Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the Shirelles performing the classic Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?.
Markin comment:
This is another tongue-in-cheek commentary, the back story if you like, in the occasional entries under this headline going back to the primordial youth time of the mid to late 1950s with its bags full of classic rock songs for the ages. Of course, any such efforts have to include the views of one Billie, William James Bradley, the schoolboy mad-hatter of the 1950s rock jailbreak out in our “the projects” neighborhood. Ya, in those days, unlike during his later fateful wrong turn trajectory days, every kid, including best friend Markin, me, lived to hear what he had to say about any song that came trumpeting over the radio, at least every one that we would recognize as our own.
Note:
Billie and I spent many, many hours mainly up in his tiny bedroom, his rock heaven bedroom, walls plastered with posters of Elvis, Bo Diddley and Chuck Berry and of every new teen heartthrob singer, heartthrob to the girls that is, around, every new record Billie could get his hands on, by hook or by crook, and neatly folded piles of clothing, also gathered by that same hook or by crook, appropriate to the king hell king of the schoolboy rock scene, the elementary school rock scene between about 1956 to 1960. Much of that time was spent discussing the “meaning” of various songs, especially their sexual implications, ah, their mystery of girls-finding-out-about worthiness.
Although in early 1959 my family was beginning to start the process of moving out of the projects, and, more importantly, I had begun to move away from Billie’s orbit, his new found orbit as king hell gangster wannabe, I still would wander back until mid-1960 just to hear his take on whatever music was interesting him at the time. These commentaries, these Billie commentaries, are my recollections of his and my conversations on the song lyrics in this series. But I am not relying on memory alone. During this period we would use my father’s tape recorder, by today’s standard his big old reel to reel monstrosity of a tape recorder, to record Billie’s covers of the then current hit songs (for those who have not read previously of Billie’s “heroics” he was a pretty good budding rock singer at the time) and our conversations of those song meanings that we fretted about for hours. I have, painstakingly, had those reels transcribed so that many of these commentaries will be the actual words (somewhat edited, of course) that appear in this space. That said, Billie, king hell rock and roll king of the old neighborhood, knew how to call a lyric, and make us laugh to boot. Wherever you are Billie I’m still pulling for you. Got it.
********
Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? Lyrics
Carole King
Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow
Tonight you're mine completely,
You give your love so sweetly,
Tonight the light of love is in your eyes,
But will you love me tomorrow?
Is this a lasting treasure,
Or just a moment's pleasure,
Can I believe the magic of your sighs,
Will you still love me tomorrow?
Tonight with words unspoken,
You said that I'm the only one,
But will my heart be broken,
When the night (When the night)
Meets the morning sun.
I'd like to know that your love,
Is love I can be sure of,
So tell me now and I won't ask again,
Will you still love me tomorrow?
Will you still love me tomorrow?
**********
Billie back again, William James Bradley, if you didn’t know. Markin’s pal, Peter Paul Markin’s pal, from over the Adamsville Elementary School and the pope of rock lyrics down here in “the projects.” The Adamsville projects, if you don’t know. Markin, who I hadn’t seen for a while since he moved “uptown” to North Adamsville, came by the other day to breathe in the fresh air of the old neighborhood and we got to talking about this latest record, Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow? by the Shirelles. They are hot.
Fair’s fair right, so I’ll give you Markin’s, Peter Paul’s, take on the lyrics, so I can come crashing down on his silly pipe dream ideas. By the way if you don’t know, and he will tell you this himself if he is honest, he was behind, way behind, in figuring out girls, and their girlish charms. I had to practically tell him everything he knows. Where did I learn it? Hell like everybody else from the older kids, the older guys, and my older sisters too if you can believe that. So I know a lot, or at least enough to keep old Peter Paul from being a total goofball. Still, see, he thinks the main thing is that the girl in the song here is worried about her reputation because she has just given in, in a moment of passion, to her boyfriend, it’s way too late to turn back and yet she is having second thoughts, second thought regrets, about it, and about what he will think of her and whether it will get around that she “does it.”
Ya, she does it, now officially certified a woman, or at least acting like a woman can act, that is what my sister Donna says, and from the feel of the song, probably in some back seat of some “boss” convertible, a Chevy I hope. Her guy, some under the hood day and night guy making that baby, his real baby, hum against the in-stock store-bought standards of his father’s car, his old fogy father’s car. She was breathless weeks ago when her Chevy guy came up gunning that beast behind her walking home from school and said “Hop in.” And she did, now she's the queen bee of the high school adventure car hop night. All the other girls, friend or foe, frantic at her fortune and ready to leap, girls’ “lav” leap, all over her come Monday morning finely-tuned grapevine gossip time. So tonight is paying back time, car hop queen bee paying back time. No turning back.
I hope, I really hope, they “did the deed” down by the seashore, big old moon out, big old laughing moon, waves splashing against the rocks and against the sounds of the night, the sounds of the be-bop moaning and groaning night. Call me a romantic but at least I hope that is where she gave it up. Or, maybe, away from coastal shoreline possibilities it was at some secluded lovers’ lane mountain top, tree-lined, dirt road, away from the city noise, some be-bop music playing on the car radio, just to keep those mountain fears away, motor humming against the autumn chill and the creaking sun ready to devour that last mountain top and face the day, and face the music.
But see that’s where Markin has got it all wrong, all wrong on two counts, because Chevy guy two-timing her, or spreading the “news” about his conquest, or even that hellish girls’ lav whirlwind inferno is not really what’s bothering her. Markin has got this starry-eyed thing, and I think it is from hanging around, or being around, all those straight lace no-go Catholic girls, who do actually worry about their reputations, at least for public consumption. That is why high Catholic that I am, just like old Markin, I don’t go within twenty yards of those, well, teasers. Ya, teasers but that’s a story for another time, because right now we have only time for women, or girls who act like women. What’s bothering moonstruck girl, number one, is that she likes it, she liked doing it with Chevy guy, and is worried that she’ll go crazy every time a boy gets within arms length of her. She “heard” that once a girl starts doing it they can’t help themselves and are marks, easy marks, for every guy who gives them the eye. Jesus, where did she ever get that idea. Must have been out in the streets, although I personally never heard such an idea when I was asking around. This is what I heard, well, not from the street but from my sister Donna, she said it was okay, natural even, for girls to like sex. If the moment was right, and maybe the guy too. It wasn’t some Propagation of the Faith, do-your-sex-duty to multiply thing we heard in church. Hell, Donna said she liked it too, and believe me, old Donna doesn’t like much if you listen to her long enough. So moonstruck girl don’t worry.
But number two you do have to worry about, although I don’t know what you can do about it now I never did ask Donna about that part. Pregnant. Ya, the dreaded word for girls and guys alike when you were just trying to have a little fun, just liking it. Now everything your mother told you about “bad” girls, about leaving school, about shot-gun weddings, or about having to go to “Aunt Bessie’s” for a few months, flood memories and as the sun comes up there is momentary panic. Like I say I don’t know what you can do. I don’t know the medical part of the thing. But Peter Paul, leave it to Peter Paul, who knows diddley about sex (except what I tell him) says do you know about “rubbers.” And he got all in a lather telling me that there is some new pill coming out, and coming out soon, so you don’t have to worry. This from a guy was practically missed the first time he kissed a girl. But if he is right, and I ain’t saying he is, then check it out and then you can still like “doing it.” And not worry.
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
From The UJP Website- A Report On The Boston Veterans For Peace Alternative Saint Patrick's Day Parade-March 20, 2011
Click on the headline to link to a UJP Website entry- A Report On The Boston Veterans For Peace Alternative Saint Patrick's Day Parade. Plus links for Photos.
Reflections From The Quantico War-Zone- The March 20th Rally In Support Of Private Bradley Manning- Free Bradley Manning Now
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the rally at Quantico Marine Base in Virginia on March 20, 2011 in support of alleged Army whistleblower Private Bradley Manning.
Markin comment:
I don’t have much occasion, or at least have not had much occasion recently, to be in Northern Virginia and certainly not in Triangle, Virginia the town attached to the Quantico Marine Base just off the Jefferson Davis Highway (that road designation named for the President of the defeated, or at least I assumed it was defeated, Southern Confederacy alone should tell everyone, every Northern everyone, that we are dealing with a different animal here). Nor would I, in the normal course of events, have occasion to be seeking parking space in the mammoth parking lot in front of the eerily-shaped Marine Corps Museum across from the base, although my late father proudly served in the Marines in World War II and saw battle in the Pacific. But as I have explained elsewhere (see below, Why I Will Be Standing In Solidarity With Private Bradley Manning At Quantico, Virginia On Sunday March 20th At 2:00 PM- A Personal Note From An Ex-Soldier Political Prisoner) today though, this day, this spring-like March day I am here on class-war prisoner business in support of accused whistleblower Private Bradley Manning who is being held in close pre-trial confinement here.
And so Northern Virginia Confederacy legacy or not, spring-like weather or not, I am here with other like-minded spirits to show our support in this desperate struggle to gain Private Manning’s freedom. And the usual cast of such characters are present: old-time radicals who have not lost that flickering flame that drove them to the left in their youths; Veterans for Peace, male and female, ex-soldiers of half the modern wars fought by the American imperial state, who learned the hard way, the very hard way, but learned, the madnesses of war and are out to spread the news; CodePink women who have become a righteous mainstay of the anti-war movement and put a little sparkle in as well; assorted Quakers and other religious people who know right from wrong in that milieu and are willing to do something about it; little old ladies in tennis sneakers (New Balance of course), little old men in tennis sneakers (ditto on the sneaker brand) and others, younger others, out to protest the outrageous treatment of alleged whistleblower Private Bradley Manning. Righteous people all, although maybe just a little too politically naïve about the nature of the American state. But I will let that pass for now as we are in a principled united front here on the issue that counted- freedom for Private Manning.
What was not present and, in the end to our regret, was anything like the Bolshevik Party of Russia in 1917. Or some great cloud of pre-World War I Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, Wobblies) descending on a Western town for a raucous Free Speech campaign where all hell was expected to break loose by both sides. Or even, closer in time, some Hippie-Yippie-Communist conflagration to shut down the streets of Chicago in the 1969 Days of Rage or the American government in the streets of Washington, D.C. in 1971. But someone forgot to tell the Virginia state/ Marine military intelligence officers who organized the security forces against the grannies and grandpas massed outside the Quantico base that this was not the intention, never was the intention, and could not possibly be the intention of those who sought Private Bradley Manning’s release this day. In the headline I called it the Quantico war-zone and that is what the governmental preparations were like- I swear I have not seen so many fully-armed, SWAT teams, so many horse-riding Cossacks, so many just plain police officers massed for a small demonstration in a while. Maybe I would have to go back to those shutting down the American government 1971 days but at least there we knew what we were up against, and were ready to take our chances. Needless to say with so much police presence the air was tense with expectation. And also with the inevitable police overreaction to every small gesture of resistance, no matter how non-violently posed. Like the fate of the American government was at stake in Triangle, Virginia that day. Everybody from Obama on down in that crowd should have egg on their faces from this one. But in the end the important thing was that we were there to support Private Bradley Manning, a righteous winter soldier. And we did so.
Note: I did not want to overload what I wanted to write above about the March 20th Quantico war-zone with a lot of speculation about what that massive police presence meant so I will put it in this note. Obviously some 30 billion dollars spent on intelligence-gathering, if that is the right word, does not buy you what it use to. A simple informer’s report from the March 19th Veteran’s for Peace-led march in front of the White House would have told the authorities that a mass rising at Triangle was not in the offing. And while we are on the subject it is clear that the Quantico security satraps did not bother to check with their Washington brethren about how to handle finicky grandpas and fidgety grandmas who WANT to be arrested as acts of civil disobedience. There were probably about a hundred or so police (maybe less) acting as security in front of the White House, the WHITE HOUSE for christsakes, who had the situation in well in tow and without serious incident. Additionally, and I take no credit for this one, apparently those in charge of Quantico security are-metaphorically-challenged and seemingly took literally the notion that we were there to free Bradley Manning. Like this was some Weather Underground freeing of guru Timothy Leary in the old days kind of action. In any case stop reading that old stuff and update your files.
*******
Why I Will Be Standing In Solidarity With Private Bradley Manning At Quantico, Virginia On Sunday March 20th At 2:00 PM- A Personal Note From An Ex-Soldier Political Prisoner
Markin comment:
Of course I will be standing at the front gate to the Quantico Marine Base on March 20th because I stand in solidarity with the actions of Private Bradley Manning in bringing to light, just a little light, some of the nefarious doings of this government, Bush-like or Obamian. If he did such acts. I sleep just a shade bit easier these days knowing that Private Manning (or someone) exposed what we all knew, or should have knew- the Iraq war and the Afghan war justification rested on a house of card. American imperialism’s house of cards, but cards nevertheless.
Of course I will be standing at the front gate to the Quantico Marine Base on March 20th because I am outraged by the treatment of Private Manning meted to a presumably innocent man by a government who alleges itself to be some “beacon” of the civilized world. The military has gotten more devious although not smarted since I was soldier in their crosshairs over forty years ago. Allegedly Private Manning might become so distraught over his alleged actions that he requires extraordinary protections. He is assumed, in the Catch-22 logic of the military, to be something of a suicide risk on the basis of bringing some fresh air to the nefarious doings of the international imperialist order. Be serious. I, however, noticed no ‘spike” in suicide rates among the world’s diplomatic community once they were exposed, a place where such activities might have been expected once it was observed in public that most of these persons could barely tie their own shoes.
Now the two reasons above are more than sufficient reasons for my standing at the front gate to the Quantico Marine Base on March 20th although they, in themselves, are only the appropriate reasons that any progressive thinking person would need to show up and shout to the high heavens for Private Manning’s freedom. I have an addition reason though, a very pressing personal reason. As mentioned above I too was in the military’s crosshairs as a soldier during the height of the Vietnam War. I will not go into the details of that episode, this after all is about soldier Manning, other than that I spent my own time in an Army stockade for, let’s put it this way, working on the principle of “what if they gave a war and nobody came.” Forty years later I am still working off that principle, and gladly. But here is the real point. During that time I had outside support, outside civilian support, that rallied on several occasions outside the military base where I was confined. Believe me that knowledge helped me through the tough days inside. So on March 20th I am just, as I have been able to on too few other occasions over years, paying my dues for that long ago support. You, brother, are true winter soldier.
Private Manning I hope that you will hear us, or hear about our rally in your defense. Better yet, everybody who read this join us and make sure that he can hear us loud and clear. And let us shout to those high heavens mentioned above-Free Private Bradley Manning Now!
Markin comment:
I don’t have much occasion, or at least have not had much occasion recently, to be in Northern Virginia and certainly not in Triangle, Virginia the town attached to the Quantico Marine Base just off the Jefferson Davis Highway (that road designation named for the President of the defeated, or at least I assumed it was defeated, Southern Confederacy alone should tell everyone, every Northern everyone, that we are dealing with a different animal here). Nor would I, in the normal course of events, have occasion to be seeking parking space in the mammoth parking lot in front of the eerily-shaped Marine Corps Museum across from the base, although my late father proudly served in the Marines in World War II and saw battle in the Pacific. But as I have explained elsewhere (see below, Why I Will Be Standing In Solidarity With Private Bradley Manning At Quantico, Virginia On Sunday March 20th At 2:00 PM- A Personal Note From An Ex-Soldier Political Prisoner) today though, this day, this spring-like March day I am here on class-war prisoner business in support of accused whistleblower Private Bradley Manning who is being held in close pre-trial confinement here.
And so Northern Virginia Confederacy legacy or not, spring-like weather or not, I am here with other like-minded spirits to show our support in this desperate struggle to gain Private Manning’s freedom. And the usual cast of such characters are present: old-time radicals who have not lost that flickering flame that drove them to the left in their youths; Veterans for Peace, male and female, ex-soldiers of half the modern wars fought by the American imperial state, who learned the hard way, the very hard way, but learned, the madnesses of war and are out to spread the news; CodePink women who have become a righteous mainstay of the anti-war movement and put a little sparkle in as well; assorted Quakers and other religious people who know right from wrong in that milieu and are willing to do something about it; little old ladies in tennis sneakers (New Balance of course), little old men in tennis sneakers (ditto on the sneaker brand) and others, younger others, out to protest the outrageous treatment of alleged whistleblower Private Bradley Manning. Righteous people all, although maybe just a little too politically naïve about the nature of the American state. But I will let that pass for now as we are in a principled united front here on the issue that counted- freedom for Private Manning.
What was not present and, in the end to our regret, was anything like the Bolshevik Party of Russia in 1917. Or some great cloud of pre-World War I Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, Wobblies) descending on a Western town for a raucous Free Speech campaign where all hell was expected to break loose by both sides. Or even, closer in time, some Hippie-Yippie-Communist conflagration to shut down the streets of Chicago in the 1969 Days of Rage or the American government in the streets of Washington, D.C. in 1971. But someone forgot to tell the Virginia state/ Marine military intelligence officers who organized the security forces against the grannies and grandpas massed outside the Quantico base that this was not the intention, never was the intention, and could not possibly be the intention of those who sought Private Bradley Manning’s release this day. In the headline I called it the Quantico war-zone and that is what the governmental preparations were like- I swear I have not seen so many fully-armed, SWAT teams, so many horse-riding Cossacks, so many just plain police officers massed for a small demonstration in a while. Maybe I would have to go back to those shutting down the American government 1971 days but at least there we knew what we were up against, and were ready to take our chances. Needless to say with so much police presence the air was tense with expectation. And also with the inevitable police overreaction to every small gesture of resistance, no matter how non-violently posed. Like the fate of the American government was at stake in Triangle, Virginia that day. Everybody from Obama on down in that crowd should have egg on their faces from this one. But in the end the important thing was that we were there to support Private Bradley Manning, a righteous winter soldier. And we did so.
Note: I did not want to overload what I wanted to write above about the March 20th Quantico war-zone with a lot of speculation about what that massive police presence meant so I will put it in this note. Obviously some 30 billion dollars spent on intelligence-gathering, if that is the right word, does not buy you what it use to. A simple informer’s report from the March 19th Veteran’s for Peace-led march in front of the White House would have told the authorities that a mass rising at Triangle was not in the offing. And while we are on the subject it is clear that the Quantico security satraps did not bother to check with their Washington brethren about how to handle finicky grandpas and fidgety grandmas who WANT to be arrested as acts of civil disobedience. There were probably about a hundred or so police (maybe less) acting as security in front of the White House, the WHITE HOUSE for christsakes, who had the situation in well in tow and without serious incident. Additionally, and I take no credit for this one, apparently those in charge of Quantico security are-metaphorically-challenged and seemingly took literally the notion that we were there to free Bradley Manning. Like this was some Weather Underground freeing of guru Timothy Leary in the old days kind of action. In any case stop reading that old stuff and update your files.
*******
Why I Will Be Standing In Solidarity With Private Bradley Manning At Quantico, Virginia On Sunday March 20th At 2:00 PM- A Personal Note From An Ex-Soldier Political Prisoner
Markin comment:
Of course I will be standing at the front gate to the Quantico Marine Base on March 20th because I stand in solidarity with the actions of Private Bradley Manning in bringing to light, just a little light, some of the nefarious doings of this government, Bush-like or Obamian. If he did such acts. I sleep just a shade bit easier these days knowing that Private Manning (or someone) exposed what we all knew, or should have knew- the Iraq war and the Afghan war justification rested on a house of card. American imperialism’s house of cards, but cards nevertheless.
Of course I will be standing at the front gate to the Quantico Marine Base on March 20th because I am outraged by the treatment of Private Manning meted to a presumably innocent man by a government who alleges itself to be some “beacon” of the civilized world. The military has gotten more devious although not smarted since I was soldier in their crosshairs over forty years ago. Allegedly Private Manning might become so distraught over his alleged actions that he requires extraordinary protections. He is assumed, in the Catch-22 logic of the military, to be something of a suicide risk on the basis of bringing some fresh air to the nefarious doings of the international imperialist order. Be serious. I, however, noticed no ‘spike” in suicide rates among the world’s diplomatic community once they were exposed, a place where such activities might have been expected once it was observed in public that most of these persons could barely tie their own shoes.
Now the two reasons above are more than sufficient reasons for my standing at the front gate to the Quantico Marine Base on March 20th although they, in themselves, are only the appropriate reasons that any progressive thinking person would need to show up and shout to the high heavens for Private Manning’s freedom. I have an addition reason though, a very pressing personal reason. As mentioned above I too was in the military’s crosshairs as a soldier during the height of the Vietnam War. I will not go into the details of that episode, this after all is about soldier Manning, other than that I spent my own time in an Army stockade for, let’s put it this way, working on the principle of “what if they gave a war and nobody came.” Forty years later I am still working off that principle, and gladly. But here is the real point. During that time I had outside support, outside civilian support, that rallied on several occasions outside the military base where I was confined. Believe me that knowledge helped me through the tough days inside. So on March 20th I am just, as I have been able to on too few other occasions over years, paying my dues for that long ago support. You, brother, are true winter soldier.
Private Manning I hope that you will hear us, or hear about our rally in your defense. Better yet, everybody who read this join us and make sure that he can hear us loud and clear. And let us shout to those high heavens mentioned above-Free Private Bradley Manning Now!
*From The Archives-The Struggle To Win The Youth To The Fight For Our Communist Future-The Progressive Labor Party (PL) "Leads" Students For A Democratic Society (SDS)
Markin comment:
One of the declared purposes of this space is to draw the lessons of our left-wing past here in America and internationally, especially from the pro-communist wing. To that end I have made commentaries and provided archival works in order to help draw those lessons for today’s left-wing activists to learn, or at least ponder over. More importantly, for the long haul, to help educate today’s youth in the struggle for our common communist future. That is no small task or easy task given the differences of generations; differences of political milieus worked in; differences of social structure to work around; and, increasingly more important, the differences in appreciation of technological advances, and their uses.
There is no question that back in my youth I could have used, desperately used, many of the archival materials available today. When I developed political consciousness very early on, albeit liberal political consciousness, I could have used this material as I knew, I knew deep inside my heart and mind, that a junior Cold War liberal of the American For Democratic Action (ADA) stripe was not the end of my leftward political trajectory. More importantly, I could have used a socialist or communist youth organization to help me articulate the doubts I had about the virtues of liberal capitalism and be recruited to a more left-wing world view. As it was I spent far too long in the throes of the left-liberal/soft social-democratic milieu where I was dying politically. A group like the Young Communist League (W.E.B. Dubois Clubs in those days), the Young People’s Socialist League, or the Young Socialist Alliance representing the youth organizations of the American Communist Party, American Socialist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S.) respectively would have saved much wasted time and energy. I knew they were around but not in my area.
The archival material to be used in this series is weighted heavily toward the youth movements of the early American Communist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S). For more recent material I have relied on material from the Spartacus Youth Clubs, the youth group of the Spartacist League (U.S.), both because they are more readily available to me and because, and this should give cause for pause, there are not many other non-CP, non-SWP youth groups around. As I gather more material from other youth sources I will place them in this series.
Finally I would like to finish up with the preamble to the Spartacist Youth Club’s What We Fight For statement of purpose:
"The Spartacus Youth Clubs intervene into social struggles armed with the revolutionary internationalist program of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. We work to mobilize youth in struggle as partisans of the working class, championing the liberation of black people, women and all the oppressed. The SYCs fight to win youth to the perspective of building the Leninist vanguard party that will lead the working class in socialist revolution, laying the basis for a world free of capitalist exploitation and imperialist slaughter."
This seems to me be somewhere in the right direction for what a Bolshevik youth group should be doing these days; a proving ground to become professional revolutionaries with enough wiggle room to learn from their mistakes, and successes. More later.
**********
Markin comment on this article:
This article is a very concise and compact summary of the issues that were confronted, or not confronted, by the radical student movement, the driving edge of the radical movement of the late 1960s, the time when thoughtful radicals were turning to the “old left” working-class orientation where the core of the social power to change society in a progressive direction resided. Now, in hindsight, it is not at all that clear to me that there were objectively revolutionary opportunities to actually take on the government frontally and win. Not with the disarray of the left, and the mostly quiet working class. The defeat, the easy defeat, of the May Day 1971 actions in Washington, D.C. that I have written about previously as one of the key events in my own evolution to a working-class orientation, if nothing else, put paid to notion that it could be done without the social power of the working class behind it.
However, revolution, the word, the idea, the dream, was palpably in the air, or at least the smell of it and it was necessary to get, and keep, communist cadre ready for the long haul class-struggle from among those who flamed red in those days. Thus, even if we lived in a fool’s paradise about revolutionary prospects either on our own volition or through working class struggle we could have avoided squandering that cadre potential. In short, even if objective circumstances were not in our favor it was not necessary, consciously at least as with the case of Progressive Labor, to make every mistake in the revolutionary handbook. (And there were many other candidates as well, PL is just the subject here because in many ways it had the most thoughtful subjective revolutionaries and because it is a classic case study of where wrong theory leads an organization up a blind alley), . And leave a bitter, futile taste for those who come after.
And those who come after now are the youth of the early 21st century who need to read this article, and other critical articles, on the radical politics of the 1960s. As we baby-boomers retire and have more free time there are sure to be myriad memoirs and other productions by those who participated in that student radical minute in the 1960s so get ready for the onslaught. But read the stuff so this generation is better armed for the struggle than the 1960s rebels.
**********
From The Revolutionary Communist Youth (RCY) Newsletter: The Progressive Labor Party (PL) "Leads" Students For A Democratic Society (SDS) (headline edited by Markin)
The history of the decline of latter-day SDS is the history of Progressive Labor's criminal dissipation of revolutionary impulse and the loss of everything SDS had gained from its break from New Leftist populism in 1969. In April 1966 PL dissolved its youth front group, the May 2nd Movement, in favor of entry into the growing Students for a Democratic Society. In "A Statement on the Dissolution of M2M" PL put forward the following political thrust for SDS: "Our radicalism is based on the belief that the student movement cannot survive or grow without a socialist perspective. " (M2M's Free Student No. 7, April 1966)
Following its SDS entry, PL became the major force in SDS promoting a class analysis and a socialist goal, winning supporters on this basis.But since the SDS split in 1969 PL has systematically squandered this political capital and undercut the chance to build a strong organization of pro-working-class socialist students. While Revolutionary Communist Youth (formerly Revolutionary Marxist Caucus) led the struggle for a socialist class-struggle perspective for SDS, PL led SDS from a subjectively revolutionary working-class line to an economist working-class line, and finally, back to SDS's liberal reformist beginnings.
SDS: Social-Democratic Roots
SDS has its roots in labor reformism and social democracy, originating as the youth group of the League for Industrial Democracy, an organization of liberal union bureaucrats and their kept intellectuals, politically associated with the pro-imperialist Socialist Party. Renamed SDS in 1950, the organization involved itself in the civil rights movement; in June 1962, it came out with the Port Huron statement advocating "participatory democracy" and reaffirming its anti-communism. In June 1965 SDS dropped from its constitution the ban on communist participation and on 1 January 1966 officially severed its connection with the LID, to which SDS had become something of an embarrassment. SDS had passed from establishment left-liberalism to petty-bourgeois radicalism.
Worker-Student Alliance
Following its massive entry into SDS, PL emerged as the pole of attraction in opposition to groupings which wrote off the working class as the vanguard of revolution. But when the hard New Leftists split in 1969 and PL took over leadership of SDS, the rotten and contradictory Stalinist roots of PL's brand of "Marxism" gradually began to erode the left thrust around which PL had built its Worker-Student Alliance caucus. This was apparent as early as the 1969 split convention itself.
Spartacist League members of SDS critically supported the WSA wing, introducing to the WSA's main motion proposing a working-class orientation an amendment calling upon SDS to declare itself a noh-exclusionist socialist youth group. Despite its stated intentions for dissolving M2M, PL opposed this amendment, insisting on defining SDS's program only negatively--!, e. , anti-imperialist, anti-racist, anti-male-chauvinist, etc. Still riding on the sharp polarization of the factional struggle, however, PL included the following slogan at the end of the WSA statement: "ALL POWER TO THE INTERNATIONAL WORKING CLASS!" When a Spartacist spokesman pointed out that the slogan had a certain communist flavor, PL did not reply, but when a final edition of the WSA statement was presented to the body for approval, the slogan had disappeared. This was a foretaste of things to come.
The degeneration of PL's line in SDS from a crude but real working-class orientation to an alliance with academic liberalism stems from an opportunist "two-stage theory" of revolutionary organization and the rejection of the transitional program. PL puts forward a minimum program for "mass organizations" (SDS), reserving for "cadre organizations" (PL) a "maximum program" of socialism. By this logic, PL must fight for reformism in organizations like SDS in order not to deprive itself of its very reason for existence.
At the root of the reformist content PL gives to the slogan of a worker-student alliance is an inability to grasp the Leninist insistence on the leading role of the industrial working class in the socialist revolution. The working class—by virtue of its role in production, the collective and cohesive social organization of its work, its existence as wage slaves rather than proprietors (small or large) of lander capital—is the only inherently revolutionary class in capitalist society. The petty bourgeoisie stands tangential to capitalist production, and its social position is highly unstable. In times of crisis, the petty bourgeoisie in its main motion supports whichever major class—bourgeoisie or proletariat-offers the greater social stability. The critical factor in gaining the support of sections of the petty bourgeoisie for socialist revolution is therefore the strength of the working class and its leadership, the Leninist party. In the absence of a politically conscious and organizationally cohesive working class contending for power, no section of the petty bourgeoisie as a group will transcend the varieties of capitalist ideology: liberalism or, in periods of crisis, fascism. But many individual students can and must be won to the side of the proletariat on the basis of a communist world view, as declassed revolutionary intelligentsia who will constitute an important part of the future Leninist vanguard party.
In a book called SDS—A Profile (New York, Scribner's, 1972), endorsed by PL with only the slightest qualifications (PL Magazine. March, 1972), Alan Adelson writes:
"A revolution is very much a possibility in this country, PL reasons, if the tremendous industrial work-force can be united in struggle with the legions of students. That powerful worker-student alliance would be enough to run out the entrenched 'rulers' here just as the fusion of workers and peasants established 'a dictatorship of the proletariat' in China. " (page 9)
Later, in discussing the failure of the Campus Worker-Student Alliance strategy at Berkeley, Adelson writes: "No one wanted to scrap the idea of trying to ally Berkeley's 'two oppressed groups'—the workers and the students.,.. " (page 91) PL's conception refuses to recognize the class difference between the petty bourgeoisie (to which both peasants and students belong) and the working class, and thus projects an equal
revolutionary role for each group. The "theoretical" codification of this obscuring of class lines is found in PL Magazine, November 1971 (see RCY Newsletter No. 10, January-February 1972, "PL's Right Turn").
The Short but Dull Life of the CWSA
Rejection of the 1969 Spartacist proposal that SDS declare itself socialist was only the beginning of its retreat from the sharp leftist posture taken by PL in preparing for the SDS split. In the fall of 1969, just months after the split, PL pro¬posed the Campus Worker-Student Alliance stra¬tegy for SDS—a reformist working-class orientation economist in thrust and parochially confined to the campus. At the December 1969 SDS conference in New Haven, Spartacist members and supporters in SDS formed the Revolutionary Marxist Caucus. RMC pointed out that campus workers, having little social power, were being used by PL/SDS as a substitute for the decisive struggles in industry and within the union movement, and that the question of program was being shunted aside in favor of "show the workers SDS wants to help them. " PL vehemently opposed RMC demands to broaden working-class struggles beyond pure and narrow economism and to inject revolutionary political issues into SDS's mere atrocity-mongering propaganda. The oft-repeated "Students can't tell workers what to do" conflicted with the line that students and workers are natural allies with shared class interests, but it also represented a patronizing view of workers, a negation of the role of revolutionary theory and a dishonest cover for the desire to keep SDS a low-level front group so that revolutionary-minded-students could be drawn into an organization that could, presumably, "tell workers what to do": PL.
Anti-War Upsurge Bypasses SDS
RMC argued that SDS must address itself to the critically important issue of the Vietnam war, with a revolutionary class program demanding labor strikes against the war. But SDS continued to push the CWSA line, and the national student strike in the wake of the Cambodia invasion and the murders of students at Kent and Jackson State caught SDS totally unprepared. When the student strike wave erupted over its head, SDS chased frantically around campuses trying to seize , buildings and get campus workers to join the de¬monstrations. Only the RMC, pointing out that student strikes are impotent unless they are extended to the working class, which has the power to stop capitalist production, distributed propaganda at union meetings and worked with workers who were agitating in their unions for labor strikes against the war.
PL let the CWSA die quietly, admitting to each other that it had been a failure (as Adelson openly states in his book) and switching SDS's attention to assorted on-campus issues like day care, ROTC, right-wing professors, and resisting any serious orientation to major labor struggles--all this against the background of an increasingly -militant wave of strikes all across the country.
During the summer of 1971, PL held numerous "Fight Unemployment" marches in its own name (around essentially economist demands) but in SDS confined itself to demanding an end to campus unemployment! In August, when Nixon declared the wage freeze, PL responded with the call for a general strike and "30 for 40" (demands lifted directly from the Spartacist program) but opposed RMC's attempt to get SDS to join in agitation for labor strikes against the war and the wage freeze.
We Both Get Thrown Out of NPAC
Belatedly, PL/SDS turned its attention to the anti-war movement and began attending the meetings of the National Peace Action Coalition, the Socialist Workers Party's single-issue popular-front alliance with the liberal wing of the bourgeoisie. At the Cleveland December 1970 NPAC meeting, PL/SDS blocked with Spartacist/RMC to militantly oppose the participation of bourgeois representatives in the anti-war movement.
At the July 1971 NPAC conference in New York, PL/SDS and Spartacist/RMC were violently ejected for shouting down Senator Vance Hartke. Like it or not (and they didn't) PL/SDS found itself in an anti-class-collaboration bloc with Trotskyists. It managed to differentiate itself by organizing a token kamikaze attack on the conference the following day and by its position that trade union bureaucrats are the same as capitalist politicians and should equally be excluded from the anti-war movement.
By the time the November NPAC peace marches came around, PL/SDS declared its support for them. At the December NPAC conference in Cleveland, PL/SDS humbled itself many times over to the leadership of this alliance with the liberal bourgeoisie, pledging its support to the next march and generally adopting the posture of NPAC loyalists. The SL/RCY alone at the con¬ference stood in militant and unconditional opposition to class collaboration. What PL learned from the NPAC experience was apparently that capitulation works, and began developing its own reformist single-issue campaign, SDS's "Fight Racist Textbooks" line, complete with endorser lists signed by liberal professors.
PL opposed the welding of a political alliance between radical students and class-conscious workers (the formation of a fighting youth auxiliary to communist opposition in the unions), pre¬ferring to establish such an alliance on an appeal to moral do-goodism and the obscuring of a class line. PL's own inability as a would-be revolutionary party to develop a program to bridge the gap between trade union and socialist conscious¬ness, its adherence to the sterile minimum/ maximum program, fed its tendency to progressively lower the political level of SDS.
Throughout our existence as. the left opposition to PL in SDS, Revolutionary Communist Youth has raised the need for a socialist orientation based on transitional demands--demands which raise the issue of class power, connecting the felt needs of workers to their larger political interests—e. g., strikes against the war and wage freeze, "30 for 40", construction of a labor party, etc. Marked by a rejection of a communist approach, the history of PL's "leadership" of SDS is a sad story of the squandering of precious political capital. Now the sellout-to-liberalism "Fight Racist Textbooks" campaign marks a qualitative shift in the political character of SDS. It is a betrayal and has transformed SDS into an organization whose thrust is dangerous to the working class. The RCY must struggle politically to defeat SDS, counterposing itself as the genuine communist youth organization.
One of the declared purposes of this space is to draw the lessons of our left-wing past here in America and internationally, especially from the pro-communist wing. To that end I have made commentaries and provided archival works in order to help draw those lessons for today’s left-wing activists to learn, or at least ponder over. More importantly, for the long haul, to help educate today’s youth in the struggle for our common communist future. That is no small task or easy task given the differences of generations; differences of political milieus worked in; differences of social structure to work around; and, increasingly more important, the differences in appreciation of technological advances, and their uses.
There is no question that back in my youth I could have used, desperately used, many of the archival materials available today. When I developed political consciousness very early on, albeit liberal political consciousness, I could have used this material as I knew, I knew deep inside my heart and mind, that a junior Cold War liberal of the American For Democratic Action (ADA) stripe was not the end of my leftward political trajectory. More importantly, I could have used a socialist or communist youth organization to help me articulate the doubts I had about the virtues of liberal capitalism and be recruited to a more left-wing world view. As it was I spent far too long in the throes of the left-liberal/soft social-democratic milieu where I was dying politically. A group like the Young Communist League (W.E.B. Dubois Clubs in those days), the Young People’s Socialist League, or the Young Socialist Alliance representing the youth organizations of the American Communist Party, American Socialist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S.) respectively would have saved much wasted time and energy. I knew they were around but not in my area.
The archival material to be used in this series is weighted heavily toward the youth movements of the early American Communist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S). For more recent material I have relied on material from the Spartacus Youth Clubs, the youth group of the Spartacist League (U.S.), both because they are more readily available to me and because, and this should give cause for pause, there are not many other non-CP, non-SWP youth groups around. As I gather more material from other youth sources I will place them in this series.
Finally I would like to finish up with the preamble to the Spartacist Youth Club’s What We Fight For statement of purpose:
"The Spartacus Youth Clubs intervene into social struggles armed with the revolutionary internationalist program of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. We work to mobilize youth in struggle as partisans of the working class, championing the liberation of black people, women and all the oppressed. The SYCs fight to win youth to the perspective of building the Leninist vanguard party that will lead the working class in socialist revolution, laying the basis for a world free of capitalist exploitation and imperialist slaughter."
This seems to me be somewhere in the right direction for what a Bolshevik youth group should be doing these days; a proving ground to become professional revolutionaries with enough wiggle room to learn from their mistakes, and successes. More later.
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Markin comment on this article:
This article is a very concise and compact summary of the issues that were confronted, or not confronted, by the radical student movement, the driving edge of the radical movement of the late 1960s, the time when thoughtful radicals were turning to the “old left” working-class orientation where the core of the social power to change society in a progressive direction resided. Now, in hindsight, it is not at all that clear to me that there were objectively revolutionary opportunities to actually take on the government frontally and win. Not with the disarray of the left, and the mostly quiet working class. The defeat, the easy defeat, of the May Day 1971 actions in Washington, D.C. that I have written about previously as one of the key events in my own evolution to a working-class orientation, if nothing else, put paid to notion that it could be done without the social power of the working class behind it.
However, revolution, the word, the idea, the dream, was palpably in the air, or at least the smell of it and it was necessary to get, and keep, communist cadre ready for the long haul class-struggle from among those who flamed red in those days. Thus, even if we lived in a fool’s paradise about revolutionary prospects either on our own volition or through working class struggle we could have avoided squandering that cadre potential. In short, even if objective circumstances were not in our favor it was not necessary, consciously at least as with the case of Progressive Labor, to make every mistake in the revolutionary handbook. (And there were many other candidates as well, PL is just the subject here because in many ways it had the most thoughtful subjective revolutionaries and because it is a classic case study of where wrong theory leads an organization up a blind alley), . And leave a bitter, futile taste for those who come after.
And those who come after now are the youth of the early 21st century who need to read this article, and other critical articles, on the radical politics of the 1960s. As we baby-boomers retire and have more free time there are sure to be myriad memoirs and other productions by those who participated in that student radical minute in the 1960s so get ready for the onslaught. But read the stuff so this generation is better armed for the struggle than the 1960s rebels.
**********
From The Revolutionary Communist Youth (RCY) Newsletter: The Progressive Labor Party (PL) "Leads" Students For A Democratic Society (SDS) (headline edited by Markin)
The history of the decline of latter-day SDS is the history of Progressive Labor's criminal dissipation of revolutionary impulse and the loss of everything SDS had gained from its break from New Leftist populism in 1969. In April 1966 PL dissolved its youth front group, the May 2nd Movement, in favor of entry into the growing Students for a Democratic Society. In "A Statement on the Dissolution of M2M" PL put forward the following political thrust for SDS: "Our radicalism is based on the belief that the student movement cannot survive or grow without a socialist perspective. " (M2M's Free Student No. 7, April 1966)
Following its SDS entry, PL became the major force in SDS promoting a class analysis and a socialist goal, winning supporters on this basis.But since the SDS split in 1969 PL has systematically squandered this political capital and undercut the chance to build a strong organization of pro-working-class socialist students. While Revolutionary Communist Youth (formerly Revolutionary Marxist Caucus) led the struggle for a socialist class-struggle perspective for SDS, PL led SDS from a subjectively revolutionary working-class line to an economist working-class line, and finally, back to SDS's liberal reformist beginnings.
SDS: Social-Democratic Roots
SDS has its roots in labor reformism and social democracy, originating as the youth group of the League for Industrial Democracy, an organization of liberal union bureaucrats and their kept intellectuals, politically associated with the pro-imperialist Socialist Party. Renamed SDS in 1950, the organization involved itself in the civil rights movement; in June 1962, it came out with the Port Huron statement advocating "participatory democracy" and reaffirming its anti-communism. In June 1965 SDS dropped from its constitution the ban on communist participation and on 1 January 1966 officially severed its connection with the LID, to which SDS had become something of an embarrassment. SDS had passed from establishment left-liberalism to petty-bourgeois radicalism.
Worker-Student Alliance
Following its massive entry into SDS, PL emerged as the pole of attraction in opposition to groupings which wrote off the working class as the vanguard of revolution. But when the hard New Leftists split in 1969 and PL took over leadership of SDS, the rotten and contradictory Stalinist roots of PL's brand of "Marxism" gradually began to erode the left thrust around which PL had built its Worker-Student Alliance caucus. This was apparent as early as the 1969 split convention itself.
Spartacist League members of SDS critically supported the WSA wing, introducing to the WSA's main motion proposing a working-class orientation an amendment calling upon SDS to declare itself a noh-exclusionist socialist youth group. Despite its stated intentions for dissolving M2M, PL opposed this amendment, insisting on defining SDS's program only negatively--!, e. , anti-imperialist, anti-racist, anti-male-chauvinist, etc. Still riding on the sharp polarization of the factional struggle, however, PL included the following slogan at the end of the WSA statement: "ALL POWER TO THE INTERNATIONAL WORKING CLASS!" When a Spartacist spokesman pointed out that the slogan had a certain communist flavor, PL did not reply, but when a final edition of the WSA statement was presented to the body for approval, the slogan had disappeared. This was a foretaste of things to come.
The degeneration of PL's line in SDS from a crude but real working-class orientation to an alliance with academic liberalism stems from an opportunist "two-stage theory" of revolutionary organization and the rejection of the transitional program. PL puts forward a minimum program for "mass organizations" (SDS), reserving for "cadre organizations" (PL) a "maximum program" of socialism. By this logic, PL must fight for reformism in organizations like SDS in order not to deprive itself of its very reason for existence.
At the root of the reformist content PL gives to the slogan of a worker-student alliance is an inability to grasp the Leninist insistence on the leading role of the industrial working class in the socialist revolution. The working class—by virtue of its role in production, the collective and cohesive social organization of its work, its existence as wage slaves rather than proprietors (small or large) of lander capital—is the only inherently revolutionary class in capitalist society. The petty bourgeoisie stands tangential to capitalist production, and its social position is highly unstable. In times of crisis, the petty bourgeoisie in its main motion supports whichever major class—bourgeoisie or proletariat-offers the greater social stability. The critical factor in gaining the support of sections of the petty bourgeoisie for socialist revolution is therefore the strength of the working class and its leadership, the Leninist party. In the absence of a politically conscious and organizationally cohesive working class contending for power, no section of the petty bourgeoisie as a group will transcend the varieties of capitalist ideology: liberalism or, in periods of crisis, fascism. But many individual students can and must be won to the side of the proletariat on the basis of a communist world view, as declassed revolutionary intelligentsia who will constitute an important part of the future Leninist vanguard party.
In a book called SDS—A Profile (New York, Scribner's, 1972), endorsed by PL with only the slightest qualifications (PL Magazine. March, 1972), Alan Adelson writes:
"A revolution is very much a possibility in this country, PL reasons, if the tremendous industrial work-force can be united in struggle with the legions of students. That powerful worker-student alliance would be enough to run out the entrenched 'rulers' here just as the fusion of workers and peasants established 'a dictatorship of the proletariat' in China. " (page 9)
Later, in discussing the failure of the Campus Worker-Student Alliance strategy at Berkeley, Adelson writes: "No one wanted to scrap the idea of trying to ally Berkeley's 'two oppressed groups'—the workers and the students.,.. " (page 91) PL's conception refuses to recognize the class difference between the petty bourgeoisie (to which both peasants and students belong) and the working class, and thus projects an equal
revolutionary role for each group. The "theoretical" codification of this obscuring of class lines is found in PL Magazine, November 1971 (see RCY Newsletter No. 10, January-February 1972, "PL's Right Turn").
The Short but Dull Life of the CWSA
Rejection of the 1969 Spartacist proposal that SDS declare itself socialist was only the beginning of its retreat from the sharp leftist posture taken by PL in preparing for the SDS split. In the fall of 1969, just months after the split, PL pro¬posed the Campus Worker-Student Alliance stra¬tegy for SDS—a reformist working-class orientation economist in thrust and parochially confined to the campus. At the December 1969 SDS conference in New Haven, Spartacist members and supporters in SDS formed the Revolutionary Marxist Caucus. RMC pointed out that campus workers, having little social power, were being used by PL/SDS as a substitute for the decisive struggles in industry and within the union movement, and that the question of program was being shunted aside in favor of "show the workers SDS wants to help them. " PL vehemently opposed RMC demands to broaden working-class struggles beyond pure and narrow economism and to inject revolutionary political issues into SDS's mere atrocity-mongering propaganda. The oft-repeated "Students can't tell workers what to do" conflicted with the line that students and workers are natural allies with shared class interests, but it also represented a patronizing view of workers, a negation of the role of revolutionary theory and a dishonest cover for the desire to keep SDS a low-level front group so that revolutionary-minded-students could be drawn into an organization that could, presumably, "tell workers what to do": PL.
Anti-War Upsurge Bypasses SDS
RMC argued that SDS must address itself to the critically important issue of the Vietnam war, with a revolutionary class program demanding labor strikes against the war. But SDS continued to push the CWSA line, and the national student strike in the wake of the Cambodia invasion and the murders of students at Kent and Jackson State caught SDS totally unprepared. When the student strike wave erupted over its head, SDS chased frantically around campuses trying to seize , buildings and get campus workers to join the de¬monstrations. Only the RMC, pointing out that student strikes are impotent unless they are extended to the working class, which has the power to stop capitalist production, distributed propaganda at union meetings and worked with workers who were agitating in their unions for labor strikes against the war.
PL let the CWSA die quietly, admitting to each other that it had been a failure (as Adelson openly states in his book) and switching SDS's attention to assorted on-campus issues like day care, ROTC, right-wing professors, and resisting any serious orientation to major labor struggles--all this against the background of an increasingly -militant wave of strikes all across the country.
During the summer of 1971, PL held numerous "Fight Unemployment" marches in its own name (around essentially economist demands) but in SDS confined itself to demanding an end to campus unemployment! In August, when Nixon declared the wage freeze, PL responded with the call for a general strike and "30 for 40" (demands lifted directly from the Spartacist program) but opposed RMC's attempt to get SDS to join in agitation for labor strikes against the war and the wage freeze.
We Both Get Thrown Out of NPAC
Belatedly, PL/SDS turned its attention to the anti-war movement and began attending the meetings of the National Peace Action Coalition, the Socialist Workers Party's single-issue popular-front alliance with the liberal wing of the bourgeoisie. At the Cleveland December 1970 NPAC meeting, PL/SDS blocked with Spartacist/RMC to militantly oppose the participation of bourgeois representatives in the anti-war movement.
At the July 1971 NPAC conference in New York, PL/SDS and Spartacist/RMC were violently ejected for shouting down Senator Vance Hartke. Like it or not (and they didn't) PL/SDS found itself in an anti-class-collaboration bloc with Trotskyists. It managed to differentiate itself by organizing a token kamikaze attack on the conference the following day and by its position that trade union bureaucrats are the same as capitalist politicians and should equally be excluded from the anti-war movement.
By the time the November NPAC peace marches came around, PL/SDS declared its support for them. At the December NPAC conference in Cleveland, PL/SDS humbled itself many times over to the leadership of this alliance with the liberal bourgeoisie, pledging its support to the next march and generally adopting the posture of NPAC loyalists. The SL/RCY alone at the con¬ference stood in militant and unconditional opposition to class collaboration. What PL learned from the NPAC experience was apparently that capitulation works, and began developing its own reformist single-issue campaign, SDS's "Fight Racist Textbooks" line, complete with endorser lists signed by liberal professors.
PL opposed the welding of a political alliance between radical students and class-conscious workers (the formation of a fighting youth auxiliary to communist opposition in the unions), pre¬ferring to establish such an alliance on an appeal to moral do-goodism and the obscuring of a class line. PL's own inability as a would-be revolutionary party to develop a program to bridge the gap between trade union and socialist conscious¬ness, its adherence to the sterile minimum/ maximum program, fed its tendency to progressively lower the political level of SDS.
Throughout our existence as. the left opposition to PL in SDS, Revolutionary Communist Youth has raised the need for a socialist orientation based on transitional demands--demands which raise the issue of class power, connecting the felt needs of workers to their larger political interests—e. g., strikes against the war and wage freeze, "30 for 40", construction of a labor party, etc. Marked by a rejection of a communist approach, the history of PL's "leadership" of SDS is a sad story of the squandering of precious political capital. Now the sellout-to-liberalism "Fight Racist Textbooks" campaign marks a qualitative shift in the political character of SDS. It is a betrayal and has transformed SDS into an organization whose thrust is dangerous to the working class. The RCY must struggle politically to defeat SDS, counterposing itself as the genuine communist youth organization.
*From The Pages Of The Communist International-In Honor Of The 92nd Anniversary Of Its Founding (March 1919) And The 91st Anniversary Of The Historic Second World Congress (1920)-Theses on the Fundamental Tasks of the Communist International
Honor The 92nd Anniversary Of The Founding Of The Communist International (March, 1919)- Honor The 91st Anniversary Of The Historic Second World Congress (The 21 Conditions Congress) Of The CI (July-August 1920)
Markin comment:
Some anniversaries, like those marking the publication of a book, play or poem, are worthy of remembrance every five, ten, or twenty-five years. Other more world historic events like the remembrance of the Paris Commune of 1871, the Bolshevik Russian Revolution of 1917, and, as here, the founding of the Communist International (also known as the Third International, Comintern, and CI) in 1919 are worthy of yearly attention. Why is that so in the case of the long departed (1943, by Stalin fiat) and, at the end unlamented, Comintern? That is what this year’s remembrance, through CI documentation and other commentary, will attempt to impart on those leftist militants who are serious about studying the lessons of our revolutionary, our communist revolutionary past.
No question that the old injunction of Marx and Engels as early as the Communist Manifesto that the workers of the world needed to unite would have been hollow, and reduced to hortatory holiday speechifying (there was enough of that, as it was) without an organization expression. And they, Marx and Engels, fitfully made their efforts with the all-encompassing pan-working class First International. Later the less all encompassing but still party of the whole class-oriented socialist Second International made important, if limited, contributions to fulfilling that slogan before the advent of world imperialism left its outlook wanting, very wanting.
The Third International thus was created, as mentioned in one of the commentaries in this series, to pick up the fallen banner of international socialism after the betrayals of the Second International. More importantly, it was the first international organization that took upon itself in its early, heroic revolutionary days, at least, the strategic question of how to make, and win, a revolution in the age of world imperialism. The Trotsky-led effort of creating a Fourth International in the 1930s, somewhat stillborn as it turned out to be, nevertheless based itself, correctly, on those early days of the Comintern. So in some of the specific details of the posts in this year’s series, highlighting the 90th anniversary of the Third World Congress this is “just” history, but right underneath, and not far underneath at that, are rich lessons for us to ponder today.
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Markin comment on this post:
As noted in my commentary on the Manifesto of the Second World Congress of the Communist International (1920), reposted below since it also applies to these theses, such documents give the political movement it is addressed to its marching order. In a general sense, at least. These theses codify those general propositions outlined in the manifesto. Note here that this Second Congress took place as the international working class movement was going through a regroupment process right after World War I between the reformist socialists, the emerging communist vanguard, and the bewildered anarchists. Note also the difference in approaches to the more hardened reformist-led socialist parties, and to the ill-formed but more revolutionary-spirited anarchist formations, especially the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, Wobblies) here in America in their good days.
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A manifesto, particularly a political manifesto, and especially a revolutionary communist manifesto like the one that issued out of the historic Second World Congress of the Communist International in 1920 should give a cogent analysis of the world political situation. It should also describe the nature of the period (revolutionary, non-revolutionary, heading toward or away from either, an estimation of the enemy’s capacities, and the obstacles in the way both inside and outside the workers movement (out side the treachery of the liberals and inside the perfidy of the labor bureaucracy resting on the labor bureaucracy). In short, give the international proletariat its marching orders. The Manifesto of the Second World Congress does just those things at a time when the fledgling Communist International was trying to consolidate its vanguard position in the world working class movement. The Communist International then, and for some time after, did yeoman’s work in that regard, not always perfectly but from a revolutionary perspective. Even as it degenerated politically toward the middle and late 1920s there were, as the Leon Trotsky-led International Left Opposition held, reasons, good reasons to adhere to its tenets. Only with the debacle around Hitler’s coming to power in Germany did Trotsky throw in the towel. That seemed right then, and now. I would argue that the Seventh (and last) World Congress in 1935 unquestionably put paid to that notion. We did not need a vanguard national party, or a vanguard revolutionary international party for that matter, to give the lead in the political struggle to the liberal bourgeoisie as the popular frontist politics of the CI proclaimed from that time onward (with a few “left” turns). There was an international for that “strategy”, or rather a mail-drop address, it was (is) called the Second International.
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Minutes of the Second Congress of the Communist International: Theses
Theses on the Fundamental Tasks of the Communist International
1. A characteristic feature of the present moment in the development of the international Communist movement is the fact that in all capitalist countries the best representatives of the revolutionary proletariat have completely understood the fundamental principles of the Communist International – namely, the dictatorship of the proletariat and the power of the Soviet – and with a loyal enthusiasm have placed themselves on the side of the Communist International. A still more important and still greater step forward is the completely clear and unlimited sympathy with these principles manifested by the wider masses, not only of the proletariat of the towns, but also by the advanced portion of the agrarian workers.
On the other hand two mistakes or weaknesses have shown them selves in the Communist movement, in spite of its extraordinary and rapid increase. One, very serious and a direct threat to the liberation of the proletariat, consists’ in the fact that a section of the old leaders and old parties of the Second International, partly unconsciously yielding to the wishes and pressure of the masses, partly consciously deceiving them, in order to preserve their former role of agents and supporters of the bourgeoisie inside the Labour movement, are declaring a conditional or even unconditional – affiliation to the Third International, while remaining, in reality, in the whole practice of their party and political work, on the level of the Second International. Such a state of things is absolutely inadmissible, because it demoralises the masses, hinders the development of a strong Communist Party, and lowers their respect for the Third International by threatening repetition of such betrayals as that of the Hungarian Social-Democrats, who so facilely assumed the disguise of Communists. The second, much less important mistake, which is for the most part a malady inherent to the growth of the movement, is the tendency to be ‘on the extreme Left,’ which leads to an erroneous evaluation of the role and duties of the party with respect to the class and to the mass, and a denial of the obligation of the revolutionary Communists to work in bourgeois parliaments and reactionary trades unions.
The duty of the Communists is not to gloss over any of the weaknesses of their movement, but to criticise them openly, in order to get rid of them promptly and radically. To this end it is necessary (1) to establish concretely, on the basis of the practical experience already acquired, the meaning of the terms: ‘Dictatorship of the Proletariat’ and ‘Soviet System'; and (2) to point out in what could and should consist in all countries the immediate and systematic preparatory work for realising these slogans; and (3) to indicate the means of curing our movement of its defects.
I. – The meaning of the dictatorship of the proletariat and of the soviet system
2. The victory of Socialism over capitalism – as the first step to Communism – demands the accomplishment of the three following tasks by the proletariat, as the only really revolutionary class:
The first is to lay low the exploiters, and first of all the bourgeoisie as their chief economic. and political representative, to defeat them completely, to crush their resistance, to render impossible any attempts on their part to reimpose the yoke of capitalism and wage-slavery.
The second is to inspire, and lead in the footsteps of the revolutionary advance-guard of the proletariat (the Communist Party) not only the whole proletariat or its large majority, but the entire mass of workers and those exploited by capital; to enlighten, organise, instruct and discipline them during the course of the bold and merciless struggle against the exploiters; to wrench this enormous majority of the population in all the capitalist countries out of their state of dependence on the bourgeoisie; to instil in them, through practical experience, confidence in the leading role of the proletariat and its revolutionary advance guard.
The third is to neutralise or render harmless the inevitable fluctuations between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, between bourgeois democracy and the Soviet system, on the part of that rather numerous class in all advanced countries – although constituting a minority of the population – the small owners and proprietors in agriculture, industry, commerce, and the corresponding strata of intellectuals, white-collar workers, and so on.
The first and second tasks are independent ones, demanding each its special methods of action in respect to the exploiters and to the exploited. The third task results from the two first, demanding only a skilful, timely, supple combination of the methods of the first and second depending on the concrete circumstances of each separate case of fluctuation.
3. Under the circumstances which have been created in the whole world, and most of all in the most advanced, powerful, enlightened and free capitalist countries by militarist imperialism, oppression of colonies and the weaker nations, by the universal imperialist slaughter, and the ‘peace’ of Versailles, to admit the idea of a voluntary submission of the capitalists to the will of the majority of the exploited – of a peaceful, reformist passage to Socialism – is not only to give proof of an extreme petty-bourgeois dullheadedness, but it is direct deception of the workers, a disguising of capitalist wage-slavery, a concealment of the truth. This truth consists in the fact that the bourgeoisie, the most enlightened and democratic bourgeoisie, is even now not hesitating at deceit and crime, at the slaughter of millions of workmen and peasants, for the retention of the right of private ownership over the means of production. Only a violent defeat of the bourgeoisie, the confiscation of its property, the annihilation of the entire bourgeois government apparatus, from top to bottom, parliamentary, judicial, military, bureaucratic, administrative, municipal, etc., up to the individual exile or internment of the most stubborn and dangerous exploiters, the establishment of a strict control over them for the repressing of all inevitable attempts at resistance and restoration of capitalist slavery – only such measures will be able to guarantee the complete submission of the whole class of exploiters.
It is the same camouflage of capitalism and bourgeois democracy, the same deception of the workers when the old parties and old leaders of the Second International suggest that the majority of the workers and exploited will be able to acquire a clear socialist consciousness, firm socialist convictions and character under the conditions of capitalist enslavement, under the yoke of the bourgeoisie, which assumes an endless variety of forms – the more refined, and at the same time the more cruel and pitiless in the more cultured capitalist nations. In reality it is only when the advanced guard of the proletariat, supported by the whole class, or a majority of it, has overthrown the exploiters, crushed them, freed all the exploited from their position of slaves, improved their conditions of life immediately at the expense of the expropriated capitalists – only after that, and during the very course of the acute class struggle, will it be possible to realise the enlightenment, education and organisation of the widest masses of workers and exploited, under the influence and direction of the communists, to cure them of their egotism, their non-solidarity, their vices and weaknesses engendered by private ownership, and to transform them into a free association of free workers.
4. In order to win victory over capitalism it is necessary to have the right mutual relations between the Communist Party as leader, the revolutionary class, the proletariat, on the one hand and the masses, that is all of the toilers and the exploited, on the other. Only the Communist party, if it is really the advanced guard of the revolutionary class, if it includes the best representatives of the class, if it consists of perfectly conscious and loyal Communists, enlightened and tempered by the experience gained in the stubborn revolutionary struggle – if this party is able to become bound indissolubly with the entire life of its class, and through the latter with the whole mass of the exploited, and to inspire full confidence in this class and this mass, only such a party is capable of leading the proletariat in the most pitiless decisive last struggle against all the forces of capitalism.
On the other hand, only under the leadership of such a party will the proletariat be able to employ all the force of its revolutionary onslaught which is immeasurably smaller than the proportion of proletarians in the population in capitalist society as a result of its economic structure, nullifying the inevitable apathy and partial resistance of the insignificant minority of the demoralised labour aristocracy, the old Trade Union leaders, etc. Only then will the proletariat be able to display its power, which is immeasurably greater than its share in the population, by reason of the economic organisation of capitalist society itself.
Lastly, only when in practice freed from the yoke of the bourgeoisie and the bourgeois state apparatus, only after acquiring the possibility of organising into its own Soviets , free from all capitalist exploitation, will the mass – i.e., the whole of the workers and exploited – employ for the first time in history all the initiative and energy of tens of millions of people, formerly crushed by capitalism. Only when the Soviets become the only State apparatus will effectual participation m the administration be realised for the entire mass of the exploited, who even under the most cultured and free bourgeois democracy remained ninety per cent excluded from participation in the administration. Only in the Soviets does the mass really begin to study, not out of books, but out of its own practical experience, the work of Socialist construction, the creation of a new social discipline, a free union of free workers.
II – In what should the immediate preparation for dictatorship of the proletariat everywhere consist?
5. The present moment in the development of the International Communist movement is characterized by the fact that in a great majority of capitalist countries the preparation of the proletariat to the realisation of its dictatorship is incomplete. Very often it has not even been begun systematically. It does not follow that the proletarian revolution is not possible in the most immediate future; it is quite possible, because the economic and political situation is extraordinarily rich in inflammable material; sparks to light it. The other condition of a revolution, besides the preparedness of the proletariat, namely, the general state of crisis in all the ruling and all the bourgeois parties, is also at hand. But it follows from the above that the duty for the moment of the Communist Parties consists in accelerating the revolution, without provoking it artificially until sufficient preparation has been made. The preparedness of the proletariat for the revolution must be advanced by deeds. On the other hand, the above instance in the history of many Socialist parties, draws our attention to the fact that the ‘recognition’ of the dictatorship of the proletariat should not remain only verbal.
Therefore, the principal duty of the Communist parties, from the point of view of the international proletarian movement, is at the present moment the uniting of the dispersed Communist forces, the formation in each country of a single Communist Party (or the strengthening and renovation of the already existing one) in order to assist in the work of preparing the proletariat for the conquest of state power in the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The socialist work usually done by groups and parties which recognise the dictatorship of the proletariat has not yet by a long way been subjected to the radical strengthening and renewal which is essential if it is to be regarded as Communist work corresponding to the tasks on the eve of the proletarian dictatorship.
6. The conquest of political power by the proletariat does not Put a stop to its class struggle against the bourgeoisie; on the contrary, it makes the struggle particularly widespread, acute and pitiless. All the groups, parties, leaders of the labour movement, fully or partially on the side of reformism, the ‘Centre,’ and so on, turn inevitably, during the most acute moments of the struggle, either to the side of the bourgeoisie or to that of the waverers, or, most dangerous, add to the number of the unreliable friends of the victorious proletariat. Therefore, the preparation of the dictatorship of the proletariat demands not only an increased struggle against all reformist and ‘Centrist’ tendencies, but a modification of the nature of this struggle.
The struggle should not be limited by an explanation of the erroneousness of such tendencies, but it should stubbornly and mercilessly denounce any leader in the Labour movement who may be manifesting such tendencies, otherwise the proletariat will not know whom it must trust in the most decisive struggle against the bourgeoisie. This struggle is such that at any moment it may replace, and has replaced, as experience has proved, the weapon of criticism by the criticism of the weapon. The least inconsistency or weakness in the denunciation of those who show themselves to be reformists or ‘Centrists,’ means a direct increase of the danger of the power of the proletariat being over-thrown by the bourgeoisie, which will, tomorrow, utilise in favour of the counter-revolution everything which today appears to short-sighted people only as a ‘theoretical difference of opinion.'
7. In particular, one cannot stop at the usual abstract refutation of all ‘collaboration’ between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.
The mere defence of ‘liberty and equality,’ under the condition of preserving the right of private ownership of the means of production, becomes transformed under the conditions of the dictatorship of the proletariat – which will never be able to suppress completely all private ownership – into a ‘collaboration’ with the bourgeoisie, which undermines directly the power of the working class. The dictatorship of the proletariat means the strengthening and defence, by means of the ruling power of the State, of the ‘non-liberty’ of the exploiter to continue his work of oppression and exploitation, the ‘inequality’ of the proprietor (i.e., of the person who has taken for himself personally the means of production created by social labour) with the propertyless. That which, before the victory of the proletariat, seems but a theoretical difference of opinion on the question of ‘democracy,’ becomes inevitably on the morrow, after the victory, a question which can only be decided by force of arms. Consequently, without a radical modification of the whole nature of the struggle against the ‘centrists’ and ‘democrats,’ even a preliminary preparation of the mass for the realisation of a dictatorship of the proletariat is impossible.
8. The dictatorship of the proletariat is the most decisive form of class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Such a struggle can be successful only when the most revolutionary advance-guard of the proletariat leads the huge majority of it. The preparation of the dictatorship of the proletariat demands, therefore, not only the explanation of the bourgeois nature of all reformism and all defence of ‘democracy,’ which preserves the private ownership of the means of production; not only the denunciation of such tendencies, which in practice mean the defence of the bourgeoisie inside the Labour movement – but it demands also the replacing of the old leaders by Communists in all kinds of proletarian organisations, not only political, but industrial, co-operative, educational, etc. The more lasting, complete and solid the rule of the bourgeois democracy has been in any country, the more has it been possible for the bourgeoisie to appoint as labour leaders men who have been educated by it, imbued with its views and prejudices and very frequently, directly or indirectly, bribed by it. It is necessary to remove all these representatives of the labour aristocracy, or of the bourgeoisified workers, from their posts and replace them by even inexperienced workers, so long as these are in unity with the exploited masses, and enj oy the latter’s confidence in the struggle against the exploiters. The dictatorship of the proletariat will demand the appointment of such inexperienced workmen to the most responsible State functions, otherwise the workers’ government will be powerless and it will not have the support of the masses.
9. The dictatorship of the proletariat is the most complete realisation of a leadership of all workers and exploited, who have been oppressed, beaten down, crushed, intimidated, dispersed, deceived by the class of capitalists, by the only class prepared for such a leading role by the whole history of capitalism. Therefore, the preparation of the dictatorship of the proletariat must be begun immediately and in all places by means of the following methods, among others: –
In every organisation, union or association without exception beginning with the proletarian ones at first, and afterwards in all those of the non-proletarian workers and exploited masses (political, professional, military, co-operative, educational, sporting, etc.) must be formed groups or nuclei of Communists – mostly open ones, but also secret ones which become necessary in each case when the arrest or exile of their members or the dispersal of the organisation is threatened. These nuclei, in close contact with one another and with the Central Party, exchanging experiences, carrying on the work of propaganda, campaign, organisation, adapting themselves to an the branches of social life, to all the various forms and subdivisions of the working masses, must systematically train themselves, the party, the class and the masses by such many-sided work.
At the same time it is most important to work out practically the necessary methods on the one hand in respect to the ‘leaders’ or responsible representatives, who are very frequently hopelessly infected with petty bourgeois and imperialist prejudices – these ‘leaders’ must be mercilessly exposed and driven from the labour movement; on the other hand, with respect to the masses who, especially after the imperialist slaughter, are mostly inclined to listen to and accept the doctrine of the necessity of the rule of the proletariat as the only way out of capitalist enslavement. The masses must be approached with patience and caution, and with an understanding of the peculiarities, the special psychology of each layer or profession.
10. In particular one. of the groups or nuclei of the Communists deserves the exclusive attention and care of the party, namely, the parliamentary faction, i.e., the group of members of the party who are members of bourgeois representative institutions (first of all in state institutions, then local, municipal and others). On the one hand, such a tribune has a special importance in the eyes of the wider circles of the backward toiling masses or those permeated by petty-bourgeois prejudices; therefore, from this very tribune the Communists must carry on their work of propaganda, agitation, organisation, explaining to the masses why the dissolution of the bourgeois parliament, the Constituent Assembly, by the National Congress of Soviets was a legitimate proceeding at the time in Russia (as it will be in all countries in due time). On the other hand, the whole history of bourgeois democracy has made out of parliament, especially in the more advanced countries, the chief or one of the chief means of unbelievable financial and political swindles, and the possibility of making a career out of hypocrisy and the oppression of the workers. Therefore, the deep hatred against all parliaments among the best representatives of the revolutionary proletariat is perfectly justified. Therefore, the Communist Parties, and all parties adhering to the Third International, especially in cases when such parties have become formed not by means of a division in the old parties and after a lasting stubborn struggle against them, but by means of the old parties passing over (often only nominally) to a new position, must be very strict in their attitude towards their parliamentary faction, demanding their complete subordination to the control and the directions of the Central Committee of the party; to include in them mostly revolutionary workers; to carry out at party meetings and in the Party Press a most attentive analysis of the parliamentary speeches, from the point of view of their communist integrity; to detail the M.P.s for propaganda among the masses; to exclude from such factions all those who show a tendency towards the Second International, and so forth.
Not even preliminary preparation of the proletariat for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie is possible without an immediate, systematic, widely-organised and open struggle against the group which undoubtedly – as experience has already proved – will furnish plenty of men for the White Guards of the bourgeoisie after the victory of the proletariat. All the parties adhering to the Third International must at all costs put into practice the motto: ‘Deeper into the masses, in closer contact with the masses,’ understanding by the word ‘masses’ the entire mass of workers and those exploited by capitalism, especially the less organised and enlightened, the most oppressed and least accessible to organisation.
The proletariat becomes revolutionary only in so far as it is not enclosed within narrow craft limits, in so far as it participates in all the events and branches of public life, as a leader of the whole working and exploited mass; and it is completely impossible for it to realise its dictatorship unless it is ready for and capable of the greatest sacrifices for the victory over the bourgeoisie. The experience of Russia in this respect has a theoretical and practical importance. In Russia the proletariat could not have realised its dictatorship, nor ‘acquired’ the respect and confidence of the whole working mass, if it had not borne most of the sacrifices and had not suffered from hunger more than all the other groups in this mass, during the most difficult moments of the onslaught, war and blockade on the part of the world bourgeoisie.
In particular, it is necessary for the Communist party and the whole advanced proletariat to give the most absolute and self-denying support to all the masses in a broad, elemental strike movement, which is alone able, under the yoke of capitalism, to awaken properly, arouse , enlighten and organise the masses, and develop in them a full confidence in the leading role of the revolutionary proletariat. Without such a preparation no dictatorship of the proletariat will be possible, and those who are capable of preaching against strikes, like Kautsky in Germany and Turati in Italy, are not to be suffered in the ranks of parties adhering to the Third International. This concerns still more, naturally, those trade union and parliamentary leaders, who often betray the workmen by teaching them to make the strike an instrument of reformism and not of revolution (Jouhaux in France, Gompers in America, and Thomas in England).
12. For all countries, even for most free ‘legal’ and ‘peaceful’ ones in the sense of a lesser acuteness in the class struggle, the period has arrived when it has become absolutely necessary for every Communist party to combine systematically both legal and illegal work, legal and illegal organisation.
In the most enlightened and free countries, with a most ‘solid’ bourgeois-democratic regime, the governments are systematically recurring, in spite of their false and hypocritical assurances, to the method of keeping secret lists of Communists, to endless violations of their constitutions for the semi-secret and secret support of White Guards and the murder of Communists in all countries, to secret preparations for the arrest of Communists, the introduction of agents provocateurs among the Communists, etc. Only the most reactionary petty bourgeois, by whatever high-sounding ‘democratic’ or pacifist phrases he may disguise his ideas, can dispute this fact or the necessary conclusion – an immediate formation by all lawful Communist Parties of illegal organisations for systematic illegal work, for their complete preparation for the moment bourgeois persecution emerges. It is especially necessary to carry on illegal work in the army, navy and police, as after the imperialist slaughter all the governments in the world are becoming afraid of the national armies, open to all peasants and workmen, and they are setting up in secret all kinds of select military organisations recruited from the bourgeoisie and specially provided with improved technical equipment.
On the other hand, it is also necessary, and in all cases, without exception, not to limit oneself to illegal work, but to carry on also legal work, overcoming all difficulties. founding a legal press and legal organisations under the most diverse and, in case of need, frequently changing, names. This is now being done by the illegal Communist parties in Finland, Hungary, partly in Germany, Poland, Latvia, etc. It is thus that the IWW in America should act, as well as all the legal Communist Parties at present, in case the Public Prosecutor starts prosecutions on the basis of resolutions of the congresses of the Communist International, etc.
The absolute necessity of the principle of both illegal and legal work is determined not only by the total aggregate of all the peculiarities of the given moment, on the very eve of a proletarian dictatorship, but by the necessity of proving to the bourgeoisie that there is not, and cannot be, any branch of the work of which the Communists have not possessed themselves – and still more by the fact that everywhere there are still wide circles of the proletariat and greater ones of the non-proletarian workers and exploited masses, which still trust in bourgeois democracy, and which it is very important for us to convince of the opposite.
13. In particular, the situation of the labour press in the more advanced capitalist countries shows, especially clearly, both the falseness of liberty and equality under bourgeois democracy, and the necessity of a systematic blending of legal and illegal work. Both in vanquished Germany and in victorious America all the power of the governmental apparatus of the bourgeoisie, and all the tricks of its financial kings are being set in motion in order to deprive the workers of their press; prosecutions and arrests (or murder by means of hired murderers) of the editors, prohibition of sending by mail, depriving of paper, etc. Moreover, the information necessary for a daily paper is in the hands of bourgeois telegraph agencies, and the advertisements, without which a large paper cannot pay its way, are at the ‘free’ disposal of capitalists. On the whole, by means of deceit, the pressure of capital and the bourgeois government, the bourgeoisie deprives the revolutionary proletariat of its press.
For the struggle against this state of things the Communist Parties must create a new type of periodical press for extensive circulation among the workers:
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(1) Lawful publications, in which the Communists, without calling themselves such, and without mentioning their connection with the Party, utilize the slightest possibility allowed by the laws, as the Bolsheviks did in the time of the Tsar, after 1905.
(2) Illegal sheets, although of the smallest dimensions and irregularly published, but reproduced in most of the printing offices by the workers (in secret, or if the movement has grown stronger, by means of a revolutionary seizure of the printing offices) and giving the proletariat undiluted revolutionary information and revolutionary slogans.
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Without a revolutionary fight involving the masses for the freedom of the communist press preparation for the dictatorship of the proletariat is impossible.
III – Correction of the policy and partly also of the personnel of the parties adhering or willing to adhere to the Communist International
14. The degree of preparedness of the proletariat to carry out its dictatorship, in the countries most important from the view-point of world economics and world politics, is manifested most objectively and clearly by the fact that the most influential parties of the Second International, the French Socialist Party, the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany, the Independent Labour Party of England, the American Socialist Party, have gone out of this yellow International and have decided conditionally to join the Third International. This proves that not only the advance-guard but the majority of the proletariat has begun to pass over to our side, convinced by the whole course of events. The chief thing now is to know how to complete this passage and solidly, organisationally strengthen what has been achieved, so as to be able to advance along the whole line without the slightest hesitation.
15. The whole activity of the above-mentioned parties (to which must be added the Swiss Socialist Party if the telegraphic reports regarding its resolution to join the Third International are correct) proves – and any given periodical paper of these parties confirms it – that they are not communist as yet, and frequently even are in direct opposition to the fundamental principles of the Third International – namely, the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and of the Soviet system instead of bourgeois democracy.
Therefore, the Second Congress of the Communist International should announce that it does not consider it possible to receive these parties immediately; that it confirms the answer of the Executive Committee of the Third International to the German Independents; that it confirms its readiness to carry on negotiations with any party leaving the Second International and desiring to join the Third; that it reserves the right of a consultative vote to the delegates of such parties at all its Congresses and Conferences, and that it proposes the following conditions for a complete union of these (and similar) parties with the Communist International:
1. The publishing of all the resolutions passed by all the Congresses of the Communist International and by the Executive Committee, in all the periodical publications of the Party.
2. Their discussion at the special meetings of all sections and local organisations of the Party.
3. The convocation, after such a discussion, of a special Congress of the Party to draw up a balance sheet. Such a Congress is to be called together as soon as possible within a period of four months at the most, following the Second Congress.
4. Purging from the Party of all elements who continue to act in the spirit of the Second International.
5. The transfer of all periodical papers of the Party into the hands of communist editors.
6. Those parties which now wish to join the Third International, but which have not yet radically changed their old tactics, must above all take care that two-thirds of their Central Committee and of their chief central institutions consist of such comrades as have publicly spoken out in favour of affiliation to the Third International before the Second Congress. Exceptions can be made only with the sanction of the Executive Committee of the Communist International. The EC also reserves the right of making exceptions with regard to the representatives of the ‘centrist’ tendency mentioned in paragraph 7.
7. Members of the Party who repudiate the conditions and theses adopted by the Communist International must be excluded from the Party. The same applies to delegates of special congresses.
The Second Congress of the Third International charges its Executive Committee to admit the above-named and similar parties into the Third International after a preliminary verification that all these conditions have been fulfilled, and that the nature of the activity of the party has become communist.
16. In regard to the question as to what must be the line of conduct of the Communists (at present constituting the minority) in the responsible posts of the above-named and similar parties, the Second Congress of the Third International has decided that, in view of the rapid development and the revolutionary spirit of the masses, it would be undesirable for the Communists to leave these parties so long as they are able to carry on their work within the parties in the spirit of recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat and of the criticism of all opportunists and ‘centrists’ still remaining in these parties.
When the left wing of the centre party becomes sufficiently strong it can – provided it considers it beneficial for the development of Communism – leave the party in a body and inaugurate a Communist Party.
At the same time, the Second Congress of the Third International must declare itself in favour of the Communist Party, and the groups and organisations sympathising with Communism in England, joining the Labour Party, although this party is a member of the Second International. The reason for this is that so long as this party will allow all constituent organisations their present freedom of criticism and freedom of propaganda, and organisational activity in favour of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the power of Soviets, so long as this party preserves its character as an alliance of all the trade union organisations of the working class, the Communists ought to take all measures, and even consent to certain compromises, in order to be able to exercise an influence over the wider circles of workers and the masses, to denounce their opportunist leaders from a higher platform visible to the masses, to accelerate the transfer of political power from the direct representatives of the bourgeoisie to the ‘labour lieutenants of the capitalist class,’ so that the masses may be more rapidly cured of all illusions on this subject.
17. In regard to the Italian Socialist Party, the Second Congress of the Communist International recognises that the revision of the programme undertaken by this Party at its Congress at Bologna last year represents a very important stage in the transformation to Communism and that the proposals made to the National Council of the Party by the Turin Section and published in the magazine Ordine Nuovo of May 8, 1920 all correspond with the fundamental principles of Communism.
The Congress asks the Italian Socialist Party to examine at its next Congress, which will take place in accordance with its own statutes and the general conditions of entry into the Communist International, the proposals that have been made and all the decisions of the Second Congress of the Communist International, especially with regard to the parliamentary faction, the trades unions and the non-communist elements in the Party.
18. The Second Congress of the Third International considers as not correct the views regarding the relations of the Party to the class and to the masses, and the non-participation of the Communist Parties in bourgeois parliaments and reactionary unions (which have been emphatically repudiated in the special resolutions of the present Congress), which are defended in full by the KAPD and also partially by the ‘Communist Party of Switzerland’, by the organ of the East European secretariat of the Communist International Kommunismus in Vienna, and by several of our Dutch comrades; also by certain Communist organisations in England, as for instance the Workers’ Socialist Federation, and by the IWW in America, the Shop Stewards’ Committees in England, etc.
Nevertheless the Second Congress of the Third International considers possible and desirable the immediate affiliation of such of these organisations which have not already done so officially, because, in all these cases, especially in the cases of the IWW of America and Australia, and the Shop Stewards’ Committees of England, we have to deal with a genuine proletarian mass movement, which practically adheres to the principles of the Communist International. In such organisations any mistaken views on the question of participation in the bourgeois parliaments, are to be explained not so much by the presence of members of the bourgeoisie advocating their own petty bourgeois views, as the views of the anarchists frequently are, but by the political inexperience of proletarians who are, nevertheless, completely revolutionary and in contact with the masses.
The Second Congress of the Communist International requests therefore all the Communist organisations and groups in the Anglo-Saxon countries, even in case immediate union between the Third International and the Industrial Workers of the World and the Shop Stewards’ Committees does not take place, to carry on a policy of the most friendly attitude toward these organisations, and the masses sympathising with them, to explain to them in a friendly way, from the point of view of all revolutions and the three Russian revolutions in the twentieth century especially, the erroneousness of their above-stated views, and not to desist from repeated attempts to become united with these organisations so as to form one Communist Party.
19. In connection with this the Congress draws the attention of all comrades, especially in the Latin and Anglo-Saxon countries, to the fact that among the Anarchists since the war all over the world a deep theoretical division is taking place upon the question of their attitude towards the dictatorship of the proletariat and the power of the Soviets. And it is just among the proletarian elements, which were frequently led into anarchism by their perfectly justified hatred of the opportunism and reformism of the parties of the Second International, that there is to be noticed a perfectly correct understanding of these principles, especially among those who are more nearly acquainted with the experience of Russia, Finland, Hungary, Latvia, Poland and Germany.
The Congress considers it the duty of all comrades to support with all their strength all the masses of proletarian elements passing from anarchism to the Third International. The Congress points out that the success of the work of truly Communist Parties ought to be measured, among other things, by how far they have been able to attract to their party all the mass proletarian elements from anarchism to their side.
Markin comment:
Some anniversaries, like those marking the publication of a book, play or poem, are worthy of remembrance every five, ten, or twenty-five years. Other more world historic events like the remembrance of the Paris Commune of 1871, the Bolshevik Russian Revolution of 1917, and, as here, the founding of the Communist International (also known as the Third International, Comintern, and CI) in 1919 are worthy of yearly attention. Why is that so in the case of the long departed (1943, by Stalin fiat) and, at the end unlamented, Comintern? That is what this year’s remembrance, through CI documentation and other commentary, will attempt to impart on those leftist militants who are serious about studying the lessons of our revolutionary, our communist revolutionary past.
No question that the old injunction of Marx and Engels as early as the Communist Manifesto that the workers of the world needed to unite would have been hollow, and reduced to hortatory holiday speechifying (there was enough of that, as it was) without an organization expression. And they, Marx and Engels, fitfully made their efforts with the all-encompassing pan-working class First International. Later the less all encompassing but still party of the whole class-oriented socialist Second International made important, if limited, contributions to fulfilling that slogan before the advent of world imperialism left its outlook wanting, very wanting.
The Third International thus was created, as mentioned in one of the commentaries in this series, to pick up the fallen banner of international socialism after the betrayals of the Second International. More importantly, it was the first international organization that took upon itself in its early, heroic revolutionary days, at least, the strategic question of how to make, and win, a revolution in the age of world imperialism. The Trotsky-led effort of creating a Fourth International in the 1930s, somewhat stillborn as it turned out to be, nevertheless based itself, correctly, on those early days of the Comintern. So in some of the specific details of the posts in this year’s series, highlighting the 90th anniversary of the Third World Congress this is “just” history, but right underneath, and not far underneath at that, are rich lessons for us to ponder today.
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Markin comment on this post:
As noted in my commentary on the Manifesto of the Second World Congress of the Communist International (1920), reposted below since it also applies to these theses, such documents give the political movement it is addressed to its marching order. In a general sense, at least. These theses codify those general propositions outlined in the manifesto. Note here that this Second Congress took place as the international working class movement was going through a regroupment process right after World War I between the reformist socialists, the emerging communist vanguard, and the bewildered anarchists. Note also the difference in approaches to the more hardened reformist-led socialist parties, and to the ill-formed but more revolutionary-spirited anarchist formations, especially the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, Wobblies) here in America in their good days.
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A manifesto, particularly a political manifesto, and especially a revolutionary communist manifesto like the one that issued out of the historic Second World Congress of the Communist International in 1920 should give a cogent analysis of the world political situation. It should also describe the nature of the period (revolutionary, non-revolutionary, heading toward or away from either, an estimation of the enemy’s capacities, and the obstacles in the way both inside and outside the workers movement (out side the treachery of the liberals and inside the perfidy of the labor bureaucracy resting on the labor bureaucracy). In short, give the international proletariat its marching orders. The Manifesto of the Second World Congress does just those things at a time when the fledgling Communist International was trying to consolidate its vanguard position in the world working class movement. The Communist International then, and for some time after, did yeoman’s work in that regard, not always perfectly but from a revolutionary perspective. Even as it degenerated politically toward the middle and late 1920s there were, as the Leon Trotsky-led International Left Opposition held, reasons, good reasons to adhere to its tenets. Only with the debacle around Hitler’s coming to power in Germany did Trotsky throw in the towel. That seemed right then, and now. I would argue that the Seventh (and last) World Congress in 1935 unquestionably put paid to that notion. We did not need a vanguard national party, or a vanguard revolutionary international party for that matter, to give the lead in the political struggle to the liberal bourgeoisie as the popular frontist politics of the CI proclaimed from that time onward (with a few “left” turns). There was an international for that “strategy”, or rather a mail-drop address, it was (is) called the Second International.
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Minutes of the Second Congress of the Communist International: Theses
Theses on the Fundamental Tasks of the Communist International
1. A characteristic feature of the present moment in the development of the international Communist movement is the fact that in all capitalist countries the best representatives of the revolutionary proletariat have completely understood the fundamental principles of the Communist International – namely, the dictatorship of the proletariat and the power of the Soviet – and with a loyal enthusiasm have placed themselves on the side of the Communist International. A still more important and still greater step forward is the completely clear and unlimited sympathy with these principles manifested by the wider masses, not only of the proletariat of the towns, but also by the advanced portion of the agrarian workers.
On the other hand two mistakes or weaknesses have shown them selves in the Communist movement, in spite of its extraordinary and rapid increase. One, very serious and a direct threat to the liberation of the proletariat, consists’ in the fact that a section of the old leaders and old parties of the Second International, partly unconsciously yielding to the wishes and pressure of the masses, partly consciously deceiving them, in order to preserve their former role of agents and supporters of the bourgeoisie inside the Labour movement, are declaring a conditional or even unconditional – affiliation to the Third International, while remaining, in reality, in the whole practice of their party and political work, on the level of the Second International. Such a state of things is absolutely inadmissible, because it demoralises the masses, hinders the development of a strong Communist Party, and lowers their respect for the Third International by threatening repetition of such betrayals as that of the Hungarian Social-Democrats, who so facilely assumed the disguise of Communists. The second, much less important mistake, which is for the most part a malady inherent to the growth of the movement, is the tendency to be ‘on the extreme Left,’ which leads to an erroneous evaluation of the role and duties of the party with respect to the class and to the mass, and a denial of the obligation of the revolutionary Communists to work in bourgeois parliaments and reactionary trades unions.
The duty of the Communists is not to gloss over any of the weaknesses of their movement, but to criticise them openly, in order to get rid of them promptly and radically. To this end it is necessary (1) to establish concretely, on the basis of the practical experience already acquired, the meaning of the terms: ‘Dictatorship of the Proletariat’ and ‘Soviet System'; and (2) to point out in what could and should consist in all countries the immediate and systematic preparatory work for realising these slogans; and (3) to indicate the means of curing our movement of its defects.
I. – The meaning of the dictatorship of the proletariat and of the soviet system
2. The victory of Socialism over capitalism – as the first step to Communism – demands the accomplishment of the three following tasks by the proletariat, as the only really revolutionary class:
The first is to lay low the exploiters, and first of all the bourgeoisie as their chief economic. and political representative, to defeat them completely, to crush their resistance, to render impossible any attempts on their part to reimpose the yoke of capitalism and wage-slavery.
The second is to inspire, and lead in the footsteps of the revolutionary advance-guard of the proletariat (the Communist Party) not only the whole proletariat or its large majority, but the entire mass of workers and those exploited by capital; to enlighten, organise, instruct and discipline them during the course of the bold and merciless struggle against the exploiters; to wrench this enormous majority of the population in all the capitalist countries out of their state of dependence on the bourgeoisie; to instil in them, through practical experience, confidence in the leading role of the proletariat and its revolutionary advance guard.
The third is to neutralise or render harmless the inevitable fluctuations between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, between bourgeois democracy and the Soviet system, on the part of that rather numerous class in all advanced countries – although constituting a minority of the population – the small owners and proprietors in agriculture, industry, commerce, and the corresponding strata of intellectuals, white-collar workers, and so on.
The first and second tasks are independent ones, demanding each its special methods of action in respect to the exploiters and to the exploited. The third task results from the two first, demanding only a skilful, timely, supple combination of the methods of the first and second depending on the concrete circumstances of each separate case of fluctuation.
3. Under the circumstances which have been created in the whole world, and most of all in the most advanced, powerful, enlightened and free capitalist countries by militarist imperialism, oppression of colonies and the weaker nations, by the universal imperialist slaughter, and the ‘peace’ of Versailles, to admit the idea of a voluntary submission of the capitalists to the will of the majority of the exploited – of a peaceful, reformist passage to Socialism – is not only to give proof of an extreme petty-bourgeois dullheadedness, but it is direct deception of the workers, a disguising of capitalist wage-slavery, a concealment of the truth. This truth consists in the fact that the bourgeoisie, the most enlightened and democratic bourgeoisie, is even now not hesitating at deceit and crime, at the slaughter of millions of workmen and peasants, for the retention of the right of private ownership over the means of production. Only a violent defeat of the bourgeoisie, the confiscation of its property, the annihilation of the entire bourgeois government apparatus, from top to bottom, parliamentary, judicial, military, bureaucratic, administrative, municipal, etc., up to the individual exile or internment of the most stubborn and dangerous exploiters, the establishment of a strict control over them for the repressing of all inevitable attempts at resistance and restoration of capitalist slavery – only such measures will be able to guarantee the complete submission of the whole class of exploiters.
It is the same camouflage of capitalism and bourgeois democracy, the same deception of the workers when the old parties and old leaders of the Second International suggest that the majority of the workers and exploited will be able to acquire a clear socialist consciousness, firm socialist convictions and character under the conditions of capitalist enslavement, under the yoke of the bourgeoisie, which assumes an endless variety of forms – the more refined, and at the same time the more cruel and pitiless in the more cultured capitalist nations. In reality it is only when the advanced guard of the proletariat, supported by the whole class, or a majority of it, has overthrown the exploiters, crushed them, freed all the exploited from their position of slaves, improved their conditions of life immediately at the expense of the expropriated capitalists – only after that, and during the very course of the acute class struggle, will it be possible to realise the enlightenment, education and organisation of the widest masses of workers and exploited, under the influence and direction of the communists, to cure them of their egotism, their non-solidarity, their vices and weaknesses engendered by private ownership, and to transform them into a free association of free workers.
4. In order to win victory over capitalism it is necessary to have the right mutual relations between the Communist Party as leader, the revolutionary class, the proletariat, on the one hand and the masses, that is all of the toilers and the exploited, on the other. Only the Communist party, if it is really the advanced guard of the revolutionary class, if it includes the best representatives of the class, if it consists of perfectly conscious and loyal Communists, enlightened and tempered by the experience gained in the stubborn revolutionary struggle – if this party is able to become bound indissolubly with the entire life of its class, and through the latter with the whole mass of the exploited, and to inspire full confidence in this class and this mass, only such a party is capable of leading the proletariat in the most pitiless decisive last struggle against all the forces of capitalism.
On the other hand, only under the leadership of such a party will the proletariat be able to employ all the force of its revolutionary onslaught which is immeasurably smaller than the proportion of proletarians in the population in capitalist society as a result of its economic structure, nullifying the inevitable apathy and partial resistance of the insignificant minority of the demoralised labour aristocracy, the old Trade Union leaders, etc. Only then will the proletariat be able to display its power, which is immeasurably greater than its share in the population, by reason of the economic organisation of capitalist society itself.
Lastly, only when in practice freed from the yoke of the bourgeoisie and the bourgeois state apparatus, only after acquiring the possibility of organising into its own Soviets , free from all capitalist exploitation, will the mass – i.e., the whole of the workers and exploited – employ for the first time in history all the initiative and energy of tens of millions of people, formerly crushed by capitalism. Only when the Soviets become the only State apparatus will effectual participation m the administration be realised for the entire mass of the exploited, who even under the most cultured and free bourgeois democracy remained ninety per cent excluded from participation in the administration. Only in the Soviets does the mass really begin to study, not out of books, but out of its own practical experience, the work of Socialist construction, the creation of a new social discipline, a free union of free workers.
II – In what should the immediate preparation for dictatorship of the proletariat everywhere consist?
5. The present moment in the development of the International Communist movement is characterized by the fact that in a great majority of capitalist countries the preparation of the proletariat to the realisation of its dictatorship is incomplete. Very often it has not even been begun systematically. It does not follow that the proletarian revolution is not possible in the most immediate future; it is quite possible, because the economic and political situation is extraordinarily rich in inflammable material; sparks to light it. The other condition of a revolution, besides the preparedness of the proletariat, namely, the general state of crisis in all the ruling and all the bourgeois parties, is also at hand. But it follows from the above that the duty for the moment of the Communist Parties consists in accelerating the revolution, without provoking it artificially until sufficient preparation has been made. The preparedness of the proletariat for the revolution must be advanced by deeds. On the other hand, the above instance in the history of many Socialist parties, draws our attention to the fact that the ‘recognition’ of the dictatorship of the proletariat should not remain only verbal.
Therefore, the principal duty of the Communist parties, from the point of view of the international proletarian movement, is at the present moment the uniting of the dispersed Communist forces, the formation in each country of a single Communist Party (or the strengthening and renovation of the already existing one) in order to assist in the work of preparing the proletariat for the conquest of state power in the form of the dictatorship of the proletariat. The socialist work usually done by groups and parties which recognise the dictatorship of the proletariat has not yet by a long way been subjected to the radical strengthening and renewal which is essential if it is to be regarded as Communist work corresponding to the tasks on the eve of the proletarian dictatorship.
6. The conquest of political power by the proletariat does not Put a stop to its class struggle against the bourgeoisie; on the contrary, it makes the struggle particularly widespread, acute and pitiless. All the groups, parties, leaders of the labour movement, fully or partially on the side of reformism, the ‘Centre,’ and so on, turn inevitably, during the most acute moments of the struggle, either to the side of the bourgeoisie or to that of the waverers, or, most dangerous, add to the number of the unreliable friends of the victorious proletariat. Therefore, the preparation of the dictatorship of the proletariat demands not only an increased struggle against all reformist and ‘Centrist’ tendencies, but a modification of the nature of this struggle.
The struggle should not be limited by an explanation of the erroneousness of such tendencies, but it should stubbornly and mercilessly denounce any leader in the Labour movement who may be manifesting such tendencies, otherwise the proletariat will not know whom it must trust in the most decisive struggle against the bourgeoisie. This struggle is such that at any moment it may replace, and has replaced, as experience has proved, the weapon of criticism by the criticism of the weapon. The least inconsistency or weakness in the denunciation of those who show themselves to be reformists or ‘Centrists,’ means a direct increase of the danger of the power of the proletariat being over-thrown by the bourgeoisie, which will, tomorrow, utilise in favour of the counter-revolution everything which today appears to short-sighted people only as a ‘theoretical difference of opinion.'
7. In particular, one cannot stop at the usual abstract refutation of all ‘collaboration’ between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.
The mere defence of ‘liberty and equality,’ under the condition of preserving the right of private ownership of the means of production, becomes transformed under the conditions of the dictatorship of the proletariat – which will never be able to suppress completely all private ownership – into a ‘collaboration’ with the bourgeoisie, which undermines directly the power of the working class. The dictatorship of the proletariat means the strengthening and defence, by means of the ruling power of the State, of the ‘non-liberty’ of the exploiter to continue his work of oppression and exploitation, the ‘inequality’ of the proprietor (i.e., of the person who has taken for himself personally the means of production created by social labour) with the propertyless. That which, before the victory of the proletariat, seems but a theoretical difference of opinion on the question of ‘democracy,’ becomes inevitably on the morrow, after the victory, a question which can only be decided by force of arms. Consequently, without a radical modification of the whole nature of the struggle against the ‘centrists’ and ‘democrats,’ even a preliminary preparation of the mass for the realisation of a dictatorship of the proletariat is impossible.
8. The dictatorship of the proletariat is the most decisive form of class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Such a struggle can be successful only when the most revolutionary advance-guard of the proletariat leads the huge majority of it. The preparation of the dictatorship of the proletariat demands, therefore, not only the explanation of the bourgeois nature of all reformism and all defence of ‘democracy,’ which preserves the private ownership of the means of production; not only the denunciation of such tendencies, which in practice mean the defence of the bourgeoisie inside the Labour movement – but it demands also the replacing of the old leaders by Communists in all kinds of proletarian organisations, not only political, but industrial, co-operative, educational, etc. The more lasting, complete and solid the rule of the bourgeois democracy has been in any country, the more has it been possible for the bourgeoisie to appoint as labour leaders men who have been educated by it, imbued with its views and prejudices and very frequently, directly or indirectly, bribed by it. It is necessary to remove all these representatives of the labour aristocracy, or of the bourgeoisified workers, from their posts and replace them by even inexperienced workers, so long as these are in unity with the exploited masses, and enj oy the latter’s confidence in the struggle against the exploiters. The dictatorship of the proletariat will demand the appointment of such inexperienced workmen to the most responsible State functions, otherwise the workers’ government will be powerless and it will not have the support of the masses.
9. The dictatorship of the proletariat is the most complete realisation of a leadership of all workers and exploited, who have been oppressed, beaten down, crushed, intimidated, dispersed, deceived by the class of capitalists, by the only class prepared for such a leading role by the whole history of capitalism. Therefore, the preparation of the dictatorship of the proletariat must be begun immediately and in all places by means of the following methods, among others: –
In every organisation, union or association without exception beginning with the proletarian ones at first, and afterwards in all those of the non-proletarian workers and exploited masses (political, professional, military, co-operative, educational, sporting, etc.) must be formed groups or nuclei of Communists – mostly open ones, but also secret ones which become necessary in each case when the arrest or exile of their members or the dispersal of the organisation is threatened. These nuclei, in close contact with one another and with the Central Party, exchanging experiences, carrying on the work of propaganda, campaign, organisation, adapting themselves to an the branches of social life, to all the various forms and subdivisions of the working masses, must systematically train themselves, the party, the class and the masses by such many-sided work.
At the same time it is most important to work out practically the necessary methods on the one hand in respect to the ‘leaders’ or responsible representatives, who are very frequently hopelessly infected with petty bourgeois and imperialist prejudices – these ‘leaders’ must be mercilessly exposed and driven from the labour movement; on the other hand, with respect to the masses who, especially after the imperialist slaughter, are mostly inclined to listen to and accept the doctrine of the necessity of the rule of the proletariat as the only way out of capitalist enslavement. The masses must be approached with patience and caution, and with an understanding of the peculiarities, the special psychology of each layer or profession.
10. In particular one. of the groups or nuclei of the Communists deserves the exclusive attention and care of the party, namely, the parliamentary faction, i.e., the group of members of the party who are members of bourgeois representative institutions (first of all in state institutions, then local, municipal and others). On the one hand, such a tribune has a special importance in the eyes of the wider circles of the backward toiling masses or those permeated by petty-bourgeois prejudices; therefore, from this very tribune the Communists must carry on their work of propaganda, agitation, organisation, explaining to the masses why the dissolution of the bourgeois parliament, the Constituent Assembly, by the National Congress of Soviets was a legitimate proceeding at the time in Russia (as it will be in all countries in due time). On the other hand, the whole history of bourgeois democracy has made out of parliament, especially in the more advanced countries, the chief or one of the chief means of unbelievable financial and political swindles, and the possibility of making a career out of hypocrisy and the oppression of the workers. Therefore, the deep hatred against all parliaments among the best representatives of the revolutionary proletariat is perfectly justified. Therefore, the Communist Parties, and all parties adhering to the Third International, especially in cases when such parties have become formed not by means of a division in the old parties and after a lasting stubborn struggle against them, but by means of the old parties passing over (often only nominally) to a new position, must be very strict in their attitude towards their parliamentary faction, demanding their complete subordination to the control and the directions of the Central Committee of the party; to include in them mostly revolutionary workers; to carry out at party meetings and in the Party Press a most attentive analysis of the parliamentary speeches, from the point of view of their communist integrity; to detail the M.P.s for propaganda among the masses; to exclude from such factions all those who show a tendency towards the Second International, and so forth.
Not even preliminary preparation of the proletariat for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie is possible without an immediate, systematic, widely-organised and open struggle against the group which undoubtedly – as experience has already proved – will furnish plenty of men for the White Guards of the bourgeoisie after the victory of the proletariat. All the parties adhering to the Third International must at all costs put into practice the motto: ‘Deeper into the masses, in closer contact with the masses,’ understanding by the word ‘masses’ the entire mass of workers and those exploited by capitalism, especially the less organised and enlightened, the most oppressed and least accessible to organisation.
The proletariat becomes revolutionary only in so far as it is not enclosed within narrow craft limits, in so far as it participates in all the events and branches of public life, as a leader of the whole working and exploited mass; and it is completely impossible for it to realise its dictatorship unless it is ready for and capable of the greatest sacrifices for the victory over the bourgeoisie. The experience of Russia in this respect has a theoretical and practical importance. In Russia the proletariat could not have realised its dictatorship, nor ‘acquired’ the respect and confidence of the whole working mass, if it had not borne most of the sacrifices and had not suffered from hunger more than all the other groups in this mass, during the most difficult moments of the onslaught, war and blockade on the part of the world bourgeoisie.
In particular, it is necessary for the Communist party and the whole advanced proletariat to give the most absolute and self-denying support to all the masses in a broad, elemental strike movement, which is alone able, under the yoke of capitalism, to awaken properly, arouse , enlighten and organise the masses, and develop in them a full confidence in the leading role of the revolutionary proletariat. Without such a preparation no dictatorship of the proletariat will be possible, and those who are capable of preaching against strikes, like Kautsky in Germany and Turati in Italy, are not to be suffered in the ranks of parties adhering to the Third International. This concerns still more, naturally, those trade union and parliamentary leaders, who often betray the workmen by teaching them to make the strike an instrument of reformism and not of revolution (Jouhaux in France, Gompers in America, and Thomas in England).
12. For all countries, even for most free ‘legal’ and ‘peaceful’ ones in the sense of a lesser acuteness in the class struggle, the period has arrived when it has become absolutely necessary for every Communist party to combine systematically both legal and illegal work, legal and illegal organisation.
In the most enlightened and free countries, with a most ‘solid’ bourgeois-democratic regime, the governments are systematically recurring, in spite of their false and hypocritical assurances, to the method of keeping secret lists of Communists, to endless violations of their constitutions for the semi-secret and secret support of White Guards and the murder of Communists in all countries, to secret preparations for the arrest of Communists, the introduction of agents provocateurs among the Communists, etc. Only the most reactionary petty bourgeois, by whatever high-sounding ‘democratic’ or pacifist phrases he may disguise his ideas, can dispute this fact or the necessary conclusion – an immediate formation by all lawful Communist Parties of illegal organisations for systematic illegal work, for their complete preparation for the moment bourgeois persecution emerges. It is especially necessary to carry on illegal work in the army, navy and police, as after the imperialist slaughter all the governments in the world are becoming afraid of the national armies, open to all peasants and workmen, and they are setting up in secret all kinds of select military organisations recruited from the bourgeoisie and specially provided with improved technical equipment.
On the other hand, it is also necessary, and in all cases, without exception, not to limit oneself to illegal work, but to carry on also legal work, overcoming all difficulties. founding a legal press and legal organisations under the most diverse and, in case of need, frequently changing, names. This is now being done by the illegal Communist parties in Finland, Hungary, partly in Germany, Poland, Latvia, etc. It is thus that the IWW in America should act, as well as all the legal Communist Parties at present, in case the Public Prosecutor starts prosecutions on the basis of resolutions of the congresses of the Communist International, etc.
The absolute necessity of the principle of both illegal and legal work is determined not only by the total aggregate of all the peculiarities of the given moment, on the very eve of a proletarian dictatorship, but by the necessity of proving to the bourgeoisie that there is not, and cannot be, any branch of the work of which the Communists have not possessed themselves – and still more by the fact that everywhere there are still wide circles of the proletariat and greater ones of the non-proletarian workers and exploited masses, which still trust in bourgeois democracy, and which it is very important for us to convince of the opposite.
13. In particular, the situation of the labour press in the more advanced capitalist countries shows, especially clearly, both the falseness of liberty and equality under bourgeois democracy, and the necessity of a systematic blending of legal and illegal work. Both in vanquished Germany and in victorious America all the power of the governmental apparatus of the bourgeoisie, and all the tricks of its financial kings are being set in motion in order to deprive the workers of their press; prosecutions and arrests (or murder by means of hired murderers) of the editors, prohibition of sending by mail, depriving of paper, etc. Moreover, the information necessary for a daily paper is in the hands of bourgeois telegraph agencies, and the advertisements, without which a large paper cannot pay its way, are at the ‘free’ disposal of capitalists. On the whole, by means of deceit, the pressure of capital and the bourgeois government, the bourgeoisie deprives the revolutionary proletariat of its press.
For the struggle against this state of things the Communist Parties must create a new type of periodical press for extensive circulation among the workers:
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(1) Lawful publications, in which the Communists, without calling themselves such, and without mentioning their connection with the Party, utilize the slightest possibility allowed by the laws, as the Bolsheviks did in the time of the Tsar, after 1905.
(2) Illegal sheets, although of the smallest dimensions and irregularly published, but reproduced in most of the printing offices by the workers (in secret, or if the movement has grown stronger, by means of a revolutionary seizure of the printing offices) and giving the proletariat undiluted revolutionary information and revolutionary slogans.
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Without a revolutionary fight involving the masses for the freedom of the communist press preparation for the dictatorship of the proletariat is impossible.
III – Correction of the policy and partly also of the personnel of the parties adhering or willing to adhere to the Communist International
14. The degree of preparedness of the proletariat to carry out its dictatorship, in the countries most important from the view-point of world economics and world politics, is manifested most objectively and clearly by the fact that the most influential parties of the Second International, the French Socialist Party, the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany, the Independent Labour Party of England, the American Socialist Party, have gone out of this yellow International and have decided conditionally to join the Third International. This proves that not only the advance-guard but the majority of the proletariat has begun to pass over to our side, convinced by the whole course of events. The chief thing now is to know how to complete this passage and solidly, organisationally strengthen what has been achieved, so as to be able to advance along the whole line without the slightest hesitation.
15. The whole activity of the above-mentioned parties (to which must be added the Swiss Socialist Party if the telegraphic reports regarding its resolution to join the Third International are correct) proves – and any given periodical paper of these parties confirms it – that they are not communist as yet, and frequently even are in direct opposition to the fundamental principles of the Third International – namely, the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and of the Soviet system instead of bourgeois democracy.
Therefore, the Second Congress of the Communist International should announce that it does not consider it possible to receive these parties immediately; that it confirms the answer of the Executive Committee of the Third International to the German Independents; that it confirms its readiness to carry on negotiations with any party leaving the Second International and desiring to join the Third; that it reserves the right of a consultative vote to the delegates of such parties at all its Congresses and Conferences, and that it proposes the following conditions for a complete union of these (and similar) parties with the Communist International:
1. The publishing of all the resolutions passed by all the Congresses of the Communist International and by the Executive Committee, in all the periodical publications of the Party.
2. Their discussion at the special meetings of all sections and local organisations of the Party.
3. The convocation, after such a discussion, of a special Congress of the Party to draw up a balance sheet. Such a Congress is to be called together as soon as possible within a period of four months at the most, following the Second Congress.
4. Purging from the Party of all elements who continue to act in the spirit of the Second International.
5. The transfer of all periodical papers of the Party into the hands of communist editors.
6. Those parties which now wish to join the Third International, but which have not yet radically changed their old tactics, must above all take care that two-thirds of their Central Committee and of their chief central institutions consist of such comrades as have publicly spoken out in favour of affiliation to the Third International before the Second Congress. Exceptions can be made only with the sanction of the Executive Committee of the Communist International. The EC also reserves the right of making exceptions with regard to the representatives of the ‘centrist’ tendency mentioned in paragraph 7.
7. Members of the Party who repudiate the conditions and theses adopted by the Communist International must be excluded from the Party. The same applies to delegates of special congresses.
The Second Congress of the Third International charges its Executive Committee to admit the above-named and similar parties into the Third International after a preliminary verification that all these conditions have been fulfilled, and that the nature of the activity of the party has become communist.
16. In regard to the question as to what must be the line of conduct of the Communists (at present constituting the minority) in the responsible posts of the above-named and similar parties, the Second Congress of the Third International has decided that, in view of the rapid development and the revolutionary spirit of the masses, it would be undesirable for the Communists to leave these parties so long as they are able to carry on their work within the parties in the spirit of recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat and of the criticism of all opportunists and ‘centrists’ still remaining in these parties.
When the left wing of the centre party becomes sufficiently strong it can – provided it considers it beneficial for the development of Communism – leave the party in a body and inaugurate a Communist Party.
At the same time, the Second Congress of the Third International must declare itself in favour of the Communist Party, and the groups and organisations sympathising with Communism in England, joining the Labour Party, although this party is a member of the Second International. The reason for this is that so long as this party will allow all constituent organisations their present freedom of criticism and freedom of propaganda, and organisational activity in favour of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the power of Soviets, so long as this party preserves its character as an alliance of all the trade union organisations of the working class, the Communists ought to take all measures, and even consent to certain compromises, in order to be able to exercise an influence over the wider circles of workers and the masses, to denounce their opportunist leaders from a higher platform visible to the masses, to accelerate the transfer of political power from the direct representatives of the bourgeoisie to the ‘labour lieutenants of the capitalist class,’ so that the masses may be more rapidly cured of all illusions on this subject.
17. In regard to the Italian Socialist Party, the Second Congress of the Communist International recognises that the revision of the programme undertaken by this Party at its Congress at Bologna last year represents a very important stage in the transformation to Communism and that the proposals made to the National Council of the Party by the Turin Section and published in the magazine Ordine Nuovo of May 8, 1920 all correspond with the fundamental principles of Communism.
The Congress asks the Italian Socialist Party to examine at its next Congress, which will take place in accordance with its own statutes and the general conditions of entry into the Communist International, the proposals that have been made and all the decisions of the Second Congress of the Communist International, especially with regard to the parliamentary faction, the trades unions and the non-communist elements in the Party.
18. The Second Congress of the Third International considers as not correct the views regarding the relations of the Party to the class and to the masses, and the non-participation of the Communist Parties in bourgeois parliaments and reactionary unions (which have been emphatically repudiated in the special resolutions of the present Congress), which are defended in full by the KAPD and also partially by the ‘Communist Party of Switzerland’, by the organ of the East European secretariat of the Communist International Kommunismus in Vienna, and by several of our Dutch comrades; also by certain Communist organisations in England, as for instance the Workers’ Socialist Federation, and by the IWW in America, the Shop Stewards’ Committees in England, etc.
Nevertheless the Second Congress of the Third International considers possible and desirable the immediate affiliation of such of these organisations which have not already done so officially, because, in all these cases, especially in the cases of the IWW of America and Australia, and the Shop Stewards’ Committees of England, we have to deal with a genuine proletarian mass movement, which practically adheres to the principles of the Communist International. In such organisations any mistaken views on the question of participation in the bourgeois parliaments, are to be explained not so much by the presence of members of the bourgeoisie advocating their own petty bourgeois views, as the views of the anarchists frequently are, but by the political inexperience of proletarians who are, nevertheless, completely revolutionary and in contact with the masses.
The Second Congress of the Communist International requests therefore all the Communist organisations and groups in the Anglo-Saxon countries, even in case immediate union between the Third International and the Industrial Workers of the World and the Shop Stewards’ Committees does not take place, to carry on a policy of the most friendly attitude toward these organisations, and the masses sympathising with them, to explain to them in a friendly way, from the point of view of all revolutions and the three Russian revolutions in the twentieth century especially, the erroneousness of their above-stated views, and not to desist from repeated attempts to become united with these organisations so as to form one Communist Party.
19. In connection with this the Congress draws the attention of all comrades, especially in the Latin and Anglo-Saxon countries, to the fact that among the Anarchists since the war all over the world a deep theoretical division is taking place upon the question of their attitude towards the dictatorship of the proletariat and the power of the Soviets. And it is just among the proletarian elements, which were frequently led into anarchism by their perfectly justified hatred of the opportunism and reformism of the parties of the Second International, that there is to be noticed a perfectly correct understanding of these principles, especially among those who are more nearly acquainted with the experience of Russia, Finland, Hungary, Latvia, Poland and Germany.
The Congress considers it the duty of all comrades to support with all their strength all the masses of proletarian elements passing from anarchism to the Third International. The Congress points out that the success of the work of truly Communist Parties ought to be measured, among other things, by how far they have been able to attract to their party all the mass proletarian elements from anarchism to their side.
On The Congressional Anti-War Front- From UJP-Congress Votes 321 to 93 to Continue Afghanistan War
Markin comment:
At this rate of Congressional understanding on the No to the war budget question the Afghan war should be defunded by the Greek calends. Remember that when you think, even for one minute, a minute of weakness to be sure, that anything but fighting the anti-war struggle any place but in the streets, the workplace and the classroom is going to bring this liberal president's damn war to an end.
*****
Congress Votes 321 to 93 to Continue Afghanistan War
Submitted by ujpadmin1 on Thu, 03/17/2011 - 10:16pm.
March 17 - Rep. Dennis Kucinich won 93 votes today for a measure to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan by the end of the year, while 321 representatives voted to continue the war. The 93 who voted yes was an increase from 65 for a similar measure a year ago.
Nine of ten Massachusetts House members voted for the Kucinich resolution. Only Rep. Lynch, who represents the district that stretches from Boston through Needham to Brockton, voted no.
Only nine Republicans voted yes (up from five last year), but CBS News reported that "the discussion over major points of contention today -- such whether the cost of the war is worth it, or whether it's necessary for U.S. security -- took place largely between Republicans in favor of the war and the growing GOP contingent questioning operations in Afghanistan."
At this rate of Congressional understanding on the No to the war budget question the Afghan war should be defunded by the Greek calends. Remember that when you think, even for one minute, a minute of weakness to be sure, that anything but fighting the anti-war struggle any place but in the streets, the workplace and the classroom is going to bring this liberal president's damn war to an end.
*****
Congress Votes 321 to 93 to Continue Afghanistan War
Submitted by ujpadmin1 on Thu, 03/17/2011 - 10:16pm.
March 17 - Rep. Dennis Kucinich won 93 votes today for a measure to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan by the end of the year, while 321 representatives voted to continue the war. The 93 who voted yes was an increase from 65 for a similar measure a year ago.
Nine of ten Massachusetts House members voted for the Kucinich resolution. Only Rep. Lynch, who represents the district that stretches from Boston through Needham to Brockton, voted no.
Only nine Republicans voted yes (up from five last year), but CBS News reported that "the discussion over major points of contention today -- such whether the cost of the war is worth it, or whether it's necessary for U.S. security -- took place largely between Republicans in favor of the war and the growing GOP contingent questioning operations in Afghanistan."
Lies, Damn Lies, and Humanitarian Intervention - by Stephen Lendman
Lies, Damn Lies, and Humanitarian Intervention
by Stephen Lendman
Email: lendmanstephen (nospam) sbcglobal.net (verified) 22 Mar 2011
naked aggression
Lies, Damn Lies, and Humanitarian Intervention - by Stephen Lendman
Masquerading as "humanitarian intervention," Washington launched full-force barbarism on six million Libyans, all endangered by America's latest intervention. More on how below.
Beginning March 19, it was visible. However, months of planning preceded it, including US and UK special forces and intelligence operatives on the ground enlisting, inciting, funding, arming and supporting violent insurrection to oust Gaddafi and replace him with a Washington-controlled puppet like in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
The scrip is familiar, playing out now in Libya - full-scale "imperial barbarism," a term James Petras used in a September 2010 article titled, "Imperialism and Imperial Barbarism," saying:
"The organizing principle of imperial barbarism is the idea of total war," including:
-- use of mass destruction weapons, unleashed on Libya as explained below;
-- targeting the entire country and society; and
-- dismantling "the entire civil and military apparatus of the state," replacing it with "colonial officials, paid mercenaries and unscrupulous and corrupt satraps" - puppets, figures As'ad AbuKhalil calls "useful idiots."
Moreover, as Petras explains:
"The entire modern professional class is targeted (and) replaced by retrograde religious-ethnic clans and gangs, susceptible to bribes and booty-shares. All existing modern civil society organizations are pulverized and replaced by crony-plunderers linked to the colonial regime. The entire economy is" disrupted by "shock and awe" bombings and ground attacks, affecting essential civilian infrastructure on the pretext of destroying military and "dual use" targets.
As a result, mass casualties follow, many post-conflict from disease, homelessness, starvation, depravation, and environmental contamination. All wars are ugly, especially modern ones Washington wages, unleashing full force human and overall destruction, mostly affecting noncombatant men, women and children - imperialism's hidden victims.
Already, unknown hundreds of Libyans have been killed, wounded, or disabled, besides countless numbers affected overall. Expect much worse ahead, including violent, US-backed proxy insurgence, perhaps later joined by Pentagon troops if current air and ground attacks don't accomplish "Operation Odyssey Dawn's" objectives.
UN Resolution 1973
Claiming authority under the UN Charter's Article VII, it, in fact, violates Article 51, stating:
"Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defense shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security."
Effectively, UN Resolution 1973 authorized war, not peace. Moreover, it denied a sitting government, despotic or otherwise, the right of self-defense. A Western-backed insurgency initiated attacks, permitting a head of state to respond.
Further, the UN Charter explains under what conditions intervention, violence and coercion are justified. None exist in Libya.
In addition, Article 2(3) and Article 33(1) require peaceful settlement of international disputes, not "shock and awe" attacks. Article 2(4), in fact, prohibits force or its threatened use, including no-fly zones that are acts of war.
Further, Articles 2(3), 2(4), and 33 absolutely prohibit any unilateral or other external threat or use of force not specifically allowed under Article 51 or otherwise authorized by the Security Council - that may not violate its own Charter. In fact, Washington bullied enough members to do so, planning naked aggression in response.
Ostensibly to protect civilians, Resolution 1973's paragraph 4 authorized Member States "to take all necessary measures...." As a result, a giant interventionist loophole was created they knew Washington would exploit.
Under paragraph 6, moreover, "establish(ing) a ban on all flights in the airspace of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya in order to help protect civilians," in fact, harms them by US "shock and awe" attacks.
Further, paragraph 7's authorization for "flights whose sole purpose is humanitarian" denies them because Pentagon-controlled airspace will destroy any encountered Libyan aircraft, claiming it hostile, not delivering food, medical or other essential supplies or personnel.
In addition, supplying insurgents with weapons and munitions violates paragraph 13, "Call(ing) upon Member States, in particular States of the region, acting nationally or through regional organisations or arrangements, in order to ensure strict implementation of the arms embargo established by paragraphs 9 and 10 of resolution 1970 (2011), to inspect in their territory, including seaports and airports, and on the high seas, vessels and aircraft bound to or from" Libya.
In fact, besides covertly supplying its own weapons, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and perhaps other regional and/or NATO countries are arming insurgents, at the behest of Washington - violating Resolution 1973.
As a result, Libyans are at the mercy of US imperial aggression, disdaining all international laws, principles and standards. At war, Washington causes mass casualties and destruction. Now begun, expect much more ahead.
In addition, "coalition" participation is fig leaf cover for US aggression. AFRICOM's General Carter Ham has full command authority, directing UK, French and other belligerent partners, besides America's full air, sea and ground might.
Expect protracted conflict, perhaps "boots on the ground," putting a lie to Obama's promise for "humanitarian intervention" to end in "a matter of days, not weeks." Already, insurgency has been ongoing for weeks, perhaps months covertly, the worst yet to come, but already conditions are bad. They always are when Washington arrives.
Weapons of Mass Destruction Used
Since the 1991 Gulf War, Washington used nuclear weapons covertly - in depleted uranium (DU) form. Contaminating exposure is deadly. All US missiles, bombs, and shells have solid DU projectiles or warheads in them. Even bullets because in all forms, DU-tipped munitions easily penetrate armor, irradiating air, ground and water when used. DU, in fact, painfully kills from later contracted illnesses and diseases, including cancer and many others.
When weaponized DU strikes, it penetrates deeply, aerosolizing into a fine spray which then contaminates wide areas. Moreover, its residue is permanent. Its microscopic/submicroscopic particles remain suspended in air or swept into it from contaminated soil.
Atmospheric winds then carry it far distances as a radioactive component of atmospheric dust, falling indiscriminately to earth and water. Virtually every known illness and disease may result from severe headaches, muscle pain and general fatigue, to major birth defects, infection, depression, cardiovascular disease, many types of cancer and brain tumors. As a result, permanent disability or death may follow.
Moreover, DU use is illegal under international law. Although no specific convention or treaty bans radioactive weapons, including DU, they're, in fact, illegal de facto and de jure under the Hague Convention of 1907, prohibiting use of any "poison or poisoned weapons."
In all forms, DU is radioactive and chemically toxic, thus fitting the definition of poisonous weapons Hague banned. America is a signatory. As a result, DU weapons use for any purpose violates international law. Moreover, all DU weapons meet the U.S. federal code WMD definition in 2 out of 3 categories:
The US CODE, TITLE 50, CHAPTER 40, SECTION 2302 defines a Weapon of Mass Destruction as follows:
"The term 'weapon of mass destruction' means any weapon or device that is intended, or has the capability, to cause death or serious bodily injury to a significant number of people through the release, dissemination, or impact of (A) toxic or poisonous chemicals or their precursors, (B) a disease organism, or (C) radiation or radioactivity."
As a result, commanders up the chain of command, including civilian ones to the highest level, authorizing DU weapons use for any purpose are war criminals.
Moreover, under various UN Conventions and Covenants, weapons causing post-battle environmental or human harm are banned. Nonetheless, Washington uses them indiscriminately, including DU. As a result, millions of Iraqi, Serbian/Kosovar, and Afghan nationals, as well as belligerent US troops have been gravely harmed, yet Pentagon and administration authorities deny all responsibility.
Libyans will now be victimized by DU poisoning. Wherever it strikes and spreads, it's unforgiving, disabling and deadly. If enough is used, a future cancer epidemic will follow, too late to help those harmed.
Helen Caldicott calls radiation a "Destroyer of Worlds," doing it by killing people silently, painfully, illegally, and at times genocidally.
In 2005, before his death, no wonder Nobel laureate Harold Pinter condemned US aggression saying:
"(T)he United States no longer bothers about low intensity conflict. It no longer sees any point in being reticent or even devious......It quite simply doesn't give a damn about the United Nations, international law or critical dissent, which it regards as impotent and irrelevant."
Under Bush, Obama or anyone else, it does what it pleases - the law, human welfare, and environmental considerations be damned.
A Final Comment
On March 21, Reuters said missile and air attacks on Libya continue. The New York Times headlined, "Allies Target Qaddafi's Ground Forces, but Resistance Continues (unconfirmed) Reports Say." The Washington Post said, "Libyan rebels launch offensive; coalition pounds Gaddafi forces," that may be observing a ceasefire. Al Jazeera reported "Rejoicing in Libya's Benghazi," continuing its biased war reporting, siding with anti-Gaddafi forces.
In contrast, independent web sites, analysts, and on-air programming offer detailed, truthful information, including the Progressive Radio News Hour this writer hosts on the Progressive Radio Network.com, featuring distinguished guests, dominant media sources spurn.
Middle East/Central Asian analyst Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya is one of many reliable sources. On March 20, his Global Research.ca article headlined, "BREAKING NEWS: Libyan Sources Report Italian POWs Captured. Additional Coalition Jets Downed. Qatar has joined the War," saying:
-- unconfirmed "(i)nternal Libyan sources reported....the capture of an Italian vessel and military personnel, who were detained;"
-- Gaddafi's government "started supplying (Libyans) with food rations, medicine, and weapons to defend themselves;"
-- unconfirmed "Libyan sources reported" downing two more "coalition" jets, "identified as Qatari military planes;" and
-- unconfirmed Libyan sources claim five "coalition" jets downed, three attacking Tripoli, two others over Sirt.
March 21 marks day three of a protracted conflict. It's certain to cause widespread deaths, injuries, disabilities and destruction. It's assured when America arrives - on cruise missiles, bombs and shells, not white horses promoting peace and democratic values, what all US administrations disdain.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen (at) sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.
See also:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com
by Stephen Lendman
Email: lendmanstephen (nospam) sbcglobal.net (verified) 22 Mar 2011
naked aggression
Lies, Damn Lies, and Humanitarian Intervention - by Stephen Lendman
Masquerading as "humanitarian intervention," Washington launched full-force barbarism on six million Libyans, all endangered by America's latest intervention. More on how below.
Beginning March 19, it was visible. However, months of planning preceded it, including US and UK special forces and intelligence operatives on the ground enlisting, inciting, funding, arming and supporting violent insurrection to oust Gaddafi and replace him with a Washington-controlled puppet like in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
The scrip is familiar, playing out now in Libya - full-scale "imperial barbarism," a term James Petras used in a September 2010 article titled, "Imperialism and Imperial Barbarism," saying:
"The organizing principle of imperial barbarism is the idea of total war," including:
-- use of mass destruction weapons, unleashed on Libya as explained below;
-- targeting the entire country and society; and
-- dismantling "the entire civil and military apparatus of the state," replacing it with "colonial officials, paid mercenaries and unscrupulous and corrupt satraps" - puppets, figures As'ad AbuKhalil calls "useful idiots."
Moreover, as Petras explains:
"The entire modern professional class is targeted (and) replaced by retrograde religious-ethnic clans and gangs, susceptible to bribes and booty-shares. All existing modern civil society organizations are pulverized and replaced by crony-plunderers linked to the colonial regime. The entire economy is" disrupted by "shock and awe" bombings and ground attacks, affecting essential civilian infrastructure on the pretext of destroying military and "dual use" targets.
As a result, mass casualties follow, many post-conflict from disease, homelessness, starvation, depravation, and environmental contamination. All wars are ugly, especially modern ones Washington wages, unleashing full force human and overall destruction, mostly affecting noncombatant men, women and children - imperialism's hidden victims.
Already, unknown hundreds of Libyans have been killed, wounded, or disabled, besides countless numbers affected overall. Expect much worse ahead, including violent, US-backed proxy insurgence, perhaps later joined by Pentagon troops if current air and ground attacks don't accomplish "Operation Odyssey Dawn's" objectives.
UN Resolution 1973
Claiming authority under the UN Charter's Article VII, it, in fact, violates Article 51, stating:
"Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defense shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security."
Effectively, UN Resolution 1973 authorized war, not peace. Moreover, it denied a sitting government, despotic or otherwise, the right of self-defense. A Western-backed insurgency initiated attacks, permitting a head of state to respond.
Further, the UN Charter explains under what conditions intervention, violence and coercion are justified. None exist in Libya.
In addition, Article 2(3) and Article 33(1) require peaceful settlement of international disputes, not "shock and awe" attacks. Article 2(4), in fact, prohibits force or its threatened use, including no-fly zones that are acts of war.
Further, Articles 2(3), 2(4), and 33 absolutely prohibit any unilateral or other external threat or use of force not specifically allowed under Article 51 or otherwise authorized by the Security Council - that may not violate its own Charter. In fact, Washington bullied enough members to do so, planning naked aggression in response.
Ostensibly to protect civilians, Resolution 1973's paragraph 4 authorized Member States "to take all necessary measures...." As a result, a giant interventionist loophole was created they knew Washington would exploit.
Under paragraph 6, moreover, "establish(ing) a ban on all flights in the airspace of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya in order to help protect civilians," in fact, harms them by US "shock and awe" attacks.
Further, paragraph 7's authorization for "flights whose sole purpose is humanitarian" denies them because Pentagon-controlled airspace will destroy any encountered Libyan aircraft, claiming it hostile, not delivering food, medical or other essential supplies or personnel.
In addition, supplying insurgents with weapons and munitions violates paragraph 13, "Call(ing) upon Member States, in particular States of the region, acting nationally or through regional organisations or arrangements, in order to ensure strict implementation of the arms embargo established by paragraphs 9 and 10 of resolution 1970 (2011), to inspect in their territory, including seaports and airports, and on the high seas, vessels and aircraft bound to or from" Libya.
In fact, besides covertly supplying its own weapons, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and perhaps other regional and/or NATO countries are arming insurgents, at the behest of Washington - violating Resolution 1973.
As a result, Libyans are at the mercy of US imperial aggression, disdaining all international laws, principles and standards. At war, Washington causes mass casualties and destruction. Now begun, expect much more ahead.
In addition, "coalition" participation is fig leaf cover for US aggression. AFRICOM's General Carter Ham has full command authority, directing UK, French and other belligerent partners, besides America's full air, sea and ground might.
Expect protracted conflict, perhaps "boots on the ground," putting a lie to Obama's promise for "humanitarian intervention" to end in "a matter of days, not weeks." Already, insurgency has been ongoing for weeks, perhaps months covertly, the worst yet to come, but already conditions are bad. They always are when Washington arrives.
Weapons of Mass Destruction Used
Since the 1991 Gulf War, Washington used nuclear weapons covertly - in depleted uranium (DU) form. Contaminating exposure is deadly. All US missiles, bombs, and shells have solid DU projectiles or warheads in them. Even bullets because in all forms, DU-tipped munitions easily penetrate armor, irradiating air, ground and water when used. DU, in fact, painfully kills from later contracted illnesses and diseases, including cancer and many others.
When weaponized DU strikes, it penetrates deeply, aerosolizing into a fine spray which then contaminates wide areas. Moreover, its residue is permanent. Its microscopic/submicroscopic particles remain suspended in air or swept into it from contaminated soil.
Atmospheric winds then carry it far distances as a radioactive component of atmospheric dust, falling indiscriminately to earth and water. Virtually every known illness and disease may result from severe headaches, muscle pain and general fatigue, to major birth defects, infection, depression, cardiovascular disease, many types of cancer and brain tumors. As a result, permanent disability or death may follow.
Moreover, DU use is illegal under international law. Although no specific convention or treaty bans radioactive weapons, including DU, they're, in fact, illegal de facto and de jure under the Hague Convention of 1907, prohibiting use of any "poison or poisoned weapons."
In all forms, DU is radioactive and chemically toxic, thus fitting the definition of poisonous weapons Hague banned. America is a signatory. As a result, DU weapons use for any purpose violates international law. Moreover, all DU weapons meet the U.S. federal code WMD definition in 2 out of 3 categories:
The US CODE, TITLE 50, CHAPTER 40, SECTION 2302 defines a Weapon of Mass Destruction as follows:
"The term 'weapon of mass destruction' means any weapon or device that is intended, or has the capability, to cause death or serious bodily injury to a significant number of people through the release, dissemination, or impact of (A) toxic or poisonous chemicals or their precursors, (B) a disease organism, or (C) radiation or radioactivity."
As a result, commanders up the chain of command, including civilian ones to the highest level, authorizing DU weapons use for any purpose are war criminals.
Moreover, under various UN Conventions and Covenants, weapons causing post-battle environmental or human harm are banned. Nonetheless, Washington uses them indiscriminately, including DU. As a result, millions of Iraqi, Serbian/Kosovar, and Afghan nationals, as well as belligerent US troops have been gravely harmed, yet Pentagon and administration authorities deny all responsibility.
Libyans will now be victimized by DU poisoning. Wherever it strikes and spreads, it's unforgiving, disabling and deadly. If enough is used, a future cancer epidemic will follow, too late to help those harmed.
Helen Caldicott calls radiation a "Destroyer of Worlds," doing it by killing people silently, painfully, illegally, and at times genocidally.
In 2005, before his death, no wonder Nobel laureate Harold Pinter condemned US aggression saying:
"(T)he United States no longer bothers about low intensity conflict. It no longer sees any point in being reticent or even devious......It quite simply doesn't give a damn about the United Nations, international law or critical dissent, which it regards as impotent and irrelevant."
Under Bush, Obama or anyone else, it does what it pleases - the law, human welfare, and environmental considerations be damned.
A Final Comment
On March 21, Reuters said missile and air attacks on Libya continue. The New York Times headlined, "Allies Target Qaddafi's Ground Forces, but Resistance Continues (unconfirmed) Reports Say." The Washington Post said, "Libyan rebels launch offensive; coalition pounds Gaddafi forces," that may be observing a ceasefire. Al Jazeera reported "Rejoicing in Libya's Benghazi," continuing its biased war reporting, siding with anti-Gaddafi forces.
In contrast, independent web sites, analysts, and on-air programming offer detailed, truthful information, including the Progressive Radio News Hour this writer hosts on the Progressive Radio Network.com, featuring distinguished guests, dominant media sources spurn.
Middle East/Central Asian analyst Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya is one of many reliable sources. On March 20, his Global Research.ca article headlined, "BREAKING NEWS: Libyan Sources Report Italian POWs Captured. Additional Coalition Jets Downed. Qatar has joined the War," saying:
-- unconfirmed "(i)nternal Libyan sources reported....the capture of an Italian vessel and military personnel, who were detained;"
-- Gaddafi's government "started supplying (Libyans) with food rations, medicine, and weapons to defend themselves;"
-- unconfirmed "Libyan sources reported" downing two more "coalition" jets, "identified as Qatari military planes;" and
-- unconfirmed Libyan sources claim five "coalition" jets downed, three attacking Tripoli, two others over Sirt.
March 21 marks day three of a protracted conflict. It's certain to cause widespread deaths, injuries, disabilities and destruction. It's assured when America arrives - on cruise missiles, bombs and shells, not white horses promoting peace and democratic values, what all US administrations disdain.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen (at) sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.
See also:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com
Monday, March 21, 2011
Statement of the International Executive Committee of the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist)-Defend Libya Against Imperialist Attack!
Markin comment
Defend Libya Against Imperialist Attack! Down With The U.S.-Led Imperialist Coalition!
20 March 2011
Statement of the International Executive Committee of the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist)
Defend Libya Against Imperialist Attack!
The International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist) calls on workers around the world to take a stand for military defense of semicolonial Libya against the attack begun yesterday by a coalition of rapacious imperialist governments. The French, British and U.S. rulers, in league with other imperialist governments and with the blessings of the sheiks, kings and military bonapartists of the Arab League, wasted not a moment in acting on the green light given by the United Nations Security Council on Thursday to slaughter countless innocent people in the name of “protecting civilians” and ensuring “democracy.” French air strikes were quickly followed by U.S. and British missile attacks, while Egypt’s military regime is providing arms to the Benghazi opposition forces. From Indochina and the Korean peninsula to the U.S.-led occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan today, the “democratic” imperialist rulers wade in the blood of millions upon millions of their victims. Recall that Britain and France historically carried out untold massacres in the Near East, Africa and the Indian subcontinent in order to pursue their colonial subjugation of those areas. Recall that Italy, now providing the use of its air bases for the attack, is responsible for the deaths of up to half the population of Cyrenaica in eastern Libya during its colonial rule prior to World War II.
Prior to the current attack, the conflict in Libya had taken the form of a low-intensity civil war, heavily overlaid by tribal and regional divisions, between the Tripoli-centered government of strongman Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi and imperialist-backed opposition forces concentrated in the country’s eastern areas. Workers Vanguard No. 976 (18 March), newspaper of the U.S. section of the ICL, noted that “Marxists presently have no side in this conflict.” But as the article continued: “In the event of imperialist attack against neocolonial Libya, the proletariat internationally must stand for the military defense of that country while giving no political support to Qaddafi’s capitalist regime.” The civil war in Libya has now been subordinated to the fight of a neocolonial country against imperialism. Every step taken by the workers of the imperialist countries to halt the depredations and military adventures of their rulers is a step toward their own liberation from capitalist exploitation, impoverishment and oppression. Defend Libya against imperialist attack! U.S. Fifth Fleet and all imperialist military bases and troops out of North Africa and the Near East!
Recall that the slaughter of well over a million people in Iraq began with the imposition of a UN-sponsored starvation embargo and a “no fly zone” in the 1990s. The latest action by the Security Council, including the neo-apartheid South African regime led by the African National Congress, underscores yet again the character of the United Nations as a den of imperialist thieves and their lackeys and semicolonial victims. The abstention by the representative of China, a bureaucratically deformed workers state, gave tacit approval to imperialist depredation, emboldening the very forces which seek to overturn the 1949 Chinese Revolution.
The crocodile tears shed by the imperialist rulers and their media mouthpieces over the Libyans killed by the Qaddafi regime during the recent wave of protests stands in sharp contrast to their muted response to the continuing massacre of protesters in Yemen—whose dictatorship is a key component of Washington’s “war on terror”—and their ongoing support to the Bahraini kingdom, which hosts the headquarters of the U.S. Fifth Fleet. To aid in crushing mass protests, Bahrain last week invited in troops from the medievalist and theocratic Saudi monarchy, a key bulwark of U.S. imperialist interests in the region. In the eyes of the imperialist rulers, Bahrain’s Shi’ite majority and the Yemeni masses are less than human, with no rights they are bound to respect.
Numerous social-democratic leftists, typified by the United Secretariat (USec) and the British Cliffite Socialist Workers Party, have done their part to prepare the ground for imperialist massacres in Libya by cheering on the so-called “Libyan Revolution.” Having urged support for the cabal of pro-imperialist “democrats,” CIA stooges, monarchists and Islamists that comprise the Benghazi-based opposition, these reformists now feign to balk at imperialist military intervention in support of the opposition. The New Anti-Capitalist Party, constituted in 2009 by the USec’s French section, signed a call for a demonstration yesterday demanding that the Benghazi outfit be recognized as “the only legitimate representative of the Libyan people”—which French ruler Sarkozy had already done! At the same time, those left groups that have promoted illusions in Qaddafi’s “anti-imperialist” pretensions—such as the Workers World Party in the U.S.—seek everywhere and at all times to chain the working class to a mythical “progressive” wing of the bourgeoisie.
We pledge today, as we did at the time of the U.S. Reagan administration’s bombing of Libya in 1986, to “undertake every effort to propagandize the need for the world working class to take the side of Libya” against its imperialist enemies (“Under Reagan’s Guns in Libya,” WV No. 401, 11 April 1986). In the pursuit of profit and domination, the same capitalist ruling classes that brutally exploit the working class “at home,” only to throw workers on the scrap heap during periods of economic crisis, as today, carry out murderous imperialist attacks abroad. The struggle against imperialist war cannot be conducted separately and apart from the class struggle. Only socialist revolution can overthrow the system of capitalist imperialism which breeds war. Our path is that of the October Revolution of 1917, led by the Bolshevik Party of Lenin and Trotsky, which was a beacon of revolutionary internationalism for the proletariat everywhere. We struggle to reforge the Fourth International as an instrument that can lead the working masses, from the Near East to the imperialist centers, forward to new October Revolutions and a world socialist society.
—20 March 2011
Defend Libya Against Imperialist Attack! Down With The U.S.-Led Imperialist Coalition!
20 March 2011
Statement of the International Executive Committee of the International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist)
Defend Libya Against Imperialist Attack!
The International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist) calls on workers around the world to take a stand for military defense of semicolonial Libya against the attack begun yesterday by a coalition of rapacious imperialist governments. The French, British and U.S. rulers, in league with other imperialist governments and with the blessings of the sheiks, kings and military bonapartists of the Arab League, wasted not a moment in acting on the green light given by the United Nations Security Council on Thursday to slaughter countless innocent people in the name of “protecting civilians” and ensuring “democracy.” French air strikes were quickly followed by U.S. and British missile attacks, while Egypt’s military regime is providing arms to the Benghazi opposition forces. From Indochina and the Korean peninsula to the U.S.-led occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan today, the “democratic” imperialist rulers wade in the blood of millions upon millions of their victims. Recall that Britain and France historically carried out untold massacres in the Near East, Africa and the Indian subcontinent in order to pursue their colonial subjugation of those areas. Recall that Italy, now providing the use of its air bases for the attack, is responsible for the deaths of up to half the population of Cyrenaica in eastern Libya during its colonial rule prior to World War II.
Prior to the current attack, the conflict in Libya had taken the form of a low-intensity civil war, heavily overlaid by tribal and regional divisions, between the Tripoli-centered government of strongman Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi and imperialist-backed opposition forces concentrated in the country’s eastern areas. Workers Vanguard No. 976 (18 March), newspaper of the U.S. section of the ICL, noted that “Marxists presently have no side in this conflict.” But as the article continued: “In the event of imperialist attack against neocolonial Libya, the proletariat internationally must stand for the military defense of that country while giving no political support to Qaddafi’s capitalist regime.” The civil war in Libya has now been subordinated to the fight of a neocolonial country against imperialism. Every step taken by the workers of the imperialist countries to halt the depredations and military adventures of their rulers is a step toward their own liberation from capitalist exploitation, impoverishment and oppression. Defend Libya against imperialist attack! U.S. Fifth Fleet and all imperialist military bases and troops out of North Africa and the Near East!
Recall that the slaughter of well over a million people in Iraq began with the imposition of a UN-sponsored starvation embargo and a “no fly zone” in the 1990s. The latest action by the Security Council, including the neo-apartheid South African regime led by the African National Congress, underscores yet again the character of the United Nations as a den of imperialist thieves and their lackeys and semicolonial victims. The abstention by the representative of China, a bureaucratically deformed workers state, gave tacit approval to imperialist depredation, emboldening the very forces which seek to overturn the 1949 Chinese Revolution.
The crocodile tears shed by the imperialist rulers and their media mouthpieces over the Libyans killed by the Qaddafi regime during the recent wave of protests stands in sharp contrast to their muted response to the continuing massacre of protesters in Yemen—whose dictatorship is a key component of Washington’s “war on terror”—and their ongoing support to the Bahraini kingdom, which hosts the headquarters of the U.S. Fifth Fleet. To aid in crushing mass protests, Bahrain last week invited in troops from the medievalist and theocratic Saudi monarchy, a key bulwark of U.S. imperialist interests in the region. In the eyes of the imperialist rulers, Bahrain’s Shi’ite majority and the Yemeni masses are less than human, with no rights they are bound to respect.
Numerous social-democratic leftists, typified by the United Secretariat (USec) and the British Cliffite Socialist Workers Party, have done their part to prepare the ground for imperialist massacres in Libya by cheering on the so-called “Libyan Revolution.” Having urged support for the cabal of pro-imperialist “democrats,” CIA stooges, monarchists and Islamists that comprise the Benghazi-based opposition, these reformists now feign to balk at imperialist military intervention in support of the opposition. The New Anti-Capitalist Party, constituted in 2009 by the USec’s French section, signed a call for a demonstration yesterday demanding that the Benghazi outfit be recognized as “the only legitimate representative of the Libyan people”—which French ruler Sarkozy had already done! At the same time, those left groups that have promoted illusions in Qaddafi’s “anti-imperialist” pretensions—such as the Workers World Party in the U.S.—seek everywhere and at all times to chain the working class to a mythical “progressive” wing of the bourgeoisie.
We pledge today, as we did at the time of the U.S. Reagan administration’s bombing of Libya in 1986, to “undertake every effort to propagandize the need for the world working class to take the side of Libya” against its imperialist enemies (“Under Reagan’s Guns in Libya,” WV No. 401, 11 April 1986). In the pursuit of profit and domination, the same capitalist ruling classes that brutally exploit the working class “at home,” only to throw workers on the scrap heap during periods of economic crisis, as today, carry out murderous imperialist attacks abroad. The struggle against imperialist war cannot be conducted separately and apart from the class struggle. Only socialist revolution can overthrow the system of capitalist imperialism which breeds war. Our path is that of the October Revolution of 1917, led by the Bolshevik Party of Lenin and Trotsky, which was a beacon of revolutionary internationalism for the proletariat everywhere. We struggle to reforge the Fourth International as an instrument that can lead the working masses, from the Near East to the imperialist centers, forward to new October Revolutions and a world socialist society.
—20 March 2011
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