Click on the headline to link to updates from the Occupy Boston website. Occupy Boston started at 6:00 PM, September 30, 2011. I will post important updates as they appear on that site.
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Markin comment November 18, 2011:
Josh Breslin didn’t know what to expect this time as the streamlined subway car that he was riding was approaching the South Station stop on the MBTA Red Line in Boston. He half-expected to see some multi-colored hand-made poster proclaiming this stop as “Occupy Boston,” something with stenciled and silhouetted clenched fist, or something like that, proclaiming this newly sacred ground, this fetid, dank subway stop, in the name of the people. Hell, just like back in the old days, the old 1960s times of blessed memory, when no wall, no public wall anyway, was safe from revolutionary pronouncements, or off-hand midnight-crafted graffiti. He had certainly seen stranger signs plastered around the Occupy encampment the last few times that he had come over from his home in Cambridge on the other side of the river. Stuff from Thoreau and Gandhi, naturally, but also odd-ball wisps of wisdom about being kind, not being greedy, corporate greedy or otherwise, not being sexist, racist, homophobic and the whole litany of politically acceptable Don’ts scripted out since those ‘60s that seemed almost self-explanatory and in not need of proclamation in this microscopic social experiment, this exemplar of the “new world order,” leftist-style.
Ya, these times definitely call for some outlandish statement in bright day-glo colors something, he mused amused, to confuse the touristas who were making the Occupy site a “must see” stop on their vacation itineraries. Something to throw them off the scent when they asked their infernal questions- “What are the kids up to, why all the tents, why all the black flags (really not many but that black flag of anarchy, like the red one of communism, spooked people, made their deepest fears surface, and in the old days rightly so),” and on and on. Like he, Joshua Breslin, known far and wide back in the day under the moniker, Prince of Love, a magical mystery tour merry prankster, music-and-drugs-are- the-revolution, west coast communal living madman knew what was on the kids minds today, except they were getting the short straw in the game of who gets what in the social game.
Just then he reflected, flash-back reflected, that a lot of what he had seen and heard on those other occasions when he had crossed the river of late, maybe four or five by now, echoed some long ago, half-forgotten signs and totems from the times when he was searching for the blue-pink great American West night back in the late 1960s and had wound up in People’s Park in Berkeley out in wayward California. And had been wounded and tear-gassed, Prince of Love renown notwithstanding, for his efforts when things got twisted and the deal went down. Yes, this was just exactly what it was like and now he had a “theme” for the notes that he was feeling pressed to take on this trip now that he had a “feel” for the situation. Although this time, unlike back then, he was not expecting, not expecting in his on-coming dotage, to be wounded or tear-gassed. He frankly admitted to himself after his last visit to the camp site a few days before that he was not up those rigors now, those shake-them-off-and-come-back-swinging-youth- spunks that he had had in great quantity as he headed barrel-assing out west from his old hometown, Olde Saco up Maine way.
The train then stopped jarring him in mid-thought, opened its air-pressurized doors, and its sullen passengers decamped for seven winds places. No, Josh noticed, no sign at the subway level anyway that occupyitis had expanded to the cavernous underground. On surfacing in the Dewey Square sunlight though, another mercifully warm late October day starting to break through, his ears were immediately accosted by the ranting, there was no other name for it, of “Syllable Slim,” a name that he had coined for this vagabond prince standing kitty-corner in front of him when he first heard him holding forth on the perfidies of the Democrats, democrats, Republicans, republicans and anyone else who held the whiff of power, or wanted it, at Park Street Station years ago. Now Slim was the “king” of the Dewey Square day and night having moved either uptown or downtown, Josh was not quite sure of the geographic relationship between the two subway stops, with a new audience to ignore, or try to ignore, him. What was also perfectly clear was, uptown or downtown, Slim would be hard-pressed to describe what was going on at his Occupy kingdom. His spiel did not depend on such trivials The city, any city with size, produces its fair share of drifters, grifters, and midnight shifters and they, like lemmings to the sea, have heard of the glad tidings emitting from Dewey Square (read: food, shelter, and no hassles-the famous “three squares and a cot” from “on-the-road” jungle camp lore) and have come forth. And Slim is their king.
Josh, by the way, was here, here on assignment, not much pay but an assignment anyway, his first since he “officially” retired from his onerous editorial duties a couple of years back to be able to sit back, kick back, and write that great sex/drug/political/musical/ hail fellows well met/digger commune 1960s explosion novel he had been putting off since, well, since he “got off the bus” in 1971 and headed back first to Olde Saco and then drifted down to various Boston area spots. See the pay part was required, no, demanded by Josh, in order to give his employer a real “feel” for the flavor of what was going on at Dewey Square to the “soccer moms and dads” who might be wondering what they were missing while waiting, SUV-waiting, for their little Ashley or Samson to finish up their suburban kids soccer league workouts, or one or another of twelve other possible organized kid "to do" things for their resumes, the kid’s that is. A few random notes to titillate the rubes, and move on. No sweat. He, moreover, was going to parlay those skimpy notes into working order for his now great Tom Wolfe-ish sociological sex/drug/political/musical/ hail fellows well met/digger commune 1960s explosion novel. And in Josh Breslin’s mind Syllable Slim was already slated, with a big intro, to lead off this 21st century magical mystery tour, merry prankster gig, warts and all. We merely get his leavings here.
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“Hey brother, can you help me put this tarp over my tent? It got cold as hell last night and the winds were blowing fierce,” yelled a cherub-faced male, almost too youthful to be here but such are the times, although it was later learned that he was now a few weeks-seasoned Occupy Boston grizzly veteran resident to a middle-aged man casually walking by. “Sure thing, let’s get to it” replied that passer-by. Was the passer-by some wayward tourist looking for the next thrill in the city night life, a career gawker, or just one of many unnamed “volunteers” who have sprung from the woodwork (okay, okay suburbia) in response to the news that something more than nine-to-five and white picket fences might be in the air?
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“Can you bring this hot pot of soup to the kitchen? Some lady, a lady who would not give her name and would not acknowledge anything but thanks, drove up on the Atlantic Avenue side and asked me to unload some stuff for her,” said one young woman in shorts, short shorts thereby showing off her firm athletic legs for one and all to see to another young woman dressed in long pants, maybe jeans, getting ready for colder climates. Shortly thereafter the “laundry lady” tooted her horn looking for help in unloading a trunk-load of everything from towels to sleeping bags. And our two young women again “hit” the Atlantic Avenue curb for this “angel.” See the angel’s kindly thing, her matronly, middle-aged, unnamed kindly thing, was to come by on Tuesday for dirty laundry and return on Thursday with everything Seventh Generation bright and clean. Said “laundry lady” is also unnamed like our tent-fixing passer-by and soup lady, but clearly one who has come out of the woodwork on the news of the glad tidings.
********
“If you want a meal, a nice hot meal, could you wash some dishes to help us out,” barked, barked above the din of the dozen assorted humans in line in front of him, a man who has daily volunteered to help out in the makeshift kitchen. A kitchen whose primitive dishwashing apparatus entailed the familiar rubber soul dish pan, some lukewarm water, a little oily from the leaving of some off-hand meal, Joy detergent, and rinsing tub, dishcloth and done. Primitive like back in kid time doing after supper dishes before being released in the teenage be-bop dark streets night. And a couple of older guys, older guys who knew the streets and the lore of the streets backward and forward, stepped behind the tent and got to work on a stack while the third passed on the request. When the hot meals came on deck all three got a meal, no questions asked, but somewhere, somewhere deep inside his career vagabond heart that third man knew he was not built for this new world a-borning. Not for social solidarity dishes cleaned. Meanwhile our kitchen master chef, master of the artful tuna sandwich and of the slabbed peanut butter and jelly (grape just then) variety as well answers an older man’s inquiry about what was pressingly needed for the next day’s “menu.” That older man, a man who did not look like he had the means to do so, and could have very easily passed for a “resident” of this tent city, had been coming daily with perhaps one hundred dollars worth of whatever our master chef told him the kitchen needed. Angels, apparently, come in all sizes, shapes, and circumstances.
********
Jesus, the logistics of this encampment is simplicity itself. A few rows of tents, sleeping tents, mostly good firm weather-conditioned tents in all colors, mainly blue or the feel of blue though. Unlike those watered-down Army olive drab pup tents that I made do with out in ‘Frisco when Butterfly Swirl and I were a thing traveling up and down the West Coast in the summer of love, 1967. Of course then love drove the be-bop great western night and we probably could have made due with some newspapers under our heads. But that’s a story for another time. Then, moving along, several tents at each end of the encampment for special tasks like media, the library, and the “information desk.” A few odds and end here and there but mainly kept up nicely, city urban vagabond nicely. Fit for any well-fed college student out on an urban adventure to place his or her head on, and not have mother worry too much. And at the far end, the end away from the subway station a huge granite gray slab of a building, something to do with the "big dig” project that created this space, officially the Rose Kennedy Greenway, in its aftermath. The side wall of that big slab now serves as the main poster board for any political messages that people have the energy (and magic marker) to proclaim. And in front of that wall a few chairs, a mike, and various other equipment for those who want to harangue, humor, or hum the crowd. That fleeting chance at fifteen minutes of fame for the soul-weary, for the voiceless, and for the voiced-over. Let’s listen in for bit and jot down a few of the things said.
“Karl Marx was right, this capitalist system has got to go and we need to make a new world,” sing-songed a middle-aged man, seemingly some kind of college professor out doing missionary work this day, who then proceeded to spend his fifteen minutes expanding on his scheme to have Congress vote to limit the amount of profit each corporation can make, using some sort of exotic formula that only he had the pass code to unravel. I missed that idea when I read Marx long ago but maybe I missed one of the footnotes the probable source. Our professor didn’t. This place, every time I come, at least during the day is loaded down with professors and others from the myriad local colleges and universities that dot the Boston skyline and each brings his or her own panacea with them, usually some third-rate variation off of Marx or some other 19th century thinker dressed up to wake up the texting-enchanted modern listener.
“This place is a Potemkin Village,” chanted another younger speaker a little later to a wandering, wavering crowd audience of about seven. “The people who run this thing go home at night to their nice warm beds while we stay here and keep the faith, the real faith,” he added. This inflamed black flannel-shirted youth finished up with this epistle, “Besides half the tents are empty and the tents that have people in them are just drifters and bums who don’t know anything about what we are trying to do here. They are just trying to keep warm and away from getting hassled by the cops.” I had heard that sentiment expressed before, more than once, from political types and kind of dismissed it out of hand but this guy seemed to be speaking from some truth experience. I reminded myself to come back in a few minutes and talk to him when he was done. However when I went back about ten minutes later he was gone. But his plaintive plea stuck with me and I will have to keep on the trail of that strand.
********
Later that same day at the same wall-
“Man, play us a Hendrix tune on that thing, ‘cause you are smokin’, man” earnestly requested a young, red-bearded man, obviously a student, an ardent musical student from the look of him. “Okay man, if you play a little drum behind me,” came the reply from the reincarnation of Jimi, complete with tie-dyed headband to hold his head together. And for perhaps fifteen minutes they held it together like some aura out on the 1960s be-bop night, their fifteen minutes of fame on the Dewey Square main stage for their resumes. And the crowd that swelled to listen in knew they had heard some old phantom primordial from the womb sound, and liked it. Another group this time a guitar, harmonica, drum combination trying to bring a blues riff together sends most of the crowd wandering in all directions. Such are the hard facts of the fame game from Broadway to tent city. Hopefully some more harmonious society will have more room for the fringes of that game.
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“Say, can I have cigarette, man, I’m out?” said another older man weary, street weary, getting ready to enter a tent to catch a few winks. “I’m rolling Bull, okay?” answered a red-headed dread-locked young man. That cadging of cigarettes, factory-made or from the pouch, between and among the young is somewhat strange after the righteous lifetime drumbeats of foul smoking. Not all messages get through.
Such were, are, will be the random sights and sounds of the Occupy Boston encampment on any given day, or any given minute if you can be in seven places at one time, as the camp continues to organize itself in the tradition of the old westward pioneers seeking that great American west blue-pink night, and still are seeking it generations later.
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“Hey man, don’t be cheap give me a fucking cigarette, I’m all shaky,” shouted out a razor-edged guy, obviously working off some hang-over, although not necessarily an alcoholic or drug one. “I’m down to my last one, what the fuck do you want from me,” came the surly reply. The tension spiked then passed away in the midday air. In that same midday air came this from one of the tents, voiced by an unseen man, a gruff-voiced man, not young “Fuck, give me my space, my free space, don’t be all around me.” And that voice too went to ground, unresolved.
*******
“This place is neat, three squares and a cot, and nobody hassles you and you don’t have to work for your grub, or nothing,” murmured a street veteran, shabbily-dressed, rough edge- bearded but of sober expression to no one in particular in a crowd of suburban tourists who have made the site at Dewey Square a place on their “must see” map. A young man came up to a clot of that same crowd to discuss the Occupy theme. A question was asked about the shabbily-dressed man’s comment. “Oh, ya, most of the residents are street people, a few of us like me stay to keep the peace but most of the politicos go home, or back to the dorms when the General Assembly is over. We opened the space to anyone who followed the simple rules of the camp so here we are.” One tourista smirked the smirk of someone who “knew, just knew” this thing was not going to work, not with bums, hell no. We shall see.
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“Out of the tents, into the streets, Out of the tents, into the streets” yelled a tall dark-haired young man dressed in black, Black Bloc black, meaning black everything black, from boots to jacket, topped off with the de rigueur black bandana handkerchief covering the bottom part of his face as some kind of security blanket measure. This youth is known to me so that there is only a little affectation in his dress to be in touch with his anarchist heart. Others’ motives I am not as sure of as they flaunt their garb like wearing the “uniform” would cast away all sins and black purify their corrupted souls. Such acts would guard against turning into a stinking bourgeois baddie like daddy.
This sight, the nightmare sight to every protective mother guarding her young against the travails of the world and the bane of every government seeing spook shadows behind the dress, is however here among the tents just another guy with a cause. He repeats himself several times as he tries to rouse the denizens of the new world tent city to come out and march on behalf of any number of causes, this one in solidarity with the shutting down of the Port of Oakland by Occupy Oakland on this early November day, the vanguard action city of the whole American movement and one that has been increasing under attack, under police attack almost nightly.
A few younger comrades also dressed in black, head-to-toe black as well, heeded his plea and stirred from their tents, stretching the stretch of the huddled or prone to ready themselves for the couple of mile walk on this cold but clear evening. Mostly the camp residents ignore the plea and go about their business of fixing tents, heading to the kitchen mess tent for supper or just pretend that our big-hearted black-attired anarcho-mad monk of an activist will gather his troops and leave. And here is where the funny part comes in as I think back to a guy I heard up on the “main stage” a few days back who kept yelling about this occupation site being a Potemkin Village. [Markin: For those not in the know about Russian history or are unfamiliar with the term it signifies all front, no substance. Allegedly one of Russian Empress Catherine the Great’s lovers back in the 18th century, Potemkin, ordered beautiful villages build with only the facades so his honey would have pleasant sights to see when they went riding by. Ya I know, lame but that is the story.] And today that seems true, at least to my eye, as the vast majority of the three hundred or so marchers were not resident “occupiers,” or had the now signature drawn-out slightly dazed sag look of occupiers. In any case we are off, as I have decided to express my solidarity with the sisters and brothers in Oakland (a place I know well from back in the day).
Naturally the black-suited sisters and brothers are up front leading this thing chanting solidarity slogans centered on the defense of Occupy Oakland ("From the East Bay to Back Bay-Defend Occupy Oakland"), the ubiquitous “Banks got bailed out, we got sold out” that is something of a national anthem for the movement now, and to show the tenor of militancy this night this little beauty, “What’s the solution?: Revolution, What’s the reaction?: Direct action." All in a day’s work out in the protest march world though. What makes this one a little unusual is the march route. See the line of march on this one, perhaps reflecting some super-black dream kick, is deliberately planned to go helter-skelter, one assumes to “throw off” the bicycle police and other law enforcement types who are “guarding” the march.
Of course the only ones who are confused by all this are the few marchers who are rare rookies to this scene, trampling on others' shoes we travel zigzag (and they, the rookies zigzag) up the wrong way on Winter Street or Congress Street stopping already stopped rush hour traffic with our pleas for solidarity and a whole range of other concerns. Eventually we get to the State House on Beacon Street then march down to Charles Street and move against the waiting traffic before heading back to Boylston Street and then to Downtown Crossing for the now obligatory “die in” (a momentary sit-in, if you are not familiar with that term) a few “mic check” shout-outs and then more chanting back to camp. Done, finis, chalk up some more march miles on my protest-o-meter. A spirited march, a necessary march, no question, but I hope that I was just being jittery when I got that feeling in my spine at the end of the march that something was out of joint, that those who wish to “lead” a revolution, a black-encrusted revolution, were heading up the wrong street with their antics.
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“You had better stay the fuck away from my woman, and stay way away,” threatened a young guy, a young white guy, not a street guy, not a student but just the kind of guy who drifts in and out of things. “Fuck you and your woman,” came the reply from a young Spanish-looking dude who had daggers in his eyes as the two nearly came to blows. Just then someone yelled “rainbow” and several people appeared to calm the situation down. Not too quickly calmed it down by the way.
This too is a part of the “new world a-borning” as not everybody is quite ready yet to shift gears, or just has too much, much too much, baggage from old bourgeois society to make the leap of faith just yet.
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Voices overheard while waiting for a rally or march against or for something to start, a Free School University lecture to begin, a this or that meeting to proceed, a just plain old ordinary passing through the camp or the thousand and one other things waits at the Occupy Boston site at Dewey Square.
“See, this is the way it works,” said a tall, red-headed curly-haired young man, dressed in an “approved” regulation Occupy resident garb, fatigue jacket, denim jeans, a rakish hat, and this warmish evening wearing shoes with no socks to a small, middle-aged, graying woman dressed in some outfit worthy of high hippie times in the summer of love, 1967 but who was having a hard time getting around the various concepts involved in participation in a General Assembly (GA) show-up, the central decision-making body of the Occupy movement, although she liked the idea in theory as she made plain to tell her “tour guide” at the start.
The red-headed youth, let’s call him Red for short although no inference should be drawn about his political allegiances from that, continued, “Somebody brings an idea they, or their group, want to have heard, discussed, and voted on by GA. Let’s say, for example, an action like having everybody turn in their saving and checking accounts at the big banks like Bank of America and transfer the money to credit unions or small neighborhood banks on a certain day. They come here, get their point put on the agenda and when their turn comes up they can motivate it. Then people can discuss it, discuss it from all angles, sometimes unto death practically, I’ve seen that at GA, and periodic “temperature checks” can be taken on the favorability of supporting such an action.”
“What’s a temperature check?” asked our somewhat bewildered ancient flower-child.
“That’s a sense of the meeting on some point and instead of the crowd yelling and screaming a response you just wiggle your fingers on one hand, or two, in the middle, or down. It doesn’t mean a thing about whether the thing, the idea being presented, will pass or not,” young Red answered, answered in the patient low-key monotone that he had either spent many moons perfecting in secret or came naturally to him. I suspect the latter from other times I have seen him give his spiels at GA. “After the proposal is presented then people can approach the facilitator, or the assigned “stack” person, and ask to speak on the matter, in turn. Okay, so far?”
He continued, “After full discussion that can, like I say, take the whole evening there is a vote, a vote if there is a quorum left at GA by voting time. Sometimes there is not, more so recently. Then a bunch of procedures come into play that I don’t always understood about dissent blocks and mortal dissent blocks that can kill a proposal even before a vote if somebody thinks it is a small or big danger to what the Occupy movement is trying to do. And others agree after a vote, if it gets that far. Usually though that doesn’t happen because the stuff we deal with isn’t that weird. The quorum thing will more likely delay action on a vote and the thing is tabled until a later GA. If nothing gets in the way though it can be voted that night by consensus."
“What?” asked the starting to get glazed-eye woman, who seemingly no stranger to the in and outs of grassroots participatory democracy, is taken back by our Red’s use of the word.
“Okay, okay in the corporate world things get done by majority vote, right. So a lot of people can be losers even if the vote is close so to guard against that tyranny of the majority everything is done by consensus. Someone explained it to me this way and it made sense to me. You raise your hand in approval if you can live with the proposal. On the credit union thing that would be easy but on some other stuff maybe not.”
“So what if you don’t get consensus but have a majority? Our fair lady asks. “No go, go back and work on your proposal or give it up,” shot back Red, for the first time a little annoyed with a question like the idea of consensus was automatically the best way to do things in a democracy and how could anyone, especially an anyone who came from 1960s land, object. “Thanks, for your help” our hippie lady, our perplexed hippie lady on that last point, told Red as she meandered around the camp looking for the kitchen area, or maybe just to think over what had suddenly perplexed her.
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“How long have you been coming here?,” asked the white-haired old man, neatly although inexpensively dressed, a man who seemingly had seen many struggles in his time, not all of them political, but enough of them to know that he had some political thoughts hidden among those white hairs. “Oh, I started camping out here on Day 1 in September and stayed for a few weeks but then I had to go back to my dorm at Boston University because there was too much noise here at night for me to study and anyway I got kind of bored just hanging around a lot being gawked at by tourists and everybody else who wanted to see what was going on here at the beginning,” forthrightly answered a fetching young brunette who did not, frankly, look, strictly from appearances, like she belonged here for one day never mind weeks but that is the beauty of what has been churned up this fall by the tide of the Occupy movement in the face of overwhelmingly social discontent.
The wizened white-haired man moved slowly away to speak to others he had met, especially a couple of Veterans For Peace supporters whom he had come to know fairly well, at the site when the young woman reached out, tugged at his coat and said “Wait, I have more to tell you.” A little startled the old man stopped in his tracks and asked to hear more. She continued “I’ve seen you around camp before, talking to some people I know about the 1960s and about the funny stuff that went on then, and you look like you might have been a hippie or something so I think I can tell you stuff.” “What stuff?” answered the now red-faced old man waiting for the young damsel to pore out her heart about the indignities of life, boy-friend problems, some unknown addictions, or some such thing.
“I just didn’t leave because I couldn’t study or was bored although that was part of it. Mainly it was because I feel this movement has lost direction, lost direction in a big way, by spending all its time and energy here defending and winter fortifying the camp and getting isolated from trying to reach out to people. I’m studying about social movements in school and this one seems to be going away from what groups like the black civil rights movement and anti-war movements were trying to even if they made a lot of mistakes. My boy-friend and I almost broke up over it because he likes the camp life, he’s still here, and he doesn’t want any demands raised, period, and thinks that if we just show a good example people will gravitate to see things our way. He was furious when I said nobody was watching, or not enough were. We made up after I left and went back to my dorm room but I still think after over a month that the encampment has been here that I was right, although we avoid talking about it. What do you think?”
The white-haired man laughed, laughed good-naturedly explaining that he did not expect in his fairly frequent stops at Dewey Square that he would be performing Dear Occupy Abby services to the lovelorn. She gave half a smile to that notion. He continued, “We too made every mistake in the book back in the day, especially in going out of our way to alienate every possible person who disagreed with us until, like some light bulb going on, we finally got it that such things were self-defeating and changed tack. I too share your reservations about getting isolated out here in the middle of nowhere, even if it is the center of the Financial District, but an old radical, and old communist actually, told me back in the day that each generation must find its own ways to drive the struggle. And he was basically right. At least some of us did learn and I am living proof that not all mistakes are politically fatal. Things are still fresh yet so talk to your boy-friend, and keep talking about the need to break out of the camps. Okay?” She nodded the nod of the half-believer and walked away saying she hoped to run into our wizard again.
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“Hey, what time is the Women’s Caucus march starting?, asked, asked softly and politely, a young, maybe mixed spanishblackwhiteindian, woman dressed in what I would describe as modern young women casual elegant, student division, but what do I know of such North Face fashion trends, as I approached the tent full gravel walkway entrance that leads into the Occupy Boston encampment on the kitchen side. I answered softly and politely not out of instinct, or mannered effect, but from hoarsed-out chanting-“Whatever we wear, Wherever we go, Yes means Yes, No means No!” – “Consent in the sheets, Dissent in the streets!” – “We are unstoppable, another world is possible!,” words that rang in the streets that Sunday afternoon as the Women’s Caucus and their allies, including me, marched through Boston. A little change of pace from the generic national anthem-like “Banks got bailed out, we got sold out” slogans of late, but necessary to show, show manly show, solidarity with the women of this encampment who have led the struggle against male chauvinism and sexual harassment in general-and, disturbingly, in the camp.
“Sorry, you just missed it, we are just finishing up,” I told her. She responded that she thought the thing started at two (another of those snafus that are intrinsic to makeshift social movements, even movements hard-drive driven by modern computer technology), it said so in the Occupy Daily Calendar and she had rushed over here to make it in time. “That is when the music and poetry was listed to start. In fact they are underway down at the main stage now. I’ll walk you down” “Oh, I hope I didn’t miss Letta Neely reading her poetry, that is really why I came. She speaks to me, speaks to me a lot” I replied that I was not familiar with this woman’s work. “Oh she is a sistah, a black beautiful lesbian sistah who writes about stuff I feel, feel deeply, being a mixed race, mixed-up, bi-sexual woman.” I gulped, and smiled, smiled inside, not at what she said but at what infinite number of words would have to go into righteously describing her with that added information, and her space. I gave up as we approached the main stage and listened to a woman who described herself as PuertoDom ( I hope I am spelling this right, Puerto Rican and Dominican, okay) reading her poetry. Very sharp, witty, and politically to the point poetry. Then Letta Neely came on. Check this out:
From Juba:poetry/by Letta Neely, Wildheart Press, copyright 1998
juba
for renita
u be a gospel song
some a dat
ole time religion
where the tambourine git goin
and the holy ghost sneak up
inside people's bones and
everybody dancin and shoutin
screamin and cryin
oh jesus, oh jesus
and the people start to clappin
and reachin back to african rhythms
pulled through the wombs of
the middle passage
and women's hats start flying
while the dance,
the dance they do gets hotter and holier
and just the music has brought cause for celebration
yeah, u be a gospel song, girl
like some a dat ole back in the woods, mississippi river kinda
gospel
and i feel the holy ghost when you is
inside me
and the tambourines keep goin
and folks is stampin they feet
and oh no,
it's the neighbor knocking on the door
askin is we alright
say we was screamin
oh jesus, oh jesus
and i heard us but i
didn't hear cuz
i was being washed in the gorgeous wetness of
your pussy
being baptized w/ole time religion
the oldest religion there
is
2 women inside the groove
of each other
we come here
we come
we come here
to be
saved
I an old white man who spend his 1960s drug-drenched be-bop nights summers of love chasing women (young girls really as I was ayoung boy) and running away from my old working-class Olde Saco, Maine oceanside white bread roots am probably separated by entire gulfs of time, of age, of politics, of means streets, hell, of sexual preference, kind of, but know this, my new-found young mixed woman friend was right. Letta Neely is a sistah.
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From the Occupy Boston Daily Digest:
Saturday, December 3
10:00am Occupy Movement Day of Action (Neighborhood specific locations);11:30am Occupy ICE – Ocupa la Migra;12:00pm **Corporate Negligence and Bhopal, India: An Ongoing Disaster (FSU);12:00pm Faith & Spirituality WG Meeting;1:00pm Unity Rally (Copley Square);2:00pm Winterizing meeting;3:30pm Women’s Caucus;4:00pm General Assembly (Copley Square);5:30pm Anti-Oppression Working Group meeting
6:00pm Alperovitz: America Beyond Capitalism (FSU Economics Forum – Offsite)
6:30pm Safety meeting.
Sunday, December 4
12:00pm **Teach-In on Secure Communities (FSU); 12:00pm Occupy Boston Women’s March; 12:00pm Davis Square Carolers; 12:00pm Faith & Spirituality WG Meeting
1:30pm Catholic Mass;2:00pm **Occu-Stock- Women Spoken Word (see Description for line up);2:30pm Peace Action Working Group Meeting;3:00pm POC Working Group Meeting (People Of Color);3:00pm Media Working Group Meeting;3:00pm (CANCELLED) Publicly-Funded Elections & Repairing Representative Government (FSU Discussion);3:00pm **Concert: Occu-Stock Concert -Erica Russo and Lauren DeRose;4:00pm Facilitation Working Group Meeting;4:00pm **Middle East and North Africa Solidarity Day;4:00pm Socialist Caucus WG Meeting;4:30pm Peace Vigil
5:30pm Queer/Trans Working Group Meeting; 6:00pm General Assembly; 6:30pm Safety meeting; 7:00pm MENA Solidarity Day Plan.
Monday, December 5
Take Back the Capitol;9:00am MAMLEO – Food Drive Drop Off;10:00am FOOD BANK DROP OFF12:oopm Health And Safety Improvement Festival!;2:00pm Community Wellness Working Group Meeting;4:00pm Radio Meeting;4:00pm Direct Action Meeting4:00pm Street Theater Working Group;5:00pm Facilitation;6:00pm Finance and Accountability Working Group Meeting;6:00pm Climate Action, Sustainability and Environmental Justice Working Group;6:00pm Food Tent Working Group Meeting6:00pm Houseless And Allies Community Working Group;6:00pm Outreach working group meeting;6:30pm Safety meeting;7:00pm Occupy Boston Social;7:00pm InfoTent Working Group Meeting
********
“Josh, I am feeling a little overwhelmed by all the meetings and events that I am committed to going to here when I come down for two or three days of heavy political work,” sighed Bonnie Bream (nee Stein) a long-time activist whom I had met a few decades ago while fighting the good fight over Ronald Reagan’s crazed war policies in Central America. Bonnie, then a bright young student at Harvard, was the darling of that movement because she threw herself, absolutely threw herself, into the work, including a couple of stints down in the fields of Nicaragua. I had seen her a couple of times since then down in D.C. or New York fighting the good fight against one or another Bush war policy but it had been a while when I ran into her a couple of weeks ago here on a Sunday afternoon. Like I say Bonnie is an activist, a hard-core activist, and that remained true even when I heard through the grapevine that she had moved up north with her husband to Maine in order to help him with his dream deferred, deferred in support of her social justice dream, of setting up a seashore restaurant in Belfast or Camden, I forget which one. As she told me when we met that first Sunday when she saw and hear about the Occupy movement’s encampment down here it was like lemmings to the sea, she had to come. And so she has come down to work a few days a week before trundling home to serve lobsters, clams, and whatever to hungry ocean-starved touristas in summer and “real food” to the townies off-season.
As she spoke those words I could see just the slightest air of resignation, of a certain tiredness maybe, a certain confusion, perhaps, about which way the winds were blowing here and the flat-out possibility that just too many damn things were going on and it was wearing people down. I had heard such inchoate mutterings before from some younger activists tired of the endless this or that cause marches. But when Bonnie Bream says stuff like that then you know there are some troubled waters stirring so I wanted to hear more.
She then went on, “I don’t mind the work. Or the too many committees with too few people, or two few same people on about six committees. You know I live for this stuff. I don’t even mind, if you can believe this Josh, the disorganized, haphazard way things are run, especially meetings that resolve nothing. But what bothers the hell out of me is when things that are scheduled don’t occur. Like this last Sunday. I knew it was going to be a big long day what with the Women’s Caucus march through the streets of Boston. That was fun, just like in the old days when we tried to roust the slumbering masses having their tea and coffee at Fanueil Market. And the music and poetry performances on the main stage after were great. But then one of the working group meeting which was scheduled failed to materialize, a socialist caucus meeting that I dearly wanted to attend since they had previously met on Fridays when I am not here was wrongly placed on the daily schedule, and then a peace vigil I planned on attending hoping to run into some old UJP [United For Justice with Peace, the local pre-Occupy umbrella activist organization] folks I used to run with never happened for reasons unknown to me. So I spent a lot of the later part of the day just talking the talk to the same people that I always see here on Sunday (or Saturday or Monday the other of my three chosen days). Hell I could just have easily done that at some pokey UJP event.”
I had no answer to her plea just then, and said so. We then went on to other subjects, more personal subjects that need not detain us here. Except later when thinking about it as I was making my own exit from the camp to head home for the evening I stopped for a moment to reflect on this conversation. When the Bonnie Breams of this “new world” feel adrift in this big old amorphous movement then sunny days do not lie ahead.
*******
“Give way, give way we are carrying this tent and it is heavy, give way,” abruptly, and with no apologies in his voice, yelled a burly, black-haired, wisp of a beard, young Latino man as the group of four of five young men with him walked their way down the gravel stone Dewey Square path from the kitchen area to a waiting U-Haul truck parked by the main stage. “Watch your feet, please, watch your feet,” with a delicious sing-song voice chanted a young flaming black-haired, red-ruby-lipped, determined young women, at first glance certainly a college student, who was carrying a load of materials in a Rubbermaid basket from Logistics. “Where do these books go” plaintively asked a short, pert, winter-hatted to protect her head young woman, clearly not a student although not far removed from that venue either, to another unseen woman inside the Library tent. “Put them in that basket marked Celeste they are going to her house for safe-keeping,” answered a voice from the bowels of that tent. And that voice added “We will need them for our next location, wherever that is.”
The sights, sounds, and groans of people moving, moving from the Occupy Boston encampment now that some judge, some Superior Court judge, has in her Solomon-like “wisdom” parsed the facts in favor of the City of Boston’s side of the legal case and determined that while, of course, whatever on earth was going on at this encampment was profusely constitutionally protected speech except that the speech part was trumped by the occupied nature of that expression. Like this whole exercise in plebeian rudimentary democracy, well or badly done, was just another sanctified imperial adventure “land grab” in the on-going American saga. So all about me now are comings and goings as the main frame of the camp is broken down to be placed somewhere, or nowhere else. The whole atmosphere, including the one hundred and one malingerers just hanging around and merely commenting on the spectacle while the few actually worked, was like some gigantic moving day at some college campus. Except for the tents. And just like that scene on that moving day many are bewildered, bewildered however unlike in that college scene, because they are not sure why they are moving. Or just flat-out want to stay, stay despite the Mayor’s order to “cease and desist” by midnight this very night, this December 8th night.
As darkness descends on the unlit camp, unlit except for the ten-thousand lights from the many office buildings that surround the site, the street lights of Atlantic Avenue, and the twenty -thousand automobile lights now heading home turned on in the early winter day turned night voices begin to openly map out “plans.” “Let’s defend this place to the death, like our forebears did,” I heard one old man, who could perhaps have been with those same forebears at Valley Forge from the look of him, proclaim to all who would listen, and many nodded in agreement. “Let’s dance our way out of here,” jokingly non-joking exclaimed a young brown-bearded man, a long-time tenant-at-will resident of the camp, to the approval of several college students near-by, a group whose collective ages would perhaps not equal that old Valley Forger’s but who had a determined look to defend something in their eyes. “Let’s put on a media campaign in the newspapers, especially the suburban newspapers, to get our message out, it doesn’t cost much,” chimed in a young up-and-coming unconscious ad executive-type , or some such, to a more frosty reception. Several other plans, endless plans, were endlessly discussed, almost as many proposals as participants, but in the end through exhaustion, or the need of the hour, the notion of civil disobedience held sway and so the now half-emptied tent camp will be defended against Czar Menino’s storm-troopers.
As it turned out there were many voices heard that night, that cold clear night, but not those of the police screaming their epitaphs at rebellious citizens. Rather, in a small victory way, chants to ward off the evil spirits were heard and then, as the drums began their incessant beat and as people took heart in their resolve, that dance into the future idea took on a life of its own.
*******
December 11, 2011:
“What will we do now, now that they have taken our camp away, taken our freedom of assembly, taken what we have fought for away ?,” asked a young woman, near tears, but holding them back knowing after ten weeks that this was not the time for tears, not public tears anyway. She expressed those dearly won sentiments at the old Parkman Bandstand, the traditional spot for protest rallies, vigils and the start of marches in this city, and the spot where the Occupy Boston was cradled while waiting for the General Assembly (GA) in exile to start this cold, clear Saturday night.
A young man beside her, although not her companion, in the de rigueur all black Black Bloc all black answered “Fuck the system, we will be back, back bigger than ever.” But something in his voice betrayed a sense that a serious defeat had been taken with the successful nighttime police raid of Occupy Boston at Dewey Square early that morning, and that maybe that heavily bundled young woman’s almost tears, almost public tears, were closer to the heart of the matter. Her look, her somewhat startled look at his response spoke eloquently to that fear.
A second young man, an obvious student, with an obvious trying-to-to be-wise-beyond- his-years wisp of a beard attempting to deepen his face and demeanor posed it another way for the now head down woman. “GA tonight will figure out what is next, we will figure out what is next, and if we all work together now when things are tough we will pull through this and next spring we will come back stronger than ever.” Something in his manner and his words brought the woman’s head up, momentarily, as if in recognition that this whole adventure had gone beyond her wildest “new world a-bornin’” dreams anyway and that if she could just keep the dream alike through the winter that wise, bearded young man might just be right.
Standing a few away from this trio, this remnant trio of the good fight, the good American Fall fight, stood an older man, graying, maybe a professor or some kind of teacher, but no “generation of ‘68” guy battle-scarred from fighting racist monsters in the black civil rights South, or against the bombs of American imperialism Vietnam, or even drawing away from conventional bourgeois society and heading to the hills of old Vermont to create a new society away from city madness. He just stated this proposition to his trio audience. “Study history a little, the history of social struggles, revolutions, poor people’s marches, national liberation struggles, rent strikes, eviction parties, fights for freedom for class-war prisoners, struggles against American imperialism. Study them hard and you will notice that they all go through this growing pain thing that we are in right now. Sure we have taken a defeat, a big defeat, on the freedom of assembly question but the camp issues, stay, go or half-stay were starting to drown out what we are here for-tame, or get rid of, the capitalist monster on our backs. So it’s okay to have a minute tear but now we have to get off our knees, dust off our knees, and get back to the struggle. We will rise from the ashes just like the phoenix. Bet on it.” And, you know maybe he was right because that young woman stopped putting her head down for the rest of the evening. .
*******
As I have written my words along the way this past ten weeks or so I have continued to put this last sketch from early on in October when the world was new the end and here at the end of my song it seems right to stay.
Five minutes ago the sidewalk along the Atlantic Avenue side of the encampment was deserted, a lonely yellow-jacketed cop shifting back and forth on his heels to make his duty time pass more quickly. Now the first sign of the day, “Tax The Rich,” along with it human holder, here a well-dressed, well-preserved older woman, a woman who looked like she has seen many battles for social justice in her time hit the sidewalk. And her action acted as a catalyst because then came a couple of young students carrying a banner-“Banks got bailed out, we got sold out,” one of the anthems of the Occupy movement, to stand beside her. They smile, she smiles, nothing more is needed as they banner understand each other completely.
Then a convoy of about twelve middle-aged and older Universalist-Unitarians from out in some suburban town, who have rented a bus for the occasion, begin filling in the sidewalk a little farther up the street with their “peace, this,” “peace, that,” “good-will toward all” signs. Upon investigation this group had made a solemn decision, as only U-Uers can, to come weekly to Boston to stand in solidarity with the efforts in Dewey Square.
A few minutes later, from out of nowhere, came a nomadic resident of the “village” with a plateful of cookies, chocolate chip perhaps, and offers them to those “working the line” on Atlantic Avenue.
Later, an older model automobile, frankly a heap, driven by a menacing-looking man in lumberjack jacket with fierce flashing eyes like some crazed survivalist stopped just in front of the Atlantic Avenue entrance to the encampment and yells out, “Hey, when do I put these sleeping bags, tarps, shovels, and pots? I can’t stay but I am with you, with you all the way.” Of such acts by such desperate looking men, revolutions are made, big-time revolutions.
Toward late afternoon the Atlantic Avenue traffic gets heavier, bumper to bumper, as people try to leave the city, and city cares behind. A guy in a big dump truck, a flat-top hair cut showing yells out, “Get a job” at a group of street people standing on the avenue. Later a pedestrian muttered to that yellow-jacketed cop on duty, who was still rocking his heels, about how he paid taxes and isn’t it a shame what these people are up to. The call of the day though goes to a guy, a light-skinned Cuban-looking guy in a late model cherry red sports car driving on the far right lane away from the encampment, who yells out, “Commies, go back to where you came from.”
Ya, I know, not everybody got the news about what happened about twenty years back, not everybody gets what is going on now, and not everybody, despite the sleek street slogan of ninety-nine percent, is with the Occupy movement. But just remember that guy, that lumberjack jacket guy in that old heap, who gave what he had, and gave it for keeps.
*******
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend All The Occupation Sites And All The Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Protesters Everywhere!
********
Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
********
A Five-Point Program As Talking Points
*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay to spread the available work around. Organize the unorganized- Organize the South- Organize Wal-mart- Defend the right for public and private workers to unionize.
* Defend the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. Spent the dough on organizing the unorganized and other labor-specific causes (example, the November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio).
*End the endless wars!- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan! Hands Off Iran! Hands Off The World!
*Fight for a social agenda for working people!. Quality Healthcare For All! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! Forgive student debt! Stop housing foreclosures!
*We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Build a workers party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed. Labor and the oppressed must rule!
Sunday, December 18, 2011
Saturday, December 17, 2011
Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By-In Honor Of The Frontline Defenders Of This “Occupy” Site Arrested For Standing In Solidarity-Drop All The Charges!-Bob Marley’s “Get Up, Stand Up!”
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Bob Marley performing his classic song of struggle, Get Up, Stand Up.
*******
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend All The Occupation Sites And All The Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Protesters Everywhere!
********
Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
********
A Five-Point Program As Talking Points
*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay to spread the available work around. Organize the unorganized- Organize the South- Organize Wal-mart- Defend the right for public and private workers to unionize.
* Defend the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. Spent the dough on organizing the unorganized and other labor-specific causes (example, the November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio).
*End the endless wars!- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan! Hands Off Iran! Hands Off The World!
*Fight for a social agenda for working people!. Quality Healthcare For All! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! Forgive student debt! Stop housing foreclosures!
*We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Build a workers party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed. Labor and the oppressed must rule!
***********
Markin comment:
In this series, presented under the headline Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By, I will post some songs that I think will help us get through the “dog days” of the struggle for our communist future. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here.
*********
Markin comment October 26, 2011, updated December 17, 2011:
This having to send solidarity messages almost daily is getting too redundant, way too redundant. Forget this notion of each occupation site being a separate operation. We had better unite to fight nationally (and internationally) or they (and you know who the "they" is) will pick us off one by one like they are doing now. It is the same struggle, same fight! An injury to one is an injury to all!
******
Bob Marley Get Up, Stand Up Lyrics
Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!
Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!
Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!
Get up, stand up: don't give up the fight!
Preacher man, don't tell me,
Heaven is under the earth.
I know you don't know
What life is really worth.
It's not all that glitters is gold;
'Alf the story has never been told:
So now you see the light, eh!
Stand up for your rights. come on!
Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!
Get up, stand up: don't give up the fight!
Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!
Get up, stand up: don't give up the fight!
Most people think,
Great god will come from the skies,
Take away everything
And make everybody feel high.
But if you know what life is worth,
You will look for yours on earth:
And now you see the light,
You stand up for your rights. jah!
[ Lyrics from: http://www.lyricsfreak.com/b/bob+marley/get+up+stand+up_20021743.html ]
Get up, stand up! (jah, jah! )
Stand up for your rights! (oh-hoo! )
Get up, stand up! (get up, stand up! )
Don't give up the fight! (life is your right! )
Get up, stand up! (so we can't give up the fight! )
Stand up for your rights! (lord, lord! )
Get up, stand up! (keep on struggling on! )
Don't give up the fight! (yeah! )
We sick an' tired of-a your ism-skism game -
Dyin' 'n' goin' to heaven in-a Jesus' name, lord.
We know when we understand:
Almighty god is a living man.
You can fool some people sometimes,
But you can't fool all the people all the time.
So now we see the light (what you gonna do?),
We gonna stand up for our rights! (yeah, yeah, yeah! )
So you better:
Get up, stand up! (in the morning! git it up! )
Stand up for your rights! (stand up for our rights! )
Get up, stand up!
Don't give up the fight! (don't give it up, don't give it up! )
Get up, stand up! (get up, stand up! )
Stand up for your rights! (get up, stand up! )
Get up, stand up! (... )
Don't give up the fight! (get up, stand up! )
Get up, stand up! (... )
Stand up for your rights!
Get up, stand up!
Don't give up the fight! /fadeout/
*******
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend All The Occupation Sites And All The Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Protesters Everywhere!
********
Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
********
A Five-Point Program As Talking Points
*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay to spread the available work around. Organize the unorganized- Organize the South- Organize Wal-mart- Defend the right for public and private workers to unionize.
* Defend the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. Spent the dough on organizing the unorganized and other labor-specific causes (example, the November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio).
*End the endless wars!- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan! Hands Off Iran! Hands Off The World!
*Fight for a social agenda for working people!. Quality Healthcare For All! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! Forgive student debt! Stop housing foreclosures!
*We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Build a workers party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed. Labor and the oppressed must rule!
***********
Markin comment:
In this series, presented under the headline Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By, I will post some songs that I think will help us get through the “dog days” of the struggle for our communist future. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here.
*********
Markin comment October 26, 2011, updated December 17, 2011:
This having to send solidarity messages almost daily is getting too redundant, way too redundant. Forget this notion of each occupation site being a separate operation. We had better unite to fight nationally (and internationally) or they (and you know who the "they" is) will pick us off one by one like they are doing now. It is the same struggle, same fight! An injury to one is an injury to all!
******
Bob Marley Get Up, Stand Up Lyrics
Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!
Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!
Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!
Get up, stand up: don't give up the fight!
Preacher man, don't tell me,
Heaven is under the earth.
I know you don't know
What life is really worth.
It's not all that glitters is gold;
'Alf the story has never been told:
So now you see the light, eh!
Stand up for your rights. come on!
Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!
Get up, stand up: don't give up the fight!
Get up, stand up: stand up for your rights!
Get up, stand up: don't give up the fight!
Most people think,
Great god will come from the skies,
Take away everything
And make everybody feel high.
But if you know what life is worth,
You will look for yours on earth:
And now you see the light,
You stand up for your rights. jah!
[ Lyrics from: http://www.lyricsfreak.com/b/bob+marley/get+up+stand+up_20021743.html ]
Get up, stand up! (jah, jah! )
Stand up for your rights! (oh-hoo! )
Get up, stand up! (get up, stand up! )
Don't give up the fight! (life is your right! )
Get up, stand up! (so we can't give up the fight! )
Stand up for your rights! (lord, lord! )
Get up, stand up! (keep on struggling on! )
Don't give up the fight! (yeah! )
We sick an' tired of-a your ism-skism game -
Dyin' 'n' goin' to heaven in-a Jesus' name, lord.
We know when we understand:
Almighty god is a living man.
You can fool some people sometimes,
But you can't fool all the people all the time.
So now we see the light (what you gonna do?),
We gonna stand up for our rights! (yeah, yeah, yeah! )
So you better:
Get up, stand up! (in the morning! git it up! )
Stand up for your rights! (stand up for our rights! )
Get up, stand up!
Don't give up the fight! (don't give it up, don't give it up! )
Get up, stand up! (get up, stand up! )
Stand up for your rights! (get up, stand up! )
Get up, stand up! (... )
Don't give up the fight! (get up, stand up! )
Get up, stand up! (... )
Stand up for your rights!
Get up, stand up!
Don't give up the fight! /fadeout/
Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By-In Honor Of The Frontline Defenders Of This “Occupy” Site Arrested For Standing In Solidarity-Drop All The Charges!-From Our Forebears The Diggers Of The English Revolution-“The World Turned Upside Down”
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Billy Bragg (Known In This Space As Narrator Of Woody Guthrie And His Guitar: The Machine Kills Fascists )performing The World Turned Upside Down.
****
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend All The Occupation Sites And All The Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Protesters Everywhere!
********
Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
********
A Five-Point Program As Talking Points
*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay to spread the available work around. Organize the unorganized- Organize the South- Organize Wal-mart- Defend the right for public and private workers to unionize.
* Defend the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. Spent the dough on organizing the unorganized and other labor-specific causes (example, the November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio).
*End the endless wars!- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan! Hands Off Iran! Hands Off The World!
*Fight for a social agenda for working people!. Quality Healthcare For All! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! Forgive student debt! Stop housing foreclosures!
*We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Build a workers party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed. Labor and the oppressed must rule!
***********
Markin comment:
In this series, presented under the headline Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By, I will post some songs that I think will help us get through the “dog days” of the struggle for our communist future. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here.
THE FOLLOWING IS A SONG BASED ON THE DIGGER EXPERIENCE IN 1650
If John Milton was the literary muse of the English Revolution then the Diggers and their leader, Gerrard Winstanley, were the political muses.
The World Turned Upside Down
We will not worship the God they serve, a God of greed who feeds the rich while poor folk starve.
In 1649 to St. George's Hill
A ragged band they called the Diggers came to show the people's
will
They defied the landlords, they defied the laws
They were the dispossessed reclaiming what was theirs.
We come in peace, they said, to dig and sow
We come to work the lands in common and make the waste
ground grow
This earth divided we will make whole
So it may be a common treasury for all "**
The sin of property we do disdain
No man has any right to buy or sell the earth for private gain
By theft and murder they took the land
Now everywhere the walls spring up at their command
They make the laws to chain us well
The clergy dazzle us with heaven, or they damn us into hell
We will not worship the God they serve,
a God of greed who feeds the rich while poor folk starve
We work and eat together, we need no swords
We will not bow to masters, nor pay rent to the lords
Still we are free, though we are poor
Ye Diggers all, stand up for glory, stand up now!
From the men of property the orders came
They sent the hired men and troopers to wipe out the Diggers'
claim
Tear down their cottages, destroy their corn
They were dispersed - only the vision lingers on
Ye poor take courage, ye rich take care
This earth was made a common treasury for everyone to share
All things in common, all people one
They came in peace - the order came to cut them down
WORDS AND MUSIC BY LEON ROSSELSON, 1981
****
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend All The Occupation Sites And All The Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Protesters Everywhere!
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Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
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A Five-Point Program As Talking Points
*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay to spread the available work around. Organize the unorganized- Organize the South- Organize Wal-mart- Defend the right for public and private workers to unionize.
* Defend the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. Spent the dough on organizing the unorganized and other labor-specific causes (example, the November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio).
*End the endless wars!- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan! Hands Off Iran! Hands Off The World!
*Fight for a social agenda for working people!. Quality Healthcare For All! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! Forgive student debt! Stop housing foreclosures!
*We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Build a workers party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed. Labor and the oppressed must rule!
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Markin comment:
In this series, presented under the headline Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By, I will post some songs that I think will help us get through the “dog days” of the struggle for our communist future. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here.
THE FOLLOWING IS A SONG BASED ON THE DIGGER EXPERIENCE IN 1650
If John Milton was the literary muse of the English Revolution then the Diggers and their leader, Gerrard Winstanley, were the political muses.
The World Turned Upside Down
We will not worship the God they serve, a God of greed who feeds the rich while poor folk starve.
In 1649 to St. George's Hill
A ragged band they called the Diggers came to show the people's
will
They defied the landlords, they defied the laws
They were the dispossessed reclaiming what was theirs.
We come in peace, they said, to dig and sow
We come to work the lands in common and make the waste
ground grow
This earth divided we will make whole
So it may be a common treasury for all "**
The sin of property we do disdain
No man has any right to buy or sell the earth for private gain
By theft and murder they took the land
Now everywhere the walls spring up at their command
They make the laws to chain us well
The clergy dazzle us with heaven, or they damn us into hell
We will not worship the God they serve,
a God of greed who feeds the rich while poor folk starve
We work and eat together, we need no swords
We will not bow to masters, nor pay rent to the lords
Still we are free, though we are poor
Ye Diggers all, stand up for glory, stand up now!
From the men of property the orders came
They sent the hired men and troopers to wipe out the Diggers'
claim
Tear down their cottages, destroy their corn
They were dispersed - only the vision lingers on
Ye poor take courage, ye rich take care
This earth was made a common treasury for everyone to share
All things in common, all people one
They came in peace - the order came to cut them down
WORDS AND MUSIC BY LEON ROSSELSON, 1981
The Latest From “The International Marxist Tendency” Website-Trotsky and the struggle for a Revolutionary International (1933-1946) – Part One And Two
Click on to the headline to link to the latest from the International Marxist Tendency website.
Markin comment:
More often than not I disagree with the line of the IMT or its analysis(mainly I do not believe their political analysis leads to adequate programmatically-based conclusions, revolutionary conclusions in any case), nevertheless, they provide interesting material, especially from areas, “third world” areas, where it is hard to get any kind of information (for our purposes). Read the material from this site.
********
Trotsky and the struggle for a Revolutionary International (1933-1946) – Part One
Written by Patrick Larsen
Tuesday, 22 November 2011
The figure of Leon Trotsky has created a new wave of interest among historians and writers of all types. Recently two new books about the Russian revolutionary have appeared; the first being the work of U.S. Professor Robert Service and the second of Bertrand M. Patenaude, a historian at California University. Both of them belong to that class of commercial literature typical of the bourgeoisie, full of factual errors, which tries to present Trotsky as an authoritarian politician who only lost to Stalin because he lacked tactical skills.
Introduction
Another work, much more sympathetic in its style and its content, is the new novel by Leonardo Padura, “The man who loved dogs”. It tells the stories of Trotsky and his assassin, Ramón Mercader, both stories projected on the life of Iván, a Cuban who represents the post-revolutionary generation on the island.
We have dealt with this important contribution elsewhere. But although it has great value in reclaiming the general legacy of Trotsky, it does indeed contain some mistakes in the appreciation that the author has of aspects of Trotsky's political activity.
The main reason is that the majority of facts about his life which are presented in the book have been taken by Padura from Isaac Deutscher's trilogy – The Prophet Unarmed, The Prophet Armed and The Prophet Outcast. This biography, although it contains some interesting facts, has the major disadvantage of having been written by a person who lacked a firm comprehension of the method of Trotsky. He therefore fell into a whole number of misinterpretations of key elements of his life, especially concerning the last phase of it.
What all these books have in common is the absence of a serious analysis of Trotsky's attempt to found a new revolutionary international, the Fourth International. All of them regard it with a certain suspicion, emphasizing its reduced numbers, its isolation from the working masses and the splits which took place in the movement.
While most of Trotsky's biographers were full of praise for his great literary works such as My life or the History of the Russian Revolution they never understood why the creator of the Red Army spent countless hours of his last years writing letters, critiques, manifestos and programmes which only reached a handful of people and in many cases dealt with practical questions in the day-to-day work.
In our opinion this great flaw was mainly due to the fact that all of these writers were intellectuals on the margins of the workers' movement. They did not have the knowledge or the experience of a participant and consequently their books were not written with the methodology of a revolutionary militant.
However, when one reads the hundreds of letters that Trotsky wrote to create and train a new Marxist leadership, and when one studies the activity of his followers during the Second World War, it is impossible not to be impressed, faced with the magnitude of the lessons that this epoch contains for the future.
The objective of this article is, on the one hand, to serve as an introduction to the reading of Trotsky's last writings, and on the other hand also to extract the principal lessons of the attempt to create a Fourth International. For reasons of space, we cannot go into a detailed analysis of the subsequent history of Trotskyism and we will therefore limit ourselves to give an overview of the main reasons for the decline of the Fourth International after the end of WW2. For a more complete history, we recommend the work of Ted Grant: History of British Trotskyism, The origins of the collapse of the Fourth International by Fred Weston and The theoretical origins of the degeneration of the Fourth - Interview with Ted Grant.
In the work of researching the material for this article, it has been necessary to reclaim the real Trotsky, buried under a mountain of distortions and manipulations. By saying this we are not only referring to the monstrous lies of Stalinism nor only to the caricature presented by the bourgeois historians. We also refer to the “theoreticians” of the small self-styled Trotskyist sects, who have hijacked the name of the great revolutionary.
Always fond of internal rows and personal antagonisms, these gentlemen always had a modus operandi, a style and a life completely separated from the real mass movement. Their hysterical denunciations and their schematic views never allowed them to enter into contact with the living workers' movement and consequently they gave a very bad name to Trotskyism; something which has alienated many workers and made them refuse to collaborate with the 4th International and its subsequent fractions.
Trotsky himself, who had a profound knowledge of the psychology of the masses, did everything to throw out sectarianism and educate the cadres in the Bolshevik method of winning the majority. In this article we will show how he made several attempts to push his followers towards the mass organizations, not only to influence them, but also to constantly renovate his own movement, give it new life blood and break with the vicious circle of the small-group environment.
“The most important work of my life”
It was in the year of 1933 that Trotsky came to the conclusion that a new revolutionary international was necessary. Before this, he had maintained the position of building an opposition within the official Communist Parties in order to fight for a genuine Marxist programme. But it was a huge political event which made Trotsky change his mind: the catastrophe in Germany, where the crazy “theory” of the Third Period and the consequent refusal to form a united front with the Social Democrats, whom they called “social-fascists”, which opened the gates for Hitler to come to power.
From that moment on, Trotsky came to the conclusion that the Party and the International not only had been incapable of taking a correct stance in the decisive moments. They had also been organically incapable of learning from their mistakes and they had proclaimed the big defeat of the German working class as if it was a victory (“After Hitler, our turn!”). He therefore thought that such an organization was doomed and could not be reconquered as an instrument for the proletarian revolution.
Contrary to his biographers, Lev Davidovich considered that the task of forging this new International was the “greatest work of his life”. In 1935, in one of his lesser-known works, Diary in Exile, he wrote the following:
"And still I think that the work in which I am engaged now, despite its extremely insufficient and fragmentary nature, is the most important work of my life—more important than 1917, more important than the period of the Civil War or any other.
“For the sake of clarity I would put it this way. Had I not been present in 1917 in Petersburg, the October Revolution would still have taken place—on the condition that Lenin was present and in command. If neither Lenin nor I had been present in Petersburg, there would have been no October Revolution: the leadership of the Bolshevik Party would have prevented it from occurring—of this I have not the slightest doubt! If Lenin had not been in Petersburg, I doubt whether I could have managed to conquer the resistance of the Bolshevik leaders. The struggle with ‘Trotskyism’ (i.e., with the proletarian revolution) would have commenced in May, 1917, and the outcome of the revolution would have been in question. But I repeat, granted the presence of Lenin the October Revolution would have been victorious anyway. The same could by and large be said of the Civil War, although in its first period, especially at the time of the fall of Simbirsk and Kazan, Lenin wavered and was beset by doubts. But this was undoubtedly a passing mood which he probably never even admitted to anyone but me.”
“Thus I cannot speak of the ‘indispensability’ of my work, even about the period from 1917 to 1921. But now my work is ‘indispensable’ in the full sense of the word. There is no arrogance in this claim at all. The collapse of the two Internationals has posed a problem which none of the leaders of these Internationals is at all equipped to solve. The vicissitudes of my personal fate have confronted me with this problem and armed me with important experience in dealing with it. There is now no one except me to carry out the mission of arming a new generation with the revolutionary method over the heads of the leaders of the Second and Third International. And I am in a complete agreement with Lenin (or rather Turgenev) that the worst vice is to be more than 55 years old! I need at least about five more years of uninterrupted work to ensure the succession."[i]
The first steps: The bloc of the four
According to Trotsky, the new international would of course not fall from the sky from one day to another, but would be the result of a process of formation. It would include different sectors of the workers' movement who had arrived at the same conclusion or were drawing close to it. The degeneration of the Third (Communist) International and the bankruptcy of the Second International, in the context of the rise of fascism and the worst crisis in the history of capitalism created a vacuum on the political scene.
It was in such a situation that Trotsky received with great enthusiasm the news of the formation and the rapid turn to the left of the ILP, the Independent Labour Party of Great Britain. The leaders of the ILP were even for a short time flirting with the idea of setting up a new revolutionary international, although they subsequently abandoned that position. Other organizations, especially left-wing splits from the Socialist parties in Europe, were coming closer to the very same conclusion.
The followers of Trotsky, the Bolshevik-Leninists, participated in that debate and in the conference which was held by fourteen labour organizations and parties in Paris in August of 1933. This meeting had certain similarities with the conference of Zimmerwald in 1915, which, in spite of the enormous theoretical confusion, organized those who opposed the First World War. Just as in Zimmerwald, in the Paris conference a left and a rightwing appeared. The adherents of the left were four organizations who came out signing a declaration for a new International. These included, apart from the International Left Opposition, the SAP of Germany and two Dutch organizations, the RSP and the OSP.
This initiative, in spite of the programmatical limitations and the subsequent disagreements, showed how Trotsky was absolutely willing to collaborate with other groups, even with people who came from other traditions within the workers' movement. He was never afraid of an open and honest discussion with groups or individuals who were moving in the direction of Bolshevism. However, at the same time he insisted on transparency and honesty on the part of his allies and reserved the right to always put forward his own position:
“Revolutionary irreconcilability consists not in demanding our “leadership” be recognized a priori, not in presenting our allies at every occasion with ultimatums and threatening with a break, with the removal of signatures, etc. We leave such methods on one hand, to the Stalinist bureaucrats, on the other to some impatient allies. We realize full well that disagreements between us and our allies will arise more than once. But we hope, more than that, we are convinced, that the march of events will reveal in deeds the impossibility of participating simultaneously in the principled bloc of four and in the unprincipled bloc of the majority. Without resorting to any unbecoming “ultimatums”, we claim however our full right not only to raise our banners but also to state openly to our allies our opinions regarding what we consider to be their mistakes. We expect from them the same frankness. Our alliance will thus be strengthened."
The French Turn
Trotsky was completely conscious of the weakness of his forces, not only from a numerical point of view, but also from the point of view of the lack of political experience of his followers. In one of the discussions he had with a visitor in his house in April of 1939 he explained it in these terms:
“We have comrades who came to us, as Naville and others, 15 or 16 or more years ago when they were young boys. Now they are mature people and their whole conscious life they have had only blows, defeats and terrible defeats on an international scale and they are more or less acquainted with this situation. They appreciate very highly the correctness of their conceptions and they can analyze, but they never had the capacity to penetrate, to work with the masses and they have not acquired it.”[ii]
This was one of the main reasons why he began to recommend a sharp turn towards the Socialist parties, and especially their youth organizations, beginning in France. In his opinion, the Trotskyists should enter these organizations to win the best proletarian elements. This tactic, which was later referred to as “entryism”, was not only about getting a numerical growth in terms of militants, but also about giving new life to the internal regimes of the Trotskyist groups.
This was a vital point for the educating of Marxist cadres in the harsh school of the class struggle. From the Old Man's point of view, it was not sufficient merely to comment on the life of a party from the perspective of an external observer. On the contrary, it was crucial to converge with the masses in revolutionary action, fighting shoulder to shoulder with the left against the right:
“It is not enough for a revolutionist to have correct ideas. Let us not forget that correct ideas have already been set down in Capital and The Communist Manifesto. But that has not prevented false ideas from being broadcast. It is the task of the revolutionary party to weld together the ideas with the mass labour movement. Only in this manner can an idea become a driving force.
“A revolutionary organization does not mean a paper and its readers. One can write and read revolutionary articles day in and day out and still remain in reality outside of the revolutionary movement. One can give the labour organizations good advice from the sidelines. That is something. But that still does not make a revolutionary organization.(...)
“In relation to the Socialist Party, the League has shown not only insufficient initiative but also a hidebound sectarianism. Instead of taking for its task the creation of a faction inside the SFIO just as soon as the crisis in the latter became obvious, the League demanded that every Socialist become convinced of the correctness of our ideas and leave his mass organization to join the group of La Verite readers. In order to create an internal faction, it was necessary to pursue the mass movement, to adapt oneself to the environment, to carry on a menial daily work. Precisely in this very decisive field the League has not been able to make any progress up to the present – with very few exceptions. A great deal of valuable time was allowed to be lost. (...)
“The criticism, the ideas, the slogans of the League are in general correct, but in this present period particularly inadequate. The revolutionary ideas must be transformed into life itself every day through the experiences of the masses themselves. But how can the League explain this to them when it is itself cut off from the experience of the masses? It is necessary to add: several comrades do not even see the need of this experience. It seems to them to be sufficient to form an opinion on the basis of newspaper accounts they read and then give it expression in an article or in a talk. Yet if the most correct ideas do not reflect directly the ideas and actions of the mass, they will escape the attention of the masses altogether” (Trotsky, The League Faced with a Turn, June 1934[iii])
Afterwards, Trotsky made the same recommendations for his followers in England concerning the ILP and in the United States concerning the Socialist Party. In many cases his followers received the advice with a lot of conservatism and opposed entering the organizations in question, or in some cases only a handful entered and did so too late to influence the left-wing tendencies that were developing in the rank and file of the Socialist parties.
Trotsky and the Spanish Revolution
The country where this refusal on the part of Trotsky's comrades to accept his advice generated most controversy was Spain. The study of Trotsky's position in regard to the Spanish Revolution could merit a whole article or a book apart[iv], but in this occasion we will limit ourselves to the most important lessons.
Since the proclamation of the Second Republic in April of 1931, Spain had lived through a revolution of enormous dimensions in all spheres of social and political life. The subsequent incapacity of the republican-socialist government to keep its promises, especially the agrarian reform which would have benefitted the poor and exploited peasants, led to the electoral defeat of the left in the elections of November 1933. What followed afterwards is known as the “bienio negro” (the two black years).
The heroic resistance on the part of the workers, when faced with the entry of the ultra-right-wing CEDA party in 1934, represented the beginning of the armed insurrection and the proletarian commune in Asturias. This experiment was only cut across by the ferocious repression on the part of the army, led by general Franco. This was the very same officer who led a new coup d'etat in July of 1936 with the aim of destroying the revolution once and for all. But the brave workers of Catalonia and in other parts of Spain rose up and prevented a Fascist victory. In effect they made themselves the masters of Barcelona and other parts of Spain. Thus the Spanish civil war commenced in July 1936 and lasted for three years, up until Franco's final victory in April of 1939.
This was the context in which Trotsky tried to build a revolutionary party which could play the same role as the Bolshevik Party had played in Russia in 1917. A victory for the revolution in Spain would have acted as a real earthquake, which in turn would have changed the whole balance of forces internationally. That is why the amount of attention which Trotsky paid in dealing with the Spanish revolution, (something that the majority of his biographers ignore), is completely justified.
From 1930 onwards, one of his old friends, his former secretary, Andreu Nin, had been living in Spain. Nin was a relatively experienced cadre who had been many years in the Soviet Union, working as the President of the Profintern, the Federation of red trade-unions. From his arrival in Spain, he began to correspond with Trotsky about the problems of the revolution and the tasks of the Spanish communists. Nin began to develop more and more differences with the Old Man. While the former wanted a fusion with the right-wing-Communist group of JoaquÃn Maurin on an eclectic programme, Trotsky insisted on maintaining ideological clarity and discipline.
In the course of the year 1934, the same phenomenon of radicalization of the Socialist Youth which had been seen in France was repeated in Spain. The Spanish Socialist Youth even reached a point where they invited the Trotskyists to enter the Socialist Party in order to “bolshevize” it[v]. The main leader of the Socialist Party left, Largo Caballero, who organized his followers around the paper Claridad, spoke in favour of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” and quoted the writings of Lenin on more than one occasion. But instead of grasping this historic opportunity, Nin and his friends opposed Trotsky's call to enter the PSOE and the FSJ. The Stalinists were more intelligent and they managed to make a fusion between their own miniscule youth organization and the Socialist Youth, thus conquering a solid base in the working class youth.
The fusion of Nin's group (Izquierda Comunista) with Maurin's Catalan group (The BOC), led to the formation of the POUM (The Workers' Party for Marxist Unification). Although it was very much accused of being Trotskyist by the Stalinists and although its members showed a lot of courage during the civil war (including Nin himself who was brutally tortured and murdered by the Stalinists), the POUM was never a Trotskyist party. Instead of carrying out the revolution from below, building the power of the workers' and peasant committees, it vacillated between reformism and revolution.
It recognized the legitimacy of the Catalan bourgeois government, the Generalitat, and even entered it with Nin as Minister of Justice. They accepted the dissolution of the militias and the disarmament, something which the government was promoting with the excuse of creating a single professional army. The leaders of the POUM also decided to call upon its militants to abandon the barricades during the famous May Days in Barcelona in 1937, when the Stalinists attempted to destroy workers’ control in the Telephone Exchange.
All these actions were severely condemned by Trotsky who in the last instance explained the defeat of the Spanish Revolution by the lack of a genuine revolutionary party. In his brilliant, unfinished article Class, Party and Leadership, he pointed out that the destruction of the Spanish Revolution was in no way due to a “low level of consciousness” on the part of the working class, but rather due to the betrayal of the leaders:
“The workers’ line of march at all times cut a certain angle to the line of the leadership. And at the most critical moments this angle became 180 degrees. The leadership then helped directly or indirectly to subdue the workers by armed force. In May 1937 the workers of Catalonia rose not only without their own leadership but against it(...)
“The proletariat may “tolerate” for a long time a leadership that has already suffered a complete inner degeneration but has not as yet had the opportunity to express this degeneration amid great events. A great historic shock is necessary to reveal sharply the contradiction between the leadership and the class. The mightiest historical shocks are wars and revolutions. Precisely for this reason the working class is often caught unawares by war and revolution. But even in cases where the old leadership has revealed its internal corruption, the class cannot improvise immediately a new leadership, especially if it has not inherited from the previous period strong revolutionary cadres capable of utilizing the collapse of the old leading party.(...)
“Victory is not at all the ripe fruit of the proletariat’s “maturity.” Victory is a strategical task. It is necessary to utilize the favourable conditions of a revolutionary crisis in order to mobilize the masses; taking as a starting point the given level of their ‘maturity’ it is necessary to propel them forward, teach them to understand that the enemy is by no means omnipotent, that it is torn asunder with contradictions, that behind the imposing facade panic prevails. Had the Bolshevik party failed to carry out this work, there couldn’t even be talk of the victory of the proletarian revolution. The Soviets would have been crushed by the counter-revolution and the little sages of all countries would have written articles and books on the keynote that only uprooted visionaries could dream in Russia of the dictatorship of the proletariat, so small numerically and so immature. [vi]
Incredibly, these very same arguments about a so-called “immaturity” and “low level of consciousness of the masses” are used by reformists in relation to the Venezuelan revolution today. Their aim is to hide their own incapability of completing the revolution by expropriating the capitalists, the bankers and the landlords.
Just as in Spain, in Venezuela the central problem is the lack of a real Marxist leadership which can guide the revolution. And as in Spain, the activity of the Venezuelan masses was also 180 degrees in contradiction with the activities of the reformist ministers during the 11, 12th and 13th of April 2002. While the latter were in hiding or fleeing from the coup d'etát, the masses courageously opposed the coup, taking the control of the streets and fraternizing with the revolutionary elements in the army.
But precisely as with the Spanish revolution, in Venezuela the revolution is running the risk of a defeat, because there is no mass Marxist leadership to drive all the energy of the masses towards the taking of power.
The debates with the leaders of the American SWP:The method of transitional demands
The largest party of Trotsky's movement was without doubt the American Socialist Workers' Party. Its leaders had followed his advice and in a short space of time they had managed to make a successful fusion with the centrist party of A.J. Muste (The American Workers' Party), in reality with the purpose of winning the followers of the AWP over to Trotskyism, without allowing any political concessions. Afterwards they had entered the Socialist Party and effectively won over its youth organization, the Young Peoples' Socialist League. They had also managed to conquer important positions, as the one in Minneapolis, where they led the famous Teamsters Strike in 1934. The SWP had a membership of around 2,000 towards the end of the 30s.
However, Trotsky was completely aware of the theoretical shortcomings of the SWP leaders. He tried to prepare them for the great events that lay ahead by providing them with an insight to the dialectical method of analysis and a militant attitude towards the intervention in the mass movement. During 1938 and 1939 he held various discussions, with Cannon, Shactmann, Vincent Dunne, Joseph Hansen and other leaders of the American party.
The debates lasted for whole days at a time and had a widespread character, not just dealing with the particular problems of the practical work in the United States, but also about general problems of revolutionary tactics and strategy. The notes taken from the discussions were subsequently published and they constitute a real goldmine of lessons for revolutionary work.
The main point which ran through all the discussions was the method with which one could connect with the most active layers of the masses and consequently, the transitional demands to win them over. At that time, there was an increasing mood in favour of united proletarian action, but the class lacked a party on a national level.
Reflecting this mood, the LNPL (Labour's Non-Partisan League) was launched as a political instrument of the workers. However, the LNPL was launched by trade union leaders who merely wanted it to restrict it as being an office under their bureaucratic control which would recommend the vote for the bourgeois candidate Roosevelt. The SWP leaders were doubtful as to whether they should participate in the LNPL but Trotsky insisted on the struggle for “a policy which enables the trade unions to put their weight on the balance”.
He explained that it was necessary to counter-pose revolutionary demands to those of the reformists within the LNPL, in a concrete and audacious manner which could be understood by the workers:
“We are for a party, for an independent party of the toiling masses who will take power in the state. We must concretize it—we are for the creation of factory committees, for workers’ control of industry through the factory committees. All these questions are now pending in the air. They speak of technocracy, and put forward the slogan of ‘production for use.’ We oppose this charlatan formula and advance the workers’ control of production through the factory committees. (...)
“We say, the factory committees should see the books. This program we must develop parallel with the idea of a labour party in the unions, and workers’ militia. Otherwise it is an abstraction and an abstraction is a weapon in the hands of the opposing class. (...)
“Naturally we must make our first step in such a way as to accumulate experience for practical work, not to engage in abstract formulas, but develop a concrete program of action and demands in the sense that this transitional program issues from the conditions of capitalist society today, but immediately leads over the limits of capitalism (...)
“Then we also have the possibility of spreading the slogans of our transitional program and see the reaction of the masses. We will see what slogans should be selected, what slogans abandoned, but if we give up our slogans before the experience, before seeing the reaction of the masses, then we can never advance. .”[vii]
Faced with the scepticism, especially on the part of Shactmann, Trotsky pointed out that the slogan for a workers' militia was a necessity inherent in the concrete situation of the United States, even though this country was very far away and the threat of fascism seemed quite distant. He underlined that on the one hand the events of Europe would have a huge impact on the consciousness of the North American workers and on the other hand that the workers' militia could be proposed in a concrete way to protect shop stewards and picket lines from scabs and the bosses’ armed gangs.
Another controversial point was about the Ludlow amendment, by a bourgeois member of congress proposing a referendum on the participation of the United States in the Second World War. The schematic and abstract way of thinking of the SWP leaders had led the party to reject every attempt of using this slogan in favour of the referendum.
Trotsky opposed himself directly to Cannon and his colleagues and gave them an important lesson on how to tackle the question of democratic demands and connect them with the struggle for socialism. In the first place he explained that, until you can overthrow the bourgeois democracy, you have to take advantage of the means that it gives to you (regardless of how limited these are), in order to mobilize the masses in favour of your programme.
Of course he did not for one instance believe that a referendum could stop the outbreak of the war, nor decide whether the United States would take part in it or not. But Trotsky maintained that “We cannot dissipate the illusions [of the masses] a priori, only in the course of the struggle”. He added that it was crucial to say openly to the masses that the revolutionaries would fight side by side with their class brothers and sisters in favour of this referendum proposed by Ludlow, showing in practice that he wasn't really interested in realizing it, and that the working class could only trust its own forces in order to achieve such a referendum.
The words of Trotsky about the Ludlow amendment could perfectly have been written yesterday about the democratic demands in Tunisia and Egypt, where millions are struggling against the remnants of the dictatorships of Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak. It is a good answer to all those sectarian elements who reject the necessity of giving support to democratic demands, among them for a Constituent Assembly.
In all these discussions we can observe the dialectical method of Trotsky in contrast with the mechanical ideas of sectarianism.
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[i] Trotsky, Diary In Exile, pp. 53-4
[ii] Writings of Leon Trotsky, : Fighting against the stream. 1939.: http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1939/04/stream.htm
[iii] Writings of Leon Trotsky: The league faced with a turn, June 1934
[iv] Among the writings that analyze Trotsky's position on the Spanish Revolution, I would like to highlight the introduction written by Pierre Broué to the Spanish edition of his works on Spain (available online here: http://www.marx.org/history/etol/writers/broue/works/1967/04/trotsky-spanish-revolution.htm ) and also the article by Juan Manuel Municio, “Trotsky, La izquierda comunista y el POUM” published in Marxismo Hoy No. 2, 1995.
[v] For a more detailed historical analysis of the development of the Spanish Socialist Youth, I recommend the following work: Pierre Broué: The Spanish Socialist Youth (When Carillo was a leftist), published in Revolutionary History, 2007: http://www.revolutionaryhistory.co.uk/rh09/rh0904.html
[vi] Writings of Leon Trotsky: The class, the party and the leadership. 1940. : http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1940/xx/party.htm
[vii] Writings of Leon Trotsky: On the Labor Party Question in the United States, 1938: http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/04/lp.htm
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Trotsky and the struggle for a revolutionary international (1933-1946) – Part Two
Written by Patrick Larsen
Thursday, 15 December 2011
In the 1930s Trotsky had to put up an energetic struggle to convince the various national sections of his movement of the necessity of an International, in the real sense of the word.
The persecution of the revolutionaries
In the history of the destiny of revolutionaries throughout the world, it is impossible to find a life with more pain and suffering than Trotsky's. He had already suffered several losses in his family, among them his daughter Zina, who committed suicide in Berlin in 1933 after having had her Soviet citizenship removed and thus being unable to see her husband and child again.
However, the most painful loss for Trotsky was that of his son León Sedov, who was assassinated by the Stalinists in a Paris hospital in February of 1938. Sedov was not just Trotsky's son but had also worked as his secretary, giving indispensable assistance in the collection of facts and sources for the books of the Old Man. Sedov had stayed in Berlin and subsequently in Paris, where he had organized the International Secretariat of the movement and also maintained the publication of the Bulletin of the Russian Left Opposition, which he managed to smuggle into the USSR through a clandestine network of supporters.
Sedov was a brilliant organizer and his death left an enormous vacuum in the movement[i]. The young Rudolf Klement took over his responsibility in the work at the International Secretariat, but the GPU – Stalin's secret police – was following his footsteps. In the end he was kidnapped by that intelligence service in July of the same year, 1938, and his body was found, headless, in the river a couple of weeks later.
The French historian Jean-Jacques Marie, in his recent Trotsky biography (Revolutionary without borders), quotes a secret document from the now opened GPU archives, which revealed that they estimated that the assassination of Klement would be a “severe blow” for Trotsky and his closest collaborators, because they had not only been able to kill the young secretary but also steal the archives of the Fourth International, including all the contacts and addresses of its international network.
Many other collaborators of Trotsky were assassinated by the GPU between 1936 and 1938: Hans Martin Freund (known as Moulin) and Ernest Wolf were both kidnapped and killed during the Spanish civil war. Ignace Reiss, an agent of the GPU who had deserted and embraced the Fourth International, was found shot in a car in a rural area of Switzerland in 1937.
Even the other of son of Trotsky, Sergei, who held no interest in politics and had stayed in the USSR, was deported and executed on Stalin's orders in 1937. Walter Held, a German Trotskyist who had for a time functioned as the Old Man's secretary in Norway, tried to travel to the U.S. through the Soviet Union by train, but was arrested and shot, apparently in 1941.
However, the greatest massacre against Trotsky's followers took place in the Gulag camps in Siberia, in Vorkuta and Kolomya, where thousands of Trotskyists were killed by Stalin’s henchmen. Even until the last moments they maintained their revolutionary spirit, organizing a hunger strike to protest against the terrible conditions of the political prisoners. Witnesses saw them singing the Internationale when they were taken out to the execution squads[ii].
Internationalism as a principle
In the 1930s Lev Davidovich had to put up an energetic struggle to convince the various national sections of his movement of the necessity of an International, in the real sense of the word. All the conflicts with the groups of Andreu Nin in Spain – and later Molinier in France, Sneevliet in Holland and Vereecken in Belgium – had their origins in the narrow-minded national outlook and the provincial and opportunist mentality of the main leaders of those groups.
Lenin, Trotsky and the other Bolshevik leaders had the great advantage of having got to know the international labour movement in person during their exiles in several countries. Trotsky spoke German and French fluently and also gained a certain level of English in the last period of his life. But even more decisive than that was his profound knowledge of the general characteristics of the class struggle on an international level, of the question of oppressed nationalities and of the effects of imperialist domination.
It is no coincidence that Trotsky also criticized the American SWP leaders for not giving sufficient attention to the international questions. In various letters and in the discussions he had with them during 1939-40, he underlined three aspects:
In the first place he considered it the fundamental duty of any Bolshevik-Leninist group in an imperialist country to condemn in an energetic way the foreign policy of the country and help the working class in the colonial countries. In the case of the SWP, Trotsky believed that the party had not done what was necessary in relation to Latin America and that it should write more frequently about this theme in its press and translate the articles into Spanish and distribute them south of the border.
Secondly, Trotsky complained about the lack of serious work among the racial minorities in the United States, particularly among the black workers. He proposed that the American party should make a special effort to reach the most oppressed layers of the proletariat and that its struggles should be reflected in the Socialist Appeal. Furthermore, he underlined that the transitional programme should adapt itself to the black minority in the United States, including demands for civil and democratic rights.[iii]
Trotsky’s third criticism was that the leaders of the SWP did not have a real internationalist approach. In one letter after the other, the Old Man tried to pressurize Cannon and Shactmann to take on the responsibility of building the Fourth International in a serious manner. He demanded that they make political trips to give advice and exchange experience with the other sections of the international, particularly in France, where the political situation was very tense and explosive in the years leading up to the outbreak of WW2.
It is interesting to note how Trotsky's opponents always complained of his supposedly “authoritarian style” and his “interventions into the national issues” of the groups in question. They always hid their own lack of arguments under the accusations of “bad proceedings” or the “arrogant attitude” of the old Bolshevik leader. On other occasions they denounced a supposed “personality cult” around Trotsky, yet another trick to avoid discussing the real issues at stake.
The attitude towards the anti-imperialist struggle in Latin America
The writings of Lev Davidovich on Latin America are particularly interesting. In another detailed analysis we have dealt with the main lessons in those texts. The attitude of Trotsky towards the most advanced representatives of the revolutionary-democratic movement, and specifically towards Lázaro Cárdenas (the then president of Mexico), is very significant. The latter was of course not a Marxist, but there cannot be any doubt about his honesty and political stance in the anti-imperialist struggle.
It was not a coincidence that Mexico was the only country prepared to put an end to what Trotsky had called “The planet without a visa”. President Cárdenas was the leader of a Nationalist project which tried to liberate Mexico from Imperialist stranglehold. It was exactly for this reason that it had the sufficient independence which allowed them to receive the world's most persecuted man. Even Norway, supposedly free and ruled by the social-democrats, had bent down after the Stalinist pressure and had recalled the right to asylum.
While some of his Mexican supporters, led by a man named Fernando Galicia, constantly denounced the Mexican government, Trotsky himself advocated the maintenance of friendly relations and defended unconditionally the actions of the Mexican government which were directed against the imperialist dominance of Great Britain and the United States.
In order to prevent confusion about the position of the Fourth International, Trotsky and the Panamerican Bureau were forced to expel Galicia and his followers who were compromising the work heavily with their sectarian approach towards Cárdena's movement.
When president Cárdenas announced the nationalization of the oil, British Imperialism naturally organized a violent campaign against this measure, basing itself on groups of intellectuals and the so-called “defence of international law”. Trotsky replied with firmness and demanded that the British Labour Party take a stand in favour of the working class in the colonial world. In an article called México and Imperialism, written just after the nationalization, he expounded his position:
“Without succumbing to illusions and without fear of slander, the advanced workers will completely support the Mexican people in their struggle against the imperialists. The expropriation of oil is neither socialism nor communism. But it is a highly progressive measure of national self-defense. Marx did not, of course, consider Abraham Lincoln a communist; this did not, however, prevent Marx from entertaining the deepest sympathy for the struggle that Lincoln headed. The First International sent the Civil War president a message of greeting, and Lincoln in his answer greatly appreciated this moral support.
“The international proletariat has no reason to identify its program with the program of the Mexican government. Revolutionists have no need of changing colour, adapting themselves, and rendering flattery in the manner of the GPU school of courtiers, who in a moment of danger will sell out and betray the weaker side. Without giving up its own identity, every honest working class organization of the entire world, and first of all in Great Britain, is duty-bound – to take an irreconcilable position against the imperialist robbers, their diplomacy, their press, and their fascist hirelings. The cause of Mexico, like the cause of Spain, like the cause of China, is the cause of the international working class. The struggle over Mexican oil is only one of the advance-line skirmishes of future battles between the oppressors and the oppressed. ”[iv]
How relevant are these words for Venezuela today! When the International Marxist Tendency defended the Bolivarian revolution unconditionally, faced with the failed coup d'état of April 2002 and the bosses’ lockout which occurred in December of the same year, many so-called “Trotskyists” attacked us and denounced us as “traitors” of the working class. When Alan Woods, leader of the IMT, met with Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez on several occasions, all the sectarian groups called him an opportunist. But they forget this attitude of Trotsky who was never afraid of a discussion and a dialogue with the best representatives of the revolutionary-democratic movement.
There are even some historians who say that Trotsky met personally with Cárdenas to discuss politics. This has not been proved decisively. Others argue that the political collaboration between the two took place through the general of the Mexican Army, Francisco J. Mújica.[v] However, the most important thing to underline is that Lev Davidovich held a position of critical support faced with the anti-imperialist actions of the Mexican government. In this moment, when the state-owned Venezuelan oil-company PDVSA is being sanctioned by the North American Imperialists, it is clear that we as revolutionaries should adopt the same position as in 1938: “Irreconcilable opposition to against the imperialist robbers, their diplomacy, their press, and their fascist hirelings”.
The founding congress of the Fourth International
Apart from replying to the outrageous lies in the Second Moscow Trial, Trotsky used most of his time in the first half of 1938 for the political preparation of the Founding Congress of the Fourth International. It was finally held in the house of Alfred Rosmer, in Périgny, close to Paris.
Twenty-three delegates of national sections met under severely adverse circumstances. Because of security measures, the congress could only last for one day. However that did not prevent Stalin from being directly represented among the delegates; the “representative of the Russian section” was Etienne (Zobowski), who in reality was a GPU agent infiltrated into the ranks of the Fourth International. Fortunately, they did not give him indications about the meeting place until the last moment, a measure which prevented a violent persecution of the congress on the part of the Stalinists.
The main document at the congress was the Transitional Programme, which is still an invaluable guide for revolutionaries to this day. But the document, drafted by Trotsky, contained several elements which created controversy with some of the congress delegates. For example Trotsky's position on the Second World War, in which he tried to connect with the anti-fascist sentiment of the masses, even recognizing the “fatherland”-sentiment among workers.
We see in this the seed to the famous Proletarian Military Policy, which the Old Man developed the following year; a theme we will touch upon in the next part. However, according to the reports available from the congress[vi], many delegates, including David Rousset, Joánnes Bardin [Boitel], George Vitsoris [Busson] and Michel Raptis Pablo [Speros], were completely opposed to Trotsky's position and accused it of being an adaptation to social-chauvinism. The majority did approve the original formulations and thus the international, at least officially, defended Trotsky's policy on the war.
There were people at the congress – the Polish delegates – and later on also many historians and intellectual commentators who rejected the founding of the Fourth International, arguing that it “had no mass base” and that the whole enterprise was doomed to failure from the outset. Trotsky responded in the following way, emphasizing the necessity of preserving the Marxist doctrine in spite of all obstacles:
“Sceptics ask: But has the moment for the creation of the Fourth International yet arrived? It is impossible, they say, to create an International “artificially”; it can arise only out of great events, etc., etc. All of these objections merely show that sceptics are no good for the building of a new International. They are good for scarcely anything at all.
“The Fourth International has already arisen out of great events: the greatest defeats of the proletariat in history. The cause for these defeats is to be found in the degeneration and perfidy of the old leadership. The class struggle does not tolerate an interruption. The Third International, following the Second, is dead for purposes of revolution. Long live the Fourth International!
“But has the time yet arrived to proclaim its creation? ... the sceptics are not quieted down. The Fourth International, we answer, has no need of being “proclaimed.” It exists and it fights. It is weak? Yes, its ranks are not numerous because it is still young. They are as yet chiefly cadres. But these cadres are pledges for the future. Outside these cadres there does not exist a single revolutionary current on this planet really meriting the name. If our international be still weak in numbers, it is strong in doctrine, program, tradition, in the incomparable tempering of its cadres. Who does not perceive this today, let him in the meantime stand aside. Tomorrow it will become more evident.”[vii]
And he underlined the significance of the founding congress:
“WHEN THESE LINES APPEAR in the press, the Conference of the Fourth International will probably have concluded its labours. The calling of this Conference is a major achievement. The irreconcilable revolutionary tendency, subjected to such persecutions as no other political tendency in world history has in all likelihood suffered, has again given proof of its power. Surmounting all obstacles, it has under the blows of its almighty enemies convened its International Conference. This fact constitutes unimpeachable evidence of the profound viability and unwavering perseverance of the international Bolshevik-Leninists. The very possibility of a successful Conference was first of all assured by the spirit of revolutionary internationalism which imbues all our sections. As a matter of fact, it is necessary to place extremely great value upon the international ties of the proletarian vanguard in order to gather together the international revolutionary staff at the present time when Europe and the entire world live in the expectation of the approaching war. The fumes of national hatreds and racial persecutions compose today the political atmosphere of our planet.”[viii]
Crisis in the SWP: Trotsky and the split of 1940
Another point which had created a big polemic in the Founding Congress and also in the period leading up to it was the Russian question. In his brilliant book, The Revolution Betrayed, Trotsky had explained the character of the Soviet Union, defining it as a degenerated workers' state – led by a bureaucratic caste which had taken over the workers' state and the planned economy. He had rejected every pretension of defining the Stalinist bureaucracy as a new class, as he pointed out that the power and privileges of the bureaucracy were upheld by the state-ownership of the means of production and not a capitalist economy based on private property.
From the beginning there were militants in the Trotskyist movement who did not share this view. In the United States, Burnham – an intellectual who had joined the movement through the fusion with the party of Muste, the AWP – tried to develop another theory, first defining the Soviet state as “bureaucratic collectivism”. The key point in his analysis was that the Stalinist bureaucracy had transformed itself into a new social class and that a political revolution was not sufficient in Russia; a social one was needed as well.
Craipeau, one of the leaders of the French section, defended similar ideas in the Founding Congress. The arguments of these militants were very much influenced by moral indignation, faced with the crimes of Stalinism. But Trotsky, who suffered the consequences of the terror more than anybody else, insisted on maintaining a sober and materialist analysis of the phenomenon of Stalinism.
In September 1939 – partially as a result of the pact between Stalin and Hitler and of the Soviet occupation of Finland – a minority in the SWP, led by Shactmann, Burnham and Abern, began to change their opinion on the Russian question. The majority led by James Cannon took the same position as Trotsky. The question in debate had a political and a practical significance in the world situation, as the members of the minority were drawing the conclusion that it was not a duty to defend the Soviet Union unconditionally in the war against the imperialist powers.
The contributions of Trotsky in this debate have a great value, not only because they shed light on the Russian question, but also because they explain the method of dialectical materialism. The collection of letters and articles in the discussion were subsequently published under the title “In defense of Marxism”. However, it is necessary to analyse this book cautiously, as there have been many misinterpretations of it over the years.
A careful reading of the book shows that Trotsky was not at all interested in a split with the whole minority faction of the SWP. He tried to separate the best elements in that group from the openly anti-Marxist elements like Burnham. Trotsky knew that the opposition represented around forty per cent of the American party, including the majority among the youth.
In one letter after the other he invited a comradely discussion and he even proposed that Shachtman travel to Mexico to discuss with him.[ix] What many biographers do not understand about Trotsky, just as they don't understand Lenin's approach to Martov, is how he always tried to work with collaborators and did everything possible to save them from political degeneration. In another letter which Trotsky wrote to Wright (another leader of the majority), he pointed out that a split was not at all desirable:
“You have not the slightest interest in a split, even if the opposition should become, accidentally, a majority at the next convention. You have not the slightest reason to give the heterogeneous and unbalanced army of the opposition a pretext for a split. Even as an eventual minority, you should in my opinion remain disciplined and loyal towards the party as a whole. It is extremely important for the education in genuine party patriotism, about the necessity of which Cannon wrote me one time very correctly.
“A majority composed of this opposition would not last more than a few months. Then the proletarian tendency of the party will again become the majority with tremendously increased authority. Be extremely firm but don’t lose your nerve – this applies now more than ever to the strategy of the proletarian wing of the party.”[x]
In another letter to Joseph Hansen (also from the majority) he explained the necessity of proposing common guarantees for the minority in the future:
“I believe we must answer them approximately as follows:
“‘You are already afraid of our future repressions? We propose to you mutual guarantees for the future minority, independently of who might be this minority, you or we. These guarantees could be formulated in four points: (1) No prohibition of factions; (2) No other restrictions on factional activity than those dictated by the necessity for common action; (3) The official publications must represent, of course, the line established by the new convention; (4) The future minority can have, if it wishes, an internal bulletin destined for party members, or a common discussion bulletin with the majority.’
“The continuation of discussion bulletins immediately after a long discussion and a convention is, of course, not a rule but an exception, a rather deplorable one. But we are not bureaucrats at all. We don’t have immutable rules. We are dialecticians also in the organizational field. If we have in the party an important minority which is dissatisfied with the decisions of the convention, it is incomparably more preferable to legalize the discussion after the convention than to have a split.
“We can go, if necessary, even further and propose to them to publish, under the supervision of the new National Committee, special discussion symposiums, not only for party members, but for the public in general. We should go as far as possible in this respect in order to disarm their at least premature complaints and handicap them in provoking a split.
“For my part I believe that the prolongation of the discussion, if it is channelized by the good will of both sides, can only serve in the present conditions the education of the party. I believe that the majority should make these propositions officially in the National Committee in a written form. Whatever might be their answer, the party could only win.”[xi]
Even one of his last articles, dated February 21st of 1940 - when the leaders of the opposition had announced the possibility of a split - was entitled “Back to the Party!”, calling upon the minority to stop the breakaway.
Unfortunately, Cannon did not possess the same method as Trotsky and it is an undeniable fact that his behaviour pushed many valuable militants, especially in the youth, towards a split. The final departure of Shactmann's group in April 1940 cost nearly 40 per cent of the total membership.
Incredibly, this particular book – In Defense of Marxism – has been misinterpreted in one extreme or the other. Some tendencies have been obsessed with the parts where Trotsky, correctly, argue against the petit-bourgeois concept that the minority had of democracy in a revolutionary party. These people take quotations completely out of context, in an attempt to silence all debate inside a revolutionary organization. On the other extreme we find people with certain anarchist and opportunist tendencies who put all emphasis in the complete freedom of discussion.
What both groups forget is the dialectical method. Trotsky stressed, in a previous letter, how centralism and democracy always find themselves in different positions and degrees, adjusting themselves to the moment and the concrete necessity of the revolutionary organization:
“Democracy and centralism do not at all find themselves in an invariable ratio to one another. Everything depends on the concrete circumstances, on the political situation in the country, on the strength of the party and its experience, on the general level of its members, on the authority the leadership has succeeded in winning. Before a conference, when the problem is one of formulating a political line for the next period, democracy triumphs over centralism.
“When the problem is political action, centralism subordinates democracy to itself. Democracy again asserts its rights when the party feels the need to examine critically its own actions. The equilibrium between democracy and centralism establishes itself in the actual struggle, at moments it is violated and then again re-established. The maturity of each member of the party expresses itself particularly in the fact that he does not demand from the party regime more than it can give. The person who defines his attitude to the party by the individual fillips that he gets on the nose is a poor revolutionist.
“It is necessary, of course, to fight against every individual mistake of the leadership, every injustice, and the like. But it is necessary to assess these “injustices” and “mistakes” not in themselves but in connection with the general development of the party both on a national and international scale.
“A correct judgement and a feeling for proportion in politics is an extremely important thing.”[xii]
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[i] For a comprehensive biography of Leon Sedov, see: Pierre Broué: Fils de Trotsky, Victime de Staline, Atelier, 1993. Some of the chapters are also available in Revolutionary History, 2007
[ii] A detailed explanation of this is given in Pierre Broué: Comunistas contra Stalin, Editorial SEPHA, 2008. English readers may also consult the following eyewitness report: http://www.marxist.com/History-old/strike_at_vorkuta.htm
[iii] The main writings and discussions with Trotsky on the black question have been published in English: Leon Trotsky on Black Nationalism and Self-Determination, Pathfinder Press, New York, 1978.
[iv] LDT: Mexico and British Imperialism. 1938: http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/06/mexico02.htm
[v] For an explanation of this theory, see an article in the Mexican paper La Jornada: La Jornada: http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2005/08/14/a03n1cul.php
[vi] Reports from the Founding Congress of the Fourth International are available in Spanish as appendix to León Trotsky: El programa de transición y la fundación de la Cuarta Internacional, CEIP, Buenos Aires, 2008, pages 311-332 and in the CD-ROM appendix.
[vii] LDT: The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International - The Transitional Program: http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/tp/tp-text2.htm#fi
[viii] LDT: A Great Achievement. 1938: http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/ni/vol04/no10/trotsky.htm
[ix] LDT: A Letter to Max Shachtman, December 20, 1939: http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/idom/dm/11-shachtman2.htm
[x] LDT: A Letter to John G. Wright, December 19, 1939: http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/idom/dm/10-wright1.htm
[xi] LDT: A Letter to Joseph Hansen. January 18, 1940: http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/idom/dm/20-hansen2.htm
[xii] LDT: On Democratic Centralism and the Regime. December 1937: http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1937/xx/democent.htm
Markin comment:
More often than not I disagree with the line of the IMT or its analysis(mainly I do not believe their political analysis leads to adequate programmatically-based conclusions, revolutionary conclusions in any case), nevertheless, they provide interesting material, especially from areas, “third world” areas, where it is hard to get any kind of information (for our purposes). Read the material from this site.
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Trotsky and the struggle for a Revolutionary International (1933-1946) – Part One
Written by Patrick Larsen
Tuesday, 22 November 2011
The figure of Leon Trotsky has created a new wave of interest among historians and writers of all types. Recently two new books about the Russian revolutionary have appeared; the first being the work of U.S. Professor Robert Service and the second of Bertrand M. Patenaude, a historian at California University. Both of them belong to that class of commercial literature typical of the bourgeoisie, full of factual errors, which tries to present Trotsky as an authoritarian politician who only lost to Stalin because he lacked tactical skills.
Introduction
Another work, much more sympathetic in its style and its content, is the new novel by Leonardo Padura, “The man who loved dogs”. It tells the stories of Trotsky and his assassin, Ramón Mercader, both stories projected on the life of Iván, a Cuban who represents the post-revolutionary generation on the island.
We have dealt with this important contribution elsewhere. But although it has great value in reclaiming the general legacy of Trotsky, it does indeed contain some mistakes in the appreciation that the author has of aspects of Trotsky's political activity.
The main reason is that the majority of facts about his life which are presented in the book have been taken by Padura from Isaac Deutscher's trilogy – The Prophet Unarmed, The Prophet Armed and The Prophet Outcast. This biography, although it contains some interesting facts, has the major disadvantage of having been written by a person who lacked a firm comprehension of the method of Trotsky. He therefore fell into a whole number of misinterpretations of key elements of his life, especially concerning the last phase of it.
What all these books have in common is the absence of a serious analysis of Trotsky's attempt to found a new revolutionary international, the Fourth International. All of them regard it with a certain suspicion, emphasizing its reduced numbers, its isolation from the working masses and the splits which took place in the movement.
While most of Trotsky's biographers were full of praise for his great literary works such as My life or the History of the Russian Revolution they never understood why the creator of the Red Army spent countless hours of his last years writing letters, critiques, manifestos and programmes which only reached a handful of people and in many cases dealt with practical questions in the day-to-day work.
In our opinion this great flaw was mainly due to the fact that all of these writers were intellectuals on the margins of the workers' movement. They did not have the knowledge or the experience of a participant and consequently their books were not written with the methodology of a revolutionary militant.
However, when one reads the hundreds of letters that Trotsky wrote to create and train a new Marxist leadership, and when one studies the activity of his followers during the Second World War, it is impossible not to be impressed, faced with the magnitude of the lessons that this epoch contains for the future.
The objective of this article is, on the one hand, to serve as an introduction to the reading of Trotsky's last writings, and on the other hand also to extract the principal lessons of the attempt to create a Fourth International. For reasons of space, we cannot go into a detailed analysis of the subsequent history of Trotskyism and we will therefore limit ourselves to give an overview of the main reasons for the decline of the Fourth International after the end of WW2. For a more complete history, we recommend the work of Ted Grant: History of British Trotskyism, The origins of the collapse of the Fourth International by Fred Weston and The theoretical origins of the degeneration of the Fourth - Interview with Ted Grant.
In the work of researching the material for this article, it has been necessary to reclaim the real Trotsky, buried under a mountain of distortions and manipulations. By saying this we are not only referring to the monstrous lies of Stalinism nor only to the caricature presented by the bourgeois historians. We also refer to the “theoreticians” of the small self-styled Trotskyist sects, who have hijacked the name of the great revolutionary.
Always fond of internal rows and personal antagonisms, these gentlemen always had a modus operandi, a style and a life completely separated from the real mass movement. Their hysterical denunciations and their schematic views never allowed them to enter into contact with the living workers' movement and consequently they gave a very bad name to Trotskyism; something which has alienated many workers and made them refuse to collaborate with the 4th International and its subsequent fractions.
Trotsky himself, who had a profound knowledge of the psychology of the masses, did everything to throw out sectarianism and educate the cadres in the Bolshevik method of winning the majority. In this article we will show how he made several attempts to push his followers towards the mass organizations, not only to influence them, but also to constantly renovate his own movement, give it new life blood and break with the vicious circle of the small-group environment.
“The most important work of my life”
It was in the year of 1933 that Trotsky came to the conclusion that a new revolutionary international was necessary. Before this, he had maintained the position of building an opposition within the official Communist Parties in order to fight for a genuine Marxist programme. But it was a huge political event which made Trotsky change his mind: the catastrophe in Germany, where the crazy “theory” of the Third Period and the consequent refusal to form a united front with the Social Democrats, whom they called “social-fascists”, which opened the gates for Hitler to come to power.
From that moment on, Trotsky came to the conclusion that the Party and the International not only had been incapable of taking a correct stance in the decisive moments. They had also been organically incapable of learning from their mistakes and they had proclaimed the big defeat of the German working class as if it was a victory (“After Hitler, our turn!”). He therefore thought that such an organization was doomed and could not be reconquered as an instrument for the proletarian revolution.
Contrary to his biographers, Lev Davidovich considered that the task of forging this new International was the “greatest work of his life”. In 1935, in one of his lesser-known works, Diary in Exile, he wrote the following:
"And still I think that the work in which I am engaged now, despite its extremely insufficient and fragmentary nature, is the most important work of my life—more important than 1917, more important than the period of the Civil War or any other.
“For the sake of clarity I would put it this way. Had I not been present in 1917 in Petersburg, the October Revolution would still have taken place—on the condition that Lenin was present and in command. If neither Lenin nor I had been present in Petersburg, there would have been no October Revolution: the leadership of the Bolshevik Party would have prevented it from occurring—of this I have not the slightest doubt! If Lenin had not been in Petersburg, I doubt whether I could have managed to conquer the resistance of the Bolshevik leaders. The struggle with ‘Trotskyism’ (i.e., with the proletarian revolution) would have commenced in May, 1917, and the outcome of the revolution would have been in question. But I repeat, granted the presence of Lenin the October Revolution would have been victorious anyway. The same could by and large be said of the Civil War, although in its first period, especially at the time of the fall of Simbirsk and Kazan, Lenin wavered and was beset by doubts. But this was undoubtedly a passing mood which he probably never even admitted to anyone but me.”
“Thus I cannot speak of the ‘indispensability’ of my work, even about the period from 1917 to 1921. But now my work is ‘indispensable’ in the full sense of the word. There is no arrogance in this claim at all. The collapse of the two Internationals has posed a problem which none of the leaders of these Internationals is at all equipped to solve. The vicissitudes of my personal fate have confronted me with this problem and armed me with important experience in dealing with it. There is now no one except me to carry out the mission of arming a new generation with the revolutionary method over the heads of the leaders of the Second and Third International. And I am in a complete agreement with Lenin (or rather Turgenev) that the worst vice is to be more than 55 years old! I need at least about five more years of uninterrupted work to ensure the succession."[i]
The first steps: The bloc of the four
According to Trotsky, the new international would of course not fall from the sky from one day to another, but would be the result of a process of formation. It would include different sectors of the workers' movement who had arrived at the same conclusion or were drawing close to it. The degeneration of the Third (Communist) International and the bankruptcy of the Second International, in the context of the rise of fascism and the worst crisis in the history of capitalism created a vacuum on the political scene.
It was in such a situation that Trotsky received with great enthusiasm the news of the formation and the rapid turn to the left of the ILP, the Independent Labour Party of Great Britain. The leaders of the ILP were even for a short time flirting with the idea of setting up a new revolutionary international, although they subsequently abandoned that position. Other organizations, especially left-wing splits from the Socialist parties in Europe, were coming closer to the very same conclusion.
The followers of Trotsky, the Bolshevik-Leninists, participated in that debate and in the conference which was held by fourteen labour organizations and parties in Paris in August of 1933. This meeting had certain similarities with the conference of Zimmerwald in 1915, which, in spite of the enormous theoretical confusion, organized those who opposed the First World War. Just as in Zimmerwald, in the Paris conference a left and a rightwing appeared. The adherents of the left were four organizations who came out signing a declaration for a new International. These included, apart from the International Left Opposition, the SAP of Germany and two Dutch organizations, the RSP and the OSP.
This initiative, in spite of the programmatical limitations and the subsequent disagreements, showed how Trotsky was absolutely willing to collaborate with other groups, even with people who came from other traditions within the workers' movement. He was never afraid of an open and honest discussion with groups or individuals who were moving in the direction of Bolshevism. However, at the same time he insisted on transparency and honesty on the part of his allies and reserved the right to always put forward his own position:
“Revolutionary irreconcilability consists not in demanding our “leadership” be recognized a priori, not in presenting our allies at every occasion with ultimatums and threatening with a break, with the removal of signatures, etc. We leave such methods on one hand, to the Stalinist bureaucrats, on the other to some impatient allies. We realize full well that disagreements between us and our allies will arise more than once. But we hope, more than that, we are convinced, that the march of events will reveal in deeds the impossibility of participating simultaneously in the principled bloc of four and in the unprincipled bloc of the majority. Without resorting to any unbecoming “ultimatums”, we claim however our full right not only to raise our banners but also to state openly to our allies our opinions regarding what we consider to be their mistakes. We expect from them the same frankness. Our alliance will thus be strengthened."
The French Turn
Trotsky was completely conscious of the weakness of his forces, not only from a numerical point of view, but also from the point of view of the lack of political experience of his followers. In one of the discussions he had with a visitor in his house in April of 1939 he explained it in these terms:
“We have comrades who came to us, as Naville and others, 15 or 16 or more years ago when they were young boys. Now they are mature people and their whole conscious life they have had only blows, defeats and terrible defeats on an international scale and they are more or less acquainted with this situation. They appreciate very highly the correctness of their conceptions and they can analyze, but they never had the capacity to penetrate, to work with the masses and they have not acquired it.”[ii]
This was one of the main reasons why he began to recommend a sharp turn towards the Socialist parties, and especially their youth organizations, beginning in France. In his opinion, the Trotskyists should enter these organizations to win the best proletarian elements. This tactic, which was later referred to as “entryism”, was not only about getting a numerical growth in terms of militants, but also about giving new life to the internal regimes of the Trotskyist groups.
This was a vital point for the educating of Marxist cadres in the harsh school of the class struggle. From the Old Man's point of view, it was not sufficient merely to comment on the life of a party from the perspective of an external observer. On the contrary, it was crucial to converge with the masses in revolutionary action, fighting shoulder to shoulder with the left against the right:
“It is not enough for a revolutionist to have correct ideas. Let us not forget that correct ideas have already been set down in Capital and The Communist Manifesto. But that has not prevented false ideas from being broadcast. It is the task of the revolutionary party to weld together the ideas with the mass labour movement. Only in this manner can an idea become a driving force.
“A revolutionary organization does not mean a paper and its readers. One can write and read revolutionary articles day in and day out and still remain in reality outside of the revolutionary movement. One can give the labour organizations good advice from the sidelines. That is something. But that still does not make a revolutionary organization.(...)
“In relation to the Socialist Party, the League has shown not only insufficient initiative but also a hidebound sectarianism. Instead of taking for its task the creation of a faction inside the SFIO just as soon as the crisis in the latter became obvious, the League demanded that every Socialist become convinced of the correctness of our ideas and leave his mass organization to join the group of La Verite readers. In order to create an internal faction, it was necessary to pursue the mass movement, to adapt oneself to the environment, to carry on a menial daily work. Precisely in this very decisive field the League has not been able to make any progress up to the present – with very few exceptions. A great deal of valuable time was allowed to be lost. (...)
“The criticism, the ideas, the slogans of the League are in general correct, but in this present period particularly inadequate. The revolutionary ideas must be transformed into life itself every day through the experiences of the masses themselves. But how can the League explain this to them when it is itself cut off from the experience of the masses? It is necessary to add: several comrades do not even see the need of this experience. It seems to them to be sufficient to form an opinion on the basis of newspaper accounts they read and then give it expression in an article or in a talk. Yet if the most correct ideas do not reflect directly the ideas and actions of the mass, they will escape the attention of the masses altogether” (Trotsky, The League Faced with a Turn, June 1934[iii])
Afterwards, Trotsky made the same recommendations for his followers in England concerning the ILP and in the United States concerning the Socialist Party. In many cases his followers received the advice with a lot of conservatism and opposed entering the organizations in question, or in some cases only a handful entered and did so too late to influence the left-wing tendencies that were developing in the rank and file of the Socialist parties.
Trotsky and the Spanish Revolution
The country where this refusal on the part of Trotsky's comrades to accept his advice generated most controversy was Spain. The study of Trotsky's position in regard to the Spanish Revolution could merit a whole article or a book apart[iv], but in this occasion we will limit ourselves to the most important lessons.
Since the proclamation of the Second Republic in April of 1931, Spain had lived through a revolution of enormous dimensions in all spheres of social and political life. The subsequent incapacity of the republican-socialist government to keep its promises, especially the agrarian reform which would have benefitted the poor and exploited peasants, led to the electoral defeat of the left in the elections of November 1933. What followed afterwards is known as the “bienio negro” (the two black years).
The heroic resistance on the part of the workers, when faced with the entry of the ultra-right-wing CEDA party in 1934, represented the beginning of the armed insurrection and the proletarian commune in Asturias. This experiment was only cut across by the ferocious repression on the part of the army, led by general Franco. This was the very same officer who led a new coup d'etat in July of 1936 with the aim of destroying the revolution once and for all. But the brave workers of Catalonia and in other parts of Spain rose up and prevented a Fascist victory. In effect they made themselves the masters of Barcelona and other parts of Spain. Thus the Spanish civil war commenced in July 1936 and lasted for three years, up until Franco's final victory in April of 1939.
This was the context in which Trotsky tried to build a revolutionary party which could play the same role as the Bolshevik Party had played in Russia in 1917. A victory for the revolution in Spain would have acted as a real earthquake, which in turn would have changed the whole balance of forces internationally. That is why the amount of attention which Trotsky paid in dealing with the Spanish revolution, (something that the majority of his biographers ignore), is completely justified.
From 1930 onwards, one of his old friends, his former secretary, Andreu Nin, had been living in Spain. Nin was a relatively experienced cadre who had been many years in the Soviet Union, working as the President of the Profintern, the Federation of red trade-unions. From his arrival in Spain, he began to correspond with Trotsky about the problems of the revolution and the tasks of the Spanish communists. Nin began to develop more and more differences with the Old Man. While the former wanted a fusion with the right-wing-Communist group of JoaquÃn Maurin on an eclectic programme, Trotsky insisted on maintaining ideological clarity and discipline.
In the course of the year 1934, the same phenomenon of radicalization of the Socialist Youth which had been seen in France was repeated in Spain. The Spanish Socialist Youth even reached a point where they invited the Trotskyists to enter the Socialist Party in order to “bolshevize” it[v]. The main leader of the Socialist Party left, Largo Caballero, who organized his followers around the paper Claridad, spoke in favour of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” and quoted the writings of Lenin on more than one occasion. But instead of grasping this historic opportunity, Nin and his friends opposed Trotsky's call to enter the PSOE and the FSJ. The Stalinists were more intelligent and they managed to make a fusion between their own miniscule youth organization and the Socialist Youth, thus conquering a solid base in the working class youth.
The fusion of Nin's group (Izquierda Comunista) with Maurin's Catalan group (The BOC), led to the formation of the POUM (The Workers' Party for Marxist Unification). Although it was very much accused of being Trotskyist by the Stalinists and although its members showed a lot of courage during the civil war (including Nin himself who was brutally tortured and murdered by the Stalinists), the POUM was never a Trotskyist party. Instead of carrying out the revolution from below, building the power of the workers' and peasant committees, it vacillated between reformism and revolution.
It recognized the legitimacy of the Catalan bourgeois government, the Generalitat, and even entered it with Nin as Minister of Justice. They accepted the dissolution of the militias and the disarmament, something which the government was promoting with the excuse of creating a single professional army. The leaders of the POUM also decided to call upon its militants to abandon the barricades during the famous May Days in Barcelona in 1937, when the Stalinists attempted to destroy workers’ control in the Telephone Exchange.
All these actions were severely condemned by Trotsky who in the last instance explained the defeat of the Spanish Revolution by the lack of a genuine revolutionary party. In his brilliant, unfinished article Class, Party and Leadership, he pointed out that the destruction of the Spanish Revolution was in no way due to a “low level of consciousness” on the part of the working class, but rather due to the betrayal of the leaders:
“The workers’ line of march at all times cut a certain angle to the line of the leadership. And at the most critical moments this angle became 180 degrees. The leadership then helped directly or indirectly to subdue the workers by armed force. In May 1937 the workers of Catalonia rose not only without their own leadership but against it(...)
“The proletariat may “tolerate” for a long time a leadership that has already suffered a complete inner degeneration but has not as yet had the opportunity to express this degeneration amid great events. A great historic shock is necessary to reveal sharply the contradiction between the leadership and the class. The mightiest historical shocks are wars and revolutions. Precisely for this reason the working class is often caught unawares by war and revolution. But even in cases where the old leadership has revealed its internal corruption, the class cannot improvise immediately a new leadership, especially if it has not inherited from the previous period strong revolutionary cadres capable of utilizing the collapse of the old leading party.(...)
“Victory is not at all the ripe fruit of the proletariat’s “maturity.” Victory is a strategical task. It is necessary to utilize the favourable conditions of a revolutionary crisis in order to mobilize the masses; taking as a starting point the given level of their ‘maturity’ it is necessary to propel them forward, teach them to understand that the enemy is by no means omnipotent, that it is torn asunder with contradictions, that behind the imposing facade panic prevails. Had the Bolshevik party failed to carry out this work, there couldn’t even be talk of the victory of the proletarian revolution. The Soviets would have been crushed by the counter-revolution and the little sages of all countries would have written articles and books on the keynote that only uprooted visionaries could dream in Russia of the dictatorship of the proletariat, so small numerically and so immature. [vi]
Incredibly, these very same arguments about a so-called “immaturity” and “low level of consciousness of the masses” are used by reformists in relation to the Venezuelan revolution today. Their aim is to hide their own incapability of completing the revolution by expropriating the capitalists, the bankers and the landlords.
Just as in Spain, in Venezuela the central problem is the lack of a real Marxist leadership which can guide the revolution. And as in Spain, the activity of the Venezuelan masses was also 180 degrees in contradiction with the activities of the reformist ministers during the 11, 12th and 13th of April 2002. While the latter were in hiding or fleeing from the coup d'etát, the masses courageously opposed the coup, taking the control of the streets and fraternizing with the revolutionary elements in the army.
But precisely as with the Spanish revolution, in Venezuela the revolution is running the risk of a defeat, because there is no mass Marxist leadership to drive all the energy of the masses towards the taking of power.
The debates with the leaders of the American SWP:The method of transitional demands
The largest party of Trotsky's movement was without doubt the American Socialist Workers' Party. Its leaders had followed his advice and in a short space of time they had managed to make a successful fusion with the centrist party of A.J. Muste (The American Workers' Party), in reality with the purpose of winning the followers of the AWP over to Trotskyism, without allowing any political concessions. Afterwards they had entered the Socialist Party and effectively won over its youth organization, the Young Peoples' Socialist League. They had also managed to conquer important positions, as the one in Minneapolis, where they led the famous Teamsters Strike in 1934. The SWP had a membership of around 2,000 towards the end of the 30s.
However, Trotsky was completely aware of the theoretical shortcomings of the SWP leaders. He tried to prepare them for the great events that lay ahead by providing them with an insight to the dialectical method of analysis and a militant attitude towards the intervention in the mass movement. During 1938 and 1939 he held various discussions, with Cannon, Shactmann, Vincent Dunne, Joseph Hansen and other leaders of the American party.
The debates lasted for whole days at a time and had a widespread character, not just dealing with the particular problems of the practical work in the United States, but also about general problems of revolutionary tactics and strategy. The notes taken from the discussions were subsequently published and they constitute a real goldmine of lessons for revolutionary work.
The main point which ran through all the discussions was the method with which one could connect with the most active layers of the masses and consequently, the transitional demands to win them over. At that time, there was an increasing mood in favour of united proletarian action, but the class lacked a party on a national level.
Reflecting this mood, the LNPL (Labour's Non-Partisan League) was launched as a political instrument of the workers. However, the LNPL was launched by trade union leaders who merely wanted it to restrict it as being an office under their bureaucratic control which would recommend the vote for the bourgeois candidate Roosevelt. The SWP leaders were doubtful as to whether they should participate in the LNPL but Trotsky insisted on the struggle for “a policy which enables the trade unions to put their weight on the balance”.
He explained that it was necessary to counter-pose revolutionary demands to those of the reformists within the LNPL, in a concrete and audacious manner which could be understood by the workers:
“We are for a party, for an independent party of the toiling masses who will take power in the state. We must concretize it—we are for the creation of factory committees, for workers’ control of industry through the factory committees. All these questions are now pending in the air. They speak of technocracy, and put forward the slogan of ‘production for use.’ We oppose this charlatan formula and advance the workers’ control of production through the factory committees. (...)
“We say, the factory committees should see the books. This program we must develop parallel with the idea of a labour party in the unions, and workers’ militia. Otherwise it is an abstraction and an abstraction is a weapon in the hands of the opposing class. (...)
“Naturally we must make our first step in such a way as to accumulate experience for practical work, not to engage in abstract formulas, but develop a concrete program of action and demands in the sense that this transitional program issues from the conditions of capitalist society today, but immediately leads over the limits of capitalism (...)
“Then we also have the possibility of spreading the slogans of our transitional program and see the reaction of the masses. We will see what slogans should be selected, what slogans abandoned, but if we give up our slogans before the experience, before seeing the reaction of the masses, then we can never advance. .”[vii]
Faced with the scepticism, especially on the part of Shactmann, Trotsky pointed out that the slogan for a workers' militia was a necessity inherent in the concrete situation of the United States, even though this country was very far away and the threat of fascism seemed quite distant. He underlined that on the one hand the events of Europe would have a huge impact on the consciousness of the North American workers and on the other hand that the workers' militia could be proposed in a concrete way to protect shop stewards and picket lines from scabs and the bosses’ armed gangs.
Another controversial point was about the Ludlow amendment, by a bourgeois member of congress proposing a referendum on the participation of the United States in the Second World War. The schematic and abstract way of thinking of the SWP leaders had led the party to reject every attempt of using this slogan in favour of the referendum.
Trotsky opposed himself directly to Cannon and his colleagues and gave them an important lesson on how to tackle the question of democratic demands and connect them with the struggle for socialism. In the first place he explained that, until you can overthrow the bourgeois democracy, you have to take advantage of the means that it gives to you (regardless of how limited these are), in order to mobilize the masses in favour of your programme.
Of course he did not for one instance believe that a referendum could stop the outbreak of the war, nor decide whether the United States would take part in it or not. But Trotsky maintained that “We cannot dissipate the illusions [of the masses] a priori, only in the course of the struggle”. He added that it was crucial to say openly to the masses that the revolutionaries would fight side by side with their class brothers and sisters in favour of this referendum proposed by Ludlow, showing in practice that he wasn't really interested in realizing it, and that the working class could only trust its own forces in order to achieve such a referendum.
The words of Trotsky about the Ludlow amendment could perfectly have been written yesterday about the democratic demands in Tunisia and Egypt, where millions are struggling against the remnants of the dictatorships of Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak. It is a good answer to all those sectarian elements who reject the necessity of giving support to democratic demands, among them for a Constituent Assembly.
In all these discussions we can observe the dialectical method of Trotsky in contrast with the mechanical ideas of sectarianism.
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[i] Trotsky, Diary In Exile, pp. 53-4
[ii] Writings of Leon Trotsky, : Fighting against the stream. 1939.: http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1939/04/stream.htm
[iii] Writings of Leon Trotsky: The league faced with a turn, June 1934
[iv] Among the writings that analyze Trotsky's position on the Spanish Revolution, I would like to highlight the introduction written by Pierre Broué to the Spanish edition of his works on Spain (available online here: http://www.marx.org/history/etol/writers/broue/works/1967/04/trotsky-spanish-revolution.htm ) and also the article by Juan Manuel Municio, “Trotsky, La izquierda comunista y el POUM” published in Marxismo Hoy No. 2, 1995.
[v] For a more detailed historical analysis of the development of the Spanish Socialist Youth, I recommend the following work: Pierre Broué: The Spanish Socialist Youth (When Carillo was a leftist), published in Revolutionary History, 2007: http://www.revolutionaryhistory.co.uk/rh09/rh0904.html
[vi] Writings of Leon Trotsky: The class, the party and the leadership. 1940. : http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1940/xx/party.htm
[vii] Writings of Leon Trotsky: On the Labor Party Question in the United States, 1938: http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/04/lp.htm
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Trotsky and the struggle for a revolutionary international (1933-1946) – Part Two
Written by Patrick Larsen
Thursday, 15 December 2011
In the 1930s Trotsky had to put up an energetic struggle to convince the various national sections of his movement of the necessity of an International, in the real sense of the word.
The persecution of the revolutionaries
In the history of the destiny of revolutionaries throughout the world, it is impossible to find a life with more pain and suffering than Trotsky's. He had already suffered several losses in his family, among them his daughter Zina, who committed suicide in Berlin in 1933 after having had her Soviet citizenship removed and thus being unable to see her husband and child again.
However, the most painful loss for Trotsky was that of his son León Sedov, who was assassinated by the Stalinists in a Paris hospital in February of 1938. Sedov was not just Trotsky's son but had also worked as his secretary, giving indispensable assistance in the collection of facts and sources for the books of the Old Man. Sedov had stayed in Berlin and subsequently in Paris, where he had organized the International Secretariat of the movement and also maintained the publication of the Bulletin of the Russian Left Opposition, which he managed to smuggle into the USSR through a clandestine network of supporters.
Sedov was a brilliant organizer and his death left an enormous vacuum in the movement[i]. The young Rudolf Klement took over his responsibility in the work at the International Secretariat, but the GPU – Stalin's secret police – was following his footsteps. In the end he was kidnapped by that intelligence service in July of the same year, 1938, and his body was found, headless, in the river a couple of weeks later.
The French historian Jean-Jacques Marie, in his recent Trotsky biography (Revolutionary without borders), quotes a secret document from the now opened GPU archives, which revealed that they estimated that the assassination of Klement would be a “severe blow” for Trotsky and his closest collaborators, because they had not only been able to kill the young secretary but also steal the archives of the Fourth International, including all the contacts and addresses of its international network.
Many other collaborators of Trotsky were assassinated by the GPU between 1936 and 1938: Hans Martin Freund (known as Moulin) and Ernest Wolf were both kidnapped and killed during the Spanish civil war. Ignace Reiss, an agent of the GPU who had deserted and embraced the Fourth International, was found shot in a car in a rural area of Switzerland in 1937.
Even the other of son of Trotsky, Sergei, who held no interest in politics and had stayed in the USSR, was deported and executed on Stalin's orders in 1937. Walter Held, a German Trotskyist who had for a time functioned as the Old Man's secretary in Norway, tried to travel to the U.S. through the Soviet Union by train, but was arrested and shot, apparently in 1941.
However, the greatest massacre against Trotsky's followers took place in the Gulag camps in Siberia, in Vorkuta and Kolomya, where thousands of Trotskyists were killed by Stalin’s henchmen. Even until the last moments they maintained their revolutionary spirit, organizing a hunger strike to protest against the terrible conditions of the political prisoners. Witnesses saw them singing the Internationale when they were taken out to the execution squads[ii].
Internationalism as a principle
In the 1930s Lev Davidovich had to put up an energetic struggle to convince the various national sections of his movement of the necessity of an International, in the real sense of the word. All the conflicts with the groups of Andreu Nin in Spain – and later Molinier in France, Sneevliet in Holland and Vereecken in Belgium – had their origins in the narrow-minded national outlook and the provincial and opportunist mentality of the main leaders of those groups.
Lenin, Trotsky and the other Bolshevik leaders had the great advantage of having got to know the international labour movement in person during their exiles in several countries. Trotsky spoke German and French fluently and also gained a certain level of English in the last period of his life. But even more decisive than that was his profound knowledge of the general characteristics of the class struggle on an international level, of the question of oppressed nationalities and of the effects of imperialist domination.
It is no coincidence that Trotsky also criticized the American SWP leaders for not giving sufficient attention to the international questions. In various letters and in the discussions he had with them during 1939-40, he underlined three aspects:
In the first place he considered it the fundamental duty of any Bolshevik-Leninist group in an imperialist country to condemn in an energetic way the foreign policy of the country and help the working class in the colonial countries. In the case of the SWP, Trotsky believed that the party had not done what was necessary in relation to Latin America and that it should write more frequently about this theme in its press and translate the articles into Spanish and distribute them south of the border.
Secondly, Trotsky complained about the lack of serious work among the racial minorities in the United States, particularly among the black workers. He proposed that the American party should make a special effort to reach the most oppressed layers of the proletariat and that its struggles should be reflected in the Socialist Appeal. Furthermore, he underlined that the transitional programme should adapt itself to the black minority in the United States, including demands for civil and democratic rights.[iii]
Trotsky’s third criticism was that the leaders of the SWP did not have a real internationalist approach. In one letter after the other, the Old Man tried to pressurize Cannon and Shactmann to take on the responsibility of building the Fourth International in a serious manner. He demanded that they make political trips to give advice and exchange experience with the other sections of the international, particularly in France, where the political situation was very tense and explosive in the years leading up to the outbreak of WW2.
It is interesting to note how Trotsky's opponents always complained of his supposedly “authoritarian style” and his “interventions into the national issues” of the groups in question. They always hid their own lack of arguments under the accusations of “bad proceedings” or the “arrogant attitude” of the old Bolshevik leader. On other occasions they denounced a supposed “personality cult” around Trotsky, yet another trick to avoid discussing the real issues at stake.
The attitude towards the anti-imperialist struggle in Latin America
The writings of Lev Davidovich on Latin America are particularly interesting. In another detailed analysis we have dealt with the main lessons in those texts. The attitude of Trotsky towards the most advanced representatives of the revolutionary-democratic movement, and specifically towards Lázaro Cárdenas (the then president of Mexico), is very significant. The latter was of course not a Marxist, but there cannot be any doubt about his honesty and political stance in the anti-imperialist struggle.
It was not a coincidence that Mexico was the only country prepared to put an end to what Trotsky had called “The planet without a visa”. President Cárdenas was the leader of a Nationalist project which tried to liberate Mexico from Imperialist stranglehold. It was exactly for this reason that it had the sufficient independence which allowed them to receive the world's most persecuted man. Even Norway, supposedly free and ruled by the social-democrats, had bent down after the Stalinist pressure and had recalled the right to asylum.
While some of his Mexican supporters, led by a man named Fernando Galicia, constantly denounced the Mexican government, Trotsky himself advocated the maintenance of friendly relations and defended unconditionally the actions of the Mexican government which were directed against the imperialist dominance of Great Britain and the United States.
In order to prevent confusion about the position of the Fourth International, Trotsky and the Panamerican Bureau were forced to expel Galicia and his followers who were compromising the work heavily with their sectarian approach towards Cárdena's movement.
When president Cárdenas announced the nationalization of the oil, British Imperialism naturally organized a violent campaign against this measure, basing itself on groups of intellectuals and the so-called “defence of international law”. Trotsky replied with firmness and demanded that the British Labour Party take a stand in favour of the working class in the colonial world. In an article called México and Imperialism, written just after the nationalization, he expounded his position:
“Without succumbing to illusions and without fear of slander, the advanced workers will completely support the Mexican people in their struggle against the imperialists. The expropriation of oil is neither socialism nor communism. But it is a highly progressive measure of national self-defense. Marx did not, of course, consider Abraham Lincoln a communist; this did not, however, prevent Marx from entertaining the deepest sympathy for the struggle that Lincoln headed. The First International sent the Civil War president a message of greeting, and Lincoln in his answer greatly appreciated this moral support.
“The international proletariat has no reason to identify its program with the program of the Mexican government. Revolutionists have no need of changing colour, adapting themselves, and rendering flattery in the manner of the GPU school of courtiers, who in a moment of danger will sell out and betray the weaker side. Without giving up its own identity, every honest working class organization of the entire world, and first of all in Great Britain, is duty-bound – to take an irreconcilable position against the imperialist robbers, their diplomacy, their press, and their fascist hirelings. The cause of Mexico, like the cause of Spain, like the cause of China, is the cause of the international working class. The struggle over Mexican oil is only one of the advance-line skirmishes of future battles between the oppressors and the oppressed. ”[iv]
How relevant are these words for Venezuela today! When the International Marxist Tendency defended the Bolivarian revolution unconditionally, faced with the failed coup d'état of April 2002 and the bosses’ lockout which occurred in December of the same year, many so-called “Trotskyists” attacked us and denounced us as “traitors” of the working class. When Alan Woods, leader of the IMT, met with Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez on several occasions, all the sectarian groups called him an opportunist. But they forget this attitude of Trotsky who was never afraid of a discussion and a dialogue with the best representatives of the revolutionary-democratic movement.
There are even some historians who say that Trotsky met personally with Cárdenas to discuss politics. This has not been proved decisively. Others argue that the political collaboration between the two took place through the general of the Mexican Army, Francisco J. Mújica.[v] However, the most important thing to underline is that Lev Davidovich held a position of critical support faced with the anti-imperialist actions of the Mexican government. In this moment, when the state-owned Venezuelan oil-company PDVSA is being sanctioned by the North American Imperialists, it is clear that we as revolutionaries should adopt the same position as in 1938: “Irreconcilable opposition to against the imperialist robbers, their diplomacy, their press, and their fascist hirelings”.
The founding congress of the Fourth International
Apart from replying to the outrageous lies in the Second Moscow Trial, Trotsky used most of his time in the first half of 1938 for the political preparation of the Founding Congress of the Fourth International. It was finally held in the house of Alfred Rosmer, in Périgny, close to Paris.
Twenty-three delegates of national sections met under severely adverse circumstances. Because of security measures, the congress could only last for one day. However that did not prevent Stalin from being directly represented among the delegates; the “representative of the Russian section” was Etienne (Zobowski), who in reality was a GPU agent infiltrated into the ranks of the Fourth International. Fortunately, they did not give him indications about the meeting place until the last moment, a measure which prevented a violent persecution of the congress on the part of the Stalinists.
The main document at the congress was the Transitional Programme, which is still an invaluable guide for revolutionaries to this day. But the document, drafted by Trotsky, contained several elements which created controversy with some of the congress delegates. For example Trotsky's position on the Second World War, in which he tried to connect with the anti-fascist sentiment of the masses, even recognizing the “fatherland”-sentiment among workers.
We see in this the seed to the famous Proletarian Military Policy, which the Old Man developed the following year; a theme we will touch upon in the next part. However, according to the reports available from the congress[vi], many delegates, including David Rousset, Joánnes Bardin [Boitel], George Vitsoris [Busson] and Michel Raptis Pablo [Speros], were completely opposed to Trotsky's position and accused it of being an adaptation to social-chauvinism. The majority did approve the original formulations and thus the international, at least officially, defended Trotsky's policy on the war.
There were people at the congress – the Polish delegates – and later on also many historians and intellectual commentators who rejected the founding of the Fourth International, arguing that it “had no mass base” and that the whole enterprise was doomed to failure from the outset. Trotsky responded in the following way, emphasizing the necessity of preserving the Marxist doctrine in spite of all obstacles:
“Sceptics ask: But has the moment for the creation of the Fourth International yet arrived? It is impossible, they say, to create an International “artificially”; it can arise only out of great events, etc., etc. All of these objections merely show that sceptics are no good for the building of a new International. They are good for scarcely anything at all.
“The Fourth International has already arisen out of great events: the greatest defeats of the proletariat in history. The cause for these defeats is to be found in the degeneration and perfidy of the old leadership. The class struggle does not tolerate an interruption. The Third International, following the Second, is dead for purposes of revolution. Long live the Fourth International!
“But has the time yet arrived to proclaim its creation? ... the sceptics are not quieted down. The Fourth International, we answer, has no need of being “proclaimed.” It exists and it fights. It is weak? Yes, its ranks are not numerous because it is still young. They are as yet chiefly cadres. But these cadres are pledges for the future. Outside these cadres there does not exist a single revolutionary current on this planet really meriting the name. If our international be still weak in numbers, it is strong in doctrine, program, tradition, in the incomparable tempering of its cadres. Who does not perceive this today, let him in the meantime stand aside. Tomorrow it will become more evident.”[vii]
And he underlined the significance of the founding congress:
“WHEN THESE LINES APPEAR in the press, the Conference of the Fourth International will probably have concluded its labours. The calling of this Conference is a major achievement. The irreconcilable revolutionary tendency, subjected to such persecutions as no other political tendency in world history has in all likelihood suffered, has again given proof of its power. Surmounting all obstacles, it has under the blows of its almighty enemies convened its International Conference. This fact constitutes unimpeachable evidence of the profound viability and unwavering perseverance of the international Bolshevik-Leninists. The very possibility of a successful Conference was first of all assured by the spirit of revolutionary internationalism which imbues all our sections. As a matter of fact, it is necessary to place extremely great value upon the international ties of the proletarian vanguard in order to gather together the international revolutionary staff at the present time when Europe and the entire world live in the expectation of the approaching war. The fumes of national hatreds and racial persecutions compose today the political atmosphere of our planet.”[viii]
Crisis in the SWP: Trotsky and the split of 1940
Another point which had created a big polemic in the Founding Congress and also in the period leading up to it was the Russian question. In his brilliant book, The Revolution Betrayed, Trotsky had explained the character of the Soviet Union, defining it as a degenerated workers' state – led by a bureaucratic caste which had taken over the workers' state and the planned economy. He had rejected every pretension of defining the Stalinist bureaucracy as a new class, as he pointed out that the power and privileges of the bureaucracy were upheld by the state-ownership of the means of production and not a capitalist economy based on private property.
From the beginning there were militants in the Trotskyist movement who did not share this view. In the United States, Burnham – an intellectual who had joined the movement through the fusion with the party of Muste, the AWP – tried to develop another theory, first defining the Soviet state as “bureaucratic collectivism”. The key point in his analysis was that the Stalinist bureaucracy had transformed itself into a new social class and that a political revolution was not sufficient in Russia; a social one was needed as well.
Craipeau, one of the leaders of the French section, defended similar ideas in the Founding Congress. The arguments of these militants were very much influenced by moral indignation, faced with the crimes of Stalinism. But Trotsky, who suffered the consequences of the terror more than anybody else, insisted on maintaining a sober and materialist analysis of the phenomenon of Stalinism.
In September 1939 – partially as a result of the pact between Stalin and Hitler and of the Soviet occupation of Finland – a minority in the SWP, led by Shactmann, Burnham and Abern, began to change their opinion on the Russian question. The majority led by James Cannon took the same position as Trotsky. The question in debate had a political and a practical significance in the world situation, as the members of the minority were drawing the conclusion that it was not a duty to defend the Soviet Union unconditionally in the war against the imperialist powers.
The contributions of Trotsky in this debate have a great value, not only because they shed light on the Russian question, but also because they explain the method of dialectical materialism. The collection of letters and articles in the discussion were subsequently published under the title “In defense of Marxism”. However, it is necessary to analyse this book cautiously, as there have been many misinterpretations of it over the years.
A careful reading of the book shows that Trotsky was not at all interested in a split with the whole minority faction of the SWP. He tried to separate the best elements in that group from the openly anti-Marxist elements like Burnham. Trotsky knew that the opposition represented around forty per cent of the American party, including the majority among the youth.
In one letter after the other he invited a comradely discussion and he even proposed that Shachtman travel to Mexico to discuss with him.[ix] What many biographers do not understand about Trotsky, just as they don't understand Lenin's approach to Martov, is how he always tried to work with collaborators and did everything possible to save them from political degeneration. In another letter which Trotsky wrote to Wright (another leader of the majority), he pointed out that a split was not at all desirable:
“You have not the slightest interest in a split, even if the opposition should become, accidentally, a majority at the next convention. You have not the slightest reason to give the heterogeneous and unbalanced army of the opposition a pretext for a split. Even as an eventual minority, you should in my opinion remain disciplined and loyal towards the party as a whole. It is extremely important for the education in genuine party patriotism, about the necessity of which Cannon wrote me one time very correctly.
“A majority composed of this opposition would not last more than a few months. Then the proletarian tendency of the party will again become the majority with tremendously increased authority. Be extremely firm but don’t lose your nerve – this applies now more than ever to the strategy of the proletarian wing of the party.”[x]
In another letter to Joseph Hansen (also from the majority) he explained the necessity of proposing common guarantees for the minority in the future:
“I believe we must answer them approximately as follows:
“‘You are already afraid of our future repressions? We propose to you mutual guarantees for the future minority, independently of who might be this minority, you or we. These guarantees could be formulated in four points: (1) No prohibition of factions; (2) No other restrictions on factional activity than those dictated by the necessity for common action; (3) The official publications must represent, of course, the line established by the new convention; (4) The future minority can have, if it wishes, an internal bulletin destined for party members, or a common discussion bulletin with the majority.’
“The continuation of discussion bulletins immediately after a long discussion and a convention is, of course, not a rule but an exception, a rather deplorable one. But we are not bureaucrats at all. We don’t have immutable rules. We are dialecticians also in the organizational field. If we have in the party an important minority which is dissatisfied with the decisions of the convention, it is incomparably more preferable to legalize the discussion after the convention than to have a split.
“We can go, if necessary, even further and propose to them to publish, under the supervision of the new National Committee, special discussion symposiums, not only for party members, but for the public in general. We should go as far as possible in this respect in order to disarm their at least premature complaints and handicap them in provoking a split.
“For my part I believe that the prolongation of the discussion, if it is channelized by the good will of both sides, can only serve in the present conditions the education of the party. I believe that the majority should make these propositions officially in the National Committee in a written form. Whatever might be their answer, the party could only win.”[xi]
Even one of his last articles, dated February 21st of 1940 - when the leaders of the opposition had announced the possibility of a split - was entitled “Back to the Party!”, calling upon the minority to stop the breakaway.
Unfortunately, Cannon did not possess the same method as Trotsky and it is an undeniable fact that his behaviour pushed many valuable militants, especially in the youth, towards a split. The final departure of Shactmann's group in April 1940 cost nearly 40 per cent of the total membership.
Incredibly, this particular book – In Defense of Marxism – has been misinterpreted in one extreme or the other. Some tendencies have been obsessed with the parts where Trotsky, correctly, argue against the petit-bourgeois concept that the minority had of democracy in a revolutionary party. These people take quotations completely out of context, in an attempt to silence all debate inside a revolutionary organization. On the other extreme we find people with certain anarchist and opportunist tendencies who put all emphasis in the complete freedom of discussion.
What both groups forget is the dialectical method. Trotsky stressed, in a previous letter, how centralism and democracy always find themselves in different positions and degrees, adjusting themselves to the moment and the concrete necessity of the revolutionary organization:
“Democracy and centralism do not at all find themselves in an invariable ratio to one another. Everything depends on the concrete circumstances, on the political situation in the country, on the strength of the party and its experience, on the general level of its members, on the authority the leadership has succeeded in winning. Before a conference, when the problem is one of formulating a political line for the next period, democracy triumphs over centralism.
“When the problem is political action, centralism subordinates democracy to itself. Democracy again asserts its rights when the party feels the need to examine critically its own actions. The equilibrium between democracy and centralism establishes itself in the actual struggle, at moments it is violated and then again re-established. The maturity of each member of the party expresses itself particularly in the fact that he does not demand from the party regime more than it can give. The person who defines his attitude to the party by the individual fillips that he gets on the nose is a poor revolutionist.
“It is necessary, of course, to fight against every individual mistake of the leadership, every injustice, and the like. But it is necessary to assess these “injustices” and “mistakes” not in themselves but in connection with the general development of the party both on a national and international scale.
“A correct judgement and a feeling for proportion in politics is an extremely important thing.”[xii]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[i] For a comprehensive biography of Leon Sedov, see: Pierre Broué: Fils de Trotsky, Victime de Staline, Atelier, 1993. Some of the chapters are also available in Revolutionary History, 2007
[ii] A detailed explanation of this is given in Pierre Broué: Comunistas contra Stalin, Editorial SEPHA, 2008. English readers may also consult the following eyewitness report: http://www.marxist.com/History-old/strike_at_vorkuta.htm
[iii] The main writings and discussions with Trotsky on the black question have been published in English: Leon Trotsky on Black Nationalism and Self-Determination, Pathfinder Press, New York, 1978.
[iv] LDT: Mexico and British Imperialism. 1938: http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/06/mexico02.htm
[v] For an explanation of this theory, see an article in the Mexican paper La Jornada: La Jornada: http://www.jornada.unam.mx/2005/08/14/a03n1cul.php
[vi] Reports from the Founding Congress of the Fourth International are available in Spanish as appendix to León Trotsky: El programa de transición y la fundación de la Cuarta Internacional, CEIP, Buenos Aires, 2008, pages 311-332 and in the CD-ROM appendix.
[vii] LDT: The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International - The Transitional Program: http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1938/tp/tp-text2.htm#fi
[viii] LDT: A Great Achievement. 1938: http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/ni/vol04/no10/trotsky.htm
[ix] LDT: A Letter to Max Shachtman, December 20, 1939: http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/idom/dm/11-shachtman2.htm
[x] LDT: A Letter to John G. Wright, December 19, 1939: http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/idom/dm/10-wright1.htm
[xi] LDT: A Letter to Joseph Hansen. January 18, 1940: http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/idom/dm/20-hansen2.htm
[xii] LDT: On Democratic Centralism and the Regime. December 1937: http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1937/xx/democent.htm
From The Pages Of Workers Vanguard-From The Pen Of Leon Trotsky-For a Workers Europe!
Click on the headline to link to the International Communist League (ICL) website.
Workers Vanguard No. 992
9 December 2011
For a Workers Europe!
(Quote of the Week)
The crisis racking the EU shows that a united Europe under capitalism is a chimera. In a February 1926 speech, one of his last addresses to Soviet workers before his expulsion from the Communist Party by Stalin in November 1927, Leon Trotsky stressed that only the proletarian overthrow of capitalist rule could achieve the genuine unification and economic integration of Europe. Trotsky projected that a Europe under workers rule, allied with the Soviet Union and a liberated Asia, would be a bulwark against capitalist America, which had become the world’s dominant imperialist force, while also serving as a springboard for workers rule in the U.S.
The proletarian revolution signifies the unification of Europe. Bourgeois economists, pacifists, business sharpers, day-dreamers and mere bourgeois babblers are not averse nowadays to talk about a United States of Europe. But that task is beyond the strength of the European bourgeoisie which is utterly corroded by contradictions. Europe can be unified only by the victorious European proletariat. No matter where the revolution may first break out, and no matter what the tempo of its development may be, the economic unification of Europe is the first indispensable condition for its socialist reconstruction. Back in 1923 the Communist International proclaimed that it is necessary to drive out those who have partitioned Europe, take power in partitioned Europe in order to unify it, in order to create the Socialist United States of Europe.
Revolutionary Europe will clear a road for herself to raw materials, to food products; she will know how to get help from the peasantry. We ourselves have grown sufficiently strong to be able to extend some help to revolutionary Europe during the most difficult months. Over and above this, we will provide for Europe an excellent bridge to Asia. Proletarian England, shoulder to shoulder with the peoples of India, will insure the independence of that country. But this does not mean that England will lose the possibility of a close economic collaboration with India. Free India will have need of European technology and culture; Europe will have need of the products of India. The Soviet United States of Europe, together with our Soviet Union, will serve as the mightiest of magnets for the peoples of Asia, who will gravitate toward the establishment of the closest economic and political ties with proletarian Europe.
—Leon Trotsky, “Europe and America” (Fourth International, May 1943)
Workers Vanguard No. 992
9 December 2011
For a Workers Europe!
(Quote of the Week)
The crisis racking the EU shows that a united Europe under capitalism is a chimera. In a February 1926 speech, one of his last addresses to Soviet workers before his expulsion from the Communist Party by Stalin in November 1927, Leon Trotsky stressed that only the proletarian overthrow of capitalist rule could achieve the genuine unification and economic integration of Europe. Trotsky projected that a Europe under workers rule, allied with the Soviet Union and a liberated Asia, would be a bulwark against capitalist America, which had become the world’s dominant imperialist force, while also serving as a springboard for workers rule in the U.S.
The proletarian revolution signifies the unification of Europe. Bourgeois economists, pacifists, business sharpers, day-dreamers and mere bourgeois babblers are not averse nowadays to talk about a United States of Europe. But that task is beyond the strength of the European bourgeoisie which is utterly corroded by contradictions. Europe can be unified only by the victorious European proletariat. No matter where the revolution may first break out, and no matter what the tempo of its development may be, the economic unification of Europe is the first indispensable condition for its socialist reconstruction. Back in 1923 the Communist International proclaimed that it is necessary to drive out those who have partitioned Europe, take power in partitioned Europe in order to unify it, in order to create the Socialist United States of Europe.
Revolutionary Europe will clear a road for herself to raw materials, to food products; she will know how to get help from the peasantry. We ourselves have grown sufficiently strong to be able to extend some help to revolutionary Europe during the most difficult months. Over and above this, we will provide for Europe an excellent bridge to Asia. Proletarian England, shoulder to shoulder with the peoples of India, will insure the independence of that country. But this does not mean that England will lose the possibility of a close economic collaboration with India. Free India will have need of European technology and culture; Europe will have need of the products of India. The Soviet United States of Europe, together with our Soviet Union, will serve as the mightiest of magnets for the peoples of Asia, who will gravitate toward the establishment of the closest economic and political ties with proletarian Europe.
—Leon Trotsky, “Europe and America” (Fourth International, May 1943)
The Latest From The “Occupy Oakland” Website-This Is Class War-We Say No More- Take The Offensive- Make The “Occupy” Movement Streets Labor’s Streets-Defend The Oakland Commune!
Click on the headline to link to Occupy Oakland website for the latest from the Bay Area vanguard battleground in the struggle for social justice.
****
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend All The Occupation Sites And All The Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Protesters Everywhere!
********
Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
********
A Five-Point Program As Talking Points
*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay to spread the available work around. Organize the unorganized- Organize the South- Organize Wal-mart- Defend the right for public and private workers to unionize.
* Defend the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. Spent the dough on organizing the unorganized and other labor-specific causes (example, the November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio).
*End the endless wars!- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan! Hands Off Iran! Hands Off The World!
*Fight for a social agenda for working people!. Quality Healthcare For All! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! Forgive student debt! Stop housing foreclosures!
*We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Build a workers party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed. Labor and the oppressed must rule!
****
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend All The Occupation Sites And All The Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Protesters Everywhere!
********
Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
********
A Five-Point Program As Talking Points
*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay to spread the available work around. Organize the unorganized- Organize the South- Organize Wal-mart- Defend the right for public and private workers to unionize.
* Defend the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. Spent the dough on organizing the unorganized and other labor-specific causes (example, the November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio).
*End the endless wars!- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan! Hands Off Iran! Hands Off The World!
*Fight for a social agenda for working people!. Quality Healthcare For All! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! Forgive student debt! Stop housing foreclosures!
*We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Build a workers party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed. Labor and the oppressed must rule!
From The “West Coast Port Shutdown” Website-This Is Class War, We Say No More!-Defend The Longshoremen’s Unions!-Defend All Our Unions- Take The Offensive
Click on the headline to link to the West Coast Port Shutdown website.
Markin comment December 13, 2011:
We know that we are only at the very start of an upsurge in the labor movement as witness the stellar exemplary actions by the West Coast activists. As I have pointed out in my remarks below this is the way forward as we struggle against the ruling class for a different more society. Not everything went as well, or as well-attended, as expected including our rally in solidarity in Boston but we are still exhibiting growing pains in the post-encampment era.
***********
Remarks prepared for the Speak Out in defense of Occupy Boston, Occupy West Coast and in solidarity with the West Coast Port Shutdown action at Boston City Hall Plaza, December 12, 2011:
I will read from prepared notes. Let me explain why. In the old days, my old street corner agitator days, I could whip up a speech off the top of my head. But of late, before the fresh breeze of the Occupy movement blew across the Boston waterfront, I was more used to sitting at tables in small, over-heated rooms. Or participating in small marches, rallies, and vigils where such oratorical skills were not in much demand. But let me get to my main point.
Sisters and brothers, brothers and sisters, no question, no question at all that the recent police occupation at Dewey Square was a big defeat, a big if temporary defeat, for our struggle for freedom of expression and assembly in the public square. In response, over the past few days not a few younger or newer activists, not used to the ebb and flow of the political struggle, the class struggle, have been disheartened and expressed a sense of defeat.
Today though I bring you glad tidings. The sleeping giant of the labor movement has begun to stir. The long night of despair and disorientation is beginning to lift. At the beginning of this year when the struggle of the public workers unions in Wisconsin heated up I, among others, proposed a general strike and solidarity rallies in order to beat back the anti-labor attacks. We were written off as mad men and women, old-time leftists gone off their rockers. General strike, shut down, no, that was okay for those Greek workers who seemed to strike every other day, or those French workers who struck every day. In America, never. And then came the mass actions in Wisconsin, the shut down of the Port Of Oakland on November 2nd, and today’s actions. Now we can quibble over whether such events are real general strikes or not but now the language of general strike and shutdown is firmly etched on labor’s political agenda.
The old Polish socialist scholar, Isaac Deutscher, once remarked back in the 1960s heyday of the anti-Vietnam War movement that he would give up all the endless marches, rallies and vigils for one dock strike against the war. He was right. We have to hit the war-mongers, the capitalists where it hurts-their profits and power. And today’s West Coast actions are proof of that proposition. If the age of the Occupy encampment has passed so too has the age of endless marches, rallies and vigils. They certainly have their place but now we must take the offensive. Now every action must be thought out to measure the effect on breaking the power of the one percent.
I had, several weeks ago, proposed to various people that we shut down the Port of Boston today in solidarity with the West Coast. That proposal was premature considering the situation in the Boston movement. But someday, someday soon, we too will be marching to shut down the port. To shut down GE in Lynn. To shut down the Bank of America. To shut down their government. And maybe not to just shut them down for a day either. I will leave you with this thought. We created the wealth-let’s take it back. Working people and their allies must rule!
*******
***********
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend All The Occupation Sites And All The Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Protesters Everywhere!
********
Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
********
A Five-Point Program As Talking Points
*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay to spread the available work around. Organize the unorganized- Organize the South- Organize Wal-mart- Defend the right for public and private workers to unionize.
* Defend the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. Spent the dough on organizing the unorganized and other labor-specific causes (example, the November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio).
*End the endless wars!- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan! Hands Off Iran! Hands Off The World!
*Fight for a social agenda for working people!. Quality Healthcare For All! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! Forgive student debt! Stop housing foreclosures!
*We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Build a workers party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed. Labor and the oppressed must rule!
Markin comment December 13, 2011:
We know that we are only at the very start of an upsurge in the labor movement as witness the stellar exemplary actions by the West Coast activists. As I have pointed out in my remarks below this is the way forward as we struggle against the ruling class for a different more society. Not everything went as well, or as well-attended, as expected including our rally in solidarity in Boston but we are still exhibiting growing pains in the post-encampment era.
***********
Remarks prepared for the Speak Out in defense of Occupy Boston, Occupy West Coast and in solidarity with the West Coast Port Shutdown action at Boston City Hall Plaza, December 12, 2011:
I will read from prepared notes. Let me explain why. In the old days, my old street corner agitator days, I could whip up a speech off the top of my head. But of late, before the fresh breeze of the Occupy movement blew across the Boston waterfront, I was more used to sitting at tables in small, over-heated rooms. Or participating in small marches, rallies, and vigils where such oratorical skills were not in much demand. But let me get to my main point.
Sisters and brothers, brothers and sisters, no question, no question at all that the recent police occupation at Dewey Square was a big defeat, a big if temporary defeat, for our struggle for freedom of expression and assembly in the public square. In response, over the past few days not a few younger or newer activists, not used to the ebb and flow of the political struggle, the class struggle, have been disheartened and expressed a sense of defeat.
Today though I bring you glad tidings. The sleeping giant of the labor movement has begun to stir. The long night of despair and disorientation is beginning to lift. At the beginning of this year when the struggle of the public workers unions in Wisconsin heated up I, among others, proposed a general strike and solidarity rallies in order to beat back the anti-labor attacks. We were written off as mad men and women, old-time leftists gone off their rockers. General strike, shut down, no, that was okay for those Greek workers who seemed to strike every other day, or those French workers who struck every day. In America, never. And then came the mass actions in Wisconsin, the shut down of the Port Of Oakland on November 2nd, and today’s actions. Now we can quibble over whether such events are real general strikes or not but now the language of general strike and shutdown is firmly etched on labor’s political agenda.
The old Polish socialist scholar, Isaac Deutscher, once remarked back in the 1960s heyday of the anti-Vietnam War movement that he would give up all the endless marches, rallies and vigils for one dock strike against the war. He was right. We have to hit the war-mongers, the capitalists where it hurts-their profits and power. And today’s West Coast actions are proof of that proposition. If the age of the Occupy encampment has passed so too has the age of endless marches, rallies and vigils. They certainly have their place but now we must take the offensive. Now every action must be thought out to measure the effect on breaking the power of the one percent.
I had, several weeks ago, proposed to various people that we shut down the Port of Boston today in solidarity with the West Coast. That proposal was premature considering the situation in the Boston movement. But someday, someday soon, we too will be marching to shut down the port. To shut down GE in Lynn. To shut down the Bank of America. To shut down their government. And maybe not to just shut them down for a day either. I will leave you with this thought. We created the wealth-let’s take it back. Working people and their allies must rule!
*******
***********
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend All The Occupation Sites And All The Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Protesters Everywhere!
********
Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
********
A Five-Point Program As Talking Points
*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay to spread the available work around. Organize the unorganized- Organize the South- Organize Wal-mart- Defend the right for public and private workers to unionize.
* Defend the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. Spent the dough on organizing the unorganized and other labor-specific causes (example, the November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio).
*End the endless wars!- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan! Hands Off Iran! Hands Off The World!
*Fight for a social agenda for working people!. Quality Healthcare For All! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! Forgive student debt! Stop housing foreclosures!
*We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Build a workers party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed. Labor and the oppressed must rule!
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