Click on the headline to link to the archives of the Occupy Boston General Assembly minutes from the Occupy Boston website. Occupy Boston started at 6:00 PM, September 30, 2011. The General Assembly is the core political institution of the Occupy movement. Some of the minutes will reflect the growing pains of that movement and its concepts of political organization. Note that I used the word embryo in the headline and I believe that gives a fair estimate of its status, and its possibilities.
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An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend All The Occupation Sites And All The Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Protesters Everywhere!
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Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It, It’s Ours! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
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Below I am posting, occasionally, comments on the Occupy movement as I see or hear things of interest, or that cause alarm bells to ring in my head. The first comment directly below from October 1, which represented my first impressions of Occupy Boston, is the lead for all further postings.
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Markin comment October 1, 2011:
There is a lot of naiveté expressed about the nature of capitalism, capitalists, and the way to win in the class struggle by various participants in this occupation. Many also have attempted to make a virtue out of that naiveté, particularly around the issues of effective democratic organization (the General Assembly, its unrepresentative nature and its undemocratic consensus process) and relationships with the police (they are not our friends, no way, when the deal goes down). However, their spirit is refreshing, they are acting out of good subjective anti-capitalist motives and, most importantly, even those of us who call ourselves "reds" (communists), including this writer, started out from liberal premises as naive, if not more so, than those encountered at the occupation site. We can all learn something but in the meantime we must defend the "occupation" and the occupiers. More later as the occupation continues.
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In the recent past as part of my one of my commentaries I noted the following:
“… The idea of the General Assembly with each individual attendee acting as a “tribune of the people” is interesting and important. And, of course, it represents, for today anyway, the embryo of what the “new world” we need to create might look like at the governmental level.”
A couple of the people that I have talked lately were not quite sure what to make of that idea. The idea that what is going on in Occupy Boston at the governmental level could, should, would be a possible form of governing this society in the “new world a-borning” with the rise of the Occupy movement. Part of the problem is that there was some confusion on the part of the listeners that one of the possible aims of this movement is to create an alternative government, or at least provide a model for such a government. I will argue here now, and in the future, that it should be one of the goals. In short, we need to take power away from the Democrats and Republicans and their tired old congressional/executive/judicial doesn’t work- checks and balances-form of governing and place it at the grassroots level and work upward from there rather than, as now, have power devolve from the top. (And stop well short of the bottom.)
I will leave aside the question (the problem really) of what it would take to create such a possibility. Of course a revolutionary solution would, of necessity, have be on the table since there is no way that the current powerful interests, Democratic, Republican or those of the "one percent" having no named politics, is going to give up power without a fight. What I want to pose now is the use of the General Assembly as a deliberative executive, legislative, and judicial body all rolled into one. In that sense previous historical models come to mind; the short-lived but heroic Paris Commune of 1871 that Karl Marx tirelessly defended against the reactionaries of Europe as the prototype of a workers government; the early heroic days of the Russian October Revolution of 1917 when the workers councils (soviets in Russian parlance) acted as a true workers' government; and the period in the Spanish Revolution of 1936-39 where the Central Committee of the Anti-Fascist Militias acted, de facto, as a workers government. All the just mentioned examples had their problems and flaws, no question. However, merely mentioning the General Assembly concept in the same paragraph as these great historic examples should signal that thoughtful leftists and other militants need to investigate and study these examples.
In order to facilitate the investigation and study of those examples I will, occasionally, post works in this space that deal with these forbears from several leftist perspectives (rightist perspectives were clear- crush all the above examples ruthlessly, and with no mercy- so we need not look at them now). I started this Lessons Of History series with Karl Marx’s classic defense and critique of the Paris Commune, The Civil War In France and today’s presentation noted in the headline continues on in that same vein.
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A Five-Point Program As Talking Points
*Jobs For All Now!-“30 For 40”- A historic demand of the labor movement. Thirty hours work for forty hours pay to spread the available work around. Organize the unorganized- Organize the South- Organize Wal-Mart- Defend the right for public and private workers to unionize.
* Defend the working classes! No union dues for Democratic (or the stray Republican) candidates. Spent the dough on organizing the unorganized and other labor-specific causes (example, the November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio).
*End the endless wars!- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan! Hands Off Iran! Hands Off The World!
*Fight for a social agenda for working people!. Quality Healthcare For All! Nationalize the colleges and universities under student-teacher-campus worker control! Forgive student debt! Stop housing foreclosures!
*We created the wealth, let’s take it back. Take the struggle for our daily bread off the historic agenda. Build a workers party that fights for a workers government to unite all the oppressed.
Emblazon on our red banner-Labor and the oppressed must rule!
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A Quest for Universal Harmony
Extracts from
Robert Owen’s published works
Many ideas expressed by Robert Owen (1771-1858) remain amazingly relevant and topical today. The international, cultural influence of his campaign for a better and fairer society is one of the criteria by which New Lanark was assessed by UNESCO as being worthy of World Heritage Status. A selection of extracts from Owen's published works follows.
A New Society for the New Millennium?
Robert Owen often talked of the new Millennium; a time, he hoped, when society would be greatly improved. When he opened the Institute for the Formation of Character on New Year's Day 1816, he gave an Address to the Inhabitants of New Lanark, in which he outlined his hopes for the Millennium, his plans, and his notion that education was the means of achieving a better and fairer society.
The Address included these memorable words:
"What ideas individuals may attach to the term "Millennium" I know not; but I know that society may be formed so as to exist without crime, without poverty, with health greatly improved, with little, if any misery, and with intelligence and happiness increased a hundredfold; and no obstacle whatsoever intervenes at this moment except ignorance to prevent such a state of society from becoming universal.”
Education
Owen's campaign for education as a means of eradicating society's problems, and making people happier and more fulfilled, was prominent throughout his working life:
"To train and educate the rising generation will at all times be the first object of society, to which every other will be subordinate". [The Social System, 1826]
"The three lower rooms (in the Institute) will be thrown open for the use of the adult part of the population, who are to be provided with every accommodation requisite to enable them to read, write, account, sew or play, converse or walk about. Two evenings in the week will be appropriated to dancing and music, but on these occasions, every accommodation will be prepared for those who prefer to study or to follow any of the occupations pursued on the other evenings".
[Address to the Inhabitants of New Lanark, 1816]
"It is therefore, the interest of all, that everyone, from birth, should be well educated, physically and mentally, that society may be improved in its character, - that everyone should be beneficially employed, physically and mentally, that the greatest amount of wealth may be created, and knowledge attained, - that everyone should be placed in the midst of those external circumstances that will produce the greatest number of pleasurable sensations, through the longest life, that man may be made truly intelligent, moral and happy, and be thus prepared to enter upon the coming Millennium". [1841]
"Where are these rational practices to be taught and acquired? Not within the four walls of a bare building, in which formality predominates ………. But in the nursery, play-ground, fields, gardens, workshops, manufactures, museums and class-rooms. …The facts collected from all these sources will be concentrated, explained, discussed, made obvious to all, and shown in their direct application to practice in all the business of life". [Book of the New Moral World 3rd Part 1842]
Social Inclusion and Early Intervention
Social Inclusion and Early Intervention have both been key aspects of the government's social policy in the early 21st century. Robert Owen was including them in his plans for The Institute back in 1816 when he stated that the building would accommodate more than just the children of New Lanark, and that anyone in Lanark or the surrounding neighbourhood who could not afford to educate their children, would be at liberty to send them to it, where:
"They would receive the same care and attention as those who belong to the establishment. Nor will there be any distinction made between the children of those parents who are deemed the worst, and of those who may be esteemed the best members of society: indeed I would prefer to receive the offspring of the worst, if they shall be sent at an early age; because they really require more of our care and pity and by well-training these, society will be more essentially benefited than if the like attention were paid to those whose parents are educating them in comparatively good habits".
[Address to the Inhabitants of New Lanark, 1st Jan 1816]
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Parenting Classes
"One of the apartments (in the Institute) will also be occasionally appropriated for the purpose of giving useful instruction to the older classes of the inhabitants. For believe me, my friends, you are yet very deficient with regard to the best modes of training your children, or of arranging your domestic concerns". [Address to the Inhabitants of New Lanark, 1816]
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Working Conditions
Owen's extremely advanced system of factory management, which he pioneered at the New Lanark Mills gained him credibility, not only as a successful businessman, but also as a benevolent employer. He proved that commercial success could be achieved without exploitation of those employed; his approach to social and economic organisation was extended beyond the mill floor into every aspect of village life.
"The working classes may be injuriously degraded and oppressed in three ways:
1st When they are neglected in infancy
2nd When they are overworked by their employer, and are thus rendered incompetent
from ignorance to make a good use of high wages when they can procure them.
3rd When they are paid low wages for their labour ".
[On the employment of children in manufactories, 1818]
"The lowest stage of humanity is experienced when the individual must labour for a small pittance of wages from others". [From a Paper Dedicated to the Governments of Great Britain, Austria, Russia, France, Prussia and the United States of America, London 1841]
"Eight hours' daily labour is enough for any human being, and under proper arrangements sufficient to afford an ample supply of food, raiment and shelter, or the necessaries and comforts of life, and for the remainder of his time, every person is entitled to education, recreation and sleep". [From the Foundation Axioms of Owen's "Society for Promoting National Regeneration", 1833]
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Employment Training
"Train any population rationally, and they will be rational. Furnish honest and useful employments to those so trained, and such employments they will greatly prefer to dishonest or injurious occupations. It is beyond all calculation the interest of every government to provide that training and that employment; and to provide both is easily practicable". [A New View of Society - Essays 1813-1816]
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Child Care / Workplace Nurseries
"The Institution has been devised to afford the means of receiving your children at an early age, almost as soon as they can walk. By this means many of you, mothers and families, will be able to earn a better maintenance or support for your children; you will have less care and anxiety about them, while the children will be prevented from acquiring any bad habits. and gradually prepared to learn the best".
[Address to the Inhabitants of New Lanark, 1816]
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Women
Robert Owen's views had particular appeal for women. At a time when men were hostile to women's rights, he courted controversy by denouncing marriage, as it then existed, as a form of slavery for women.
"Women will be no longer made the slaves of, or dependent upon men….
They will be equal in education, rights, privileges and personal liberty".
[Book of the New Moral World: Sixth Part, 1841]
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Rules for the Inhabitants of New Lanark
Robert Owen drew up a list of rules for the inhabitants of New Lanark. These encouraged community responsibility, religious tolerance, and other good habits amongst the villagers.
"Parents shall be answerable for the conduct of their children, and householders for their lodgers".
"None of the inhabitants of same village shall injure any of the fences about it, or upon the farm, whether stone, dyke, railings, or hedges; nor any of the houses, ground, or plantings, nor any of the company's property, of whatever nature it may be; but, on the contrary, when they see children or others committing such damage, they shall immediately cause them to desist from it, or if that shall not be in their power, give notice at the principal counting-house of the offences, and who are the offenders".
"As there are a very great variety of religious sects in the world (and which are probably adapted to different constitutions under different circumstances, seeing there are many good and conscientious characters in each), it is particularly recommended, as a means of uniting the inhabitants of the village into one family, that while each faithfully adheres to the principles which he most approves, at the same time all shall think charitably of their neighbours respecting their religious opinions, and not presumptuously suppose that theirs alone are right".
[from the Rules and Regulations for the Inhabitants of New Lanark, 1800]
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Health, Preventive Medicine & Health Education
"The advanced members of the medical profession know that the health of society is not to be obtained or maintained by medicines; - that it is far better, far more easy and far wiser, to adopt substantive measures to prevent disease of body or mind, than to allow substantive measure to remain continually to generate causes to produce physical and mental disorders".
"It is the interest of the individual and of all society, that he should be made, at the earliest period, to understand his own construction, the proper use of its parts, and how to keep them at all times in a state of health; and especially that he should be taught to observe the varied effects of different kinds of food, and different quantities, upon his own constitution. He should be taught the general and individual laws of health, thus early, that he may know how to prevent the approach of disease. And the knowledge of the particular diet best suited to his constitution, is one of the most essential laws of health".
"To preserve permanent good health, the state of mind must be taken into consideration". [Book of the New Moral World, 3rd Part, 1842]
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Care for the elderly and infirm
"In advanced age, and in cases of disability from accident, natural infirmity or any other cause, the individual shall be supported by the colony, and receive every comfort which kindness can administer". [The Social System - Constitution, Laws, and Regulations of a Community 1826]
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The Environment
"They will be surrounded by gardens, have abundance of space in all directions to keep the air healthy and pleasant. They will have walks and plantations before them".
"To obtain and preserve health in the best state to ensure happiness, pure air is necessary. It is at once obvious that large cities and extensive manufactories are not well calculated to permit pure air to be enjoyed by those who live in the one, or who are employed in the other The advantage of pure, and the disadvantage of impure air are experienced each time we breathe, and all who understand the causes of disease know that an impure atmosphere is most unfavourable to the enjoyment of health, and an efficient cause to shorten human existence within the natural life of man. It is therefore most desirable that decisive measures should be devised and generally adopted to ensure to all a pure atmosphere, in which to live during their lives". [Book of the New Moral World – 1842]
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Campaign for Universal Harmony
"Is it not the interest of the human race, that every one should be so taught and placed, that he would find his highest enjoyment to arise from the continued practice of doing all in his power to promote the well-being, and happiness, of every man, woman, and child, without regard to their class, sect, party, country or colour" [From a Paper Dedicated to the Governments of Great Britain, Austria, Russia, France, Prussia and the United States of America, published by Robert Owen, 1841. This is the 17th of 20 Questions to the Human Race]
"It is therefore, the interest of all, that everyone, from birth, should be well educated, physically and mentally that society may be improved in its character, - that everyone should be beneficially employed, physically and mentally, that the greatest amount of wealth may be created, and knowledge attained, that everyone should be placed in the midst at those external circumstances, that will produce the greatest number of pleasurable sensations, through the longest life, that man may be made truly intelligent, moral and happy, and be, thus, prepared to enter upon the coming Millennium".[A Development of the Principles & Plans on which to establish self-supporting Home Colonies, 1841]
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International Co-operation
“There is but one mode by which man can possess in perpetuity all the happiness which his nature is capable of enjoying, - that is by the union and co-operation of ALL for the benefit of EACH.
Union and co-operation in war obviously increase the power of the individual a thousand fold. Is there the shadow of a reason why they should not produce equal effects in peace; why the principle of co-operation should not give to men the same superior powers, and advantages, (and much greater) in the creation, preservation, distribution and enjoyment of wealth?” [The Social System, written in 1821, published in 1826]
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Out In The Be-Bop 1930s Night-It Don’t Mean A Thing If You Ain’t Got That Swing- Benny Goodman At Carnegie Hall-1938- A CD Review
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Benny Goodman his band performing, well, performing swing music, what else.
CD Review
Benny Goodman At Carnegie Hall-1938, Benny Goodman and his 1938 version band, Columbia Records, Sony Music, 1999
“Did you hear it, did you hear? Benny Goodman and his band, the king of swing himself, is coming to the Olde Saco Ballroom next month for two nights only,” shouted Delores LeBlanc to Betty La Croix over the hum of the separating machine that she was tending at the MacAdams Textile Mill. The central building over on Main Street (really U.S. Route One but everybody calls it Main Street and calls it that even to strangers looking for directions to Kennebunkport or going north up Portland way) not the smaller complex by the Olde Saco River which is slated to be closed soon for lack of work.
Betty, too proud, too female acting like a female quiet proud, too proper French-Canadian Catholic female to act like some “wrong side of the tracks” girl proud, to yell back over the drone of her own tended machine, just gave a gleeful nod. Delores continues over the drumbeat, “Let’s get tickets right away for both shows because after his concert last year down in New York at that Carnegie Hall the place will be packed and we don’t want to miss the event of 1939 and maybe the whole century here in old musty, fussy nothing ever happens except the river flows by Olde Saco. Once again Betty nodded, although not gleefully this time. Not gleefully at all.
The cause of that non-glee is, well, not to leave you all mixed-up and guessing, boy trouble, really man trouble. It seems that Betty (although she is just too proper and too female, well you know the drill already so I won’t go on) had the previous night had her fifteenth, no sixteenth, fight and never make-up with Delores’ brother Jean. And whether the year was 1039, 1539, or like now, 1939, the issue, to put it delicately, was sex. Or rather why Betty wanted to wait all the way until marriage, and not before, no way not before, to give in to one Jean Claude LeBlanc. Yes, Betty was a mother-can-be-proud proper French-Canadian Catholic, although in the heat of the moment a couple of times down at the Squaw Rock “parking “ end of Olde Saco Beach, a spot chosen by the local younger set for its position far from parental and police eyes she almost succumbed to Jean’s urgings.
Needless to say All-American boy, really all All-American French-Canadian boy and former star of the Olde Saco High football team, the one that beat Auburn for the state title a couple of years back, Jean Claude LeBlanc, was all for “doing the do” right now as a test run for marriage, or so that is how he presented it to Betty last Saturday (and many a previous Saturday night) down in those dunes of Olde Saco Beach as they watched old Neptune do his ocean magic. And Jean almost made the sale that night, except by the time Betty decided yes, she wasn’t in the mood any longer. At least she didn’t use the headache excuse. Jesus.
And what does all this eternal young love squabbling, good-looking sexed-up guy charging forth, nice girl holding back for dear life, post-drugstore soda for two listening to the latest tunes or old Bijou movie date, ending the night down at some forlorn beach and endless possibilities have to do with Benny Goodman. Benny Goodman, king of swing-ness, the be-bop night, and the possibilities of seeing said king in person. Well where have you been? How do you thing our boy Jean, champion football mover and persona non grata for life within ten miles of Auburn but a little bashful in the sex department when he came right down to it, tried to get one Betty La Croix in the mood. Take one guess. No, I will give you a hint-think clarinet, a heavenly deep beat-pacing, fingers snapping, clarinet that sets those drums a rolling, those trumpets blowing to Gabriel’s heaven, and sets those sexy saxes on fire to blow the walls of Jericho down. A little Body And Soul or Swing Time In The Mountains. Maybe Blue Skies. Get it.
But back to Betty and Jean, and Betty’s dilemma. Back right away because after Delores and Betty finish their conversation, or rather Delores finishes here monologue, here comes Jean down the aisle to Betty’s machine. He nods to Delores, the appropriate publicly polite brotherly greeting, although at home in the LeBlanc household over on Fourteenth Street in the “Little Quebec " section of town there is a daily war going on, and has been since, well, since Delores found out that she, with just a few hours work in the family’s sole bathroom, could set the guys stirring. Maybe since about fourteen. And did so, did spend those girlish work hours, to Jean’s intense displeasure when he needed to attend to his own toilet for some hot date, or the last couple of years, for Betty.
Standing, a little sheepishly, but also with just that certain touch of fox that attracted Betty to him in the first place, Jean lays his great scheme on one Betty La Croix. He will spring for the tickets to both of Benny Goodman’s shows if she will just make up with him. She hesitates, thinking back to that last Saturday and how Benny and the gang, via Jean’s car radio, the ocean swells, and Buddha Swings, got her almost in the mood to “do the do.” Finally, Betty looked over at Delores and gave her that kind of “sorry I can’t go with you” look that Delores had learned to expect when Jean came anywhere with five feet of her. Delores, also thought, in her own publicly proper French-Canadian Catholic girl devilish thought, that Betty was not going to be able to withstand two nights of Benny swing, Jean ardor and Olde Saco ocean swell. But, damn, that’s her problem. Delores, never a social glum (at least since that fourteen and set guys stirring revelation) wondered to herself if that dreamy Jean Jacques La Croix (yes, Betty’s brother) was going? For him (with promise of be-bop Benny in the background) she might check those ocean swells out too.
CD Review
Benny Goodman At Carnegie Hall-1938, Benny Goodman and his 1938 version band, Columbia Records, Sony Music, 1999
“Did you hear it, did you hear? Benny Goodman and his band, the king of swing himself, is coming to the Olde Saco Ballroom next month for two nights only,” shouted Delores LeBlanc to Betty La Croix over the hum of the separating machine that she was tending at the MacAdams Textile Mill. The central building over on Main Street (really U.S. Route One but everybody calls it Main Street and calls it that even to strangers looking for directions to Kennebunkport or going north up Portland way) not the smaller complex by the Olde Saco River which is slated to be closed soon for lack of work.
Betty, too proud, too female acting like a female quiet proud, too proper French-Canadian Catholic female to act like some “wrong side of the tracks” girl proud, to yell back over the drone of her own tended machine, just gave a gleeful nod. Delores continues over the drumbeat, “Let’s get tickets right away for both shows because after his concert last year down in New York at that Carnegie Hall the place will be packed and we don’t want to miss the event of 1939 and maybe the whole century here in old musty, fussy nothing ever happens except the river flows by Olde Saco. Once again Betty nodded, although not gleefully this time. Not gleefully at all.
The cause of that non-glee is, well, not to leave you all mixed-up and guessing, boy trouble, really man trouble. It seems that Betty (although she is just too proper and too female, well you know the drill already so I won’t go on) had the previous night had her fifteenth, no sixteenth, fight and never make-up with Delores’ brother Jean. And whether the year was 1039, 1539, or like now, 1939, the issue, to put it delicately, was sex. Or rather why Betty wanted to wait all the way until marriage, and not before, no way not before, to give in to one Jean Claude LeBlanc. Yes, Betty was a mother-can-be-proud proper French-Canadian Catholic, although in the heat of the moment a couple of times down at the Squaw Rock “parking “ end of Olde Saco Beach, a spot chosen by the local younger set for its position far from parental and police eyes she almost succumbed to Jean’s urgings.
Needless to say All-American boy, really all All-American French-Canadian boy and former star of the Olde Saco High football team, the one that beat Auburn for the state title a couple of years back, Jean Claude LeBlanc, was all for “doing the do” right now as a test run for marriage, or so that is how he presented it to Betty last Saturday (and many a previous Saturday night) down in those dunes of Olde Saco Beach as they watched old Neptune do his ocean magic. And Jean almost made the sale that night, except by the time Betty decided yes, she wasn’t in the mood any longer. At least she didn’t use the headache excuse. Jesus.
And what does all this eternal young love squabbling, good-looking sexed-up guy charging forth, nice girl holding back for dear life, post-drugstore soda for two listening to the latest tunes or old Bijou movie date, ending the night down at some forlorn beach and endless possibilities have to do with Benny Goodman. Benny Goodman, king of swing-ness, the be-bop night, and the possibilities of seeing said king in person. Well where have you been? How do you thing our boy Jean, champion football mover and persona non grata for life within ten miles of Auburn but a little bashful in the sex department when he came right down to it, tried to get one Betty La Croix in the mood. Take one guess. No, I will give you a hint-think clarinet, a heavenly deep beat-pacing, fingers snapping, clarinet that sets those drums a rolling, those trumpets blowing to Gabriel’s heaven, and sets those sexy saxes on fire to blow the walls of Jericho down. A little Body And Soul or Swing Time In The Mountains. Maybe Blue Skies. Get it.
But back to Betty and Jean, and Betty’s dilemma. Back right away because after Delores and Betty finish their conversation, or rather Delores finishes here monologue, here comes Jean down the aisle to Betty’s machine. He nods to Delores, the appropriate publicly polite brotherly greeting, although at home in the LeBlanc household over on Fourteenth Street in the “Little Quebec " section of town there is a daily war going on, and has been since, well, since Delores found out that she, with just a few hours work in the family’s sole bathroom, could set the guys stirring. Maybe since about fourteen. And did so, did spend those girlish work hours, to Jean’s intense displeasure when he needed to attend to his own toilet for some hot date, or the last couple of years, for Betty.
Standing, a little sheepishly, but also with just that certain touch of fox that attracted Betty to him in the first place, Jean lays his great scheme on one Betty La Croix. He will spring for the tickets to both of Benny Goodman’s shows if she will just make up with him. She hesitates, thinking back to that last Saturday and how Benny and the gang, via Jean’s car radio, the ocean swells, and Buddha Swings, got her almost in the mood to “do the do.” Finally, Betty looked over at Delores and gave her that kind of “sorry I can’t go with you” look that Delores had learned to expect when Jean came anywhere with five feet of her. Delores, also thought, in her own publicly proper French-Canadian Catholic girl devilish thought, that Betty was not going to be able to withstand two nights of Benny swing, Jean ardor and Olde Saco ocean swell. But, damn, that’s her problem. Delores, never a social glum (at least since that fourteen and set guys stirring revelation) wondered to herself if that dreamy Jean Jacques La Croix (yes, Betty’s brother) was going? For him (with promise of be-bop Benny in the background) she might check those ocean swells out too.
A Man Of The West- The Old West Ballads Of Johnny Cash
CD Review
Johnny Cash Sings The True Ballads Of The Old West, Johnny Cash, Sbme Special Mkts, 2009
I have spent some time, and I believe time well spent, at this site over the pass couple of years talking about things of the West, old and new. You know the stuff of legends like we grew up with as kids, at least my generation, the generation of ’68, did, for better or worst. Blame it on Larry McMurtry, his books, and his incessant Old West reviews in “The New York Review Of Books”. Some of this stuff is genuine history, things that today’s labor militants should know about like the struggles of the Western Federation Of Miners, Big Bill Haywood and the legendary Wobblies (IWW, Industrial Workers Of The World) who led many a strike against the mine, farm, and lumber bosses.
Other things are, and should be treated a little more circumspectly, like the legends of Jesse James and John Wesley Harding, especially those who honor the Northern victory in the American Civil War. There has, in short, been no lack of song and storytelling about the Old West. This is a round-about way of introducing Johnny Cash’s valuable little cache of old time Western-oriented material, mainly ballads, including some long needed focus on the struggle s of Native Americans, the odd group out in the West, old and new.
The name Johnny Cash, although well thought of in this space, has mainly been mentioned in connection with his connection to the legendary Carter family (he married Maybelle’s daughter, June, for those who are not familiar with that family’s genealogy), a family more noted for their contributions to mountain music, eastern mountain music, than the hard western plains described in this album. Nonetheless, Johnny in that deep, authoritative and plaintive voice of his has brought the Old West alive in this recording. I should like to note several stick out items of interest here. First off- the rendition, based on Longfellow, of “Hiawatha’s Vision”; an interesting song about the fate of the assassin of President James Garfield in the post-Civil War period, “Mr. Garfield; and, a song of the original old West, Kentucky, in” Road to Kaintuck”. Then to finish this compilation up there are songs that truly reflect the struggles of the Old West, “Stampede,” “Blizzard,” “The Streets Of Laredo,” and “Bury Me Not On The Lone Prairie”. Just a nice little slice of Americana, mainly not mentioned in the history books, or by western Chamber of Commerces.
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The Streets of Laredo
arranged & adapted by Arlo Guthrie
As I walked out in the streets of Laredo
As I walked out in Laredo one day
I spied a poor cowboy wrapped up in white linen
All wrapped in white linen as cold as the clay
"I see by your outfit that you are a cowboy"
These words he did say as I proudly stepped by
"Come sit down beside me and hear my sad story
I'm shot in the breast and I know I must die
"'Twas once in the saddle I used to go ridin'
Once in the saddle I used to go gay
First lead to drinkin', and then to card-playing
I'm shot in the breast and I'm dying today
"Let six jolly cowboys come carry my coffin
Let six pretty gals come to carry my pall
Throw bunches of roses all over my coffin
Throw roses to deaden the clods as they fall
"Oh, beat the drum slowly, and play the fife lowly
And play the dead march as you carry me along
Take me to the green valley and lay the earth o'er me
For I'm a poor cowboy and I know I've done wrong"
We beat the drum slowly and played the fife lowly
And bitterly wept as we carried him along
For we all loved our comrade, so brave, young and handsome
We all loved our comrade although he done wrong
©1991 Arloco Music Inc
All Rights Reserved.
Johnny Cash Sings The True Ballads Of The Old West, Johnny Cash, Sbme Special Mkts, 2009
I have spent some time, and I believe time well spent, at this site over the pass couple of years talking about things of the West, old and new. You know the stuff of legends like we grew up with as kids, at least my generation, the generation of ’68, did, for better or worst. Blame it on Larry McMurtry, his books, and his incessant Old West reviews in “The New York Review Of Books”. Some of this stuff is genuine history, things that today’s labor militants should know about like the struggles of the Western Federation Of Miners, Big Bill Haywood and the legendary Wobblies (IWW, Industrial Workers Of The World) who led many a strike against the mine, farm, and lumber bosses.
Other things are, and should be treated a little more circumspectly, like the legends of Jesse James and John Wesley Harding, especially those who honor the Northern victory in the American Civil War. There has, in short, been no lack of song and storytelling about the Old West. This is a round-about way of introducing Johnny Cash’s valuable little cache of old time Western-oriented material, mainly ballads, including some long needed focus on the struggle s of Native Americans, the odd group out in the West, old and new.
The name Johnny Cash, although well thought of in this space, has mainly been mentioned in connection with his connection to the legendary Carter family (he married Maybelle’s daughter, June, for those who are not familiar with that family’s genealogy), a family more noted for their contributions to mountain music, eastern mountain music, than the hard western plains described in this album. Nonetheless, Johnny in that deep, authoritative and plaintive voice of his has brought the Old West alive in this recording. I should like to note several stick out items of interest here. First off- the rendition, based on Longfellow, of “Hiawatha’s Vision”; an interesting song about the fate of the assassin of President James Garfield in the post-Civil War period, “Mr. Garfield; and, a song of the original old West, Kentucky, in” Road to Kaintuck”. Then to finish this compilation up there are songs that truly reflect the struggles of the Old West, “Stampede,” “Blizzard,” “The Streets Of Laredo,” and “Bury Me Not On The Lone Prairie”. Just a nice little slice of Americana, mainly not mentioned in the history books, or by western Chamber of Commerces.
*********
The Streets of Laredo
arranged & adapted by Arlo Guthrie
As I walked out in the streets of Laredo
As I walked out in Laredo one day
I spied a poor cowboy wrapped up in white linen
All wrapped in white linen as cold as the clay
"I see by your outfit that you are a cowboy"
These words he did say as I proudly stepped by
"Come sit down beside me and hear my sad story
I'm shot in the breast and I know I must die
"'Twas once in the saddle I used to go ridin'
Once in the saddle I used to go gay
First lead to drinkin', and then to card-playing
I'm shot in the breast and I'm dying today
"Let six jolly cowboys come carry my coffin
Let six pretty gals come to carry my pall
Throw bunches of roses all over my coffin
Throw roses to deaden the clods as they fall
"Oh, beat the drum slowly, and play the fife lowly
And play the dead march as you carry me along
Take me to the green valley and lay the earth o'er me
For I'm a poor cowboy and I know I've done wrong"
We beat the drum slowly and played the fife lowly
And bitterly wept as we carried him along
For we all loved our comrade, so brave, young and handsome
We all loved our comrade although he done wrong
©1991 Arloco Music Inc
All Rights Reserved.
Once More On The Post-World War II Chicago Blues Explosion- The Work Of Master Blues Harmonica Player Sonny Boy Williamson
CD Review
Sonny Boy Williamson: His Best: 50th Anniversary Chess Edition, Sonny Boy Williamson, Chess Records, 1997
I hope I never get tired of reviewing the various blues greats that I have spent the better part of the last couple of years trying to highlight. And I probably won’t. However, one little problem tends to keep creeping up. Just when I think that I have hit all the blues highbinders that are possible to mention without just running out into the street and reviewing some itinerant street player along comes another one that it would be a sin, a mortal sin, not to mention. That is the case here with the work of Sonny Boy Williamson (Rice Carter version, for those who want to get into that controversy over who the real Sonny Boy is, or was), master harmonica player, no, make that harmonica wizard.
One of the things that got added, significantly, when the blues went north to Chicago (and other such environs) and went electric in the post-World War II period was the increased use of the harmonica to drive the beat, or act as counter-point to it, as the case may be on any particular song. We all know, or should know, of the key role that Muddy Walters and his various bands played in this with the emergence of Little Walter and later James Cotton. Note should also be taken of Howlin’ Wolf’s role when he was in his prime, and drove everyone crazy with that voice and THAT harmonica he practically inhaled on things like “How Many More Years”. Well, how do you think these guys learned the tricks of the harmonica trade? One way or another at the feet of Sonny Boy.
And the proof? Well just take about ten out of the twenty selections in this 50th Anniversary of Chess Records edition. Perhaps any ten will do but here are my stick outs. Keep in mind that most of the lyrics are monstrously “politically incorrect” but “Keep It To Yourself,” “Your Funeral And Mine,” Down Child,” and, the well-known “Help Yourself” are a good sampler.
***********
Sonny Boy Williamson - Blue Bird Blues Lyrics
Artist: Sonny Boy Williamson
Album: Miscellaneous
Genre: Blues
Send "Blue Bird Blues" Ringtone to your Cell
Songwriters: John Lee Williamson
My bluebird, bluebird
Please take this letter down south for me
Now, bluebird, bluebird
Please take this letter down south for me
Now you can tell my baby, I'm up here in St. Louis
Oh, but I'm just as blue as I can be
Now, bluebird, when you get to Jackson
I want you to fly down on Shannon Street
Now, bluebird when you get to Jackson
I want you to fly down on Shannon Street
Well, but I don't want you to stop flyin'
Until you find Miss Lacey Belle, for me
Now bluebird, when you find Miss Lacey Belle
I want you to please give her my best regard
Now bluebird, when you find Miss Lacey Belle
Oh, give her my best regard
Well, that you can tell her I'm up here in St. Louis
But these times is awful doggone hard
Now bluebird, she may not be at home
But please, knock on her door
Now bluebird, she may not be at home
But please knock on her door
Well, but she might be right across the street
Visitin' her next door neighbor, you know
Sonny Boy Williamson: His Best: 50th Anniversary Chess Edition, Sonny Boy Williamson, Chess Records, 1997
I hope I never get tired of reviewing the various blues greats that I have spent the better part of the last couple of years trying to highlight. And I probably won’t. However, one little problem tends to keep creeping up. Just when I think that I have hit all the blues highbinders that are possible to mention without just running out into the street and reviewing some itinerant street player along comes another one that it would be a sin, a mortal sin, not to mention. That is the case here with the work of Sonny Boy Williamson (Rice Carter version, for those who want to get into that controversy over who the real Sonny Boy is, or was), master harmonica player, no, make that harmonica wizard.
One of the things that got added, significantly, when the blues went north to Chicago (and other such environs) and went electric in the post-World War II period was the increased use of the harmonica to drive the beat, or act as counter-point to it, as the case may be on any particular song. We all know, or should know, of the key role that Muddy Walters and his various bands played in this with the emergence of Little Walter and later James Cotton. Note should also be taken of Howlin’ Wolf’s role when he was in his prime, and drove everyone crazy with that voice and THAT harmonica he practically inhaled on things like “How Many More Years”. Well, how do you think these guys learned the tricks of the harmonica trade? One way or another at the feet of Sonny Boy.
And the proof? Well just take about ten out of the twenty selections in this 50th Anniversary of Chess Records edition. Perhaps any ten will do but here are my stick outs. Keep in mind that most of the lyrics are monstrously “politically incorrect” but “Keep It To Yourself,” “Your Funeral And Mine,” Down Child,” and, the well-known “Help Yourself” are a good sampler.
***********
Sonny Boy Williamson - Blue Bird Blues Lyrics
Artist: Sonny Boy Williamson
Album: Miscellaneous
Genre: Blues
Send "Blue Bird Blues" Ringtone to your Cell
Songwriters: John Lee Williamson
My bluebird, bluebird
Please take this letter down south for me
Now, bluebird, bluebird
Please take this letter down south for me
Now you can tell my baby, I'm up here in St. Louis
Oh, but I'm just as blue as I can be
Now, bluebird, when you get to Jackson
I want you to fly down on Shannon Street
Now, bluebird when you get to Jackson
I want you to fly down on Shannon Street
Well, but I don't want you to stop flyin'
Until you find Miss Lacey Belle, for me
Now bluebird, when you find Miss Lacey Belle
I want you to please give her my best regard
Now bluebird, when you find Miss Lacey Belle
Oh, give her my best regard
Well, that you can tell her I'm up here in St. Louis
But these times is awful doggone hard
Now bluebird, she may not be at home
But please, knock on her door
Now bluebird, she may not be at home
But please knock on her door
Well, but she might be right across the street
Visitin' her next door neighbor, you know
Monday, March 12, 2012
Films To While Away The Class Struggle By- The Class Struggle is….”hot running water and a big old bathtub”- "Harlan County, U.S.A."- A Review
DVD Review
Harlan County, U.S.A., starring the workers of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) and the women of the Brookside (Kentucky) Women’s Club, directed by Barbara Kopple, 1976
This excellent documentary, directed by Barbara Kopple, focuses on the long, somewhat isolated strike in 1973 by the new United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) local of Brookside, Kentucky coal miners fighting for a union contract against the Eastover Mining Company (a subsidiary of the massive Duke Power Company, the modern equivalent of the old villainous Peabody Mining Company well known in labor circles and in coal country songs). That long strike, the ups and downs of the battles for recognition, the changing tactics on both sides over time, the frustrations of the strikers and their wives and other supporters, and the lessons to be learned for labor militants today are what make this such a compelling and rewarding documentary to view.
That “hot running water and a big old bathtub” caption in the title may need some explaining in post-industrial America, although perhaps not by as many people as one would think. One of the virtues of this documentary is that the participants in the strike and their wives and loved ones get plenty of air time. Thus, we get to hear and see, up close and personal, them express their views, their frustrations during the strike and their hopes for a successful strike and a new contract that will provide enhanced safety standards (notoriously poor throughout the inherently dangerous history of coal mining underground and a central goal of coal miner unions up to the present day), produce more benefits and place the Eastern Kentucky miners on a equal footing with other UMWA miners.
The most poignant expression, as noted above, of that hope was provided by a poor miner’s wife living in a ramshackle old cabin (company-provided, I believe, which is not unusual in coal country) without hot running water or a proper bathtub to her daughter while the daughter was being bathed in a washtub. That, my friends, is what the class struggle meant down at the base then, and, I daresay, now. We politically-oriented labor militants may express that proposition a little more theoretically concise and analytically profuse but I dare anyone who fights for a more just society to say they can express the sense of the struggle down at the base better than that.
And what of the lessons to be learned by today’s labor militants, including today’s coal miners who have lost a great deal of the spirit of their militant history in the last almost forty years since the events depicted in this film occurred. Well, as always, the question posed by the sub-theme that drives the spirit of the struggle in this documentary and as eloquently expressed by the writer of the song in the 1930s when there was also a huge wave of class struggle in the coal fields, Florence Reece - “Which Side Are You On?” After a few minutes of viewing here one should be very clear about that point. Further that, “picket lines mean don’t cross”, a chronic problem during the strike with scabs being sent into the mines by the company daily- a question that repeatedly comes up these days when labor disputes come up as well. And another lesson, not surprisingly, do not trust bourgeois politicians, judges, cop, the pro-capitalist union bureaucracy or anyone else that gets in your way. That is for starters.
Moreover, a strike committee has to be tactically supple, as the heroic work of the Brookside Women’s Club demonstrated when the miners were enjoined from keeping effective picket lines to keep the scabs out. And… well I could go on and on but the best bet is to actually watch this film, and re-watch it because there is plenty to pick up on there. And plenty to make you glad, glad as hell, that you are a labor militant. A retrospective hats off to the 1973 Harlan County, Kentucky coal miners, a place very close to this reviewer’s heart.
Harlan County, U.S.A., starring the workers of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) and the women of the Brookside (Kentucky) Women’s Club, directed by Barbara Kopple, 1976
This excellent documentary, directed by Barbara Kopple, focuses on the long, somewhat isolated strike in 1973 by the new United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) local of Brookside, Kentucky coal miners fighting for a union contract against the Eastover Mining Company (a subsidiary of the massive Duke Power Company, the modern equivalent of the old villainous Peabody Mining Company well known in labor circles and in coal country songs). That long strike, the ups and downs of the battles for recognition, the changing tactics on both sides over time, the frustrations of the strikers and their wives and other supporters, and the lessons to be learned for labor militants today are what make this such a compelling and rewarding documentary to view.
That “hot running water and a big old bathtub” caption in the title may need some explaining in post-industrial America, although perhaps not by as many people as one would think. One of the virtues of this documentary is that the participants in the strike and their wives and loved ones get plenty of air time. Thus, we get to hear and see, up close and personal, them express their views, their frustrations during the strike and their hopes for a successful strike and a new contract that will provide enhanced safety standards (notoriously poor throughout the inherently dangerous history of coal mining underground and a central goal of coal miner unions up to the present day), produce more benefits and place the Eastern Kentucky miners on a equal footing with other UMWA miners.
The most poignant expression, as noted above, of that hope was provided by a poor miner’s wife living in a ramshackle old cabin (company-provided, I believe, which is not unusual in coal country) without hot running water or a proper bathtub to her daughter while the daughter was being bathed in a washtub. That, my friends, is what the class struggle meant down at the base then, and, I daresay, now. We politically-oriented labor militants may express that proposition a little more theoretically concise and analytically profuse but I dare anyone who fights for a more just society to say they can express the sense of the struggle down at the base better than that.
And what of the lessons to be learned by today’s labor militants, including today’s coal miners who have lost a great deal of the spirit of their militant history in the last almost forty years since the events depicted in this film occurred. Well, as always, the question posed by the sub-theme that drives the spirit of the struggle in this documentary and as eloquently expressed by the writer of the song in the 1930s when there was also a huge wave of class struggle in the coal fields, Florence Reece - “Which Side Are You On?” After a few minutes of viewing here one should be very clear about that point. Further that, “picket lines mean don’t cross”, a chronic problem during the strike with scabs being sent into the mines by the company daily- a question that repeatedly comes up these days when labor disputes come up as well. And another lesson, not surprisingly, do not trust bourgeois politicians, judges, cop, the pro-capitalist union bureaucracy or anyone else that gets in your way. That is for starters.
Moreover, a strike committee has to be tactically supple, as the heroic work of the Brookside Women’s Club demonstrated when the miners were enjoined from keeping effective picket lines to keep the scabs out. And… well I could go on and on but the best bet is to actually watch this film, and re-watch it because there is plenty to pick up on there. And plenty to make you glad, glad as hell, that you are a labor militant. A retrospective hats off to the 1973 Harlan County, Kentucky coal miners, a place very close to this reviewer’s heart.
The Latest From The United National Anti-War Coalition (UNAC) Website- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops, Mercenaries, Contractors, Etc, From Afghanistan! Hands Off Iran!
Click on the headline to link to the United National Anti-War Coalition (UNAC) Website for more information about various anti-war, anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist actions around the country.
Markin comment:
Every once in a while it is necessary, if for not other reason than to proclaim from the public square that we are alive, and fighting, to show “the colors,” our anti-war colors. While, as I have mentioned many times in this space, endless marches are not going to end any war the street opposition to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as protests against other imperialist adventures has been under the radar of late. It is time for anti-warriors to get back where we belong in the struggle against Obama’s wars. The UNAC appears to be the umbrella clearing house these days for many anti-war, anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist actions. Not all the demands of this coalition are ones that I would raise but the key one is enough to take to the streets. Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops, Mercenaries, Contractors, Etc, From Afghanistan and Iraq!
BostonUNAC.org | 781-285-8622 | BostonUNAC(S)gmail.com
Markin comment:
Every once in a while it is necessary, if for not other reason than to proclaim from the public square that we are alive, and fighting, to show “the colors,” our anti-war colors. While, as I have mentioned many times in this space, endless marches are not going to end any war the street opposition to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as protests against other imperialist adventures has been under the radar of late. It is time for anti-warriors to get back where we belong in the struggle against Obama’s wars. The UNAC appears to be the umbrella clearing house these days for many anti-war, anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist actions. Not all the demands of this coalition are ones that I would raise but the key one is enough to take to the streets. Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops, Mercenaries, Contractors, Etc, From Afghanistan and Iraq!
BostonUNAC.org | 781-285-8622 | BostonUNAC(S)gmail.com
From The Pen Of Leon Trotsky-Leon Trotsky-Lessons of the Paris Commune(February 1921)
Click on the headline to link to the Leon Trotsky Internet Archives.
Markin comment:
Blame it on Leon Trotsky, Blame it on Lenin. Blame it on the Russian October Revolution of 1917. Or, maybe, just blame it on my reaction to the residue from the bourgeois holiday celebrations. Today I am, in any case, in a mood for “high Trotskyism.” That is always a good way to readjust the political compass, and read some very literate political writing as well. With all due respect to black author James Baldwin and his great work, Another Country, that I have just finished reading Jimmy you have to share the stage today. Okay?
************
Leon Trotsky-Lessons of the Paris Commune(February 1921)
Written: 4 February 1921.
First Published: Zlatoost, February 4, 1921
Source: New International, Vol.2 No.2, March 1935, pp.43-47.
Translated: By New International.
Transcription/HTML Markup: David Walters.
Copyleft: Leon Trotsky Internet Archive (www.marxists.org) 2002. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
EACH TIME that we study the history of the Commune we see it from a new aspect, thanks to the experience acquired by the later revolutionary struggles and above all by the latest revolutions, not only the Russian but the German and Hungarian revolutions. The Franco-German war was a bloody explosion, harbinger of an immense world slaughter, the Commune of Paris a lightning harbinger of a world proletarian revolution.
The Commune shows us the heroism of the working masses, their capacity to unite into a single bloc, their talent to sacrifice themselves in the name of the future, but at the same time it shows us the incapacity of the masses to choose their path, their indecision in the leadership of the movement, their fatal penchant to come to a halt after the first successes, thus permitting the enemy to regain its breath, to reestablish its position.
The Commune came too late. It had all the possibilities of taking the power on September 4 and that would have permitted the proletariat of Paris to place itself at a single stroke at the head of the workers of the country in their struggle against all the forces of the past, against Bismarck as well as against Thiers. But the power fell into the hands of the democratic praters, the deputies of Paris. The Parisian proletariat had neither a party, nor leaders to whom it would have been closely bound by previous struggles. The petty bourgeois patriots who thought themselves socialists and sought the support of the workers did not really have any confidence in themselves. They shook the proletariat’s faith in itself, they were continually in quest of celebrated lawyers, of journalists, of deputies, whose baggage consisted only of a dozen vaguely revolutionary phrases, in order to entrust them with the leadership of the movement.
The reason why Jules Favre, Picard, Gamier-Pages and Co. took power in Paris on September 4 is the same as that which permitted Paul-Boncour, A. Varenne, Renaudel and numerous others to be for a time the masters of the party of the proletariat. The Renaudels and the Boncours and even the Longuets and the Pressemanes are much closer, by virtue of their sympathies, their intellectual habits and their conduct, to the Jules Favres and the Jules Ferrys than to the revolutionary proletariat. Their socialist phraseology is nothing but an historic mask which permits them to impose themselves upon the masses. And it is just because Favre, Simon, Picard and the others used and abused a democratico-liberal phraseology that their sons and their grandsons are obliged to resort to a socialist phraseology. But the sons and the grandsons have remained worthy of their fathers and continue their work. And when it will be necessary to decide not the question of the composition of a ministerial clique but the much more important question of knowing what class in France must take power, Renaudel, Varenne, Longuet and their similars will be in the camp of Millerand – collaborator of Galliffet, the butcher of the Commune ... When the revolutionary babblers of the salons and of parliament find themselves face to face, in real life, with the revolution, they never recognize it.
The workers’ party – the real one 𔆇 is not a machine for parliamentary manoeuvres, it is the accumulated and organized experience of the proletariat. It is only with the aid of the party, which rests upon the whole history of its past, which foresees theoretically the paths of development, all its stages, and which extracts from it the necessary formula of action, that the proletariat frees itself from the need of always recommencing its history: its hesitations, its lack of decision, its mistakes.
The proletariat of Paris did not have such a party. The bourgeois socialists with whom the Commune swarmed, raised their eyes to heaven, waited for a miracle or else a prophetic word, hesitated, and during that time the masses groped about and lost their heads because of the indecision of some and the fantasy of others. The result was that the revolution broke out in their very midst, too late, and Paris was encircled. Six months elapsed before the proletariat had reestablished in its memory the lessons of past revolutions, of battles of yore, of the reiterated betrayals of democracy – and it seized power.
These six months proved to be an irreparable loss. If the centralized party of revolutionary action had been found at the head of the proletariat of France in September 1870, the whole history of France and with it the whole history of humanity would have taken another direction.
If the power was found in the hands of the proletariat of Paris on March 18, it was not because it had been deliberately seized, but because its enemies had quitted Paris.
These latter were losing ground continuously, the workers despised and detested them, the petty bourgeoisie no longer had confidence in them and the big bourgeoisie feared that they were no longer capable of defending it. The soldiers were hostile to the officers. The government fled Paris in order to concentrate its forces elsewhere. And it was then that the proletariat became master of the situation.
But it understood this fact only on the morrow. The revolution fell upon it unexpectedly.
This first success was a new source of passivity. The enemy had fled to Versailles. Wasn’t that a victory? At that moment the governmental band could have been crushed almost without the spilling of blood. In Paris, all the ministers, with Thiers at their head, could have been taken prisoner. Nobody would have raised a hand to defend them. It was not done. There was no organization of a centralized party, having a rounded view of things and special organs for realizing its decisions.
The debris of the infantry did not want to fall back to Versailles. The thread which tied the officers and the soldiers was pretty tenuous. And had there been a directing party center at Paris, it would have incorporated into the retreating armies – since there was the possibility of retreating – a few hundred or even a few dozen devoted workers, and given them the following instructions: enhance the discontent of the soldiers against the officers, profit by the first favorable psychological moment to free the soldiers from their officers and bring them back to Paris to unite with the people. This could easily have been realized, according to the admissions of Thiers’ supporters themselves. Nobody even thought of it. Nor was there anybody to think of it. In the midst of great events, moreover, such decisions can be adopted only by a revolutionary party which looks forward to a revolution, prepares for it, does not lose its head, by a party which is accustomed to having a rounded view and is not afraid to act.
And a party of action is just what the French proletariat did not have.
The Central Committee of the National Guard is in effect a Council of Deputies of the armed workers and the petty bourgeoisie. Such a Council, elected directly by the masses who have taken the revolutionary road, represents an excellent apparatus of action. But at the same time, and just because of its immediate and elementary connection with the masses who are in the state in which the revolutionary has found them, it reflects not only all the strong sides but also the weak sides of the masses, and it reflects at first the weak sides still more than it does the strong: it manifests the spirit of indecision, of waiting, the tendency to be inactive after the first successes.
The Central Committee of the National Guard needed to be led. It was indispensable to have an organization incarnating the political experience of the proletariat and always present-not only in the Central Committee, but in the legions, in the batallion, in the deepest sectors of the French proletariat. By means of the Councils of Deputies – in the given case they were organs of the National Guard – the party could have been in continual contact with the masses, known their state of mind; its leading center could each day put forward a slogan which, through the medium of the party’s militants, would have penetrated into the masses, uniting their thought and their will.
Hardly had the government fallen back to Versailles than the National Guard hastened to unload its responsibility, at the very moment when this responsibility was enormous. The Central Committee imagined “legal” elections to the Commune. It entered into negotiations with the mayors of Paris in order to cover itself, from the Right, with “legality”.
Had a violent attack been prepared against Versailles at the same time, the negotiations with the mayors would have been a ruse fully justified from the military standpoint and in conformity with the goal. But in reality, these negotiations were being conducted only in order to avert the struggle by some miracle or other. The petty bourgeois radicals and the socialistic idealists, respecting “legality” and the men who embodied a portion of the “legal” state – the deputies, the mayors, etc. – hoped at the bottom of their souls that Thiers would halt respectfully before revolutionary Paris the minute the latter covered itself with the “legal” Commune.
Passivity and indecision were supported in this case by the sacred principle of federation and autonomy. Paris, you see, is only one commune among many other communes. Paris wants to impose nothing upon anyone; it does not struggle for the dictatorship, unless it be for the ’dictatorship of example”.
In sum, it was nothing but an attempt to replace the proletarian revolution, which was developing, by a petty bourgeois reform: communal autonomy. The real revolutionary task consisted of assuring the proletariat the power all ove the country. Paris had to serve as its base, its support, its stronghold. And to attain this goal, it was necessary to vanquish Versailles without the loss of time and to send agitators, organizers, and armed forces throughout France. It was necessary to enter into contact with sympathizers, to strengthen the hesitators and to shatter the opposition of the adversary. Instead of this policy of offensive and aggression which was the only thing that could save the situation, the leaders of Paris attempted to seclude themselves in their communal autonomy: they will not attack the others if the others do not attack them; each town has its sacred right of self-government. This idealistic chatter – of the same gender as mundane anarchism – covered up in reality a cowardice in face of revolutionary action which should have been conducted incessantly up to the very end, for otherwise it should not have been begun.
The hostility to capitalist organization – a heritage of petty bourgeois localism and autonomism – is without a doubt the weak side of a certain section of the French proletariat. Autonomy for the districts, for the wards, for the batallions, for the towns, is the supreme guarantee of real activity and individual independence for certain revolutionists. But that is a great mistake which cost the French proletariat dearly.
Under the form of the “struggle against despotic centralism” and against “stifling” discipline, a fight takes place for the self-preservation of various groups and sub-groupings of the working class, for their petty interests, with their petty ward leaders and their local oracles. The entire working class, while preserving its cultural originality and its political nuances, can act methodically and firmly, without remaining in the tow of events, and directing each time its mortal blows against the weak sectors of its enemies, on the condition that at its head, above the wards, the districts, the groups, there is an apparatus which is centralized and bound together by an iron discipline. The tendency towards particularism, whatever the form it may assume, is a heritage of the dead past. The sooner French communist-socialist communism and syndicalist communism emancipates itself from it, the better it will be for the proletarian revolution.
* * *
The party does not create the revolution at will, it does not choose the moment for seizing power as it likes, but it intervenes actively in the events, penetrates at every moment the state of mind of the revolutionary masses and evaluates the power of resistance of the enemy, and thus determines the most favoraHe moment for decisive action. This is the most difficult side of its task. The party has no decision that is valid for every case. Needed are a correct theory, an intimate contact with the masses, the comprehension of the situation, a revolutionary perception, a great resoluteness. The more profoundly a revolutionary party penetrates into all the domains of the proletarian struggle, the more unified it is by the unity of goal and discipline, the speedier and better will it arrive at resolving its task.
The difficulty consists in having this organization of a centralized party, internally welded by an iron discipline, linked intimately with the movement of the masses, with its ebbs and flows. The conquest of power cannot be achieved save on the condition of a powerful revolutionary pressure of the toiling masses. But in this act the element of preparation is entirely inevitable. The better the party will understand the conjuncture and the moment, the better the bases of resistance will be prepared, the better the force and the roles will be distributed, the surer will be the success and the less victims will it cost. The correlation of a carefully prepared action and a mass movement is the politico-strategical task of the taking of power.
The comparison of March 18, 1871 with November 7, 1917 is very instructive from this point of view. In Paris, there is an absolute lack of initiative for action on the part of the leading revolutionary circles. The proletariat, armed by the bourgeois government, is in reality master of the town, has all the material means of power – cannon and rifles – at its disposal, but it is not aware of it. The bourgeoisie makes an attempt to retake the weapon of the giant: it wants to steal the cannon of the proletariat. The attempt fails. The government flees in panic from Paris to Versailles. The field is clear. But it is only on the morrow that the proletariat understands that it is the master of Paris. The “leaders” are in the wake of events, they record them when the latter are already accomplished, and they do everything in their power to blunt the revolutionary edge.
In Petrograd, the events developed differently. The party moved firmly, resolutely, to the seizure of power, having its men everywhere, consolidating each position, extending every fissure between the workers and the garrison on the one side and the government on the other.
The armed demonstration of the July days is a vast reconnoitering conducted by the party to sound the degree of close contact between the masses and the power of resistance of the enemy. The reconnoitering is transformed into a struggle of outposts. We are thrown back, but at the same time the action establishes a connection between the party and the depths of the masses. The months of August, September and October see a powerful revolutionary flux. The party profits by it and augments considerably its points of support in the working class and the garrison. Later, the harmony between the conspirative preparations and the mass action takes place almost automatically. The Second Congress of the Soviets is fixed for November ’. All our preceding agitation was to lead to the seizure of power by the Congress. Thus, the overturn was adapted in advance to November 7. This fact was well known and understood by the enemy. Kerensky and his councillors could not fail to make efforts to consolidate themselves, to however small an extent, in Petrograd for the decisive moment. Also, they stood in need of shipping out of the capital the most revolutionary sections of the garrison. We on our part profited by this attempt by Kerensky in order to make it the source of a new conflict which had a decisive importance. We openly accused the Kerensky government – our accusation subsequently found a written confirmation in an official document – of having planned the removal of a third of the Petrograd garrison not out of military considerations but for the purpose of counter-revolutionary combinations. This conflict bound us still more closely to the garrison and put before the latter a well-defined task, to support the Soviet Congress fixed for November 7. And since the government insisted – even if in a feeble enough manner – that the garrison be sent off, we created in the Petrograd Soviet, already in our hands, a Revolutionary War Committee, on the pretext of verifying the military reasons for the governmental plan.
Thus we had a purely military organ, standing at the head of the Petrograd garrison, which was in reality a legal organ of armed insurrection. At the same time we designated (communist) commissars in all the military units, in the military stores, etc. The clandestine military organization accomplished specific technical tasks and furnished the Revolutionary War Committee with fully trustworthy militants for important military tasks. The essential work concerning the preparation, the realization and the armed insurrection took place openly, and so methodically and naturally that the bourgeoisie, led by Kerensky, did not clearly understand what was taking place under their very eyes. (In Paris, the proletariat understood only on the following day that it had been really victorious – a victory which it had not, moreover, deliberately sought – that it was master of the situation. In Petrograd, it was the contrary. Our party, basing itself on the workers and the garrison, had already seized the power, the bourgeoisie passed a fairly tranquil night and learned only on the following morning that the helm of the country was in the hands of its gravedigger.)
As to strategy, there were many differences of opinion in our party.
A part of the Central Committee declared itself, as is known, against the taking of power, believing that the moment had not yet arrived, that Petrograd was detached from the rest of the country, the proletariat from the peasantry, etc.
Other comrades believed that we were not attributing sufficient importance to the elements of military complot. One of the members of the Central Committee demanded in October the surrounding of the Alexandrine Theater where the Democratic Conference was in session, and the proclamation of the dictatorship of the Central Committee of the party. He said: in concentrating our agitation as well as our preparatory military work for the moment of the Second Congress, we are showing our plan to the adversary, we are giving him the possibility of preparing himself and even of dealing us a preventive blow. But there is no doubt that the attempt at a military complot and the surrounding of the Alexandrine Theater would have been a fact too alien to the development of the events, that it would have been an event disconcerting to the masses. Even in the Petrograd Soviet, where our faction dominated, such an enterprise, anticipating the logical development of the struggle, would have provoked great disorder at that moment, above all among the garrison where there were hesitant and not very trustful regiments, primarily the cavalry regiments. It would have been much easier for Kerensky to crush a complot unexpected by the masses than to attack the garrison consolidating itself more and more on its positions: the defense of its inviolability in the name of the future Congress of the Soviets. Therefore the majority of the Central Committee rejected the plan to surround the Democratic Conference and it was right. The conjuncture was very well judged: the armed insurrection, almost without bloodshed, triumphed exactly on the date, fixed in advance and openly, for the convening of the Second Soviet Congress.
This strategy cannot, however, become a general rule, it requires specific conditions. Nobody believed any longer in the war with the Germans, and the less revolutionary soldiers did not want to quit Petrograd for the front. And even if the garrison as a whole was on the side of the workers for this single reason, it became stronger in its point of view to the extent that Kerensky’s machinations were revealed. But this mood of the Petrograd garrison had a still deeper cause in the situation of the peasant class and in the development of the imperialist war. Had there been a split in the garrison and had Kerensky obtained the possibility of support from a few regiments, our plan would have failed. The elements of purely military complot (conspiracy and great speed of action) would have prevailed. It would have been necessary, of course, to choose another moment for the insurrection.
The Lommune also had the complete possibility of winning even the peasant regiments, for the latter had lost all confidence and all respect for the power and the command. Yet it undertook nothing towards this end. The fault here is not in the relationships of the peasant and the working classes, but in the revolutionary strategy.
What will be the situation in this regard in the European countries in the present epoch? It is not easy to foretell anything on this score. Yet, with the events developing slowly and the bourgeois governments exerting all their efforts to utilize past experiences, it may be foreseen that the proletariat, in order to attract the sympathies of the soldiers, will have to overcome a great and well organized resistance at a given moment. A skillful and well-timed attack on the part of the revolution will then be necessary. The duty of the party is to prepare itself for it. That is just why it must maintain and develop its character of a centralized organization, which openly guides the revolutionary movement of the masses and is at the same time a clandestine apparatus of the armed insurrection.
* * *
The question of the electibility of the command was one of the reasons of the conflict between the National Guard and Thiers. Paris refused to accept the command designated by Thiers. Varlin subsequently formulated the demand that the command of the National Guard, from top to bottom, ought to be elected by the National Guardsmen themselves. That is where the Central Committee of the National Guard found its support.
This question must he envisaged from two sides: from the political and the military sides, which are interlinked but which should be distinguished. The political task consisted in purging the National Guard of the counter-revolutionary command. Complete electibility was the only means for it, the majority of the National Guard being composed of workers and revolutionary petty bourgeois. And in addition, the motto “electibility of the command”, being extended also to the infantry, Thiers would have been deprived at a single stroke of his essential weapon, the counter-revolutionary officers. In order to realize this plan, a party organization, having its men in all the military units, was required. In a word, electihility in this ease had as its immediate task not to give good commanders to the batallions, but to liberate them from commanders devoted to the bourgeoisie. Electibility served as a wedge for splitting the army into two parts, along class lines. Thus did matters occur with its in the period of Kerensky, above all on the eve of October.
But the liberation of the army from the old commanding apparatus inevitably involves the weakening of organizational cohesion and the diminution of combative power. As a rule, the elected command is pretty weak from the technico-military standpoint and with regard to the maintenance of order and of discipline. Thus, at the moment when the army frees itself from the old counterrevolutionary command which oppressed it, the question arises of giving it a revolutionary command capable of fulfilling its mission. And this question can by no means be resolved by simple elections. Before wide masses of soldiers acquire the experience of well choosing and selecting commanders, the revolution will be beaten by the enemy which is guided in the choice of its command by the experience of centuries. The methods of shapeless democracy (simple electibility) must be supplemented and to a certain extent replaced by measures of selection from above. The revolution must create an organ composed of experienced, reliable organizers, in which one can have absolute confidence, give it full powers to choose, designate and educate the command. If particularism and democratic autonomism are extremely dangerous to the proletarian revolution in general, they are ten times more dangerous ¥to the army. We saw that in the tragic example of the Commune.
The Central Committee of the National Guard drew its authority from democratic electibility. At the moment when the Central Committee needed to develop to the maximum its initiative in the offensive, deprived of the leadership of a proletarian party, it lost its head, hastened to transmit its powers to the representatives of the Commune which required a broader democratic basis. And it was a great mistake in that period to play with elections. But once the elections had been held and the Commune brought together, ft was necessary to concentrate everything in the Commune at a single blow and to have it create an organ possessing real power to reorganize the National Guard. This was not the case. By the side of the elected Commune there remained the Central Committee; the elected character of the latter gave it a political authority thanks to which it was able to compete with the Commune. But at the same time that deprived it of the energy and the firmness necessary in the purely military questions which, after the organization of the Commune, justified its existence. Electibility, democratic methods, are but one of the instruments in the hands of the proletariat and its party. Electibility can in no wise be a fetish, a remedy for all evils. The methods of electibility must be combined with those of appointments. The power of the Commune came from the elected National Guard. But once created, the Commune should have reorganized with a strong hand the National Guard, from top to bottom, given it reliable leaders and established a régime of very strict discipline. The Commune did not do this, being itself deprived of a powerful revolutionary directing center. It too was crushed.
We can thus thumb the whole history of the Commune, page by page, and we will find in it one single lesson: a strong party leadership is needed. More than any other proletariat has the French made sacrifices for the revolution. But also more than any other has it been duped. Many times has the bourgeoisie dazzled it with all the colors of republicanism, of radicalism, of socialism, so as always to fasten upon it the fetters of capitalism. By means of its agents, its lawyers and its journalists, the bourgeoisie has put forward a whole mass of democratic, parliamentary, autonomist formulae which are nothing but impediments on the feet of the proletariat, hampering its forward movement.
The temperament of the French proletariat is a revolutionary lava. But this lava is now covered with the ashes of skepticismresult of numerous deceptions and disenchantments. Also, the revolutionary proletarians of France must be severer towards their party and unmask more pitilessly any non-conformity between word and action. The French workers have need of an organization, strong as steel, with leaders controlled by the masses at every new stage of the revolutionary movement.
How much time will history afford us to prepare ourselves? We do not know. For fifty years the French bourgeoisie has retained the power in its hands after having elected the Third Republic on the bones of the Communards. Those fighters of ’71 were not lacking in heroism. What they lacked was clarity in method and a centralized leading organization. That is why they were vanquished. Half a century elapsed before the proletariat of France could pose the question of avenging the death of the Communards. But this time, the action will be firmer, more concentrated. The heirs of Thiers will have to pay the historic debt in full.
Leon TROTSKY
Markin comment:
Blame it on Leon Trotsky, Blame it on Lenin. Blame it on the Russian October Revolution of 1917. Or, maybe, just blame it on my reaction to the residue from the bourgeois holiday celebrations. Today I am, in any case, in a mood for “high Trotskyism.” That is always a good way to readjust the political compass, and read some very literate political writing as well. With all due respect to black author James Baldwin and his great work, Another Country, that I have just finished reading Jimmy you have to share the stage today. Okay?
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Leon Trotsky-Lessons of the Paris Commune(February 1921)
Written: 4 February 1921.
First Published: Zlatoost, February 4, 1921
Source: New International, Vol.2 No.2, March 1935, pp.43-47.
Translated: By New International.
Transcription/HTML Markup: David Walters.
Copyleft: Leon Trotsky Internet Archive (www.marxists.org) 2002. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License
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EACH TIME that we study the history of the Commune we see it from a new aspect, thanks to the experience acquired by the later revolutionary struggles and above all by the latest revolutions, not only the Russian but the German and Hungarian revolutions. The Franco-German war was a bloody explosion, harbinger of an immense world slaughter, the Commune of Paris a lightning harbinger of a world proletarian revolution.
The Commune shows us the heroism of the working masses, their capacity to unite into a single bloc, their talent to sacrifice themselves in the name of the future, but at the same time it shows us the incapacity of the masses to choose their path, their indecision in the leadership of the movement, their fatal penchant to come to a halt after the first successes, thus permitting the enemy to regain its breath, to reestablish its position.
The Commune came too late. It had all the possibilities of taking the power on September 4 and that would have permitted the proletariat of Paris to place itself at a single stroke at the head of the workers of the country in their struggle against all the forces of the past, against Bismarck as well as against Thiers. But the power fell into the hands of the democratic praters, the deputies of Paris. The Parisian proletariat had neither a party, nor leaders to whom it would have been closely bound by previous struggles. The petty bourgeois patriots who thought themselves socialists and sought the support of the workers did not really have any confidence in themselves. They shook the proletariat’s faith in itself, they were continually in quest of celebrated lawyers, of journalists, of deputies, whose baggage consisted only of a dozen vaguely revolutionary phrases, in order to entrust them with the leadership of the movement.
The reason why Jules Favre, Picard, Gamier-Pages and Co. took power in Paris on September 4 is the same as that which permitted Paul-Boncour, A. Varenne, Renaudel and numerous others to be for a time the masters of the party of the proletariat. The Renaudels and the Boncours and even the Longuets and the Pressemanes are much closer, by virtue of their sympathies, their intellectual habits and their conduct, to the Jules Favres and the Jules Ferrys than to the revolutionary proletariat. Their socialist phraseology is nothing but an historic mask which permits them to impose themselves upon the masses. And it is just because Favre, Simon, Picard and the others used and abused a democratico-liberal phraseology that their sons and their grandsons are obliged to resort to a socialist phraseology. But the sons and the grandsons have remained worthy of their fathers and continue their work. And when it will be necessary to decide not the question of the composition of a ministerial clique but the much more important question of knowing what class in France must take power, Renaudel, Varenne, Longuet and their similars will be in the camp of Millerand – collaborator of Galliffet, the butcher of the Commune ... When the revolutionary babblers of the salons and of parliament find themselves face to face, in real life, with the revolution, they never recognize it.
The workers’ party – the real one 𔆇 is not a machine for parliamentary manoeuvres, it is the accumulated and organized experience of the proletariat. It is only with the aid of the party, which rests upon the whole history of its past, which foresees theoretically the paths of development, all its stages, and which extracts from it the necessary formula of action, that the proletariat frees itself from the need of always recommencing its history: its hesitations, its lack of decision, its mistakes.
The proletariat of Paris did not have such a party. The bourgeois socialists with whom the Commune swarmed, raised their eyes to heaven, waited for a miracle or else a prophetic word, hesitated, and during that time the masses groped about and lost their heads because of the indecision of some and the fantasy of others. The result was that the revolution broke out in their very midst, too late, and Paris was encircled. Six months elapsed before the proletariat had reestablished in its memory the lessons of past revolutions, of battles of yore, of the reiterated betrayals of democracy – and it seized power.
These six months proved to be an irreparable loss. If the centralized party of revolutionary action had been found at the head of the proletariat of France in September 1870, the whole history of France and with it the whole history of humanity would have taken another direction.
If the power was found in the hands of the proletariat of Paris on March 18, it was not because it had been deliberately seized, but because its enemies had quitted Paris.
These latter were losing ground continuously, the workers despised and detested them, the petty bourgeoisie no longer had confidence in them and the big bourgeoisie feared that they were no longer capable of defending it. The soldiers were hostile to the officers. The government fled Paris in order to concentrate its forces elsewhere. And it was then that the proletariat became master of the situation.
But it understood this fact only on the morrow. The revolution fell upon it unexpectedly.
This first success was a new source of passivity. The enemy had fled to Versailles. Wasn’t that a victory? At that moment the governmental band could have been crushed almost without the spilling of blood. In Paris, all the ministers, with Thiers at their head, could have been taken prisoner. Nobody would have raised a hand to defend them. It was not done. There was no organization of a centralized party, having a rounded view of things and special organs for realizing its decisions.
The debris of the infantry did not want to fall back to Versailles. The thread which tied the officers and the soldiers was pretty tenuous. And had there been a directing party center at Paris, it would have incorporated into the retreating armies – since there was the possibility of retreating – a few hundred or even a few dozen devoted workers, and given them the following instructions: enhance the discontent of the soldiers against the officers, profit by the first favorable psychological moment to free the soldiers from their officers and bring them back to Paris to unite with the people. This could easily have been realized, according to the admissions of Thiers’ supporters themselves. Nobody even thought of it. Nor was there anybody to think of it. In the midst of great events, moreover, such decisions can be adopted only by a revolutionary party which looks forward to a revolution, prepares for it, does not lose its head, by a party which is accustomed to having a rounded view and is not afraid to act.
And a party of action is just what the French proletariat did not have.
The Central Committee of the National Guard is in effect a Council of Deputies of the armed workers and the petty bourgeoisie. Such a Council, elected directly by the masses who have taken the revolutionary road, represents an excellent apparatus of action. But at the same time, and just because of its immediate and elementary connection with the masses who are in the state in which the revolutionary has found them, it reflects not only all the strong sides but also the weak sides of the masses, and it reflects at first the weak sides still more than it does the strong: it manifests the spirit of indecision, of waiting, the tendency to be inactive after the first successes.
The Central Committee of the National Guard needed to be led. It was indispensable to have an organization incarnating the political experience of the proletariat and always present-not only in the Central Committee, but in the legions, in the batallion, in the deepest sectors of the French proletariat. By means of the Councils of Deputies – in the given case they were organs of the National Guard – the party could have been in continual contact with the masses, known their state of mind; its leading center could each day put forward a slogan which, through the medium of the party’s militants, would have penetrated into the masses, uniting their thought and their will.
Hardly had the government fallen back to Versailles than the National Guard hastened to unload its responsibility, at the very moment when this responsibility was enormous. The Central Committee imagined “legal” elections to the Commune. It entered into negotiations with the mayors of Paris in order to cover itself, from the Right, with “legality”.
Had a violent attack been prepared against Versailles at the same time, the negotiations with the mayors would have been a ruse fully justified from the military standpoint and in conformity with the goal. But in reality, these negotiations were being conducted only in order to avert the struggle by some miracle or other. The petty bourgeois radicals and the socialistic idealists, respecting “legality” and the men who embodied a portion of the “legal” state – the deputies, the mayors, etc. – hoped at the bottom of their souls that Thiers would halt respectfully before revolutionary Paris the minute the latter covered itself with the “legal” Commune.
Passivity and indecision were supported in this case by the sacred principle of federation and autonomy. Paris, you see, is only one commune among many other communes. Paris wants to impose nothing upon anyone; it does not struggle for the dictatorship, unless it be for the ’dictatorship of example”.
In sum, it was nothing but an attempt to replace the proletarian revolution, which was developing, by a petty bourgeois reform: communal autonomy. The real revolutionary task consisted of assuring the proletariat the power all ove the country. Paris had to serve as its base, its support, its stronghold. And to attain this goal, it was necessary to vanquish Versailles without the loss of time and to send agitators, organizers, and armed forces throughout France. It was necessary to enter into contact with sympathizers, to strengthen the hesitators and to shatter the opposition of the adversary. Instead of this policy of offensive and aggression which was the only thing that could save the situation, the leaders of Paris attempted to seclude themselves in their communal autonomy: they will not attack the others if the others do not attack them; each town has its sacred right of self-government. This idealistic chatter – of the same gender as mundane anarchism – covered up in reality a cowardice in face of revolutionary action which should have been conducted incessantly up to the very end, for otherwise it should not have been begun.
The hostility to capitalist organization – a heritage of petty bourgeois localism and autonomism – is without a doubt the weak side of a certain section of the French proletariat. Autonomy for the districts, for the wards, for the batallions, for the towns, is the supreme guarantee of real activity and individual independence for certain revolutionists. But that is a great mistake which cost the French proletariat dearly.
Under the form of the “struggle against despotic centralism” and against “stifling” discipline, a fight takes place for the self-preservation of various groups and sub-groupings of the working class, for their petty interests, with their petty ward leaders and their local oracles. The entire working class, while preserving its cultural originality and its political nuances, can act methodically and firmly, without remaining in the tow of events, and directing each time its mortal blows against the weak sectors of its enemies, on the condition that at its head, above the wards, the districts, the groups, there is an apparatus which is centralized and bound together by an iron discipline. The tendency towards particularism, whatever the form it may assume, is a heritage of the dead past. The sooner French communist-socialist communism and syndicalist communism emancipates itself from it, the better it will be for the proletarian revolution.
* * *
The party does not create the revolution at will, it does not choose the moment for seizing power as it likes, but it intervenes actively in the events, penetrates at every moment the state of mind of the revolutionary masses and evaluates the power of resistance of the enemy, and thus determines the most favoraHe moment for decisive action. This is the most difficult side of its task. The party has no decision that is valid for every case. Needed are a correct theory, an intimate contact with the masses, the comprehension of the situation, a revolutionary perception, a great resoluteness. The more profoundly a revolutionary party penetrates into all the domains of the proletarian struggle, the more unified it is by the unity of goal and discipline, the speedier and better will it arrive at resolving its task.
The difficulty consists in having this organization of a centralized party, internally welded by an iron discipline, linked intimately with the movement of the masses, with its ebbs and flows. The conquest of power cannot be achieved save on the condition of a powerful revolutionary pressure of the toiling masses. But in this act the element of preparation is entirely inevitable. The better the party will understand the conjuncture and the moment, the better the bases of resistance will be prepared, the better the force and the roles will be distributed, the surer will be the success and the less victims will it cost. The correlation of a carefully prepared action and a mass movement is the politico-strategical task of the taking of power.
The comparison of March 18, 1871 with November 7, 1917 is very instructive from this point of view. In Paris, there is an absolute lack of initiative for action on the part of the leading revolutionary circles. The proletariat, armed by the bourgeois government, is in reality master of the town, has all the material means of power – cannon and rifles – at its disposal, but it is not aware of it. The bourgeoisie makes an attempt to retake the weapon of the giant: it wants to steal the cannon of the proletariat. The attempt fails. The government flees in panic from Paris to Versailles. The field is clear. But it is only on the morrow that the proletariat understands that it is the master of Paris. The “leaders” are in the wake of events, they record them when the latter are already accomplished, and they do everything in their power to blunt the revolutionary edge.
In Petrograd, the events developed differently. The party moved firmly, resolutely, to the seizure of power, having its men everywhere, consolidating each position, extending every fissure between the workers and the garrison on the one side and the government on the other.
The armed demonstration of the July days is a vast reconnoitering conducted by the party to sound the degree of close contact between the masses and the power of resistance of the enemy. The reconnoitering is transformed into a struggle of outposts. We are thrown back, but at the same time the action establishes a connection between the party and the depths of the masses. The months of August, September and October see a powerful revolutionary flux. The party profits by it and augments considerably its points of support in the working class and the garrison. Later, the harmony between the conspirative preparations and the mass action takes place almost automatically. The Second Congress of the Soviets is fixed for November ’. All our preceding agitation was to lead to the seizure of power by the Congress. Thus, the overturn was adapted in advance to November 7. This fact was well known and understood by the enemy. Kerensky and his councillors could not fail to make efforts to consolidate themselves, to however small an extent, in Petrograd for the decisive moment. Also, they stood in need of shipping out of the capital the most revolutionary sections of the garrison. We on our part profited by this attempt by Kerensky in order to make it the source of a new conflict which had a decisive importance. We openly accused the Kerensky government – our accusation subsequently found a written confirmation in an official document – of having planned the removal of a third of the Petrograd garrison not out of military considerations but for the purpose of counter-revolutionary combinations. This conflict bound us still more closely to the garrison and put before the latter a well-defined task, to support the Soviet Congress fixed for November 7. And since the government insisted – even if in a feeble enough manner – that the garrison be sent off, we created in the Petrograd Soviet, already in our hands, a Revolutionary War Committee, on the pretext of verifying the military reasons for the governmental plan.
Thus we had a purely military organ, standing at the head of the Petrograd garrison, which was in reality a legal organ of armed insurrection. At the same time we designated (communist) commissars in all the military units, in the military stores, etc. The clandestine military organization accomplished specific technical tasks and furnished the Revolutionary War Committee with fully trustworthy militants for important military tasks. The essential work concerning the preparation, the realization and the armed insurrection took place openly, and so methodically and naturally that the bourgeoisie, led by Kerensky, did not clearly understand what was taking place under their very eyes. (In Paris, the proletariat understood only on the following day that it had been really victorious – a victory which it had not, moreover, deliberately sought – that it was master of the situation. In Petrograd, it was the contrary. Our party, basing itself on the workers and the garrison, had already seized the power, the bourgeoisie passed a fairly tranquil night and learned only on the following morning that the helm of the country was in the hands of its gravedigger.)
As to strategy, there were many differences of opinion in our party.
A part of the Central Committee declared itself, as is known, against the taking of power, believing that the moment had not yet arrived, that Petrograd was detached from the rest of the country, the proletariat from the peasantry, etc.
Other comrades believed that we were not attributing sufficient importance to the elements of military complot. One of the members of the Central Committee demanded in October the surrounding of the Alexandrine Theater where the Democratic Conference was in session, and the proclamation of the dictatorship of the Central Committee of the party. He said: in concentrating our agitation as well as our preparatory military work for the moment of the Second Congress, we are showing our plan to the adversary, we are giving him the possibility of preparing himself and even of dealing us a preventive blow. But there is no doubt that the attempt at a military complot and the surrounding of the Alexandrine Theater would have been a fact too alien to the development of the events, that it would have been an event disconcerting to the masses. Even in the Petrograd Soviet, where our faction dominated, such an enterprise, anticipating the logical development of the struggle, would have provoked great disorder at that moment, above all among the garrison where there were hesitant and not very trustful regiments, primarily the cavalry regiments. It would have been much easier for Kerensky to crush a complot unexpected by the masses than to attack the garrison consolidating itself more and more on its positions: the defense of its inviolability in the name of the future Congress of the Soviets. Therefore the majority of the Central Committee rejected the plan to surround the Democratic Conference and it was right. The conjuncture was very well judged: the armed insurrection, almost without bloodshed, triumphed exactly on the date, fixed in advance and openly, for the convening of the Second Soviet Congress.
This strategy cannot, however, become a general rule, it requires specific conditions. Nobody believed any longer in the war with the Germans, and the less revolutionary soldiers did not want to quit Petrograd for the front. And even if the garrison as a whole was on the side of the workers for this single reason, it became stronger in its point of view to the extent that Kerensky’s machinations were revealed. But this mood of the Petrograd garrison had a still deeper cause in the situation of the peasant class and in the development of the imperialist war. Had there been a split in the garrison and had Kerensky obtained the possibility of support from a few regiments, our plan would have failed. The elements of purely military complot (conspiracy and great speed of action) would have prevailed. It would have been necessary, of course, to choose another moment for the insurrection.
The Lommune also had the complete possibility of winning even the peasant regiments, for the latter had lost all confidence and all respect for the power and the command. Yet it undertook nothing towards this end. The fault here is not in the relationships of the peasant and the working classes, but in the revolutionary strategy.
What will be the situation in this regard in the European countries in the present epoch? It is not easy to foretell anything on this score. Yet, with the events developing slowly and the bourgeois governments exerting all their efforts to utilize past experiences, it may be foreseen that the proletariat, in order to attract the sympathies of the soldiers, will have to overcome a great and well organized resistance at a given moment. A skillful and well-timed attack on the part of the revolution will then be necessary. The duty of the party is to prepare itself for it. That is just why it must maintain and develop its character of a centralized organization, which openly guides the revolutionary movement of the masses and is at the same time a clandestine apparatus of the armed insurrection.
* * *
The question of the electibility of the command was one of the reasons of the conflict between the National Guard and Thiers. Paris refused to accept the command designated by Thiers. Varlin subsequently formulated the demand that the command of the National Guard, from top to bottom, ought to be elected by the National Guardsmen themselves. That is where the Central Committee of the National Guard found its support.
This question must he envisaged from two sides: from the political and the military sides, which are interlinked but which should be distinguished. The political task consisted in purging the National Guard of the counter-revolutionary command. Complete electibility was the only means for it, the majority of the National Guard being composed of workers and revolutionary petty bourgeois. And in addition, the motto “electibility of the command”, being extended also to the infantry, Thiers would have been deprived at a single stroke of his essential weapon, the counter-revolutionary officers. In order to realize this plan, a party organization, having its men in all the military units, was required. In a word, electihility in this ease had as its immediate task not to give good commanders to the batallions, but to liberate them from commanders devoted to the bourgeoisie. Electibility served as a wedge for splitting the army into two parts, along class lines. Thus did matters occur with its in the period of Kerensky, above all on the eve of October.
But the liberation of the army from the old commanding apparatus inevitably involves the weakening of organizational cohesion and the diminution of combative power. As a rule, the elected command is pretty weak from the technico-military standpoint and with regard to the maintenance of order and of discipline. Thus, at the moment when the army frees itself from the old counterrevolutionary command which oppressed it, the question arises of giving it a revolutionary command capable of fulfilling its mission. And this question can by no means be resolved by simple elections. Before wide masses of soldiers acquire the experience of well choosing and selecting commanders, the revolution will be beaten by the enemy which is guided in the choice of its command by the experience of centuries. The methods of shapeless democracy (simple electibility) must be supplemented and to a certain extent replaced by measures of selection from above. The revolution must create an organ composed of experienced, reliable organizers, in which one can have absolute confidence, give it full powers to choose, designate and educate the command. If particularism and democratic autonomism are extremely dangerous to the proletarian revolution in general, they are ten times more dangerous ¥to the army. We saw that in the tragic example of the Commune.
The Central Committee of the National Guard drew its authority from democratic electibility. At the moment when the Central Committee needed to develop to the maximum its initiative in the offensive, deprived of the leadership of a proletarian party, it lost its head, hastened to transmit its powers to the representatives of the Commune which required a broader democratic basis. And it was a great mistake in that period to play with elections. But once the elections had been held and the Commune brought together, ft was necessary to concentrate everything in the Commune at a single blow and to have it create an organ possessing real power to reorganize the National Guard. This was not the case. By the side of the elected Commune there remained the Central Committee; the elected character of the latter gave it a political authority thanks to which it was able to compete with the Commune. But at the same time that deprived it of the energy and the firmness necessary in the purely military questions which, after the organization of the Commune, justified its existence. Electibility, democratic methods, are but one of the instruments in the hands of the proletariat and its party. Electibility can in no wise be a fetish, a remedy for all evils. The methods of electibility must be combined with those of appointments. The power of the Commune came from the elected National Guard. But once created, the Commune should have reorganized with a strong hand the National Guard, from top to bottom, given it reliable leaders and established a régime of very strict discipline. The Commune did not do this, being itself deprived of a powerful revolutionary directing center. It too was crushed.
We can thus thumb the whole history of the Commune, page by page, and we will find in it one single lesson: a strong party leadership is needed. More than any other proletariat has the French made sacrifices for the revolution. But also more than any other has it been duped. Many times has the bourgeoisie dazzled it with all the colors of republicanism, of radicalism, of socialism, so as always to fasten upon it the fetters of capitalism. By means of its agents, its lawyers and its journalists, the bourgeoisie has put forward a whole mass of democratic, parliamentary, autonomist formulae which are nothing but impediments on the feet of the proletariat, hampering its forward movement.
The temperament of the French proletariat is a revolutionary lava. But this lava is now covered with the ashes of skepticismresult of numerous deceptions and disenchantments. Also, the revolutionary proletarians of France must be severer towards their party and unmask more pitilessly any non-conformity between word and action. The French workers have need of an organization, strong as steel, with leaders controlled by the masses at every new stage of the revolutionary movement.
How much time will history afford us to prepare ourselves? We do not know. For fifty years the French bourgeoisie has retained the power in its hands after having elected the Third Republic on the bones of the Communards. Those fighters of ’71 were not lacking in heroism. What they lacked was clarity in method and a centralized leading organization. That is why they were vanquished. Half a century elapsed before the proletariat of France could pose the question of avenging the death of the Communards. But this time, the action will be firmer, more concentrated. The heirs of Thiers will have to pay the historic debt in full.
Leon TROTSKY
From The Pen Of Vladimir Lenin-New Events and Old Questions (1902)
Click on the headline to link to the Lenin Internet Archives.
Markin comment:
This article goes along with the propaganda points in the fight for our communist future mentioned in this day's other posts.
**************
V. I. Lenin
New Events and Old Questions
Published:Iskra, No. 29, December 1, 1902. Published according to the Iskra text.
Source:Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1964, Moscow, Volume 6, pages 278-283.
Translated: ??? ???
Transcription\Markup: R. Cymbala and D. Walters
Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive (2003). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.
Other Formats: Text• README
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To
all appearances the brief “lull” which has marked our revolutionary movement for the past six to nine months, as distinguished from its previous rapid and stormy development, is drawing to a close. However brief this “lull” may have been, however obvious it has been to every careful and informed observer that the absence (for so short a time) of open manifestations of mass indignation among the workers by no means signifies a stop in the growth of this indignation both in depth and in extent, numerous voices have nevertheless been raised among our intelligentsia—who are revolutionary in spirit but frequently have neither firm ties with the working class nor a sound foundation of definite socialist convictions—expressing despondency and a lack of faith in the mass working-class movement, on the one hand, and, on the other, calling for a repetition of the old tactics of individual, political assassinations as a necessary and obligatory method of political struggle at the present time. During the few months that have elapsed since the demonstrations of the previous season, a “party” of “Socialist-Revolutionaries” has had time to arise in our country, and has begun to declaim loudly that demonstrations have a discouraging effect, that “the people, alas, are still a long way off,” and that it is easy, of course, to speak and write of arming the masses, but that now it is necessary to get down to “individual resistance” without trying to wriggle out of the urgent necessity of individual terror by obsolete references to one and the same old task (so dull and “uninteresting” to the intellectual who is free from “dogmatic” faith in the working-class movement!) of carrying on agitation among the proletarian masses and organising a mass onslaught.
But
what at first sight seemed a most ordinary and “common place” strike suddenly broke out in Rostov-on-Don and led to events which manifestly demonstrated the utter stupidity and harmfulness of the Socialist-Revolutionaries’ attempt to restore the Narodnaya Volya movement with all its theoretical and tactical mistakes. The strike, which Involved many thousands of workers and began with demands of a purely economic nature, rapidly developed into a political event, despite the extreme dearth of organised revolutionary forces participating in it. Crowds of people which, according to some participants, numbered between twenty and thirty thousand, held astonishingly serious and well-organised political meetings where Social-Democratic leaf lets were read and eagerly discussed, political speeches were delivered, the most casual and untrained representatives of the working people were told the elementary truths of socialism and the political struggle, and practical and “object” lessons were given on how to deal with the soldiers and how to appeal to them. The authorities and the police lost their heads (perhaps partly because the soldiers could not be relied on?) and for several days proved unable to interfere with the organising of open-air political mass gatherings, the like of which had never before been seen in Russia. When armed force was finally brought in, the crowd offered desperate resistance, and the murder of a comrade served as the occasion for a political demonstration at his funeral the following day.... The Socialist-Revolutionaries, however, most likely see the thing in a different light; from their standpoint it would perhaps have been “more expedient” if the six comrades murdered in Rostov had given their lives in an attempt on the lives of individual police tyrants.
We, however, are of the opinion that it is only such mass movements, in which mounting political consciousness and revolutionary activity are openly manifested to all by the working class, that deserve to be called genuinely revolutionary acts and are capable of really encouraging everyone who is fighting for the Russian revolution. What we see here is not the much-vaunted “individual resistance,” whose only connection with the masses consists of verbal declarations, publication of sentences passed, etc. What we see is genuine resistance on the part of the crowd; and the lack of organisation, unpreparedness and spontaneity of this resistance remind us how unwise it is to exaggerate our revolutionary forces and how criminal it is to neglect the task of steadily improving the organisation and preparedness of this crowd, which is waging an actual struggle before our very eyes. The only task worthy of a revolutionary is to learn to elaborate, utilise and make our own the material which Russian life furnishes in only too great sufficiency, rather than fire a few shots in order to create pretexts for stimulating the masses, and material for agitation and for political reflection. The Socialist-Revolutionaries cannot find enough praise of the great “agitational” effect of political assassinations, about which there is so much whispering both in the drawing-rooms of the liberals and in the taverns of the common people. It is nothing to them (since they are free of all narrow dogmas on anything even approximating a definite socialist theory!) to stage a political sensation as a substitute (or, at least, as a supplement) for the political education of the proletariat. We, however, consider that the only events that can have a real and serious “agitational” (stimulating), and not only stimulating but also (and this is far more important) educational, effect are events in which the masses themselves are the actors, events which are born of the sentiments of the masses and not staged “for a special purpose” by one organisation or another. We believe that even a hundred regicides can never produce so stimulating and educational an effect as this participation of tens of thousands of working people in meetings where their vital interests and the links between politics and these interests are discussed, and as this participation in a struggle, which really rouses ever new and “untapped” sections of the proletariat to greater political consciousness, to a broader revolutionary struggle. We are told of the disorganisation of the government (which has been obliged to replace Messrs. the Sipyagins by Messrs. the Plehves and to “select” the vilest scoundrels to serve it), but we are convinced that to sacrifice one revolutionary, even in exchange for ten scoundrels, means only disorganising our own ranks, which are thin as it is, so thin that they cannot keep up with all that is “demanded” of them by the workers. We believe that the government is truly disorganised when, and only when, the broad masses, genuinely organised by the struggle itself, plunge the government into a state of confusion; when the legitimacy of the demands of the progressive elements of the working class becomes apparent to the crowd in the street and begins to be clear even to part of the troops called out for the purpose of “pacification”; when military action against tens of thousands of the people is preceded by wavering among the authorities, who have no way of really knowing what this military action will lead to; when the crowd see and feel that those who have fallen on the field of civil war are their comrades, a part of themselves, and are filled with new wrath and a desire to grapple more decisively with the enemy. Here it is no longer some scoundrel, but the existing system as a whole that comes out as the enemy of the people, against whom are arrayed the local and the St. Petersburg authorities, the police, the Cossacks, and the troops, to say nothing of the gendarmes and the courts which, as ever, supplement and complete the picture in every popular uprising.
Yes,
uprising. However far the beginning of what seemed to be a strike movement in a remote provincial town was from a “genuine” uprising, its continuation and its finale nevertheless evoke involuntary thoughts of an uprising. The prosaic motive for the strike and the minor nature of the demands presented by the workers throw into particularly bold relief, not only the mighty power of the solidarity of the proletariat, which at once saw that the railway workers’ struggle was the common cause of the proletarians, but also its receptiveness of political ideas and political propaganda, and its readiness to defend with might and main, in open battle with the troops, those rights to a free life and free development which all thinking workers have already come to consider common and elementary. And the Don Committee was a thousand times right when it declared in its proclamation, “To All Citizens,” which we print in full elsewhere in this issue, that the Rostov strike was one of the steps towards a general upsurge among the Russian workers with the demand for political liberty.[1] In events of this sort we really see with our own eyes how an armed uprising of the whole people against the autocratic government is maturing, not only as an idea in the minds and programmes of the revolutionaries, but also as the inevitable, natural and practical next step of the movement itself, as the result of the growing indignation, growing experience, and growing boldness of the masses, who are being given such valuable lessons, such a splendid education by the realities of Russian life.
An
inevitable and natural step, I have said—and I hasten to make the reservation: if only we do not permit ourselves to depart by a single step from the impending and pressing task of assisting these masses, who have already begun to rise, to act more boldly and concertedly; of giving them not a couple but dozens of open-air speakers and leaders; of creating a real, militant organisation capable of guiding the masses, and not a so-called “combat organisation” that guides elusive individuals (if it does guide them at all). That this is a difficult task goes without saying, but we can quite justifiably adapt Marx’s words which have so frequently and so ineptly been quoted of late, and say: “Every step of real movement is more important than a dozen” individual attempts and cases of resistance, more important than a hundred organisations and “parties” belonging only to the intelligentsia.[2]
Besides the Rostov fighting, the penal sentences passed on demonstrators are outstanding among recent political events. The government has decided to use every possible method of intimidation, from floggings to penal servitude. And what a splendid reply it received from the workers, whose speeches in court we give below[3]; how instructive this reply is to all those who were especially loud in their outcries about the discouraging effect of demonstrations, not because they wanted to encourage further work in this direction, but because they wanted to preach much-vaunted individual resistance! These speeches, coming as they do from the very thick of the proletariat, are excellent commentaries on events like those in Rostov, and, at the same time, they are remarkable statements (“public manifestations,” I would say if this were not so specifically police terminology), imbuing with boundless vigour the long and difficult work for the “real” steps of the movement. What is remarkable in these speeches is the simple, authentically precise description of how the most everyday facts, occurring in scores and hundreds 01 millions, of the “misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation” of the workers in present-day society lead to the awakening of their consciousness, to their growing “revolt,” to a revolutionary expression of this revolt (I have put in quotation marks the words I had to use in describing the speeches of the Nizhni-Novgorod workers, for they are the famous words which Marx uses in the last pages of the first volume of Capital, and which evoked such clamorous and unsuccessful attempts on the part of the “critics,” opportunists, revisionists, etc., to refute the Social-Democrats and accuse them of not telling the truth).
For
the very reason that these speeches came from ordinary workers by no means advanced in their development, workers who did not even speak as members of any particular organisation, but simply as men in the crowd, for the very reason that they stressed not their personal convictions but facts from the life of every proletarian or semi-proletarian in Russia, for that very reason their conclusions are so inspiring: “that is why we consciously went to the demonstration against the autocratic government.” The ordinariness and “mass character” of the facts from which they drew their conclusions are a guarantee that thousands, tens and hundreds of thousands, can and inevitably will come to the same conclusion, provided we prove capable of continuing, extending, and strengthening systematic, theoretically consistent, and all-round revolutionary (Social Democratic) influence over them. We are ready to be condemned to penal servitude for fighting against political and economic slavery now that we have felt the breath of liberty, said four workers from Nizhni-Novgorod. And thousands of workers in Rostov, who for several days won for themselves the right to hold political gatherings, fighting off a series of attacks on the part of the soldiers against the unarmed crowd, repeated after them as It were: we are ready to face death.
By this sign shall ye conquer, is all that remains for us to say to those who have eyes to see and ears to hear.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Notes
[1] The proclamation of the Don Committee of the R.S.D.L.P., “To All Citizens,” dated November 6, 1902, was reprinted by Iskra, No. 29, December 1, 1902.
[2] Lenin is referring to the following passage from Karl Marx’s letter to Wilhelm Bracke, of May 5, 1875: “Every step of real movement is more important than a dozen programmes” (see Marx and Engels, Selected Works, Vol. II, Moscow, 1958, p. 16).
[3] Lenin is referring to the speeches made in court on October 28-31 (November 10-13), 1902, by Nizhni-Novgorod workers on trial for taking part in demonstrations on May I and 5 (14 and 18), 1902. The speeches were originally published as a separate leaflet by the Nizhni-Novgorod Committee of the R.S.D.L.P.; they were later reprinted by Iskra (No. 29, December 1, 1902) under the heading “Nizhni-Novgorod Workers in Court” and issued as a separate pamphlet.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Markin comment:
This article goes along with the propaganda points in the fight for our communist future mentioned in this day's other posts.
**************
V. I. Lenin
New Events and Old Questions
Published:Iskra, No. 29, December 1, 1902. Published according to the Iskra text.
Source:Lenin Collected Works, Progress Publishers, 1964, Moscow, Volume 6, pages 278-283.
Translated: ??? ???
Transcription\Markup: R. Cymbala and D. Walters
Public Domain: Lenin Internet Archive (2003). You may freely copy, distribute, display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet Archive” as your source.
Other Formats: Text• README
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To
all appearances the brief “lull” which has marked our revolutionary movement for the past six to nine months, as distinguished from its previous rapid and stormy development, is drawing to a close. However brief this “lull” may have been, however obvious it has been to every careful and informed observer that the absence (for so short a time) of open manifestations of mass indignation among the workers by no means signifies a stop in the growth of this indignation both in depth and in extent, numerous voices have nevertheless been raised among our intelligentsia—who are revolutionary in spirit but frequently have neither firm ties with the working class nor a sound foundation of definite socialist convictions—expressing despondency and a lack of faith in the mass working-class movement, on the one hand, and, on the other, calling for a repetition of the old tactics of individual, political assassinations as a necessary and obligatory method of political struggle at the present time. During the few months that have elapsed since the demonstrations of the previous season, a “party” of “Socialist-Revolutionaries” has had time to arise in our country, and has begun to declaim loudly that demonstrations have a discouraging effect, that “the people, alas, are still a long way off,” and that it is easy, of course, to speak and write of arming the masses, but that now it is necessary to get down to “individual resistance” without trying to wriggle out of the urgent necessity of individual terror by obsolete references to one and the same old task (so dull and “uninteresting” to the intellectual who is free from “dogmatic” faith in the working-class movement!) of carrying on agitation among the proletarian masses and organising a mass onslaught.
But
what at first sight seemed a most ordinary and “common place” strike suddenly broke out in Rostov-on-Don and led to events which manifestly demonstrated the utter stupidity and harmfulness of the Socialist-Revolutionaries’ attempt to restore the Narodnaya Volya movement with all its theoretical and tactical mistakes. The strike, which Involved many thousands of workers and began with demands of a purely economic nature, rapidly developed into a political event, despite the extreme dearth of organised revolutionary forces participating in it. Crowds of people which, according to some participants, numbered between twenty and thirty thousand, held astonishingly serious and well-organised political meetings where Social-Democratic leaf lets were read and eagerly discussed, political speeches were delivered, the most casual and untrained representatives of the working people were told the elementary truths of socialism and the political struggle, and practical and “object” lessons were given on how to deal with the soldiers and how to appeal to them. The authorities and the police lost their heads (perhaps partly because the soldiers could not be relied on?) and for several days proved unable to interfere with the organising of open-air political mass gatherings, the like of which had never before been seen in Russia. When armed force was finally brought in, the crowd offered desperate resistance, and the murder of a comrade served as the occasion for a political demonstration at his funeral the following day.... The Socialist-Revolutionaries, however, most likely see the thing in a different light; from their standpoint it would perhaps have been “more expedient” if the six comrades murdered in Rostov had given their lives in an attempt on the lives of individual police tyrants.
We, however, are of the opinion that it is only such mass movements, in which mounting political consciousness and revolutionary activity are openly manifested to all by the working class, that deserve to be called genuinely revolutionary acts and are capable of really encouraging everyone who is fighting for the Russian revolution. What we see here is not the much-vaunted “individual resistance,” whose only connection with the masses consists of verbal declarations, publication of sentences passed, etc. What we see is genuine resistance on the part of the crowd; and the lack of organisation, unpreparedness and spontaneity of this resistance remind us how unwise it is to exaggerate our revolutionary forces and how criminal it is to neglect the task of steadily improving the organisation and preparedness of this crowd, which is waging an actual struggle before our very eyes. The only task worthy of a revolutionary is to learn to elaborate, utilise and make our own the material which Russian life furnishes in only too great sufficiency, rather than fire a few shots in order to create pretexts for stimulating the masses, and material for agitation and for political reflection. The Socialist-Revolutionaries cannot find enough praise of the great “agitational” effect of political assassinations, about which there is so much whispering both in the drawing-rooms of the liberals and in the taverns of the common people. It is nothing to them (since they are free of all narrow dogmas on anything even approximating a definite socialist theory!) to stage a political sensation as a substitute (or, at least, as a supplement) for the political education of the proletariat. We, however, consider that the only events that can have a real and serious “agitational” (stimulating), and not only stimulating but also (and this is far more important) educational, effect are events in which the masses themselves are the actors, events which are born of the sentiments of the masses and not staged “for a special purpose” by one organisation or another. We believe that even a hundred regicides can never produce so stimulating and educational an effect as this participation of tens of thousands of working people in meetings where their vital interests and the links between politics and these interests are discussed, and as this participation in a struggle, which really rouses ever new and “untapped” sections of the proletariat to greater political consciousness, to a broader revolutionary struggle. We are told of the disorganisation of the government (which has been obliged to replace Messrs. the Sipyagins by Messrs. the Plehves and to “select” the vilest scoundrels to serve it), but we are convinced that to sacrifice one revolutionary, even in exchange for ten scoundrels, means only disorganising our own ranks, which are thin as it is, so thin that they cannot keep up with all that is “demanded” of them by the workers. We believe that the government is truly disorganised when, and only when, the broad masses, genuinely organised by the struggle itself, plunge the government into a state of confusion; when the legitimacy of the demands of the progressive elements of the working class becomes apparent to the crowd in the street and begins to be clear even to part of the troops called out for the purpose of “pacification”; when military action against tens of thousands of the people is preceded by wavering among the authorities, who have no way of really knowing what this military action will lead to; when the crowd see and feel that those who have fallen on the field of civil war are their comrades, a part of themselves, and are filled with new wrath and a desire to grapple more decisively with the enemy. Here it is no longer some scoundrel, but the existing system as a whole that comes out as the enemy of the people, against whom are arrayed the local and the St. Petersburg authorities, the police, the Cossacks, and the troops, to say nothing of the gendarmes and the courts which, as ever, supplement and complete the picture in every popular uprising.
Yes,
uprising. However far the beginning of what seemed to be a strike movement in a remote provincial town was from a “genuine” uprising, its continuation and its finale nevertheless evoke involuntary thoughts of an uprising. The prosaic motive for the strike and the minor nature of the demands presented by the workers throw into particularly bold relief, not only the mighty power of the solidarity of the proletariat, which at once saw that the railway workers’ struggle was the common cause of the proletarians, but also its receptiveness of political ideas and political propaganda, and its readiness to defend with might and main, in open battle with the troops, those rights to a free life and free development which all thinking workers have already come to consider common and elementary. And the Don Committee was a thousand times right when it declared in its proclamation, “To All Citizens,” which we print in full elsewhere in this issue, that the Rostov strike was one of the steps towards a general upsurge among the Russian workers with the demand for political liberty.[1] In events of this sort we really see with our own eyes how an armed uprising of the whole people against the autocratic government is maturing, not only as an idea in the minds and programmes of the revolutionaries, but also as the inevitable, natural and practical next step of the movement itself, as the result of the growing indignation, growing experience, and growing boldness of the masses, who are being given such valuable lessons, such a splendid education by the realities of Russian life.
An
inevitable and natural step, I have said—and I hasten to make the reservation: if only we do not permit ourselves to depart by a single step from the impending and pressing task of assisting these masses, who have already begun to rise, to act more boldly and concertedly; of giving them not a couple but dozens of open-air speakers and leaders; of creating a real, militant organisation capable of guiding the masses, and not a so-called “combat organisation” that guides elusive individuals (if it does guide them at all). That this is a difficult task goes without saying, but we can quite justifiably adapt Marx’s words which have so frequently and so ineptly been quoted of late, and say: “Every step of real movement is more important than a dozen” individual attempts and cases of resistance, more important than a hundred organisations and “parties” belonging only to the intelligentsia.[2]
Besides the Rostov fighting, the penal sentences passed on demonstrators are outstanding among recent political events. The government has decided to use every possible method of intimidation, from floggings to penal servitude. And what a splendid reply it received from the workers, whose speeches in court we give below[3]; how instructive this reply is to all those who were especially loud in their outcries about the discouraging effect of demonstrations, not because they wanted to encourage further work in this direction, but because they wanted to preach much-vaunted individual resistance! These speeches, coming as they do from the very thick of the proletariat, are excellent commentaries on events like those in Rostov, and, at the same time, they are remarkable statements (“public manifestations,” I would say if this were not so specifically police terminology), imbuing with boundless vigour the long and difficult work for the “real” steps of the movement. What is remarkable in these speeches is the simple, authentically precise description of how the most everyday facts, occurring in scores and hundreds 01 millions, of the “misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation” of the workers in present-day society lead to the awakening of their consciousness, to their growing “revolt,” to a revolutionary expression of this revolt (I have put in quotation marks the words I had to use in describing the speeches of the Nizhni-Novgorod workers, for they are the famous words which Marx uses in the last pages of the first volume of Capital, and which evoked such clamorous and unsuccessful attempts on the part of the “critics,” opportunists, revisionists, etc., to refute the Social-Democrats and accuse them of not telling the truth).
For
the very reason that these speeches came from ordinary workers by no means advanced in their development, workers who did not even speak as members of any particular organisation, but simply as men in the crowd, for the very reason that they stressed not their personal convictions but facts from the life of every proletarian or semi-proletarian in Russia, for that very reason their conclusions are so inspiring: “that is why we consciously went to the demonstration against the autocratic government.” The ordinariness and “mass character” of the facts from which they drew their conclusions are a guarantee that thousands, tens and hundreds of thousands, can and inevitably will come to the same conclusion, provided we prove capable of continuing, extending, and strengthening systematic, theoretically consistent, and all-round revolutionary (Social Democratic) influence over them. We are ready to be condemned to penal servitude for fighting against political and economic slavery now that we have felt the breath of liberty, said four workers from Nizhni-Novgorod. And thousands of workers in Rostov, who for several days won for themselves the right to hold political gatherings, fighting off a series of attacks on the part of the soldiers against the unarmed crowd, repeated after them as It were: we are ready to face death.
By this sign shall ye conquer, is all that remains for us to say to those who have eyes to see and ears to hear.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Notes
[1] The proclamation of the Don Committee of the R.S.D.L.P., “To All Citizens,” dated November 6, 1902, was reprinted by Iskra, No. 29, December 1, 1902.
[2] Lenin is referring to the following passage from Karl Marx’s letter to Wilhelm Bracke, of May 5, 1875: “Every step of real movement is more important than a dozen programmes” (see Marx and Engels, Selected Works, Vol. II, Moscow, 1958, p. 16).
[3] Lenin is referring to the speeches made in court on October 28-31 (November 10-13), 1902, by Nizhni-Novgorod workers on trial for taking part in demonstrations on May I and 5 (14 and 18), 1902. The speeches were originally published as a separate leaflet by the Nizhni-Novgorod Committee of the R.S.D.L.P.; they were later reprinted by Iskra (No. 29, December 1, 1902) under the heading “Nizhni-Novgorod Workers in Court” and issued as a separate pamphlet.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From The Pens Of Karl Marx And Friedrich Engels-The Program of the Blanquist Fugitives from the Paris Commune(1874)
Click on the headline to link to the Marx-Engels Internet Archives for an online copy of the article mentioned in the headline.
Markin comment:
This article goes along with the propaganda points in the fight for our communist future mentioned in this day's other posts.
****************
Works of Frederick Engels 1874
The Program of the Blanquist Fugitives from the Paris Commune
First published: in Der Volksstaat, No.73, 26 June 1874;
Translated: Ernest Untermann for International Socialist Review, Volume IX, No. 2, August 1908;
Transcribed: for marxists@marx.org, May 2002.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
AFTER THE FAILURE of every revolution or counter revolution, a feverish activity develops among the fugitives, who have escaped to foreign countries. The parties of different shades form groups, accuse each other of having driven the cart into the mud, charge one another with treason and every conceivable sin.
At the same time they remain in close touch with the home country, organise, conspire, print leaflets and newspapers, swear that the trouble will start afresh within twenty-four hours, that victory is certain, and distribute the various government offices beforehand on the strength of this anticipation.
Of course, disappointment follows disappointment, and since this is not attributed to the inevitable historical conditions, which they refuse to understand, but rather to accidental mistakes of individuals, the mutual accusations multiply, and the whole business winds up with a grand row. This is the history of all groups of fugitives from the royalist emigrants of 1792 until the present day. Those fugitives, who have any sense and understanding, retire from the fruitless squabble as soon as they can do so with propriety and devote themselves to better things.
The French emigrants after the Commune did not escape this disagreeable fate.
Owing to the European campaign of slander, which attacked everybody without distinction, and being compelled particularly in London, where they had a common center in the General Council of the International Working Men's Association, for the time being, to suppress their internal troubles before the world, they had not been able, during the last two years, to conceal the signs of advancing disintegration. The open fight broke out everywhere. In Switzerland a part of them joined the Bakounists, mainly under the influence of Malon, who was himself one of the founders of the secret alliance. Then the socalled Blanquists in London withdrew from the International and formed a group of their own under the title of "The Revolutionary Commune". Outside of them numerous other groups arose later, which continue in a state of ceaseless transformation and modulation and have not put out anything essential in the way of manifestos. But the Blanquists are just making their program known to the world by a proclamation to the "Communeux".
These Blanquists are not called by this name, because they are a group founded by Blanqui. Only a few of the thirty-three signers of this program have ever spoken personally to Blanqui. They rather wish to express the fact that they intend to be active in his spirit and according to his traditions.
Blanqui is essentially a political revolutionist. He is a socialist only through sentiment, through his sympathy with the sufferings of the people, but he has neither a socialist theory nor any definite practical suggestions for social remedies. In his political activity he was mainly a "man of action", believing that a small and well organized minority, who would attempt a political stroke of force at the opportune moment, could carry the mass of the people with them by a few successes at the start and thus make a victorious revolution. Of course, he could organize such a group under Louis Phillippe's reign only as a secret society. Then the thing, which generally happens in the case of conspiracies, naturally took place. His men, tired of beings held off all the time by the empty promises that the outbreak should soon begin, finally lost all patience, became rebellious, and only the alternative remained of either letting the conspiracy fall to pieces or of breaking loose without any apparent provocation. They made a revolution on May 12th, 1839, and were promptly squelched. By the way, this Blanquist conspiracy was the only one, in which the police could never get a foothold. The blow fell out of a clear sky.
From Blanqui's assumption, that any revolution may be made by the outbreak of a small revolutionary minority, follows of itself the necessity of a dictatorship after the success of the venture. This is, of course, a dictatorship, not of the entire revolutionary class, the proletariat, but of the small minority that has made the revolution, and who are themselves previously organized under the dictatorship of one or several individuals.
We see, then, that Blanqui is a revolutionary of the preceding generation.
These conceptions of the march of revolutionary events have long become obsolete, at least for the German worker's party, and will not find much sympathy in France, except among the less mature or the more impatient laborers. We shall also note, that they are placed under certain restrictions in the present program. Nevertheless our London Blanquists agree with the principle, that revolutions do not make themselves, but are made; that they are made by a relatively small minority and after a previously conceived plan; and finally, that they may be made at ally time, and that "soon".
It is a matter of course that such principles will deliver a man hopelessly into the hands of all the self-deceptions of a fugitive's life and drive him from one folly into another. He wants above all to play the role of Blanqui, "the man of action". But little can be accomplished by mere good will. Not every one has the revolutionary instinct and quick decision of Blanqui. Hamlet may talk ever so much of energy, he will still remain Hamlet. And if our thirty-three men of action cannot find anything at all to do upon what they call the field of action, then these thirty-three Brutuses come into a more comical than tragic conflict with themselves. The tragic of their situation is by no means increased by the dark men which they assume, as though they were so many slayers of tyrants with stilettos in their bosoms, which they are not.
What can they do? They prepare the next "outbreak" by drawing up lists of proscription for the future, in order that the line of men, who took part in the Commune, may be purified. For this reason they are called "The Pure" by the other fugitives. Whether they themselves assume this title, I cannot say. It would fit some of them rather badly. Their meetings are secret, and their resolutions are supposed to he kept secret, although this does not prevent the whole French quarter from ringing with them next morning. And as always happens to men of action that have nothing to do, they became involved first in a personal, then in a literary quarrel with a foe worthy of themselves, one of the most doubtful of the minor Parisian journalists, a certain Vermersch, who published during the Commune the "Pére Duchene", a miserable caricature of the paper published by Hébert in 1793. This noble creature replies to their moral indignation, by calling all of them thieves or accomplices of thieves in some leaflet, and smothering them with a flood of billingsgate that smells of the dungheap. Every word is an excrement. And is with such opponents that our thirty-three Brutuses wrestle before the public!
If anything is evident, it is the fact that the Parisian proletariat, after the exhausting war, after the famine in Paris, and especially after the fearful massacres of May, 1871, will require a good deal of time to rest, in order to gather new strength, and that every premature attempt at a revolution would bring on merely a new and still more crushing defeat. Our Blanquists are of a different opinion.
The route of the royalist majority in Versailles forebodes to them "the fall of Versailles, the revenge of the Commune. For we are approaching one of those great historical moments, one of those great crises, in which the people, while seemingly sunk in misery and doomed to death, resume their revolutionary advance with new strength."
In other words, another outbreak will "soon" come. This hope for an "immediate revenge of the Commune" is not a mere illusion of the fugitives, but a necessary article of faith with men, who have their mind set upon being "men of action" at a time when there is absolutely nothing to be done in the sense which they represent, that of an immediate outbreak.
Nevermind. Since a start will be made soon, they hold that "the time has come, when every fugitive, who still has any life in him, should declare himself."
And so the thirty-three declare that they are: 1) atheists; 2) communists,; 3) revolutionaries.
Our Blanquists have this in common with the Bakounists, that they wish to represent the most advanced, most extreme line. For this reason they often choose the same means as the Bakounists, although they differ from them in their aims. The point with them is, then, to be more radical in the matter of atheism than all others. Fortunately it requires no great heroism to be an atheist nowadays. Atheism is practically accepted by the European working men's parties, although in certain countries it may at times be of the same caliber as that of a certain Bakounist, who declared that it was contrary to all socialism to believe in God, but that it was different with the virgin Mary, in whom every good socialist ought to believe. Of the vast majority of the German socialist working men it may even be said that mere atheism has been outgrown by them. This purely negative term does not apply to them any more, for they maintain no longer merely a theoretical, but rather a practical opposition to the belief in God. They are simply done with God, they live and think in the real world, for they are materialists. This will probably be the case in France also. But if it were not, then nothing would be easier than to see to it that the splendid French materialist literature of the preceding century is widely distributed among the laborers, that literature; in which the French mind has so far accomplished its best in form and content, and which, with due allowance for the condition of the science of their day, still stands infinitely high in content, while its form has never been equalled since.
But this cannot suit our Blanquists. In order to show that they are the most radical, God is abolished by them by decree, as in 1793: "May the Commune for ever free humanity from this ghost of past misery (God), from this cause of its present Misery." (The non-existing God a cause!) There is no room in the Commune for priests; every religious demonstration, every religious organisation, must be forbidden."
And this demand for a transformation of people into atheists by order of the star chamber is signed by two members of the Commune, who had opportunity enough to learn in the first place, that a multitude of things may be ordered on paper without being carried out, and in the second place, that persecutions are the best means of promoting disliked convictions. So much is certain, that the only service, which may still be rendered to God today, is that of declaring atheism an article of faith to he enforced and of outdoing even Bismarck's anti-Catholic laws by forbidding religion altogether.
The second point of the program is Communism.
Here we are more at home, for the ship in which we sail here is called "The Manifesto of the Communist Party, published in February 1848." Already in the fall of 1872 the five Blanquists who withdrew from the International had adopted a socialist program, which was in all essential points that of the present German Communism. They had justified their withdrawal by the fact that the International refused to play at revolution making after the manner of these five. Now this council of thirty-three adopts this program with its entire materialist conception of history, although its translation into Blanquist French leaves a good deal to desire, in parts where the "Manifesto" has not been almost literally adopted, as it has, for instance, in the following passage: "As the last expression of all forms of servitude, the bourgeoisie has lifted the mystic veil from the exploitation of labor, by which it was formerly obscured: Governments, religions, family, laws, institutions of the past and the present, finally revealed themselves in this society, reduced to the simple antagonism between capitalist and wage workers, as instruments of oppression, by the help of which the bourgeoisie maintains its rule and holds the proletariat down."
Compare with this "The Communist Manifesto", Section 1: "In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation. The bourgeoise has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honored and looked up to with reverend awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage laborers. The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation. Etc."
But as soon as we descend from theory to practice, the peculiarity of the thirty-three manifests itself: "We are Communists, because we want to reach our goal without stopping at any intermediate stations, at compromises, which merely defer the victory and prolong the slavery."
The German Communists are communists, because they clearly see the final goal and work towards it through all intermediate stations and compromises, which are created, not by them, but by historical development. And their goal is the abolition of classes, the inauguration of a society, in which no private property in land and means of production shall exist any longer. The thirty-three, on the other hand, are communists, because they imagine that they can skip intermediate stations and compromises at their sweet will, and if only the trouble begins, as it will soon according to them, and they get hold of affairs, then Communism will be introduced the day after tomorrow. If this is not immediately possible, then they are not communists.
What a simple hearted childishness, which quotes impatience as a convincing argument in support of a theory!
Finally the thirty-three are "revolutionaries."
In this line, so far as big words are concerned, we know that the Bakounists have reached the limit; but the Blanquists feel that it is their duty to excel them in this. And how do they do this? It is well known that the entire socialist proletariat, from Lisbon to New York and Budapest to Belgrade has assumed the responsibility for the actions of the Paris Commune without hesitation. But that is not enough for the Blanquists. "As for us, we claim our part of the responsibility for the executions of the enemies of the people" (by the Commune), whose names are then enumerated; "we claim our part of the responsibility for those fires, which destroyed the instruments of royal or bourgeois oppression or protected our fighters."
In every revolution some follies are inevitably committed, just as they are at any other time, and when quiet is finally restored, and calm reasoning comes, people necessarily conclude: We have done many things which had better been left undone, and we have neglected many things which we should have done, and for this reason things went wrong.
But what a lack of judgment it requires to declare the Commune sacred, to proclaim it infallible, to claim that every burnt house, every executed hostage, received their just dues to the dot over the i! Is not that equivalent to saying that during that week in May the people shot just as many opponents as was necessary, and no more, and burnt just those buildings which had to be burnt, and no more? Does not that repeat the saying about the first French Revolution: Every beheaded victim received justice, first those beheaded by order of Robespierre and then Robespierre himself! To such follies are people driven, when they give free rein to the desire to appear formidable, although they are at bottom quite goodnatured.
Enough. In spite of all follies of the fugitives, and in spite of all comical efforts to appear terrible, this program shows some progress. It is the first manifesto, in which French workingmen endorse the present German communism. And these are moreover working men of that caliber, who consider the French as the chosen people of the revolution and Paris as the revolutionary Jerusalem. To have carried them to this point is the undeniable merit of Vaillant, who is one of the signers of the manifesto, and who is well known to be thoroughly familiar with the German language and the German socialist literature. The German socialist working men, on the other hand, who proved in 1870 that they were completely free from jingoism, may regard it as a good sign that French working men adopt correct theoretical principles, even when they come from Germany.
Markin comment:
This article goes along with the propaganda points in the fight for our communist future mentioned in this day's other posts.
****************
Works of Frederick Engels 1874
The Program of the Blanquist Fugitives from the Paris Commune
First published: in Der Volksstaat, No.73, 26 June 1874;
Translated: Ernest Untermann for International Socialist Review, Volume IX, No. 2, August 1908;
Transcribed: for marxists@marx.org, May 2002.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
AFTER THE FAILURE of every revolution or counter revolution, a feverish activity develops among the fugitives, who have escaped to foreign countries. The parties of different shades form groups, accuse each other of having driven the cart into the mud, charge one another with treason and every conceivable sin.
At the same time they remain in close touch with the home country, organise, conspire, print leaflets and newspapers, swear that the trouble will start afresh within twenty-four hours, that victory is certain, and distribute the various government offices beforehand on the strength of this anticipation.
Of course, disappointment follows disappointment, and since this is not attributed to the inevitable historical conditions, which they refuse to understand, but rather to accidental mistakes of individuals, the mutual accusations multiply, and the whole business winds up with a grand row. This is the history of all groups of fugitives from the royalist emigrants of 1792 until the present day. Those fugitives, who have any sense and understanding, retire from the fruitless squabble as soon as they can do so with propriety and devote themselves to better things.
The French emigrants after the Commune did not escape this disagreeable fate.
Owing to the European campaign of slander, which attacked everybody without distinction, and being compelled particularly in London, where they had a common center in the General Council of the International Working Men's Association, for the time being, to suppress their internal troubles before the world, they had not been able, during the last two years, to conceal the signs of advancing disintegration. The open fight broke out everywhere. In Switzerland a part of them joined the Bakounists, mainly under the influence of Malon, who was himself one of the founders of the secret alliance. Then the socalled Blanquists in London withdrew from the International and formed a group of their own under the title of "The Revolutionary Commune". Outside of them numerous other groups arose later, which continue in a state of ceaseless transformation and modulation and have not put out anything essential in the way of manifestos. But the Blanquists are just making their program known to the world by a proclamation to the "Communeux".
These Blanquists are not called by this name, because they are a group founded by Blanqui. Only a few of the thirty-three signers of this program have ever spoken personally to Blanqui. They rather wish to express the fact that they intend to be active in his spirit and according to his traditions.
Blanqui is essentially a political revolutionist. He is a socialist only through sentiment, through his sympathy with the sufferings of the people, but he has neither a socialist theory nor any definite practical suggestions for social remedies. In his political activity he was mainly a "man of action", believing that a small and well organized minority, who would attempt a political stroke of force at the opportune moment, could carry the mass of the people with them by a few successes at the start and thus make a victorious revolution. Of course, he could organize such a group under Louis Phillippe's reign only as a secret society. Then the thing, which generally happens in the case of conspiracies, naturally took place. His men, tired of beings held off all the time by the empty promises that the outbreak should soon begin, finally lost all patience, became rebellious, and only the alternative remained of either letting the conspiracy fall to pieces or of breaking loose without any apparent provocation. They made a revolution on May 12th, 1839, and were promptly squelched. By the way, this Blanquist conspiracy was the only one, in which the police could never get a foothold. The blow fell out of a clear sky.
From Blanqui's assumption, that any revolution may be made by the outbreak of a small revolutionary minority, follows of itself the necessity of a dictatorship after the success of the venture. This is, of course, a dictatorship, not of the entire revolutionary class, the proletariat, but of the small minority that has made the revolution, and who are themselves previously organized under the dictatorship of one or several individuals.
We see, then, that Blanqui is a revolutionary of the preceding generation.
These conceptions of the march of revolutionary events have long become obsolete, at least for the German worker's party, and will not find much sympathy in France, except among the less mature or the more impatient laborers. We shall also note, that they are placed under certain restrictions in the present program. Nevertheless our London Blanquists agree with the principle, that revolutions do not make themselves, but are made; that they are made by a relatively small minority and after a previously conceived plan; and finally, that they may be made at ally time, and that "soon".
It is a matter of course that such principles will deliver a man hopelessly into the hands of all the self-deceptions of a fugitive's life and drive him from one folly into another. He wants above all to play the role of Blanqui, "the man of action". But little can be accomplished by mere good will. Not every one has the revolutionary instinct and quick decision of Blanqui. Hamlet may talk ever so much of energy, he will still remain Hamlet. And if our thirty-three men of action cannot find anything at all to do upon what they call the field of action, then these thirty-three Brutuses come into a more comical than tragic conflict with themselves. The tragic of their situation is by no means increased by the dark men which they assume, as though they were so many slayers of tyrants with stilettos in their bosoms, which they are not.
What can they do? They prepare the next "outbreak" by drawing up lists of proscription for the future, in order that the line of men, who took part in the Commune, may be purified. For this reason they are called "The Pure" by the other fugitives. Whether they themselves assume this title, I cannot say. It would fit some of them rather badly. Their meetings are secret, and their resolutions are supposed to he kept secret, although this does not prevent the whole French quarter from ringing with them next morning. And as always happens to men of action that have nothing to do, they became involved first in a personal, then in a literary quarrel with a foe worthy of themselves, one of the most doubtful of the minor Parisian journalists, a certain Vermersch, who published during the Commune the "Pére Duchene", a miserable caricature of the paper published by Hébert in 1793. This noble creature replies to their moral indignation, by calling all of them thieves or accomplices of thieves in some leaflet, and smothering them with a flood of billingsgate that smells of the dungheap. Every word is an excrement. And is with such opponents that our thirty-three Brutuses wrestle before the public!
If anything is evident, it is the fact that the Parisian proletariat, after the exhausting war, after the famine in Paris, and especially after the fearful massacres of May, 1871, will require a good deal of time to rest, in order to gather new strength, and that every premature attempt at a revolution would bring on merely a new and still more crushing defeat. Our Blanquists are of a different opinion.
The route of the royalist majority in Versailles forebodes to them "the fall of Versailles, the revenge of the Commune. For we are approaching one of those great historical moments, one of those great crises, in which the people, while seemingly sunk in misery and doomed to death, resume their revolutionary advance with new strength."
In other words, another outbreak will "soon" come. This hope for an "immediate revenge of the Commune" is not a mere illusion of the fugitives, but a necessary article of faith with men, who have their mind set upon being "men of action" at a time when there is absolutely nothing to be done in the sense which they represent, that of an immediate outbreak.
Nevermind. Since a start will be made soon, they hold that "the time has come, when every fugitive, who still has any life in him, should declare himself."
And so the thirty-three declare that they are: 1) atheists; 2) communists,; 3) revolutionaries.
Our Blanquists have this in common with the Bakounists, that they wish to represent the most advanced, most extreme line. For this reason they often choose the same means as the Bakounists, although they differ from them in their aims. The point with them is, then, to be more radical in the matter of atheism than all others. Fortunately it requires no great heroism to be an atheist nowadays. Atheism is practically accepted by the European working men's parties, although in certain countries it may at times be of the same caliber as that of a certain Bakounist, who declared that it was contrary to all socialism to believe in God, but that it was different with the virgin Mary, in whom every good socialist ought to believe. Of the vast majority of the German socialist working men it may even be said that mere atheism has been outgrown by them. This purely negative term does not apply to them any more, for they maintain no longer merely a theoretical, but rather a practical opposition to the belief in God. They are simply done with God, they live and think in the real world, for they are materialists. This will probably be the case in France also. But if it were not, then nothing would be easier than to see to it that the splendid French materialist literature of the preceding century is widely distributed among the laborers, that literature; in which the French mind has so far accomplished its best in form and content, and which, with due allowance for the condition of the science of their day, still stands infinitely high in content, while its form has never been equalled since.
But this cannot suit our Blanquists. In order to show that they are the most radical, God is abolished by them by decree, as in 1793: "May the Commune for ever free humanity from this ghost of past misery (God), from this cause of its present Misery." (The non-existing God a cause!) There is no room in the Commune for priests; every religious demonstration, every religious organisation, must be forbidden."
And this demand for a transformation of people into atheists by order of the star chamber is signed by two members of the Commune, who had opportunity enough to learn in the first place, that a multitude of things may be ordered on paper without being carried out, and in the second place, that persecutions are the best means of promoting disliked convictions. So much is certain, that the only service, which may still be rendered to God today, is that of declaring atheism an article of faith to he enforced and of outdoing even Bismarck's anti-Catholic laws by forbidding religion altogether.
The second point of the program is Communism.
Here we are more at home, for the ship in which we sail here is called "The Manifesto of the Communist Party, published in February 1848." Already in the fall of 1872 the five Blanquists who withdrew from the International had adopted a socialist program, which was in all essential points that of the present German Communism. They had justified their withdrawal by the fact that the International refused to play at revolution making after the manner of these five. Now this council of thirty-three adopts this program with its entire materialist conception of history, although its translation into Blanquist French leaves a good deal to desire, in parts where the "Manifesto" has not been almost literally adopted, as it has, for instance, in the following passage: "As the last expression of all forms of servitude, the bourgeoisie has lifted the mystic veil from the exploitation of labor, by which it was formerly obscured: Governments, religions, family, laws, institutions of the past and the present, finally revealed themselves in this society, reduced to the simple antagonism between capitalist and wage workers, as instruments of oppression, by the help of which the bourgeoisie maintains its rule and holds the proletariat down."
Compare with this "The Communist Manifesto", Section 1: "In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation. The bourgeoise has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honored and looked up to with reverend awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage laborers. The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation. Etc."
But as soon as we descend from theory to practice, the peculiarity of the thirty-three manifests itself: "We are Communists, because we want to reach our goal without stopping at any intermediate stations, at compromises, which merely defer the victory and prolong the slavery."
The German Communists are communists, because they clearly see the final goal and work towards it through all intermediate stations and compromises, which are created, not by them, but by historical development. And their goal is the abolition of classes, the inauguration of a society, in which no private property in land and means of production shall exist any longer. The thirty-three, on the other hand, are communists, because they imagine that they can skip intermediate stations and compromises at their sweet will, and if only the trouble begins, as it will soon according to them, and they get hold of affairs, then Communism will be introduced the day after tomorrow. If this is not immediately possible, then they are not communists.
What a simple hearted childishness, which quotes impatience as a convincing argument in support of a theory!
Finally the thirty-three are "revolutionaries."
In this line, so far as big words are concerned, we know that the Bakounists have reached the limit; but the Blanquists feel that it is their duty to excel them in this. And how do they do this? It is well known that the entire socialist proletariat, from Lisbon to New York and Budapest to Belgrade has assumed the responsibility for the actions of the Paris Commune without hesitation. But that is not enough for the Blanquists. "As for us, we claim our part of the responsibility for the executions of the enemies of the people" (by the Commune), whose names are then enumerated; "we claim our part of the responsibility for those fires, which destroyed the instruments of royal or bourgeois oppression or protected our fighters."
In every revolution some follies are inevitably committed, just as they are at any other time, and when quiet is finally restored, and calm reasoning comes, people necessarily conclude: We have done many things which had better been left undone, and we have neglected many things which we should have done, and for this reason things went wrong.
But what a lack of judgment it requires to declare the Commune sacred, to proclaim it infallible, to claim that every burnt house, every executed hostage, received their just dues to the dot over the i! Is not that equivalent to saying that during that week in May the people shot just as many opponents as was necessary, and no more, and burnt just those buildings which had to be burnt, and no more? Does not that repeat the saying about the first French Revolution: Every beheaded victim received justice, first those beheaded by order of Robespierre and then Robespierre himself! To such follies are people driven, when they give free rein to the desire to appear formidable, although they are at bottom quite goodnatured.
Enough. In spite of all follies of the fugitives, and in spite of all comical efforts to appear terrible, this program shows some progress. It is the first manifesto, in which French workingmen endorse the present German communism. And these are moreover working men of that caliber, who consider the French as the chosen people of the revolution and Paris as the revolutionary Jerusalem. To have carried them to this point is the undeniable merit of Vaillant, who is one of the signers of the manifesto, and who is well known to be thoroughly familiar with the German language and the German socialist literature. The German socialist working men, on the other hand, who proved in 1870 that they were completely free from jingoism, may regard it as a good sign that French working men adopt correct theoretical principles, even when they come from Germany.
The Latest From The Private Bradley Manning Support Network-Free Bradley Manning Now!
Click on the headline to link to the Private Bradley Manning Support Network for the latest information in his case.
From the American Left History blog, dated March 17, 2011
Why I Will Be Standing In Solidarity With Private Bradley Manning At Quantico, Virginia On Sunday March 20th At 2:00 PM- A Personal Note From An Ex-Soldier Political Prisoner
Markin comment:
Of course I will be standing at the front gate to the Quantico Marine Base on March 20th because I stand in solidarity with the actions of Private Bradley Manning in bringing to light, just a little light, some of the nefarious doings of this government, Bush-like or Obamian. If he did such acts. I sleep just a shade bit easier these days knowing that Private Manning (or someone) exposed what we all knew, or should have known- the Iraq war and the Afghan war justification rested on a house of card. American imperialism’s house of cards, but cards nevertheless.
Of course I will be standing at the front gate to the Quantico Marine Base on March 20th because I am outraged by the treatment of Private Manning meted to a presumably innocent man by a government who alleges itself to be some “beacon” of the civilized world. The military has gotten more devious although not smarter since I was a soldier in their crosshairs over forty years ago. Allegedly Private Manning might become so distraught over his alleged actions that he requires extraordinary protections. He is assumed, in the Catch-22 logic of the military, to be something of a suicide risk on the basis of bringing some fresh air to the nefarious doings of the international imperialist order. Be serious. I, however, noticed no "spike” in suicide rates among the world’s diplomatic community once they were exposed, a place where such activities might have been expected once it was observed in public that most of these persons could barely tie their own shoes.
Now the two reasons above are more than sufficient reasons for my standing at the front gate to the Quantico Marine Base on March 20th although they, in themselves, are only the appropriate reasons that any progressive thinking person would need to show up and shout to the high heavens for Private Manning’s freedom. I have an addition reason though, a very pressing personal reason. As mentioned above I too was in the military’s crosshairs as a soldier during the height of the Vietnam War. I will not go into the details of that episode, this comment after all is about soldier Manning, other than that I spent my own time in an Army stockade for, let’s put it this way, working on the principle of “what if they gave a war and nobody came.”
Forty years later I am still working off that principle, and gladly. But here is the real point. During that time I had outside support, outside civilian support, that rallied on several occasions outside the military base where I was confined. Believe me that knowledge helped me through the tough days inside. So on March 20th I am just, as I have been able to on too few other occasions over years, paying my dues for that long ago support. You, brother, are a true winter soldier.
Private Manning I hope that you will hear us, or hear about our rally in your defense. Better yet, everybody who reads this piece join us and make sure that he can hear us loud and clear. And let us shout to those high heavens mentioned above-Free Private Bradley Manning Now!
******
February 23, 2012-And, of course, I will be standing in support of Private Manning as long as he is not freed from the clutches of his jailers.
From the American Left History blog, dated March 17, 2011
Why I Will Be Standing In Solidarity With Private Bradley Manning At Quantico, Virginia On Sunday March 20th At 2:00 PM- A Personal Note From An Ex-Soldier Political Prisoner
Markin comment:
Of course I will be standing at the front gate to the Quantico Marine Base on March 20th because I stand in solidarity with the actions of Private Bradley Manning in bringing to light, just a little light, some of the nefarious doings of this government, Bush-like or Obamian. If he did such acts. I sleep just a shade bit easier these days knowing that Private Manning (or someone) exposed what we all knew, or should have known- the Iraq war and the Afghan war justification rested on a house of card. American imperialism’s house of cards, but cards nevertheless.
Of course I will be standing at the front gate to the Quantico Marine Base on March 20th because I am outraged by the treatment of Private Manning meted to a presumably innocent man by a government who alleges itself to be some “beacon” of the civilized world. The military has gotten more devious although not smarter since I was a soldier in their crosshairs over forty years ago. Allegedly Private Manning might become so distraught over his alleged actions that he requires extraordinary protections. He is assumed, in the Catch-22 logic of the military, to be something of a suicide risk on the basis of bringing some fresh air to the nefarious doings of the international imperialist order. Be serious. I, however, noticed no "spike” in suicide rates among the world’s diplomatic community once they were exposed, a place where such activities might have been expected once it was observed in public that most of these persons could barely tie their own shoes.
Now the two reasons above are more than sufficient reasons for my standing at the front gate to the Quantico Marine Base on March 20th although they, in themselves, are only the appropriate reasons that any progressive thinking person would need to show up and shout to the high heavens for Private Manning’s freedom. I have an addition reason though, a very pressing personal reason. As mentioned above I too was in the military’s crosshairs as a soldier during the height of the Vietnam War. I will not go into the details of that episode, this comment after all is about soldier Manning, other than that I spent my own time in an Army stockade for, let’s put it this way, working on the principle of “what if they gave a war and nobody came.”
Forty years later I am still working off that principle, and gladly. But here is the real point. During that time I had outside support, outside civilian support, that rallied on several occasions outside the military base where I was confined. Believe me that knowledge helped me through the tough days inside. So on March 20th I am just, as I have been able to on too few other occasions over years, paying my dues for that long ago support. You, brother, are a true winter soldier.
Private Manning I hope that you will hear us, or hear about our rally in your defense. Better yet, everybody who reads this piece join us and make sure that he can hear us loud and clear. And let us shout to those high heavens mentioned above-Free Private Bradley Manning Now!
******
February 23, 2012-And, of course, I will be standing in support of Private Manning as long as he is not freed from the clutches of his jailers.
The Latest From “The International Marxist Tendency” Website
Click on to the headline to link to the latest from the International Marxist Tendency website.
Markin comment:
More often than not I disagree with the line of the IMT or its analysis(mainly I do not believe their political analysis leads to adequate programmatically-based conclusions, revolutionary conclusions in any case), nevertheless, they provide interesting material, especially from areas, “third world” areas, where it is hard to get any kind of information (for our purposes). Read the material from this site.
Markin comment:
More often than not I disagree with the line of the IMT or its analysis(mainly I do not believe their political analysis leads to adequate programmatically-based conclusions, revolutionary conclusions in any case), nevertheless, they provide interesting material, especially from areas, “third world” areas, where it is hard to get any kind of information (for our purposes). Read the material from this site.
The Latest From The “Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox” Blog
Click on the headline to link to Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox blog for the latest from her site.
Markin comment:
I find Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox rather a mishmash of eclectic politics and basic old time left-liberal/radical thinking. Not enough, not nearly enough, in our troubled times but enough to take the time to read about and get a sense of the pulse (if any) of that segment of the left to which she is appealing. One though should always remember, despite our political differences, her heroic action in going down to hell-hole Texas to confront one President George W. Bush when many others were resigned to accepting the lies of that administration or who “folded” their tents when the expected end to the Iraq War did not materialize. Hats off on that one, Cindy Sheehan.
Markin comment:
I find Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox rather a mishmash of eclectic politics and basic old time left-liberal/radical thinking. Not enough, not nearly enough, in our troubled times but enough to take the time to read about and get a sense of the pulse (if any) of that segment of the left to which she is appealing. One though should always remember, despite our political differences, her heroic action in going down to hell-hole Texas to confront one President George W. Bush when many others were resigned to accepting the lies of that administration or who “folded” their tents when the expected end to the Iraq War did not materialize. Hats off on that one, Cindy Sheehan.
The Latest From “The Rag Blog”-Bombing Iran:Will they or won't they?
The Latest From “The Rag Blog”
http://theragblog.blogspot.com/
Click on the headline to link to The Rag Blog website.
Markin comment:
I find this The Rag Blog very useful to monitor for the latest in what is happening with past tense radical activists and activities. Anybody, with some kind of name, who is still around from the 1960s has found a home here. So the remembrances and recollections are helpful for today’s activists. Strangely the politics are almost non-existent, as least ones that would help today, except to kind of retroactively “bless” those old-time left politics that did nothing (well, almost nothing) but get us on the losing end of the class (and cultural) wars of the last forty plus years. Still this is a must read blog for today’s left militants.
************
Bombing Iran:Will they or won't they?
Iran insists it is not producing or about to produce nuclear weapons... Israel is known to possess at least 200 nuclear weapons and delivery systems.
By Jack A. Smith / The Rag Blog / March 1, 2012
What's the Obama Administration's latest position on the possibility of an attack on Iran? It seems to be in flux but the White House is reported to be urging Israel not to start a war before the November elections.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says there is a "strong possibility" that Israel will attack Iran in either April, May, or June. The purpose would be to destroy Iran's alleged building of a nuclear weapon, an assertion Tehran rejects, pointing to strong support for its position from authoritative American sources.
Commenting on Panetta's report, a February 25 Associated Press dispatch declared: "An Israeli pre-emptive attack on Iran's nuclear sites could draw the U.S. into a new Middle East conflict, a prospect dreaded by a war-weary Pentagon wary of new entanglements... with unpredictable outcomes."
Foreign policy theorist Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter with links to the Obama White House, told CNN Feb. 24 that if Israel attacks Iraq, "it will be disastrous for us in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in the terms of oil, but also in the Middle East more generally."
On February 28, the AP reported that "Israeli officials say they won’t warn the U.S. if they decide to launch a pre-emptive strike against Iranian nuclear facilities."
The U.S. is in daily communication with Israel about the matter. President Barack Obama is scheduled to hold discussions with warhawk Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on March 5.
In the midst of this gathering war talk there are indications Washington does not want Israel to start a war at this juncture for several reasons:•The Obama Administration believes bombing Iran's nuclear facilities will cause far more problems than it solves, and that the more effective policy is composed of sanctions, spying, and subversion, leading to regime change if possible.
•Washington is hesitant to get any deeper into a potential Iran quagmire at a time when Afghanistan is blowing up in its face, and while the U.S. is involved behind the scenes in ousting the Bashar al-Assad regime in Damascus.
•The White House does not want a new war on its hands during the last few months of an election campaign. The Wall Steet Journal online pointed out February 28 that "Iran and its nuclear intentions are rapidly emerging as the ultimate wild card in this year's presidential race."
In any event, President Obama and the entire U.S. national security bureaucracy know very well that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon.
The New York Times published a relatively sensational front page article February 25 about Iran and the bomb that was based largely on authoritative information clearing Iran of bomb-making charges.
These facts have been publicly available for five years, but because the Bush and Obama Administrations sought to minimize the significance of the bombshell reports most Americans knew little of their importance
The Times' headline read: "U.S. Agencies See No Move by Iran to Build a Bomb." The article disclosed:
American intelligence analysts continue to believe that there is no hard evidence that Iran has decided to build a nuclear bomb. Recent assessments by American spy agencies are broadly consistent with a 2007 intelligence finding that concluded that Iran had abandoned its nuclear weapons program years earlier, according to current and former American officials. The officials said that assessment was largely reaffirmed in a 2010 National Intelligence Estimate, and that it remains the consensus view of America’s 16 intelligence agencies.
The article also reported on some unusually honest statements made in the last few weeks by Obama Administration officials:
In Senate testimony on Jan. 31, James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, stated explicitly that American officials believe that Iran is preserving its options for a nuclear weapon, but said there was no evidence that it had made a decision on making a concerted push to build a weapon. David H. Petraeus, the C.I.A. director, concurred with that view at the same hearing. Other senior United States officials, including Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta and Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have made similar statements in recent television appearances.
The fact that the Times decided to publish a front page article based on largely dated information undermining the rationale for attacking Iran evidently means the ruling elite is leaning on the White House to avoid one more war that could backfire during the election campaign.
Published in the same issue of the Times was a new statement from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that Iran is producing additional enriched uranium inside a deep underground site -- a report that the right wing Netanyahu regime distorted to signify that Iran is one step closer to creating a weapon with which to threaten the existence of Israel.
There was no proof the uranium in question was intended for any purpose other than Iran's civilian nuclear program. Iran is working with the UN on an agreement to allow inspectors into all sites associated with the program.
Given the immense U.S. and Israeli spying apparatus inside Iran, as well as America's extensive surveillance abilities -- from spy satellites to drone flights and probable access to every telephone call and Internet message in Iran -- it is significant no evidence has been collected to verify the bomb-making accusations. The 16 American intelligence agencies seem to know what they are talking about.
This does not impress war hawks in the U.S. Congress and among anti-Iranian organizations, such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, who are working to push Washington toward greater confrontations with Tehran. Several right wing senators introduced a bill in mid-February lowering the threshold for a U.S. or Israeli strike against Iran from making a bomb to possessing the ability to do so.
Iran insists it is not producing or about to produce nuclear weapons, and maintains that its nuclear power program is essentially in compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Israel is known to possess at least 200 nuclear weapons and delivery systems while ignoring the treaty.
Tehran has long called for transforming the Middle East into a nuclear-free zone -- a proposition opposed by both Obama and Netanyahu. Ironically, Washington is on exceptionally close terms with the three countries in possession of large nuclear arsenals that have thumbed their noses at the NonProliferation Treaty -- Israel, Pakistan and India -- even to the point of assisting them to maintain and update their weaponry.
In a statement February 28, Iranian Foreign Minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, declared that "We do not see any glory, pride or power in the nuclear weapons; quite the opposite." He then referred to a religious decree issued by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme authority within the Islamic Republic of Iran, that termed "the production possession, use or threat of use of nuclear weapons are illegitimate, futile, harmful, dangerous and prohibited as a great sin."
United States animosity toward Iran -- which has existed since America's puppet monarch in Tehran was overthrown over 30 years ago -- has nothing to do with Tehran's alleged efforts to construct nuclear weapons. It is instead primarily based on Washington's intention to exercise unimpeded domination of the Persian Gulf region, in which perhaps 30% of the world's petroleum originates and is transported through the Gulf.
America has sought hegemony over the Middle East, and particularly the Persian Gulf, for several decades. This goal was a principle reason President George W. Bush decided to invade Iraq in 2003 to solidify U.S. control of the Gulf, believing a quick victory would pave the way toward toppling the government in Iran.
The Iraqi fightback and the subsequent stalemate destroyed Bush's plans. Since Baghdad had long been Tehran's main enemy, the only country to benefit from Bush's neoconservative folly in Iraq was Iran.
Iran is now the principal power within the Persian Gulf region. Tehran has had a sharp rhetorical critique of the U.S., Israel, and Saudi Arabia for decades but is not using its power to threaten or attack any other country. Tehran's military is not large, and is defensive in structure and intention.
But as long as the Islamic Republic refuses to subordinate itself to imperial Washington it remains an obstacle to America's geopolitical ambitions, which are based on retaining global hegemony.
A main reason for the Obama Administration's cruel and ever-tightening economic sanctions is to bring about regime-change in Iran to situate a client administration in Tehran. If this doesn't work, the threat of military action is obviously implicit in President Obama's mantra about "No option is off the table."
For the immediate future, however, the White House appears to prefer sanctions, spying, and subversion to the potential unintended consequences of a U.S. or Israeli bombing attack on Iran.
[Jack A. Smith was editor of the Guardian -- for decades the nation's preeminent leftist newsweekly -- that closed shop in 1992. Smith now edits the Hudson Valley Activist Newsletter, where this article was also posted. Read more articles by Jack A. Smith on The Rag Blog.]
The Rag Blog
http://theragblog.blogspot.com/
Click on the headline to link to The Rag Blog website.
Markin comment:
I find this The Rag Blog very useful to monitor for the latest in what is happening with past tense radical activists and activities. Anybody, with some kind of name, who is still around from the 1960s has found a home here. So the remembrances and recollections are helpful for today’s activists. Strangely the politics are almost non-existent, as least ones that would help today, except to kind of retroactively “bless” those old-time left politics that did nothing (well, almost nothing) but get us on the losing end of the class (and cultural) wars of the last forty plus years. Still this is a must read blog for today’s left militants.
************
Bombing Iran:Will they or won't they?
Iran insists it is not producing or about to produce nuclear weapons... Israel is known to possess at least 200 nuclear weapons and delivery systems.
By Jack A. Smith / The Rag Blog / March 1, 2012
What's the Obama Administration's latest position on the possibility of an attack on Iran? It seems to be in flux but the White House is reported to be urging Israel not to start a war before the November elections.
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says there is a "strong possibility" that Israel will attack Iran in either April, May, or June. The purpose would be to destroy Iran's alleged building of a nuclear weapon, an assertion Tehran rejects, pointing to strong support for its position from authoritative American sources.
Commenting on Panetta's report, a February 25 Associated Press dispatch declared: "An Israeli pre-emptive attack on Iran's nuclear sites could draw the U.S. into a new Middle East conflict, a prospect dreaded by a war-weary Pentagon wary of new entanglements... with unpredictable outcomes."
Foreign policy theorist Zbigniew Brzezinski, a former National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter with links to the Obama White House, told CNN Feb. 24 that if Israel attacks Iraq, "it will be disastrous for us in Afghanistan, in Iraq, in the terms of oil, but also in the Middle East more generally."
On February 28, the AP reported that "Israeli officials say they won’t warn the U.S. if they decide to launch a pre-emptive strike against Iranian nuclear facilities."
The U.S. is in daily communication with Israel about the matter. President Barack Obama is scheduled to hold discussions with warhawk Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on March 5.
In the midst of this gathering war talk there are indications Washington does not want Israel to start a war at this juncture for several reasons:•The Obama Administration believes bombing Iran's nuclear facilities will cause far more problems than it solves, and that the more effective policy is composed of sanctions, spying, and subversion, leading to regime change if possible.
•Washington is hesitant to get any deeper into a potential Iran quagmire at a time when Afghanistan is blowing up in its face, and while the U.S. is involved behind the scenes in ousting the Bashar al-Assad regime in Damascus.
•The White House does not want a new war on its hands during the last few months of an election campaign. The Wall Steet Journal online pointed out February 28 that "Iran and its nuclear intentions are rapidly emerging as the ultimate wild card in this year's presidential race."
In any event, President Obama and the entire U.S. national security bureaucracy know very well that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon.
The New York Times published a relatively sensational front page article February 25 about Iran and the bomb that was based largely on authoritative information clearing Iran of bomb-making charges.
These facts have been publicly available for five years, but because the Bush and Obama Administrations sought to minimize the significance of the bombshell reports most Americans knew little of their importance
The Times' headline read: "U.S. Agencies See No Move by Iran to Build a Bomb." The article disclosed:
American intelligence analysts continue to believe that there is no hard evidence that Iran has decided to build a nuclear bomb. Recent assessments by American spy agencies are broadly consistent with a 2007 intelligence finding that concluded that Iran had abandoned its nuclear weapons program years earlier, according to current and former American officials. The officials said that assessment was largely reaffirmed in a 2010 National Intelligence Estimate, and that it remains the consensus view of America’s 16 intelligence agencies.
The article also reported on some unusually honest statements made in the last few weeks by Obama Administration officials:
In Senate testimony on Jan. 31, James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, stated explicitly that American officials believe that Iran is preserving its options for a nuclear weapon, but said there was no evidence that it had made a decision on making a concerted push to build a weapon. David H. Petraeus, the C.I.A. director, concurred with that view at the same hearing. Other senior United States officials, including Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta and Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have made similar statements in recent television appearances.
The fact that the Times decided to publish a front page article based on largely dated information undermining the rationale for attacking Iran evidently means the ruling elite is leaning on the White House to avoid one more war that could backfire during the election campaign.
Published in the same issue of the Times was a new statement from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that Iran is producing additional enriched uranium inside a deep underground site -- a report that the right wing Netanyahu regime distorted to signify that Iran is one step closer to creating a weapon with which to threaten the existence of Israel.
There was no proof the uranium in question was intended for any purpose other than Iran's civilian nuclear program. Iran is working with the UN on an agreement to allow inspectors into all sites associated with the program.
Given the immense U.S. and Israeli spying apparatus inside Iran, as well as America's extensive surveillance abilities -- from spy satellites to drone flights and probable access to every telephone call and Internet message in Iran -- it is significant no evidence has been collected to verify the bomb-making accusations. The 16 American intelligence agencies seem to know what they are talking about.
This does not impress war hawks in the U.S. Congress and among anti-Iranian organizations, such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, who are working to push Washington toward greater confrontations with Tehran. Several right wing senators introduced a bill in mid-February lowering the threshold for a U.S. or Israeli strike against Iran from making a bomb to possessing the ability to do so.
Iran insists it is not producing or about to produce nuclear weapons, and maintains that its nuclear power program is essentially in compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Israel is known to possess at least 200 nuclear weapons and delivery systems while ignoring the treaty.
Tehran has long called for transforming the Middle East into a nuclear-free zone -- a proposition opposed by both Obama and Netanyahu. Ironically, Washington is on exceptionally close terms with the three countries in possession of large nuclear arsenals that have thumbed their noses at the NonProliferation Treaty -- Israel, Pakistan and India -- even to the point of assisting them to maintain and update their weaponry.
In a statement February 28, Iranian Foreign Minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, declared that "We do not see any glory, pride or power in the nuclear weapons; quite the opposite." He then referred to a religious decree issued by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme authority within the Islamic Republic of Iran, that termed "the production possession, use or threat of use of nuclear weapons are illegitimate, futile, harmful, dangerous and prohibited as a great sin."
United States animosity toward Iran -- which has existed since America's puppet monarch in Tehran was overthrown over 30 years ago -- has nothing to do with Tehran's alleged efforts to construct nuclear weapons. It is instead primarily based on Washington's intention to exercise unimpeded domination of the Persian Gulf region, in which perhaps 30% of the world's petroleum originates and is transported through the Gulf.
America has sought hegemony over the Middle East, and particularly the Persian Gulf, for several decades. This goal was a principle reason President George W. Bush decided to invade Iraq in 2003 to solidify U.S. control of the Gulf, believing a quick victory would pave the way toward toppling the government in Iran.
The Iraqi fightback and the subsequent stalemate destroyed Bush's plans. Since Baghdad had long been Tehran's main enemy, the only country to benefit from Bush's neoconservative folly in Iraq was Iran.
Iran is now the principal power within the Persian Gulf region. Tehran has had a sharp rhetorical critique of the U.S., Israel, and Saudi Arabia for decades but is not using its power to threaten or attack any other country. Tehran's military is not large, and is defensive in structure and intention.
But as long as the Islamic Republic refuses to subordinate itself to imperial Washington it remains an obstacle to America's geopolitical ambitions, which are based on retaining global hegemony.
A main reason for the Obama Administration's cruel and ever-tightening economic sanctions is to bring about regime-change in Iran to situate a client administration in Tehran. If this doesn't work, the threat of military action is obviously implicit in President Obama's mantra about "No option is off the table."
For the immediate future, however, the White House appears to prefer sanctions, spying, and subversion to the potential unintended consequences of a U.S. or Israeli bombing attack on Iran.
[Jack A. Smith was editor of the Guardian -- for decades the nation's preeminent leftist newsweekly -- that closed shop in 1992. Smith now edits the Hudson Valley Activist Newsletter, where this article was also posted. Read more articles by Jack A. Smith on The Rag Blog.]
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