Click on the headline to link to an Associated Press, dated September 8, 2011, online report on the struggle by Washington longshormen.
Markin comment:
Below is a an article relate to the general struggle by West Coast longshoremen to keep their militant union traditons alive.
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Workers Vanguard No. 979
29 April 2011
Union Attacked for Solidarity with Public Workers
All Labor Must Defend ILWU Local 10!
Reliance on the Democrats: Recipe for Defeat
In their call for nationwide protests on April 4, the AFL-CIO tops said the day would be one of “rising up to support workers in Wisconsin, Ohio, Indiana and other states.” But the only genuine labor action was taken by members of Bay Area Local 10 of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), who overwhelmingly stayed away from work that day. The port of Oakland was shut down for 24 hours.
Now the shipping companies represented by the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) are gunning for the union with a lawsuit against Local 10 and its president, Richard Mead, demanding that the ILWU foot the bill for “damages sustained” by the PMA as a result of the port shutdown. Although no price is named, in a similar suit East Coast shipping companies are demanding that the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) pay $5 million for a two-day shutdown of the ports in New York and New Jersey last September in response to a union-busting attack on ILA jobs. According to the head of the PMA, the employers also want the courts to enforce an injunction against further work stoppages.
Local 10 longshore workers stood up against the assault on public workers unions. Now all of labor must stand up for Local 10! Stop the PMA’s union-busting attack!
That Local 10 members gave up a day’s pay in solidarity with embattled public workers unions is a real statement of the deeply felt anger and desire to fight at the base of the unions. This was also witnessed in the tens of thousands of workers who mobilized in protest outside the capitol building in Madison, Wisconsin, this winter. But the labor misleaders have done their level best to contain any militancy and redirect it back into support for the Democratic Party. This was the intended purpose of the April 4 “We Are One” rallies, as was baldly stated a week later by AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka in a speech to the National Women’s Democratic Club in Washington, D.C. Declaring that “the energy of working people is infectious and their solidarity and commitment are inspiring,” Trumka advised that “if Democrats are to take back the House in 2012, and to hold on to the White House and the Senate, it will be because they succeed in riding this wave.”
The price of the bureaucrats’ subordination of the unions to the political fortunes of the Democratic Party, which no less than the Republicans represents the interests of the capitalist class enemy, can be counted in busted unions, millions of unemployed and the living hell that is life for the ghetto and barrio poor and countless others who have been written off by a system based on the exploitation of labor. So beholden are the labor bureaucrats to the capitalist order that even the notion that there is a working class in this country has been deep-sixed, reflected in the pitch at the April 4 protests to “reclaim the middle class.” By the same token, the union misleaders were desperate to avoid the remotest hint of working-class struggle against the one-sided class war by the capitalist exploiters and their state.
At the “We Are One” rallies in Oakland and San Francisco, called by the Alameda and SF Labor Councils, the organizers would not even allow a speaker from ILWU Local 10, the only union whose members took any kind of actual labor action! There was no such censorship of a representative of the strikebreaking cops. One of the few speakers at the opening rally for the thousands-strong SF protest was the president of the Police Officers Association of San Francisco, who used the occasion to declare: “I am a member of labor just like you are.” Far from being “union brothers,” the cops are the armed thugs of the capitalist state whose job is to smash labor struggle. This would readily be seen if there were any real fight against the union-busting assault on public workers, just as it was seen when the SF police killed two workers in the 1934 longshore strike. The “bloody Thursday” assault by the cops was the spark for the citywide general strike that laid the basis for founding the ILWU.
The only speaker who even mentioned that Local 10 members had not worked on April 4 was the secretary-treasurer of the Wisconsin AFL-CIO, Stephanie Bloomingdale. But this was not to promote any such action by others, much less to address the crying need to mobilize the power of labor in strike action to fight the assault on public workers unions. On the contrary. Bloomingdale hailed the Wisconsin judge who put a temporary stay on the implementation of the state’s union-busting bill for not letting Republican governor Scott Walker “get away” with it. But Walker did get away with it, as did the Ohio legislature, which passed an even more draconian anti-union law in the immediate aftermath.
In response to the PMA’s lawsuit against Local 10, the San Francisco Labor Council passed a resolution calling for a “mass mobilization of all Bay Area Labor Councils and the California AFL-CIO” on April 25 at PMA headquarters. But the Labor Council officials did little to nothing to mobilize their membership for this protest, which drew about 150 people. Fine words will not stop the union-busters!
The capitalist rulers have been winning the war against labor because the power of the working class has been shackled by the class-collaborationist policies of the trade-union leadership. Labor’s weapons are inherent in its collective organization—strike action, mass pickets, plant occupations, hot-cargoing of scab goods, etc. The capitalists’ arsenal is the state—the courts, cops and military. The 1934 SF general strike, and mass strikes in Toledo and Minneapolis the same year, were pitched battles between workers and cops and other strikebreakers. All of them were led by reds. The 1934 Minneapolis strikes, which forged the Teamsters as a powerful industrial union, were led by supporters of the Trotskyist Communist League of America. James P. Cannon, the founding leader of American Trotskyism, underlined the political program that lay behind this victory:
“The modern labor movement must be politically directed because it is confronted by the government at every turn. Our people were prepared for that since they were political people, inspired by political conceptions. The policy of the class struggle guided our comrades; they couldn’t be deceived and outmaneuvered, as so many strike leaders of that period were, by this mechanism of sabotage and destruction known as the National Labor Board and all its auxiliary setups. They put no reliance whatever in Roosevelt’s Labor Board; they weren’t fooled by any idea that Roosevelt, the liberal ‘friend of labor’ president, was going to help the truck drivers in Minneapolis.…
“Our people didn’t believe in anybody or anything but the policy of the class struggle and the ability of the workers to prevail by their mass strength and solidarity.”
—James P. Cannon, The History of American Trotskyism (1944)
If the unions are to wage the battles necessary for their own defense and in the interests of all the oppressed, they must be mobilized in opposition to the capitalist state and independently of all of the political parties of the class enemy—Democrats, Republicans and Greens. That means a political struggle to get rid of the sellouts sitting on top of the unions who strangle the workers’ fighting spirit. It is in the crucible of the class struggle that a new leadership of the unions can be forged. This is not simply a matter of militancy but, as Cannon pointed out, a question of political program. What is needed is a leadership that will arm the workers with an understanding both of their social power and their historic interests to free all of humanity from the exploitation, all-sided misery and war inherent to a system based on production for profit. Forging such a leadership is in turn an integral part of the fight for a multiracial revolutionary workers party whose aim is no less than doing away with the entire system of capitalist wage slavery through socialist revolution.
“Progressive” Labor Tops: Different Talk, Same Walk
In an interview on KPFA radio the day after the April 4 protests, ILWU Local 10 executive board member Clarence Thomas said that “one of the reasons” no Local 10 member was allowed to speak “is because the Democratic Party is not in favor of workers taking independent action.” True enough. But when asked if he was opposed to the unions continuing to pour millions into backing the Democrats and funding Obama’s re-election campaign, Thomas responded that the unions should support only those Democrats who would be “accountable” to the working class. In short, behind all the seemingly radical rhetoric that has historically been a trademark of the “progressive” labor tops in Local 10 is the same old shell game of peddling the Democrats as a party that can be made to serve the interests of the working class and the oppressed if, in Thomas’ words, their feet are “held to the fire.”
Last year, the Local 10 leadership pulled out all the stops to mobilize the ranks for the election of Democrat Jean Quan as mayor of Oakland. Boosted as a “friend of labor,” Quan was the headline speaker at the Oakland April 4 rally. Denouncing Wisconsin governor Walker for stripping public workers unions of the right to bargain for their members, Quan contrasted the good offices of her administration, declaring: “We will have layoffs but they will come as part of collective bargaining.” It would be hard to find a more chemically pure expression of the role played by the Democratic Party. The Republicans revel in taking out the knife to slaughter the unions. The Democrats hand the knife to the union bureaucrats to slash the wages and benefits of their members in the name of “preserving collective bargaining.”
That’s exactly what the union leaders following the Democrats, who had already agreed to such givebacks, were willing to do in Wisconsin. In California, the bureaucrats promote Democratic governor Jerry Brown, who has axed millions from social programs for the poor, as a man they can do business with.
But Quan’s appeal for the unions to sacrifice more jobs did not go down well with much of the crowd at the Oakland rally. She was drowned out in a chorus of booing, a response aptly described by one reporter as reflecting “a schism between the labor leaders who invited Quan to headline their rally and rank-and-file workers impatient with years of government cut-backs” (Bay Citizen, 4 April). It is precisely such burgeoning anger that the labor tops are working overtime to head off.
At the same time, calls for a “general strike” have been coming from left-talking bureaucrats like Ken Riley, president of ILA Local 1422 in Charleston, South Carolina. Heading into an “Emergency Labor Meeting” held in Cleveland on March 4-5, which was called to “explore together what we can do to mount a more militant and robust fight-back campaign to defend the interests of working people,” Riley said, “I don’t see any other way than a general workers strike.” But there was no call for any such action coming out of this meeting, which drew some 100 of the more radical-sounding and even “socialist” labor fakers and their hangers-on. Rather, the best they could choke out was that labor “must go to the streets,” meekly adding that “where possible” the participants would promote “industrial actions” on April 4.
Evidently, they did not find it “possible.” Instead, the April 4 protests are being portrayed as helping build “momentum” toward a general strike. This is simply to provide some militant-sounding cover for a program these labor fakers share in common with the top AFL-CIO officialdom: reliance on the capitalist state. The “perspectives” approved by those attending the Cleveland meeting advise: “There is plenty of money available without demanding givebacks from public employees, but this requires changing our nation’s priorities to raise taxes on the rich, redirect war dollars to meet human needs, and more—all demands that we must place on the federal government.” Far from building momentum for any kind of real labor action, much less a general strike, such appeals serve merely to dissipate and divert the workers’ anger into the illusion that the government can be pressured into serving their needs.
A central chant at both the SF and Oakland rallies was “tax the rich!” The banks, corporations and other capitalist enterprises are sitting on mountains of cash, the ill-gotten gains of a system based on the exploitation of labor for the profits of the few. But the working class is not going to get its hands on this money by appeals to the federal government, whose purpose is not to “meet human needs” but to defend and increase the profitability of American imperialism.
Capitalist governments might temporarily increase tax rates for the rich to meet the needs of the ruling class as a whole, such as gearing up for war or bailing out their economies at times of crisis. And in the face of class or other social struggle, the rulers may shell out some money to buy social peace. But once such peace is purchased, the benefits gained through struggle come under attack, and all the more so in times of economic crisis like today. What they take out of the hides of the working class and oppressed at home they invest in waging war against the workers and oppressed abroad to expand their spheres of exploitation and their domination around the globe. These “priorities” cannot and will not change short of getting rid of the profit system in which they are rooted.
For the workers to reclaim the wealth that is the product of their labor, they have to break the power of the bourgeoisie and its state. That means fighting for a workers government that will expropriate the expropriators and put the wealth of this society to serving the needs of society under a planned socialist economy.
Bureaucrats Feeling the Heat
It’s not just left-talking labor bureaucrats who are mouthing the words “general strike.” In his column in the March issue of the ILWU’s Dispatcher, the union’s International president, Robert McEllrath, wrote: “Holding a rally is usually the first thing we think of. It’s good to feel pumped-up for a few hours or even a few days, but they’re soon over and then people ask: ‘now what do we do?’ If the answer is, ‘hold more rallies,’ then maybe we need to think harder, because our goal has to be about winning public support, and if rallies don’t help us accomplish that goal, maybe we need to be doing other things such as a general strike across the United States with support from all unions and labor.” This is an extraordinary, indeed unheard-of, statement coming from an official in the upper echelons of the AFL-CIO bureaucracy, for whom the very mention of working-class struggle is to be avoided like the plague. While it lacks credibility, it is a measure of the desperation of at least some of the union misleaders as they feel heat from the ranks.
The industrial unions have been ravaged, with the rate of unionization in the private sector now below 7 percent. Public workers are now the majority of union members in the country, and the laws being brought down against them challenge their survival. Asking “Will we be able to win over workers—many who once belonged to unions—but have since seen their pay, benefits, and job security go down?” McEllrath argues: “The stakes in this fight couldn’t be higher, as it may determine whether the labor movement continues to shrink or survives long enough to organize and grow in the future.”
While the ILWU holds real social power in its hands, the union itself is an increasingly isolated bastion of labor organization in a sea of unorganized workers on the docks and the inland warehouses. The union leadership has done little to nothing to organize these workers.
Standing amid the wreckage that their sellout policies have produced over the past 30 years and more, McEllrath is expressing the bureaucrats’ concern for their own survival, which is, after all, dependent on having dues-paying members. To preserve their status, it is possible that they could be moved to take some kind of strike action. But that would not change their fundamental loyalty to the capitalist system, particularly as represented by the Democratic Party, which includes the labor officials among its key components. Following his musing over a general strike, McEllrath makes clear its purpose, arguing that “if we want more politicians to stand with us, then we’ll need to rally a lot more troops to our side.”
For a Multiracial Revolutionary Workers Party!
The April 4 protests were called in conjunction with the anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, who was killed in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was supporting a strike by black sanitation workers. The photos of these black workers with picket signs reading “I Am a Man” are a searing statement of the integral link between the struggles for labor rights and black rights. But while much was made at the protests of King’s dedication to labor’s cause, the truth is that King was a spokesman for reliance on the capitalist government, seeing the courts and the Democratic Party as the vehicles for legal reform of the racist status quo.
The myth that black people could achieve equality within the confines of racist American capitalism was ripped apart when the civil rights movement “came North.” Here the forcible segregation of blacks in the ghettos was not a matter of a legal code but was and is rooted in the very foundation of capitalist rule in America. When the black masses in the Northern ghettos entered the struggle—fighting for real equality, for jobs, for decent housing and schools—the role of King and others in the liberal leadership of the civil rights movement was one of fearful containment. Thus, King supported the troops sent in to brutally suppress ghetto upheavals in the 1960s.
With the deindustrialization of large swaths of the U.S., the ghetto poor who once supplied a “reserve army of labor” to be employed when the bosses needed them have been written off as a “surplus population” by the capitalist rulers, their labor and very lives no longer seen as necessary for the production of profit. But black workers remain a militant backbone of organized labor—from the ILWU to the public workers unions—and are critical to linking the power of the working class to the simmering anger of the ghettos. If the unions are to fight for their very existence, they must take up the defense of the ghetto and barrio poor by fighting for jobs, quality housing, education, health care and more, and must as well defend the rights of immigrants, an increasingly important component of the working class. Organizing the unorganized is a life-and-death question for labor everywhere. Crucially it means a fight to break the open shop South, directly posing the need for labor to combat anti-black racism and anti-immigrant bigotry.
Many workers no longer buy the lie peddled by the trade-union bureaucracy and its “socialist” water boys that the election of Barack Obama would bring “change” they could “believe in.” The massive protests in Wisconsin inspired many to believe that finally there might be some fightback against the war on their unions, their families and their livelihoods. The leaden hands of the labor bureaucracy are trying to drown any such impulse. It doesn’t have to be this way. There is a real explosive potential here. But to transform that potential into some successful class struggle poses the question of leadership. The labor misleaders must be ousted and replaced with workers’ leaders who will link the fight to defend the unions to building a multiracial revolutionary workers party. This is the necessary instrument to lead the struggle to free the working class and the oppressed from the chains of exploitation, poverty and imperialist war.
Thursday, September 08, 2011
Labor's Untold Story-From The Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels Archives-The Struggle For Working Class Organization-Marx To Ferdinand Freiligrath (the German poet and Marx friend) London (1860)
Markin comment:
Every Month Is Labor History MonthThis post is part of an on-going series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!
Other Septembers in this series I have concentrated on various sometimes now obscure leaders and rank and file militants in the international working class movement, especially those who made contributions here in America like "Big Bill" Haywood and Eugene V. Debs. This year, given the pressing need for clarity around the labor party question in America(algebraically expressed in our movement as the struggle for a workers party that fights for a workers government) I have gone back to the sources-Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and their correspondence on working class organizationwith various associates and opponents. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely given the state of working class organization here these days, many of their comments, taken in due regard for changed times and circumstances, are germane today. This correspondence is only a start and should just whet the reader's appetite to research further.
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Marx-Engels Correspondence 1860
Marx To Ferdinand Freiligrath (the German poet and Marx friend) London (1860)
Source: MECW, Volume 41, p. 80;
First published: considerably abridged in Die Neue Zeit, Erganzungshefte, No. 12, Stuttgart, 1911-1912, and in full in: Marx and Engels, Works, Moscow, 1934.
Manchester, 29 February 1860
6 Thorncliffe Grove, Oxford Road
Dear Freiligrath,
Your letter really warmed my heart, for there are very few people with whom I strike up a friendship, but when I do I adhere to it. My friends of 1844 continue to be my friends today. As to the strictly official part of your letter, however, this is based on some grave misapprehensions, hence the following by way of clarification:
1. The Eichhoff-Stieber case
The ‘material’ which I passed on to Juch (on which occasion I also pointed out to him that there were two reasons why he and Eichhoff did not deserve my support: firstly, the way in which they had referred to the Cologne trial in the Hermann; secondly, my conviction that Eichhoff is simply a tool of the ex-police official Duncker, who is seeking to avenge himself on Stieber as Vidocq once did on Gisquet in Paris; nevertheless, I would, I said, do all in my power to help overthrow Stieber and bring him to book, if only to avenge the death of my friend, Dr Daniels), this ‘material’, say, amounts to the following:
I gave Juch a copy of the Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne; N. B. this publication of mine, which was printed first in Switzerland and later in Boston, was cited by Vogt as a well-known book, and was in no sense ‘something secret’.
I told Juch that it contained all I knew.
Finally, I pointed out to him that Lewald (Eichhoff’s defence counsel) must examine Hirsch, who was in jail in Hamburg, as a witness. This was done. Hirsch has now admitted on oath that the ‘minute-book’ was a Prussian fabrication and an indictable offence in every other respect.
Hence the ‘revelations’ produced by the trial, thanks to my ‘material’, exonerate the former members of the League from any semblance of legal culpa and ‘expose’ the Prussian police system, which, once installed as a result of the ‘Cologne trial’ and the infamous pusillanimity of the Cologne jury, grew to be such a power in Prussia that it has finally become intolerable to the bourgeois themselves and even to Auerswald’s ministry. Voilà tout.
Besides, I'm astonished that you could even imagine that I might hand the police anything on a platter. I would remind you of letters sent from Cologne (1849-50), which you knew about and in which I was reproached in so many words with having dragged my feet too much (at the time, I did so for very good reasons, certainly not out of concern for myself) in regard to agitation by the League.
2. My lawsuit against the ‘National-Zeitung’
I would point out d'abord that, after the ‘League’ had been disbanded at my behest in November 1852, I never belonged to any society again, whether secret or public; that the party, therefore, in this wholly ephemeral sense, ceased to exist for me 8 years ago. The lectures on political economy I gave, after the appearance of my book (in the autumn of 1859), to a few picked working men, amongst whom were also former members of the League, had nothing in common with an exclusive society — less even than, say, Mr Gerstenberg’s lectures to the Schiller Committee.
You will recall that the leaders of the fairly ramified Communist Club in New York (among them. Albrecht Komp, Manager of the General Bank, 44 Exchange Place, New York) sent me a letter, which passed through your hands, and in which it was tentatively suggested that I should reorganise the old League. A whole year passed before I replied, and then it was to the effect that since 1852 I had not been associated with any association and was firmly convinced that my theoretical studies were of greater use to the working class than my meddling with associations which had now had their day on the Continent. Because of this ‘inactivity’ I was thereupon repeatedly and bitterly attacked, if not by name at least by inference, in Mr Scherzer’s London Neue Zeit.
When Mr Levy came over from Düsseldorf (for the first time), on which occasion he frequently called on you, too, he actually proffered me a factory operatives’ insurrection, no less, in Iserlohn, Solingen, etc. I told him bluntly, that I was against such futile and dangerous folly. I further informed him that I no longer belonged to any ‘league'; nor, in view of the danger presented to the people in Germany by such a connection, could I have anything to do with it, no matter what the circumstances. Levy returned to Düsseldorf, and as I was shortly afterwards informed by letter, spoke very highly of you while denouncing my ‘doctrinaire’ indifference.
Since 1852, then, I have known nothing of ‘party’ in the sense implied in your letter. Whereas you are a poet, I am a critic and for me the experiences of 1849-52 were quite enough. The ‘League’, like the société des saisons in Paris and a hundred other societies, was simply an episode in the history of a party that is everywhere springing up naturally out of the soil of modern society.
There are two things I have to prove in Berlin (I mean with regard to this hoary and outdated business of the League):
First, that since 1852 no such society has existed of which I have been a member,
next, that in as much as he slings Telleringian mud, and worse, at the communist society that existed up till November 1852, Mr Vogt is a scoundrelly and infamous slanderer.
As to the latter point, you, of course, are a witness and your letter to Ruge (summer of 1851) proves that, during the period with which we are solely concerned here, you regarded attacks of this kind as being directed against yourself, too.
You were a co-signatory to the statements in the Morning Advertiser, the Spectator, the Examiner, the Leader, and the People’s Paper. One copy of these is on the court files in Cologne.
Nor did you raise the least objection when I reverted to this matter in my Revelations (p. 47) (Boston edition).
Again, your name appears — as treasurer — in the appeal we published requesting contributions for the convicted men.
But there’s hardly any need to go into all this again.
What is imperative, however, is that my lawyer in Berlin should be sent the following letter from me to Engels, this being a legal document by virtue of the fact that it was sent without an envelope and bears both London and Manchester Postmarks.
‘London, 19 November 1852
28 Dean Street, Soho ‘Dear Engels, ‘Last Wednesday, at my suggestion, the League disbanded; similarly the continued existence of the League on the Continent was declared to be no longer expedient. In any case, since the arrest of Burgers-Roser, it had to all intents and purposes already ceased to exist there. Enclosed a statement for the English papers, etc. In addition I am writing, for the Lithographierte Korrespondenz, an article (instead, I wrote the pamphlet published by Schabelitz “) ‘on the dirty tricks played by the police, etc., and also an appeal to America for money for the prisoners and their families. Treasurer Freiligrath. Signed by all our people.’ (The few remaining lines are irrelevant.) ‘Your K. M.’.
In the case of such a document I cannot, of course, delete any names. This is the only document in which, with a view to substantiating a fact, namely the disbandment of the League, I make use of your name, in as much as it happens to occur in a letter written by me in 1852. I cannot see how that would compromise you.
I should like to use one letter of yours, written in 1851, for the pamphlet which is to appear after the hearing. Nothing in the least compromising about it, legally speaking. But since this will take many weeks, I shall arrange matters with you by word of mouth.
From the above it follows that:
The ‘meetings, resolutions and transactions of the party’ since 1852 belong to the realm of fantasy, as you might have known in any case without my telling you and, judging by a great many of your letters to me, evidently did know.
The only activity in which I persisted after 1852, for as long as it continued necessary — i.e. until the end of 1853 — in company with a few kindred spirits on the other side of the Atlantic, was of the kind described by Mr Ludwig Simon in 1851 in the Tribune as a ‘system of mockery and contempt’, and was directed against the emigration’s democratic humbug and revolution-mongering. Your anti-Kinkel poem, no less than your correspondence with me during that time, prove that you and I were entirely d'accord.
However, this has nothing to do with the lawsuits.
Tellering, Bangya, Fleury, etc., never belonged to the ‘League’. That dirt is thrown up by storms, that no revolutionary period smells of attar of roses, that even, at times, one becomes a target for all manner of garbage, goes without saying. Aut, aut. However, when one considers the tremendous efforts made to combat us by the whole of the official world, who did not so much skim as wade through the depths of the Code pénal in order to ruin us; when one considers the slanderous attacks of the ‘democracy of folly’ which could never forgive our party for having more brains and character than itself; when one knows the parallel history of all the other parties; when one finally asks oneself what can actually be held (other than, say, the infamies refutable in court, of a Vogt or a Tellering) against the party as a whole, one can only conclude that what distinguishes it in this, the nineteenth century, is its purity.
Can one escape the filth in bourgeois intercourse or trade? But in the latter, the filth has its natural habitat. Example: Sir R. Carden, vide the Parliamentary Blue Book on corrupt election practices. Example: Mr Klapka, concerning whose personal details I am now very well informed. Kl. is not one whit better, and possibly worse, than Bangya whom, by the by, he and Kossuth have been sheltering to this day in Constantinople, despite his heroic deeds in Circassia and despite my public denunciation, simply because he knew too much about them. As a person Bangya was more decorous than Kl. He kept a mistress; for years Klapka allowed a mistress to keep him, etc. The filth of a Tellering may well be counterbalanced by the purity of a Beta, and even the dissoluteness of a Reiff finds its equivalent in the chastity of a Paula who, at any rate, was not a member of the party, nor made any pretence so to be.
The honourable meanness or mean honourableness of solvent (and this subject only to highly ambiguous provisos, as every trade crisis goes to show) morality is to my mind not one whit superior to disrespectable meanness, from the taint of which neither the first Christian communities. nor the Jacobin Club, nor our erstwhile ‘League’ could remain entirely free. But bourgeois intercourse accustoms one to the loss of one’s sense of respectable meanness or mean respectability.
3. The special matter of Vogt and Blind.
Following the affidavits made by Vögele and Wiehe (as everyone knows, a false affidavit entails transportation) and following the statements extracted in consequence thereof — from Blind in the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung and from Dr Schaible (Daily Telegraph of 15 February ) — the affair has resolved itself to the extent that your testimony relating to this point has now been rendered quite superfluous. As regards the Blind case, my only problem is an embarras de richesses.
In this matter I approached Ernest Jones, with whom I had not consorted for two years on account of his foolish, but now publicly disavowed, attitude to Bright, Gilpin, etc. I approached him firstly because he, like many others, some of them quite unknown to me, let me know spontaneously, immediately after the Telegraph of 6 February had appeared, how profoundly indignant he was at the infamous conduct of Vogt, who had had the effrontery to assert that the Communist League had been founded and, from 1849 to 1852, had operated, with one end in view, namely to extort money from compromised people in Germany by threatening to denounce them; who traced back my ‘connection’ with the Neue Preussische Zeitung to my ‘relationship by marriage’ to von Westphalen, etc. (For my wife’s sake I was glad of this demonstration, since one can hardly expect ladies to grow a political thick skin; moreover, it is precisely by catastrophes that they are accustomed to gauge whether a friendship is in earnest or in jest); secondly, because I was deterred by consideration, not for Blind, but for his wife and children, from discussing his case, most invidious from a legal point of view, with a true-blue English lawyer. It was this same consideration that deterred me from sending the English circular to the Morning Advertiser or to any English daily other than the Telegraph.
What Jones told me was this:
‘You can go — and I myself will go with you — to the magistrate and at once take out a warrant for Blind’s arrest for conspiracy on the strength of Wiehe’s affidavit. But bear in mind that this is a criminal action and that, once it has been reported, you will have no power to withdraw it.’
I then asked Jones (who can tell you this all over again; he lives at 5 Cambridge Place, Kensington, W.) whether it wasn’t possible for him to warn Blind and thus induce him to make a statement that would include, not only everything he knew about Vogt, but also an admission of the falsity of the depositions adduced by him in the A.A.Z.
Jones replied:
‘In conspiracy, and hence criminal, cases, any attempt by the advocate to compound or bring about a compromise would itself be punishable under criminal law.’
Jones will act as my council in the Telegraph affair.
After Jones’s pronouncements, I found myself in a most awkward and embarrassing situation, for, on the one hand, I owed it to my family to compel the Telegraph to recant; on the other, I did not wish to take any steps that might be legally injurious to Blind’s family. As an expedient I sent to Blind’s friend Louis Blanc a copy of both affidavits and a letter, part of which reads (I quote):
‘Not for Mr Blind who has richly deserved it, but for his family, I should regret being forced to lodge a criminal action against him.’
This last move evoked Schaible’s statement (poor dear), just as the printed circular, which I had sent to Blind immediately after it came out, had evoked his anti-Vogt statement the self-same day in the A. A. Z. Blind may have the hole-and-corner cunning of a man from Baden, but he had forgotten that he was confronting someone who would be ruthless the moment his own honour, or that of his party, was at stake.
This is how matters stand: The action against The Daily Telegraph has been instituted but my solicitor will delay matters until after the case against the National-Zeitung has been decided.
Had Schaible told me frankly what he knew against Vogt (Schaible is Blind’s tame elephant, of course), it would have been wholly unnecessary for me, after his statement had appeared in the Telegraph of 15 February, to lodge the affidavits in London. In Berlin, where it will have no legal repercussions on Blind, this will, of course, be unavoidable. Whether Schaible was the real (literary) author of the ‘flysheet’ or not does nothing to alter the facts established in the affidavits, namely that the depositions adduced by Blind in the A. A. Z. were false, that they were obtained by means of a conspiracy, that the flysheet had been printed in Hollinger’s printshop, written in Blind’s hand and handed over by him to Hollinger to be printed.
Distasteful though these matters certainly are, they are not more distasteful than European history as a whole since 1851, with all its achievements in the diplomatic, military and literary fields.
‘For all that and all that’, the philistine upon me will always be a better device for us than I beneath the philistine.’
I have frankly stated my views, with which I trust you are largely in agreement. Moreover, I have tried to dispel the misunderstanding arising out of the impression that by ‘party’ I meant a ‘League’ that expired eight years ago, or an editorial board that was disbanded twelve years ago. By party, I meant the party in the broad historical sense.
With sincere assurances of my friendship,
Your
K. Marx
P. S. I have just had a letter from my wife, and should accordingly be much obliged if you would draw £16 on the Tribune on Saturday (the day after tomorrow) (not on Friday as I am also including the Tuesday article). As usual, the plenipotentiary-general will pay you a call.
Every Month Is Labor History MonthThis post is part of an on-going series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!
Other Septembers in this series I have concentrated on various sometimes now obscure leaders and rank and file militants in the international working class movement, especially those who made contributions here in America like "Big Bill" Haywood and Eugene V. Debs. This year, given the pressing need for clarity around the labor party question in America(algebraically expressed in our movement as the struggle for a workers party that fights for a workers government) I have gone back to the sources-Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and their correspondence on working class organizationwith various associates and opponents. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely given the state of working class organization here these days, many of their comments, taken in due regard for changed times and circumstances, are germane today. This correspondence is only a start and should just whet the reader's appetite to research further.
*****
Marx-Engels Correspondence 1860
Marx To Ferdinand Freiligrath (the German poet and Marx friend) London (1860)
Source: MECW, Volume 41, p. 80;
First published: considerably abridged in Die Neue Zeit, Erganzungshefte, No. 12, Stuttgart, 1911-1912, and in full in: Marx and Engels, Works, Moscow, 1934.
Manchester, 29 February 1860
6 Thorncliffe Grove, Oxford Road
Dear Freiligrath,
Your letter really warmed my heart, for there are very few people with whom I strike up a friendship, but when I do I adhere to it. My friends of 1844 continue to be my friends today. As to the strictly official part of your letter, however, this is based on some grave misapprehensions, hence the following by way of clarification:
1. The Eichhoff-Stieber case
The ‘material’ which I passed on to Juch (on which occasion I also pointed out to him that there were two reasons why he and Eichhoff did not deserve my support: firstly, the way in which they had referred to the Cologne trial in the Hermann; secondly, my conviction that Eichhoff is simply a tool of the ex-police official Duncker, who is seeking to avenge himself on Stieber as Vidocq once did on Gisquet in Paris; nevertheless, I would, I said, do all in my power to help overthrow Stieber and bring him to book, if only to avenge the death of my friend, Dr Daniels), this ‘material’, say, amounts to the following:
I gave Juch a copy of the Revelations Concerning the Communist Trial in Cologne; N. B. this publication of mine, which was printed first in Switzerland and later in Boston, was cited by Vogt as a well-known book, and was in no sense ‘something secret’.
I told Juch that it contained all I knew.
Finally, I pointed out to him that Lewald (Eichhoff’s defence counsel) must examine Hirsch, who was in jail in Hamburg, as a witness. This was done. Hirsch has now admitted on oath that the ‘minute-book’ was a Prussian fabrication and an indictable offence in every other respect.
Hence the ‘revelations’ produced by the trial, thanks to my ‘material’, exonerate the former members of the League from any semblance of legal culpa and ‘expose’ the Prussian police system, which, once installed as a result of the ‘Cologne trial’ and the infamous pusillanimity of the Cologne jury, grew to be such a power in Prussia that it has finally become intolerable to the bourgeois themselves and even to Auerswald’s ministry. Voilà tout.
Besides, I'm astonished that you could even imagine that I might hand the police anything on a platter. I would remind you of letters sent from Cologne (1849-50), which you knew about and in which I was reproached in so many words with having dragged my feet too much (at the time, I did so for very good reasons, certainly not out of concern for myself) in regard to agitation by the League.
2. My lawsuit against the ‘National-Zeitung’
I would point out d'abord that, after the ‘League’ had been disbanded at my behest in November 1852, I never belonged to any society again, whether secret or public; that the party, therefore, in this wholly ephemeral sense, ceased to exist for me 8 years ago. The lectures on political economy I gave, after the appearance of my book (in the autumn of 1859), to a few picked working men, amongst whom were also former members of the League, had nothing in common with an exclusive society — less even than, say, Mr Gerstenberg’s lectures to the Schiller Committee.
You will recall that the leaders of the fairly ramified Communist Club in New York (among them. Albrecht Komp, Manager of the General Bank, 44 Exchange Place, New York) sent me a letter, which passed through your hands, and in which it was tentatively suggested that I should reorganise the old League. A whole year passed before I replied, and then it was to the effect that since 1852 I had not been associated with any association and was firmly convinced that my theoretical studies were of greater use to the working class than my meddling with associations which had now had their day on the Continent. Because of this ‘inactivity’ I was thereupon repeatedly and bitterly attacked, if not by name at least by inference, in Mr Scherzer’s London Neue Zeit.
When Mr Levy came over from Düsseldorf (for the first time), on which occasion he frequently called on you, too, he actually proffered me a factory operatives’ insurrection, no less, in Iserlohn, Solingen, etc. I told him bluntly, that I was against such futile and dangerous folly. I further informed him that I no longer belonged to any ‘league'; nor, in view of the danger presented to the people in Germany by such a connection, could I have anything to do with it, no matter what the circumstances. Levy returned to Düsseldorf, and as I was shortly afterwards informed by letter, spoke very highly of you while denouncing my ‘doctrinaire’ indifference.
Since 1852, then, I have known nothing of ‘party’ in the sense implied in your letter. Whereas you are a poet, I am a critic and for me the experiences of 1849-52 were quite enough. The ‘League’, like the société des saisons in Paris and a hundred other societies, was simply an episode in the history of a party that is everywhere springing up naturally out of the soil of modern society.
There are two things I have to prove in Berlin (I mean with regard to this hoary and outdated business of the League):
First, that since 1852 no such society has existed of which I have been a member,
next, that in as much as he slings Telleringian mud, and worse, at the communist society that existed up till November 1852, Mr Vogt is a scoundrelly and infamous slanderer.
As to the latter point, you, of course, are a witness and your letter to Ruge (summer of 1851) proves that, during the period with which we are solely concerned here, you regarded attacks of this kind as being directed against yourself, too.
You were a co-signatory to the statements in the Morning Advertiser, the Spectator, the Examiner, the Leader, and the People’s Paper. One copy of these is on the court files in Cologne.
Nor did you raise the least objection when I reverted to this matter in my Revelations (p. 47) (Boston edition).
Again, your name appears — as treasurer — in the appeal we published requesting contributions for the convicted men.
But there’s hardly any need to go into all this again.
What is imperative, however, is that my lawyer in Berlin should be sent the following letter from me to Engels, this being a legal document by virtue of the fact that it was sent without an envelope and bears both London and Manchester Postmarks.
‘London, 19 November 1852
28 Dean Street, Soho ‘Dear Engels, ‘Last Wednesday, at my suggestion, the League disbanded; similarly the continued existence of the League on the Continent was declared to be no longer expedient. In any case, since the arrest of Burgers-Roser, it had to all intents and purposes already ceased to exist there. Enclosed a statement for the English papers, etc. In addition I am writing, for the Lithographierte Korrespondenz, an article (instead, I wrote the pamphlet published by Schabelitz “) ‘on the dirty tricks played by the police, etc., and also an appeal to America for money for the prisoners and their families. Treasurer Freiligrath. Signed by all our people.’ (The few remaining lines are irrelevant.) ‘Your K. M.’.
In the case of such a document I cannot, of course, delete any names. This is the only document in which, with a view to substantiating a fact, namely the disbandment of the League, I make use of your name, in as much as it happens to occur in a letter written by me in 1852. I cannot see how that would compromise you.
I should like to use one letter of yours, written in 1851, for the pamphlet which is to appear after the hearing. Nothing in the least compromising about it, legally speaking. But since this will take many weeks, I shall arrange matters with you by word of mouth.
From the above it follows that:
The ‘meetings, resolutions and transactions of the party’ since 1852 belong to the realm of fantasy, as you might have known in any case without my telling you and, judging by a great many of your letters to me, evidently did know.
The only activity in which I persisted after 1852, for as long as it continued necessary — i.e. until the end of 1853 — in company with a few kindred spirits on the other side of the Atlantic, was of the kind described by Mr Ludwig Simon in 1851 in the Tribune as a ‘system of mockery and contempt’, and was directed against the emigration’s democratic humbug and revolution-mongering. Your anti-Kinkel poem, no less than your correspondence with me during that time, prove that you and I were entirely d'accord.
However, this has nothing to do with the lawsuits.
Tellering, Bangya, Fleury, etc., never belonged to the ‘League’. That dirt is thrown up by storms, that no revolutionary period smells of attar of roses, that even, at times, one becomes a target for all manner of garbage, goes without saying. Aut, aut. However, when one considers the tremendous efforts made to combat us by the whole of the official world, who did not so much skim as wade through the depths of the Code pénal in order to ruin us; when one considers the slanderous attacks of the ‘democracy of folly’ which could never forgive our party for having more brains and character than itself; when one knows the parallel history of all the other parties; when one finally asks oneself what can actually be held (other than, say, the infamies refutable in court, of a Vogt or a Tellering) against the party as a whole, one can only conclude that what distinguishes it in this, the nineteenth century, is its purity.
Can one escape the filth in bourgeois intercourse or trade? But in the latter, the filth has its natural habitat. Example: Sir R. Carden, vide the Parliamentary Blue Book on corrupt election practices. Example: Mr Klapka, concerning whose personal details I am now very well informed. Kl. is not one whit better, and possibly worse, than Bangya whom, by the by, he and Kossuth have been sheltering to this day in Constantinople, despite his heroic deeds in Circassia and despite my public denunciation, simply because he knew too much about them. As a person Bangya was more decorous than Kl. He kept a mistress; for years Klapka allowed a mistress to keep him, etc. The filth of a Tellering may well be counterbalanced by the purity of a Beta, and even the dissoluteness of a Reiff finds its equivalent in the chastity of a Paula who, at any rate, was not a member of the party, nor made any pretence so to be.
The honourable meanness or mean honourableness of solvent (and this subject only to highly ambiguous provisos, as every trade crisis goes to show) morality is to my mind not one whit superior to disrespectable meanness, from the taint of which neither the first Christian communities. nor the Jacobin Club, nor our erstwhile ‘League’ could remain entirely free. But bourgeois intercourse accustoms one to the loss of one’s sense of respectable meanness or mean respectability.
3. The special matter of Vogt and Blind.
Following the affidavits made by Vögele and Wiehe (as everyone knows, a false affidavit entails transportation) and following the statements extracted in consequence thereof — from Blind in the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung and from Dr Schaible (Daily Telegraph of 15 February ) — the affair has resolved itself to the extent that your testimony relating to this point has now been rendered quite superfluous. As regards the Blind case, my only problem is an embarras de richesses.
In this matter I approached Ernest Jones, with whom I had not consorted for two years on account of his foolish, but now publicly disavowed, attitude to Bright, Gilpin, etc. I approached him firstly because he, like many others, some of them quite unknown to me, let me know spontaneously, immediately after the Telegraph of 6 February had appeared, how profoundly indignant he was at the infamous conduct of Vogt, who had had the effrontery to assert that the Communist League had been founded and, from 1849 to 1852, had operated, with one end in view, namely to extort money from compromised people in Germany by threatening to denounce them; who traced back my ‘connection’ with the Neue Preussische Zeitung to my ‘relationship by marriage’ to von Westphalen, etc. (For my wife’s sake I was glad of this demonstration, since one can hardly expect ladies to grow a political thick skin; moreover, it is precisely by catastrophes that they are accustomed to gauge whether a friendship is in earnest or in jest); secondly, because I was deterred by consideration, not for Blind, but for his wife and children, from discussing his case, most invidious from a legal point of view, with a true-blue English lawyer. It was this same consideration that deterred me from sending the English circular to the Morning Advertiser or to any English daily other than the Telegraph.
What Jones told me was this:
‘You can go — and I myself will go with you — to the magistrate and at once take out a warrant for Blind’s arrest for conspiracy on the strength of Wiehe’s affidavit. But bear in mind that this is a criminal action and that, once it has been reported, you will have no power to withdraw it.’
I then asked Jones (who can tell you this all over again; he lives at 5 Cambridge Place, Kensington, W.) whether it wasn’t possible for him to warn Blind and thus induce him to make a statement that would include, not only everything he knew about Vogt, but also an admission of the falsity of the depositions adduced by him in the A.A.Z.
Jones replied:
‘In conspiracy, and hence criminal, cases, any attempt by the advocate to compound or bring about a compromise would itself be punishable under criminal law.’
Jones will act as my council in the Telegraph affair.
After Jones’s pronouncements, I found myself in a most awkward and embarrassing situation, for, on the one hand, I owed it to my family to compel the Telegraph to recant; on the other, I did not wish to take any steps that might be legally injurious to Blind’s family. As an expedient I sent to Blind’s friend Louis Blanc a copy of both affidavits and a letter, part of which reads (I quote):
‘Not for Mr Blind who has richly deserved it, but for his family, I should regret being forced to lodge a criminal action against him.’
This last move evoked Schaible’s statement (poor dear), just as the printed circular, which I had sent to Blind immediately after it came out, had evoked his anti-Vogt statement the self-same day in the A. A. Z. Blind may have the hole-and-corner cunning of a man from Baden, but he had forgotten that he was confronting someone who would be ruthless the moment his own honour, or that of his party, was at stake.
This is how matters stand: The action against The Daily Telegraph has been instituted but my solicitor will delay matters until after the case against the National-Zeitung has been decided.
Had Schaible told me frankly what he knew against Vogt (Schaible is Blind’s tame elephant, of course), it would have been wholly unnecessary for me, after his statement had appeared in the Telegraph of 15 February, to lodge the affidavits in London. In Berlin, where it will have no legal repercussions on Blind, this will, of course, be unavoidable. Whether Schaible was the real (literary) author of the ‘flysheet’ or not does nothing to alter the facts established in the affidavits, namely that the depositions adduced by Blind in the A. A. Z. were false, that they were obtained by means of a conspiracy, that the flysheet had been printed in Hollinger’s printshop, written in Blind’s hand and handed over by him to Hollinger to be printed.
Distasteful though these matters certainly are, they are not more distasteful than European history as a whole since 1851, with all its achievements in the diplomatic, military and literary fields.
‘For all that and all that’, the philistine upon me will always be a better device for us than I beneath the philistine.’
I have frankly stated my views, with which I trust you are largely in agreement. Moreover, I have tried to dispel the misunderstanding arising out of the impression that by ‘party’ I meant a ‘League’ that expired eight years ago, or an editorial board that was disbanded twelve years ago. By party, I meant the party in the broad historical sense.
With sincere assurances of my friendship,
Your
K. Marx
P. S. I have just had a letter from my wife, and should accordingly be much obliged if you would draw £16 on the Tribune on Saturday (the day after tomorrow) (not on Friday as I am also including the Tuesday article). As usual, the plenipotentiary-general will pay you a call.
On The Question Of Jury Nullification- John Gresham’s “The Runaway Jury”
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entey for the film The Runaway Jury.
DVD Review
The Runaway Jury, from the book by John Gresham, starring John Cusack, Dustin Hoffman, and Gene Hackman, 20th Century Fox, 2003.
In a sense every legal thriller (as well as the more mundane psychological and political thrillers) requires a suspension of disbelieve to draw the audience in. And many times the plotline is twisty enough to have us hanging on the edges of our seats as we watch the real villain (or villains) receive sweet, blind-eyed justice. No so here in the film under review, The Runaway Jury. And that title tells exactly what the problem is with the plot line. Just too many of us have been summoned into the real jury selection processes to take this one with anything but the grain of salt. And also, probably as a misbegotten result of watching just one or two too many legal thrillers, the actual legal twists would have had the trial in this case set up for mistrial about fourteen different ways.
And in a way that is too bad because John Cusack as one of the avenging angels (along with his fetching girlfriend) who plot the demise of the gun industry, at least make them subject to produce liability, as a result of a previous innocent victim-filled shootout gun spree that hit close to home and Gene Hackman as the over-the-top “hired gun” (metaphorically of course) jury selection consultant are more than competent in there roles, roles they have produced sparks with in other films. Here though the high moral ground drama (including a major role by a gun control freak lawyer played by Dustin Hoffman) about the question of product liability for inherently dangerous weapons, the slanted issue behind the civil action, the Second Amendment right to bear arms (since codified as an individual right by recent United States Supreme Court decisions), the ethics of jury selection (or rather of pervasive jury tampering), and, oh yes, the winning of the legal battle at whatever cost represented in their respect roles, gets lost in the convoluted and confused plot line. Better luck next time.
DVD Review
The Runaway Jury, from the book by John Gresham, starring John Cusack, Dustin Hoffman, and Gene Hackman, 20th Century Fox, 2003.
In a sense every legal thriller (as well as the more mundane psychological and political thrillers) requires a suspension of disbelieve to draw the audience in. And many times the plotline is twisty enough to have us hanging on the edges of our seats as we watch the real villain (or villains) receive sweet, blind-eyed justice. No so here in the film under review, The Runaway Jury. And that title tells exactly what the problem is with the plot line. Just too many of us have been summoned into the real jury selection processes to take this one with anything but the grain of salt. And also, probably as a misbegotten result of watching just one or two too many legal thrillers, the actual legal twists would have had the trial in this case set up for mistrial about fourteen different ways.
And in a way that is too bad because John Cusack as one of the avenging angels (along with his fetching girlfriend) who plot the demise of the gun industry, at least make them subject to produce liability, as a result of a previous innocent victim-filled shootout gun spree that hit close to home and Gene Hackman as the over-the-top “hired gun” (metaphorically of course) jury selection consultant are more than competent in there roles, roles they have produced sparks with in other films. Here though the high moral ground drama (including a major role by a gun control freak lawyer played by Dustin Hoffman) about the question of product liability for inherently dangerous weapons, the slanted issue behind the civil action, the Second Amendment right to bear arms (since codified as an individual right by recent United States Supreme Court decisions), the ethics of jury selection (or rather of pervasive jury tampering), and, oh yes, the winning of the legal battle at whatever cost represented in their respect roles, gets lost in the convoluted and confused plot line. Better luck next time.
“Workers of The World Unite, You Have Nothing To Lose But Your Chains”-The Struggle For Trotsky's Fourth (Communist) International-From The Archives-The Founding Conference Of The Fourth International (1938)
Click on the headline to link to the Toward A History Of The Fourth International website for the article listed above.
Markin comment (repost from September 2010):
Recently, when the question of an international, a new workers international, a fifth international, was broached by the International Marxist Tendency (IMT), faintly echoing the call by Venezuelan caudillo, Hugo Chavez, I got to thinking a little bit more on the subject. Moreover, it must be something in the air (maybe caused by these global climatic changes) because I have also seen recent commentary on the need to go back to something that looks very much like Karl Marx’s one-size-fits-all First International. Of course, just what the doctor by all means, be my guest, but only if the shades of Proudhon and Bakunin can join. Boys and girls that First International was disbanded in the wake of the demise of the Paris Commune for a reason, okay. Mixing political banners (Marxism and fifty-seven varieties of anarchism) is appropriate to a united front, not a hell-bent revolutionary International fighting, and fighting hard, for our communist future. Forward
The Second International, for those six, no seven, people who might care, is still alive and well (at least for periodic international conferences) as a mail-drop for homeless social democrats who want to maintain a fig leaf of internationalism without having to do much about it. Needless to say, one Joseph Stalin and his cohorts liquidated the Communist (Third) International in 1943, long after it turned from a revolutionary headquarters into an outpost of Soviet foreign policy. By then no revolutionary missed its demise, nor shed a tear goodbye. And of course there are always a million commentaries by groups, cults, leagues, tendencies, etc. claiming to stand in the tradition (although, rarely, the program) of the Leon Trotsky-inspired Fourth International that, logically and programmatically, is the starting point of any discussion of the modern struggle for a new communist international.
With that caveat in mind this month, the September American Labor Day month, but more importantly the month in 1938 that the ill-fated Fourth International was founded I am posting some documents around the history of that formation, and its program, the program known by the shorthand, Transitional Program. If you want to call for a fifth, sixth, seventh, what have you, revolutionary international, and you are serious about it beyond the "mail-drop" potential, then you have to look seriously into that organization's origins, and the world-class Bolshevik revolutionary who inspired it. Forward.
******
Markin comment on this document:
Everybody, and that most notably included Leon Trotsky, knew something was going awry with the Bolshevik Revolution by 1923 for many reasons, some of them beyond correction outside of an international extension of the revolution, especially to Germany that would provide the vital industrial infrastructure to aid the struggling Soviet Union. Nevertheless, and this is important to note about serious revolutionary politics and politicians in general, the fight in 1923 still needed to aimed at winning the party cadre over. That was the failing point of many oppositionists, inside and outside the party, then.
By 1933, with the rise of the virtually unopposed rise and consolidation of Nazism in Germany clearly putting paid to the Communist International’s (read: Stalin’s) erroneous strategy, working inside the party, or acting as an expelled fraction of the party, was no longer tenable. Like earlier with the First and Second Internationals the Communist International was now dead as a revolutionary organizational center. Time now to gather, by fits and starts, the cadre for a new international- the Fourth International
Markin comment (repost from September 2010):
Recently, when the question of an international, a new workers international, a fifth international, was broached by the International Marxist Tendency (IMT), faintly echoing the call by Venezuelan caudillo, Hugo Chavez, I got to thinking a little bit more on the subject. Moreover, it must be something in the air (maybe caused by these global climatic changes) because I have also seen recent commentary on the need to go back to something that looks very much like Karl Marx’s one-size-fits-all First International. Of course, just what the doctor by all means, be my guest, but only if the shades of Proudhon and Bakunin can join. Boys and girls that First International was disbanded in the wake of the demise of the Paris Commune for a reason, okay. Mixing political banners (Marxism and fifty-seven varieties of anarchism) is appropriate to a united front, not a hell-bent revolutionary International fighting, and fighting hard, for our communist future. Forward
The Second International, for those six, no seven, people who might care, is still alive and well (at least for periodic international conferences) as a mail-drop for homeless social democrats who want to maintain a fig leaf of internationalism without having to do much about it. Needless to say, one Joseph Stalin and his cohorts liquidated the Communist (Third) International in 1943, long after it turned from a revolutionary headquarters into an outpost of Soviet foreign policy. By then no revolutionary missed its demise, nor shed a tear goodbye. And of course there are always a million commentaries by groups, cults, leagues, tendencies, etc. claiming to stand in the tradition (although, rarely, the program) of the Leon Trotsky-inspired Fourth International that, logically and programmatically, is the starting point of any discussion of the modern struggle for a new communist international.
With that caveat in mind this month, the September American Labor Day month, but more importantly the month in 1938 that the ill-fated Fourth International was founded I am posting some documents around the history of that formation, and its program, the program known by the shorthand, Transitional Program. If you want to call for a fifth, sixth, seventh, what have you, revolutionary international, and you are serious about it beyond the "mail-drop" potential, then you have to look seriously into that organization's origins, and the world-class Bolshevik revolutionary who inspired it. Forward.
******
Markin comment on this document:
Everybody, and that most notably included Leon Trotsky, knew something was going awry with the Bolshevik Revolution by 1923 for many reasons, some of them beyond correction outside of an international extension of the revolution, especially to Germany that would provide the vital industrial infrastructure to aid the struggling Soviet Union. Nevertheless, and this is important to note about serious revolutionary politics and politicians in general, the fight in 1923 still needed to aimed at winning the party cadre over. That was the failing point of many oppositionists, inside and outside the party, then.
By 1933, with the rise of the virtually unopposed rise and consolidation of Nazism in Germany clearly putting paid to the Communist International’s (read: Stalin’s) erroneous strategy, working inside the party, or acting as an expelled fraction of the party, was no longer tenable. Like earlier with the First and Second Internationals the Communist International was now dead as a revolutionary organizational center. Time now to gather, by fits and starts, the cadre for a new international- the Fourth International
Wednesday, September 07, 2011
Labor's Untold Story-From The Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels Archives-The Struggle For Working Class Organization-Marx-Engels Correspondence London-1851
Markin comment:
Every Month Is Labor History MonthThis post is part of an on-going series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!
Other Septembers in this series I have concentrated on various sometimes now obscure leaders and rank and file militants in the international working class movement, especially those who made contributions here in America like "Big Bill" Haywood and Eugene V. Debs. This year, given the pressing need for clarity around the labor party question in America(algebraically expressed in our movement as the struggle for a workers party that fights for a workers government) I have gone back to the sources-Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and their correspondence on working class organizationwith various associates and opponents. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely given the state of working class organization here these days, many of their comments, taken in due regard for changed times and circumstances, are germane today. This correspondence is only a start and should just whet the reader's appetite to research further.
*****
Marx-Engels Correspondence 1851
Engels to Marx
In London
Source: MECW Volume 38, p. 289;
First published: in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, 1913.
[Manchester,] Thursday, 13 February 1851
Dear Marx,
I had been more or less expecting this business with Harney. I saw the notice of the Bem meeting in The Friend of the People, which stated that the Germans, French, Poles and Hungarians, as well as the fraternal democrats would be taking part, and it was quite clear that these could be none other than Great Windmill Street & Co. I forgot to draw your attention to this announcement before. There’s no possibility of my pursuing the matter any further today. But tomorrow I shall write a letter to Harney in which I shall tell him not to print the manuscript I sent him, as I shall not be providing a sequel, and in which I shall at the same time explain the whole business to him in detail. If this letter is of no avail, the whole rigmarole will have to be dropped until Mr Harney returns of his own accord, which will happen very soon. I have a very strong suspicion that he will be up here shortly and then I shall duly take him to task. It’s about time he realised that we're in earnest with him, too. At any rate, so as to save time and avoid writing twice I shall send the letter to you to be passed on to him as quickly as possible once you've read it.
Personally I find this inanity and want of tact on Harney’s part more irritating than anything else. But au fond it is of little moment.
At long last we again have the opportunity — the first time in ages — to show that we need neither popularity, nor the support of any party in any country, and that our position is completely independent of such ludicrous trifles. From now on we are only answerable for ourselves and, come the time when these gentry need us, we shall be in a position to dictate our own terms. Until then we shall at least have some peace and quiet. A measure of loneliness, too, of course — mon Dieu, I've already had a 3 months’ spell of that in Manchester and have grown used to it, and this, moreover, as a bachelor, which here, at any rate, is excessively boring. Besides we have no real grounds for complaint if we are shunned by the petits grands hommes; haven’t we been acting for years as though Cherethites and Plethites were our party when, in fact, we had no party, and when the people whom we considered as belonging to our party, at least officially, sous réserve de les appeler des bêtes incorrigibles entre nous [with the reservation that between ourselves we called them incorrigible fools], didn’t even understand the rudiments of our stuff? How can people like us, who shun official appointments like the plague, fit into a ‘party’? And what have we, who spit on popularity, who don’t know what to make of ourselves if we show signs of growing popular, to do with a ‘party’, i.e. a herd of jackasses who swear by us because they think we're of the same kidney as they? Truly, it is no loss if we are no longer held to be the ‘right and adequate expression’ of the ignorant curs with whom we have been thrown together over the past few years.
A revolution is a purely natural phenomenon which is subject to physical laws rather than to the rules that determine the development of society in ordinary times. Or rather, in revolution these rules assume a much more physical character, the material force of necessity makes itself more strongly felt. And as soon as one steps forward as the representative of a party, one is dragged into this whirlpool of irresistible natural necessity. By the mere fact of keeping oneself independent, being in the nature of things more revolutionary than the others, one is able at least for a time to maintain one’s independence from this whirlpool, although one does, of course, end up by being dragged into it.
This is the position we can and must adopt on the next occasion. Not only no official government appointments but also, and for as long as possible, no official party appointments, no seat on committees, etc., no responsibility for jackasses, merciless criticism of everyone, and, besides, that serenity of which all the conspiracies of blockheads cannot deprive us. And this much we are able to do. We can always, in the nature of things, be more revolutionary than the phrase-mongers because we have learnt our lesson and they have not, because we know what we want and they do not, and because, after what we have seen for at least three years, we shall take it a great deal more coolly than anyone who has an interest in the business.
The main thing at the moment is to find some way of getting our things published; either in a quarterly in which we make a frontal attack and consolidate our position so far as persons are concerned, or in fat books where we do the same without being under the necessity of mentioning any one of these vipers. Either way suits me; in the long run, and with reaction on the increase, it seems to me that the feasibility of the former is decreasing and that the latter will come more and more to be the expedient to which we must apply ourselves. What price all the gossip the entire émigré crowd can muster against you, when you answer it with your political economy?
Tomorrow, the letter for Harney. En attendant, salut.
Your
F. E.
Every Month Is Labor History MonthThis post is part of an on-going series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!
Other Septembers in this series I have concentrated on various sometimes now obscure leaders and rank and file militants in the international working class movement, especially those who made contributions here in America like "Big Bill" Haywood and Eugene V. Debs. This year, given the pressing need for clarity around the labor party question in America(algebraically expressed in our movement as the struggle for a workers party that fights for a workers government) I have gone back to the sources-Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and their correspondence on working class organizationwith various associates and opponents. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely given the state of working class organization here these days, many of their comments, taken in due regard for changed times and circumstances, are germane today. This correspondence is only a start and should just whet the reader's appetite to research further.
*****
Marx-Engels Correspondence 1851
Engels to Marx
In London
Source: MECW Volume 38, p. 289;
First published: in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, 1913.
[Manchester,] Thursday, 13 February 1851
Dear Marx,
I had been more or less expecting this business with Harney. I saw the notice of the Bem meeting in The Friend of the People, which stated that the Germans, French, Poles and Hungarians, as well as the fraternal democrats would be taking part, and it was quite clear that these could be none other than Great Windmill Street & Co. I forgot to draw your attention to this announcement before. There’s no possibility of my pursuing the matter any further today. But tomorrow I shall write a letter to Harney in which I shall tell him not to print the manuscript I sent him, as I shall not be providing a sequel, and in which I shall at the same time explain the whole business to him in detail. If this letter is of no avail, the whole rigmarole will have to be dropped until Mr Harney returns of his own accord, which will happen very soon. I have a very strong suspicion that he will be up here shortly and then I shall duly take him to task. It’s about time he realised that we're in earnest with him, too. At any rate, so as to save time and avoid writing twice I shall send the letter to you to be passed on to him as quickly as possible once you've read it.
Personally I find this inanity and want of tact on Harney’s part more irritating than anything else. But au fond it is of little moment.
At long last we again have the opportunity — the first time in ages — to show that we need neither popularity, nor the support of any party in any country, and that our position is completely independent of such ludicrous trifles. From now on we are only answerable for ourselves and, come the time when these gentry need us, we shall be in a position to dictate our own terms. Until then we shall at least have some peace and quiet. A measure of loneliness, too, of course — mon Dieu, I've already had a 3 months’ spell of that in Manchester and have grown used to it, and this, moreover, as a bachelor, which here, at any rate, is excessively boring. Besides we have no real grounds for complaint if we are shunned by the petits grands hommes; haven’t we been acting for years as though Cherethites and Plethites were our party when, in fact, we had no party, and when the people whom we considered as belonging to our party, at least officially, sous réserve de les appeler des bêtes incorrigibles entre nous [with the reservation that between ourselves we called them incorrigible fools], didn’t even understand the rudiments of our stuff? How can people like us, who shun official appointments like the plague, fit into a ‘party’? And what have we, who spit on popularity, who don’t know what to make of ourselves if we show signs of growing popular, to do with a ‘party’, i.e. a herd of jackasses who swear by us because they think we're of the same kidney as they? Truly, it is no loss if we are no longer held to be the ‘right and adequate expression’ of the ignorant curs with whom we have been thrown together over the past few years.
A revolution is a purely natural phenomenon which is subject to physical laws rather than to the rules that determine the development of society in ordinary times. Or rather, in revolution these rules assume a much more physical character, the material force of necessity makes itself more strongly felt. And as soon as one steps forward as the representative of a party, one is dragged into this whirlpool of irresistible natural necessity. By the mere fact of keeping oneself independent, being in the nature of things more revolutionary than the others, one is able at least for a time to maintain one’s independence from this whirlpool, although one does, of course, end up by being dragged into it.
This is the position we can and must adopt on the next occasion. Not only no official government appointments but also, and for as long as possible, no official party appointments, no seat on committees, etc., no responsibility for jackasses, merciless criticism of everyone, and, besides, that serenity of which all the conspiracies of blockheads cannot deprive us. And this much we are able to do. We can always, in the nature of things, be more revolutionary than the phrase-mongers because we have learnt our lesson and they have not, because we know what we want and they do not, and because, after what we have seen for at least three years, we shall take it a great deal more coolly than anyone who has an interest in the business.
The main thing at the moment is to find some way of getting our things published; either in a quarterly in which we make a frontal attack and consolidate our position so far as persons are concerned, or in fat books where we do the same without being under the necessity of mentioning any one of these vipers. Either way suits me; in the long run, and with reaction on the increase, it seems to me that the feasibility of the former is decreasing and that the latter will come more and more to be the expedient to which we must apply ourselves. What price all the gossip the entire émigré crowd can muster against you, when you answer it with your political economy?
Tomorrow, the letter for Harney. En attendant, salut.
Your
F. E.
For Oratorian Brother Ronald Callahan- North Adamsville High School Class of 1974- Another Way To Seek A Newer World
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the Oratorian Brothers. I think this is the right religious order.
Peter Paul Markin, Class of 1974, comment:
Usually when I have had an occasion to use the word “brother” it is to ask for something like –“Say brother, can you spare a dime?” And has cursed, under my breathe of course, when I have not received recognition of and, more importantly, dough for my down and out status which required the use of that statement. Or I have used it as a solidarity word when I have addressed one of the male members of the eight million political causes that I have worked on in my life-“Brother Jones has made very good point. We should, of course, storm heaven to get this government to stop this damn war (fill in whatever war is going on at the time and you will not be far off).” Here, in speaking of one of my fellow North Adamsville High School classmates, Brother Ronald Callahan, I am using the term as a sincere honorific. For those of you who do not know Brother Ronald is a member of the Oratorian Brothers, a Catholic order somewhere down on the hierarchical ladder of the Roman Catholic Church. Wherever that rung is, he, as my devout Irish Catholic grandmother, the one who lived over on Young Street and was regarded by one and all as a “saint” (if only for having put up with cranky, I am being kind here, grandfather), would say (secretly hoping, hoping against hope, that it would apply to me), had the “calling” to serve the Church.
Now Brother Ronald and I, except for a few sporadic e-mails over the last couple of years, have neither seen nor heard from each other since our school days. So this is something of an unsolicited testimonial on my part (although my intention is to draw him out into the public spotlight to write about his life and work of which I have a glimmer of long time ago recognition). Moreover, except for a shared youthful adherence to the Roman Catholic Church which I long ago placed on the back burner of my life there are no religious connections that bind us together now. At one time, I swear, that I did delight in arguing, through the dark North Adamsville beach night, about the actual number of angels that could dance on the head of a needle, and the like, but that is long past. I do not want to comment on such matters, in any case, but rather on the fact of Brother Ronald’s doing good in this world.
We, from an early age, are told, no, ordered by parents, preachers, and Sunday school teachers that while we are about the business of ‘making and doing’ in the world to do good, or at least to do no evil. Most of us got that ‘making and doing’ part, and have paid stumbling, fumbling, mumbling lip service to the last part. Brother Ronald, as his profession, and as a profession of his faith, and that is important here, choose a different path. Maybe not my path, and maybe not yours, but certainly in Brother Ronald’s case, as old Abe Lincoln said, the “better angels of our nature” prevailed over the grimy struggle for this world’s good. Most times I have to fidget around to find the right endings to my commentaries, but not on this one. You did good, real good, Brother. And from the ragtag remnant of the Salducci’s Pizza Parlor corner boys in the old North Adamsville hang-out good night- All honor to Brother Ronald Callahan.
Peter Paul Markin, Class of 1974, comment:
Usually when I have had an occasion to use the word “brother” it is to ask for something like –“Say brother, can you spare a dime?” And has cursed, under my breathe of course, when I have not received recognition of and, more importantly, dough for my down and out status which required the use of that statement. Or I have used it as a solidarity word when I have addressed one of the male members of the eight million political causes that I have worked on in my life-“Brother Jones has made very good point. We should, of course, storm heaven to get this government to stop this damn war (fill in whatever war is going on at the time and you will not be far off).” Here, in speaking of one of my fellow North Adamsville High School classmates, Brother Ronald Callahan, I am using the term as a sincere honorific. For those of you who do not know Brother Ronald is a member of the Oratorian Brothers, a Catholic order somewhere down on the hierarchical ladder of the Roman Catholic Church. Wherever that rung is, he, as my devout Irish Catholic grandmother, the one who lived over on Young Street and was regarded by one and all as a “saint” (if only for having put up with cranky, I am being kind here, grandfather), would say (secretly hoping, hoping against hope, that it would apply to me), had the “calling” to serve the Church.
Now Brother Ronald and I, except for a few sporadic e-mails over the last couple of years, have neither seen nor heard from each other since our school days. So this is something of an unsolicited testimonial on my part (although my intention is to draw him out into the public spotlight to write about his life and work of which I have a glimmer of long time ago recognition). Moreover, except for a shared youthful adherence to the Roman Catholic Church which I long ago placed on the back burner of my life there are no religious connections that bind us together now. At one time, I swear, that I did delight in arguing, through the dark North Adamsville beach night, about the actual number of angels that could dance on the head of a needle, and the like, but that is long past. I do not want to comment on such matters, in any case, but rather on the fact of Brother Ronald’s doing good in this world.
We, from an early age, are told, no, ordered by parents, preachers, and Sunday school teachers that while we are about the business of ‘making and doing’ in the world to do good, or at least to do no evil. Most of us got that ‘making and doing’ part, and have paid stumbling, fumbling, mumbling lip service to the last part. Brother Ronald, as his profession, and as a profession of his faith, and that is important here, choose a different path. Maybe not my path, and maybe not yours, but certainly in Brother Ronald’s case, as old Abe Lincoln said, the “better angels of our nature” prevailed over the grimy struggle for this world’s good. Most times I have to fidget around to find the right endings to my commentaries, but not on this one. You did good, real good, Brother. And from the ragtag remnant of the Salducci’s Pizza Parlor corner boys in the old North Adamsville hang-out good night- All honor to Brother Ronald Callahan.
“Workers of The World Unite, You Have Nothing To Lose But Your Chains”-The Struggle For Trotsky's Fourth (Communist) International-From The Archives-THE DECLARATION OF FOUR(1933)-"On the Necessity and Principles of a New International"
Click on the headline to link to the Toward A History Of The Fourth International website for the article listed above.
Markin comment (repost from September 2010):
Recently, when the question of an international, a new workers international, a fifth international, was broached by the International Marxist Tendency (IMT), faintly echoing the call by Venezuelan caudillo, Hugo Chavez, I got to thinking a little bit more on the subject. Moreover, it must be something in the air (maybe caused by these global climatic changes) because I have also seen recent commentary on the need to go back to something that looks very much like Karl Marx’s one-size-fits-all First International. Of course, just what the doctor by all means, be my guest, but only if the shades of Proudhon and Bakunin can join. Boys and girls that First International was disbanded in the wake of the demise of the Paris Commune for a reason, okay. Mixing political banners (Marxism and fifty-seven varieties of anarchism) is appropriate to a united front, not a hell-bent revolutionary International fighting, and fighting hard, for our communist future. Forward
The Second International, for those six, no seven, people who might care, is still alive and well (at least for periodic international conferences) as a mail-drop for homeless social democrats who want to maintain a fig leaf of internationalism without having to do much about it. Needless to say, one Joseph Stalin and his cohorts liquidated the Communist (Third) International in 1943, long after it turned from a revolutionary headquarters into an outpost of Soviet foreign policy. By then no revolutionary missed its demise, nor shed a tear goodbye. And of course there are always a million commentaries by groups, cults, leagues, tendencies, etc. claiming to stand in the tradition (although, rarely, the program) of the Leon Trotsky-inspired Fourth International that, logically and programmatically, is the starting point of any discussion of the modern struggle for a new communist international.
With that caveat in mind this month, the September American Labor Day month, but more importantly the month in 1938 that the ill-fated Fourth International was founded I am posting some documents around the history of that formation, and its program, the program known by the shorthand, Transitional Program. If you want to call for a fifth, sixth, seventh, what have you, revolutionary international, and you are serious about it beyond the "mail-drop" potential, then you have to look seriously into that organization's origins, and the world-class Bolshevik revolutionary who inspired it. Forward.
********
Markin comment on this document
Everybody, and that most notably included Leon Trotsky, knew something was going awry with the Bolshevik Revolution by 1923 for many reasons, some of them beyond correction outside of an international extension of the revolution, especially to Germany that would provide the vital industrial infrastructure to aid the struggling Soviet Union. Nevertheless, and this is important to note about serious revolutionary politics and politicians in general, the fight in 1923 still needed to aimed at winning the party cadre over. That was the failing point of many oppositionists, inside and outside the party, then.
By 1933, with the rise of the virtually unopposed rise and consolidation of Nazism in Germany clearly putting paid to the Communist International’s (read: Stalin’s) erroneous strategy, working inside the party, or acting as an expelled fraction of the party, was no longer tenable. Like earlier with the First and Second Internationals the Communist International was now dead as a revolutionary organizational center. Time now to gather, by fits and starts, the cadre for a new international- the Fourth International
Markin comment (repost from September 2010):
Recently, when the question of an international, a new workers international, a fifth international, was broached by the International Marxist Tendency (IMT), faintly echoing the call by Venezuelan caudillo, Hugo Chavez, I got to thinking a little bit more on the subject. Moreover, it must be something in the air (maybe caused by these global climatic changes) because I have also seen recent commentary on the need to go back to something that looks very much like Karl Marx’s one-size-fits-all First International. Of course, just what the doctor by all means, be my guest, but only if the shades of Proudhon and Bakunin can join. Boys and girls that First International was disbanded in the wake of the demise of the Paris Commune for a reason, okay. Mixing political banners (Marxism and fifty-seven varieties of anarchism) is appropriate to a united front, not a hell-bent revolutionary International fighting, and fighting hard, for our communist future. Forward
The Second International, for those six, no seven, people who might care, is still alive and well (at least for periodic international conferences) as a mail-drop for homeless social democrats who want to maintain a fig leaf of internationalism without having to do much about it. Needless to say, one Joseph Stalin and his cohorts liquidated the Communist (Third) International in 1943, long after it turned from a revolutionary headquarters into an outpost of Soviet foreign policy. By then no revolutionary missed its demise, nor shed a tear goodbye. And of course there are always a million commentaries by groups, cults, leagues, tendencies, etc. claiming to stand in the tradition (although, rarely, the program) of the Leon Trotsky-inspired Fourth International that, logically and programmatically, is the starting point of any discussion of the modern struggle for a new communist international.
With that caveat in mind this month, the September American Labor Day month, but more importantly the month in 1938 that the ill-fated Fourth International was founded I am posting some documents around the history of that formation, and its program, the program known by the shorthand, Transitional Program. If you want to call for a fifth, sixth, seventh, what have you, revolutionary international, and you are serious about it beyond the "mail-drop" potential, then you have to look seriously into that organization's origins, and the world-class Bolshevik revolutionary who inspired it. Forward.
********
Markin comment on this document
Everybody, and that most notably included Leon Trotsky, knew something was going awry with the Bolshevik Revolution by 1923 for many reasons, some of them beyond correction outside of an international extension of the revolution, especially to Germany that would provide the vital industrial infrastructure to aid the struggling Soviet Union. Nevertheless, and this is important to note about serious revolutionary politics and politicians in general, the fight in 1923 still needed to aimed at winning the party cadre over. That was the failing point of many oppositionists, inside and outside the party, then.
By 1933, with the rise of the virtually unopposed rise and consolidation of Nazism in Germany clearly putting paid to the Communist International’s (read: Stalin’s) erroneous strategy, working inside the party, or acting as an expelled fraction of the party, was no longer tenable. Like earlier with the First and Second Internationals the Communist International was now dead as a revolutionary organizational center. Time now to gather, by fits and starts, the cadre for a new international- the Fourth International
Tuesday, September 06, 2011
When James Bond Re-Tread The World- "Casino Royale" - A Film Review
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for Casino Royale.
DVD Review
Casino Royale, starring Daniel Craig, Eva Green, Judi Dench, form the spy novel written by Ian Fleming, M-G-M, 2006
I admit I was smitten by Ian Fleming’s James Bond epic Cold War spy notion back when we used to see such adventure film fare on the big screen at the local drive-in theater (for those who do know of that 1950s and early 1960s institution check Wikipedia) when we were more interested in some “hot” date more than in the movie. I think the first one in the Bond series was Doctor No with Sean Connery in the Bond role. There have been some twenty-odd Bond films since (and many copy-cat films) and a succession of Bond replacements. Frankly, despite the good performance here by Daniel Craig as Bond (and as almost always by Judi Dench in anything she does) this Bond notion I think has gotten stale. The virtue of Connery’s Bond was that while he was a wily and steadfast advocate of the “free world” he brought something of a slapstick air about the whole thing. This one, premised on fighting the “war on terrorism” by foiling a poker-loving “banker,” made me long for a cheeky Cold War spy night performance by Connery done with far less physical and technical whiz-bang action and more guile.
DVD Review
Casino Royale, starring Daniel Craig, Eva Green, Judi Dench, form the spy novel written by Ian Fleming, M-G-M, 2006
I admit I was smitten by Ian Fleming’s James Bond epic Cold War spy notion back when we used to see such adventure film fare on the big screen at the local drive-in theater (for those who do know of that 1950s and early 1960s institution check Wikipedia) when we were more interested in some “hot” date more than in the movie. I think the first one in the Bond series was Doctor No with Sean Connery in the Bond role. There have been some twenty-odd Bond films since (and many copy-cat films) and a succession of Bond replacements. Frankly, despite the good performance here by Daniel Craig as Bond (and as almost always by Judi Dench in anything she does) this Bond notion I think has gotten stale. The virtue of Connery’s Bond was that while he was a wily and steadfast advocate of the “free world” he brought something of a slapstick air about the whole thing. This one, premised on fighting the “war on terrorism” by foiling a poker-loving “banker,” made me long for a cheeky Cold War spy night performance by Connery done with far less physical and technical whiz-bang action and more guile.
Labor's Untold Story-From The Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels Archives-The Struggle For Working Class Organization-Engels To Emil Blank In London (1848)
Markin comment:
Every Month Is Labor History MonthThis post is part of an on-going series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!
Other Septembers in this series I have concentrated on various sometimes now obscure leaders and rank and file militants in the international working class movement, especially those who made contributions here in America like "Big Bill" Haywood and Eugene V. Debs. This year, given the pressing need for clarity around the labor party question in America(algebraically expressed in our movement as the struggle for a workers party that fights for a workers government) I have gone back to the sources-Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and their correspondence on working class organizationwith various associates and opponents. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely given the state of working class organization here these days, many of their comments, taken in due regard for changed times and circumstances, are germane today. This correspondence is only a start and should just whet the reader's appetite to research further.
*****
Letters of Marx and Engels 1848
Engels To Emil Blank In London (1848)
Source: MECW Volume 38, p. 167;
Written: 28 March 1848;
First published: in Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, 1934.
Paris, 28 March 1848
Dear Emil,
Today I received the first four halves of the 4 £5 notes and would ask you to send the other halves immediately, since I must get away as soon as possible. Many thanks for your willingness to come so promptly to my assistance in this emergency. Your subscription to the [Neue] Rheinische Zeitung has been registered.
As regards the parties here, there are, properly speaking, three major ones, not counting the minor ones (Legitimists [supporters of the Bourbon dynasty overthrown in 1830] and Bonapartists who simply intrigue, mere sects without influence among the people, in part wealthy, but no hope whatever of victory). These three are, first, those defeated on 24 February, i.e. the big bourgeoisie, speculators on the Bourse, bankers, manufacturers and big merchants, the old conservatives and liberals. Secondly, the petty bourgeoisie, the middle class, the bulk of the National Guard which, on 23 and 24 Febr. sided with the people, the ‘reasonable radicals’, Lamartine’s men and those of the National. Thirdly, the people, the Parisian workers, who are now holding Paris by force of arms.
The big bourgeoisie and the workers are in direct confrontation with each other. The petty bourgeois play an intermediary but altogether contemptible role. The latter, however, have a majority in the provisional government (Lamartine, Marrast, Dupont de I'Eure, Marie, Garnier-Pagès and, occasionally, Crémieux as well).
They, and the provisional government with them, vacillate a great deal. The quieter everything becomes, the more the government and the petty-bourgeois party incline towards the big bourgeoisie; the greater the unrest, the more they join up with the workers again. Recently, for instance, when the bourgeois had again become fearfully uppish and actually dispatched a column of National Guards 8,000 strong to the Town Hall to protest against a decree of the provisional government, and more especially against Ledru-Rollin’s vigorous measures,[212] they did in fact succeed in so intimidating the majority of the government, and in particular the weak-kneed Lamartine, that he publicly disavowed Ledru. But on the following day, 17 March, 200,000 workers marched on the Town Hall, proclaimed their implicit confidence in Ledru-Rollin and compelled the majority of the government and Lamartine to recant. For the time being, then, the men of the Réforme (Ledru-Rollin, Flocon, L. Blanc, Albert, Arago) again have the upper hand. They, more than anyone else in the government, still represent the workers, and are communists without knowing it. Unfortunately little Louis Blanc is making a great ass of himself with his vanity and his crack-brained schemes.[213] Ere long he will come a terrible cropper. But Ledru-Rollin is behaving very well.
The most unfortunate thing is that the government, on the one hand, has to make promises to the workers and, on the other, is unable to keep any of them because it lacks the courage to secure the necessary funds by revolutionary measures against the bourgeoisie, by severe progressive taxation, succession duties, confiscation of all émigré property, ban on the export of currency, state bank, etc. The men of the Réforme are allowed to make promises which they are then prevented from keeping by the most inane conservative decisions.
In addition there is now a new element in the National Assembly: the peasants who make up 5/7 of the French nation and support the party of the National, of the petty bourgeoisie. It is highly probable that this party will win, that the men of the Réforme will fall, and then there'll be another revolution. It’s also possible that, once in Paris, the deputies will realise how things stand here, and that only the men of the Réforme can stay the course in the long term. This, however, is improbable.
The postponement of the elections for a fortnight is also a victory for the Parisian workers over the bourgeois party.[214]
The men of the National, Marrast and Co., cut a very poor figure in other respects as well. They live in clover and provide their friends with palaces and good positions. Those from the Réforme are quite different. I've been to see old Flocon several times; the fellow lives as before in poor lodgings on the fifth floor, smokes cheap shag in an old clay pipe, and has bought nothing for himself but a new dressing-gown. For the rest his way of life is no less republican than when he was still editor of the Réforme, nor is he any less friendly, cordial and open-hearted. He’s one of the most decent fellows I know.
Recently I lunched at the Tuileries, in the Prince de Joinville’s suite, with old Imbert who was a réfugié in Brussels and is now Governor of the Tuileries. In Louis-Philippe’s apartments now the wounded lie on the carpets, smoking stubby pipes. In the throne-room the portraits of Soult and Bugeaud have been torn down and ripped and the one of Grouchy cut to shreds.
Going past at this very moment, to the strains of the Marseillaise, is the funeral cortège of a working man who died of his wounds. Escorting him are National Guards and armed populace at least 10,000 strong, and young toffs from the Chaussée d'Antin, have to escort the procession as mounted National Guards. The bourgeois are enraged at seeing a working man thus given the last honours.
Your
F. E.
Every Month Is Labor History MonthThis post is part of an on-going series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!
Other Septembers in this series I have concentrated on various sometimes now obscure leaders and rank and file militants in the international working class movement, especially those who made contributions here in America like "Big Bill" Haywood and Eugene V. Debs. This year, given the pressing need for clarity around the labor party question in America(algebraically expressed in our movement as the struggle for a workers party that fights for a workers government) I have gone back to the sources-Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and their correspondence on working class organizationwith various associates and opponents. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely given the state of working class organization here these days, many of their comments, taken in due regard for changed times and circumstances, are germane today. This correspondence is only a start and should just whet the reader's appetite to research further.
*****
Letters of Marx and Engels 1848
Engels To Emil Blank In London (1848)
Source: MECW Volume 38, p. 167;
Written: 28 March 1848;
First published: in Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, 1934.
Paris, 28 March 1848
Dear Emil,
Today I received the first four halves of the 4 £5 notes and would ask you to send the other halves immediately, since I must get away as soon as possible. Many thanks for your willingness to come so promptly to my assistance in this emergency. Your subscription to the [Neue] Rheinische Zeitung has been registered.
As regards the parties here, there are, properly speaking, three major ones, not counting the minor ones (Legitimists [supporters of the Bourbon dynasty overthrown in 1830] and Bonapartists who simply intrigue, mere sects without influence among the people, in part wealthy, but no hope whatever of victory). These three are, first, those defeated on 24 February, i.e. the big bourgeoisie, speculators on the Bourse, bankers, manufacturers and big merchants, the old conservatives and liberals. Secondly, the petty bourgeoisie, the middle class, the bulk of the National Guard which, on 23 and 24 Febr. sided with the people, the ‘reasonable radicals’, Lamartine’s men and those of the National. Thirdly, the people, the Parisian workers, who are now holding Paris by force of arms.
The big bourgeoisie and the workers are in direct confrontation with each other. The petty bourgeois play an intermediary but altogether contemptible role. The latter, however, have a majority in the provisional government (Lamartine, Marrast, Dupont de I'Eure, Marie, Garnier-Pagès and, occasionally, Crémieux as well).
They, and the provisional government with them, vacillate a great deal. The quieter everything becomes, the more the government and the petty-bourgeois party incline towards the big bourgeoisie; the greater the unrest, the more they join up with the workers again. Recently, for instance, when the bourgeois had again become fearfully uppish and actually dispatched a column of National Guards 8,000 strong to the Town Hall to protest against a decree of the provisional government, and more especially against Ledru-Rollin’s vigorous measures,[212] they did in fact succeed in so intimidating the majority of the government, and in particular the weak-kneed Lamartine, that he publicly disavowed Ledru. But on the following day, 17 March, 200,000 workers marched on the Town Hall, proclaimed their implicit confidence in Ledru-Rollin and compelled the majority of the government and Lamartine to recant. For the time being, then, the men of the Réforme (Ledru-Rollin, Flocon, L. Blanc, Albert, Arago) again have the upper hand. They, more than anyone else in the government, still represent the workers, and are communists without knowing it. Unfortunately little Louis Blanc is making a great ass of himself with his vanity and his crack-brained schemes.[213] Ere long he will come a terrible cropper. But Ledru-Rollin is behaving very well.
The most unfortunate thing is that the government, on the one hand, has to make promises to the workers and, on the other, is unable to keep any of them because it lacks the courage to secure the necessary funds by revolutionary measures against the bourgeoisie, by severe progressive taxation, succession duties, confiscation of all émigré property, ban on the export of currency, state bank, etc. The men of the Réforme are allowed to make promises which they are then prevented from keeping by the most inane conservative decisions.
In addition there is now a new element in the National Assembly: the peasants who make up 5/7 of the French nation and support the party of the National, of the petty bourgeoisie. It is highly probable that this party will win, that the men of the Réforme will fall, and then there'll be another revolution. It’s also possible that, once in Paris, the deputies will realise how things stand here, and that only the men of the Réforme can stay the course in the long term. This, however, is improbable.
The postponement of the elections for a fortnight is also a victory for the Parisian workers over the bourgeois party.[214]
The men of the National, Marrast and Co., cut a very poor figure in other respects as well. They live in clover and provide their friends with palaces and good positions. Those from the Réforme are quite different. I've been to see old Flocon several times; the fellow lives as before in poor lodgings on the fifth floor, smokes cheap shag in an old clay pipe, and has bought nothing for himself but a new dressing-gown. For the rest his way of life is no less republican than when he was still editor of the Réforme, nor is he any less friendly, cordial and open-hearted. He’s one of the most decent fellows I know.
Recently I lunched at the Tuileries, in the Prince de Joinville’s suite, with old Imbert who was a réfugié in Brussels and is now Governor of the Tuileries. In Louis-Philippe’s apartments now the wounded lie on the carpets, smoking stubby pipes. In the throne-room the portraits of Soult and Bugeaud have been torn down and ripped and the one of Grouchy cut to shreds.
Going past at this very moment, to the strains of the Marseillaise, is the funeral cortège of a working man who died of his wounds. Escorting him are National Guards and armed populace at least 10,000 strong, and young toffs from the Chaussée d'Antin, have to escort the procession as mounted National Guards. The bourgeois are enraged at seeing a working man thus given the last honours.
Your
F. E.
Out In The 1940s Crime Noir Night-The Mexican Immigration Situation-Then- Anthony Mann’s “Border Incident”-A Film Review
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the film noir Border Incident
DVD Review
Border Incident, starring Ricardo Montaban, George Murphy, directed by Anthony Mann, M-G-M, 1949
No question I am a film noir, especially a crime noir, aficionado. Recently I have been on a tear reviewing various crime noir efforts and drawing comparisons between the ones that “speak” to me and those that, perhaps, should have been better left on the cutting room floor. The classics are easy and need no additional comment from me for their plot lines stand on their own merits. Others, because they have a fetching, or wicked, for that matter, femme fatale to muddy the waters also get a pass. Some, such as the film under review, which deals with the American and Mexican governments’ attempts to curb illegal immigration and those who benefit from it, the 1940s black and white B-film Border Incident, offers very little of either.
It is not for lack of interesting subject matter- the question of illegal Mexican immigrant migration is still very much with us as the news headlines scream out almost daily. Certainly the “coyotes” (illegal alien smugglers) and other social relationships (complicit farm owners, governmental agents, etc.) featured in this film are very much with us as the periodic finding of clots of dead illegal immigrants in some woe begotten deserts testifies to. It is also not for lack of trying to draw attention to the importance of the issue but rather that the stilted dialogue of the main characters, relentlessly hammering us with clear cut choices between good and evil when a lot of life is very gray, very gray indeed, gets in the way.
Probably the biggest problem, however, and one which is seemingly endemic to the police procedural crime noir B-movie genre, is that in the attempt to earnestly portray a living social problem involving governmental action takes the life out of the film and becomes mere propaganda. I would contrast this one with, let us say, Orson Welles’ Touch Of Evil, another border town-centered film and you will in one minute both get my point and get the different. If you insist on seeing this one then it is because of the great black and white gritty cinematography of the great American West landscape and some tense character-shot moments. But again Touch has all that, and more.
DVD Review
Border Incident, starring Ricardo Montaban, George Murphy, directed by Anthony Mann, M-G-M, 1949
No question I am a film noir, especially a crime noir, aficionado. Recently I have been on a tear reviewing various crime noir efforts and drawing comparisons between the ones that “speak” to me and those that, perhaps, should have been better left on the cutting room floor. The classics are easy and need no additional comment from me for their plot lines stand on their own merits. Others, because they have a fetching, or wicked, for that matter, femme fatale to muddy the waters also get a pass. Some, such as the film under review, which deals with the American and Mexican governments’ attempts to curb illegal immigration and those who benefit from it, the 1940s black and white B-film Border Incident, offers very little of either.
It is not for lack of interesting subject matter- the question of illegal Mexican immigrant migration is still very much with us as the news headlines scream out almost daily. Certainly the “coyotes” (illegal alien smugglers) and other social relationships (complicit farm owners, governmental agents, etc.) featured in this film are very much with us as the periodic finding of clots of dead illegal immigrants in some woe begotten deserts testifies to. It is also not for lack of trying to draw attention to the importance of the issue but rather that the stilted dialogue of the main characters, relentlessly hammering us with clear cut choices between good and evil when a lot of life is very gray, very gray indeed, gets in the way.
Probably the biggest problem, however, and one which is seemingly endemic to the police procedural crime noir B-movie genre, is that in the attempt to earnestly portray a living social problem involving governmental action takes the life out of the film and becomes mere propaganda. I would contrast this one with, let us say, Orson Welles’ Touch Of Evil, another border town-centered film and you will in one minute both get my point and get the different. If you insist on seeing this one then it is because of the great black and white gritty cinematography of the great American West landscape and some tense character-shot moments. But again Touch has all that, and more.
“Workers of The World Unite, You Have Nothing To Lose But Your Chains”-The Struggle For Trotsky's Fourth (Communist) International-From The Archives-Documents of the 1923 opposition-"The Thirteenth Party Conference January 16-18 1924"
Click on the headline to link to the Toward A History Of The Fourth International website for the article listed above.
Markin comment (repost from September 2010):
Recently, when the question of an international, a new workers international, a fifth international, was broached by the International Marxist Tendency (IMT), faintly echoing the call by Venezuelan caudillo, Hugo Chavez, I got to thinking a little bit more on the subject. Moreover, it must be something in the air (maybe caused by these global climatic changes) because I have also seen recent commentary on the need to go back to something that looks very much like Karl Marx’s one-size-fits-all First International. Of course, just what the doctor by all means, be my guest, but only if the shades of Proudhon and Bakunin can join. Boys and girls that First International was disbanded in the wake of the demise of the Paris Commune for a reason, okay. Mixing political banners (Marxism and fifty-seven varieties of anarchism) is appropriate to a united front, not a hell-bent revolutionary International fighting, and fighting hard, for our communist future. Forward
The Second International, for those six, no seven, people who might care, is still alive and well (at least for periodic international conferences) as a mail-drop for homeless social democrats who want to maintain a fig leaf of internationalism without having to do much about it. Needless to say, one Joseph Stalin and his cohorts liquidated the Communist (Third) International in 1943, long after it turned from a revolutionary headquarters into an outpost of Soviet foreign policy. By then no revolutionary missed its demise, nor shed a tear goodbye. And of course there are always a million commentaries by groups, cults, leagues, tendencies, etc. claiming to stand in the tradition (although, rarely, the program) of the Leon Trotsky-inspired Fourth International that, logically and programmatically, is the starting point of any discussion of the modern struggle for a new communist international.
With that caveat in mind this month, the September American Labor Day month, but more importantly the month in 1938 that the ill-fated Fourth International was founded I am posting some documents around the history of that formation, and its program, the program known by the shorthand, Transitional Program. If you want to call for a fifth, sixth, seventh, what have you, revolutionary international, and you are serious about it beyond the "mail-drop" potential, then you have to look seriously into that organization's origins, and the world-class Bolshevik revolutionary who inspired it. Forward.
*********
Markin comment on this document
Everybody, and that most notably included Leon Trotsky, knew something was going awry with the Bolshevik Revolution by 1923 for many reasons, some of them beyond correction outside of an international extension of the revolution, especially to Germany that would provide the vital industrial infrastructure to aid the struggling Soviet Union. Nevertheless, and this is important to note about serious revolutionary politics and politicians in general, the fight in 1923 still needed to aimed at winning the party cadre over. That was the failing point of many oppositionists, inside and outside the party, then. Who were revolutionaries to appeal to at that time? The kulaks? We saw where that led a couple of years later when Stalin/Bukharin made their right turn.
The line of argument of the two leading left- Bolsheviks, Sapronov and Preobrazensky, here and in previous documents on workers democracy , the soviet economy, and party bureaucratization would, along with the criticisms of Communist International policy as most clearly articulated by Trotsky later, would form the thread around which the Russian (and later International)Left Opposition would struggle for the next ten years. Unfortuntely this Party Conference was really the last time that the Russian Left Opposition could fairly forthrightly (even with the Stalinist rigging of the delegate selection) argue its case-and be heard.
Markin comment (repost from September 2010):
Recently, when the question of an international, a new workers international, a fifth international, was broached by the International Marxist Tendency (IMT), faintly echoing the call by Venezuelan caudillo, Hugo Chavez, I got to thinking a little bit more on the subject. Moreover, it must be something in the air (maybe caused by these global climatic changes) because I have also seen recent commentary on the need to go back to something that looks very much like Karl Marx’s one-size-fits-all First International. Of course, just what the doctor by all means, be my guest, but only if the shades of Proudhon and Bakunin can join. Boys and girls that First International was disbanded in the wake of the demise of the Paris Commune for a reason, okay. Mixing political banners (Marxism and fifty-seven varieties of anarchism) is appropriate to a united front, not a hell-bent revolutionary International fighting, and fighting hard, for our communist future. Forward
The Second International, for those six, no seven, people who might care, is still alive and well (at least for periodic international conferences) as a mail-drop for homeless social democrats who want to maintain a fig leaf of internationalism without having to do much about it. Needless to say, one Joseph Stalin and his cohorts liquidated the Communist (Third) International in 1943, long after it turned from a revolutionary headquarters into an outpost of Soviet foreign policy. By then no revolutionary missed its demise, nor shed a tear goodbye. And of course there are always a million commentaries by groups, cults, leagues, tendencies, etc. claiming to stand in the tradition (although, rarely, the program) of the Leon Trotsky-inspired Fourth International that, logically and programmatically, is the starting point of any discussion of the modern struggle for a new communist international.
With that caveat in mind this month, the September American Labor Day month, but more importantly the month in 1938 that the ill-fated Fourth International was founded I am posting some documents around the history of that formation, and its program, the program known by the shorthand, Transitional Program. If you want to call for a fifth, sixth, seventh, what have you, revolutionary international, and you are serious about it beyond the "mail-drop" potential, then you have to look seriously into that organization's origins, and the world-class Bolshevik revolutionary who inspired it. Forward.
*********
Markin comment on this document
Everybody, and that most notably included Leon Trotsky, knew something was going awry with the Bolshevik Revolution by 1923 for many reasons, some of them beyond correction outside of an international extension of the revolution, especially to Germany that would provide the vital industrial infrastructure to aid the struggling Soviet Union. Nevertheless, and this is important to note about serious revolutionary politics and politicians in general, the fight in 1923 still needed to aimed at winning the party cadre over. That was the failing point of many oppositionists, inside and outside the party, then. Who were revolutionaries to appeal to at that time? The kulaks? We saw where that led a couple of years later when Stalin/Bukharin made their right turn.
The line of argument of the two leading left- Bolsheviks, Sapronov and Preobrazensky, here and in previous documents on workers democracy , the soviet economy, and party bureaucratization would, along with the criticisms of Communist International policy as most clearly articulated by Trotsky later, would form the thread around which the Russian (and later International)Left Opposition would struggle for the next ten years. Unfortuntely this Party Conference was really the last time that the Russian Left Opposition could fairly forthrightly (even with the Stalinist rigging of the delegate selection) argue its case-and be heard.
Monday, September 05, 2011
Out In The 1940s Crime Noir Night-From Rags To Riches- John Garfield’s Blues- “Force Of Evil”-A Film Review
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the crime noir film, Force Of Evil.
DVD Review
Force Of Evil, starring John Garfield, Thomas Gomez, M-G-M, 1948
No question I am a film noir, especially a crime noir, aficionado. Recently I have been on a tear reviewing various crime noir efforts and drawing comparisons between the ones that “speak” to me and those that, perhaps, should have been better left on the cutting room floor. The classics are easy and need no additional comment from me their plot lines stand on their own merits, although I will make some comment here. Others, because they have a fetching, or wicked, for that matter, femme fatale to muddy the waters also get a pass. Some, such as the film under review from the late 1940s starring John Garfield, Force of Evil, offers very little of either. It is not for lack of trying but rather that the stilted dialogue of the main characters, relentlessly hammering us with clear cut choices between good and evil when a lot of life is very gray, very gray indeed, gets in the way. And it is certainly not that John Garfield can not carry off a crime noir film. Hell, he and femme fatale Lana Turner burned up the screen in the film adaptation of James M. Cain’s crime novel The Postman Always Rings Twice, a film that I will review in the near future in this series. The plot line and dialogue just got in the way here. It is as simple as that.
Here is the scoop. John Garfield, through his brother’s Great Depression-era sacrifice went to law school and became a high-priced lawyer (silly brother, right?), made the New York City big time. A Wall Street lawyer big time. Well, almost big time, because the way he got there was through a very lucrative association with a crime boss who was looking to control the numbers racket in 1940s New York City (the numbers racket, now called the lottery, is now respectably controlled by the state, whatever state) and make it a legal business like any other self-respecting capitalist adventure. The trouble is said sacrificing brother is running a numbers “bank” slated for the dustbin as part of the crime boss’s consolidation plan. Capitalism 101, okay. This makes Brother Garfield queasy and filled with self-doubts and regrets (in between bouts of greed fueled by the dough to be made by a poor boy New York City slum corner boy). The tension between those two forces (ah, good and evil, got it) aided by a “girl next store-type (good force, right?) gnawing at his innards forces dear John to come clean at the end. Especially when said crime boss, through another criminal associate, offs his brother. Like I said, a little thin in the story line.
What is not thin though, and as is usually the case when New York City is the locale, is the black and white cinematography that gives some very interesting footage to the dramatic tension here- the good versus evil thing mentioned above. Additionally “the girl next store” character almost breaks out and becomes something of a human we can recognize when money, wealth and fame enter the picture. Although she never quite does break out of the good angel stuff. Still it is always good to hear John Garfield struggling with some cosmic message in his corner boy heart. But wait and see him in Postman if you want really gritty, attention-getting performance. This one is just very, very average.
DVD Review
Force Of Evil, starring John Garfield, Thomas Gomez, M-G-M, 1948
No question I am a film noir, especially a crime noir, aficionado. Recently I have been on a tear reviewing various crime noir efforts and drawing comparisons between the ones that “speak” to me and those that, perhaps, should have been better left on the cutting room floor. The classics are easy and need no additional comment from me their plot lines stand on their own merits, although I will make some comment here. Others, because they have a fetching, or wicked, for that matter, femme fatale to muddy the waters also get a pass. Some, such as the film under review from the late 1940s starring John Garfield, Force of Evil, offers very little of either. It is not for lack of trying but rather that the stilted dialogue of the main characters, relentlessly hammering us with clear cut choices between good and evil when a lot of life is very gray, very gray indeed, gets in the way. And it is certainly not that John Garfield can not carry off a crime noir film. Hell, he and femme fatale Lana Turner burned up the screen in the film adaptation of James M. Cain’s crime novel The Postman Always Rings Twice, a film that I will review in the near future in this series. The plot line and dialogue just got in the way here. It is as simple as that.
Here is the scoop. John Garfield, through his brother’s Great Depression-era sacrifice went to law school and became a high-priced lawyer (silly brother, right?), made the New York City big time. A Wall Street lawyer big time. Well, almost big time, because the way he got there was through a very lucrative association with a crime boss who was looking to control the numbers racket in 1940s New York City (the numbers racket, now called the lottery, is now respectably controlled by the state, whatever state) and make it a legal business like any other self-respecting capitalist adventure. The trouble is said sacrificing brother is running a numbers “bank” slated for the dustbin as part of the crime boss’s consolidation plan. Capitalism 101, okay. This makes Brother Garfield queasy and filled with self-doubts and regrets (in between bouts of greed fueled by the dough to be made by a poor boy New York City slum corner boy). The tension between those two forces (ah, good and evil, got it) aided by a “girl next store-type (good force, right?) gnawing at his innards forces dear John to come clean at the end. Especially when said crime boss, through another criminal associate, offs his brother. Like I said, a little thin in the story line.
What is not thin though, and as is usually the case when New York City is the locale, is the black and white cinematography that gives some very interesting footage to the dramatic tension here- the good versus evil thing mentioned above. Additionally “the girl next store” character almost breaks out and becomes something of a human we can recognize when money, wealth and fame enter the picture. Although she never quite does break out of the good angel stuff. Still it is always good to hear John Garfield struggling with some cosmic message in his corner boy heart. But wait and see him in Postman if you want really gritty, attention-getting performance. This one is just very, very average.
The Struggle For The Labor Party In The United States- The DeLeonist (Socialist Labor Party-Derived) Attempt At A Labor Party- The American Labor Party (1932)
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the DeLeonist (Socialist Labor Party-Derived) attempt at a labor party The American Labor Party (1932)
Markin comment on this series:
Obviously, for a Marxist, the question of working class political power is central to the possibilities for the main thrust of his or her politics- the quest for that socialist revolution that initiates the socialist reconstruction of society. But working class politics, no less than any other kinds of political expressions has to take an organization form, a disciplined organizational form in the end, but organization nevertheless. In that sense every Marxist worth his or her salt, from individual labor militants to leagues, tendencies, and whatever other formations are out there these days on the left, struggles to built a revolutionary labor party, a Bolshevik-style party.
Glaringly, in the United States there is no such party, nor even a politically independent reformist labor party, as exists in Great Britain. And no, the Democratic Party, imperialist commander-in-chief Obama's Democratic Party is not a labor party. Although plenty of people believe it is an adequate substitute, including some avowed socialists. But they are just flat-out wrong. This series is thus predicated on providing information about, analysis of, and acting as a spur to a close look at the history of the labor party question in America by those who have actually attempted to create one, or at to propagandize for one.
As usual, I will start this series with the work of the International Communist League/Spartacist League/U.S. as I have been mining their archival materials of late. I am most familiar with the history of their work on this question, although on this question the Socialist Workers Party's efforts run a close second, especially in their revolutionary period. Lastly, and most importantly, I am comfortable starting with the ICL/SL efforts on the labor party question since after having reviewed in this space in previous series their G.I. work and youth work (Campus Spartacist and the Revolutionary Marxist Caucus Newsletter inside SDS) I noted that throughout their history they have consistently called for the creation of such a party in the various social arenas in which they have worked. Other organizational and independent efforts, most notably by the Socialist Workers Party and the American Communist Party will follow.
*********
Markin comment on this article:
Markin comment on this series:
Obviously, for a Marxist, the question of working class political power is central to the possibilities for the main thrust of his or her politics- the quest for that socialist revolution that initiates the socialist reconstruction of society. But working class politics, no less than any other kinds of political expressions has to take an organization form, a disciplined organizational form in the end, but organization nevertheless. In that sense every Marxist worth his or her salt, from individual labor militants to leagues, tendencies, and whatever other formations are out there these days on the left, struggles to built a revolutionary labor party, a Bolshevik-style party.
Glaringly, in the United States there is no such party, nor even a politically independent reformist labor party, as exists in Great Britain. And no, the Democratic Party, imperialist commander-in-chief Obama's Democratic Party is not a labor party. Although plenty of people believe it is an adequate substitute, including some avowed socialists. But they are just flat-out wrong. This series is thus predicated on providing information about, analysis of, and acting as a spur to a close look at the history of the labor party question in America by those who have actually attempted to create one, or at to propagandize for one.
As usual, I will start this series with the work of the International Communist League/Spartacist League/U.S. as I have been mining their archival materials of late. I am most familiar with the history of their work on this question, although on this question the Socialist Workers Party's efforts run a close second, especially in their revolutionary period. Lastly, and most importantly, I am comfortable starting with the ICL/SL efforts on the labor party question since after having reviewed in this space in previous series their G.I. work and youth work (Campus Spartacist and the Revolutionary Marxist Caucus Newsletter inside SDS) I noted that throughout their history they have consistently called for the creation of such a party in the various social arenas in which they have worked. Other organizational and independent efforts, most notably by the Socialist Workers Party and the American Communist Party will follow.
*********
Markin comment on this article:
“Workers of The World Unite, You Have Nothing To Lose But Your Chains”-The Struggle For Trotsky's Fourth (Communist) International-From The Archives-Documents of the 1923 opposition-"The Moscow Provincial Conference January 10-11 1924"
Click on the headline to link to the Toward A History Of The Fourth International website for the article listed above.
Markin comment (repost from September 2010):
Recently, when the question of an international, a new workers international, a fifth international, was broached by the International Marxist Tendency (IMT), faintly echoing the call by Venezuelan caudillo, Hugo Chavez, I got to thinking a little bit more on the subject. Moreover, it must be something in the air (maybe caused by these global climatic changes) because I have also seen recent commentary on the need to go back to something that looks very much like Karl Marx’s one-size-fits-all First International. Of course, just what the doctor by all means, be my guest, but only if the shades of Proudhon and Bakunin can join. Boys and girls that First International was disbanded in the wake of the demise of the Paris Commune for a reason, okay. Mixing political banners (Marxism and fifty-seven varieties of anarchism) is appropriate to a united front, not a hell-bent revolutionary International fighting, and fighting hard, for our communist future. Forward
The Second International, for those six, no seven, people who might care, is still alive and well (at least for periodic international conferences) as a mail-drop for homeless social democrats who want to maintain a fig leaf of internationalism without having to do much about it. Needless to say, one Joseph Stalin and his cohorts liquidated the Communist (Third) International in 1943, long after it turned from a revolutionary headquarters into an outpost of Soviet foreign policy. By then no revolutionary missed its demise, nor shed a tear goodbye. And of course there are always a million commentaries by groups, cults, leagues, tendencies, etc. claiming to stand in the tradition (although, rarely, the program) of the Leon Trotsky-inspired Fourth International that, logically and programmatically, is the starting point of any discussion of the modern struggle for a new communist international.
With that caveat in mind this month, the September American Labor Day month, but more importantly the month in 1938 that the ill-fated Fourth International was founded I am posting some documents around the history of that formation, and its program, the program known by the shorthand, Transitional Program. If you want to call for a fifth, sixth, seventh, what have you, revolutionary international, and you are serious about it beyond the "mail-drop" potential, then you have to look seriously into that organization's origins, and the world-class Bolshevik revolutionary who inspired it. Forward.
*********
Markin comment on this document:
Everybody, and that most notably included Leon Trotsky, knew something was going awry with the Bolshevik Revolution by 1923 for many reasons, some of them beyond correction outside of an international extension of the revolution, especially to Germany that would provide the vital industrial infrastructure to aid the struggling Soviet Union. Nevertheless, and this is important to note about serious revolutionary politics and politicians in general, the fight in 1923 still needed to aimed at winning the party cadre over. That was the failing point of many oppositionists, inside and outside the party, then. Who were revolutionaries to appeal to at that time? The kulaks? We saw where that led a couple of years later when Stalin/Bukharin made their right turn.
The line of argument of the two leading left- Bolsheviks, Sapronov and Preobrazensky, here and in the previous document on workers democracy, the soviet economy, and party bureaucratization would, along with the criticisms of Communist International policy as most clearly articulated by Trotsky later, would form the thread around which the Russian (and later International)Left Opposition would struggle for the next ten years.
Markin comment (repost from September 2010):
Recently, when the question of an international, a new workers international, a fifth international, was broached by the International Marxist Tendency (IMT), faintly echoing the call by Venezuelan caudillo, Hugo Chavez, I got to thinking a little bit more on the subject. Moreover, it must be something in the air (maybe caused by these global climatic changes) because I have also seen recent commentary on the need to go back to something that looks very much like Karl Marx’s one-size-fits-all First International. Of course, just what the doctor by all means, be my guest, but only if the shades of Proudhon and Bakunin can join. Boys and girls that First International was disbanded in the wake of the demise of the Paris Commune for a reason, okay. Mixing political banners (Marxism and fifty-seven varieties of anarchism) is appropriate to a united front, not a hell-bent revolutionary International fighting, and fighting hard, for our communist future. Forward
The Second International, for those six, no seven, people who might care, is still alive and well (at least for periodic international conferences) as a mail-drop for homeless social democrats who want to maintain a fig leaf of internationalism without having to do much about it. Needless to say, one Joseph Stalin and his cohorts liquidated the Communist (Third) International in 1943, long after it turned from a revolutionary headquarters into an outpost of Soviet foreign policy. By then no revolutionary missed its demise, nor shed a tear goodbye. And of course there are always a million commentaries by groups, cults, leagues, tendencies, etc. claiming to stand in the tradition (although, rarely, the program) of the Leon Trotsky-inspired Fourth International that, logically and programmatically, is the starting point of any discussion of the modern struggle for a new communist international.
With that caveat in mind this month, the September American Labor Day month, but more importantly the month in 1938 that the ill-fated Fourth International was founded I am posting some documents around the history of that formation, and its program, the program known by the shorthand, Transitional Program. If you want to call for a fifth, sixth, seventh, what have you, revolutionary international, and you are serious about it beyond the "mail-drop" potential, then you have to look seriously into that organization's origins, and the world-class Bolshevik revolutionary who inspired it. Forward.
*********
Markin comment on this document:
Everybody, and that most notably included Leon Trotsky, knew something was going awry with the Bolshevik Revolution by 1923 for many reasons, some of them beyond correction outside of an international extension of the revolution, especially to Germany that would provide the vital industrial infrastructure to aid the struggling Soviet Union. Nevertheless, and this is important to note about serious revolutionary politics and politicians in general, the fight in 1923 still needed to aimed at winning the party cadre over. That was the failing point of many oppositionists, inside and outside the party, then. Who were revolutionaries to appeal to at that time? The kulaks? We saw where that led a couple of years later when Stalin/Bukharin made their right turn.
The line of argument of the two leading left- Bolsheviks, Sapronov and Preobrazensky, here and in the previous document on workers democracy, the soviet economy, and party bureaucratization would, along with the criticisms of Communist International policy as most clearly articulated by Trotsky later, would form the thread around which the Russian (and later International)Left Opposition would struggle for the next ten years.
Sunday, September 04, 2011
The Struggle For The Labor Party In The United States- Daniel DeLeon's Socialist Labor Party
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the Socialist Labor Party
Markin comment on this series:
Obviously, for a Marxist, the question of working class political power is central to the possibilities for the main thrust of his or her politics- the quest for that socialist revolution that initiates the socialist reconstruction of society. But working class politics, no less than any other kinds of political expressions has to take an organization form, a disciplined organizational form in the end, but organization nevertheless. In that sense every Marxist worth his or her salt, from individual labor militants to leagues, tendencies, and whatever other formations are out there these days on the left, struggles to built a revolutionary labor party, a Bolshevik-style party.
Glaringly, in the United States there is no such party, nor even a politically independent reformist labor party, as exists in Great Britain. And no, the Democratic Party, imperialist commander-in-chief Obama's Democratic Party is not a labor party. Although plenty of people believe it is an adequate substitute, including some avowed socialists. But they are just flat-out wrong. This series is thus predicated on providing information about, analysis of, and acting as a spur to a close look at the history of the labor party question in America by those who have actually attempted to create one, or at to propagandize for one.
As usual, I will start this series with the work of the International Communist League/Spartacist League/U.S. as I have been mining their archival materials of late. I am most familiar with the history of their work on this question, although on this question the Socialist Workers Party's efforts run a close second, especially in their revolutionary period. Lastly, and most importantly, I am comfortable starting with the ICL/SL efforts on the labor party question since after having reviewed in this space in previous series their G.I. work and youth work (Campus Spartacist and the Revolutionary Marxist Caucus Newsletter inside SDS) I noted that throughout their history they have consistently called for the creation of such a party in the various social arenas in which they have worked. Other organizational and independent efforts, most notably by the Socialist Workers Party and the American Communist Party will follow.
*********
Markin comment on this series:
Obviously, for a Marxist, the question of working class political power is central to the possibilities for the main thrust of his or her politics- the quest for that socialist revolution that initiates the socialist reconstruction of society. But working class politics, no less than any other kinds of political expressions has to take an organization form, a disciplined organizational form in the end, but organization nevertheless. In that sense every Marxist worth his or her salt, from individual labor militants to leagues, tendencies, and whatever other formations are out there these days on the left, struggles to built a revolutionary labor party, a Bolshevik-style party.
Glaringly, in the United States there is no such party, nor even a politically independent reformist labor party, as exists in Great Britain. And no, the Democratic Party, imperialist commander-in-chief Obama's Democratic Party is not a labor party. Although plenty of people believe it is an adequate substitute, including some avowed socialists. But they are just flat-out wrong. This series is thus predicated on providing information about, analysis of, and acting as a spur to a close look at the history of the labor party question in America by those who have actually attempted to create one, or at to propagandize for one.
As usual, I will start this series with the work of the International Communist League/Spartacist League/U.S. as I have been mining their archival materials of late. I am most familiar with the history of their work on this question, although on this question the Socialist Workers Party's efforts run a close second, especially in their revolutionary period. Lastly, and most importantly, I am comfortable starting with the ICL/SL efforts on the labor party question since after having reviewed in this space in previous series their G.I. work and youth work (Campus Spartacist and the Revolutionary Marxist Caucus Newsletter inside SDS) I noted that throughout their history they have consistently called for the creation of such a party in the various social arenas in which they have worked. Other organizational and independent efforts, most notably by the Socialist Workers Party and the American Communist Party will follow.
*********
Labor's Untold Story-From The Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels Archives-The Struggle For Working Class Organization-Engels To Marx In Brussels (1847)
Markin comment:
Every Month Is Labor History MonthThis post is part of an on-going series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!
Other Septembers in this series I have concentrated on various sometimes now obscure leaders and rank and file militants in the international working class movement, especially those who made contributions here in America like "Big Bill" Haywood and Eugene V. Debs. This year, given the pressing need for clarity around the labor party question in America(algebraically expressed in our movement as the struggle for a workers party that fights for a workers government) I have gone back to the sources-Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and their correspondence on working class organizationwith various associates and opponents. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely given the state of working class organization here these days, many of their comments, taken in due regard for changed times and circumstances, are germane today. This correspondence is only a start and should just whet the reader's appetite to research further.
*******
Letters of Marx and Engels 1847
Engels To Marx
In Brussels
Source: MECW Volume 38, p. 133;
Written: 26 October 1847;
First published: in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, 1913.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Paris, 25-26 October 1847
Dear Bartholomäus,
Only today am I able to write to you because it was only today that I managed to see little Louis Blanc – after terrible tussles with the portière. As a result of my long conversation with him, the little man is prepared to do anything. He was courtesy and friendliness itself, and seems to have no more urgent wish than to associate with us as closely as possible. There is none of the French national patronage about him. I had written to tell him that I was coming with a mandat formel to him from the London, Brussels and Rhineland democrats, and also as a Chartist agent.[168] He asked for details about everything; I described the condition of our party to him in the most glowing terms, spoke about Switzerland, Jacoby, the Badeners as allies [169] etc., etc.
You, I said, were the chief: You can regard Mr Marx as the head of our party (i. e. of the most advanced section of German democracy, which I was representing vis-à-vis him) and his recent book against Mr Proudhon as our programme. Of this he took most careful note. Then finally he promised to comment on your book in the Réforme. He told me a great deal about the mouvement souterrain [underground movement] that is now going on among the workers; he also said that the workers had printed 3,000 copies of his Organisation du travail cheaply and that at the end of a fortnight a further edition of 3,000 copies had been needed — he said the workers were more revolutionary than ever, but had learned to bide their time, no riots, only major coups that would be sure to succeed, etc., etc. By the way he too would seem to have got out of the habit of patronising the workers.
When I see such things as M. de Lamartine’s new programme, I can’t help laughing! In order to assess the present state of French society properly you have to be in a position which enables you to see a little of everything, to visit a minister in the morning, a merchant in the afternoon, and a working man in the evening.’
The coming revolution, he went on, would be quite different from, and much more drastic than, all previous ones, and it would be sheer bêtise [stupidity] to keep on thundering only against kings, etc., etc.
By and large, he was very well-behaved and perfectly cordial. You see, the man is all right, he has the best intentions in the world. He spoke of you with great sympathy and said he was sorry that you and he had parted rather froidement [coldly], etc., etc. He still has a special hankering after a German and French review to be published in Paris. Might come in useful later.
As to Ruge, after whom he inquired, I warned him; he has appointed himself panegyrist of the Prussian Diet, and this even after the result.[170] — So he’s taken a step back? — Yes, indeed.
With père Flocon I am hitting it off well. I first approached him as if I were an Englishman and asked him in Harney’s name why he so ignored the Star. Well, yes, he said, he was sorry, he’d be only too glad to mention it, only there was no one on the editorial staff who understood English! I offered to write a weekly article for him [171] which he accepted de grand coeur. When I told him I was the Star’s correspondent, he seemed quite moved.[172] If things go on like this we shall have won over this whole trend in four weeks. Flocon wishes me to write an essay on Chartism for his personal benefit, he hasn’t the vaguest idea about it. I shall call on him presently and ensnare him further in our net. I shall tell him that the Atelier is making approaches to me (which is true; I am going there this evening), and that, if he behaves decently, I shall turn them down. That will touch his worthy heart.
When I’ve been here a little longer and have grown more accustomed to writing French, I’ll make a start on the Revue indépendante.
I quite forgot to ask L. Blanc why he hadn’t accepted your Congress article.[173] I shall tax him with it when he next comes to see me. By the way I doubt whether he has, in fact, received your book. He was quite unable to remember having done so today. And before I went away he spoke in very uncertain terms about it. I shall find out within a day or two. If he hasn’t got it, I shall give him my copy.
Just imagine, little Bernays, who trots round here and plays the martyr — one betrayed by everybody, one ‘who has helped everybody with money or good advice’ (littéralement) — this creature has a horse and gig! It’s Börnstein’s, of course, but no matter. This same chap who makes himself out to be an oppressed, penniless martyr one day, boasts the next that he is the only one who knows how to earn money. He has been plodding away at 21 sheets (!) on the Praslin affair[174] which are coming out in Switzerland. [Bernays, Die Ermordung der Herzogin von Praslin] The nub of the matter is this: not la duchesse but le duc is the martyr! My response to his prating about martyrdom was to remind him that he has long owed me 60 fr. He is becoming every inch the industrialist and brags about it. In any case he’s cracked. — Even Ewerbeck is furious with him.
I have not yet seen Cabet. He is happy, it seems, to be leaving, having noticed that things are showing signs of disintegrating here. Flocon wants to commence the attack, not so L. Blanc, and rightly, although L. Blanc has a finger in all manner of pies and looks forward with glee to seeing the bourgeoisie jolted out of their security by the sudden onset of revolution.
I have been to see père Flocon. The good man was cordiality itself, and the honest frankness with which I told him about my affair with the Atelier nearly brought tears to his eyes. From the Atelier I went on to talk about the National: ‘When in Brussels we were discussing the question of which faction of French democracy to approach, we were unanimously agreed that our very first move should be to make contact with the Réforme, there being a strong and well-founded bias against the National abroad. In the first place this paper’s national prejudices prevent any rapprochement’ — ‘yes, yes, that’s true,’ said Flocon, ‘and this was precisely why the Réforme was founded; we declared from the very outset that we were not out for conquests’ — ‘and then,’ I went on, ‘if I am to believe my predecessors, for I myself have never been to the National those gentlemen always give the impression of wanting to patronise foreigners, which for that matter is perfectly consistent with their national prejudices; we for our part have no need of their patronage; it is not patrons we want, but allies. — ‘Ah, yes, but we’re not at all like that; it would never occur to us: — ‘True, and I have nothing but praise for the way the gentlemen of the Réforme proceed.’
But how helpful it was that I reminded little Blanc of our affairs. Your Congress speech had, it appears, been mislaid; today he hastened to look for it and send it to Flocon with a very urgent note requesting him to print it forthwith. I explained the thing to Flocon; the man was unable to understand the why, how and when because Blanc had sent it to him without any further explanation. Flocon greatly regretted that the thing had become so outdated; while parfaitement d’accord with it, he thought it was now too late. Nevertheless he would see whether it could not be included in an article. He would, he said, do his very best.
The article in the Réforme on Lamartine’s pious intentions was by L. Blanc, as you will have seen. It isn’t bad, and in all respects a thousand times better than perpetual Flocon. Undoubtedly he would attack Lamartine very harshly, did he not happen to be his rival just now.
People, you see, are as well-disposed as one could wish. My relations with them are already ten times better than Ewerbeck’s ever were. I shall now utterly forbid the latter to write for the Réforme. He can relieve himself in the National and there compete with Venedey & Co.; he’ll do no harm there, and anyway nothing of his will be published.
Afterwards I again visited the Atelier. I took with me an amendment to an article in the last issue on English working men which will also be included. The fellows were very well-behaved; I told them un tas d’anecdotes about English workers, etc. They requested me most urgently to collaborate, which I shall only do, however, if needs must. Just imagine, the rédacteur en chef thought it would be a good idea if the English workers were to dispatch an address to their French counterparts, calling on them to oppose the libre-échange movement and champion the cause of travail national. Quel héroïque dévouement! But in this he failed even where his own people were concerned.
By the way, I was not compelled to make any concessions to these people. I told L. Blanc that we were in agreement with them on all practical and current questions and that on purely theoretical questions we were marching towards the same goal; that the principles propounded in his first volume agreed in many respects with our own and that, regarding the rest, he would find it more fully developed in your book. As for the religious question, we regarded this as altogether secondary, as a question which should never be allowed to become a pretext for strife between men of the same party. For all that, I went on, a friendly discussion of theoretical questions was perfectly feasible and indeed desirable, with which he was parfaitment d’accord.
Lupus was perfectly right in assuming that I would very soon meet the management.[175] Barely three days after my arrival here I ran into Seiler in the Boulevard des Italiens. You will long since have heard that he has done a bolt and has no intention of returning. He is going the rounds of the French correspondence bureaux in search of a berth. Since then I have repeatedly failed to find him and don’t know how his affairs are going. If he meddles with the Réforme we shall have to disown him.
Ask that accursed Bornstedt what he means by not sending me his paper. [Deutsche-Brüsseler-Zeitung] I cannot forever be chasing after the Straubingers[86] for it. Should he feign ignorance of my address, give it to him, 5, rue Neuve Saint-Martin. I’ll send him a few articles as soon as ever can.
Hellish confusion among the Straubingers. In the days immediately preceding my arrival, the last of the Grünians were thrown out, an entire community of whom, however, half will return. We are now only thirty strong. I at once set up a propaganda community and I rush round speechifying. I was immediately elected to the district [Paris District Committee of the Communist League] and have been entrusted with the correspondence. Some 20-30 candidates have been put up for admission. We shall soon grow stronger again. Strictly between ourselves, I’ve played an infernal trick on Mosi. [Moses Hess] He had actually put through a delightfully amended confession of faith.[176] Last Friday at the district I dealt with this, point by point, and was not yet half way through when the lads declared themselves satisfaits. Completely unopposed, I got them to entrust me with the task of drafting a new one [Engels, ‘Principles of Communism’] which will be discussed next Friday by the district and will be sent to London behind the backs of the communities. Naturally not a soul must know about this, otherwise we shall all be unseated and there’ll be the deuce of a row.
Born will be coming to see you in Brussels; he is going to London.[177] He may arrive before this letter. He will be travelling, somewhat rashly, down the Rhine through Prussia, always provided they don’t cop him. Drum something more into him when he arrives; the fellow is the most receptive of all to our ideas and with a little preparation will be able to do good service in London.
Great heavens, I was on the point of forgetting all that avalanche of trash unloosed upon me from the heights of the Alps by the great Heinzen. [K. Heinzen, ‘Ein “Repräsentant” der Kommunisten’, Deutsche-Brüsseler-Zeitung, 21 October 1847 — written in reply to Engels’ ‘The Communists and Karl Heinzen’] It is truly fortunate that it should all have been packed into one issue; nobody will plough his way through it. I myself had to break off several times. What a blockhead! Having first maintained that he can’t write, I now find myself compelled to add that he can’t read either, nor does he seem particularly conversant with the four rules of arithmetic. The ass ought to read F. O’Connor’s letter in the last Star, addressed to the radical newspapers, which begins with ‘You Ruffians’, and ends with ‘You Ruffians’, [F. O’Connor, ‘To the Editors of the Nottingham Mercury, the Nonconformist, the Dispatch, the Globe, the Manchester Examiner and Lloyds’ Trash’, The Northern Star, No. 522, 23 October 1847] then he would see what a miserable duffer he is in the matter of invective. Well, you will be duly hauling this low, stupid lout over the coals. [Marx, Moralising Criticism and Critical Morality] I’m very glad that you intend to keep your answer quite brief. I could never answer such an attack, simply couldn’t bring myself to — save perhaps with a box on the ears.
Tuesday
My article [The Commercial Crisis in England. — The Chartist Movement. — Ireland] has appeared in the Réforme. Curiously enough Flocon hasn’t altered one syllable, which greatly surprises me.
I have not yet called on père Heine. As you can well imagine, with all this business, I’ve had a devilish lot to do and a fearsome amount of running about and writing.
I have written to Elberfeld about the Free Trade — protective tariff business and am daily expecting a reply. [178] Write again soon. My regards to your wife and children.
Your
Engels
You really should read O’Connor’s article in the last Star attacking the six radical newspapers; it’s a masterpiece of inspired abuse, in many places better than Cobbett and approaching Shakespeare.
What bug can have bitten poor Moses to make him thus perpetually air in the newspaper his fantasies on the consequences of a revolution by the proletariat? [a reference to M. Hess, ‘Die Folgen einer Revolution des Proletariats’, Deutsche-Brüsseler-Zeitung, 14 and 31 October, 7 and 11 November 1847]
Every Month Is Labor History MonthThis post is part of an on-going series under the following general title: Labor’s Untold Story- Reclaiming Our Labor History In Order To Fight Another Day-And Win!
Other Septembers in this series I have concentrated on various sometimes now obscure leaders and rank and file militants in the international working class movement, especially those who made contributions here in America like "Big Bill" Haywood and Eugene V. Debs. This year, given the pressing need for clarity around the labor party question in America(algebraically expressed in our movement as the struggle for a workers party that fights for a workers government) I have gone back to the sources-Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and their correspondence on working class organizationwith various associates and opponents. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely given the state of working class organization here these days, many of their comments, taken in due regard for changed times and circumstances, are germane today. This correspondence is only a start and should just whet the reader's appetite to research further.
*******
Letters of Marx and Engels 1847
Engels To Marx
In Brussels
Source: MECW Volume 38, p. 133;
Written: 26 October 1847;
First published: in Der Briefwechsel zwischen F. Engels und K. Marx, 1913.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Paris, 25-26 October 1847
Dear Bartholomäus,
Only today am I able to write to you because it was only today that I managed to see little Louis Blanc – after terrible tussles with the portière. As a result of my long conversation with him, the little man is prepared to do anything. He was courtesy and friendliness itself, and seems to have no more urgent wish than to associate with us as closely as possible. There is none of the French national patronage about him. I had written to tell him that I was coming with a mandat formel to him from the London, Brussels and Rhineland democrats, and also as a Chartist agent.[168] He asked for details about everything; I described the condition of our party to him in the most glowing terms, spoke about Switzerland, Jacoby, the Badeners as allies [169] etc., etc.
You, I said, were the chief: You can regard Mr Marx as the head of our party (i. e. of the most advanced section of German democracy, which I was representing vis-à-vis him) and his recent book against Mr Proudhon as our programme. Of this he took most careful note. Then finally he promised to comment on your book in the Réforme. He told me a great deal about the mouvement souterrain [underground movement] that is now going on among the workers; he also said that the workers had printed 3,000 copies of his Organisation du travail cheaply and that at the end of a fortnight a further edition of 3,000 copies had been needed — he said the workers were more revolutionary than ever, but had learned to bide their time, no riots, only major coups that would be sure to succeed, etc., etc. By the way he too would seem to have got out of the habit of patronising the workers.
When I see such things as M. de Lamartine’s new programme, I can’t help laughing! In order to assess the present state of French society properly you have to be in a position which enables you to see a little of everything, to visit a minister in the morning, a merchant in the afternoon, and a working man in the evening.’
The coming revolution, he went on, would be quite different from, and much more drastic than, all previous ones, and it would be sheer bêtise [stupidity] to keep on thundering only against kings, etc., etc.
By and large, he was very well-behaved and perfectly cordial. You see, the man is all right, he has the best intentions in the world. He spoke of you with great sympathy and said he was sorry that you and he had parted rather froidement [coldly], etc., etc. He still has a special hankering after a German and French review to be published in Paris. Might come in useful later.
As to Ruge, after whom he inquired, I warned him; he has appointed himself panegyrist of the Prussian Diet, and this even after the result.[170] — So he’s taken a step back? — Yes, indeed.
With père Flocon I am hitting it off well. I first approached him as if I were an Englishman and asked him in Harney’s name why he so ignored the Star. Well, yes, he said, he was sorry, he’d be only too glad to mention it, only there was no one on the editorial staff who understood English! I offered to write a weekly article for him [171] which he accepted de grand coeur. When I told him I was the Star’s correspondent, he seemed quite moved.[172] If things go on like this we shall have won over this whole trend in four weeks. Flocon wishes me to write an essay on Chartism for his personal benefit, he hasn’t the vaguest idea about it. I shall call on him presently and ensnare him further in our net. I shall tell him that the Atelier is making approaches to me (which is true; I am going there this evening), and that, if he behaves decently, I shall turn them down. That will touch his worthy heart.
When I’ve been here a little longer and have grown more accustomed to writing French, I’ll make a start on the Revue indépendante.
I quite forgot to ask L. Blanc why he hadn’t accepted your Congress article.[173] I shall tax him with it when he next comes to see me. By the way I doubt whether he has, in fact, received your book. He was quite unable to remember having done so today. And before I went away he spoke in very uncertain terms about it. I shall find out within a day or two. If he hasn’t got it, I shall give him my copy.
Just imagine, little Bernays, who trots round here and plays the martyr — one betrayed by everybody, one ‘who has helped everybody with money or good advice’ (littéralement) — this creature has a horse and gig! It’s Börnstein’s, of course, but no matter. This same chap who makes himself out to be an oppressed, penniless martyr one day, boasts the next that he is the only one who knows how to earn money. He has been plodding away at 21 sheets (!) on the Praslin affair[174] which are coming out in Switzerland. [Bernays, Die Ermordung der Herzogin von Praslin] The nub of the matter is this: not la duchesse but le duc is the martyr! My response to his prating about martyrdom was to remind him that he has long owed me 60 fr. He is becoming every inch the industrialist and brags about it. In any case he’s cracked. — Even Ewerbeck is furious with him.
I have not yet seen Cabet. He is happy, it seems, to be leaving, having noticed that things are showing signs of disintegrating here. Flocon wants to commence the attack, not so L. Blanc, and rightly, although L. Blanc has a finger in all manner of pies and looks forward with glee to seeing the bourgeoisie jolted out of their security by the sudden onset of revolution.
I have been to see père Flocon. The good man was cordiality itself, and the honest frankness with which I told him about my affair with the Atelier nearly brought tears to his eyes. From the Atelier I went on to talk about the National: ‘When in Brussels we were discussing the question of which faction of French democracy to approach, we were unanimously agreed that our very first move should be to make contact with the Réforme, there being a strong and well-founded bias against the National abroad. In the first place this paper’s national prejudices prevent any rapprochement’ — ‘yes, yes, that’s true,’ said Flocon, ‘and this was precisely why the Réforme was founded; we declared from the very outset that we were not out for conquests’ — ‘and then,’ I went on, ‘if I am to believe my predecessors, for I myself have never been to the National those gentlemen always give the impression of wanting to patronise foreigners, which for that matter is perfectly consistent with their national prejudices; we for our part have no need of their patronage; it is not patrons we want, but allies. — ‘Ah, yes, but we’re not at all like that; it would never occur to us: — ‘True, and I have nothing but praise for the way the gentlemen of the Réforme proceed.’
But how helpful it was that I reminded little Blanc of our affairs. Your Congress speech had, it appears, been mislaid; today he hastened to look for it and send it to Flocon with a very urgent note requesting him to print it forthwith. I explained the thing to Flocon; the man was unable to understand the why, how and when because Blanc had sent it to him without any further explanation. Flocon greatly regretted that the thing had become so outdated; while parfaitement d’accord with it, he thought it was now too late. Nevertheless he would see whether it could not be included in an article. He would, he said, do his very best.
The article in the Réforme on Lamartine’s pious intentions was by L. Blanc, as you will have seen. It isn’t bad, and in all respects a thousand times better than perpetual Flocon. Undoubtedly he would attack Lamartine very harshly, did he not happen to be his rival just now.
People, you see, are as well-disposed as one could wish. My relations with them are already ten times better than Ewerbeck’s ever were. I shall now utterly forbid the latter to write for the Réforme. He can relieve himself in the National and there compete with Venedey & Co.; he’ll do no harm there, and anyway nothing of his will be published.
Afterwards I again visited the Atelier. I took with me an amendment to an article in the last issue on English working men which will also be included. The fellows were very well-behaved; I told them un tas d’anecdotes about English workers, etc. They requested me most urgently to collaborate, which I shall only do, however, if needs must. Just imagine, the rédacteur en chef thought it would be a good idea if the English workers were to dispatch an address to their French counterparts, calling on them to oppose the libre-échange movement and champion the cause of travail national. Quel héroïque dévouement! But in this he failed even where his own people were concerned.
By the way, I was not compelled to make any concessions to these people. I told L. Blanc that we were in agreement with them on all practical and current questions and that on purely theoretical questions we were marching towards the same goal; that the principles propounded in his first volume agreed in many respects with our own and that, regarding the rest, he would find it more fully developed in your book. As for the religious question, we regarded this as altogether secondary, as a question which should never be allowed to become a pretext for strife between men of the same party. For all that, I went on, a friendly discussion of theoretical questions was perfectly feasible and indeed desirable, with which he was parfaitment d’accord.
Lupus was perfectly right in assuming that I would very soon meet the management.[175] Barely three days after my arrival here I ran into Seiler in the Boulevard des Italiens. You will long since have heard that he has done a bolt and has no intention of returning. He is going the rounds of the French correspondence bureaux in search of a berth. Since then I have repeatedly failed to find him and don’t know how his affairs are going. If he meddles with the Réforme we shall have to disown him.
Ask that accursed Bornstedt what he means by not sending me his paper. [Deutsche-Brüsseler-Zeitung] I cannot forever be chasing after the Straubingers[86] for it. Should he feign ignorance of my address, give it to him, 5, rue Neuve Saint-Martin. I’ll send him a few articles as soon as ever can.
Hellish confusion among the Straubingers. In the days immediately preceding my arrival, the last of the Grünians were thrown out, an entire community of whom, however, half will return. We are now only thirty strong. I at once set up a propaganda community and I rush round speechifying. I was immediately elected to the district [Paris District Committee of the Communist League] and have been entrusted with the correspondence. Some 20-30 candidates have been put up for admission. We shall soon grow stronger again. Strictly between ourselves, I’ve played an infernal trick on Mosi. [Moses Hess] He had actually put through a delightfully amended confession of faith.[176] Last Friday at the district I dealt with this, point by point, and was not yet half way through when the lads declared themselves satisfaits. Completely unopposed, I got them to entrust me with the task of drafting a new one [Engels, ‘Principles of Communism’] which will be discussed next Friday by the district and will be sent to London behind the backs of the communities. Naturally not a soul must know about this, otherwise we shall all be unseated and there’ll be the deuce of a row.
Born will be coming to see you in Brussels; he is going to London.[177] He may arrive before this letter. He will be travelling, somewhat rashly, down the Rhine through Prussia, always provided they don’t cop him. Drum something more into him when he arrives; the fellow is the most receptive of all to our ideas and with a little preparation will be able to do good service in London.
Great heavens, I was on the point of forgetting all that avalanche of trash unloosed upon me from the heights of the Alps by the great Heinzen. [K. Heinzen, ‘Ein “Repräsentant” der Kommunisten’, Deutsche-Brüsseler-Zeitung, 21 October 1847 — written in reply to Engels’ ‘The Communists and Karl Heinzen’] It is truly fortunate that it should all have been packed into one issue; nobody will plough his way through it. I myself had to break off several times. What a blockhead! Having first maintained that he can’t write, I now find myself compelled to add that he can’t read either, nor does he seem particularly conversant with the four rules of arithmetic. The ass ought to read F. O’Connor’s letter in the last Star, addressed to the radical newspapers, which begins with ‘You Ruffians’, and ends with ‘You Ruffians’, [F. O’Connor, ‘To the Editors of the Nottingham Mercury, the Nonconformist, the Dispatch, the Globe, the Manchester Examiner and Lloyds’ Trash’, The Northern Star, No. 522, 23 October 1847] then he would see what a miserable duffer he is in the matter of invective. Well, you will be duly hauling this low, stupid lout over the coals. [Marx, Moralising Criticism and Critical Morality] I’m very glad that you intend to keep your answer quite brief. I could never answer such an attack, simply couldn’t bring myself to — save perhaps with a box on the ears.
Tuesday
My article [The Commercial Crisis in England. — The Chartist Movement. — Ireland] has appeared in the Réforme. Curiously enough Flocon hasn’t altered one syllable, which greatly surprises me.
I have not yet called on père Heine. As you can well imagine, with all this business, I’ve had a devilish lot to do and a fearsome amount of running about and writing.
I have written to Elberfeld about the Free Trade — protective tariff business and am daily expecting a reply. [178] Write again soon. My regards to your wife and children.
Your
Engels
You really should read O’Connor’s article in the last Star attacking the six radical newspapers; it’s a masterpiece of inspired abuse, in many places better than Cobbett and approaching Shakespeare.
What bug can have bitten poor Moses to make him thus perpetually air in the newspaper his fantasies on the consequences of a revolution by the proletariat? [a reference to M. Hess, ‘Die Folgen einer Revolution des Proletariats’, Deutsche-Brüsseler-Zeitung, 14 and 31 October, 7 and 11 November 1847]
“Workers of The World Unite, You Have Nothing To Lose But Your Chains”-The Struggle For Trotsky's Fourth (Communist) International-From The Archives-Documents of the 1923 opposition-"The Moscow—Party meeting December 11 1923 "
Click on the headline to link to the Toward A History Of The Fourth International website for the article listed above.
Markin comment (repost from September 2010):
Recently, when the question of an international, a new workers international, a fifth international, was broached by the International Marxist Tendency (IMT), faintly echoing the call by Venezuelan caudillo, Hugo Chavez, I got to thinking a little bit more on the subject. Moreover, it must be something in the air (maybe caused by these global climatic changes) because I have also seen recent commentary on the need to go back to something that looks very much like Karl Marx’s one-size-fits-all First International. Of course, just what the doctor by all means, be my guest, but only if the shades of Proudhon and Bakunin can join. Boys and girls that First International was disbanded in the wake of the demise of the Paris Commune for a reason, okay. Mixing political banners (Marxism and fifty-seven varieties of anarchism) is appropriate to a united front, not a hell-bent revolutionary International fighting, and fighting hard, for our communist future. Forward
The Second International, for those six, no seven, people who might care, is still alive and well (at least for periodic international conferences) as a mail-drop for homeless social democrats who want to maintain a fig leaf of internationalism without having to do much about it. Needless to say, one Joseph Stalin and his cohorts liquidated the Communist (Third) International in 1943, long after it turned from a revolutionary headquarters into an outpost of Soviet foreign policy. By then no revolutionary missed its demise, nor shed a tear goodbye. And of course there are always a million commentaries by groups, cults, leagues, tendencies, etc. claiming to stand in the tradition (although, rarely, the program) of the Leon Trotsky-inspired Fourth International that, logically and programmatically, is the starting point of any discussion of the modern struggle for a new communist international.
With that caveat in mind this month, the September American Labor Day month, but more importantly the month in 1938 that the ill-fated Fourth International was founded I am posting some documents around the history of that formation, and its program, the program known by the shorthand, Transitional Program. If you want to call for a fifth, sixth, seventh, what have you, revolutionary international, and you are serious about it beyond the "mail-drop" potential, then you have to look seriously into that organization's origins, and the world-class Bolshevik revolutionary who inspired it. Forward.
**********
Markin comment on this document
Everybody, and that most notably included Leon Trotsky, knew something was going awry with the Bolshevik Revolution by 1923 for many reasons, some of them beyond correction outside of an international extension of the revolution, especially to Germany that would provide the vital industrial infrastructure to aid the struggling Soviet Union. Nevertheless, and this is important to note about serious revolutionary politics and politicians in general, the fight in 1923 still needed to aimed at winning the party cadre over. That was the failing point of many oppositionists, inside and outside the party, then. Who were revolutionaries to appeal to at that time? The kulaks? We saw where that led a couple of years later when Stalin/Bukharin made their right turn. How about the adherents of Nestor Mahkno? To pose the questions is to give the answers.
The line of argument of the two leading left- Bolsheviks, Sapronov and Preobrazensky, here on workers democracy and party bureaucratization would, along with the criticisms of Communist International policy as most clearly articulated by Trotsky later, would form the thread around which the Russian (and later International)Left Opposition would struggle for the next ten years.
Markin comment (repost from September 2010):
Recently, when the question of an international, a new workers international, a fifth international, was broached by the International Marxist Tendency (IMT), faintly echoing the call by Venezuelan caudillo, Hugo Chavez, I got to thinking a little bit more on the subject. Moreover, it must be something in the air (maybe caused by these global climatic changes) because I have also seen recent commentary on the need to go back to something that looks very much like Karl Marx’s one-size-fits-all First International. Of course, just what the doctor by all means, be my guest, but only if the shades of Proudhon and Bakunin can join. Boys and girls that First International was disbanded in the wake of the demise of the Paris Commune for a reason, okay. Mixing political banners (Marxism and fifty-seven varieties of anarchism) is appropriate to a united front, not a hell-bent revolutionary International fighting, and fighting hard, for our communist future. Forward
The Second International, for those six, no seven, people who might care, is still alive and well (at least for periodic international conferences) as a mail-drop for homeless social democrats who want to maintain a fig leaf of internationalism without having to do much about it. Needless to say, one Joseph Stalin and his cohorts liquidated the Communist (Third) International in 1943, long after it turned from a revolutionary headquarters into an outpost of Soviet foreign policy. By then no revolutionary missed its demise, nor shed a tear goodbye. And of course there are always a million commentaries by groups, cults, leagues, tendencies, etc. claiming to stand in the tradition (although, rarely, the program) of the Leon Trotsky-inspired Fourth International that, logically and programmatically, is the starting point of any discussion of the modern struggle for a new communist international.
With that caveat in mind this month, the September American Labor Day month, but more importantly the month in 1938 that the ill-fated Fourth International was founded I am posting some documents around the history of that formation, and its program, the program known by the shorthand, Transitional Program. If you want to call for a fifth, sixth, seventh, what have you, revolutionary international, and you are serious about it beyond the "mail-drop" potential, then you have to look seriously into that organization's origins, and the world-class Bolshevik revolutionary who inspired it. Forward.
**********
Markin comment on this document
Everybody, and that most notably included Leon Trotsky, knew something was going awry with the Bolshevik Revolution by 1923 for many reasons, some of them beyond correction outside of an international extension of the revolution, especially to Germany that would provide the vital industrial infrastructure to aid the struggling Soviet Union. Nevertheless, and this is important to note about serious revolutionary politics and politicians in general, the fight in 1923 still needed to aimed at winning the party cadre over. That was the failing point of many oppositionists, inside and outside the party, then. Who were revolutionaries to appeal to at that time? The kulaks? We saw where that led a couple of years later when Stalin/Bukharin made their right turn. How about the adherents of Nestor Mahkno? To pose the questions is to give the answers.
The line of argument of the two leading left- Bolsheviks, Sapronov and Preobrazensky, here on workers democracy and party bureaucratization would, along with the criticisms of Communist International policy as most clearly articulated by Trotsky later, would form the thread around which the Russian (and later International)Left Opposition would struggle for the next ten years.
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