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Tuesday, December 17, 2013
From The Marxist Archives -The Revolutionary History Journal-Sam Gordon-Paul Lafargue
...Paul Lafargue had it just about right in his vision of the socialist future based on laziness, not sloth laziness but the absence of having to struggle hourly, daily, yearly. for a lifetime against hunger and other basic wants and pursue, well, pursue whatever. Engels once remarked, and it is rather a truism when you thing about it but worth noting anyway, that humankind is lazy as species. Lazy in the sense that he or she is always looking for things to make existence easier, always inventing short-cuts. Praise be. That should be the proper measure of humankind.
Click below to link to the Revolutionary History Journal index.
Peter Paul Markin comment on this series:
This is an excellent documentary source for today’s leftist militants to “discover”the work of our forebears, particularly the bewildering myriad of tendencies which have historically flown under the flag of the great Russian revolutionary, Leon Trotsky and his Fourth International, whether one agrees with their programs or not. But also other laborite, semi-anarchist, ant-Stalinist and just plain garden-variety old school social democrat groupings and individual pro-socialist proponents.
Some, maybe most of the material presented here, cast as weak-kneed programs for struggle in many cases tend to be anti-Leninist as screened through the Stalinist monstrosities and/or support groups and individuals who have no intention of making a revolution. Or in the case of examining past revolutionary efforts either declare that no revolutionary possibilities existed (most notably Germany in 1923) or alibi, there is no other word for it, those who failed to make a revolution when it was possible.
The Spanish Civil War can serve as something of litmus test for this latter proposition, most infamously around attitudes toward the Party Of Marxist Unification's (POUM) role in not keeping step with revolutionary developments there, especially the Barcelona days in 1937 and by acting as political lawyers for every non-revolutionary impulse of those forebears. While we all honor the memory of the POUM militants, according to even Trotsky the most honest band of militants in Spain then, and decry the murder of their leader, Andreas Nin, by the bloody Stalinists they were rudderless in the storm of revolution. But those present political disagreements do not negate the value of researching the POUM’s (and others) work, work moreover done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.
Finally, I place some material in this space which may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. Off hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these entries from the Revolutionary History journal in which they have post hoc attempted to rehabilitate some pretty hoary politics and politicians, most notably August Thalheimer and Paul Levy of the early post Liebknecht-Luxemburg German Communist Party. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts. So read, learn, and try to figure out the
********
In the current wave of literary discovery of Marx and Marxism, the earlier popularisers of scientific socialism have generally be overlooked. It almost seems as though the two founders of this school of thought, Karl Marx himself and Friedrich Engels, and until the advent of George Lukacs, for instance, some fifty to a hundred years later, there was a complete trough in which there was no substantial interpretative Marxian comment, nor commentator aside from political theoreticians and innovators in their own right like Plekhanov, Lenin, Trotsky, Luxemburg, perhaps Gramsci or Karl Korsch, worthy of note.
And yet a whole generation of powerful and distinguished popularisers followed the founders of this Weltanschauuing Among them – besides Karl Kautsky, whose political leadership (or misleadership) in the history of the Second International tends to eclipse his much more considerable literary contributions – were Franz Mehring, Eugene Dietzgen, Eduard Fuchs, Antonio Labriola, Daniel De Leon above all, Paul Lafargue.
Few of Lafargue’s writings have appeared in English for over sixty years, that is, ever since he died. And yet, some of Lafargue’s acute observations of bourgeois society and prescriptions for the liberatory struggle of the working class against it have about them a ring of actuality; of timeliness that the years have not withered. Among these there is, first of all, his essay, famous in its day, on The Right To Be Lazy. His slashing attacks on capitalist hypocrisy about the sacredness of toil, are apropos today. They could almost have been a direct riposte to the great hand-wringing in the venal press today about the many million “man-hours wantonly lost” strikes, alongside complete silence, of course, about the greater number of such hours lost in genuine wanton industrial accidents and illness.
The immense strides in labour-saving machinery made by automation in the so-called “third industrial revolution” provide a particularly apt realisation of Lafargue’s forecast of the trend and illuminate his bold proposal in the 1880s for a three-hour day: at a time when women and children, let alone men, were still working more than ten hours a day, and often more than 70 hours a week!
A few lines about Lafargue the man are in place.
Paul Lafargue was born in Santiago, Cuba, on 16 June 1842, the son of a planter. His paternal grandmother was a mulatto from Santo Domingo, who fled from there during the French Revolution. His paternal grandfather was French, killed in the risings in Haiti. His maternal grandfather, Abraham Armagnac, was a French Jew and his maternal grandmother a Carib Indian. He was truly a born internationalist.
In 1851 his family took the young Paul to France, where he studied in the lycées of Bordeaux and Toulouse before taking up medicine in Paris.
As a student there he became interested in socialism and a follower of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, the mutualiste.
He went to London, in 1865, to present a report on the French working class movement to the General Council of the First International. On this occasion he first came into contact with Marx. After many heated but friendly arguments he eventually became convinced that Marx’s views were superior to Proudhon’s.
He married Marx’s daughter Laura in 1868 and thereafter, despite getting his degree in medicine and various ingenious but unfruitful efforts at business enterprises, never really got a grasp on the art of making a living.
His first allegiance and preoccupation was always the international working class movement which he served as a member of the International’s General Council, as its representative in Spain and eventually as one of the founders of the Marxist-inspired French Workers Party.
Engels, fond of the Lafargues and appreciative of Paul’s political capacity, provided them with funds as he did Marx himself over the years, and left them a tidy sum in his will.
Three children that Laura bore Paul died tragically in infancy, Thereafter Laura and Paul devoted themselves exclusively to revolutionary work in a unique political partnership which ended only with their joint suicide in 1911.
Lafargue and Laura died as they lived. By 1911 the small legacy that Engels had left them was almost exhausted,
On 26 November 1911, the gardener at the country house in Draveil, which belonged to the Lafargues, found Paul and Laura, fully dressed, each sitting upright in an armchair, motionless, dead.
Lafargue explained why they committed suicide (and how), in a note left behind:
The Lafargues were buried shortly thereafter in the Père Lachaise Cemetery. Representatives from socialist parties all over Europe attended their funeral. V.I. Lenin represented the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. Among other things, he said in his graveside oration:
It would be fatuous to compare the lot of the workers today with that of Lafargue’s day. And yet, the alienation of labour is seized upon as characteristic of our age by sociologists and socio-psychologists after rediscovering the very words of the concept in the early writings of Marx (and, after discovering his Grundrisse, in his later ones as well).
Work, perhaps less arduous in one occupation than in another, is no less onerous than it was before under the capitalist whip. The greatest part of leisure for workers, for the bulk of humanity, that is, still remains leisure to starve, or at least to skimp, brought about in the business cycle by overwork in prosperity, by “overproduction”.
Only a few farsighted academics and trade unionists, inspired in part by Marxist thought, have given the problem consideration in the light of the advance of automation.
At a conference held in the University of California at Santa Barbara in the summer of 1964 they came to the conclusion that the wage system as such had outlived all sense of reality. In what became known as the Santa Barbara Declaration, they boldly called for a guaranteed annual subsistence income to be established as the right of every US citizen regardless of work.
They backed up this demand and the voluntary allocation of work tied to it, by a host of arguments from the American industrial scene of the day and the trend it was setting.
Among the hard-headed practical trade union leaders Walter Reuther had earlier on called for “a guaranteed annual wage” in negotiation with the automobile barons, but this was based on the forced labour of capitalism.
Needless to say, neither the watered down trade union demand nor the bold Santa Barbara proposition has made actual headway.
For the natural “right to be lazy”, that is, for the right of human beings to lead a life of their choice (instead of the deadly, monotonous and stultifying wage slavery), there still remains no other option but the one Lafargue put forward in his time: the overthrow of the capitalist system.
Lafargue had a brief look into that type of solution in the great Paris Commune of 1870, in which he was involved as one of its delegates-at-large in France, a role for which he was hounded and exiled until 1880.
Thus “the right to be lazy”, was entirely in the spirit of the Commune, which was one of those lightning flashes of history that illuminates mankind’s future. If it is not proclaimed today explicitly by any political organisation, it remains implicit in the programme of all who are faithful to the teachings of Marxism.
The “guaranteed national income” may well become the concrete form which this right will take on in the years to come.
There is at present also a negative illumination of the timeliness of this human demand. It is, the widespread opting out of considerable millions of youth in the Western world, the so-called “hippies”. Certainly there some anti-social aspects of this phenomenon. But roundly it must be assessed as a warning to society; the bell is tolling for wage slavery. To live and prosper, society must cast aside capitalist exploitation and establish the right to leisure for all, which advanced technology has made entirely realistic. More than ever before Lafargue is proven correct in his call for “the right to be lazy”
I am sure that, the new generation of workers and students will sense the same joy, in discovering Lafurgue that we older ones did in the thirties and even before that and that Lafargue’s message will help them join with pleasure as well as ardour in helping to put an end to this iniquitous, rotten and outlived capitalist system.
Sam Gordon
1. Lenin Works, 4th Russion edition Vol.IV, p.269
2. See the Triple Revaluation International Socialist Review, Summer 1964
3. Some signatories were: Linus Pauling, (Nobel Laureate), Michael Harrington, James Boggs, Brigadier General Hugh B. Hester, Gunnar Myrdal and many other prominent Americans and other figures.
4. James P. Cannon, What Socialist America Will Look Like, in Speeches for Socialism (Pathfinder Press, New York, 1971) pp.301-424.
...Paul Lafargue had it just about right in his vision of the socialist future based on laziness, not sloth laziness but the absence of having to struggle hourly, daily, yearly. for a lifetime against hunger and other basic wants and pursue, well, pursue whatever. Engels once remarked, and it is rather a truism when you thing about it but worth noting anyway, that humankind is lazy as species. Lazy in the sense that he or she is always looking for things to make existence easier, always inventing short-cuts. Praise be. That should be the proper measure of humankind.
http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/revhist/backissu.htm
Peter Paul Markin comment on this series:
This is an excellent documentary source for today’s leftist militants to “discover”the work of our forebears, particularly the bewildering myriad of tendencies which have historically flown under the flag of the great Russian revolutionary, Leon Trotsky and his Fourth International, whether one agrees with their programs or not. But also other laborite, semi-anarchist, ant-Stalinist and just plain garden-variety old school social democrat groupings and individual pro-socialist proponents.
Some, maybe most of the material presented here, cast as weak-kneed programs for struggle in many cases tend to be anti-Leninist as screened through the Stalinist monstrosities and/or support groups and individuals who have no intention of making a revolution. Or in the case of examining past revolutionary efforts either declare that no revolutionary possibilities existed (most notably Germany in 1923) or alibi, there is no other word for it, those who failed to make a revolution when it was possible.
The Spanish Civil War can serve as something of litmus test for this latter proposition, most infamously around attitudes toward the Party Of Marxist Unification's (POUM) role in not keeping step with revolutionary developments there, especially the Barcelona days in 1937 and by acting as political lawyers for every non-revolutionary impulse of those forebears. While we all honor the memory of the POUM militants, according to even Trotsky the most honest band of militants in Spain then, and decry the murder of their leader, Andreas Nin, by the bloody Stalinists they were rudderless in the storm of revolution. But those present political disagreements do not negate the value of researching the POUM’s (and others) work, work moreover done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.
Finally, I place some material in this space which may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. Off hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these entries from the Revolutionary History journal in which they have post hoc attempted to rehabilitate some pretty hoary politics and politicians, most notably August Thalheimer and Paul Levy of the early post Liebknecht-Luxemburg German Communist Party. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts. So read, learn, and try to figure out the
********
Paul Lafargue
Sam Gordon, born in 1910, joined the Communist League of America after hearing Trotskyist leader James Cannon speak on internationalism. He was in Germany prior to Hitler’s victory and his reports served as a basis for Trotsky's writings on Germany, many of which Gordon translated into English. He was the emergency secretary of the Fourth International at its special conference held in New York in May 1940. He played an important role in uniting the British Trotskyist movement during the Second World War and was an important representative of the US Socialist Workers Party in Europe during the ensuing Cold War, living permanently in Britain from 1952. This article, written in 1971, was to have been the introduction to a selection of essays by Paul Lafargue including his famous work The Right to be Lazy. Unfortunately the selection was never published. Sam Gordon died in 1982.In the current wave of literary discovery of Marx and Marxism, the earlier popularisers of scientific socialism have generally be overlooked. It almost seems as though the two founders of this school of thought, Karl Marx himself and Friedrich Engels, and until the advent of George Lukacs, for instance, some fifty to a hundred years later, there was a complete trough in which there was no substantial interpretative Marxian comment, nor commentator aside from political theoreticians and innovators in their own right like Plekhanov, Lenin, Trotsky, Luxemburg, perhaps Gramsci or Karl Korsch, worthy of note.
And yet a whole generation of powerful and distinguished popularisers followed the founders of this Weltanschauuing Among them – besides Karl Kautsky, whose political leadership (or misleadership) in the history of the Second International tends to eclipse his much more considerable literary contributions – were Franz Mehring, Eugene Dietzgen, Eduard Fuchs, Antonio Labriola, Daniel De Leon above all, Paul Lafargue.
Few of Lafargue’s writings have appeared in English for over sixty years, that is, ever since he died. And yet, some of Lafargue’s acute observations of bourgeois society and prescriptions for the liberatory struggle of the working class against it have about them a ring of actuality; of timeliness that the years have not withered. Among these there is, first of all, his essay, famous in its day, on The Right To Be Lazy. His slashing attacks on capitalist hypocrisy about the sacredness of toil, are apropos today. They could almost have been a direct riposte to the great hand-wringing in the venal press today about the many million “man-hours wantonly lost” strikes, alongside complete silence, of course, about the greater number of such hours lost in genuine wanton industrial accidents and illness.
The immense strides in labour-saving machinery made by automation in the so-called “third industrial revolution” provide a particularly apt realisation of Lafargue’s forecast of the trend and illuminate his bold proposal in the 1880s for a three-hour day: at a time when women and children, let alone men, were still working more than ten hours a day, and often more than 70 hours a week!
A few lines about Lafargue the man are in place.
Paul Lafargue was born in Santiago, Cuba, on 16 June 1842, the son of a planter. His paternal grandmother was a mulatto from Santo Domingo, who fled from there during the French Revolution. His paternal grandfather was French, killed in the risings in Haiti. His maternal grandfather, Abraham Armagnac, was a French Jew and his maternal grandmother a Carib Indian. He was truly a born internationalist.
In 1851 his family took the young Paul to France, where he studied in the lycées of Bordeaux and Toulouse before taking up medicine in Paris.
As a student there he became interested in socialism and a follower of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, the mutualiste.
He went to London, in 1865, to present a report on the French working class movement to the General Council of the First International. On this occasion he first came into contact with Marx. After many heated but friendly arguments he eventually became convinced that Marx’s views were superior to Proudhon’s.
He married Marx’s daughter Laura in 1868 and thereafter, despite getting his degree in medicine and various ingenious but unfruitful efforts at business enterprises, never really got a grasp on the art of making a living.
His first allegiance and preoccupation was always the international working class movement which he served as a member of the International’s General Council, as its representative in Spain and eventually as one of the founders of the Marxist-inspired French Workers Party.
Engels, fond of the Lafargues and appreciative of Paul’s political capacity, provided them with funds as he did Marx himself over the years, and left them a tidy sum in his will.
Three children that Laura bore Paul died tragically in infancy, Thereafter Laura and Paul devoted themselves exclusively to revolutionary work in a unique political partnership which ended only with their joint suicide in 1911.
Lafargue and Laura died as they lived. By 1911 the small legacy that Engels had left them was almost exhausted,
On 26 November 1911, the gardener at the country house in Draveil, which belonged to the Lafargues, found Paul and Laura, fully dressed, each sitting upright in an armchair, motionless, dead.
Lafargue explained why they committed suicide (and how), in a note left behind:
Healthy in body and mind, we are enjoying us lives before pitiless old age which has been depriving us of the pleasures and joys one after another, and which has been stripping us of our physical and mental powers, paralyses our energy and breaks our will, making us a burden to ourselves and to others. For some years we had promised ourselves not to live beyond 70, arid we fixed the exact year for our departure from life. I prepared the method for the execution of our resolution, It was a hypodermic of cyanide acid.
We die with the supreme joy of being certain that in the near future the cause for which we devoted 45 years will triumph.
Long live Communism, long live international socialism!The death, devised with medical skill, was obviously fairly painless.
The Lafargues were buried shortly thereafter in the Père Lachaise Cemetery. Representatives from socialist parties all over Europe attended their funeral. V.I. Lenin represented the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. Among other things, he said in his graveside oration:
Long before the Russian revolution [of 1905] the class-conscious workers and all the Social Democrats of Russia had come to cherish Lafague as one of the most talented and penetrating disseminators of Marxism.Franz Mehring, for the German party said:
He was a born dialectician, the dialectic was the most solid link uniting him with Marx.The “Right to Work” flayed by Lafargue so mercilessly, was first proclaimed on the barricades of 1848 in the Proudhonist guise, and was again and again revived as a rallying call at times of low ebb in the business cycle, once called “depression” but now more fashionably, minimisingly dubbed “recession”.
It would be fatuous to compare the lot of the workers today with that of Lafargue’s day. And yet, the alienation of labour is seized upon as characteristic of our age by sociologists and socio-psychologists after rediscovering the very words of the concept in the early writings of Marx (and, after discovering his Grundrisse, in his later ones as well).
Work, perhaps less arduous in one occupation than in another, is no less onerous than it was before under the capitalist whip. The greatest part of leisure for workers, for the bulk of humanity, that is, still remains leisure to starve, or at least to skimp, brought about in the business cycle by overwork in prosperity, by “overproduction”.
Only a few farsighted academics and trade unionists, inspired in part by Marxist thought, have given the problem consideration in the light of the advance of automation.
At a conference held in the University of California at Santa Barbara in the summer of 1964 they came to the conclusion that the wage system as such had outlived all sense of reality. In what became known as the Santa Barbara Declaration, they boldly called for a guaranteed annual subsistence income to be established as the right of every US citizen regardless of work.
They backed up this demand and the voluntary allocation of work tied to it, by a host of arguments from the American industrial scene of the day and the trend it was setting.
Among the hard-headed practical trade union leaders Walter Reuther had earlier on called for “a guaranteed annual wage” in negotiation with the automobile barons, but this was based on the forced labour of capitalism.
Needless to say, neither the watered down trade union demand nor the bold Santa Barbara proposition has made actual headway.
For the natural “right to be lazy”, that is, for the right of human beings to lead a life of their choice (instead of the deadly, monotonous and stultifying wage slavery), there still remains no other option but the one Lafargue put forward in his time: the overthrow of the capitalist system.
Lafargue had a brief look into that type of solution in the great Paris Commune of 1870, in which he was involved as one of its delegates-at-large in France, a role for which he was hounded and exiled until 1880.
Thus “the right to be lazy”, was entirely in the spirit of the Commune, which was one of those lightning flashes of history that illuminates mankind’s future. If it is not proclaimed today explicitly by any political organisation, it remains implicit in the programme of all who are faithful to the teachings of Marxism.
The “guaranteed national income” may well become the concrete form which this right will take on in the years to come.
There is at present also a negative illumination of the timeliness of this human demand. It is, the widespread opting out of considerable millions of youth in the Western world, the so-called “hippies”. Certainly there some anti-social aspects of this phenomenon. But roundly it must be assessed as a warning to society; the bell is tolling for wage slavery. To live and prosper, society must cast aside capitalist exploitation and establish the right to leisure for all, which advanced technology has made entirely realistic. More than ever before Lafargue is proven correct in his call for “the right to be lazy”
I am sure that, the new generation of workers and students will sense the same joy, in discovering Lafurgue that we older ones did in the thirties and even before that and that Lafargue’s message will help them join with pleasure as well as ardour in helping to put an end to this iniquitous, rotten and outlived capitalist system.
Sam Gordon
1. Lenin Works, 4th Russion edition Vol.IV, p.269
2. See the Triple Revaluation International Socialist Review, Summer 1964
3. Some signatories were: Linus Pauling, (Nobel Laureate), Michael Harrington, James Boggs, Brigadier General Hugh B. Hester, Gunnar Myrdal and many other prominent Americans and other figures.
4. James P. Cannon, What Socialist America Will Look Like, in Speeches for Socialism (Pathfinder Press, New York, 1971) pp.301-424.
Monday, December 16, 2013
***The
Roots Is The Toots- The Music That Got Them Through The Great Depression And
World War II…
…and
for a minute, or rather the two plus minutes (okay, two plus minutes plus fourteen
times played or until the nickels ran out), that it took to play this song, this
song sweated out in some Tin Pan Alley shop, sweated out to rise to the top of
the jukebox charts and therefore had to “speak” to the young, the forlorn, the sweethearts,
who put the nickels in. Speak to those hungry masses who had their hunger
curbed for that time, flashing through fresh-mown fields and shroud mists,
dreaming dreams as if dreams could curb that hunger.
Sitting
who knows where-surely old Mowbrey’s Drugstore (or name your drugstore) crowding
the soda fountain after school (or better those “saved” booths, saved for the
couples) the whole place filled to the brim with sexual longings (keep that under
your hat), down some moonless night lovers’ lane with a bevy of fog-bound cars,
over along some deserted stretch of beach car-less, snuggled in some dark, dank,
double feature movie theater (hoping against hope to be balcony-bound away from
old fogy eyes). All the places the young (and not so young) learn their trade,
learn their youth.
Yeah,
too after shaking the grime and dust of the coalmines (never, never ever
getting the black out of those fingernails) sitting in Smiley’s Tavern just outside
the shaft or at some Saturday good old boys barn dance, complete with that
white lightning that made many a young man liquor brave, shaking the sweat of
the steel plants living infernos with some be-bop thing in the head to wipe the
sweats away, shake off the speed of Mr. Henry Ford’s automobile lines making a
parallel be-bop sound in some other head, and assorted other jobs for those who
had the privilege of working.
That song too used to forget the sourness of the endless soup-line (what did that old Okie balladeer call that soup-thin enough to read a newspaper through), the ill-fit of those second-hand clothes from Saint Vincent DePaul’s or the Sallies (a fate that no balladeer could find words for except that those torn and tattered rags made no picture to place on some white-washed walls), the cold northern wind coming through that crack in the window, the discomfort of the cold-water flat, and always, always the hunger and want, yeah, forget but just for those two plus minutes.
Happy 26th Birthday Chelsea Manning!
President Obama, Pardon Pvt. Manning
CITY, STATE & ZIP _____________________________________________________________
President Obama, Pardon Pvt. Manning
Because the public deserves the truth and whistle-blowers deserve protection.
We are military veterans, journalists, educators, homemakers, lawyers, students, and citizens.
We ask you to consider the facts and free US Army Pvt. Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning.
As an Intelligence Analyst stationed in Iraq, Pvt. Manning had access to some of America’s dirtiest secrets—crimes such as torture, illegal surveillance, and corruption—often committed in our name.
Manning acted on conscience alone, with selfless courage and conviction, and gave these secrets to us, the public.
“I believed that if the general public had access to the information contained within the[Iraq and Afghan War Logs] this could spark a domestic debate on the role of the military and our foreign policy,”
Manning explained to the military court. “I wanted the American public to know that not everyone in Iraq and Afghanistan were targets that needed to be neutralized, but rather people who were struggling to live in the pressure cooker environment of what we call asymmetric warfare.”
Journalists used these documents to uncover many startling truths. We learned:
• Donald Rumsfeld and General Petraeus helped support torture in Iraq.
• Deliberate civilian killings by U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan went unpunished.
• Thousands of civilian casualties were never acknowledged publicly.
• Most Guantanamo detainees were innocent.
For service on behalf of an informed democracy, Manning was sentenced by military judge Colonel Denise Lind to a devastating 35 years in prison.
Government secrecy has grown exponentially during the past decade, but more secrecy does not make us safer when it fosters unaccountability.
Pvt. Manning was convicted of Espionage Act charges for providing WikiLeaks with this information, but the prosecutors noted that they would have done the same had the information been given to The New York Times. Prosecutors did not show that enemies used this information against the US, or that the releases resulted in any casualties.
Pvt. Manning has already been punished, even in violation of military law.
She has been:
• Held in confinement since May 29, 2010.
• Subjected to illegal punishment amounting to torture for nearly nine months at Quantico Marine Base, Virginia, in violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), Article 13—facts confirmed by both the United Nation’s lead investigator on torture and military judge Col. Lind.
• Denied a speedy trial in violation of UCMJ, Article 10, having been imprisoned for over three years before trial.
• Denied anything resembling a fair trial when prosecutors were allowed to change the charge sheet to match evidence presented, and enter new evidence, after closing arguments.
Pvt. Manning believed you, Mr. President, when you came into office promising the most transparent administration in history, and that you would protect whistle-blowers. We urge you to start upholding those promises, beginning with this American prisoner of conscience.
We urge you to grant Pvt. Manning’s petition for a Presidential Pardon.
FIRST& LAST NAME _____________________________________________________________
STREET ADDRESS _____________________________________________________________
CITY, STATE & ZIP _____________________________________________________________
EMAIL& PHONE _____________________________________________________________
Please return to: For more information: www.privatemanning.org
Private Manning Support Network, c/o Courage to Resist, 484 Lake Park Ave #41, Oakland CA 94610
Happy 26th Birthday Chelsea Manning!
Seven Ways To Support Freedom For Chelsea Manning- President Obama Pardon Chelsea Manning Now!
Note that this image is PVT Manning’s preferred photo.
The Struggle Continues …
Seven Ways To Support Heroic Wikileaks Whistle-Blower Chelsea Manning
*Call (202) 685-2900- Major General Jeffery S. Buchanan is the Convening Authority for Private Manning’s court- martial, which means that he has the authority to decrease the sentence imposed no matter what the judge handed down. Ask General Buchanan to use his authority to reduce the draconian 35 year sentence handed down by Judge Lind.
Please help us reach all these important contacts: Adrienne Combs, Deputy Officer Public Affairs (202) 685-2900 adrienne.m.combs.civ@mail.mil
Col. Michelle Martin-Hing, Public Affairs Officer (202) 685-4899 michelle.l.martinhing.mil@mail.mil The Public Affairs Office fax #: 202-685-0706
Try e-mailing Maj. Gen. Buchanan at jeffrey.s.buchanan@us.army.mil
The Public Affairs Office is required to report up the chain of command the number of calls they receive on a particular issue, so please help us flood the office with support for our heroic whistleblower today!
*Sign the public petition to President Obama – Sign online or print and share PDF petition Please sign the petition on the reverse side of this letter, “President Obama, Pardon Pvt. Manning,” and make copies to share with friends and family!
You can also call (Comments”202-456-1111), write The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20500, e-mail-(http://www.whitehouse.gov’contact/submitquestions-and comments) to demand that President Obama use his constitutional power under Article II, Section II to pardon Private Manning now.
*Start a stand -out, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, in your town square to publicize the pardon and clemency campaigns. Contact the Private Manning SupportNetwork for help with materials and organizing tips http://www.bradleymanning.org/
*Contribute to the Private Manning Defense Fund- now that the trial has finished funds are urgently needed for pardon campaign and for future military and civilian court appeals. The hard fact of the American legal system, military of civilian, is the more funds available the better the defense, especially in political prisoner cases like Private Manning’s. The government had unlimited financial and personnel resources to prosecute Private Manning at trial. And used them as it will on any future legal proceedings. So help out with whatever you can spare. For link go to http://www.bradleymanning.org/
*Write letters of solidarity to Private Manning while she is serving her sentence. She wishes to be addressed as Chelsea and have feminine pronouns used when referring to her. Private Manning’s mailing address: Bradley E. Manning, 89289, 1300 N. Warehouse Road, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas 66027-2304. You must use Bradley on the address envelope.
Private Manning cannot receive stamps or money in any form. Photos must be on copy paper. Along with “contraband,” “inflammatory material” is not allowed. Six page maximum.
*Call: (913) 758-3600-Write to:Col. Sioban Ledwith, Commander U.S. Detention Barracks 1301 N Warehouse Rd
Ft. Leavenworth KS 66027-Tell them: “Transgender rights are human rights! Respect Private Manning’s identity by acknowledging the name ‘Chelsea Manning’ whenever possible, including in mail addressed to her, and by allowing her access to appropriate medical treatment for gender dysphoria, including hormone replacement therapy (HRT).” (for more details-http://markinbookreview.blogspot.com/2013/11/respecting-chelseas-identity-is-this.html#!/2013/11/respecting-chelseas-identity-is-this.html
Ft. Leavenworth KS 66027-Tell them: “Transgender rights are human rights! Respect Private Manning’s identity by acknowledging the name ‘Chelsea Manning’ whenever possible, including in mail addressed to her, and by allowing her access to appropriate medical treatment for gender dysphoria, including hormone replacement therapy (HRT).” (for more details-http://markinbookreview.blogspot.com/2013/11/respecting-chelseas-identity-is-this.html#!/2013/11/respecting-chelseas-identity-is-this.html
Send The Following Message (Or Write Your Own) To The President In Support Of A Pardon For Private Manning
To: President Barack Obama
White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, D.C. 20500
The draconian 35 years sentence handed down by a military judge, Colonel Lind, on August 21, 2013 to Private Manning (Chelsea formerly known as Bradley) has outraged many citizens including me.
Under Article II, Section II of the U.S. Constitution the President of the United States had the authority to grant pardons to those who fall under federal jurisdiction.
Some of the reasons for my request include:
Signature ___________________________________________________________
Print Name __________________________________________________________
Address_____________________________________________________________
City / Town/State/Zip Code_________________________________________
Note that this image is PVT Manning’s preferred photo.
To: President Barack Obama
White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, D.C. 20500
The draconian 35 years sentence handed down by a military judge, Colonel Lind, on August 21, 2013 to Private Manning (Chelsea formerly known as Bradley) has outraged many citizens including me.
Under Article II, Section II of the U.S. Constitution the President of the United States had the authority to grant pardons to those who fall under federal jurisdiction.
Some of the reasons for my request include:
*that Private Manning was held for nearly a year in abusive solitary confinement at the Marine base at Quantico, Virginia, which the UN rapporteur in his findings has called “cruel, inhuman, and degrading”
*that the media had been continually blocked from transcripts and documents related to the trial and that it has only been through the efforts of Private Manning’s supporters that any transcripts exist.
*that under the UCMJ a soldier has the right to a speedy trial and that it was unconscionable and unconstitutional to wait 3 years before starting the court martial.
*that absolutely no one was harmed by the release of documents that exposed war crimes, unnecessary secrecy and disturbing foreign policy.
*that Private Manning is a hero who did the right thing when she revealed truth about wars that had been based on lies.
I urge you to use your authority under the Constitution to right the wrongs done to Private Manning – Enough is enough!
Signature ___________________________________________________________
Print Name __________________________________________________________
Address_____________________________________________________________
City / Town/State/Zip Code_________________________________________
Note that this image is PVT Manning’s preferred photo.
Happy 26th Birthday Chelsea Manning!
On Saturday December 14, 2013 a group of about twenty Chelsea Manning
supporters, including members of Veterans for Peace, held a 26th birthday party for
her at the historic Park Street Station
in Downtown Boston. Speakers emphasized the need for everybody to sign the
Courage to Resist and Amnesty International petitions for her pardon. A highlight
of the event was Jason (no last name) who stood in symbolic solidarity with
Chelsea’s three and one-half years of unjust imprisonment by standing naked
except for boxer shorts for three and one-half hours in the frigid Boston
weather. That act prompted several other to do the same for various periods of
time. As always we will not leave our sister behind. Free Chelsea Now!
On Saturday December 14, 2013 a group of about twenty Chelsea Manning
supporters, including members of Veterans for Peace, held a 26th birthday party for
her at the historic Park Street Station
in Downtown Boston. Speakers emphasized the need for everybody to sign the
Courage to Resist and Amnesty International petitions for her pardon. A highlight
of the event was Jason (no last name) who stood in symbolic solidarity with
Chelsea’s three and one-half years of unjust imprisonment by standing naked
except for boxer shorts for three and one-half hours in the frigid Boston
weather. That act prompted several other to do the same for various periods of
time. As always we will not leave our sister behind. Free Chelsea Now!
From The Marxist Archives -The Revolutionary History Journal-Rudolf Klement-Principles and tactics in war
...the burning question for communists and other revolutionaries always centered on the question of defending the gains of humankind from simple democratic rights to social revolutions. In the 20th century (and now as well) the critical question was defense of the Soviet Union and assorted similar states against world imperialism. That question of questions separated out the real from the fakers, especially when it came time to actually have to defend the Soviet Union in reality in World War II , Korea, Vietnam (both by extension) and lastly in Afghanistan in the 1980 before the demise of that state. Those on the wrong side of that question did not come out very well, not well at all.
Click below to link to the Revolutionary History Journal index.
Peter Paul Markin comment on this series:
This is an excellent documentary source for today’s leftist militants to “discover” the work of our forebears, particularly the bewildering myriad of tendencies which have historically flown under the flag of the great Russian revolutionary, Leon Trotsky and his Fourth International, whether one agrees with their programs or not. But also other laborite, semi-anarchist, ant-Stalinist and just plain garden-variety old school social democrat groupings and individual pro-socialist proponents.
Some, maybe most of the material presented here, cast as weak-kneed programs for struggle in many cases tend to be anti-Leninist as screened through the Stalinist monstrosities and/or support groups and individuals who have no intention of making a revolution. Or in the case of examining past revolutionary efforts either declare that no revolutionary possibilities existed (most notably Germany in 1923) or alibi, there is no other word for it, those who failed to make a revolution when it was possible.
The Spanish Civil War can serve as something of litmus test for this latter proposition, most infamously around attitudes toward the Party Of Marxist Unification's (POUM) role in not keeping step with revolutionary developments there, especially the Barcelona days in 1937 and by acting as political lawyers for every non-revolutionary impulse of those forebears. While we all honor the memory of the POUM militants, according to even Trotsky the most honest band of militants in Spain then, and decry the murder of their leader, Andreas Nin, by the bloody Stalinists they were rudderless in the storm of revolution. But those present political disagreements do not negate the value of researching the POUM’s (and others) work, work moreover done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.
Finally, I place some material in this space which may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. Off hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these entries from the Revolutionary History journal in which they have post hoc attempted to rehabilitate some pretty hoary politics and politicians, most notably August Thalheimer and Paul Levy of the early post Liebknecht-Luxemburg German Communist Party. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts. So read, learn, and try to figure out the
********
Encyclopedia of Trotskyism On-Line: Revolutionary History
...the burning question for communists and other revolutionaries always centered on the question of defending the gains of humankind from simple democratic rights to social revolutions. In the 20th century (and now as well) the critical question was defense of the Soviet Union and assorted similar states against world imperialism. That question of questions separated out the real from the fakers, especially when it came time to actually have to defend the Soviet Union in reality in World War II , Korea, Vietnam (both by extension) and lastly in Afghanistan in the 1980 before the demise of that state. Those on the wrong side of that question did not come out very well, not well at all.
http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/revhist/backissu.htm
Peter Paul Markin comment on this series:
This is an excellent documentary source for today’s leftist militants to “discover” the work of our forebears, particularly the bewildering myriad of tendencies which have historically flown under the flag of the great Russian revolutionary, Leon Trotsky and his Fourth International, whether one agrees with their programs or not. But also other laborite, semi-anarchist, ant-Stalinist and just plain garden-variety old school social democrat groupings and individual pro-socialist proponents.
Some, maybe most of the material presented here, cast as weak-kneed programs for struggle in many cases tend to be anti-Leninist as screened through the Stalinist monstrosities and/or support groups and individuals who have no intention of making a revolution. Or in the case of examining past revolutionary efforts either declare that no revolutionary possibilities existed (most notably Germany in 1923) or alibi, there is no other word for it, those who failed to make a revolution when it was possible.
The Spanish Civil War can serve as something of litmus test for this latter proposition, most infamously around attitudes toward the Party Of Marxist Unification's (POUM) role in not keeping step with revolutionary developments there, especially the Barcelona days in 1937 and by acting as political lawyers for every non-revolutionary impulse of those forebears. While we all honor the memory of the POUM militants, according to even Trotsky the most honest band of militants in Spain then, and decry the murder of their leader, Andreas Nin, by the bloody Stalinists they were rudderless in the storm of revolution. But those present political disagreements do not negate the value of researching the POUM’s (and others) work, work moreover done under the pressure of revolutionary times. Hopefully we will do better when our time comes.
Finally, I place some material in this space which may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. Off hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these entries from the Revolutionary History journal in which they have post hoc attempted to rehabilitate some pretty hoary politics and politicians, most notably August Thalheimer and Paul Levy of the early post Liebknecht-Luxemburg German Communist Party. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts. So read, learn, and try to figure out the
********
Encyclopedia of Trotskyism On-Line: Revolutionary History
Principles and tactics in warThe following article was originally written by Rudolf Klement in late 1937. Trotsky warmly welcomed it, although he made some minor criticisms. (See An Excellent Article on Defeatism, Writings of Leon Trotsky 1937-38, New York, 1976, pp.l53-154) Klement revised the article and we publish the English translation as it appeared in the New International, May 1938.The review of the book The Case of Leon Trotsky in the first number of the periodical Der Einzige Weg quotes the following interesting statement of comrade Trotsky on the difference in the tasks of the proletariat during the war between France-Soviet Union and Germany-Japan (reproduced here somewhat more completely): STOLBERG: Russia and France already have a military alliance, Suppose an international war breaks out. I am not interested in what you say about the Russian working class at this time. I know that. What would you say to the French working class in reference to the defence of the Soviet Union? “Change the French bourgeois government” would you say? TROTSKY: This question is more or less answered in the thesis, The War and the Fourth International, in this sense: In France I would remain in opposition to the government and would develop systematically this opposition. In Germany I would do anything I could to sabotage the war machinery. They are two different things. In Germany and in Japan, I would apply military methods as far as I am able to fight, oppose, and injure the machinery, the military machinery of Japan, to disorganise it, both in Germany and Japan. In France, it is political opposition against the bourgeoisie, and the preparation of the proletarian revolution. Both are revolutionary methods. But in Germany and Japan I have as my immediate aim the disorganisation of the whole machinery. In France, I base the aim of the proletarian revolution … GOLDMAN: Suppose you have the chance to take power during a war, in France, would you advocate it if you had the majority, of the proletariat? TROTSKY: Naturally. (pp.289f.)Within the limits of a book review it was naturally impossible, with this isolated, half-improvised, necessarily incomplete and special colloquial statement, to develop the general problems of the revolutionary struggle in wartime or even to throw a sufficient theoretical light on that special question. Since the above quotation thereupon unfortunately led to misunderstandings, and worse yet, to malicious distortions (“preparing for the civil peace in France”, renunciation of revolutionary defeatism, etc!), it is well to make up here for the previous neglect. As to the basic principles of the revolutionary struggle against war and during it, considerations of space compel us to confine ourselves here to our theses on war, which were adopted in May 1934 by the International Secretariat of our movement, have since formed one of the most important programmatic documents of Bolshevism, and acquire more topical importance with the passing of every day. With regard to the specific question that interests us, comrade Trotsky, in the statement above, makes reference to the following points in the theses on war: 44. Remaining the determined and devoted defender of the workers’ state in the struggle with imperialism, the international proletariat will not, however, become an ally of the imperialist allies of the USSR. The proletariat of a capitalist country which finds itself in alliance with the USSR must retain fully and completely its irreconcilable hostility to the imperialist government of its own country. In this sense, its policy will not differ from that of the proletariat in a country fighting against the USSR. But in the nature of practical action considerable differences may arise, depending on the concrete war situation. For instance, it would be absurd and criminal in case of war between the USSR and Japan for the American proletariat to sabotage the sending of American munitions to the USSR. But the proletariat of a country fighting against the USSR would be absolutely obliged to resort to actions of this sort-strikes, sabotage, etc. 45. Intransigent proletarian opposition to the imperialist ally of the USSR must develop, on the one hand, on the basis of international class policy, on the other, on the basis of the imperialist aims of the given government, the treacherous character of this “alliance”, its speculation on capitalist overturn in the USSR, etc. The policy of a proletarian party in an “allied” as well as in an enemy imperialist country should therefore be directed towards the revolutionary overthrow of the bourgeoisie and the seizure of power. Only in this way can a real alliance with the USSR be created and the first workers' state be saved from disaster.The wars of recent years did not represent a direct struggle between imperialist powers, but colonial expeditions (Italy-Abyssinia, Japan-China) and conflicts over spheres of influence (China, Chaco, and in a certain sense, also Spain), and therefore did not, for the time being degenerate into a world conflict. Hitler hopes to attack the USSR tomorrow just as Japan attacks China, i.e., to alter the imperialist relationship of forces without directly violating the essential interests of the other imperialisms and thereby temporarily to localise the conflict. These events occurring since 1934, have clearly shown that the above-quoted theses on the attitude of the proletariat of imperialist countries are valid not only in an anti-Soviet war but in all wars in which it must take sides – and those are precisely the ones involved in recent years. War is only the continuation of politics by other means. Hence the proletariat must continue its class struggle in war-time, among other things with the new means which the bourgeoisie hands it. It can and must utilise the weakening of its “own” bourgeoisie in the imperialist countries in order relentlessly to prepare and to carry out its social revolution in connection with the military defeat engendered by the war, and to seize the power. This tactic, known as revolutionary defeatism and realisable internationally, is one of the strongest levers of the proletarian world revolution in our epoch, and therewith of historical progress. Only, where the struggle is imperialistic only on one side, and a war of liberation of non-imperialist nations or of a socialist country against existing or threatening imperialist oppression on the other, as well as in civil wars between the classes or between democracy and fascism, the international proletariat cannot and should not apply the same tactic to both sides. Recognising the progressive character of this war of liberation, it must fight decisively against the main enemy, reactionary imperialism (or else against the reactionary camp, in the case of a civil war), that is, fight for the victory of the socially (or politically) oppressed or about-to-be oppressed: USSR, colonial and semi-colonial countries like Abyssinia or China, or Republican Spain, etc. Here too, how ever, it remains mindful of its irreconcilable class opposition to its “own” bourgeoisie-or its political opposition to the Soviet bureaucracy – and does not surrender without resistance any of its independent positions. As in the imperialist countries it strives with all its strength for the social revolution and the seizure of power, the establishment of its dictatorship, which, moreover, alone makes possible a sure and lasting victory over the imperialists. But in such cases, it cannot and does not, as in the imperialist camp, seek revolutionary victory at the cost of a military defeat but rather along the road of a military victory of his country. Class struggle and war are international phenomena, which are decided internationally. But since every struggle permits of but two camps (bloc against bloc) and since imperialistic fights intertwine with the class war world imperialism against world proletariat), there arise manifold and complex cases. The bourgeoisie of the semi-colonial countries or the liberal bourgeoisie menaced by its “own” fascism, appeal for aid to the “friendly” imperialisms; the Soviet Union attempts, for example, to utilise the antagonisms between the imperialisms by concluding alliances with one group against another. etc. The proletariat of all countries, the only international solidarity – and not least of all because of that, the only progressive class – thereby finds itself in the complicated situation in war-time, especially in the new world war, of combining revolutionary defeatism towards their own bourgeoisie with support of progressive wars. This situation is utilised with a vengeance right now and certainly will be tomorrow, by the social-patriots of the social-democratic, Stalinist or anarchist stripe, in order to have the proletarians permit themselves to be slaughtered for the profits of capital under the illusion of helping their brothers of the USSR, China, and elsewhere. It serves the social-traitors, furthermore, to depict the revolutionists not only as “betrayers of the fatherland”, but also as “betrayers of the socialist fatherland” (just as they are now shouted down as agents of Franco). All the more reason why the proletariat, especially in the imperialist countries, requires, in the seemingly contradictory situation, a particularly clear understanding of these combined tasks and of the methods for fulfilling them. In the application of revolutionary defeatism against the imperialist bourgeoisie and its state, there can be no fundamental difference, regardless of whether the latter is “friendly” or hostile to the cause supported by the proletariat, whether it is in – treacherous – alliance with the allies of the proletariat (Stalin, the bourgeoisie of the semi-colonial countries, the colonial peoples, anti-fascist liberalism), or is conducting a war against them. The methods of revolutionary defeatism remain unaltered: revolutionary propaganda, irreconcilable opposition to the regime, the class struggle from its purely economic up to its highest political form (the armed uprising), fraternisation of the troops, transformation of the war into the civil war. The international defence of the proletarian states, of the oppressed peoples fighting for their freedom, and the international support of the armed antifascist civil war, must however, naturally take on various forms in accordance with whether one’s “own” bourgeoisie stands on their side or combats them. Apart from the political preparation of the social revolution, whose rhythm and methods are in no way identical with those of war, this defence must naturally assume military forms. In addition to revolutionary support, it consists, consequently, in military support of the progressive cause, as well as in the military damaging of its imperialist opponent. The military support can naturally take on a decisive scope only where the proletariat itself has the levers of power and the economy in its hands (USSR, and to a certain extent, Spain in the summer of 1936). In the imperialist countries, which are allied with the countries conducting progressive and revolutionary wars, it boils down to this: that the proletariat fights with revolutionary means for an effective, direct military support, controlled by it, of the progressive cause (“Airplanes for Spain!” cried the French workers). In any case, it must promote and control, a really guaranteed direct military support (the sending of arms, ammunition, food, specialists, etc), even at the cost of an “exception” from the direct class struggle. It will have to be left to the instinct and revolutionary perspicacity of the proletariat, which is well aware of its tasks, to make the right distinction in every concrete situation, to avoid injuring the military interests of the far-off ally of the proletariat out of narrow national class struggle considerations, no matter how revolutionary they seem, as well to avoid doing the dirty work for its “own” imperialism on the pretext of giving indirect aid to its allies. The only real and decisive aid that the workers can bring the latter is by seizing and holding the power. It is otherwise – so far as the outward form of its struggle goes – with the proletariat of the imperialism engaged in a direct struggle against the progressive cause. In addition to its struggle for the revolution, it is its duty to engage in military sabotage for the benefit of the “enemy” – the enemy of its bourgeoisie but its own ally. As a means of revolutionary defeatism in the struggle between imperialist countries, military sabotage, like individual terror, is completely worthless. Without replacing the social revolution or even advancing it by a hair’s breadth, it would only help one imperialism against another, mislead the vanguard, sow illusions among the masses and thus facilitate the game of the imperialists. On the other hand, military sabotage is imperiously imposed as an immediate measure in defence of the camp that is fighting imperialism and is consequently progressive. As such, it is understood by the masses, welcomed and furthered. The defeat of one’s “own”, country here becomes not a lesser evil that is taken into the bargain (a lesser evil than the “victory” bought by civil peace and the abandonment of the revolution), but the direct and immediate goal, the task of the proletarian struggle. The defeat of one’s “own” country would, in this case, be no evil at all, or an evil much more easily taken into the bargain, for it would signify the common victory of the people liberated from the existing or threatening imperialist yoke and of the proletariat of its enemy, over the common overlord – imperialist capital. Such a victory would be a powerful point of departure for the international proletarian revolution, not least of all in the “friendly” imperialist countries. Thus we see how different war situations require from the revolutionary proletariat of the various imperialist countries, if it wishes to remain true to itself and to its goal, different fighting forms, which may appear to schematic spirits to be “deviations” from the basic principle of revolutionary defeatism, but which result in reality only from the combination of revolutionary defeatism with the defence of certain progressive camps. Moreover, from a higher historical standpoint these two tasks coincide: in our imperialist epoch, the national bourgeoisie of the non-imperialist countries – like the Soviet bureaucracy – because of its fear of the working class which is internationally matured for the socialist revolution and dictatorship, is not in a position to conduct an energetic struggle against imperialism. They do riot dare to appeal to the forces of the proletariat and at a definite stage of the struggle they inevitably call upon imperialism for aid against their “own” proletariat. The complete national liberation of the colonial and semi-colonial countries front imperialist enslavement, and of the Soviet Union from internal and external capitalist destruction and anarchy, the bourgeois democratic revolution, the defence from fascism – all these tasks, can be solved, nationally and internationally, only by the proletariat. Their fulfilment grows naturally into the proletarian revolution. The coming world war will be the most titanic and murderous explosion in history, but because of that it will also burst all the traditional fetters and in its flames the revolutionary and liberative movements of the entire world will be fused into one glowing stream. To present clearly, even now, to the proletariat the problems of the coming war and its combined tasks – this serious and difficult task is one of the most urgent of our day. The Bolshevik-Leninists alone have taken it upon themselves to arm the proletariat for its struggle and to create the instrument with which it will gain its future victories: the programme, the methods, the organisation of the Fourth International. BRUSSELS, December 1937 W ST 1. L. Trotsky, War and the Fourth International, Writings of Leon Trotsky 1933-34, New York, 1975, pp299-338 2. We leave aside the case where wars between two non-imperialist countries are only or predominantly the masked combat between two foreign imperialisms – England and America in the Chaco War – or the case where the war of liberation of an oppressed nation is only a pawn in the hand of an imperialistic group and a mere part of a general imperialist conflict – Serbia from 1914 to 1918. 3. It may confidently be assumed that for the French bourgeoisie in wartime, a strike of the Marseilles harbour workers, which makes an exception of war shipments to Russia, in which it is least of all interested, would be particularly vexatious! No less nonsensical would it be, for example, in the course of a printers' strike, not to allow the appearance of the labour papers which are needed for the strike struggle itself. 4. Lenin wrote on 26 July 1915 (see Gegen den Strom) against Trotsky’s false slogan of “Neither victory nor defeat” and said polemically: “And revolutionary actions during the war surely and undoubtedly signify not only the wish for its defeat but also an actual furtherance of such a defeat (for the ‘discerning’ reader: this by no means signifies that ‘bridges be blown up’, that abortive military strikes should be staged, and in general that the revolutionists should help bring about the defeat of the government).” V. Lenin, The defeat of one’s own government in the imperialist war, Collected Works, Vol.21, Moscow, 1977, pp.275-280 (My emphasis – WS) 5. Naturally, military sabotage in favour of the non-imperialist opponent of one’s own bourgeoisie is not to be extended in favour of its imperialist ally. The German proletarians, for example, would seek to disorganise militarily the eastern front, to help Soviet Russia; for the western front, where a purely imperialist war would be raging between Germany and a France allied to the USSR, “only” the rule of defeatism would be valid-for the French proletariat as well as for the Germans. |
Update 12/14/13: Chelsea’s fourth birthday behind bars, lawyer makes public presentations
digg
Supporters are wishing Chelsea a happy birthday on this Tumblr site. Submit a photo and show your support!
Chelsea’s lawyer David Coombs addressed the public and a crowd of supporters in three presentations this week. Efforts are currently focused on the clemency application that will be reviewed by Maj. Gen. Buchanan, but regardless of how that turns out Coombs suggested that Manning should be free no later than February 2, 2020. Ed Rampell writes,
Sign sign sign! Amnesty International continues to collect signatures supporting Chelsea’s immediate release. The signatures will be delivered in early 2014 to coincide with Major General Buchanan’s, the convening authority, review of the trial. Sign the petition here.
Chelsea’s lawyer David Coombs addressed the public and a crowd of supporters in three presentations this week. Efforts are currently focused on the clemency application that will be reviewed by Maj. Gen. Buchanan, but regardless of how that turns out Coombs suggested that Manning should be free no later than February 2, 2020. Ed Rampell writes,
… Coombs said he’s seeking clemency for his client. “But Chelsea… I don’t hold much hope for that,” he said, “because in my 17 years of military practice I’ve rarely seen a convening authority take a step of disapproving findings and sentences. If that doesn’t actually come to fruition, the date I am circling on my calendar is 2 February, 2020. And there is absolutely no reason why Chelsea should not be a free person [the following day].”A supporter filmed the presentations and has since published the entire talk on Youtube:
| Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 |
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