In Honor Of The 64th Anniversary Year Of The Chinese Revolution of 1949- From The Pen Of Leon Trotsky-Problems Of The Chinese Revolution (1927) –The Chinese Question-After the Sixth Congress

Click on link below to read on-line all of Leon Trotsky's book, Problems Of The Chinesee Revolution

http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1932/pcr/index.htm

Markin comment (repost from 2012):

On a day when we are honoring the 63rd anniversary of the Chinese revolution of 1949 the article posted in this entry and the comment below take on added meaning. In the old days, in the days when I had broken from many of my previously held left social-democratic political views and had begun to embrace Marxism with a distinct tilt toward Trotskyism, I ran into an old revolutionary in Boston who had been deeply involved (although I did not learn the extend of that involvement until later) in the pre-World War II socialist struggles in Eastern Europe. The details of that involvement will not detain us here now but the import of what he had to impart to me about the defense of revolutionary gains has stuck with me until this day. And, moreover, is germane to the subject of this article from the pen of Leon Trotsky -the defense of the Chinese revolution and the later gains of that third revolution (1949) however currently attenuated.

This old comrade, by the circumstances of his life, had escaped that pre-war scene in fascist-wracked Europe and found himself toward the end of the 1930s in New York working with the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party in the period when that organization was going through intense turmoil over the question of defense of the Soviet Union. In the history of American (and international) Trotskyism this is the famous Max Shachtman-James Burnham led opposition that declared, under one theory or another, that the previously defendable Soviet Union had changed dramatically enough in the course of a few months to be no longer worth defending by revolutionaries.

What struck him from the start about this dispute was the cavalier attitude of the anti-Soviet opposition, especially among the wet-behind-the-ears youth, on the question of that defense and consequently about the role that workers states, healthy, deformed or degenerated, as we use the terms of art in our movement, as part of the greater revolutionary strategy. Needless to say most of those who abandoned defense of the Soviet Union when there was even a smidgeon of a reason to defend it left politics and peddled their wares in academia or business. Or if they remained in politics lovingly embraced the virtues of world imperialism.

That said, the current question of defense of the Chinese Revolution hinges on those same premises that animated that old Socialist Workers Party dispute. And strangely enough (or maybe not so strangely) on the question of whether China is now irrevocably on the capitalist road, or is capitalist already (despite some very un-capitalistic economic developments over the past few years), I find that many of those who oppose that position have that same cavalier attitude the old comrade warned me against back when I was first starting out. There may come a time when we, as we had to with the Soviet Union and other workers states, say that China is no longer a workers state. But today is not that day. In the meantime study the issue, read the posted article, and more importantly, defend the gains of the Chinese Revolution.

**********

Leon Trotsky

Problems of the Chinese Revolution

---

The Chinese Question-After the Sixth Congress

5) Appendix

A Remarkable Document on the Policy and
the Régime of the Communist International

We referred above several times to the remarkable resolution of the Plenum of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (November 1927), precisely the one which the Ninth Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International charged with “Trotskyism”, and about which Lominadze justified himself in such a variegated manner while Stalin very monotonously slunk off in silence. In reality, this resolution is a combination of opportunism and adventurism, reflecting with perfect precision the policy of the Executive Committee of the Communist International before and after July 1927. In condemning this resolution after the defeat of the Canton insurrection, the leaders of the Communist International not only did not publish it but did not even quote from it. It was too embarrassing for them to show themselves in the Chinese mirror. This resolution was published in a special Documentation, accessible to very few, printed by the Chinese Sun Yat Sen University (no.10).

No. 14 of the same publication, which reached our hands when our work (The Chinese Question After the Sixth Congress) was already completed, contains a no less remarkable document, even though of a different, that is, of a critical character: it is a resolution adopted by the Kiangsu District Committee of the Chinese Communist Party on May 7, 1928, in connection with the decisions of the Ninth Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Comintern. Remember that Shanghai and Canton are part of the province of Kiangsu.
This resolution, as has already been said, constitutes a truly remarkable document, in spite of the errors in principle and the political misunderstandings it contains. The essence of the resolution amounts to a deadly condemnation not only of the decisions of the Ninth Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International, but in general, of the whole leadership of the Comintern in the questions of the Chinese revolution. Naturally, in conformity with the whole régime existing in the Comintern, the criticism directed against the Executive Committee of the CI bears a camouflaged and conventionally diplomatic character. The immediate point of the resolution is directed against the Central Committee itself as against a responsible ministry under an irresponsible monarch who, as is known, “can do no wrong”. There are even polite eulogies for certain parts of the resolution of the ECCI. This whole way of approaching the question by “manoeuvring” is in itself a harsh criticism of the régime of the Communist International; hypocrisy is inseparable from bureaucratism. But what the resolution says in essence about the political leadership and its methods has a much more damning character.

“After the August 7 (1927) conference,” the Kiangsu Committee relates, “the Central Committee formulated a judgement on the situation which was tantamount to saying that even though the revolution had suffered a triple defeat, it is nevertheless going through a rising phase.”

This appreciation is entirely in conformity with the caricature which Bukharin makes of the theory of the permanent revolution, a caricature which he applied first to Russia, then to Europe and finally to Asia. The actual events of the struggle, that is, the three defeats, are one thing and the permanent “rise” is another.

The Central Committee of the Chinese party draws the following conclusion from the resolution adopted by the Eighth Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International (in May):

“Wherever this is objectively possible, we must immediately prepare and organize armed insurrections.”

What are the political premises for this? The Kiangsu Committee declares that in August 1927

“the political report of the Central Committee pointed out that the workers of Hunan, after the cruel defeat, are abandoning the leadership of the Party, that we are not confronted with an objectively revolutionary situation ... but in spite of this ... the Central Committee says plainly that the general situation, from the economic, political and social [precisely! – L.T.] point of view is favourable to the insurrection. Since it is already no longer possible to launch revolts in the cities, the armed struggle must be transferred to the villages. That is where the centres of the uprising must be, while the town must be an auxiliary force.” (p.4)

Let us recall that immediately after the May Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International, which entrusted the leadership of the agrarian revolution to the Left Guomindang, the latter began to exterminate the workers and peasants. The position of the ECCI became completely untenable. At all costs, there had to be, and that without delay, “left” actions in China to refute the “calumny” of the Opposition, that is, its irreproachable prognosis. That is why the Chinese Central Committee, which found itself between the hammer and the anvil, was obliged, in August 1927, to turn the proletarian policy topsy-turvy all over again. Even though there was no revolutionary situation and the working masses were abandoning the Party, this Committee declared that the economic and social situation was, in its opinion, “favourable to the insurrection”. In any case, a triumphant uprising would have been very “favourable” to the prestige of the Executive Committee of the Comintern. Given the fact that the workers were abandoning the revolution, it was therefore necessary to turn one’s back to the towns and endeavour to launch isolated uprisings in the villages.

Already at the May Plenum (1927) of the ECCI, we pointed out that the adventurist uprisings of Ho Lung and Ye Ting were inevitably doomed to defeat because of insufficient political preparation and because they were bound up with no movement of the masses. That is just what happened. The resolution of the Kiangsu Committee says on this subject:

“In spite of the defeat of the armies of Ho Lung and Ye Ting in Guangdong, even after the November Plenum the Central Committee persists in clinging to the tactic of immediate uprisings and takes as its point of departure an estimation leading to the direct ascent of the revolution.”

For understandable reasons, the Kiangsu Committee passes in silence over the fact that this appreciation was also that of the Executive Committee of the Comintern itself, which treated as “liquidators” those who correctly estimated the situation, and the fact that the Chinese Central Committee was forced, in November 1927, on pain of being immediately overthrown and expelled from the Party, to present the decline of the revolution as its rise.

The Canton insurrection sprang up by basing itself upon this tip-tilted manner of approaching the question; manifestly, this uprising was not regarded as a rearguard battle (only raging madmen could have urged passing over to the insurrection and to the conquest of power through a “rearguard battle”); no, this uprising was conceived as part of a general coup d’état. The Kiangsu resolution says on this point:

“During the Canton insurrection of December, the Central Committee decided once more to launch an immediate uprising in Hunan, Hupeh and Kiangsu in order to defend Guangdong, in order to extend the framework of the movement all over China (this can be verified from the information letters of the Central Committee, nos. 16 and 22). These measures flowed from a subjective estimation of the situation and did not correspond to the objective circumstances. Obviously, under such conditions defeats will be inevitable.” (p.5)

The Canton experience frightened the leaders not only of China but also of Moscow. A warning was issued against putschism, but in essence the political line did not change. The orientation remained the same: towards insurrection. The Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party transmitted this ambiguous instruction to the lower bodies; it also warned against the tactic of skirmishes, while setting down in its circulars academic definitions of adventurism.

“But being given the fact that the Central Committee based itself in its estimation of the revolutionary movement, upon an uninterrupted advance,” as the Kiangsu resolution says correctly and pointedly,

“no modifications were brought into this question at the bottom. The forces of the enemy are far too greatly underrated and at the same time, no attention is paid to the fact that our organizations have lost contact with the masses. Therefore, in spite of the fact that the Central Committee had sent its information letter no.28 (on putschism) everywhere, it did not at the same time correct its mistakes.” (p.5)

Once more, it is not a question of the Central Committee of the Chinese party. The February Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Communist International introduced no modifications into its policy either. While warning against the tactics of skirmishes in general (in order to insure itself against all eventualities), the resolution of this Plenum pounced furiously upon the Opposition which spoke of the necessity of a resolute change in the whole orientation. In February 1928, the course continued as before to lead towards insurrection. The Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party only served as a mechanism to transmit this instruction. The Kiangsu Committee says:

“The Central Committee circular no.38, of March 6 [take careful note: March 6, 1928! – L.T.] shows very clearly that the Central Committee still finds itself under the influence of illusions about a favourable situation for general insurrection in Hunan, Hupeh and Kiangsu, and the possibility of conquering power throughout the province of Guangdong. The radical quarrel over the choice of Changsha or Hankow as the centre of insurrection still continued between – the Political Bureau of the Central Committee and the instructor of the Central Committee in Hunan and Hupeh.” (p.5)

Such was the disastrous significance of the resolution of the February Plenum, not only false in principle, but deliberately ambiguous from the practical point of view. The thought concealed behind this resolution was always the same: if, contrary to expectations, the uprising extends itself, we shall refer to that part which speaks against the liquidators; if the insurrection goes no further than partisan affrays, we will point a finger at that part of the resolution which warns against putschism.

Even though the Kiangsu resolution nowhere dares to criticize the Executive Committee of the Communist International (everybody knows what this costs), nevertheless, in none of its documents has the Opposition dealt such deadly blows to the leadership of the Comintern as does the Kiangsu Committee in its arraignment, aimed formally at the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. After listing chronologically the policies of adventurism month after month, the resolution turns to the general causes for the disastrous course.

“How is one to explain,” asks the resolution, “this erroneous estimation of the situation established by the Central Committee which influenced the practical struggle and contained serious errors? It is to be explained as follows:

“1. The revolutionary movement was estimated as an uninterrupted ascent [the “permanent revolution” à la Bukharin-Lominadze! – L.T.].

“2. No attention was paid to the loss of contact between our party and the masses, nor to the decomposition of the mass organizations at the turning point of the revolution.

“3. No account was taken of the new regrouping of class forces inside the enemy camp during this turn.

“4. No consideration was given to leading the movement in the cities.

“5. No attention was paid to the importance of the anti-imperialist movement in a semicolonial country.

“6. During the insurrection, no account was taken of the objective conditions, nor of the necessity of applying different methods of struggle in conformity with them.

“7. A peasant deviation made itself felt.

“8. The Central Committee, in its estimation of the situation, was guided by a subjective point of view.”

It is doubtful if the Kiangsu Committee has read what the Opposition wrote and said on all these questions. One can even say with certainty that it did not read it. As a matter of fact, if it had, it would have feared to formulate with such precision its considerations, coinciding entirely in this part with ours. The Kiangsu Committee repeated our words without suspecting it.

The eight points enumerated above, characterizing the false line of the Central Committee (that is, the Executive Committee of the Communist International) are equally important. If we wish to say a few words on the fifth point, it is simply because we have here a particularly striking confirmation “by facts” of the justice of our criticism in its most essential features. The Kiangsu resolution charges the policy of the Central Committee with neglecting the problems of the anti-imperialist movement in a semicolonial country. How could this happen? By the force of the dialectic of the false political line; mistakes have their dialectic like everything else in the world. The point of departure of official opportunism was that the Chinese revolution is essentially an anti-imperialist revolution, and that the yoke of imperialism welds together all the classes or at the very least “all the living forces of the country”. We objected that a successful struggle against imperialism is only possible by means of an audacious extension of the class struggle, and consequently, of the agrarian revolution. We rose up intransigently against the attempt to subordinate the class struggle to the abstract criterion of the struggle against imperialism (substitution of arbitration commissions for the strike movement, telegraphic advice not to stir up the agrarian revolution, prohibiting the formation of soviets, etc.). This was the first stage of the question. After Chiang Kai-shek’s coup d’état, and especially after the “treason” of the “friend” Wang Jingwei, there was a turn about face of 180 degrees. Now, it turns out to be that the question of customs independence, that is, of the economic “(and consequently, the political)” sovereignty of China is a secondary “bureaucratic” problem (Stalin).
The essence of the Chinese revolution was supposed to consist of the agrarian upheaval. The concentration of power in the hands of the bourgeoisie, the abandonment of the revolution by the workers, the schism between the Party and the masses, were appraised as secondary phenomena in comparison with the peasant revolts. Instead of a genuine hegemony of the proletariat, in the anti-imperialist as well as in the agrarian struggle, that is, in the democratic revolution as a whole, there took place a wretched capitulation before the primitive peasant forces, with “secondary” adventures in the cities. However, such a capitulation is the fundamental premise of putschism. The whole history of the revolutionary movement in Russia, as well as in other countries, is witness to that. The events in China of the past year have confirmed it.
In its estimation and its warnings, the Opposition took as its point of departure general theoretical considerations, basing itself upon official information, very incomplete and sometimes deliberately distorted. The Kiangsu Committee has as its point of departure facts which it observed directly at the centre of the revolutionary movement; from the theoretical point of view this Committee still writhes in the toils of Bukharinist scholasticism. The fact that its empirical conclusions coincide completely with our own has, in politics, the same significance as, for example, the discovery in laboratories of a new element whose existence was predicted in advance on the basis of theoretical deductions has in chemistry. Unfortunately, the triumph from the theoretical point of view of our Marxian analysis, in the case before us, has as its political foundation mortal defeats for the revolution.

* * *

The abrupt and essentially adventurist turn in the policy of the Executive Committee of the Communist International in the middle of 1927 could not but provoke painful shocks in the Chinese Communist Party, which was taken off its guard by it. Here we pass from the political line of the Executive Committee of the Communist International to the régime of the Comintern and to the organizational methods of the leadership. Here is what the Kiangsu Committee resolution says on this point:

“After the conference of August 7 (1927), the Central Committee should have assumed the responsibility for the putschist tendencies, for it demanded rigorously of the local committees that the new political line be applied; if anybody was not in agreement with the new line, without further ceremony he was not permitted to renew his party card and even comrades who had already carried out this operation were expelled At this time, the putschist mood was making headway throughout the Party; if anybody expressed doubts about the policy of uprisings, he was immediately called an opportunist and pitilessly attacked. This circumstance provoked great friction within the Party organizations.” (p.6)

All this took place with the accompaniment of pious academic warnings against the dangers of putschism “in general”.

The policy of the sudden, hastily improvised armed insurrection demanded a speedy overhauling and a regrouping of the entire Party. The Central Committee tolerated in the Party only those who silently acknowledged the course of armed insurrection in the face of an obvious decline of the revolution. It would be well to publish the instructions furnished by the Executive Committee of the Communist International during this period. They could be reduced to one: an instruction for the organization of defeat. The Kiangsu resolution sets forth that

“The Central Committee continues not to take notice of the defeats and the depressed mood of the workers; it does not see that this situation is the result of the mistakes of its leadership.” (p.6.)

But that is not all:

“The Central Committee accuses someone or other [just so! – L.T.] for the fact that:

“a) the local committees have not sufficiently well checked up on the reorganization;

“b) the worker and peasant elements are not pushed ahead;

“c) the local organizations are not purged of opportunist elements, etc.”

All this happens abruptly, by telegraph: somehow or other, the mouth of the Opposition must be closed. But nevertheless since matters are in a bad way, the Central Committee asserts that: “the disposition of the masses would be entirely different if the signal for revolt had been given at least in one single province. Does not this last indication bespeak a one hundred per cent putschism of the Central Committee itself?” (page 6) asks the Kiangsu Committee with full justice, passing prudently over in silence that the Central Committee only executed the instructions of the Executive Committee of the Communist International.

For five years the Party was led and educated in an opportunist spirit. At the present moment, it is demanded of it that it be ultra-radical and “that it immediately put forward” worker-leaders. How? ... Very simply: by fixing a certain percentage of them. The Kiangsu Committee complains:

“1. No account is taken of the fact that the ones who are to supplement the leading cadres should be advanced in the course of the struggle. Whereas the Central Committee confines itself to a formal establishment of a percentage fixed in advance of workers and peasants in the leading organs of the various organizations.

“2. In spite of the numerous failures, they do not examine the point to which our party is already restored, but they simply say formally that it is necessary to reorganize:

“3. The Central Committee simply says dictatorially that the local organizations do not put forward new elements, that they do not rid themselves of opportunism; at the same time, the Central Committee makes baseless attacks upon the militants of the cadres and replaces them light-mindedly.

“4. Without paying attention to the mistakes of its own leadership, the Central Committee nevertheless demands the most severe party discipline from the rank-and-file militants.”

Does it not seem as though all these paragraphs are copied from the Platform of the Opposition? No, they are copied from life. But since the Platform is also copied from life, there is no coincidence. Where then is the “peculiarity” of Chinese conditions? Bureaucratism levels down each and every peculiarity. The policy as well as the régime are determined by the Executive Committee of the Communist International, more exactly by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party drives both of them down into the lower organs. Here is how this takes place according to the Kiangsu resolution:

“The following declaration made by a comrade of a district committee is very characteristic: ‘At present it is very difficult to work; but the Central Committee shows that it has a very subjective manner of regarding the problem. It pounces down with accusations and says that the Provincial Committee is no good; the latter in its turn accuses the rank-and-file organizations and asserts that the district committee is bad. The latter also begins to accuse and asserts that it is the comrades working on the spot who are no good. And the comrades declare that the masses are not revolutionary’.” (p.8)

There you really have a striking picture. Only, there is nothing peculiarly Chinese about it.

Every resolution of the Executive Committee of the Communist International, in registering new defeats, declares that on the one hand all had been foreseen and that on the other it is the “executors” who are the cause of the defeats because they did not understand the line that had been pointed out to them from above. It remains unexplained how the perspicacious leadership was able to foresee everything save that the executors did not measure up to its instructions. The essential thing in the leadership does not consist of presenting an abstract line, of writing a letter without an address, but of selecting and educating the executors. The correctness of the leadership is tested precisely in execution. The reliability and perspicacity of the leadership are confirmed only when words and deeds harmonize. But if chronically, from one stage to the other, in the course of many years, the leadership is obliged post factum to complain at every turn that it has not been understood, that its ideas have been deformed, that the executors have ruined its plan, that is a sure sign that the fault devolves entirely upon the leadership. This “self-criticism” is all the more murderous by the fact that it is involuntary and unconscious. According to the Sixth Congress, the leadership of the Opposition must be held responsible for every group of turncoats; but per contra the leadership of the Communist International should in no wise have to answer for the Central Committee of all the national parties in the most decisive historical moments. But a leadership which is answerable for nothing is an irresponsible leadership. In that is to be found the root of all the evils.
In protecting itself against the criticism of the ranks, the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party bases itself on the Executive Committee of the Communist International, that is, it draws a chalk line on the floor which cannot be stepped over. Nor does the Kiangsu Committee overstep it. But within the confines of this chalk line, it tells some bitter truths to its Central Committee which automatically extend to the Executive Committee of the Communist International. We are once more forced to quote an extract from the remarkable document of Kiangsu:

“The Central Committee says that the whole past leadership was exercised in accordance with the instructions of the Communist International. As if all these hesitations and errors depended only upon the rank-and-file militants. If one adopts such a manner of regarding the question, the Central Committee will itself be unable either to repair the mistakes or to educate the comrades to study this experience. It will not be able to strengthen its ties with the lower Party apparatus. The Central Committee always says that its leadership was right; it charges the rank-and-file comrades with all the mistakes, always especially underscoring the hesitations of the rank-and-file Party committees.”

A little further on:

“If the leadership only attacks light-mindedly the local leading comrades or organs by pointing out their errors, but without actually analysing the source of these mistakes, this only produces friction within the Party; such an attitude is disloyal [“rude and disloyal” – L.T.] and can do no good to the revolution and to the Party. If the leadership itself covers up its errors and throws the blame on others, such conduct will do no good to the Party or to the revolution.” (p.10)

A simple but classic characterization of bureaucratic centrism’s work of decaying and devastating the consciousness.

The Kiangsu resolution shows in an entirely exemplary manner how and by what methods the Chinese revolution was led to numerous defeats, and the Chinese party to the brink of catastrophe. For the imaginary hundred thousand members who figure on paper in the Chinese Communist Party only represent a gross self-deception. They would then constitute one-sixth of the total membership of the Communist parties of all the capitalist countries. The payments which Chinese Communism must make for the crime of the leadership are still far from completed.
Further decline is ahead. There will be great difficulty in rising again. Every false step will fling the Party into a deeper ditch. The resolution of the Sixth Congress dooms the Chinese Communist Party to errors and false steps. With the present course of the Communist International, under its present régime, victory is impossible. The course must be changed. This is what the resolution of the Kiangsu Provincial Committee says once more.

From The Marxist Archives-In Honor Of The Anniversary Of The John Brown-Led Raid On Harpers Ferry-  

For a Workers Europe!

STRIKE THE BLOW-THE LEGEND OF CAPTAIN JOHN BROWN

Reclaiming John Brown for the Left

BOOK REVIEW

JOHN BROWN, ABOLITIONIST, DAVID S. REYNOLDS, ALFRED A. KNOPF, NEW YORK, 2005
From fairly early in my youth I knew the name John Brown and was swept up by the romance surrounding his exploits at Harpers Ferry. For example, I knew that the great anthem of the Civil War -The Battle Hymn of the Republic- had a prior existence as a tribute to John Brown and that Union soldiers marched to that song as they headed south. I was then, however, neither familiar with the import of his exploits for the black liberation struggle nor knew much about the specifics of the politics of the various tendencies in the struggle against slavery. I certainly knew nothing then of Brown’s (and his sons) prior military exploits in the Kansas ‘proxy’ wars against the expansion of slavery. Later study filled in some of those gaps and has only strengthened my strong bond with his memory. Know this, as I reach the age at which John Brown was executed,I still retain my youthful admiration for him. In the context of the turmoil of the times he was the most courageous and audacious revolutionary in the struggle for the abolition of slavery in America. Almost 150 years after his death this writer is proud to stand in the tradition of John Brown.

That said, it is with a great deal of pleasure that I can recommend Mr. Reynolds’s book detailing the life, times and exploits of John Brown, warts and all. Published in 2005, this is an important source (including helpful end notes) for updating various controversies surrounding the John Brown saga. While I may disagree with some of Mr. Reynolds’s conclusions concerning the impact of John Brown’s exploits on later black liberation struggles and to a lesser extent his position on Brown’s impact on his contemporaries, particularly the Transcendentalists, nevertheless on the key point of the central place of John Brown in American revolutionary history there is no dispute. Furthermore, Mr. Reynolds has taken pains to provide substantial detail about the ups and downs of John Brown’s posthumous reputation.

Most importantly, he defends the memory of John Brown against all-comers-that is partisan history on behalf of the ‘losers’ of history at its best. He has reclaimed John Brown to his proper position as an icon for the left against the erroneous and outrageous efforts of modern day religious and secular terrorists to lay any claim to his memory or his work. Below I make a few comments on some of controversies surrounding John Brown developed in Mr. Reynolds’s study.

If one understands the ongoing nature, from his early youth, of John Brown’s commitment to the active struggle against slavery, the scourge of the American Republic in the first half of the 19th century, one can only conclude that he was indeed a man on a mission. As Mr. Reynolds’s points out Brown took every opportunity to fight against slavery including early service as an agent of the Underground Railroad spiriting escaped slaves northward, participation as an extreme radical in all the key anti-slavery propaganda battles of the time as well as challenging other anti-slavery elements to be more militant and in the 1850’s, arms in hand, fighting in the ‘proxy’ wars in Kansas and, of course, the culmination of his life- the raid on Harpers Ferry. Those exploits alone render absurd a very convenient myth by those who supported slavery or turned a blind eye to it and their latter-day apologists for his so-called ‘madness’. This is a political man and to these eyes a very worthy one.

For those who like their political heroes ‘pure’, frankly, it is better to look elsewhere than the life of John Brown. His personal and family life as a failed rural capitalist would hardly lead one to think that this man was to become a key historical figure in any struggle, much less the great struggle against slavery. Some of his actions in Kansas (concerning the murder of some pro-slavery elements under his direction) also cloud his image. However, when the deal went down in the late 1850’s and it was apparent for all to see that there was no other way to end slavery than a fight to the death-John Brown rose to the occasion. And did not cry about it. And did not expect others to cry about it. Call him a ‘monomaniac’ if you like but even a slight acquaintance with great historical figures shows they all have this ‘disease’- that is why they make the history books. No, the ‘madness’ argument will not do.

Whether or not John Brown knew that his military strategy for the Harper’s Ferry raid would, in the short term, be defeated is a matter of dispute. Reams of paper have been spent proving the military foolhardiness of his scheme at Harper’s Ferry. Brown’s plan, however, was essentially a combination of slave revolt modeled after the maroon experiences in Haiti, Nat Turner’s earlier Virginia slave rebellion and rural guerrilla warfare of the ‘third world’ type that we have become more familiar with since that time. 150 years later this strategy does not look so foolhardy in an America of the 1850’s that had no real standing army, fairly weak lines of communications, virtually uninhabited mountains to flee to and the North at their backs.

The execution of the plan is another matter. Brown seemingly made about every mistake in the book in that regard. However, this is missing the essential political point that militant action not continuing parliamentary maneuvering advocated by other abolitionists had become necessary. A few more fighting abolitionists, including Frederick Douglass, and better propaganda work among freedman with connections to the plantations would not have hurt the chances for success at Harpers Ferry.

What is not in dispute is that Brown considered himself a true Calvinist avenging angel in the struggle against slavery and more importantly acted on that belief. In short, he was committed to bring justice to the black masses. This is why his exploits and memory stay alive after over 150 years. It is possible that if Brown did not have this, by 19th century standards as well as our own, old-fashioned Calvinist determination that he would not have been capable of militant action. Certainly other anti-slavery elements never came close to his militancy, including the key Transcendentalist movement led by Emerson and Thoreau and the Concord ‘crowd’ who supported him and kept his memory alive in hard times.

In their eyes he had the heroic manner of the Old Testament prophet. Now this animating spirit is not one that animates modern revolutionaries and so it is hard to understand the depths of his religious convictions on his actions but they were understood, if not fully appreciated, by others in those days. It is better today to look at Brown more politically through his hero (and mine, as well) Oliver Cromwell-a combination of Calvinist avenger and militant warrior. Yes, I can get behind that picture of him.

By all accounts Brown and his small integrated band of brothers fought bravely and coolly against great odds. Ten of Brown's men were killed including two of his sons. Five were captured, tried and executed, including Brown. These results are almost inevitable when one takes up a revolutionary struggle against the old order and one is not victorious. One need only think of, for example, the fate of the defenders of the Paris Commune in 1871. One can fault Brown on this or that tactical maneuver. Nevertheless he and the others bore themselves bravely in defeat. As we are all too painfully familiar there are defeats of the oppressed that lead nowhere. One thinks of the defeat of the German Revolution in the 1920’s. There other defeats that galvanize others into action. This is how Brown’s actions should be measured by history.

Militarily defeated at Harpers Ferry, Brown's political mission to destroy slavery by force of arms nevertheless continued to galvanize important elements in the North at the expense of the pacifistic non-resistant Garrisonian political program for struggle against slavery. Many writers on Brown who reduce his actions to that of a ‘madman’ still cannot believe that his road proved more appropriate to end slavery than either non-resistance or gradualism. That alone makes short shrift of such theories. Historians and others have also misinterpreted later events such as the Bolshevik strategy which led to Russian Revolution in October 1917. More recently, we saw this same incomprehension concerning the victory of the Vietnamese against overwhelming American military superiority. Needless to say, all these events continue to be revised by some historians to take the sting out of there proper political implications.

From a modern prospective Brown’s strategy for black liberation, even if the abolitionist goal he aspired to was immediately successful, reached the outer limits within the confines of capitalism. Brown’s actions were meant to make black people free. Beyond that goal he had no program except the Chatham Charter which seems to have replicated the American constitution but with racial and gender equality as a cornerstone. Unfortunately the Civil War did not provide fundamental economic and political freedom. That is still our fight. Moreover, the Civil War, the defeat of Radical Reconstruction, the reign of ‘Jim Crow’ and the subsequent waves of black migration to the cities changed the character of black oppression in the U.S. from Brown’s time. Black people are now a part of "free labor," and the key to their liberation is in the integrated fight of labor against the current one-sided class war and establishing a government of workers and their allies. Nevertheless, we can stand proudly in the revolutionary tradition of John Brown (and of his friend Frederick Douglass). We need to complete the unfinished democratic tasks of the Civil War, not by emulating Brown’s exemplary actions but to moving the multi-racial American working class to power. Finish the Civil War.
**************

	Workers Vanguard No. 992	9 December 2011

TROTSKY

LENIN

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 Roots Is The Toots- The Music That Got Them Through World War II-Peggy Lee Backed By The Benny Goodman Band- From Deep In The American Songbook-The Lamp Of Memory …

 

... and memories of that girl (or guy) who got away, or who was married to another, or who had another girlfriend (or boyfriend, or today mix and match, and then too come to think of it), or one of a thousand other reasons for parting, some good, some bad but in misty future time regret, sheer regret for that maybe first love and why things hadn’t worked out. Or maybe thinking, thinking too hard for the times, for the bloody times of the guns, the time of the the night of the long knives when lamps were blown out all over this good green earth, looking out over some Eastern or Western harbor thinking about that guy coming back, coming back in one piece to take up their dream. And he in some muddied trench, some dank cave, some frozen beach-head thinking whether she will be waiting, waiting alone, for him. Thus this song to get one by on that cold, lonely remembrance night.          

 

 

**********

Peter Paul Markin comment on this series:

 

Whether we liked it or not, whether we even knew what it meant to our parents or not, what sacred place it held in their youthful hearts, this is the music that went wafting through the house of many of those of us who constitute the Generation of ‘68. Those of us who came of age, personal, political and social age in the age of Jack Kennedy’s Camelot, and who were driven by some makeshift dream, who in the words of brother Bobby quoting  from Alfred Lord Tennyson were “seeking a new world.”  Those who took up the call to action and slogged through that decade whether it was in civil rights/black liberation struggle, the anti-Vietnam War struggle or the struggle to find one’s own identity in the counter-culture before the hammer came down. And that hammer came down quickly as the decade ended and the high white note drifted out into the ebbing tide. But enough of that about us this is about forbears and their struggles, and the music that they dreamed by on cold winter nights or hot summer days.

This is emphatically the music of the generation that survived the dust bowl, empty bowl, no sugar bowl street urchin hard times of the 1930s Great Depression, the time of the madness, the time of the night-takers, the time of the long knives. Survived god knows how by taking the nearest freight, some smoke and dreams freight, Southern Pacific, Union Pacific, B&O, Illinois Central, Penn Central, Empire State, Boston and Maine, or one of a million trunk lines to go out and search for, well, search for… Search for something that was not triple decker bodies piled high cold-water flat with a common commode and brown stained sink, rooming house, hell, call it what it was flop house stinking of perspiration and low-shelf whiskeys and wines, or tumbled down shack, window pane-less, tarpaper siding, roof tiles falling, and get out on the open road and search for the great promised American night that had been tattered by world events, and greed.

Survived the Hoovervilles, the great cardboard, tin can roof, slap-dash jerry-built camp explosions along rivers, down in ravines and under railroad trestles when the banks, yeah, the banks, the usual suspects, robbed people of their shacks, their cottages, their farm houses, robbed them as an old-time balladeer said at the time not with a gun but with a fountain pen, but still robbed them. Survived the soap kitchens hungers, the endless waiting in line for scrapes, dreaming of some by-gone steak or dish of ice cream, and always that hunger, not the stomach hunger although that was ever present, but the hunger that hurts a man, hurts his pride when he has to stick his hand out, stick it out and not know why. Out of work, or with little work waiting for that day, that full head of steam day in places like Flint, Frisco town, Akron, Chicago, hell, even in boondock Minneapolis when the score gets evened, evened a little, but until then shifting the scroungings of the trash piles of the urban glut, the rural fallow fields, and that gnarring hungry that cried out in the night-want, want that is all. 

 

Survived too the look, the look of those, the what did FDR (Franklin Delano Roosevelt for the young, or forgetful) call them, oh yeah, the economic royalists, today’s 1%, who in their fortified towers tittered that not everybody was built to survive to be the fittest. That crowd  fought tooth and nail against the little guy trying to break bread, trying to get out from under that cardboard, tar paper, windowless soup kitchen world along with a hell of a lot of comrades, yes, comrades, kindred in the struggle to put survival of the fittest on the back-burner of human history, to take collective action to put things right, hell, made the bosses cry bloody murder when they shut down their factories, shut them down cold until some puny penny justice was eked out.      

Survived but took time out too, time out if young perhaps, to stretch those legs, to sway those hips to a new sound coming out of the mist, coming out of New York, always New York then, Chicago, Detroit, and Kansas City, the Missouri K.C. okay. The sound of swing replacing the dour Brother, Can You Spare a Dime, no banishing it, casting it out with soup lines, second-hand clothes (passed down from out the door brothers and sisters), and from hunger looks, because after all it did not mean a thing, could not possibly place you anywhere else but squareville (my term, not their), if you did not have that swing. To be as one with jitter-buggery if there was (is) such a word. And swing a fade echo of the cool age be-bop that was a-borning, making everybody reach for that high white note floating out of Minton’s, Big Bill’s Jimmie’s, hell, even Olde Saco’s Starlight Ballroom before it breezed out in the ocean air night, crashed into the tepid sea. Yeah.        

 

Survived, as if there was no time to breathe in new fresh airs, to slog through the time of the gun in World War II, a time when the night-takers, those who craved the revenge night of the long knives took giant steps in Europe and Asia trying to make that same little guy, Brit, Frenchie, Chinaman, Filipino, God’s American, and half the races and nationalities on this good green earth cry uncle and buckle under, take it, take their stuff without a squawk. And so after Pearl, after that other shoe dropped on a candid world Johnnie, Jimmie, Paulie, Benny too, all the guys from the old neighborhood, the guys who hung around Doc’s hands in their pockets, guys from the wheat fields fresh from some Saturday night dance, all shy and with calloused and, guys from the coal slags, down in hill country, full of home liquor, blackened fingernails and Saturday night front porch fiddlings wound up carrying an M-I on the shoulder in Europe or the Pacific. Susie, Laura, Betty, and dark-haired Rebecca too waiting at home hoping to high heaven that some wayward gun had not carried off sweetheart Johnnie, Jimmy, Paulie, or young Benny.  Jesus not young Benny.

 

Survived the endless lines of boys heading off East and West, some who could hardly wait to get to the recruiting office others, well, other hanging back, hanging back just a little to think things over, and still others head over heels they were exempt, 4-F, bad feet, you see. All, all except that last crew who got to sit a home with Susie, Laura, Betty and even odd-ball Rebecca waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the ships to sail or planes to fly, hanging in some corner drugstore, Doc’s, Rexall, name your drugstore name, sitting two by two at the soda fountain playing that newly installed jukebox until the nickels ran out. Listened to funny banana songs, rum and coca cola songs, siting under the apple tree songs to get a minute’s reprieve from thoughts of the journey ahead.

Listened too to dreamy, sentimental songs, songs about faraway places, about keeping lamp- lights burning, about making a better world out of the fire and brimstone sacrifice before them, about Johnnie, Jimmie and the gang actually returning, returning whole, and putting a big dent in their dreams, hell, about maybe the damn wars would be over sooner rather than later. Listened and as old Doc, or some woe-begotten soda jerk, some high school kid, told them to leave he was closing up, they made for the beach, if near a beach, the pond, the back forty, the hills, or whatever passed for a lovers’ lane in their locale and with the echo of those songs as background, well, what do you think they did, why do you think they call us baby-boomers.               

 

The music, this survival music, wafted through the air coming from a large console radio, the prized possession amid the squalor of second-hand sofas and woe-begotten stuffed pillows smelling of mothballs, centered in the small square living room of my growing up house. My broken down, needs a new roof, random shingles on the ground as proof, cracked windows stuffed with paper and held with masking tape, no proof needed, overgrown lawn of a shack of a house too small, much too small, for four growing boys and two parents house.

 

That shack of a house surrounded by other houses, shack houses, too small to fit Irish Catholic- sized families with stony-eyed dreams but which represented in some frankly weird form (but what knew I of such weirdness then I just cried out in some fit of angst) the great good desire of those warriors and their war brides to latch onto a piece of golden age America. And take their struggle survival music with them as if to validate their sweet memory dreams. That radio, as if a lifesaver, literally, tuned to local station WDJA in North Adamsville, the memory station for those World War II warriors and their war brides, those who made it back. Some wizard station manager knowing his, probably his in those days, demographics, spinned those 1940s platters exclusively, as well as aimed the ubiquitous advertisement at that crowd. Cars, sofas, beds, shaving gear, soap, department store sales, all the basics of the growing families spawned (nice, huh) by those warriors and brides.

My harried mother, harried by the prospects of the day with four growing boys, maybe bewildered is a better expression, turning the radio on to start her day, hoping that Paper Dolls, I’ll Get By, or dreamy Tangerine, their songs, their spring youth meeting at some USO dance songs and so embedded, or so it seemed as she hummed away the day, used the music as background on her appointed household rounds. The stuff, that piano/drum-driven stuff with some torch-singer bleeding all over the floor with her loves, her hurts, and her wanderings, her waitings, they should have called it the waiting generation, drove me crazy then, mush stuff at a time when I was craving the big break-out rock and roll sounds I kept hearing every time I went and played the jukebox at Doc’s Drugstore over on Walker Street down near the beach. As far as I know Doc, knowing his demographics as well, did not, I repeat, did not, stock that stuff that, uh, mush for his rock-crazed after school soda fountain crowd, probably stocked nothing, mercifully before about 1955. Funny thing though while I am still a child of rock and roll (blues too) this so-called mushy stuff sounds pretty good to these ears now long after my parents and those who performed this music have passed on. Go figure. 

In Honor Of The 64th Anniversary Year Of The Chinese Revolution of 1949- From The Pen Of Leon Trotsky-Problems Of The Chinese Revolution (1927) –Appendix from Leon Trotsky Problems of the Chinese Revolution -Speech of Vuyo Vuyovitch-Delivered at the eighth plenum of the E. C. C. I.

Click on link below to read on-line all of Leon Trotsky's book, Problems Of The Chinesee Revolution

http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1932/pcr/index.htm

Markin comment (repost from 2012):

On a day when we are honoring the 63rd anniversary of the Chinese revolution of 1949 the article posted in this entry and the comment below take on added meaning. In the old days, in the days when I had broken from many of my previously held left social-democratic political views and had begun to embrace Marxism with a distinct tilt toward Trotskyism, I ran into an old revolutionary in Boston who had been deeply involved (although I did not learn the extend of that involvement until later) in the pre-World War II socialist struggles in Eastern Europe. The details of that involvement will not detain us here now but the import of what he had to impart to me about the defense of revolutionary gains has stuck with me until this day. And, moreover, is germane to the subject of this article from the pen of Leon Trotsky -the defense of the Chinese revolution and the later gains of that third revolution (1949) however currently attenuated.

This old comrade, by the circumstances of his life, had escaped that pre-war scene in fascist-wracked Europe and found himself toward the end of the 1930s in New York working with the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party in the period when that organization was going through intense turmoil over the question of defense of the Soviet Union. In the history of American (and international) Trotskyism this is the famous Max Shachtman-James Burnham led opposition that declared, under one theory or another, that the previously defendable Soviet Union had changed dramatically enough in the course of a few months to be no longer worth defending by revolutionaries.

What struck him from the start about this dispute was the cavalier attitude of the anti-Soviet opposition, especially among the wet-behind-the-ears youth, on the question of that defense and consequently about the role that workers states, healthy, deformed or degenerated, as we use the terms of art in our movement, as part of the greater revolutionary strategy. Needless to say most of those who abandoned defense of the Soviet Union when there was even a smidgeon of a reason to defend it left politics and peddled their wares in academia or business. Or if they remained in politics lovingly embraced the virtues of world imperialism.

That said, the current question of defense of the Chinese Revolution hinges on those same premises that animated that old Socialist Workers Party dispute. And strangely enough (or maybe not so strangely) on the question of whether China is now irrevocably on the capitalist road, or is capitalist already (despite some very un-capitalistic economic developments over the past few years), I find that many of those who oppose that position have that same cavalier attitude the old comrade warned me against back when I was first starting out. There may come a time when we, as we had to with the Soviet Union and other workers states, say that China is no longer a workers state. But today is not that day. In the meantime study the issue, read the posted article, and more importantly, defend the gains of the Chinese Revolution.

**********

Leon Trotsky

Problems of the Chinese Revolution

---

Appendix from Leon Trotsky Problems of the Chinese Revolution -Speech of Vuyo Vuyovitch-Delivered at the eighth plenum of the E. C. C. I.-

COMRADE BUCHARIN began his speech with a historical presentation. Permit me to carry his historical exposition further from where he broke off, for the history of the great revolutionary movement in China does not end on the eve of the march to the North, on the contrary, it is precisely here that its most important phase begins.

Before all, however, a few words on our policy in China up to the Sixth enlarged Plenum of the Communist International, that is, up to the spring of 1926. Yesterday, comrade Petrov, basing himself on numerous quotations, demonstrated here that the principal decisions and the policy of the Chinese party as well as the decisions drawn up by the E. C. C. I. before and after the Sixth Plenum were correct.
I am very thankful to comrade Petrov for proving, on the basis of quotations, not only that comrade Zinoviev participated actively in the establishment of the political line in China up to the spring of 1926, but also that all the decisions of principle of the Chinese party and the Communist International at that time were correct.[1]
That is the best answer to the contentions of comrade Bucharin.
It is highly gratifying that comrade Petrov wants to share the responsibility for the policy in China before the Sixth Plenum of the C. I. but he exaggerates when he asks that comrade Zinoviev assume the responsibility for the policy that was carried out in China since the Sixth enlarged Plenum of the E. C. C. I., that is, since the march to the North; for it is a notorious fact that all the decisions on the political independence of the Communist Party of China, on the necessity of preserving its own physiognomy, were practically trampled under foot only in order to maintain the bloc with Chiang Kai-Shek at any price.
Comrade Petrov even went so far as to adduce here quotations from the decisions of the Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China in July 1926, in order to show that the Communist Party of China always had the intention of preserving its independence and an independent policy. Petrov, or perhaps comrade Martinov, submitted the decisions of this Plenum to a severe criticism in Number 11 of Die Kommunistische Internationale . The official organ of the E. C. C. I. condemned these decisions and proposed to the next congress of the Communist Party of China to revise them. Now, after the coup d’État of Chiang Kai-Shek, comrade Petrov comes along and bases himself upon the decisions whose revision he had asked for, and he wants to prove thereby that the Communist Party of China had a correct policy. Surely, there is no greater hypocrisy than this.
We said in our theses, and we repeat it here: the Chinese Communist Party repeatedly endeavored to correct its line and to leave the bloc-at-any-price with Chiang Kai-Shek, and we proposed in our theses to send a telegram instantly to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, saying that the decisions of the July Plenum were correct in essence and that their realization must be begun immediately. Unfortunately, all the attempts of the Chinese party to correct its political line and its false tactics, encountered the formal opposition of comrade Borodin and the representative of the E. C. C. I. in China.
If you want to know what the practical execution of these decisions looked like, the decisions which comrade Petrov condemned two months ago but praised here yesterday, then have the letter of the three comrades from Shanghai laid before you and you will get a vivid picture of what went on in China and continues to go on. You will then grasp much more easily how the coup d’État of Chiang Kai-Shek was possible.
But let us return to history. It was said here that the Opposition remained silent up to the coup d’État of Chiang Kai-Shek and that it is now endeavoring to utilize this coup d’État for its “factional” purposes. How do matters really stand?
After the Sixth Plenum of the E. C. C. I., comrade Radek sent his first communication to the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in July 1926 and asked for an answer to a series of questions that were arising in China, so that he could bring his activity as rector of the Sun Yat Sen University in harmony with the political line of the party. This letter remained without an answer. In view of the great events that were taking place in China, comrade Radek, at the beginning of the school year, sent a second letter to the Political Bureau with the request for enlightenment, the essential points of which were as follows:
”These are questions that require an answer:
”1. The establishment of a military dictatorship of Chiang Kai-Shek after March 20, 1926 and our attitude toward this dictatorship. The difficulty of this question lies in the fact that Chiang Kai-Shek is the leader of the Kuo Min Tang and that Borodin supports him formally. Our intervention against Chiang Kai-Shek has a very great political significance here.
”2. The balance of the work of the Kuo Min Tang among the peasants.
”3. The demand of the Kuo Min Tang that the Communists renounce their criticism of Sun Yat Senism.
”4. Should the Kuo Min Tang work among the proletariat?
”5. How should we support the Left elements of the Kuo Min Tang?
”6. The question of the semi-Menshevik tone of the last manifesto of the Plenum of the Executive Committee of the Party of China, in which it says: we must carry on a minimum of class struggle and when the policy of the Communist party is designated as Bolshevik, it is not a matter of Bolshevism but of Bolshevism in the interests of the whole nation.
”I consider it my duty to raise these questions and beg you to call upon me to make a report.”
After comrade Radek had sent the second letter in July 1926, he took up all these important questions again in September 1926. Absolute silence was the only answer of the Political Bureau.
In January 1927, comrade Radek again took up the most important questions of the Chinese revolution in a series of lectures which he gave in the Sverdlov University in accordance with instructions. But the course of events was so rapid and the dangerous mistakes had accumulated to such an extent, that af ter the Hankow crisis, comrade Radek considered it his duty to raise these questions openly. Only then did he finally speak in the Communist Academy, where he posed the questions in the following manner:
”The conclusive fate of the Chinese revolution will be decided in Hankow and not in Shanghai. Not the immediate military successes are decisive for the progress of the revolution but the issue of the class struggle inside the national revolutionary movement. Chiang Kai-Shek’s generals are shooting the workers and peasants almost everywhere and are mobilizing for the decisive struggle. The Left Kuo Min Tang and the Communist party have to muster the courage and the necessary forces to drive away the Right wing and to take over the leadership of the movement. To this end, the workers and peasants must be armed immediately, workers’ and peasants’ detachments must be formed in the army, the agrarian revolution must be consummated, the social questions must be solved by fulfilling the demands of the workers and above all the organizational independence of the Communist party must be established, for this independence does not exist in reality and we must fight for the achievement of real homogeneity in the national-revolutionary movement.”
What was the answer of the historian Bucharin and of the other comrades of the majority who “foresaw everything and whose prognoses were confirmed by the facts”?
Instead of examining seriously the questions raised by comrade Radek, they raised a cry about panic, and since just at that time there followed the settlement of the conflict with Chiang Kai-Shek, his “submission” and his declaration of loyalty towards the Central Committee of the Kuo Min Tang, a great shout of victory was raised. But they forgot that in the revolution, as in every other thing, the bourgeoisie never submits to resolutions, but only to armed power.
A few days later Shanghai was taken, and a new shout of victory was raised.
In the meantime, the development of events showed that Chiang Kai-Shek’s march on Shanghai was not a march against the imperialists but a march towards the imperialists in order to establish contact with the imperialist armies stationed in Shanghai, in order to provide himself with a rear guard, and in this way to prepare the execution of the coup d’Etat that had ended in failure a month previously.
Why did they raise a cry about panic, instead of adopting immediately the necessary measures for the dispatch of the enemy in our own ranks? Because of the false evaluation of the events in China, because of the underestimation of the bourgeoisie and the role it plays in the Chinese revolution. What were the most characteristic answers?
1. The bourgeoisie would already like to fight against the workers and peasants, but it cannot do it, because it is above all anti-imperialistic and it needs the workers and peasants for its struggle against the imperialists (Martinov).
2. The big bourgeoisie wants to eliminate feudalism in China in order to create the economic foundation for the development of industry. Therefore, it marches against the feudal militarists of the North and against the imperialists who support the remnants of feudalism (Bucharin).
3. The bourgeoisie is a minority in the revolutionary parliament which is constituted by the Kuo Min Tang. It subordinates itself to the majority composed of the Left wing and the Communists. It can do us no harm, we have all the means to utilize it in our own interests and then to cast it aside (Stalin).
In my opinion, there is no essential difference between these three viewpoints which, unfortunately, I have not the time to analyze.
But once I have assumed the role of historian, I would like to bring a really historic speech to your attention, which might otherwise remain unknown to history. That is the speech of comrade Stalin to the party workers of Moscow on April 6, 1927, that is, almost at the very moment when workers’ blood flowed in streams in the streets of Shanghai. I take the risk of being accused of lack of loyalty, or of making personal attacks, for comrade Stalin did not touch upon the question yesterday, since he probably counts it among the personal questions. Nevertheless, I made exact notes and hope to render the content of this speech faithfully enough to preserve my calling as a former translator at congresses of the Comintern. Comrade Stalin will always have the opportunity of rectifying unintentional inaccuracies by laying his stenogram before us. What did comrade Stalin say? (I touch only upon the most important questions).
The Chinese revolution differs from the Russian revolution of 1905 by the fact that it is primarily anti-imperialistic. The essential error of comrade Radek consists of not comprehending that the tempo of development of the revolution in China cannot be so rapid as he would wish. He is impatient; he would like the events to develop rapidly, he does not comprehend that the Russian revolution of 1917 had many difficulties to overcome although the imperialists were divided into two camps at that time which strove against each other; the Chinese revolution will have still greater difficulties, for the imperialists are making a united front in China. That is why the tempo of development will be slower. Radek appears here with very revolutionary slogans: Break with the Right Kuo Min Tang, drive away the Right—a few more of such r-r-revolutionary slogans and the Chinese revolution is lost. Out of the false estimation of the international situation, of the Chinese revolution and its tempo of development, result all the other mistakes of Radek. The Kuo Min Tang is a bloc, a sort of revolutionary parliament with the Right, the Left and the Communists. Why make a coup d’État ? Why drive away the Right, when we have the majority and when the Right listens to us?
The peasant needs an old worn-out jade as long as she is necessary. He does not drive her away. So it is with us. When the Right is of no more use to us, we will drive it away. At present, we need the Right. It has capable people, who still direct the army and lead it against the imperialists. Chiang Kai-Shek has perhaps no sympathy for the revolution, but he is leading the army and cannot do otherwise than lead it against the imperialists.
Besides this, the people of the Right have relations with the generals of Tchang Tso-lin and understand very well how to demoralize them and to induce them to pass over to the side of the revolution, bag and baggage, without striking a blow. Also, they have connections with the rich merchants and can raise money from them. So they have to be utilized to the end, squeezed out like a lemon and then flung away.
This, mind you, was said three days before the coup d’État .
The Chinese revolution is being led by a broad revolutionary party, whose Central Committee forms a sort of revolutionary parliament. The hegemony belongs to the Communists. If the Communists• provoke the Kuo Min Tang, they will be beaten and the hegemony will be transferred to the Right, etc.
In what manner did comrade Stalin view the massacres of workers and peasants by the generals of the national armies, these “individual questions” with which comrade Bucharin cannot occupy himself from Moscow? Comrade Stalin said: There have been such and there will be more of them. It would be ridiculous to think that a revolution which has lasted two years already, could proceed without that. Do we conceal this? No, that is not true. We do not conceal this, but we do not want to exaggerate it in our press, and Stalin concluded with the assurance that there are ways, other ways than those proposed by Radek, to achieve our aim, not so swift it is true, but more certain.
This speech was delivered a few days before the coup d’État . It was never made public. We protest against the confiscation of the articles of the Opposition, against the silence imposed upon us, but we are democratic enough to protest also against the silence that comrade Stalin has imposed upon himself, against this self-confiscation, which in all likelihood is to replace self-criticism. And after all this, our new historian, comrade Bucharin, appears here and becomes indignant that comrade Zinoviev in 1925 did not foresee the course of events in 1927 and allowed Hu Han Min to speak before the enlarged Executive in 1926. But comrade Bucharin forgets to read the very next paragraph of comrade Zinoviev’s pamphlet, in which Zinoviev, already in 1925, launched the slogan of the arming of the workers and peasants, a slogan that could not be carried out by you, because you wanted to maintain the bloc with Chiang Kai-Shek at any price. If you had armed the workers and peasants of China at the right time, the course of the revolution would have been quite different and the coup d’État of Chiang Kai-Shek would have been made impossible.
To be sure, the secret directions of the Political Bureau of March 3 were quoted here. If these directions actually signified a change of the political line in China, why did it not have any effect at all upon the attitude of our press and upon the content of the speeches which comrade Stalin and comrade Bucharin made a month later to the Moscow party workers? If it was really understood that the line was false, that it must be changed, that another attitude must be adopted towards the big bourgeoisie and Chiang Kai-Shek, why was confusion sown in the ranks of all our parties, why was there such a fear to admit the mistakes committed? The directions of March 3 only make the political responsibility of the majority and the responsible organs of the Comintern greater, for this body concerned itself with the Chinese questions, at any rate not the Praesidium.
Instead of that, comrade Stalin, on April 6, 1927, accused comrade Radek of understanding nothing about the Chinese revolution, which was above all anti-imperialistic. The principal task consisted of triumphing over the militarists of the North; to break with the Right prematurely would signify the destruction of the revolution. We need not hurry, we need not insist, for the big bourgeoisie is obedient, and we are utilizing them. A remark in passing: it was not we who utilized the big bourgeoisie, but they who utilized us, by hastening to occupy more than half the territory that the Kuo Min Tang held at that time and to slaughter thousands of proletarians so as to carry through the coup d’État of Chiang Kai-Shek….
Up to now, all the mistakes committed in China have been justified by saying that this was “a special tactic”, corresponding to the “special conditions” and due to the role of imperialism in China. Today, imperialism has completely disappeared from the presentation of comrade Stalin. Not a word on imperialism in China. The agrarian revolution has stepped into the place of imperialism. In its name, the attempt is now made to justify an equally false policy, in the same way that the false policy before the coup d’État of Chiang Kai-Shek was justified by the role of imperialism in China.
But where was the agrarian question before the coup d’État of Chiang Kai-Shek? Was not the agrarian revolution an essential point of the whole national revolution? Because before the coup d’État you had postponed the solution of the agrarian question, the completion of the agrarian revolution on the land and, in like manner, the arming of the workers and peasants, only in order to maintain the bloc with the bourgeoisie, which, according to Bucharin, was thoroughly anti-feudal and anti-imperialistic. Formerly, you wanted to use the bourgeoisie in order to beat the militarists of the North and to exterminate the feudal remnants. We have seen the successes. It was demonstrated that the Chinese big bourgeoisie can fight against the remnants of feudalism just as well as the big bourgeoisie of other countries who have achieved the same level of capitalist development.
Now, comrades, you say that the agrarian revolution in China stands on the order of the day, and you contend that the Hankow government has been appointed to complete the agrarian revolution and to direct it. Formerly you said: Chiang Kai-Shek must not be driven away, he will not betray us. We, on the contrary, told you that the militarists of the North and the imperialists can be beaten only by removing the big bourgeoisie and Chiang Kai-Shek from the leadership of the Kuo Min Tang army. This time, you are repeating the same mistake with the Hankow government, by contending that the petty bourgeoisie has been appointed and is in a position to carry through the agrarian revolution in China. You say: No Soviets before the agrarian revolution! Only after the Left Kuo Min Tang will have completed the agrarian revolution, only when we will have utilized them in this sense, will we be able to build Soviets in China. We answer you and appeal to the Chinese workers and peasants: You will never have the agrarian revolution under the leadership of the petty bourgeoisie. You are continuing the same false and criminal policy that prepares a repetition of the coup d’État of Chiang Kai-Shek and this time a coup d’État of the vacillating Left leaders of the Kuo Min Tang and the generals of the national army of Hankow.
The government of Hankow will be able to accomplish the agrarian revolution only when the hegemony of the proletariat is guaranteed on this territory. And the only means of achieving the hegemony of the proletariat in the Hankow government and in the Left Kuo Min Tang, does not lie in making concessions to the petty bourgeoisie, for it swings continuously to and fro between the proletariat and the big bourgeoisie and will finally go over to the stronger side; the only means lies in the organization of the forces of the proletariat and the peasantry and in investing it with an organizational form—the Soviets—that will not only make it possible for us to mobilize the broad masses, but also to conquer the leadership of these masses for the Communist party, in the Soviets as well as in the Kuo Min Tang.
Comrades, what you are doing in this case is only a continuation of the policy of concessions, but this time to the petty bourgeoisie. Comrade Bucharin could not cite a single concrete fact to show what the Hankow government has done, since the last session of the Central Committee of the party, or at least since the coup d’État of Chiang Kai-Shek, really to arm the workers and peasants and to help the peasants take possession of the land.
(Heinz Neumann: The Hankow government has defeated the militarists of North China!)
Comrade Neumann, Chiang Kai-Shek also defeated the militarists of the North. We greet these victories with all our heart. But we repeat to you once more: The most essential thing is not the overthrow of the militarists of the North in general, but their defeat by the national armies, by the national movement, whose direction lies in the hands of the only class that is really in a position to accomplish the agrarian revolution, namely, in the hands of the proletariat.
We do not know what surprises the present generals of the Hankow government, Tan Shen Shi and Feng Yu-hsiang, are preparing for us tomorrow. You do not know, either. The former is a real feudal lord, and the latter entered the Kuo Min Tang only recently. The last number of the MANCHESTER GUARDIAN carries the report that Feng Yu-hsiang is sending telegrams to Chiang Kai-Shek in Shanghai to keep him informed on his military victories.
The only possible organization at present is the Soviet which mobilizes the masses of the workers and peasants and guarantees the hegemony of the Communist party in the Kuo Min Tang and on the territory of the national revolutionary movement.
(Semard: That is full of contradictions!)
There is no contradiction here. If the Hankow government is revolutionary, as you contend, if it is in a position to accomplish the agrarian revolution, then why should this Hankow government be against the Soviets and against the revolutionary organization of the workers and peasants? It is against them, because it will only help to accomplish the agrarian revolution when we are strong enough to consolidate the armed workers and peasants in the Soviets under the leadership of the Communist party. Only in this case will the petty bourgeoisie be able to accomplish the agrarian revolution. In the contrary case, however, it will finish by running over to the side of the big bourgeoisie.
I conclude my speech with the remark that the Chinese comrade was right when he said today that the Chinese revolution will triumph only under the banner of Lenin. That is true, comrades; it is not under the banner of the Kuo Min Tang, so dear to our comrade Bucharin, that the revolution in China, even the agrarian revolution, will triumph, but only under the red banner of the Soviets and under the banner of Leninism.
Moscow, May 1927 V. Vuyovitch

Endnotes

1. Vuyovitch, former secretary of the Young Communist International, was a supporter of the Zinovievist section of the united Opposition Bloc and as such sought to present Zinoviev’s whole preceding course as correct. However, this view was not in harmony with the facts. Zinoviev’s position on the problems of the Chinese revolution was not only in-correct—and Quite in harmony with Stalin’s and Bucharin’s—prior to 1927, but was extremely weak during the period of the Bloc. As can be seen from his theses, he actually defended a semi-Centrist position even at the time he was delivering a telling criticism of the official line. In their speeches and articles of that period, the apparatus supporters made much of the contrast they revealed between

Yes Indeed, In Search Of Lost Time-On The Centennial Year Of The Publication Of Marcel Prout's Swann's Way...


and dreams of a lost past, dreams of a time before the world went over the edge, went into the madness of the trenches, went to spend their time creating fields of simple white crosses and devouring the flower of a generation, and dreams of a lost past when a man or a woman could take the measure of their times and not have figure out why they had built a thing from which they had to flee. Oh yes a time too to have time for self-expression, many pages of self-expression, to preen, to look at the old order with a nod, if not a wink. And yes, go on and on, go on and on almost beyond endurance, about mystical french pastries.

***Take A Walk On The Wild Side- The Velvet Underground's Lou Reed Passes At 71...

...yeah, trying to be James Dean for a day-those pale blue eyes lingering on, dreaming about sweet janes, perfect days and a million other great lines and performances, especially later. Thanks Brother, thanks. RIP

 

***Take A Walk On The Wild Side- The Velvet Underground's Lou Reed Passes At 71...

...yeah, trying to be James Dean for a day-those pale blue eyes lingering on, dreaming about sweet janes, perfect days and a million other great lines and performances, especially later. Thanks Brother, thanks. RIP

   

From The Marxist Archives-In Honor Of The Anniversary Of The John Brown-Led Raid On Harpers Ferry- Consciousness and the Tasks of a Revolutionary Vanguard 

STRIKE THE BLOW-THE LEGEND OF CAPTAIN JOHN BROWN

Reclaiming John Brown for the Left

BOOK REVIEW

JOHN BROWN, ABOLITIONIST, DAVID S. REYNOLDS, ALFRED A. KNOPF, NEW YORK, 2005
From fairly early in my youth I knew the name John Brown and was swept up by the romance surrounding his exploits at Harpers Ferry. For example, I knew that the great anthem of the Civil War -The Battle Hymn of the Republic- had a prior existence as a tribute to John Brown and that Union soldiers marched to that song as they headed south. I was then, however, neither familiar with the import of his exploits for the black liberation struggle nor knew much about the specifics of the politics of the various tendencies in the struggle against slavery. I certainly knew nothing then of Brown’s (and his sons) prior military exploits in the Kansas ‘proxy’ wars against the expansion of slavery. Later study filled in some of those gaps and has only strengthened my strong bond with his memory. Know this, as I reach the age at which John Brown was executed,I still retain my youthful admiration for him. In the context of the turmoil of the times he was the most courageous and audacious revolutionary in the struggle for the abolition of slavery in America. Almost 150 years after his death this writer is proud to stand in the tradition of John Brown.

That said, it is with a great deal of pleasure that I can recommend Mr. Reynolds’s book detailing the life, times and exploits of John Brown, warts and all. Published in 2005, this is an important source (including helpful end notes) for updating various controversies surrounding the John Brown saga. While I may disagree with some of Mr. Reynolds’s conclusions concerning the impact of John Brown’s exploits on later black liberation struggles and to a lesser extent his position on Brown’s impact on his contemporaries, particularly the Transcendentalists, nevertheless on the key point of the central place of John Brown in American revolutionary history there is no dispute. Furthermore, Mr. Reynolds has taken pains to provide substantial detail about the ups and downs of John Brown’s posthumous reputation.

Most importantly, he defends the memory of John Brown against all-comers-that is partisan history on behalf of the ‘losers’ of history at its best. He has reclaimed John Brown to his proper position as an icon for the left against the erroneous and outrageous efforts of modern day religious and secular terrorists to lay any claim to his memory or his work. Below I make a few comments on some of controversies surrounding John Brown developed in Mr. Reynolds’s study.

If one understands the ongoing nature, from his early youth, of John Brown’s commitment to the active struggle against slavery, the scourge of the American Republic in the first half of the 19th century, one can only conclude that he was indeed a man on a mission. As Mr. Reynolds’s points out Brown took every opportunity to fight against slavery including early service as an agent of the Underground Railroad spiriting escaped slaves northward, participation as an extreme radical in all the key anti-slavery propaganda battles of the time as well as challenging other anti-slavery elements to be more militant and in the 1850’s, arms in hand, fighting in the ‘proxy’ wars in Kansas and, of course, the culmination of his life- the raid on Harpers Ferry. Those exploits alone render absurd a very convenient myth by those who supported slavery or turned a blind eye to it and their latter-day apologists for his so-called ‘madness’. This is a political man and to these eyes a very worthy one.

For those who like their political heroes ‘pure’, frankly, it is better to look elsewhere than the life of John Brown. His personal and family life as a failed rural capitalist would hardly lead one to think that this man was to become a key historical figure in any struggle, much less the great struggle against slavery. Some of his actions in Kansas (concerning the murder of some pro-slavery elements under his direction) also cloud his image. However, when the deal went down in the late 1850’s and it was apparent for all to see that there was no other way to end slavery than a fight to the death-John Brown rose to the occasion. And did not cry about it. And did not expect others to cry about it. Call him a ‘monomaniac’ if you like but even a slight acquaintance with great historical figures shows they all have this ‘disease’- that is why they make the history books. No, the ‘madness’ argument will not do.

Whether or not John Brown knew that his military strategy for the Harper’s Ferry raid would, in the short term, be defeated is a matter of dispute. Reams of paper have been spent proving the military foolhardiness of his scheme at Harper’s Ferry. Brown’s plan, however, was essentially a combination of slave revolt modeled after the maroon experiences in Haiti, Nat Turner’s earlier Virginia slave rebellion and rural guerrilla warfare of the ‘third world’ type that we have become more familiar with since that time. 150 years later this strategy does not look so foolhardy in an America of the 1850’s that had no real standing army, fairly weak lines of communications, virtually uninhabited mountains to flee to and the North at their backs.

The execution of the plan is another matter. Brown seemingly made about every mistake in the book in that regard. However, this is missing the essential political point that militant action not continuing parliamentary maneuvering advocated by other abolitionists had become necessary. A few more fighting abolitionists, including Frederick Douglass, and better propaganda work among freedman with connections to the plantations would not have hurt the chances for success at Harpers Ferry.

What is not in dispute is that Brown considered himself a true Calvinist avenging angel in the struggle against slavery and more importantly acted on that belief. In short, he was committed to bring justice to the black masses. This is why his exploits and memory stay alive after over 150 years. It is possible that if Brown did not have this, by 19th century standards as well as our own, old-fashioned Calvinist determination that he would not have been capable of militant action. Certainly other anti-slavery elements never came close to his militancy, including the key Transcendentalist movement led by Emerson and Thoreau and the Concord ‘crowd’ who supported him and kept his memory alive in hard times.

In their eyes he had the heroic manner of the Old Testament prophet. Now this animating spirit is not one that animates modern revolutionaries and so it is hard to understand the depths of his religious convictions on his actions but they were understood, if not fully appreciated, by others in those days. It is better today to look at Brown more politically through his hero (and mine, as well) Oliver Cromwell-a combination of Calvinist avenger and militant warrior. Yes, I can get behind that picture of him.

By all accounts Brown and his small integrated band of brothers fought bravely and coolly against great odds. Ten of Brown's men were killed including two of his sons. Five were captured, tried and executed, including Brown. These results are almost inevitable when one takes up a revolutionary struggle against the old order and one is not victorious. One need only think of, for example, the fate of the defenders of the Paris Commune in 1871. One can fault Brown on this or that tactical maneuver. Nevertheless he and the others bore themselves bravely in defeat. As we are all too painfully familiar there are defeats of the oppressed that lead nowhere. One thinks of the defeat of the German Revolution in the 1920’s. There other defeats that galvanize others into action. This is how Brown’s actions should be measured by history.

Militarily defeated at Harpers Ferry, Brown's political mission to destroy slavery by force of arms nevertheless continued to galvanize important elements in the North at the expense of the pacifistic non-resistant Garrisonian political program for struggle against slavery. Many writers on Brown who reduce his actions to that of a ‘madman’ still cannot believe that his road proved more appropriate to end slavery than either non-resistance or gradualism. That alone makes short shrift of such theories. Historians and others have also misinterpreted later events such as the Bolshevik strategy which led to Russian Revolution in October 1917. More recently, we saw this same incomprehension concerning the victory of the Vietnamese against overwhelming American military superiority. Needless to say, all these events continue to be revised by some historians to take the sting out of there proper political implications.

From a modern prospective Brown’s strategy for black liberation, even if the abolitionist goal he aspired to was immediately successful, reached the outer limits within the confines of capitalism. Brown’s actions were meant to make black people free. Beyond that goal he had no program except the Chatham Charter which seems to have replicated the American constitution but with racial and gender equality as a cornerstone. Unfortunately the Civil War did not provide fundamental economic and political freedom. That is still our fight. Moreover, the Civil War, the defeat of Radical Reconstruction, the reign of ‘Jim Crow’ and the subsequent waves of black migration to the cities changed the character of black oppression in the U.S. from Brown’s time. Black people are now a part of "free labor," and the key to their liberation is in the integrated fight of labor against the current one-sided class war and establishing a government of workers and their allies. Nevertheless, we can stand proudly in the revolutionary tradition of John Brown (and of his friend Frederick Douglass). We need to complete the unfinished democratic tasks of the Civil War, not by emulating Brown’s exemplary actions but to moving the multi-racial American working class to power. Finish the Civil War.
**************

Workers Vanguard No. 991	25 November 2011

TROTSKY

LENIN

Consciousness and the Tasks of a Revolutionary Vanguard

(Quote of the Week)

The 1905 Russian Revolution was the dress rehearsal for the successful proletarian socialist revolution in October 1917. Resisting all-sided pressures to adapt to the existing level of consciousness was crucial to leading the working masses to victory. Writing amid the tumult of 1905, Lenin argued that education of the proletarian vanguard by the Bolsheviks (who then considered themselves a wing of the Social-Democrats) could mean the difference between victory and defeat.

We have quite a few Social-Democrats who give way to pessimism every time the workers suffer a reverse in single battles with the capitalists or with the government, and who scornfully dismiss all mention of the great and lofty aims of the working-class movement by pointing to the inadequate degree of our influence on the masses. Who and what are we, they say, to strive towards such things? It is purposeless to speak of the role of Social-Democracy as vanguard of the revolution when we do not even really know the mood of the masses, when we are unable to merge with them and to rouse the working masses! The reverses suffered by the Social-Democrats last May Day have considerably intensified this mood. Naturally, the Mensheviks, or new-Iskrists, have seized this opening to raise anew the special slogan “To the masses!”...

That comparisons are odious is an old axiom. In every comparison a likeness is drawn in regard to only one aspect or several aspects of the objects or notions compared, while the other aspects are tentatively and with reservation abstracted. Let us remind the reader of this commonly known but frequently ignored axiom and proceed to compare the Social-Democratic Party to a large school which is at once elementary, secondary, and collegiate. The teaching of the ABC, instruction in the rudiments of knowledge and in independent thinking, will never, under any circumstances, be neglected in this big school. But if anyone sought to invoke the need for teaching the ABC as a pretext for dismissing questions of higher learning, if anyone attempted to offset the impermanent, dubious, and “narrow” results of this higher learning (accessible to a much smaller circle of people than those learning the ABC) to the durable, profound, extensive, and solid results of the elementary school, he would betray incredible short-sightedness. He might even help to pervert the whole purpose of the big school, since by ignoring higher education he would simply be making it easier for charlatans, demagogues, and reactionaries to mislead the people who had only learned the ABC.

—V.I. Lenin, “On Confounding Politics with Pedagogics,” June 1905, Collected Works, Vol. 8

 

***From The Archives Of The “ Revolutionary History” Journal-Trotsky And The POUM

Click below to link to the “Revolutionary History” Journal entry listed in the title.

http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/spain/spain03.htm

Markin comment:

I have posted,separately, a "Leon Trotsky Internet Archive" article by Leon Trotsky on the place of the POUM in the revolutionary scheme of the Spanish Civil War in this space today. It is always best to go to the source, especially when that source is Leon Trotsky who can more than hold his own, polemically, even from the revolutionary pantheon.