my strength ... As long as I live I can never forget his cry ...”
Trotsky staggered up from his seat as the assassin wrenched the weapon loose and struck again at his victim’s face. Chairs were broken, papers and books scattered, the dictaphone smashed, blood spattered over the desk, on the books, the newspapers—on the last pages of the manuscript of Trotsky’s biography of Stalin.
Could We Have Prevented It?
In the morning here at the house in Coyoacan when I am half awake, it still seems that I can hear the Old Man’s voice calling. Sometimes it seems that he is impatient, as if he were anxious that the day should begin energetically—as if then were mountainous tasks before us and only a few short hours left. Every stone, every turn in the paths, even the shade from the tall pines where the Old Man used to talk with us in the patio is a memory, keen, raw, painful ... The Old Man is everywhere. And yet the house seems empty and vacant, like a ruin left long ago to crumble into dust.
Couldn’t we have prevented it?
When I feel like this—the intolerable burden of what might have been, I remember the pressure of his hand as he lay on the floor.
I remember what he said about his escape in the May 24 assault: “In war, accidents are inevitable, favorable accidents and unfavorable—it is a part of war.”
I remember Natalia’s words: “On the morning of August 20, when we got up, L.D. said, ’Another lucky day. We are still alive.’ He had repeated that every morning since May 24.”
Trotsky knew that Stalin had decreed his death. He knew that Stalin counted on the assassination being lost in the titanic events of the Second World War where whole states are wiped out and the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of human beings means no more than a brief headline in the daily dispatches from the battlefields. Trotsky knew that against all the enormous resources of the powerful state apparatus controlled by Stalin, were pitted only the courage and woefully inadequate means of a small handful of revolutionaries. Trotsky knew that all the tactical advantages were with the enemy; the chosen moment, surprise, the ability to attack a fixed position with a number of variant methods. It was virtually certain that with enough attempts, one time sooner or later the accidents of war would be unfavorable to us. Trotsky even predicted that the next assault would occur when Hitler launched his battle against England.
Trotsky’s politics were never the politics of despair. He fought with every ounce of his energy; nevertheless many times during the month in which we constructed our “fortress”, I knew that he felt himself doomed.
“I will not see the next revolution,” he told me once, “that is for your generation.” I felt in his words a deep regret—what pleasure to see the class struggle in its next stage of development, what keen joy to participate in one more revolution—what vistas opening for the human race in the coming period!
“It is not like before,” he said again. “We are old—we don’t have the energy of the younger generation. One becomes tired ... and old ... It is for your generation, the next revolution. We will not see it.”
Yet Trotsky carried on despite the fact that he knew all the probabilities were against his personal survival. He was fighting against time, steeling the Fourth International, arming it with the ideas of Bolshevism.
Each day in this period of world war, of factional struggles, was of immeasurable value to the new generation of revolutionary cadres. Trotsky knew it better than anyone. He wanted to hand us intact the entire heritage of Bolshevism which was in his charge, even down to the smallest item. He anew what that heritage had cost, what it was worth to us in the epoch now opening before us. The time was so short!
Since September 1937 Trotsky’s secretaries tried to institute a system in the household whereby everyone who entered would be searched for concealed weapons. They also attempted to make it an iron rule that Trotsky was never to talk with anyone alone in his study. Trotsky could not endure either of these rules. Either we trust the people and admit them without search, or we do not admit them at all. He could not bear having his friends submit to search. No doubt he felt that in any case it would be useless and could even give us a false sense of security. If a GPU agent succeeded in entering, he would find some way of setting at naught what search we could make. Trotsky had dozens upon dozens of friends in Mexico, whom the guards – so far as their vigilance was concerned – placed in the same general category as Jacson before the assault. As to our second proposal that someone should always remain with him in his study, this too was never effective. So many of his guests had personal problems—would not talk freely in the presence of a guard! Sometimes I was able to remain in the room merely by sitting down contrary to Trotsky’s instructions to leave, but both he and I felt uncomfortable about it, and he would never permit this discourtesy from anyone else. Trotsky was the builder of the political party and a worker in the field of ideas. He preferred to trust his friends rather than to suspect them.
All of Trotsky’s guards tried to make themselves suspicious of everyone. Trotsky, however, was interested not only in being guarded, but in teaching his guards by example some of the fundamentals of organizing a political movement. Mutual suspicion in his eyes was a disintegrating force much worse than the inclusion of a spy in the organization, since such suspicions are useless anyway in uncovering a highly skilled provocateur. Trotsky hated personal suspicion towards the members and sympathizers of the Fourth International. He considered it worse than the evil it was supposed to cure.
Whenever this subject came up, he was fond of telling the story of Malinovsky, who became a member of the Political Bureau of the Bolshevik Party, its representative in the Duma and a trusted confidant of Lenin. Malinovsky was at the same time an agent of the Czar’s secret police, the dread Okhrana. He sent hundreds of Bolsheviks into exile and to death. Nevertheless, in order to maintain his position of confidence, it was necessary for him to spread the ideas of Bolshevism. These ideas eventually caused his downfall. The proletarian revolution is more powerful than the most cunning police spy.
Could the guards have prevented the assassination of Trotsky? With more precaution could they have prevented Jacson from ingratiating himself into the household? From using a more subtle method? Poisoning? A shot from ambush on a picnic? direct suicidal assault with some weapon especially built by the GPU to escape our limited means of detection?
The GPU itself answered this question through the mouth of its agent, Jacson: “In the next attack, the GPU will use different methods.”
How the Assassin Gained Entry
Jacson came to Mexico in October 1939. According to his story, he was told not to force an entry into the household but to let the meeting be “casual.” He followed his instructions perfectly. For months he did not come near Coyoacan but stayed in Mexico City. When Sylvia Ageloff, his wife, who was well known to the household, came to Mexico, he did not attempt to enter the house with her. But he utilized her to become known to the Rosmer—friends of Trotsky and Natalia since 1913—who were staying at the house after bringing Trotsky’s grandson from France. Through these trusted people he became known by name to the household. Many of the guards knew him, were accustomed to admitting him for a few moments to the patio where he would wait to meet whomever he had come to see. It is absolutely certain that Robert Sheldon Harte knew him and trusted him. But he did not meet Trotsky until after the May 24 assault.
On May 28, the Rosmers were leaving Mexico via Vera Cruz, carrying out the decision of several months before to return home. Jacson had offered, some weeks previously, to take them from Mexico City to the port. He had told them that he went to Vera Cruz every two weeks on business anyway, and could combine this trip with the affairs of his “boss.”
He came out to the house early in the morning, rang the bell and was invited inside to wait until the Rosmers were ready. Trotsky was in the patio, and met Jacson for the first time. They shook hands. Trotsky continued with his chores about the chicken yard. Jacson retired and began speaking to Seva, Trotsky’s grandson, to whom he gave a toy glider. Both Natalia and Trotsky noticed him in Seva’s room and asked Seva what it meant. Jacson then explained the working of the glider to them.
Trotsky with his customary thoughtfulness for others asked Natalia if Jacson should not be invited in. Natalia responded that he must have already had his breakfast. At the table, however, as a matter of courtesy, he was invited to come in and have a seat. He took a cup of coffee. This was the first time Jacson sat down at the table with Trotsky.
Jacson cultivated friendly relations with consummate skill. Already well known for his generosity, his car was at the constant disposal of the household. When he went to New York he left it for the use of the guards. He did small services not only for Trotsky and Natalia, but also for everyone connected with the house. When friends were visiting, he took them sightseeing. If it was necessary to make a trip, he offered his car and himself as a chauffeur.
In the dispute between the minority and majority, on the Russian question, he supported Trotsky’s position, even against that of his wife, Sylvia Ageloff. In talking with the guards, he was careful to mention the donations he claimed he had given to the French section. He told Jake Cooper that he knew Rudolph Klement; was in Paris when the GPU had foully murdered him. He was fond of mentioning that he had met James P. Cannon in Paris. Thus he built up an impression of himself as one known to our people.
Following the assault of May 24, he entered the house ten times in all before he carried out the GPU order to murder his host. Twice he came with Sylvia Ageloff, had tea with the Trotskys. When Trotsky reviewed the controversy in the Fourth International, Jacson warmly defended Trotsky’s views, attacked those of Sylvia.
Upon one visit he gave Natalia an elaborate box of chocolates, saying that it was a gift from Sylvia.
Nevertheless, Jacson—mainly because he was not a member of the Fourth International and because his political ideas seemed confused and far from being serious—was never accepted as an intimate or a close friend of the house.
When Jacson took a trip to New York after the May 24 assault, returning in the last part of July, he admitted that he had not visited any of the members of the Socialist Workers Party.
“Why!” we asked with astonishment.
Jacson glibly explained that it was because he spent so much time in the evenings arguing with Sylvia and her sisters, trying to convince them that the majority viewpoint was correct, that he didn’t have time to visit so much as the headquarters of the Socialist Workers Party. He said that he spent his days “slaving in an office on Wall Street.”
The fact that he had not contacted the headquarters of the Socialist Workers Party produced a bad impression on the guards, which they communicated to Trotsky. Trotsky responded :
“It is true, of course, that he is rather light minded and will probably not become a strong member of the Fourth International. Nevertheless, he can be won closer. In order to build the party we must have confidence that people can be changed.”
Trotsky added that Jacson was carrying on some studies in French statistics which could prove useful to us.
It is my conviction that Trotsky, who saw the possibility for anyone to develop into a revolutionary, wished to utilize Jacson as an example in point. The very distance which the guards kept between themselves and the apparently difficult job of turning this rather unpromising clay into a revolutionary, spurred Trotsky into making a stronger demonstration. He suggested to me specifically that I should go out of my way to become friendly with Jacson in order to help bring him closer to the Fourth International.
It was precisely at this time that Jacson was plotting how to murder Trotsky.
In a conversation with Jacson, in which Cornell and I participated, Trotsky asked Jacson what he thought of the “fortress.” Jacson responded that everything seemed well done, but “in the next attack the GPU will use other methods.” “What methods?” one of us asked.
Jacson shrugged his shoulders slightly.
Stalin’s Calling Card
When Frank Jacson was taken to the hospital, the police found in his pocket a letter of “confession.” This letter obviously intended for use by the GPU in its propaganda following the assassination, constitutes documentary evidence that Jacson was a paid agent of the GPU. It alone would fix the guilt for Trotsky’s murder directly on the Super-Borgia in the Kremlin.
Like the classic “confessions” manufactured by the GPU for use in the Moscow Trials, the “confessor” starts out as an ardent “Trotskyist,” is ordered on fantastic missions by superiors lacking names, accepts the assignments without murmur, is finally “ordered by Trotsky” to kill Stalin and “spread sabotage in the USSR,” discovers Trotsky is “linked” with a “foreign power” (with whatever power Stalin has not signed a pact), immediately becomes “disillusioned,” repents, acknowledges the genial Stalin to be right and the successor of Lenin, and “confesses” all. This pattern, developed to its finished form by Yagoda in the Lubianka torture chambers has, despite the discovery that Yagoda was a super-poisoner for ten years under Stalin, been repeated now monotonously and with little change.
Jacson’s letter includes a few variations for the local use of North American supporters of the GPU, such as Lombardo Toledano, Harry Block, correspondent of the Nation, and Frank Jellinek, correspondent of PM and the Stalinist “Federated Press.”
These variations include the slander that Trotsky sneered at the Mexican Revolution, supported Almazan. These sentences in Jacson’s letter sound as if they had been lifted bodily from the Mexican organs of the GPU – La Voz de Mexico, Futuro, and El Popular, where Trotsky was accused of being “linked with the Dies Committee,” an “agent of Wall Street” and a “traitor” who committed “self-assault” for no other reason save that of embarrassing the Cardenas government which had given him asylum alone of all the governments in the world.
Jacson claims he was a disillusioned member of the Fourth International. Lie! This was simply an attempt of the GPU to trick world opinion into believing its hands are spotless. Under questioning by the investigating judge he has now admitted he was never a member.
Jacson claims a “member of the Bureau of the Fourth International” sent him to Mexico to see Trotsky because “something more was expected of him than being a simple militant.” Another lie written in the jargon invented by the GPU for the Moscow Trials!
Jacson says that Trotsky ordered him to go to Shanghai, steal the China Clipper, fly across Manchukuo to Russia, and there, without knowing a word of the Russian language, begin spreading sabotage and plotting the death “of the leaders of the USSR!” Recall the Stalin-Hitler dictum: “The grosser the lie, the more readily will people believe it.” Jacson’s letter could not follow this dictum any closer.
The story is more absurd than the story concocted by the GPU in 1936 about the airplane in which Pyatakov was alleged to have flown from Berlin to Oslo in order to help Trotsky make a pact with Hitler.
In Jacson’s letter, the GPU again over-reached itself, succeeded in accomplishing nothing but convincing the world of Stalin’s guilt in the murder of Trotsky.
It is merely necessary to substitute in Jacson’s letter the three letters “GPU” for the “member of the Bureau of the Fourth International.” Then the story told by Jacson as to how he was ordered to go to Mexico to see Trotsky becomes clear. The reasons for the infinite caution and casualness with which he approached the household become apparent. The whole “confession” crumbles before one’s eyes and the truth stands revealed: GPU agent Jacson is lying in the easiest way possible for him—wherever possible he attributes to the Fourth International the actual instructions given him by the GPU.
Who Is “Frank Jacson”?
According to the declarations the assassin made to the police, he was furnished a false passport by “the member of the Bureau of the Fourth International,” who “proposed that he go to Mexico to see Trotsky.” On his final trip to Coyoacan from Mexico City, Jacson claims that he stopped on Avenida Insurgentes and burned this false passport along with his other personal papers. Why did Jacson burn this passport? The reason is not difficult to determine. Forgers always leave certain identifying marks. In the hands of government experts it would have been possible to trace such a passport back to those who falsified it, just as it is possible for experts to trace forged money back to the particular individual who made it. In the case of Jacson’s passport the identifying mark would have been “GPU.”
The passport on which Frank Jacson entered the United States was issued in March 1937 to Tony Babich, resident of Canada and a naturalized British subject, born at Lovinac, Yugoslavia, June 13, 1905. Tony Babich used this passport to travel from Canada ostensibly on a visit to his home. He went to Spain, instead, where he fought in the Loyalist army. On May 12, 1939, the Spanish government issued a death certificate for Tony Babich.
What happened to Tony Babich’s passport?
It is well known that the foreigners who enlisted in the Loyalist army were systematically robbed of their passports by the GPU. Walter Krivitsky, former head of the Soviet Intelligence Service in western Europe, reported that the diplomatic pouches sent to the USSR from Spain carried bundles of these passports in every mail. That is obviously what happened to the passport of Tony Babich. In the hands of the GPU it underwent certain alterations by the most skilled passport forgers in the world. The name of Tony Babich was changed to read “Frank Jacson.” The photograph of Babich was removed and replaced by that of the man who later murdered Trotsky.
The GPU attempts to picture Jacson in his “confession” as a naive lad in the beginning, so gullible that he instantly packed his valises and sent to his mother for $5,000 when the “member of the Bureau of the Fourth International” asked him to go to Mexico. It would be interesting to hear the GPU explain how this innocent “rabbit.” as Jacson labels himself, gained his expert knowledge of passport regulations between the United States and Mexico.
When he left Mexico the last time, he applied at the American Consulate on June 12 for a transit visa to Canada. Apparently he utilized this transit visa to enter the United States without giving up the Mexican tourist card which was issued to him in October 1939. From an information available, he did not apply for a tourist card on his second entry, but merely walked across the border and took passage to Mexico City, exhibiting his original tourist card with its time extension to whatever authorities demanded his credentials. Only a person with an expert acquaintance with these matters could have done this.
When Jacson was struggling with the guards, he cried out several times: ’They have imprisoned my mother!” When he was dragged out of Trotsky’s study, he repeated, “Ma mere! Ma mere!” If he is not a subject of the USSR, it is possible that the Gestapo, as a slight service to Stalin, turned Jacson’s mother, possibly his whole family, over to the GPU, subsequent to the German invasion of the Lowlands and France. Jacson was then threatened with the death of his family if he did not carry out Stalin’s order to assassinate Trotsky. It is possible that Jacson’s story about being born in Persia of Belgian parents is true, but there are many indications that his story about the “Mornard” family and its wealth is a complete fabrication:
1.The Belgian minister in Persia from 1904 to 1908 was not his father, “Mornard Van den Dreschd,’ as Jacson claims, but a man named T’Sterstevens.
2.There is no record of the older brother of Jacson, “Robert Mornard,” being in the Belgian Consular servite as Jacson claims.
3.When Jacson gave the address of his family residence in Brussels, he named one of the longest and busiest streets in the city, and the number mentioned turned out to be that of a public building.
4.Jacson wrote to Sylvia many times about his father, and the things his father was doing. But he told the Mexican police that his father died years ago.
Jacson was well supplied with money. He claims that during the last days of August, 1939, his “mother” gave him 85,000 in addition to the $200 given him by the alleged member of the Bureau of the Fourth International. In New York City he entrusted $3,000 to Sylvia Ageloff. Later, in October 1939 he established a letter of credit with the American Express agency in New York City for approximately $2,500. On this letter of credit he cashed heavy checks in January of this year, again in May of this year, just before the first assault on Trotsky, and withdrew the balance early in June. When he was taken by the police he had more than $890 in his pockets. In Mexico he bought an automobile for 3,500 pesos. When he traveled, he used airplanes. In Mexico he lived expensively from October, 1939, up until the time of the assassination without holding any job whatsoever.
Although he listed himself on his tourist card as a “mechanical engineer” he declared upon his capture that he had studied journalism and was a journalist by profession. To the household he claimed that he worked for a mysterious individual who at first dealt in oil for the Allies, but who had lately shifted to diamonds. He claimed that he was paid $50 a week by this mysterious boss.
Sylvia Ageloff testified to the police that after she met Jacson in Paris he began working for the “Argus Press Service.” He sold a number of Ageloff’s articles on child psychology to this service, but told Sylvia it was impossible to find out where they were published since she could then deal directly with the magazine, cutting the Argus’ service out of its commission. He himself, he claims, wrote sports articles at a high salary for the Argus Service. Sylvia Ageloff never saw any of her own articles in print. The Argus Service, it is clear, was merely another name for the GPU even though it might have had “Argus” printed on its letterheads and across some office door.
In personal appearance, Jacson before the assault struck one as a nervous individual, prematurely aged, darkened as if some poison were working its way through his skin. His features twitched. He talked rapidly but found words with difficulty, causing him occasionally to stumble in his utterances. While he was not husky, nevertheless he appeared wiry. He wore horn-rimmed glasses, dressed neatly, rarely covered his dark hair with a hat. It was impossible to carry on a sustained political conversation with him; he always wandered into another subject. He claimed to be an ardent sympathizer of the Fourth International, and especially devoted to Trotsky, of whom he said many times in an admiring tone, in the presence of the guards: “He has the greatest intellect in the world.”
Since the assault, Jacson has appeared completely prostrated and near collapse. When he is brought into the judge’s chambers for questioning, he drags his feet as if they were weighted to the floor, hangs his head, requires the support of two men. During the questioning he keeps his eyes on the floor, answers in tones that are scarcely audible, refuses to speak in any language but French, although he is quite familiar with Spanish and English. However, he dropped this mask completely when Albert Goldman pressed him on his story about the alleged member of the Bureau of the Fourth International who had sent him to Trotsky. He appeared suddenly alert, cautious. He sat up in his chair, gesticulated, employed histrionics. At times his eyes would peer balefully from under his bandaged head, like an animal in a trap studying its captor before lunging.
In view of the consummate skill with which he penetrated the household, ingratiated himself, brutally carried out his horrible assignment and stuck to the line prepared for him by the Stalinists, Jacson can be considered one of the most finished products of the GPU terror machine.
Professional GPU Killer
We can now look back upon some of the previous murders of our comrades committed by the GPU and begin to fix the sinister role played by Frank Jacson.
In February 1938 Leon Sedov was stricken with an intestinal ailment. He was taken to a hospital. Somehow his whereabouts leaked out to the Stalinists. Leon Sedov died within a few days under the most mysterious circumstances.
“What is your opinion about the death of Sedov?” Judge Trujillo asked Jacson at the preliminary hearing.
The assassin hesitated, fumbled for words, replied sullenly: “Only what is printed on the case.” “Was it the GPU!” “Yes. The GPU killed Leon Sedov.”
An intensely interesting statement! Was it a single slip of the tongue, an unintentional admission of a truth well known among the agents of the GPU? Was it the very height of deviousness—a conscious attempt to separate himself from the GPU by implying: the GPU did THAT job but NOT THIS one? Or was it the admission of a fact he knew to be true because of his personal involvement in the murder of Sedov and which he admitted as a welcome relief from the strain of constant lying because he did not feel it could be dangerous to him? The last hypothesis seems the most likely. It would explain his hesitation when the question was first asked—should he lie? was it necessary? “only what is printed ...” A cautious reply made to gain time while he decided on the danger involved in answering truthfully: “Yes, The GPU killed Leon Sedov.”
Just before the World Conference of the Fourth International in September, 1935, Rudolf Klement, secretary of the organization, was kidnapped. A letter forged in his handwriting was’mailed to Leon Trotsky from Perpignan, a small town in southern France with which Jacson shows great familiarity. This letter, in terms almost identical to those in Jacson’s letter of “confession,” reports Klement’s “disillusionment” over his supposed discovery that Trotsky was negotiating to make a pact with “Hitler.”
That the “Klement letter” was a GPU job became clear, a few days later, when Klement’s body was found floating in the Seine river at Paris. The head, arms and legs had been amputated by someone with a knowledge of anatomy.
Jacson was proud to show off at a dinner table his general knowledge of anatomy. With a sharp knife, a roast chicken under his hands seemed to fall apart almost by itself.
Why was Klement killed? It was Trotsky’s opinion that Klement stumbled across some information of utmost importance concerning the GPU. The identity of a provocateur—perhaps proof that the GPU murdered Leon Sedov, was preparing the assassination of Trotsky.
Jacson knew David Alfaro Siqueiros, the leader of the May 24 assault. “By accident,” Jacson told Judge Trujillo, he gave to Sylvia Ageloff as his business address in Mexico that of the house named “Ermita” which was frequented by David Alfaro Siqueiros.
It is easy now to reconstruct the night of May 24. Jacson rang the bell during Harte’s shift. Harte answered the door.
“It’s Jacson—I have a message of utmost importance.”
Harte, who knew Jacson, as admitted by the assassin himself, opened the door, holding it by the safety latch. He saw Jacson, whom he recognized as a friend of the house. He saw the GPU agents in disguise as Mexican policemen, took them for genuine and opened the door.
That was why Harte was murdered. He could have identified the GPU agent who tricked him into opening the door. This phase of the May 24 assault, one of the most mysterious, can now be considered solved. Likewise, in all probability Jacson was the mysterious “French-Jew’ who spoke Spanish with a decided French accent, who gave orders to Siqueiros, who drove about in a black Packard with New York license plates, who furnished the money for the May 24 assailants.
We can picture the scene in GPU headquarters in New York when Jacson returned to make his report following the failure of the May 24 assault:
“Go back and finish the job yourself; or—”
The Reaction to Trotsky’s Death
Indignation and sorrow over the murder of Leon Trotsky by Stalin swept through the working class on a world wide scale. Telegrams and letters poured in from all the countries from which the censorship would permit. Working class organizations, one after the other in Mexico, passed re solutions condemning the murder of Trotsky by the GPU.
President Lazaro Cardenas issued a scathing denunciation of the perpetrators of the murder, naming them as “agents of a foreign power” and “traitors” to Mexico.
Only the friends and agents of the CPU were silent or tried to insinuate that Jacson’s “confession” was true. El Popular, Lombardo Toledano’s paper, for instance, published the declaration of Trotsky’s murderer under the front-page headline: “Sensational Confession of the Assassin of Leon Trotsky—Launches Tremendous Accusation Against the Dead Chief of the Fourth International.” This was the biggest play El Popular gave to the whole assassination, which of course is only natural for an organ of the GPU.
In a more cautious form El Popular expresses the same sentiment toward Trotsky as that expressed by David Serrano before Judge Trujillo. Serrano, a member of the Political Bureau of the Mexican Communist Party and believed to be the GPU representative on that body, was arrested in connection with the May 24 assault. It was he who ordered the police uniforms with which the assailants disguised themselves. It was his ex-wife who acted as one of the spies who seduced the police on guard at the Coyoacan house.
“The Third International is opposed to personal terror,” Serrano declared cynically in testifying before Judge Trujillo “but I would not be sorry if anything happened to Trotsky.”
“You understand that a statement like that will go against you in the case?” asked the judge astonished. “I understand; but that’s what I believe.”
This was on August 1, not three weeks before the assassination. It was the order from the GPU representative to finish the job.
Among those working for the GPU in the campaign against Trotsky is Frank Jellinek. This man, long known to be at least a close sympathizer of the Stalinists, came to Mexico in the fall of 1937. He tried to visit Trotsky, was refused admittance. Later he came to the press interview which Trotsky gave following the verdict of the John Dewey Commission that he was innocent of the charges levelled against him in the Moscow Trials. Jellinek came with his friend, Frank Kluckhohn, and had to be called to order by Trotsky because of the disturbance he was creating. Frequently seen with leading Stalinists in Mexico, he wrote reports on the May 24 assault in accordance with the GPU line. What is most interesting about Jellinek, however, is what he did when Trotsky appeared in the Coyoacan court to answer questions by Serrano’s attorney, Pavon Flores. Although Flores is a member of the Political Bureau of the Mexican Communist Party and one who survived the March purge, which prepared for the assault of May 24, he consulted Jellinek in the courtroom so frequently as to give Jellinek the appearance of wielding a great deal of authority. Following the murder of Trotsky, Jellinek wrote a report in PM, which attempted to bolster Jacson’s self-portrait of warring factions in the Fourth International as the matrix out of which came the murder. Jellinek reported “quarreling factions are now competing for Trotsky’s body.” What quarreling factions? Those of James P. Cannon and Albert Goldman! (PM, Aug. 23)
Jellinek’s defense of the GPU is as stupid as Jacson’s “confession.” The hand which becomes warped to the handle of a pickaxe loses its dexterity with a pen.
The Last Days with Trotsky
During the construction work when we were converting the house into a fortress, Trotsky often walked about the patio, suggesting changes, improvements. Nevertheless, he did not feel happy about having to live in such a place. Often he told me: “It reminds me of the first prison I was in, at Khirghizan. The door make the same sound when they shut. It is not a home; it is a medieval prison.”
The place was, indeed, like a prison. Trotsky confined himself to living behind those twenty-foot walls as if he were serving a term in a Czarist jail.
One day he caught me gazing at the new towers. His eyes twinkled in one of those warm, intimate smiles of his, a glance and nod that took one into his confidence.
“Highly advanced civilization—that we must still make such constructions.” he said, his eye brow lifting good humoredly.
“Yes,” I responded—it was not the first time he had made this remark to me—”just such constructions in order to organize the economic system on a rational basis.” “To have to spend a life-time on that!”
The hot Mexican sun high-lighted his eagle features, cut his white bushy hair away from the dark vines behind him. His eyes were no longer on me but speculatively on the towers, and I was suddenly looking at the life’s task of a Bolshevik from a thousand years in the future.
The Old Man taught those about him like that—with half jest converting even his own distastes into something valuable for this new generation surrounding him.
Trotsky enjoyed the Mexican country-side; liked sitting beside a good chauffeur and driving off the paved highway onto some obscure road filled with chuck holes, boulders, mud, bayonet-bladed cactus. Such roads reminded him of the old days and campaigns with the Red Army. But these excursions, which he called “walks,” were dangerous, and for months at a time the Old Man would deny himself the pleasure.
On the last “walk” the Old Man took, he slept much more than usual. As if he were exhausted and this were his first opportunity in a long time to rest. He relaxed in the seat beside me and slept from Cuernavaca almost to Amecameca, when the volcanos, Popocatapetl and Ixtaccihuatl, the sleeping woman, gather great fleecy clouds about their white summits. While one of the other cars re-fueled, we stopped beside an ancient hacienda with towering strongly buttressed walls. The Old Man regarded the walls with interest: “A fine wall, but medieval. Like our own prison.”
As we approached Coyoacan, he slid down low in the seat so that his head would not show—from any of the windows facing the streets near our house might come a burst of machine gun fire.
“After this we must have two of the best drivers in the car,” the Old Man said. He was thinking of the danger connected with these enjoyable “walks”—the chance of the driver being killed. But there was never another “walk” on which to carry out his suggestion.
From the May 24 assault until the week before his death, Trotsky worked on uncovering the GPU—fighting its agents and its friends, such as Lombardo Toledano who carried on a rabid campaign of vilification, slander, foul personal attacks under the monotonously repeated slogan of the GPU: “Expel the Traitor Trotsky from Mexico.”
On the Saturday before the assault Trotsky told me that he had practically finished all his work in relation to exposing the perpetrators of the May 24 assault and that now he expected to return to his “poor, neglected Stalin book.” But before doing so he wanted to know what I thought about his writing something on the question of militarism. We discussed the form and content of such an article, whether it would be an article for Fourth International, something for the Socialist Appeal, or because of world conditions an unsigned article.
The thesis of the project in his own words as I recall them was as follows:
“We must now launch a fight to the finish with all the remnants of pacifism in our ranks. This pacifism is not only a heritage of our entry into the Socialist Party but a heritage of the last imperialist war. Even the Bolsheviks in 1914 did not have the perspective of taking power. Our politics then flowed more or less from a sheer opposition point of view to the official politics of the government. Even Lenin when he was in Switzerland wrote some articles in which he said that the second or third generation may see socialism but we will not. Now the world situation is even more ripe than at that time. Our politics must flow from the perspective of seizing power. There will be revolutionary situations in the coming period, one after the other. It will be a period rich in revolutionary situations. At first there will be defeats. They an inevitable; but we will learn from them. It is also inevitable that we will have victories. One good victory can change the whole world situation. It is not excluded that you will gain power in the United States in the coming period.”
We talked over this thesis several times during the afternoon. I told Trotsky of my experience in writing a war pamphlet in which it was very easy to point out the horrors and causes of war, but not so easy to tell the workers exactly what steps to take next, and that this difficulty came from the fact that we had not yet settled completely on our politics in relation to pacifist sentiment. I also gave him my reaction to the victories of Hitler as indicating not so much the strength of fascism as the rottenness of democratic imperialism, a rottenness which not even we had measured to the full and which clearly showed that we were much nearer to power than we had thought—that it would take but very little from the working class to smash this whole structure. “Of course,” Trotsky said. “Well, I will have plenty of time to think over the problem tomorrow,” referring to his doctor’s order that he stay in bed all day Sunday to rest. But he became so interested in this thesis that he went into his study and began dictating immediately. I heard his strong vibrant voice dictating to his dictaphone with a frequent “totchka!” until 9:30 that evening and again Monday morning. He had gotten an excellent start on the article, he told me just before dinner, utilizing as his point of departure the “miserable article” of Dwight Macdonald in the Partisan Review which I had underlined for him. He also mentioned some of the pacifist tendencies in the minority group who split from the Fourth International which he intended to use along with the “miserable and contemptible” pacifism of Norman Thomas as illustrations in the article.
The first draft was typed and on his desk at the time he was attacked. Knowing Trotsky’s methods of work, I am sure that he had blocked out most of his main ideas; the illustrations and quotations were in the large still missing, possibly he had not yet arrived at a formulation of his key idea. But attack against pacifism as expressed in his conversation with me is certain to permeate the entire Fourth International in the coming period.
The Funeral of Trotsky
On August 22, funeral services were held for Trotsky in accordance with the Mexican custom. A cortege followed the casket slowly through the streets. An enormous crowd followed from the funeral parlors to the Pantheon, some eight miles. At funeral pace, the procession wound through one of the densely populated working class sections of Mexico. The streets were packed on both sides with the most humble people of this city which Trotsky had learned to love during the last years of his life. As the casket approached, covered with a red flag, they took off their hats and stood silently in tribute until it had passed.
At the Pantheon, three of Trotsky’s friends spoke over the bier. Albert Goldman, who had defended Trotsky at the hearings of the John Dewey Commission, assured the people of Mexico, the only country which would grant him asylum, that his remains would finally rest here. He spoke of the irretrievable loss Trotsky’s death meant to the working class of the world.
Garcia Trevino, former leader of the CTM, one of the founders of El Popular and a well-known socialist, condemned Lombardo Toledano and his Stalinist cohorts as those directly responsible for the intellectual preparation of the murder of Trotsky. He called on the Mexican workers to purge their ranks of these perfidious and venal agents and friends of the GPU.
Grandizo Munis, one of the leaders of the Spanish section of the Fourth International, who fought in Spain and had been imprisoned there by the GPU, outlined the major events in Trotsky’s life, particularly his struggle against the degeneration of the Russian Revolution in the person of Stalin. Grandizo ended his speech with the last words of Trotsky, translated into Spanish: “Estoy seguro de la victorio de la Cuarta Internacional. Adelante!”
From August 22 until August 27 Trotsky’s body was kept at the funeral parlors pending an answer from the US government on the request to take his remains to New York City for a funeral service. A guard of honor, composed of Mexican workers and members of Trotsky’s household stood at attention twenty-four hours a day beside the casket. Then was a constant flow of those who wished to pay their last respects to Trotsky. By August 27 an estimated 300,000 people had passed his casket. They were composed almost entirely of the poorest people, burdened with toil, many of them ragged, barefoot. They filed in silently, heads bowed.
From all over the world telegrams and letters expressing the deepest sorrow were sent to Coyoacan. All the sections of the Fourth International, where it was possible, sent messages of solidarity, vowing to carry on the struggle for the ideas of Trotsky.
President Lazaro Cardenas and Mrs. Cardenas visited Natalia and expressed their indignation at the crime and their deepest sympathy with Natalia. They assured her that they “understood very well where letters such as that found in the assassin’s clothing were manufactured”,and that she was “not to worry about it.”
On August 26 the State Department of the United State, government categorically refused to permit Trotsky’s body to be taken to the United States for a funeral service. The decayed capitalist class, entering the final stage of the epoch of wars and revolutions from which socialism will emerge, does well to stand in holy terror of everything associated with Leon Trotsky!
So died our comrade, friend, teacher. He saw the future as if he were already living in it, and like Marx, Engels and Lenin, directed all his titanic energy into arousing the working class towards taking the necessary road to that future society. Trotsky neither feared death nor believed in a god or an after-life. “All that is fit to live is fit to perish.” He wished to be remembered by nothing but his revolutionary deeds and ideas, and these only so that they could be utilized in the liberating struggle of the working class. He was opposed to the mummifying of Lenin’s body, and expressed the desire to Natalia that when he died his remains should be cremated. Let the fire consume everything that decays! On August 27 this wish of his was carried out. Many of his friends on that day no doubt thought of one of Trotsky’s favorite quotations:
“Not to laugh; not to weep;
But to understand.”
Wednesday, August 24, 2011
***The Road To…., The Corner Boys Of The 1930s-Tom Hanks’ “Road to Perdition”- A Film Review
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the film The Road To Perdition.
DVD Review
The Road To Perdition, starring Tom Hanks, Paul Newman, Jude Law, based on the graphic novel by Max Allan Collins, Dreamworks, 2002
I have spent a lot of time in this space writing about my corner boy experiences growing up in my old Irish and Italian working class neighborhood in the late 1950s and early 1960s. I have also spent some time talking about the corner boys who just immediately preceded us in the early 1950s. Pretty tame really although if you were on the receiving end of a vicious beating, got your money stolen in some back alley, or had your personal household possessions ransacked or stolen by some midnight shifter your perspective might not be so romantic. The “corner boys,” Irish and Italian mainly, of 1930s Great Depression Chicago though, as portrayed in the film under review, The Road to Perdition, make all that other stuff seem “punk” by comparison.
Of course the motives to join a gang of lumpenproletarians in all cases were the same then, and today. That is “where the money was” to paraphrase the old-time famous bank robber, Willy Sutton. No question all those guys in the 1930s and later were (and are) from hunger. But also looking for the quick dollar and the “no heavy lifting” life not associated with steady working class factory every day values. Equally true is the fact that there are always more “hungry” guys than the market can bear which leads to two things-external “turf wars” between gangs and internal turf wars over who controls what within gangs. And that is the heart of this story.
The problem for Tom Hanks, a trusted, very trusted, enforcer (read: “hit man”) for Irish mob boss Paul Newman (he of many such corner boy roles going back to Cool Hand Luke and before) is that Newman's psychotic son wants his share of the goodies as befits a son and heir apparent. Needless to say that things get dicey, very dicey as they maneuver to the top, including the gangland-style execution of Hanks’ family that was suppose to include a son, the narrator of the film, who is forced to help Hanks’ seek the inevitable revenge required by the situation. In the end though Tom Waits is right in the opening line from Jersey Girl- “Ain’t got no time for the corner boys, down in the streets making all that noise.” A nice cinematically-pleasing 1930s period piece and what turned out to be a great farewell performance by the late Paul Newman.
DVD Review
The Road To Perdition, starring Tom Hanks, Paul Newman, Jude Law, based on the graphic novel by Max Allan Collins, Dreamworks, 2002
I have spent a lot of time in this space writing about my corner boy experiences growing up in my old Irish and Italian working class neighborhood in the late 1950s and early 1960s. I have also spent some time talking about the corner boys who just immediately preceded us in the early 1950s. Pretty tame really although if you were on the receiving end of a vicious beating, got your money stolen in some back alley, or had your personal household possessions ransacked or stolen by some midnight shifter your perspective might not be so romantic. The “corner boys,” Irish and Italian mainly, of 1930s Great Depression Chicago though, as portrayed in the film under review, The Road to Perdition, make all that other stuff seem “punk” by comparison.
Of course the motives to join a gang of lumpenproletarians in all cases were the same then, and today. That is “where the money was” to paraphrase the old-time famous bank robber, Willy Sutton. No question all those guys in the 1930s and later were (and are) from hunger. But also looking for the quick dollar and the “no heavy lifting” life not associated with steady working class factory every day values. Equally true is the fact that there are always more “hungry” guys than the market can bear which leads to two things-external “turf wars” between gangs and internal turf wars over who controls what within gangs. And that is the heart of this story.
The problem for Tom Hanks, a trusted, very trusted, enforcer (read: “hit man”) for Irish mob boss Paul Newman (he of many such corner boy roles going back to Cool Hand Luke and before) is that Newman's psychotic son wants his share of the goodies as befits a son and heir apparent. Needless to say that things get dicey, very dicey as they maneuver to the top, including the gangland-style execution of Hanks’ family that was suppose to include a son, the narrator of the film, who is forced to help Hanks’ seek the inevitable revenge required by the situation. In the end though Tom Waits is right in the opening line from Jersey Girl- “Ain’t got no time for the corner boys, down in the streets making all that noise.” A nice cinematically-pleasing 1930s period piece and what turned out to be a great farewell performance by the late Paul Newman.
The Latest From The “Veterans For Peace” Website-Gear Up For The 2011-12 Anti-War Season-Troops Out Now!
Click on the headline to link to the Veterans For Peace website for the latest news.
Re-posted From American Left History- Thursday, November 11, 2010
*A Stroll In The Park On Veterans Day- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S. Troops From Iraq and Afghanistan!
Markin comment:
Listen, I have been to many marches and demonstrations for democratic, progressive, socialist and communist causes in my long political life. However, of all those events none, by far, has been more satisfying that to march alongside my fellow ex-soldiers who have “switched” over to the other side and are now part of the struggle against war, the hard, hard struggle against the permanent war machine that this imperial system has embarked upon. From as far back as in the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) days I have always felt that ex-soldiers (hell, active soldiers too, if you can get them) have had just a little bit more “street cred” on the war issue than the professors, pacifists and little old ladies in tennis sneakers who have traditionally led the anti-war movements. Maybe those brothers (and in my generation it was mainly only brothers) and now sisters may not quite pose the questions of war and peace the way I do, or the way that I would like them to do, but they are kindred spirits.
Now normally in Boston, and in most places, a Veterans Day parade means a bunch of Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) or American Legion-types taking time off from drinking at their post bars (“the battle of the barstool”) and donning the old overstuffed uniform and heading out on to Main Street to be waved at, and cheered on, by like-minded, thankful citizens. And of course that happened this time as well. What also happened in Boston this year (and other years but I have not been involved in previous marches) was that the Veterans For Peace (VFP) organized an anti-war march as part of their “Veterans Day” program. Said march to be held at the same place and time as the official one.
Previously there had been a certain amount of trouble, although I am not sure that it came to blows, between the two groups. (I have only heard third-hand reports on previous events.) You know the "super-patriots" vs. “commie symps” thing that has been going on as long as there have been ex-soldiers (and others) who have differed from the bourgeois party pro-war line. In any case the way this impasse had been resolved previously, and the way the parameters were set this year as well, was that the VFP took up the rear of the official parade, and took up the rear in an obvious way. Separated from the main body of the official parade by a medical emergency truck. Nice, right? Something of the old I’ll take my ball and bat and go home by the "officials" was in the air on that one.
But here is where there is a certain amount of rough plebeian justice, a small dose for those on the side of the angels, in the world. In order to form up, and this was done knowingly by VFP organizers, the official marchers, the bands and battalions that make up such a march, had to “run the gauntlet” of dove emblem-emblazoned VFP banners waving frantically directly in front of their faces as they passed by. Moreover, although we formed the caboose of this thing the crowds along the parade route actually waited as the official paraders marched by and waved and clapped at our procession. Be still my heart. But that response just provides another example of the ‘street cred” that ex-soldiers have on the anti-war question. Now, if there is to be any really serious justice in the world, if only these vets would go beyond the “bring the troops home” and embrace- immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all U.S./Allied Troops from Iraq and Afghanistan then we could maybe start to get somewhere out on those streets. But today I was very glad to be fighting for our communist future among those who know first-hand about the dark side of the American experience. No question.
Re-posted From American Left History- Thursday, November 11, 2010
*A Stroll In The Park On Veterans Day- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S. Troops From Iraq and Afghanistan!
Markin comment:
Listen, I have been to many marches and demonstrations for democratic, progressive, socialist and communist causes in my long political life. However, of all those events none, by far, has been more satisfying that to march alongside my fellow ex-soldiers who have “switched” over to the other side and are now part of the struggle against war, the hard, hard struggle against the permanent war machine that this imperial system has embarked upon. From as far back as in the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) days I have always felt that ex-soldiers (hell, active soldiers too, if you can get them) have had just a little bit more “street cred” on the war issue than the professors, pacifists and little old ladies in tennis sneakers who have traditionally led the anti-war movements. Maybe those brothers (and in my generation it was mainly only brothers) and now sisters may not quite pose the questions of war and peace the way I do, or the way that I would like them to do, but they are kindred spirits.
Now normally in Boston, and in most places, a Veterans Day parade means a bunch of Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) or American Legion-types taking time off from drinking at their post bars (“the battle of the barstool”) and donning the old overstuffed uniform and heading out on to Main Street to be waved at, and cheered on, by like-minded, thankful citizens. And of course that happened this time as well. What also happened in Boston this year (and other years but I have not been involved in previous marches) was that the Veterans For Peace (VFP) organized an anti-war march as part of their “Veterans Day” program. Said march to be held at the same place and time as the official one.
Previously there had been a certain amount of trouble, although I am not sure that it came to blows, between the two groups. (I have only heard third-hand reports on previous events.) You know the "super-patriots" vs. “commie symps” thing that has been going on as long as there have been ex-soldiers (and others) who have differed from the bourgeois party pro-war line. In any case the way this impasse had been resolved previously, and the way the parameters were set this year as well, was that the VFP took up the rear of the official parade, and took up the rear in an obvious way. Separated from the main body of the official parade by a medical emergency truck. Nice, right? Something of the old I’ll take my ball and bat and go home by the "officials" was in the air on that one.
But here is where there is a certain amount of rough plebeian justice, a small dose for those on the side of the angels, in the world. In order to form up, and this was done knowingly by VFP organizers, the official marchers, the bands and battalions that make up such a march, had to “run the gauntlet” of dove emblem-emblazoned VFP banners waving frantically directly in front of their faces as they passed by. Moreover, although we formed the caboose of this thing the crowds along the parade route actually waited as the official paraders marched by and waved and clapped at our procession. Be still my heart. But that response just provides another example of the ‘street cred” that ex-soldiers have on the anti-war question. Now, if there is to be any really serious justice in the world, if only these vets would go beyond the “bring the troops home” and embrace- immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all U.S./Allied Troops from Iraq and Afghanistan then we could maybe start to get somewhere out on those streets. But today I was very glad to be fighting for our communist future among those who know first-hand about the dark side of the American experience. No question.
The Latest From The "Jobs With Justice Blog"-The Seemingly One-Sided Struggle Continues-It's High Time To Push Back-Push Back Hard-30 For 40 Is The Slogan Of The Day.
Click on the headline to link to the Jobs With Justice Blog for the latest national and international labor news, and of the efforts to counteract the massively one-sided class struggle against the international working class movement.
From the American Left History blog-Wednesday, June 17, 2009
With Unemployment Rising- The Call "30 For 40"- Now More Than Ever- The Transitional Socialist Program
Google To Link To The Full Transitional Program Of The Fourth International Adopted In 1938 As A Fighting Program In The Struggle For Socialism In That Era. Many Of The Points, Including The Headline Point Of 30 Hours Work For 40 Hours Pay To Spread The Work Around Among All Workers, Is As Valid Today As Then.
Guest Commentary
From The Transitional Program Of The Fourth International In 1938Sliding Scale of Wages
and Sliding Scale of Hours
Under the conditions of disintegrating capitalism, the masses continue to live the meagerized life of the oppressed, threatened now more than at any other time with the danger of being cast into the pit of pauperism. They must defend their mouthful of bread, if they cannot increase or better it. There is neither the need nor the opportunity to enumerate here those separate, partial demands which time and again arise on the basis of concrete circumstances – national, local, trade union. But two basic economic afflictions, in which is summarized the increasing absurdity of the capitalist system, that is, unemployment and high prices, demand generalized slogans and methods of struggle.
The Fourth International declares uncompromising war on the politics of the capitalists which, to a considerable degree, like the politics of their agents, the reformists, aims to place the whole burden of militarism, the crisis, the disorganization of the monetary system and all other scourges stemming from capitalism’s death agony upon the backs of the toilers. The Fourth International demands employment and decent living conditions for all.
Neither monetary inflation nor stabilization can serve as slogans for the proletariat because these are but two ends of the same stick. Against a bounding rise in prices, which with the approach of war will assume an ever more unbridled character, one can fight only under the slogan of a sliding scale of wages. This means that collective agreements should assure an automatic rise in wages in relation to the increase in price of consumer goods.
Under the menace of its own disintegration, the proletariat cannot permit the transformation of an increasing section of the workers into chronically unemployed paupers, living off the slops of a crumbling society. The right to employment is the only serious right left to the worker in a society based upon exploitation. This right today is left to the worker in a society based upon exploitation. This right today is being shorn from him at every step. Against unemployment, “structural” as well as “conjunctural,” the time is ripe to advance along with the slogan of public works, the slogan of a sliding scale of working hours. Trade unions and other mass organizations should bind the workers and the unemployed together in the solidarity of mutual responsibility. On this basis all the work on hand would then be divided among all existing workers in accordance with how the extent of the working week is defined. The average wage of every worker remains the same as it was under the old working week. Wages, under a strictly guaranteed minimum, would follow the movement of prices. It is impossible to accept any other program for the present catastrophic period.
Property owners and their lawyers will prove the “unrealizability” of these demands. Smaller, especially ruined capitalists, in addition will refer to their account ledgers. The workers categorically denounce such conclusions and references. The question is not one of a “normal” collision between opposing material interests. The question is one of guarding the proletariat from decay, demoralization and ruin. The question is one of life or death of the only creative and progressive class, and by that token of the future of mankind. If capitalism is incapable of satisfying the demands inevitably arising from the calamities generated by itself, then let it perish. “Realizability” or “unrealizability” is in the given instance a question of the relationship of forces, which can be decided only by the struggle. By means of this struggle, no matter what immediate practical successes may be, the workers will best come to understand the necessity of liquidating capitalist slavery.
From the American Left History blog-Wednesday, June 17, 2009
With Unemployment Rising- The Call "30 For 40"- Now More Than Ever- The Transitional Socialist Program
Google To Link To The Full Transitional Program Of The Fourth International Adopted In 1938 As A Fighting Program In The Struggle For Socialism In That Era. Many Of The Points, Including The Headline Point Of 30 Hours Work For 40 Hours Pay To Spread The Work Around Among All Workers, Is As Valid Today As Then.
Guest Commentary
From The Transitional Program Of The Fourth International In 1938Sliding Scale of Wages
and Sliding Scale of Hours
Under the conditions of disintegrating capitalism, the masses continue to live the meagerized life of the oppressed, threatened now more than at any other time with the danger of being cast into the pit of pauperism. They must defend their mouthful of bread, if they cannot increase or better it. There is neither the need nor the opportunity to enumerate here those separate, partial demands which time and again arise on the basis of concrete circumstances – national, local, trade union. But two basic economic afflictions, in which is summarized the increasing absurdity of the capitalist system, that is, unemployment and high prices, demand generalized slogans and methods of struggle.
The Fourth International declares uncompromising war on the politics of the capitalists which, to a considerable degree, like the politics of their agents, the reformists, aims to place the whole burden of militarism, the crisis, the disorganization of the monetary system and all other scourges stemming from capitalism’s death agony upon the backs of the toilers. The Fourth International demands employment and decent living conditions for all.
Neither monetary inflation nor stabilization can serve as slogans for the proletariat because these are but two ends of the same stick. Against a bounding rise in prices, which with the approach of war will assume an ever more unbridled character, one can fight only under the slogan of a sliding scale of wages. This means that collective agreements should assure an automatic rise in wages in relation to the increase in price of consumer goods.
Under the menace of its own disintegration, the proletariat cannot permit the transformation of an increasing section of the workers into chronically unemployed paupers, living off the slops of a crumbling society. The right to employment is the only serious right left to the worker in a society based upon exploitation. This right today is left to the worker in a society based upon exploitation. This right today is being shorn from him at every step. Against unemployment, “structural” as well as “conjunctural,” the time is ripe to advance along with the slogan of public works, the slogan of a sliding scale of working hours. Trade unions and other mass organizations should bind the workers and the unemployed together in the solidarity of mutual responsibility. On this basis all the work on hand would then be divided among all existing workers in accordance with how the extent of the working week is defined. The average wage of every worker remains the same as it was under the old working week. Wages, under a strictly guaranteed minimum, would follow the movement of prices. It is impossible to accept any other program for the present catastrophic period.
Property owners and their lawyers will prove the “unrealizability” of these demands. Smaller, especially ruined capitalists, in addition will refer to their account ledgers. The workers categorically denounce such conclusions and references. The question is not one of a “normal” collision between opposing material interests. The question is one of guarding the proletariat from decay, demoralization and ruin. The question is one of life or death of the only creative and progressive class, and by that token of the future of mankind. If capitalism is incapable of satisfying the demands inevitably arising from the calamities generated by itself, then let it perish. “Realizability” or “unrealizability” is in the given instance a question of the relationship of forces, which can be decided only by the struggle. By means of this struggle, no matter what immediate practical successes may be, the workers will best come to understand the necessity of liquidating capitalist slavery.
Tuesday, August 23, 2011
In Honor Of The “Old Man”- On The 71st Anniversary Of The Death Of Leon Trotsky-Leon Trotsky:Revolutionary Teacher Of the Colonial Peoples-By Li Fu-jen
Click on the headline to link to a review of the early life of Leon Trotsky in his political memoir, My Life.
Markin comment:
Every year at this time we honor the memory of the great Russian revolutionary leader, Leon Trotsky, a man who not only was able theoretically to articulate the arc of the Russian Revolution of 1917 (the theory of permanent revolution) but personally led the defend of that revolution against world imperialism and its internal Russian White Guard agents. Oh yes, and also wrote a million pro-communist articles, did a little turn at literary criticism, acted in various Soviet official capacities, led the Communist International, led the opposition first in Russia and then internationally to the Stalinist degeneration of that revolution, and created a new revolutionary international (the Fourth International) to rally the demoralized international working class movement in the face of Hitlerite reaction. To speak nothing of hunting, fishing, raising rabbits, collecting cactii and chasing Frida Kahlo around Mexico (oops, on that last one). In short, as I have characterized him before, the closest that this sorry old world has come to producing a complete communist man within the borders of bourgeois society (except that last thing, that skirt-chasing thing, although maybe not). All honor to his memory. Forward to new Octobers!
Usually on this anniversary I place a selection of Trotsky’s writings on various subjects in this space. This year, having found a site that has material related to his family life, the effect of his murder on that family, and other more personal details of his life I am placing that
material here in his honor. The forward to new Octobers still goes, though.
******
Li Fu-jen
Leon Trotsky:Revolutionary Teacher Of the Colonial Peoples
(August 1944)
Li Fu-jen, Revolutionary Teacher Of the Colonial Peoples, Fourth International, August 1944.
Copied form the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
The development of a Marxist program and strategy for the colonial revolution belongs exclusively to our epoch – the epoch of wars and revolutions leading to the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of a socialist society. It was Lenin who first outlined this program and strategy. But its detailed unfoldment and its first concrete applications were the work of Leon Trotsky, Lenin’s great co-worker. Trotsky’s writing on the problems of the colonial revolution, many of which still await publication, would fill numerous volumes. They form an integral and indispensable part of the program and strategy of the world socialist revolution and rank with the greatest of Trotsky’s immense contributions to the development of Marxist theory and revolutionary socialist practice.
In a preface to the Afrikaans edition of the Communist Manifesto, first published by Marx and Engels in 1848, Trotsky observed that this founding document of the international socialist movement contained no reference to the struggle of colonial and semi-colonial countries for national independence. This was due, he pointed out, to the fact that the founders of scientific socialism considered the socialist revolution in Europe to be, at most, a few years distant. The destruction of capitalism in Europe would “automatically” bring liberation to the oppressed peoples. However, history did not adhere to this optimistic time table. Not only did the European proletariat fail to destroy capitalism in its classic stronghold, but capitalism penetrated ever more deeply into the backward colonial countries, leading in time to the creation of powerful national liberation movements. Here was a new and mighty revolutionary factor. Its emergence set up an objective need for a colonial revolutionary program and strategy.
If in the period of the progressive upswing of capitalism the seizure of colonies was essential to enable the discharge by the bourgeoisie of what Marx described as their special historic mission, namely, “the establishment of the world market, at any rate in its main outlines and of a production upon this basis” (Karl Marx, letter to Engels, Oct. 8, 1858) – then today, in the era of the decline and decay of capitalist economy, retention of colonies, with the opportunity to plunder their natural riches and exploit their inhabitants, has become a vital condition of the very survival of capitalism on a world scale.
Revolutionary Internationalism
It is this profound and demonstrable truth which furnishes the basis of the reciprocal inter-relationship of the socialist movement of the proletariat in the advanced capitalist countries and the national liberation movement in the colonies and semicolonies. These latter countries embrace more than half of the world’s population. The liberation of their inhabitants is as important for the working-class as their continued enslavement is for the imperialist bourgeoisie. For Trotsky, this was the point of departure in the work of creating a colonial revolutionary strategy. It was the internationalist axis around which he always and unfailingly built. “The Communists,” declared the Manifesto of 1848, “everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things.” To which Trotsky added:
“The movement of the colored races against their imperialist oppressors is one of the most important and powerful movements against the existing order and therefore calls for complete, unconditional and unlimited support on the part of the proletariat of the white race.” (Leon Trotsky, 90 Years of the Communist Manifesto, New International, Feb. 1938.)
National liberation movements in the colonies and semicolonies unfolded after the first imperialist world war and were the immediate product of conditions created by the war.
Growth of the Working Class
Until the end of the nineteenth century, imperialist exploitation bore almost exclusively the character of outright robbery and spoliation. Economic development of colonial areas was confined to such measures as were necessary to aid in the extraction of raw materials and the marketing of finished commodities produced in the capitalist countries of the West. It was British commercial capital, for example, which first penetrated India. Such industrial development as took place was incidental to the central aim of commercial exploitation. Britain’s capitalists built cotton mills in Bombay only when it was discovered to be cheaper to process Indian-grown cotton on the spot, with cheap Indian labor, than to ship it to Lancashire for spinning and weaving, especially since a large part of the finished products was destined for sale in India and nearby countries. In line with the same policy, British capitalists erected cotton mills in Shanghai to handle the Chinese cotton crop as well as part of the Indian crop.
The most important political consequence of this incidental industrial development was the appearance in these vast backward lands of an industrial proletariat, pitted against the imperialist exploiters. Whereas foreign commercial capital had merely raised up an embryonic native or national bourgeoisie as agents of imperialism (the compradores), the foreign industrial capital which followed produced an industrial working-class which had a single, undisguised interest in relation to the imperialists – uncompromising struggle against them!
During the first world war, when the economic pressure of the imperialists was relaxed because of preoccupation with the military struggle in Europe, the industrial development of the big colonial lands took on an accelerated pace. The native compradores and some of the big native landowners entered the industrial field, creating enterprises in competition with those of the imperialists. Thus the “national” bourgeoisie came to flower. The industrial proletariat grew correspondingly. It was these developments which set the class pattern for the great revolutionary upheavals in the colonial countries in the decade after the war, above all the abortive
Chinese revolution of 1925-27.
Class relations are decisive for revolutionary Marxists in determining the character and perspectives of revolutionary movements and the political strategy necessary to bring them to fruition. The class criterion is as mandatory for the colonial countries as it is for the capitalist metropoli, Trotsky, following Marx and Lenin, insisted upon this criterion in opposition to Stalin and all the other revisionist opponents and betrayers of socialism It runs like a red thread through his voluminous speeches and writings on the problems of the colonial revolution. Most of these speeches and writings were concerned with China and the Chinese revolution. In the class relations of China are refracted the class relations of the colonies in general. The essence of Trotsky’s thought on China will therefore furnish the key to revolutionary Marxist policy in the entire colonial question.
Character of the Revolution
“In its immediate aims,” Trotsky wrote in 1938, “the incompleted Chinese Revolution is ‘bourgeois.’ This term, however, which is used as a mere echo of the bourgeois revolutions of the past actually helps us very little. Lest the historical analogy turn into a trap for the mind, it is necessary to check it in the light of a concrete sociological analysis. What are the classes which are struggling in China? What are the interrelationships of these classes? How, and in what direction, me these relations being transformed? What are the objective tasks of the Chinese Revolution, i.e.. those tasks dictated by the course of development? On the shoulders of which classes rests the solution of these tasks?
“Colonial and semi-colonial – and therefore backward – countries, which embrace by far the greater part of mankind, differ extraordinarily from one another in their degree of backwardness, representing an historical ladder reaching from nomadry, and even cannibalism, up to the most modern industrial culture. The combination of extremes in one degree or another characterizes all of the backward countries. However, the hierarchy of backwardness, if one may employ such an expression, is determined by the specific weight of the elements of barbarism and culture in the life of each colonial country. Equatorial Africa lags far behind Algeria, Paraguay behind Mexico, Abyssinia, behind India or China. With their common economic dependence upon the imperialist metropoli, their political dependence bears in some instances the character of open colonial slavery (India, Equatorial Africa), while in others it is concealed by the fiction of state independence (China, Latin America).
“In agrarian relations backwardness finds its most organic and cruel expression. Not one of these countries has carried it democratic revolution through to any real extent. Half-way agrarian reforms are absorbed by semi-serf relations, and these me inescapably reproduced in the soil of poverty and oppression. Agrarian barbarism goes hand in hand with the absence of roads, with the isolation of provinces, with ‘medieval’ particularism, and absence of national consciousness. The purging of social relations of the remnants of ancient and the encrustations of modern feudalism is the most important task in all these countries.
The National Bourgeoisie
“The achievement of the agrarian revolution is unthinkable, however, with the preservation of dependence upon foreign imperialism, which with one hand implants capitalist relations while supporting and recreating with the other all the forms of slavery and serfdom. The struggle for the democratisation of social relations and the creation of a national state thus uninterruptedly passes into an open uprising against foreign domination.
“Historical backwardness does not imply a simple reproduction or the development of advanced countries, England or France, with a delay of one, two or three centuries. It engenders an entirely new ‘combined’ social formation in which the latest conquests of capitalist technique and structure root themselves into relations of feudal or pre-feudal barbarism, transforming and subjecting them and creating a peculiar relation of classes.
“Not a single one of the tasks of the ‘bourgeois’ revolution can be solved in these backward countries under the leadership of the ‘national’ bourgeoisie, because the latter emerges at once with foreign support as a class alien or hostile to the people. Every stage in its development binds it only the more closely to foreign finance capital of which it is essentially the agency. The petty bourgeoisie of the colonies, that of handicraft and trade, is the first to fall victim in the unequal struggle with foreign capital, declining into economic insignificance, becoming declassed and pauperized. It cannot even conceive of playing an independent political role. The peasantry, the largest numerically and the most atomized, backward, and oppressed class, is capable of local uprisings and partisan warfare, but requires the leadership of a more advanced and centralized class in order for this struggle to be elevated to an all-national level. The task of such leadership falls in the nature of things upon the colonial proletariat, which, from its very first steps stands opposed not only to the foreign but also to it own national bourgeoisie” (From the Introduction by Leon Trotsky to Harold R. Isaacs’ The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution, London, 1938.)
These views concerning the peculiarity of class relations and, consequently, the special character of “bourgeois-democratic” revolutions in historically belated countries do not rest as Trotsky proceeded to point out, on theoretical analysis alone. They had been submitted to a “grandiose historical test” in the Russian revolutions of 1905 and February and October, 1917. These three revolutions proved beyond all question the incapacity of the national bourgeoisie in a backward country to solve the tasks of the democratic revolution. Hence the need to orient the proletariat toward the seizure of power. Lenin put the matter thus:
“Our revolution is a bourgeois revolution, the workers must support the bourgeoisie – say the worthless politicians from the camp of the liquidators. Our revolution is a bourgeois revolution, say we who are Marxists. The workers must open the eyes of the people to the fraud of the bourgeois politicians, teach them not to place trust in promises and to rely on their OWN forces, on their OWN organization, on their OWN unity and on their OWN weapons alone.” (Lenin, Works, Vol.XIV, Part 1, p.11.)
The Chinese Catastrophe
In the case of Czarist Russia the Bolshevik theory of the hegemony of the proletariat in the revolution received positive vindication in the victorious October overturn. The Russian workers, allied with the lower layers of the peasantry, and led by the Bolshevik Party, overthrew both Czarism and capitalism. The tasks of the democratic revolution were solved through the dictatorship of the proletariat, which then proceeded to socialist tasks.
In China, on the contrary, the theory of proletarian hegemony, the very core of Bolshevik policy, received negative confirmation in a monstrous revolutionary catastrophe. Stalin and Bukharin, the then theoreticians of the Communist International, chopped the historic process into separate, independent stages in accordance with a lifeless scheme which decreed that only the “democratic” revolution was on the order of the day and that consequently the leadership of the revolution belonged and could only belong to the bourgeoisie. The formula of the “democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry,” which Lenin had discarded in 1917 in favor of the proletarian dictatorship, was revived and expanded into the infamous “bloc of four classes,” prototype of the so-called Popular Fronts of later years. In this bloc – in reality a bloc of party tops and nothing else – the right to represent the peasantry was given to the party of the national bourgeoisie, the Kuomintang. The Communist Party, the party of the proletariat, gave up its political independence and entered the Kuomintang. The workers were thereby subordinated to the political control of the national bourgeoisie. And this criminal break with proletarian class policy, this disregard of the plain lessons of Russian revolutionary history, this rejection of the still fresh teachings of Lenin, was palmed off on the young and inexperienced Chinese Communist Party as – Bolshevism!
In order to justify this treacherous policy of class collaboration, Stalin-Bukharin adduced the fact of imperialist oppression which supposedly impelled “all the progressive forces in the country” toward an alliance against imperialism. Thus the national bourgeoisie was invested with a progressive role, that of a fighter against imperialism for national liberation. But this, as Trotsky pointed out, “was precisely in its day the argument of the Russian Mensheviks, with the difference that in their case the place of imperialism was occupied by Czarism.”
Bourgeois Counter-Revolution
As we have already seen, the national bourgeoisie is incapable of conducting a progressive fight, a fight to the end, to realize the aims of the democratic revolution, foremost of which, in the colonial countries, is the destruction of imperialist domination. This incapacity has a dual basis: 1. The close ties of the bourgeoisie with the imperialists and the elements of rural reaction; 2. Fear of mobilizing the masses, who, in the high tide of the struggle must inevitably pass over to the fight for the destruction of bourgeois property. But when the masses rise against imperialism as they did in China in 1925-27, the bourgeoisie endeavors to take charge of the movement and to use it to extract concessions from the imperialists. It then stamps upon the revolutionary masses and drives them back to their old slavery. Such, in reality, is the character of the “democratic” revolution under bourgeois leadership.
Nevertheless, insisted Stalin-Bukharin, Chiang Kai-shek (the leader of the Chinese national bourgeoisie) were conducting a struggle against imperialism. And so it really appeared to the superficial minds in the Kremlin. Actually Chiang was engaged in a limited struggle against certain militarists who were the agents of a single imperialist power – Britain – in the hope merely of forcing concessions from the imperialist overlords of the country. This is not the same thing as a principled all-out struggle to the finish against the entire system of imperialist domination. Today Chiang Kai-shek conducts a fight against Japanese imperialism, and in the process passes into the service of Anglo-American imperialism, thus preparing a new slavery for the Chinese nation. The alleged anti-imperialist role of the national bourgeoisie was sharply characterized by Trotsky in words which he sought to burn into the consciousness of the revolutionary vanguard:
“The so-called ‘national’ bourgeoisie tolerates all forms of national degradation so long as it can hope to maintain its own privileged existence. But at the moment when foreign capital sets out to assume undivided domination of the entire wealth of the country, the colonial bourgeoisie is forced to remind itself of its ‘national’ obligations. Under pressure of the masses it may even find itself plunged into a war. But this will be a war waged against one of the imperialist powers, the one least amenable to negotiations, with the hope of passing into the service of some other, more magnanimous power. Chiang Kai-shek struggles against the Japanese violators only within the limits indicated to him by his British or American patrons. Only that class which has nothing to lose but its chains can conduct to the very end the war against imperialism for national emancipation.” (From the Introduction by Leon Trotsky to Harold R. Isaacs’ The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution.)
The Lesson of China
According to Stalin-Bukharin, the policy of the bloc of four classes was to lead to completion of the democratic revolution in China and thus open the road to the socialist dictatorship of the proletariat. What happened is a matter of history. Chiang Kai-shek, instead of leading a “democratic” revolution, emerged as the leader of a triumphant counter-revolution, The shaken imperialists recovered all their positions. The agrarian problem remained unsolved. What does all this mean for future revolutionary policy?
It means – and this is the most vital part of the lesson which Trotsky taught to the new revolutionary cadres – that between the bourgeois-military dictatorship of (Chiang Kai-shek and the dictatorship of the proletariat there can be no intermediate “democratic” regime. It means that if, in the high tide of the coming colonial revolutions, the proletarian vanguard party should seek to bring about the establishment of such a regime, instead of orienting the workers toward the seizure of power and the creation of a proletarian dictatorship, only fresh revolutionary catastrophes can result.
Almost as if answering in advance the false and treacherous policies of the Stalinist betrayers of the Chinese revolution-particularly the stupid Menshevik theory of stages – Lenin in his famous April Theses, written in April 1917 to rearm the Bolshevik Party and prepare its revolutionary triumph, had proclaimed the struggle for the dictatorship of the proletariat to be the sole means of carrying through the agrarian revolution to the end and of winning freedom for oppressed peoples. But the regime of proletarian dictatorship could not, because of its very nature, limit itself to bourgeois-democratic tasks within the framework of bourgeois property relations. The rule of the proletariat automatically places the socialist revolution – destruction of bourgeois property relations and the liquidation of class rule – on the order of the day. The socialist revolution is thus uninterruptedly linked to the democratic revolution and is an organic outgrowth of it.
Theory of Permanent Revolution
“Such was (Trotsky observes), in broad outline, the essence of the conception of the permanent (uninterrupted) revolution. It was precisely this conception that guaranteed the victory of the proletariat in October.” (Idem.) In China, it was the violation of this Bolshevik conception, or, more accurately, its outright rejection, that guaranteed the victory of Chiang Kai-shek and the bourgeois counter-revolution.
The theory of permanent revolution was originated by Marx. Lenin made of it a powerful lever of revolutionary victory. Trotsky, the authentic continuator of the work of Marx and Lenin, defended and developed the theory in its manifold aspects in the course of nearly two decades of struggle against the Stalinist falsifiers and betrayers, thereby rearming the revolutionary vanguard in preparation for future great struggles. Trotsky’s writings on the permanent revolution are the theoretical mainspring of proletarian revolutionary strategy and are an obligatory study for all who aspire to lead the working-class in the struggle for socialism, whether in the capitalist countries of the West or in the backward colonial countries. The theory of the permanent revolution is the Marxist antithesis of the reactionary theory of socialism in one country which, under Stalin, became the official state doctrine of the Soviet Union. It also stands in diametrical opposition to Stalin’s Menshevik policies which brought the Chinese revolution to disaster.
“The permanent revolution, in the sense which Marx attached to the conception.” wrote Trotsky. “means a revolution which maker no compromise with any form of class rule, which does not stop at the democratic stage, which goes over to socialist measures and to war against the reaction from without, that is, a revolution whose every next stage is anchored in the preceding one and which can only end in the complete liquidation of all class society.” (Leon Trotsky, Introduction to The Permanent Revolution, New York, 1931, p.xxxii.)
Trotsky Explains Theory
What does this mean for the so-called backward countries the colonies and semi-colonies? Trotsky proceeds to explain:
“With regard to the countries with a belated development, especially the colonial and semi-colonial countries, the theory of the permanent revolution signifies that the complete and genuine solution of their tasks, democratic and national emancipation, is conceivable only through the dictatorship of the proletariat as the leader of the subjugated nation, above all of its peasant masses.
“Not only the agrarian, but also the national question, assigns to the peasantry, the overwhelming majority of the population of backward countries, an important place in the democratic revolution. Without an alliance of the proletariat with the peasantry, the tasks of the democratic revolution cannot be solved, nor even seriously posed. But the alliance of these two classes can be realized in no other way than through an intransigent struggle against the influence or the national liberal bourgeoisie.
“The dictatorship of the proletariat which has risen to power as the leader of the democratic revolution is inevitably and very quickly placed before tasks that are bound up with deep inroads into the rights of bourgeois property. The democratic revolution grows over immediately into the socialist and thereby becomes a permanent revolution.
“The conquest of power by the proletariat does not terminate the revolution, but only opens it Socialist construction is conceivable only on the foundation of the class struggle, on a national and international scale. The struggle, under the conditions of an overwhelming predominance of capitalist relationships on the world arena, will inevitably lead to explosions, that is, internally to civil wars, and externally to revolutionary wars. Therein lies the permanent character of the socialist revolution as such, regardless of whether it is a backward country that is involved, which only yesterday accomplished its democratic revolution, or an old capitalist country, which already has behind it a long epoch of democracy and parliamentarism.
“The completion of the socialist revolution within national limits is unthinkable. One of the basic reasons for the crisis in bourgeois society is the fact that the productive forces created by it conflict with the framework of the national state. From this follow, on the one hand, imperialist wars, and on the other, the utopia of the bourgeois United States of Europe. The socialist revolution commences on the national arena, is developed further on the inter-state and finally on the world arena. Thus, the socialist revolution becomes a permanent revolution in a newer and broader sense of the word; it attains completlon only in the final victory of the new society on our entire planet.” (Leon Trotsky, The Permanent Revolution, pp.151-155.)
In the domain of practical politics, these views of the character and class dynamics of the revolution obligate the party of the revolutionary vanguard in the colonial countries to a policy of irreconcilable struggle against imperialism and its native ally, the national bourgeoisie. It must not permit itself to be led into a policy of class conciliation and class collaboration when the national bourgeoisie, for its own class reasons, displays a “left” face to the masses, as did Chiang Kai-shek. It must remain completely independent of all other parties and enter into no blocs or alliances with them. It must not mix its own class banner with the banners of other classes and parties much less kneel before another’s banner. It must keep unswervingly to the single aim of leading the proletariat toward the conquest of power in alliance with the masses of peasants.
During the revolutionary crisis in China, Trotsky strove to imbue the Communist International with these fundamental revolutionary ideas, and through the C.I. to deflect the Chinese Communist Party from the fatal opportunistic course to which it was being held by Moscow. To no avail. Reaction against the Leninist ideas of the October Revolution was mounting. The Chinese revolution went down in disastrous defeat. Trotsky and the Bolshevik-Leninists of the Left Opposition were expelled from the ranks of the Russian party. Trotsky himself was exiled.
This was not, as bourgeois commentators believed, a mere personal defeat for Trotsky. It was a defeat for Bolshevism, a defeat for Marxism and Leninism. This defeat reflected the growth of reaction both within and without the Soviet Union. Thus Trotsky appraised what had occurred. But Trotsky was not only a revolutionary Marxist theoretician. He was also an active revolutionist. For him the defeat of the Chinese revolution, and the triumph of Stalinism in the Soviet Union and the Communist International, called for a Marxist analysis in order to avoid future catastrophes and clear the road for future revolutionary victories. The first need was to understand what had happened, and why, in order to furnish a basis for m grouping and rearming the revolutionary vanguard.
Rearming the Vanguard
Trotsky’s efforts to steer the Chinese Communist Party on to a correct revolutionary path in the great and tragic events of 1925-27 had a great preparatory value for this later work. Several thousand young Chinese Communists had gone to Moscow for training in the Communist University of the Toilers of the East. A large number of them, influenced by Trotsky’s tireless fight to guide the Chinese revolution toward victory, joined the ranks of the Left Opposition. Most of the remainder were silent adherents of Trotsky’s Bolshevik program. On November 7, 1927, the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution, when Stalin was preparing to exile Trotsky from the Soviet Union, the young Chinese revolutionists paraded through Moscow’s Red Square with other foreign Communist delegations. On the banners which they carried were inscribed the slogans deemed appropriate by the Stalinist controlling clique. But as they passed in front of Stalin they flipped the banners over and disclosed a slogan reading: “Long Live Trotsky!” This was not just a personal tribute to Lenin’s greatest comrade-in-arms, but a declaration of solidarity with his ideas. The banner-bearers were arrested and later murdered by Stalin’s counter-revolutionary regime. A few – very few – of the Chinese revolutionists in Moscow at that time escaped the blood-purge and managed to return to China to form the nucleus of the Left Opposition which later became the Chinese section of the Fourth International.
In his first place of exile, in Alms Ata, Trotsky set himself the task of analyzing the revolutionary disaster in China. The Stalinist clique in Moscow sought to make the Chinese Communists the scapegoats and to prevent any real discussion of what had occurred. Trotsky, however, insisted on dragging the whole lamentable story into broad daylight, drawing from it all the necessary lessons, in order to lay bare the mainsprings of the defeat and prepare for future victory. For, as he said, “one unexposed and uncondemned error always leads to another, or prepares the ground for it.” In this essential work he had in mind not only the arrival – even if with some delay – of a new revolutionary situation in China, but the future of the entire colonial revolutionary movement. in Alms Ata he wrote:
“The lessons of the second Chinese revolution are lessons for the entire Comintern, but primarily for all the countries of the Orient. All the arguments presented In defense of the Menshevik line in the Chinese revolution must, if we take them seriously, hold trebly good for India. The imperialist yoke assumes in India, the classic colony, infinitely mere direct and palpable forms than in China. The survivals of feudal and serf relations in India are immeasurably deeper and greater. Nevertheless, or rather precisely for this reason, the methods which applied In China, undermined the revolution, must result in India in even more fatal consequences. The overthrow of Hindu feudalism and of the Anglo-Hindu bureaucracy and British militarism can be accomplished only by a gigantic and an indomitable movement of the popular masses which precisely because of its powerful sweep and irresistibility, its international aims and ties, cannot tolerate any half-way and compromising opportunist measures on the part of the leadership.” (Leon Trotsky, The Third International After Lenin, New York, 1936, p.212.)
From his various places of exile, first in Alms Ata, later in Turkey, France, Norway and Mexico, Trotsky followed with passionate interest the regroupment of the revolutionary vanguard in the colonial countries, first as cadres of the Left Opposition, later as sections of the Fourth International, on the basis of the Bolshevik-Leninist program. It was largely due to his efforts, brought to bear through participation from afar in their discussions, that three separate groups of Chinese Left Oppositionists were united in the year 1931 to form the Communist League of China, now the Chinese section of the Fourth International. And it was on the basis of Trotsky’s teachings on the colonial revolution – above all the lessons which he drew from the abortive Chinese revolution – that sections of the Fourth International later grew up in India, Ceylon and Indo-China and in the semi-colonial countries of Latin America.
Markin comment:
Every year at this time we honor the memory of the great Russian revolutionary leader, Leon Trotsky, a man who not only was able theoretically to articulate the arc of the Russian Revolution of 1917 (the theory of permanent revolution) but personally led the defend of that revolution against world imperialism and its internal Russian White Guard agents. Oh yes, and also wrote a million pro-communist articles, did a little turn at literary criticism, acted in various Soviet official capacities, led the Communist International, led the opposition first in Russia and then internationally to the Stalinist degeneration of that revolution, and created a new revolutionary international (the Fourth International) to rally the demoralized international working class movement in the face of Hitlerite reaction. To speak nothing of hunting, fishing, raising rabbits, collecting cactii and chasing Frida Kahlo around Mexico (oops, on that last one). In short, as I have characterized him before, the closest that this sorry old world has come to producing a complete communist man within the borders of bourgeois society (except that last thing, that skirt-chasing thing, although maybe not). All honor to his memory. Forward to new Octobers!
Usually on this anniversary I place a selection of Trotsky’s writings on various subjects in this space. This year, having found a site that has material related to his family life, the effect of his murder on that family, and other more personal details of his life I am placing that
material here in his honor. The forward to new Octobers still goes, though.
******
Li Fu-jen
Leon Trotsky:Revolutionary Teacher Of the Colonial Peoples
(August 1944)
Li Fu-jen, Revolutionary Teacher Of the Colonial Peoples, Fourth International, August 1944.
Copied form the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
The development of a Marxist program and strategy for the colonial revolution belongs exclusively to our epoch – the epoch of wars and revolutions leading to the overthrow of capitalism and the establishment of a socialist society. It was Lenin who first outlined this program and strategy. But its detailed unfoldment and its first concrete applications were the work of Leon Trotsky, Lenin’s great co-worker. Trotsky’s writing on the problems of the colonial revolution, many of which still await publication, would fill numerous volumes. They form an integral and indispensable part of the program and strategy of the world socialist revolution and rank with the greatest of Trotsky’s immense contributions to the development of Marxist theory and revolutionary socialist practice.
In a preface to the Afrikaans edition of the Communist Manifesto, first published by Marx and Engels in 1848, Trotsky observed that this founding document of the international socialist movement contained no reference to the struggle of colonial and semi-colonial countries for national independence. This was due, he pointed out, to the fact that the founders of scientific socialism considered the socialist revolution in Europe to be, at most, a few years distant. The destruction of capitalism in Europe would “automatically” bring liberation to the oppressed peoples. However, history did not adhere to this optimistic time table. Not only did the European proletariat fail to destroy capitalism in its classic stronghold, but capitalism penetrated ever more deeply into the backward colonial countries, leading in time to the creation of powerful national liberation movements. Here was a new and mighty revolutionary factor. Its emergence set up an objective need for a colonial revolutionary program and strategy.
If in the period of the progressive upswing of capitalism the seizure of colonies was essential to enable the discharge by the bourgeoisie of what Marx described as their special historic mission, namely, “the establishment of the world market, at any rate in its main outlines and of a production upon this basis” (Karl Marx, letter to Engels, Oct. 8, 1858) – then today, in the era of the decline and decay of capitalist economy, retention of colonies, with the opportunity to plunder their natural riches and exploit their inhabitants, has become a vital condition of the very survival of capitalism on a world scale.
Revolutionary Internationalism
It is this profound and demonstrable truth which furnishes the basis of the reciprocal inter-relationship of the socialist movement of the proletariat in the advanced capitalist countries and the national liberation movement in the colonies and semicolonies. These latter countries embrace more than half of the world’s population. The liberation of their inhabitants is as important for the working-class as their continued enslavement is for the imperialist bourgeoisie. For Trotsky, this was the point of departure in the work of creating a colonial revolutionary strategy. It was the internationalist axis around which he always and unfailingly built. “The Communists,” declared the Manifesto of 1848, “everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things.” To which Trotsky added:
“The movement of the colored races against their imperialist oppressors is one of the most important and powerful movements against the existing order and therefore calls for complete, unconditional and unlimited support on the part of the proletariat of the white race.” (Leon Trotsky, 90 Years of the Communist Manifesto, New International, Feb. 1938.)
National liberation movements in the colonies and semicolonies unfolded after the first imperialist world war and were the immediate product of conditions created by the war.
Growth of the Working Class
Until the end of the nineteenth century, imperialist exploitation bore almost exclusively the character of outright robbery and spoliation. Economic development of colonial areas was confined to such measures as were necessary to aid in the extraction of raw materials and the marketing of finished commodities produced in the capitalist countries of the West. It was British commercial capital, for example, which first penetrated India. Such industrial development as took place was incidental to the central aim of commercial exploitation. Britain’s capitalists built cotton mills in Bombay only when it was discovered to be cheaper to process Indian-grown cotton on the spot, with cheap Indian labor, than to ship it to Lancashire for spinning and weaving, especially since a large part of the finished products was destined for sale in India and nearby countries. In line with the same policy, British capitalists erected cotton mills in Shanghai to handle the Chinese cotton crop as well as part of the Indian crop.
The most important political consequence of this incidental industrial development was the appearance in these vast backward lands of an industrial proletariat, pitted against the imperialist exploiters. Whereas foreign commercial capital had merely raised up an embryonic native or national bourgeoisie as agents of imperialism (the compradores), the foreign industrial capital which followed produced an industrial working-class which had a single, undisguised interest in relation to the imperialists – uncompromising struggle against them!
During the first world war, when the economic pressure of the imperialists was relaxed because of preoccupation with the military struggle in Europe, the industrial development of the big colonial lands took on an accelerated pace. The native compradores and some of the big native landowners entered the industrial field, creating enterprises in competition with those of the imperialists. Thus the “national” bourgeoisie came to flower. The industrial proletariat grew correspondingly. It was these developments which set the class pattern for the great revolutionary upheavals in the colonial countries in the decade after the war, above all the abortive
Chinese revolution of 1925-27.
Class relations are decisive for revolutionary Marxists in determining the character and perspectives of revolutionary movements and the political strategy necessary to bring them to fruition. The class criterion is as mandatory for the colonial countries as it is for the capitalist metropoli, Trotsky, following Marx and Lenin, insisted upon this criterion in opposition to Stalin and all the other revisionist opponents and betrayers of socialism It runs like a red thread through his voluminous speeches and writings on the problems of the colonial revolution. Most of these speeches and writings were concerned with China and the Chinese revolution. In the class relations of China are refracted the class relations of the colonies in general. The essence of Trotsky’s thought on China will therefore furnish the key to revolutionary Marxist policy in the entire colonial question.
Character of the Revolution
“In its immediate aims,” Trotsky wrote in 1938, “the incompleted Chinese Revolution is ‘bourgeois.’ This term, however, which is used as a mere echo of the bourgeois revolutions of the past actually helps us very little. Lest the historical analogy turn into a trap for the mind, it is necessary to check it in the light of a concrete sociological analysis. What are the classes which are struggling in China? What are the interrelationships of these classes? How, and in what direction, me these relations being transformed? What are the objective tasks of the Chinese Revolution, i.e.. those tasks dictated by the course of development? On the shoulders of which classes rests the solution of these tasks?
“Colonial and semi-colonial – and therefore backward – countries, which embrace by far the greater part of mankind, differ extraordinarily from one another in their degree of backwardness, representing an historical ladder reaching from nomadry, and even cannibalism, up to the most modern industrial culture. The combination of extremes in one degree or another characterizes all of the backward countries. However, the hierarchy of backwardness, if one may employ such an expression, is determined by the specific weight of the elements of barbarism and culture in the life of each colonial country. Equatorial Africa lags far behind Algeria, Paraguay behind Mexico, Abyssinia, behind India or China. With their common economic dependence upon the imperialist metropoli, their political dependence bears in some instances the character of open colonial slavery (India, Equatorial Africa), while in others it is concealed by the fiction of state independence (China, Latin America).
“In agrarian relations backwardness finds its most organic and cruel expression. Not one of these countries has carried it democratic revolution through to any real extent. Half-way agrarian reforms are absorbed by semi-serf relations, and these me inescapably reproduced in the soil of poverty and oppression. Agrarian barbarism goes hand in hand with the absence of roads, with the isolation of provinces, with ‘medieval’ particularism, and absence of national consciousness. The purging of social relations of the remnants of ancient and the encrustations of modern feudalism is the most important task in all these countries.
The National Bourgeoisie
“The achievement of the agrarian revolution is unthinkable, however, with the preservation of dependence upon foreign imperialism, which with one hand implants capitalist relations while supporting and recreating with the other all the forms of slavery and serfdom. The struggle for the democratisation of social relations and the creation of a national state thus uninterruptedly passes into an open uprising against foreign domination.
“Historical backwardness does not imply a simple reproduction or the development of advanced countries, England or France, with a delay of one, two or three centuries. It engenders an entirely new ‘combined’ social formation in which the latest conquests of capitalist technique and structure root themselves into relations of feudal or pre-feudal barbarism, transforming and subjecting them and creating a peculiar relation of classes.
“Not a single one of the tasks of the ‘bourgeois’ revolution can be solved in these backward countries under the leadership of the ‘national’ bourgeoisie, because the latter emerges at once with foreign support as a class alien or hostile to the people. Every stage in its development binds it only the more closely to foreign finance capital of which it is essentially the agency. The petty bourgeoisie of the colonies, that of handicraft and trade, is the first to fall victim in the unequal struggle with foreign capital, declining into economic insignificance, becoming declassed and pauperized. It cannot even conceive of playing an independent political role. The peasantry, the largest numerically and the most atomized, backward, and oppressed class, is capable of local uprisings and partisan warfare, but requires the leadership of a more advanced and centralized class in order for this struggle to be elevated to an all-national level. The task of such leadership falls in the nature of things upon the colonial proletariat, which, from its very first steps stands opposed not only to the foreign but also to it own national bourgeoisie” (From the Introduction by Leon Trotsky to Harold R. Isaacs’ The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution, London, 1938.)
These views concerning the peculiarity of class relations and, consequently, the special character of “bourgeois-democratic” revolutions in historically belated countries do not rest as Trotsky proceeded to point out, on theoretical analysis alone. They had been submitted to a “grandiose historical test” in the Russian revolutions of 1905 and February and October, 1917. These three revolutions proved beyond all question the incapacity of the national bourgeoisie in a backward country to solve the tasks of the democratic revolution. Hence the need to orient the proletariat toward the seizure of power. Lenin put the matter thus:
“Our revolution is a bourgeois revolution, the workers must support the bourgeoisie – say the worthless politicians from the camp of the liquidators. Our revolution is a bourgeois revolution, say we who are Marxists. The workers must open the eyes of the people to the fraud of the bourgeois politicians, teach them not to place trust in promises and to rely on their OWN forces, on their OWN organization, on their OWN unity and on their OWN weapons alone.” (Lenin, Works, Vol.XIV, Part 1, p.11.)
The Chinese Catastrophe
In the case of Czarist Russia the Bolshevik theory of the hegemony of the proletariat in the revolution received positive vindication in the victorious October overturn. The Russian workers, allied with the lower layers of the peasantry, and led by the Bolshevik Party, overthrew both Czarism and capitalism. The tasks of the democratic revolution were solved through the dictatorship of the proletariat, which then proceeded to socialist tasks.
In China, on the contrary, the theory of proletarian hegemony, the very core of Bolshevik policy, received negative confirmation in a monstrous revolutionary catastrophe. Stalin and Bukharin, the then theoreticians of the Communist International, chopped the historic process into separate, independent stages in accordance with a lifeless scheme which decreed that only the “democratic” revolution was on the order of the day and that consequently the leadership of the revolution belonged and could only belong to the bourgeoisie. The formula of the “democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and peasantry,” which Lenin had discarded in 1917 in favor of the proletarian dictatorship, was revived and expanded into the infamous “bloc of four classes,” prototype of the so-called Popular Fronts of later years. In this bloc – in reality a bloc of party tops and nothing else – the right to represent the peasantry was given to the party of the national bourgeoisie, the Kuomintang. The Communist Party, the party of the proletariat, gave up its political independence and entered the Kuomintang. The workers were thereby subordinated to the political control of the national bourgeoisie. And this criminal break with proletarian class policy, this disregard of the plain lessons of Russian revolutionary history, this rejection of the still fresh teachings of Lenin, was palmed off on the young and inexperienced Chinese Communist Party as – Bolshevism!
In order to justify this treacherous policy of class collaboration, Stalin-Bukharin adduced the fact of imperialist oppression which supposedly impelled “all the progressive forces in the country” toward an alliance against imperialism. Thus the national bourgeoisie was invested with a progressive role, that of a fighter against imperialism for national liberation. But this, as Trotsky pointed out, “was precisely in its day the argument of the Russian Mensheviks, with the difference that in their case the place of imperialism was occupied by Czarism.”
Bourgeois Counter-Revolution
As we have already seen, the national bourgeoisie is incapable of conducting a progressive fight, a fight to the end, to realize the aims of the democratic revolution, foremost of which, in the colonial countries, is the destruction of imperialist domination. This incapacity has a dual basis: 1. The close ties of the bourgeoisie with the imperialists and the elements of rural reaction; 2. Fear of mobilizing the masses, who, in the high tide of the struggle must inevitably pass over to the fight for the destruction of bourgeois property. But when the masses rise against imperialism as they did in China in 1925-27, the bourgeoisie endeavors to take charge of the movement and to use it to extract concessions from the imperialists. It then stamps upon the revolutionary masses and drives them back to their old slavery. Such, in reality, is the character of the “democratic” revolution under bourgeois leadership.
Nevertheless, insisted Stalin-Bukharin, Chiang Kai-shek (the leader of the Chinese national bourgeoisie) were conducting a struggle against imperialism. And so it really appeared to the superficial minds in the Kremlin. Actually Chiang was engaged in a limited struggle against certain militarists who were the agents of a single imperialist power – Britain – in the hope merely of forcing concessions from the imperialist overlords of the country. This is not the same thing as a principled all-out struggle to the finish against the entire system of imperialist domination. Today Chiang Kai-shek conducts a fight against Japanese imperialism, and in the process passes into the service of Anglo-American imperialism, thus preparing a new slavery for the Chinese nation. The alleged anti-imperialist role of the national bourgeoisie was sharply characterized by Trotsky in words which he sought to burn into the consciousness of the revolutionary vanguard:
“The so-called ‘national’ bourgeoisie tolerates all forms of national degradation so long as it can hope to maintain its own privileged existence. But at the moment when foreign capital sets out to assume undivided domination of the entire wealth of the country, the colonial bourgeoisie is forced to remind itself of its ‘national’ obligations. Under pressure of the masses it may even find itself plunged into a war. But this will be a war waged against one of the imperialist powers, the one least amenable to negotiations, with the hope of passing into the service of some other, more magnanimous power. Chiang Kai-shek struggles against the Japanese violators only within the limits indicated to him by his British or American patrons. Only that class which has nothing to lose but its chains can conduct to the very end the war against imperialism for national emancipation.” (From the Introduction by Leon Trotsky to Harold R. Isaacs’ The Tragedy of the Chinese Revolution.)
The Lesson of China
According to Stalin-Bukharin, the policy of the bloc of four classes was to lead to completion of the democratic revolution in China and thus open the road to the socialist dictatorship of the proletariat. What happened is a matter of history. Chiang Kai-shek, instead of leading a “democratic” revolution, emerged as the leader of a triumphant counter-revolution, The shaken imperialists recovered all their positions. The agrarian problem remained unsolved. What does all this mean for future revolutionary policy?
It means – and this is the most vital part of the lesson which Trotsky taught to the new revolutionary cadres – that between the bourgeois-military dictatorship of (Chiang Kai-shek and the dictatorship of the proletariat there can be no intermediate “democratic” regime. It means that if, in the high tide of the coming colonial revolutions, the proletarian vanguard party should seek to bring about the establishment of such a regime, instead of orienting the workers toward the seizure of power and the creation of a proletarian dictatorship, only fresh revolutionary catastrophes can result.
Almost as if answering in advance the false and treacherous policies of the Stalinist betrayers of the Chinese revolution-particularly the stupid Menshevik theory of stages – Lenin in his famous April Theses, written in April 1917 to rearm the Bolshevik Party and prepare its revolutionary triumph, had proclaimed the struggle for the dictatorship of the proletariat to be the sole means of carrying through the agrarian revolution to the end and of winning freedom for oppressed peoples. But the regime of proletarian dictatorship could not, because of its very nature, limit itself to bourgeois-democratic tasks within the framework of bourgeois property relations. The rule of the proletariat automatically places the socialist revolution – destruction of bourgeois property relations and the liquidation of class rule – on the order of the day. The socialist revolution is thus uninterruptedly linked to the democratic revolution and is an organic outgrowth of it.
Theory of Permanent Revolution
“Such was (Trotsky observes), in broad outline, the essence of the conception of the permanent (uninterrupted) revolution. It was precisely this conception that guaranteed the victory of the proletariat in October.” (Idem.) In China, it was the violation of this Bolshevik conception, or, more accurately, its outright rejection, that guaranteed the victory of Chiang Kai-shek and the bourgeois counter-revolution.
The theory of permanent revolution was originated by Marx. Lenin made of it a powerful lever of revolutionary victory. Trotsky, the authentic continuator of the work of Marx and Lenin, defended and developed the theory in its manifold aspects in the course of nearly two decades of struggle against the Stalinist falsifiers and betrayers, thereby rearming the revolutionary vanguard in preparation for future great struggles. Trotsky’s writings on the permanent revolution are the theoretical mainspring of proletarian revolutionary strategy and are an obligatory study for all who aspire to lead the working-class in the struggle for socialism, whether in the capitalist countries of the West or in the backward colonial countries. The theory of the permanent revolution is the Marxist antithesis of the reactionary theory of socialism in one country which, under Stalin, became the official state doctrine of the Soviet Union. It also stands in diametrical opposition to Stalin’s Menshevik policies which brought the Chinese revolution to disaster.
“The permanent revolution, in the sense which Marx attached to the conception.” wrote Trotsky. “means a revolution which maker no compromise with any form of class rule, which does not stop at the democratic stage, which goes over to socialist measures and to war against the reaction from without, that is, a revolution whose every next stage is anchored in the preceding one and which can only end in the complete liquidation of all class society.” (Leon Trotsky, Introduction to The Permanent Revolution, New York, 1931, p.xxxii.)
Trotsky Explains Theory
What does this mean for the so-called backward countries the colonies and semi-colonies? Trotsky proceeds to explain:
“With regard to the countries with a belated development, especially the colonial and semi-colonial countries, the theory of the permanent revolution signifies that the complete and genuine solution of their tasks, democratic and national emancipation, is conceivable only through the dictatorship of the proletariat as the leader of the subjugated nation, above all of its peasant masses.
“Not only the agrarian, but also the national question, assigns to the peasantry, the overwhelming majority of the population of backward countries, an important place in the democratic revolution. Without an alliance of the proletariat with the peasantry, the tasks of the democratic revolution cannot be solved, nor even seriously posed. But the alliance of these two classes can be realized in no other way than through an intransigent struggle against the influence or the national liberal bourgeoisie.
“The dictatorship of the proletariat which has risen to power as the leader of the democratic revolution is inevitably and very quickly placed before tasks that are bound up with deep inroads into the rights of bourgeois property. The democratic revolution grows over immediately into the socialist and thereby becomes a permanent revolution.
“The conquest of power by the proletariat does not terminate the revolution, but only opens it Socialist construction is conceivable only on the foundation of the class struggle, on a national and international scale. The struggle, under the conditions of an overwhelming predominance of capitalist relationships on the world arena, will inevitably lead to explosions, that is, internally to civil wars, and externally to revolutionary wars. Therein lies the permanent character of the socialist revolution as such, regardless of whether it is a backward country that is involved, which only yesterday accomplished its democratic revolution, or an old capitalist country, which already has behind it a long epoch of democracy and parliamentarism.
“The completion of the socialist revolution within national limits is unthinkable. One of the basic reasons for the crisis in bourgeois society is the fact that the productive forces created by it conflict with the framework of the national state. From this follow, on the one hand, imperialist wars, and on the other, the utopia of the bourgeois United States of Europe. The socialist revolution commences on the national arena, is developed further on the inter-state and finally on the world arena. Thus, the socialist revolution becomes a permanent revolution in a newer and broader sense of the word; it attains completlon only in the final victory of the new society on our entire planet.” (Leon Trotsky, The Permanent Revolution, pp.151-155.)
In the domain of practical politics, these views of the character and class dynamics of the revolution obligate the party of the revolutionary vanguard in the colonial countries to a policy of irreconcilable struggle against imperialism and its native ally, the national bourgeoisie. It must not permit itself to be led into a policy of class conciliation and class collaboration when the national bourgeoisie, for its own class reasons, displays a “left” face to the masses, as did Chiang Kai-shek. It must remain completely independent of all other parties and enter into no blocs or alliances with them. It must not mix its own class banner with the banners of other classes and parties much less kneel before another’s banner. It must keep unswervingly to the single aim of leading the proletariat toward the conquest of power in alliance with the masses of peasants.
During the revolutionary crisis in China, Trotsky strove to imbue the Communist International with these fundamental revolutionary ideas, and through the C.I. to deflect the Chinese Communist Party from the fatal opportunistic course to which it was being held by Moscow. To no avail. Reaction against the Leninist ideas of the October Revolution was mounting. The Chinese revolution went down in disastrous defeat. Trotsky and the Bolshevik-Leninists of the Left Opposition were expelled from the ranks of the Russian party. Trotsky himself was exiled.
This was not, as bourgeois commentators believed, a mere personal defeat for Trotsky. It was a defeat for Bolshevism, a defeat for Marxism and Leninism. This defeat reflected the growth of reaction both within and without the Soviet Union. Thus Trotsky appraised what had occurred. But Trotsky was not only a revolutionary Marxist theoretician. He was also an active revolutionist. For him the defeat of the Chinese revolution, and the triumph of Stalinism in the Soviet Union and the Communist International, called for a Marxist analysis in order to avoid future catastrophes and clear the road for future revolutionary victories. The first need was to understand what had happened, and why, in order to furnish a basis for m grouping and rearming the revolutionary vanguard.
Rearming the Vanguard
Trotsky’s efforts to steer the Chinese Communist Party on to a correct revolutionary path in the great and tragic events of 1925-27 had a great preparatory value for this later work. Several thousand young Chinese Communists had gone to Moscow for training in the Communist University of the Toilers of the East. A large number of them, influenced by Trotsky’s tireless fight to guide the Chinese revolution toward victory, joined the ranks of the Left Opposition. Most of the remainder were silent adherents of Trotsky’s Bolshevik program. On November 7, 1927, the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution, when Stalin was preparing to exile Trotsky from the Soviet Union, the young Chinese revolutionists paraded through Moscow’s Red Square with other foreign Communist delegations. On the banners which they carried were inscribed the slogans deemed appropriate by the Stalinist controlling clique. But as they passed in front of Stalin they flipped the banners over and disclosed a slogan reading: “Long Live Trotsky!” This was not just a personal tribute to Lenin’s greatest comrade-in-arms, but a declaration of solidarity with his ideas. The banner-bearers were arrested and later murdered by Stalin’s counter-revolutionary regime. A few – very few – of the Chinese revolutionists in Moscow at that time escaped the blood-purge and managed to return to China to form the nucleus of the Left Opposition which later became the Chinese section of the Fourth International.
In his first place of exile, in Alms Ata, Trotsky set himself the task of analyzing the revolutionary disaster in China. The Stalinist clique in Moscow sought to make the Chinese Communists the scapegoats and to prevent any real discussion of what had occurred. Trotsky, however, insisted on dragging the whole lamentable story into broad daylight, drawing from it all the necessary lessons, in order to lay bare the mainsprings of the defeat and prepare for future victory. For, as he said, “one unexposed and uncondemned error always leads to another, or prepares the ground for it.” In this essential work he had in mind not only the arrival – even if with some delay – of a new revolutionary situation in China, but the future of the entire colonial revolutionary movement. in Alms Ata he wrote:
“The lessons of the second Chinese revolution are lessons for the entire Comintern, but primarily for all the countries of the Orient. All the arguments presented In defense of the Menshevik line in the Chinese revolution must, if we take them seriously, hold trebly good for India. The imperialist yoke assumes in India, the classic colony, infinitely mere direct and palpable forms than in China. The survivals of feudal and serf relations in India are immeasurably deeper and greater. Nevertheless, or rather precisely for this reason, the methods which applied In China, undermined the revolution, must result in India in even more fatal consequences. The overthrow of Hindu feudalism and of the Anglo-Hindu bureaucracy and British militarism can be accomplished only by a gigantic and an indomitable movement of the popular masses which precisely because of its powerful sweep and irresistibility, its international aims and ties, cannot tolerate any half-way and compromising opportunist measures on the part of the leadership.” (Leon Trotsky, The Third International After Lenin, New York, 1936, p.212.)
From his various places of exile, first in Alms Ata, later in Turkey, France, Norway and Mexico, Trotsky followed with passionate interest the regroupment of the revolutionary vanguard in the colonial countries, first as cadres of the Left Opposition, later as sections of the Fourth International, on the basis of the Bolshevik-Leninist program. It was largely due to his efforts, brought to bear through participation from afar in their discussions, that three separate groups of Chinese Left Oppositionists were united in the year 1931 to form the Communist League of China, now the Chinese section of the Fourth International. And it was on the basis of Trotsky’s teachings on the colonial revolution – above all the lessons which he drew from the abortive Chinese revolution – that sections of the Fourth International later grew up in India, Ceylon and Indo-China and in the semi-colonial countries of Latin America.
Growing Up Absurd In The 1950s- Penny’s Brand New Phonograph
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of The Penguins performing their 50s classic, Earth Angel.
CD Review
The Golden Age Of American Rock ‘n’ Roll; Volume One, various artists, Ace Records,
1994
Scene: Prompted by the cover photograph, the memory cover photograph, which grace each CD in this The Golden Age Of American Rock ‘n’ Roll series. The photo on this CD, as might be expected, shows the ubiquitous, highly coveted, then and today, old time LP (and 45’s convertible) record player and the family radio, probably RCA, both weapons in the 1950’s teenage wars to have our own music, and to be able to listen to said music 24/7 without parental interference, or knowledge. Of course, not everybody, teenage everybody, and that’s what counted, including rock dizzy Penny had one or the other and that is the struggle we are to presently witness.
“Good night, Mr. and Mrs. Dodd, the kids were no problem and thanks again for the money.” “Whee,” Penny Parker whispered under her breathe, as she went out the door. Those kids were nothing but monsters, refusing to go to bed unless, and until, they watched Maverick on television, Penny played checkers with Bobby and Billy Dodd (sister Laura was satisfied to be a spectator), and they each (all three on this one) got not one, but two scoops of ice cream before surrendering to Penny’s demands. And all for a lousy seventy-five cents an hour. Those were slave wages, slave wages even for a thirteen year old girl and Penny, Parker proud if not Parker bright, bright yet anyway thought for just a minute to give up this monster-sitting, well, baby-sitting really, up. “No,” she yelled into the Clintondale night, “No way after all I have put up with from those beasts am I giving up my dream record player now, no way.” And that was that.
Penny, Parker bright or proud notwithstanding, was a creature of her times, as we all are more or less. And the times called for every self-respecting teenager, and teenagers were all that counted in Penny’s universe, had his or her own private, up in his or her room, phonograph to play his or her favorite music, rock ‘n’ roll music, naturally. Not some lame Benny Goodman or Doris Day mumble that her parents listened to on the radio downstairs and drove Penny up a wall, maybe up more than one wall. And drove her right out of the Parker door down to Bop Benny’s Record Shop to play the jukebox there when the newest of the new records came out. See, Penny did not have her own record player like every other girl, every other teen-age girl that counted in her class at Clintondale Junior High School. Even Pammy Fuller had one, and Pam’s parents had them practically living on the county farm. But Peter Parker, father Parker, was adamant that he would not pay for anything that was connected with rock ‘n’ roll. Not out of religious principles, or anything like that, but he just hated the sound. Yes, I know, Peter Parker, square, square cubed.
So that left Penny down at Benny’s throwing nickels, dimes, and quarters in that old juke box. Many nickels when Kathy Young’s A Thousand Stars was hot, or when she had a crush, a big crush, on Zack Smith and she “broke the bank,” playing Earth Angel by the Penguins and When We Get Married by The Dreamlovers whenever Zack was in Benny’s and she wanted to draw his attention to her. Or the time when “Foul-Mouth” Phil Jackson dared her to play Eddie My Love by the Teen Queens when he was trying to date her up, or what passed for a date at twelve.
One day her brother, Paul, a year older than Penny but seemingly about a million years wiser saw that she had put at least fifty cents in the box when she was feeling all sentimental about Jimmy Kelly, her ex-beau, or as ex-beau as any thirteen year old girl is allowed to have, and was playing I Love How You Love Me by the Paris Sisters like crazy. He just flat-out told her after dinner that night that it would be a whole lot easier and less expensive to just get her own record player and play up in her room to her heart’s contend. Penny stood there in disbelief, not in disbelief about the idea but that dear old dad would go for it. Well, the long and short of it, was that dear old dad did go for it, with the usual provisos that there would be no loud or late playing. Sure daddy.
And that prospect, that record player of her very own, with her own platters to spin (records, grooved vinyl records to the squares), and no bother, except maybe to invite Jimmy or Zack over bother, is why this night as she walks home she is muttering about wage slavery, the injustices of the world, the teenage world, the only one that counted in case someone might have forgotten, and other communistic sentiments, if anybody had hear her. Penny figured after that night that another twelve hours of drudgery, another nine dollars and she could get that cool one that she saw in the Sears&Roebuck catalogue.
But then Penny, Parker bright just then, looked pensively down at the sidewalk when she realizes that she would have to buy records to feed that record player and that she would have to continue baby-sitting for slave wages forever with Dodd monsters to get all the 45s that she absolutely needed. And then, horror of horrors, what if Jimmy liked Sixteen Candles by the Crests and Zack didn’t but liked Rockin’ Robin by Bobby Day (and he probably would) and she had to buy both records. Well, what’s a girl to do but, Penny, Parker proud just then, thought she would be able to figure it out.
CD Review
The Golden Age Of American Rock ‘n’ Roll; Volume One, various artists, Ace Records,
1994
Scene: Prompted by the cover photograph, the memory cover photograph, which grace each CD in this The Golden Age Of American Rock ‘n’ Roll series. The photo on this CD, as might be expected, shows the ubiquitous, highly coveted, then and today, old time LP (and 45’s convertible) record player and the family radio, probably RCA, both weapons in the 1950’s teenage wars to have our own music, and to be able to listen to said music 24/7 without parental interference, or knowledge. Of course, not everybody, teenage everybody, and that’s what counted, including rock dizzy Penny had one or the other and that is the struggle we are to presently witness.
“Good night, Mr. and Mrs. Dodd, the kids were no problem and thanks again for the money.” “Whee,” Penny Parker whispered under her breathe, as she went out the door. Those kids were nothing but monsters, refusing to go to bed unless, and until, they watched Maverick on television, Penny played checkers with Bobby and Billy Dodd (sister Laura was satisfied to be a spectator), and they each (all three on this one) got not one, but two scoops of ice cream before surrendering to Penny’s demands. And all for a lousy seventy-five cents an hour. Those were slave wages, slave wages even for a thirteen year old girl and Penny, Parker proud if not Parker bright, bright yet anyway thought for just a minute to give up this monster-sitting, well, baby-sitting really, up. “No,” she yelled into the Clintondale night, “No way after all I have put up with from those beasts am I giving up my dream record player now, no way.” And that was that.
Penny, Parker bright or proud notwithstanding, was a creature of her times, as we all are more or less. And the times called for every self-respecting teenager, and teenagers were all that counted in Penny’s universe, had his or her own private, up in his or her room, phonograph to play his or her favorite music, rock ‘n’ roll music, naturally. Not some lame Benny Goodman or Doris Day mumble that her parents listened to on the radio downstairs and drove Penny up a wall, maybe up more than one wall. And drove her right out of the Parker door down to Bop Benny’s Record Shop to play the jukebox there when the newest of the new records came out. See, Penny did not have her own record player like every other girl, every other teen-age girl that counted in her class at Clintondale Junior High School. Even Pammy Fuller had one, and Pam’s parents had them practically living on the county farm. But Peter Parker, father Parker, was adamant that he would not pay for anything that was connected with rock ‘n’ roll. Not out of religious principles, or anything like that, but he just hated the sound. Yes, I know, Peter Parker, square, square cubed.
So that left Penny down at Benny’s throwing nickels, dimes, and quarters in that old juke box. Many nickels when Kathy Young’s A Thousand Stars was hot, or when she had a crush, a big crush, on Zack Smith and she “broke the bank,” playing Earth Angel by the Penguins and When We Get Married by The Dreamlovers whenever Zack was in Benny’s and she wanted to draw his attention to her. Or the time when “Foul-Mouth” Phil Jackson dared her to play Eddie My Love by the Teen Queens when he was trying to date her up, or what passed for a date at twelve.
One day her brother, Paul, a year older than Penny but seemingly about a million years wiser saw that she had put at least fifty cents in the box when she was feeling all sentimental about Jimmy Kelly, her ex-beau, or as ex-beau as any thirteen year old girl is allowed to have, and was playing I Love How You Love Me by the Paris Sisters like crazy. He just flat-out told her after dinner that night that it would be a whole lot easier and less expensive to just get her own record player and play up in her room to her heart’s contend. Penny stood there in disbelief, not in disbelief about the idea but that dear old dad would go for it. Well, the long and short of it, was that dear old dad did go for it, with the usual provisos that there would be no loud or late playing. Sure daddy.
And that prospect, that record player of her very own, with her own platters to spin (records, grooved vinyl records to the squares), and no bother, except maybe to invite Jimmy or Zack over bother, is why this night as she walks home she is muttering about wage slavery, the injustices of the world, the teenage world, the only one that counted in case someone might have forgotten, and other communistic sentiments, if anybody had hear her. Penny figured after that night that another twelve hours of drudgery, another nine dollars and she could get that cool one that she saw in the Sears&Roebuck catalogue.
But then Penny, Parker bright just then, looked pensively down at the sidewalk when she realizes that she would have to buy records to feed that record player and that she would have to continue baby-sitting for slave wages forever with Dodd monsters to get all the 45s that she absolutely needed. And then, horror of horrors, what if Jimmy liked Sixteen Candles by the Crests and Zack didn’t but liked Rockin’ Robin by Bobby Day (and he probably would) and she had to buy both records. Well, what’s a girl to do but, Penny, Parker proud just then, thought she would be able to figure it out.
On The 40th Anniversary Of The Death Of Black Panther George Jackson-From San Quentin To Attica To Pelican Bay- Never Forget!
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the black liberation fighter and Black Panther Party leader, George Jackson.
Bob Dylan- George Jackson Lyrics
I woke up this morning
There were tears in my bed
They killed a man I really loved
Shot him through the head
Lord, Lord, they cut George Jackson down
Lord, Lord, they laid him in the ground
Sent him off to prison
For a seventy dollar robbery
Closed the door behind him
And they threw away the key
Lord, Lord, they cut George Jackson down
Lord, Lord, they laid him in the ground
He wouldn't take shit from no one
He wouldn't bow down or kneel
Authorities, they hated him
Because he was just too real
Lord, Lord, they cut George Jackson down
Lord, Lord, they laid him in the ground
Prison guards, they cursed him
As they watched him from above
But they were frightened of his power
They were scared of his love
Lord, Lord, so they cut George Jackson down
Lord, Lord, they laid him in the ground
Sometimes I think this whole world
Is one big prison yard
Some of us are prisoners
The rest of us are guards
Lord, Lord, they cut George Jackson down
Lord, Lord, they laid him in the ground
Bob Dylan- George Jackson Lyrics
I woke up this morning
There were tears in my bed
They killed a man I really loved
Shot him through the head
Lord, Lord, they cut George Jackson down
Lord, Lord, they laid him in the ground
Sent him off to prison
For a seventy dollar robbery
Closed the door behind him
And they threw away the key
Lord, Lord, they cut George Jackson down
Lord, Lord, they laid him in the ground
He wouldn't take shit from no one
He wouldn't bow down or kneel
Authorities, they hated him
Because he was just too real
Lord, Lord, they cut George Jackson down
Lord, Lord, they laid him in the ground
Prison guards, they cursed him
As they watched him from above
But they were frightened of his power
They were scared of his love
Lord, Lord, so they cut George Jackson down
Lord, Lord, they laid him in the ground
Sometimes I think this whole world
Is one big prison yard
Some of us are prisoners
The rest of us are guards
Lord, Lord, they cut George Jackson down
Lord, Lord, they laid him in the ground
The Struggle For The Labor Party In The United States- American Socialist Workers Party Leader James P.Cannon-Early Years of the American Communist Movement-Origin of the Policy on the Labor Party
Click on the headline to link to a James P. Cannon Internet Archives online copy of Early Years of the American Communist Movement-Origin of the Policy on the Labor Party
Markin comment on this series:
Obviously, for a Marxist, the question of working class political power is central to the possibilities for the main thrust of his or her politics- the quest for that socialist revolution that initiates the socialist reconstruction of society. But working class politics, no less than any other kinds of political expressions has to take an organization form, a disciplined organizational form in the end, but organization nevertheless. In that sense every Marxist worth his or her salt, from individual labor militants to leagues, tendencies, and whatever other formations are out there these days on the left, struggles to built a revolutionary labor party, a Bolshevik-style party.
Glaringly, in the United States there is no such party, nor even a politically independent reformist labor party, as exists in Great Britain. And no, the Democratic Party, imperialist commander-in-chief Obama's Democratic Party is not a labor party. Although plenty of people believe it is an adequate substitute, including some avowed socialists. But they are just flat-out wrong. This series is thus predicated on providing information about, analysis of, and acting as a spur to a close look at the history of the labor party question in America by those who have actually attempted to create one, or at to propagandize for one.
As usual, I will start this series with the work of the International Communist League/Spartacist League/U.S. as I have been mining their archival materials of late. I am most familiar with the history of their work on this question, although on this question the Socialist Workers Party's efforts run a close second, especially in their revolutionary period. Lastly, and most importantly, I am comfortable starting with the ICL/SL efforts on the labor party question since after having reviewed in this space in previous series their G.I. work and youth work (Campus Spartacist and the Revolutionary Marxist Caucus Newsletter inside SDS) I noted that throughout their history they have consistently called for the creation of such a party in the various social arenas in which they have worked. Other organizational and independent efforts, most notably by the Socialist Workers Party and the American Communist Party will follow.
Markin comment on this series:
Obviously, for a Marxist, the question of working class political power is central to the possibilities for the main thrust of his or her politics- the quest for that socialist revolution that initiates the socialist reconstruction of society. But working class politics, no less than any other kinds of political expressions has to take an organization form, a disciplined organizational form in the end, but organization nevertheless. In that sense every Marxist worth his or her salt, from individual labor militants to leagues, tendencies, and whatever other formations are out there these days on the left, struggles to built a revolutionary labor party, a Bolshevik-style party.
Glaringly, in the United States there is no such party, nor even a politically independent reformist labor party, as exists in Great Britain. And no, the Democratic Party, imperialist commander-in-chief Obama's Democratic Party is not a labor party. Although plenty of people believe it is an adequate substitute, including some avowed socialists. But they are just flat-out wrong. This series is thus predicated on providing information about, analysis of, and acting as a spur to a close look at the history of the labor party question in America by those who have actually attempted to create one, or at to propagandize for one.
As usual, I will start this series with the work of the International Communist League/Spartacist League/U.S. as I have been mining their archival materials of late. I am most familiar with the history of their work on this question, although on this question the Socialist Workers Party's efforts run a close second, especially in their revolutionary period. Lastly, and most importantly, I am comfortable starting with the ICL/SL efforts on the labor party question since after having reviewed in this space in previous series their G.I. work and youth work (Campus Spartacist and the Revolutionary Marxist Caucus Newsletter inside SDS) I noted that throughout their history they have consistently called for the creation of such a party in the various social arenas in which they have worked. Other organizational and independent efforts, most notably by the Socialist Workers Party and the American Communist Party will follow.
Verizon Workers Head Back To Work- No Contract Victory In Sight
Click on the headline to link to a Boston Globearticle detailing the return ot work of the Verizon strikers.
Markin comment:
The Verizon strikers are heading back to work without a new contract. From the outside it is sometimes hard to see what negotiations will produce without a picket line to back them up, if anything. A workers’ strike, short of the struggle for state power, is a moment in the class struggle and a union contract is an “armed truce” in that struggle. Not all strikes, obviously, are successful, or produce the hope for results but returning back to work without a better contract on this one does not make sense. First, the picket lines were holding, and being held militantly in many cases. Secondly Verizon acknowledged that the strike was hurting their customer base. In short the strike was hurting the company’s basic concern-profits. This did not seem like a time to walk off the lines. Period.
Markin comment:
The Verizon strikers are heading back to work without a new contract. From the outside it is sometimes hard to see what negotiations will produce without a picket line to back them up, if anything. A workers’ strike, short of the struggle for state power, is a moment in the class struggle and a union contract is an “armed truce” in that struggle. Not all strikes, obviously, are successful, or produce the hope for results but returning back to work without a better contract on this one does not make sense. First, the picket lines were holding, and being held militantly in many cases. Secondly Verizon acknowledged that the strike was hurting their customer base. In short the strike was hurting the company’s basic concern-profits. This did not seem like a time to walk off the lines. Period.
Monday, August 22, 2011
From The Partisan Defense Committee-New Move to Reinstate Death Sentence for Mumia-Free Mumia Now! Abolish the Racist Death Penalty!
Workers Vanguard No. 984
5 August 2011
Free Mumia Now! Abolish the Racist Death Penalty!
New Move to Reinstate Death Sentence for Mumia
The Philadelphia district attorney’s office recently petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to reinstate the death sentence for black political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal. The D.A. is seeking to reverse an April 26 ruling by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, which for the second time upheld a 2001 decision by District Court judge William Yohn overturning the sentence on the grounds of faulty jury instructions (see “Federal Appeals Court Orders New Sentencing Hearing,” WV No. 980, 13 May). Yohn simultaneously upheld every aspect of the frame-up conviction that sent Mumia—a former Black Panther Party spokesman and later a MOVE supporter and award-winning journalist—to death row on false charges of killing Philly police officer Daniel Faulkner in 1981. From top to bottom, the courts have repeatedly refused to hear the overwhelming evidence of Mumia’s innocence, including Arnold Beverly’s confession that he was Faulkner’s killer.
The D.A.’s petition reviles the Third Circuit for obstructing the legal lynching not just of Mumia but also of many others, largely black and poor, railroaded to death row “up South” in Philadelphia. The brief rants that the 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, signed by Bill Clinton to speed up the pace of executions, “will remain ineffective in the Third Circuit until the circuit court enforces it.” The prosecution calls on the Supreme Court to order the Third Circuit to apply the 1996 law to foreclose virtually any federal habeas corpus challenge to Pennsylvania death sentences. Where the Supreme Court stands on ruthless application of the death penalty was seen on March 28, when it turned down the appeal of Troy Davis, a black inmate in Georgia, despite overwhelming evidence of his innocence.
In its own way, the D.A.’s brief highlights that Mumia’s case is crucial in the struggle to abolish the death penalty. The ultimate sanction wielded by the capitalist rulers in their repression of workers and minorities, the death penalty is a barbaric legacy of medieval torture. In the U.S., capital punishment can be traced directly back to chattel slavery, when black people could be put to death for any act deemed “insolent” or a challenge to slaveholders. Since then, the death penalty has gone hand in hand with KKK lynchings and summary executions carried out by cops on the street. Over 3,200 sit on death rows across the U.S., 54 percent of them black or Latino.
The cops, prosecutors, lawmakers and their mouthpieces in the bourgeois press will not rest until Mumia is strapped onto an execution gurney. Mumia’s fight for life and freedom is not for him alone. By executing this eloquent spokesman for the oppressed, the forces of the state want to send a message to all who would fight against the exploitation, oppression and imperialist war inherent in the decaying capitalist system that they, too, are in the state’s gun sights. The only “alternative” to execution held out by the courts is that Mumia rot in prison for the rest of his life, without the possibility of parole. As the Spartacist League and Partisan Defense Committee have always insisted, fighters for Mumia’s freedom must place no reliance on the racist capitalist courts but must look instead to link Mumia’s cause to the class struggles of the multiracial proletariat. To put a final halt to the grisly workings of the capitalist rulers’ machinery of death will take nothing less than proletarian socialist revolution.
5 August 2011
Free Mumia Now! Abolish the Racist Death Penalty!
New Move to Reinstate Death Sentence for Mumia
The Philadelphia district attorney’s office recently petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to reinstate the death sentence for black political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal. The D.A. is seeking to reverse an April 26 ruling by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, which for the second time upheld a 2001 decision by District Court judge William Yohn overturning the sentence on the grounds of faulty jury instructions (see “Federal Appeals Court Orders New Sentencing Hearing,” WV No. 980, 13 May). Yohn simultaneously upheld every aspect of the frame-up conviction that sent Mumia—a former Black Panther Party spokesman and later a MOVE supporter and award-winning journalist—to death row on false charges of killing Philly police officer Daniel Faulkner in 1981. From top to bottom, the courts have repeatedly refused to hear the overwhelming evidence of Mumia’s innocence, including Arnold Beverly’s confession that he was Faulkner’s killer.
The D.A.’s petition reviles the Third Circuit for obstructing the legal lynching not just of Mumia but also of many others, largely black and poor, railroaded to death row “up South” in Philadelphia. The brief rants that the 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, signed by Bill Clinton to speed up the pace of executions, “will remain ineffective in the Third Circuit until the circuit court enforces it.” The prosecution calls on the Supreme Court to order the Third Circuit to apply the 1996 law to foreclose virtually any federal habeas corpus challenge to Pennsylvania death sentences. Where the Supreme Court stands on ruthless application of the death penalty was seen on March 28, when it turned down the appeal of Troy Davis, a black inmate in Georgia, despite overwhelming evidence of his innocence.
In its own way, the D.A.’s brief highlights that Mumia’s case is crucial in the struggle to abolish the death penalty. The ultimate sanction wielded by the capitalist rulers in their repression of workers and minorities, the death penalty is a barbaric legacy of medieval torture. In the U.S., capital punishment can be traced directly back to chattel slavery, when black people could be put to death for any act deemed “insolent” or a challenge to slaveholders. Since then, the death penalty has gone hand in hand with KKK lynchings and summary executions carried out by cops on the street. Over 3,200 sit on death rows across the U.S., 54 percent of them black or Latino.
The cops, prosecutors, lawmakers and their mouthpieces in the bourgeois press will not rest until Mumia is strapped onto an execution gurney. Mumia’s fight for life and freedom is not for him alone. By executing this eloquent spokesman for the oppressed, the forces of the state want to send a message to all who would fight against the exploitation, oppression and imperialist war inherent in the decaying capitalist system that they, too, are in the state’s gun sights. The only “alternative” to execution held out by the courts is that Mumia rot in prison for the rest of his life, without the possibility of parole. As the Spartacist League and Partisan Defense Committee have always insisted, fighters for Mumia’s freedom must place no reliance on the racist capitalist courts but must look instead to link Mumia’s cause to the class struggles of the multiracial proletariat. To put a final halt to the grisly workings of the capitalist rulers’ machinery of death will take nothing less than proletarian socialist revolution.
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