Click on the headline to link to the Private Bradley Manning Support Network for the latest information on his case and activities on his behalf .
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We of the anti-war movement were not able to do much to affect the Bush- Obama Iraq war timetable but we can save the one hero of that war, Private Manning. The entry below can serve as a continuing rationale for my (and your) support to this honorbale whistleblower.
From the American Left History Blog, March 28, 2012
Why I Will Be Standing In Solidarity With Private Bradley Manning On Wednesday April 25th - A Personal Note From An Ex-Soldier Political Prisoner
Markin comment:
Last year I wrote a little entry in this space in order to motivate my reasons for standing in solidarity with a March 20th rally in support of Private Manning at the Quantico Marine Base in Virginia where he was then being held. I have subsequently repeatedly used that entry, 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, as a I have tried to publicize his case in blogs and other Internet sources, at various rallies, and at marches, most recently at the Veterans For Peace Saint Patrick’s Day Peace Parade in South Boston on March 18th.
After I received information from the Bradley Manning Support Network about the latest efforts on Private Manning’s behalf scheduled for April 24th and 25th in Washington and Fort Meade respectively I decided that I would travel south to stand once again in proximate solidarity with Brother Manning at Fort Meade on April 25th. In that spirit I have updated, a little, that earlier entry to reflect the changed circumstances over the past year. As one would expect when the cause is still the same, Private Manning's freedom, unfortunately most of the entry is still in the same key. And will be until the day he is freed by his jailers. And I will continue to stand in proud solidarity with Private Manning until that great day.
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Of course I will be standing at the front gate to the Fort Meade , Maryland on April 25th 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 they are no crime. No crime at all in my eyes or in the eyes of the vast majority of people who know of the case and of its importance as an individual act of resistance to the unjust and barbaric American-led war in Iraq. 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 cards. American imperialism’s gun-toting house of cards, but cards nevertheless.
Of course I will also be standing at the front gate of Fort Meade, Maryland on April 25th because I am outraged by the treatment meted out to Private Manning, presumably an innocent man, by a government who alleges itself to be some “beacon” of the civilized world. Bradley Manning had been held in solidarity at Quantico and other locales for over 500 days, and has been held without trial for much longer, as the government and its military try to glue a case together. The military, and its henchmen in the Justice Department, have gotten more devious although not smarter since I was a soldier in their crosshairs over forty years ago.
Now the two reasons above are more than sufficient for my standing at the front gate at Fort Meade on April 25th 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 additional reason though, a very pressing personal reason. As mentioned above I too was in the military’s crosshairs as a citizen-soldier during the height of the Vietnam War. I will not go into the details of that episode, this comment after all is about brother 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 get through the tough days inside. So on April 25th I will be just, once again, as I have been able to on too few other occasions over years, paying my dues for that long ago support. You, Brother Manning, are a true winter soldier. We were not able to do much about the course of the Iraq War (and little thus far on Afghanistan) but we can move might and main to save the one real hero of that whole mess.
Private Manning I hope that you will hear us and hear about our rally in your defense outside the gates. 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 high heaven against this gross injustice-Free Private Manning Now!
Friday, July 20, 2012
From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin-Out In The 1950s British Crime Noir Night- “Man Bait” (“The Last Page”)
Click on the headline to link to a Wikipedia entry for the British crime noir Man Bait (in England The Last Page).
DVD Review
Man Bait, starring George Brent, Diana Dors, Hammer Film Collections, 1952
Sometimes the title of a crime noir will intrigue you, like The Postman Always Rings Twice, sometimes like this 1950s British crime noir under review, Man Bait (or another recently reviewed 1950s British noir, Bad Blonde), apparently the titles are mere happenstance. Either way this one is kind of, well, sleepy. Sleepy for the plot, and sleepy for action. Definitely a B-noir, very B.
Here is why. A low down grafter, Peter Hart, tries to steal a rare book out of a bookstore and is caught by an employee, Ruby Bruce (played by a young, and, yes, fetching Diana Dors). Instead of turning him in (making for a very short film) she gets into his slimy clutches (nice right) and makes her use her sexual prowess and position in the bookstore to “mark” (one would not realize such things went on such a quaint locale) the emotionally distraught bookstore owner (played by a very un-distraught appearing George Brent).
Now Peter is strictly a con man, no rough stuff, but one night when the pair are divvying up the loot provided by their scam old Ruby takes exception to the split and Peter bops her. Dead. Our boy Peter is no fall guy though and he sets up the “mark,” that self-same distraught bookstore owner for Ruby’s death. No way, no way in hell, distraught or not, is our heroic bookstore taking the fall. But guess who is.
DVD Review
Man Bait, starring George Brent, Diana Dors, Hammer Film Collections, 1952
Sometimes the title of a crime noir will intrigue you, like The Postman Always Rings Twice, sometimes like this 1950s British crime noir under review, Man Bait (or another recently reviewed 1950s British noir, Bad Blonde), apparently the titles are mere happenstance. Either way this one is kind of, well, sleepy. Sleepy for the plot, and sleepy for action. Definitely a B-noir, very B.
Here is why. A low down grafter, Peter Hart, tries to steal a rare book out of a bookstore and is caught by an employee, Ruby Bruce (played by a young, and, yes, fetching Diana Dors). Instead of turning him in (making for a very short film) she gets into his slimy clutches (nice right) and makes her use her sexual prowess and position in the bookstore to “mark” (one would not realize such things went on such a quaint locale) the emotionally distraught bookstore owner (played by a very un-distraught appearing George Brent).
Now Peter is strictly a con man, no rough stuff, but one night when the pair are divvying up the loot provided by their scam old Ruby takes exception to the split and Peter bops her. Dead. Our boy Peter is no fall guy though and he sets up the “mark,” that self-same distraught bookstore owner for Ruby’s death. No way, no way in hell, distraught or not, is our heroic bookstore taking the fall. But guess who is.
From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin-Out In The 1950s British Crime Noir Night – “Bad Blonde”
Click on the headline to link to a Noir of the Week review of the British film noir Bad Blonde.
DVD Review
Bad Blonde, starring Barbara Payton, Hammer Film Classics, 1953
Some guys will tell you straight up-never trust a blonde, a good-looking blonde, because she has nothing but murder in her heart and gold more yellow than her hair driving her soul, if she has a soul. Other guys will tell you always trust a blonde, because like the blond in Dorothy Parker’s short story, “Big Blonde,” she has a heart of gold (and unrequited deep sexual urges too). Me, I can take them or leave, although the blonde in the British crime noir under review, Bad Blonde, should make any man think twice, no, six times before getting mixed up with her. Of course her badness drives this film, and no other attribute.
Of course the story line here is as old as the hills, or as old as there have been hot blondes giving their all to gold-digging, female god-digging, whichever came first. Lorna (played by Barbara Payton), an ex-tramp or something like that, got her hooks into an old- time Italian boxing promoter. Strictly for the dough and security, okay, after too much time in the flops. But the guy is a buffoon, a rich old buffoon, but a buffoon. Enter one good-looking Johnny Flanagan, a young fighter with promise, and big muscles. They fall for each other, while he is training for the big fight. End of story.
Well, not quite. Although if you have seen enough crime noir you know you have seen this plot unravel before, and more elegantly, in the film adaptation of James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice and others. At some point the old geezer husband is just, well, just in the way, and Lorna starts working her “magic”. Naturally Johnny comes to see things her way, kills that old- time promoter (showing a little ingratitude by the way) by drowning him in his very own pond and that is that. Except Johnny (not Lorna though) has plenty of remorse. Remorse enough want to go to the police and confess. Lorna, in clover now, fails to see it that way and poisons her lovely Johnny. But you know she will not get away with that, no way. Bad blond, indeed
[Note: On the great blonde controversy mentioned above I truly can take them or leave them, good or bad. My preference is strictly brunettes lately (although there was a time when I had a run of red-heads but that was kid time, and in the Irish ghetto, where you could hardly walk around the block without running into one who wanted to play some game with you). And believe brunettes are just as capable of leading you on a merry chase, of getting their hooks in you, into you good, as any dizzy blonde, Enough said.]
DVD Review
Bad Blonde, starring Barbara Payton, Hammer Film Classics, 1953
Some guys will tell you straight up-never trust a blonde, a good-looking blonde, because she has nothing but murder in her heart and gold more yellow than her hair driving her soul, if she has a soul. Other guys will tell you always trust a blonde, because like the blond in Dorothy Parker’s short story, “Big Blonde,” she has a heart of gold (and unrequited deep sexual urges too). Me, I can take them or leave, although the blonde in the British crime noir under review, Bad Blonde, should make any man think twice, no, six times before getting mixed up with her. Of course her badness drives this film, and no other attribute.
Of course the story line here is as old as the hills, or as old as there have been hot blondes giving their all to gold-digging, female god-digging, whichever came first. Lorna (played by Barbara Payton), an ex-tramp or something like that, got her hooks into an old- time Italian boxing promoter. Strictly for the dough and security, okay, after too much time in the flops. But the guy is a buffoon, a rich old buffoon, but a buffoon. Enter one good-looking Johnny Flanagan, a young fighter with promise, and big muscles. They fall for each other, while he is training for the big fight. End of story.
Well, not quite. Although if you have seen enough crime noir you know you have seen this plot unravel before, and more elegantly, in the film adaptation of James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice and others. At some point the old geezer husband is just, well, just in the way, and Lorna starts working her “magic”. Naturally Johnny comes to see things her way, kills that old- time promoter (showing a little ingratitude by the way) by drowning him in his very own pond and that is that. Except Johnny (not Lorna though) has plenty of remorse. Remorse enough want to go to the police and confess. Lorna, in clover now, fails to see it that way and poisons her lovely Johnny. But you know she will not get away with that, no way. Bad blond, indeed
[Note: On the great blonde controversy mentioned above I truly can take them or leave them, good or bad. My preference is strictly brunettes lately (although there was a time when I had a run of red-heads but that was kid time, and in the Irish ghetto, where you could hardly walk around the block without running into one who wanted to play some game with you). And believe brunettes are just as capable of leading you on a merry chase, of getting their hooks in you, into you good, as any dizzy blonde, Enough said.]
From The Archives-The Struggle To Win The Youth To The Fight For Our Communist Future-Marxism And The Jacobin Communist Tradition-Part Four-The Origins Of The Communist League ("Young Spartacus-July-August 1976)
Markin comment on this series:
One of the declared purposes of this space is to draw the lessons of our left-wing past here in America and internationally, especially from the pro-communist wing. To that end I have made commentaries and provided archival works in order to help draw those lessons for today’s left-wing activists to learn, or at least ponder over. More importantly, for the long haul, to help educate today’s youth in the struggle for our common communist future. That is no small task or easy task given the differences of generations; differences of political milieus worked in; differences of social structure to work around; and, increasingly more important, the differences in appreciation of technological advances, and their uses.
There is no question that back in my youth I could have used, desperately used, many of the archival materials available today. When I developed political consciousness very early on, albeit liberal political consciousness, I could have used this material as I knew, I knew deep inside my heart and mind, that a junior Cold War liberal of the American for Democratic Action (ADA) stripe was not the end of my leftward political trajectory. More importantly, I could have used a socialist or communist youth organization to help me articulate the doubts I had about the virtues of liberal capitalism and be recruited to a more left-wing world view.
As it was I spent far too long in the throes of the left-liberal/soft social-democratic milieu where I was dying politically. A group like the Young Communist League (W.E.B. Dubois Clubs in those days), the Young People’s Socialist League, or the Young Socialist Alliance representing the youth organizations of the American Communist Party, American Socialist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S.) respectively would have saved much wasted time and energy. I knew they were around but just not in my area.
The archival material to be used in this series is weighted heavily toward the youth movements of the early American Communist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S). For more recent material I have relied on material from the Spartacus Youth Clubs, the youth group of the Spartacist League (U.S.), both because they are more readily available to me and because, and this should give cause for pause, there are not many other non-CP, non-SWP youth groups around. As I gather more material from other youth sources I will place them in this series.
Finally I would like to finish up with the preamble to the Spartacist Youth Club’s What We Fight For statement of purpose for educational purposes only:
"The Spartacus Youth Clubs intervene into social struggles armed with the revolutionary internationalist program of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. We work to mobilize youth in struggle as partisans of the working class, championing the liberation of black people, women and all the oppressed. The SYCs fight to win youth to the perspective of building the Leninist vanguard party that will lead the working class in socialist revolution, laying the basis for a world free of capitalist exploitation and imperialist slaughter."
This seems to me be somewhere in the right direction for what a Bolshevik youth group should be doing these days; a proving ground to become professional revolutionaries with enough wiggle room to learn from their mistakes, and successes. More later.
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Marxism And The Jacobin Communist Tradition-Part Four-The Origins Of The Communist League ("Young Spartacus-July-August 1976)
By Joseph Seymour
EDITOR'S NOTE: As a special feature Young Spartacus has been serializing the lectures on "Marxism and the Jacobin Communist Tradition" presented by Spartacist League Central Committee member Joseph Seymour at the regional educational conferences of the Spartacus Youth League during the past year. The talk reproduced in this issue was given at the SYL Midwest Educational held in Chicago over the weekend of April 16-18. The first part of the series, which appeared in our Febru¬ary issue, was devoted to the Great French Revolution and its insurrectionary continuity through the conspiratorial Jacobin communists Babeuf and Buonarroti. The next section, appearing the following month, discussed the Carbonari Conspiracy, the French Revolution of 1830 and Buonarroti, the Lyons silk weavers uprising and the Blanquist putschin!839. The third installment in the April Young Spartacus analyzed Chartism in Britain. The concluding portion of the presentation on the origins of the Communist League will appear in our next issue. To preserve the character of the verbal presentation stylistic alterations have been reduced to a minimum.
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This talk is the fourth part of a projected seven-part SYL class series, entitled "Marxism and the Jacobin Communist Tradition." As such, the full significance of this presentation today cannot be understood without knowing something about the first three, which have been encapsulated in Young Spartacus, and then hearing the next three.
The basic theme, of the talk is how the communist movement was generated and conditioned by the epoch of the bourgeois-democratic revolution; how Marx assimilated that tradition, how Marxism was tested and in many ways found faulty by the revolutions of 1848, after which the bourgeois-democratic revolution in West Europe was off the historical agenda, and how Marx fundamentally changed his conception of political strategy between 1850 and 1853. This talk, therefore, deals with the origins of Marxism, the development of Marx' political strategy up to the eve of 1848 and its encapsulation and codification in the Communist Manifesto, which was published a few months before the outbreak of the February revolution in Paris in 1848.
First I'm going to discuss the general character of the European left in the 1840's. Next I'm going to go back [to the 1830'sJ and trace the history of the League of the Just, which, becoming the Communist League in 1847, was the inclusive organization of all German communist activists and which was the organization through which Marx became a communist leader in 1847. Then we're going to go back again to the ever-popular question of the "young Marx" and the origins of Marxism in the narrow sense—Hegel and all that. And finally I'll try to tie it all together in 1846, when Marx became a Marxist and found himself on the political stage as a communist factionalist.
Now, before we get into this talk, I want to make one point about method. As both political activists and living human beings we tend to have a fairly good natural sense of the importance of time in politics. You know that the American political scene looked somewhat different five years ago than today; that Maoism, for example, represented something rather different in 1971 than Maoism today.
But when we reflect on the revolutionary movement of Europe in 1815, in 1820, in 1830, in 1840, we lose the sensitivity to time of a working politician. Unless one struggles to think contemporaneously, then I believe the origins of Marxism will appear very obscure, simply because the French political alignment was very different in 1840, say, than in 1844, and again very different than in 1847. The period before 1848 was an extremely volatile period, during which politics was much more unstable than in the U.S. or even West Europe today and in which the political alignments on the left, including Marx1 opponents, changed. Marx praised Proudhon in 1842 and polemicized against him in 1847, because in that short period Proudhon's politics had radically changed. So, while some of my talk may seem antiquarian—you know, this happened in 1843 and then that happened in 1844—you should realize that a year is a long time in a faction fight, no less so in 1846.
Revolutionary Politics Before Marx
Marxism developed in a period of relative depression throughout the international workers and revolutionary movement. The period 1830 to 1842— that is, the period beginning with the successful bourgeois-democratic revolution in France and ending with the suppression of the Chartist general strike in Britain—represents a certain kind of cycle of revolution and counterrevolution. It began with a series of relatively successful bourgeois -democratic revolutions or revolutionary movements and it ended with the communist-centered proletarian movements, even the massive Chartist movement, going against the bourgeoisie and getting smashed.
As a consequence, all the leading revolutionary cadres and all the political tendencies in the mid-1840's, when Marx and Engels first came on the scene, were profoundly shaped by these defeats. Etienne Cabet—a leader of the Society for the Rights of Man [formed 1832] and the most important socialist in France in the 1840's, had been sent into exile after the 1834 Lyons silk-weavers' uprising. Feargus O'Connor, the leader of the Chartists, was sent into exile after 1839 [the Chartist agitation to petition Parliament, leading to isolated uprisings] and imprisoned after 1842 [the Chartist insurrectionary general strike]. Karl Schapper, who was the leading cadre of the League of the Just, had also been sent into exile as a result of his role in the Blanquist putsch of 1839. So that unless one understands that the leadership of the principal revolutionary tendencies in the 1840's were rebounding against a series of defeated minority actions, that their attitudes and ideologies were profoundly shaped by that experience, then the political world that Marx entered and what Marx contributed become essentially incomprehensible.
Moreover, you need to realize the scale of the revolutionary movements at that time. Before 1848 there were only two mass movements of the left: the movement of Etienne Cabet in France and Chartism in Britain. All the other tendencies were either propaganda groups, such as the League of the Just; or literary sects, such as German True Socialism; or simply literary figures, such as Proudhon. These two mass organizations, therefore, exerted a profoundly shaping influence upon the League of the Just, whose main cadres were in exile in France and Britain. It is important, then, to have at least a working knowledge of the Cabet movement and Chartism in the 1840's.
Reaction to the Reaction
Etienne Cabet, as I said, was a leader of the Society of the Rights of Man who was forced into exile following the repression of 1835. Cabet returned to France at a time when all the revolutionary communist sects had been
driven underground in the wake of the 1839 Blanquist putsch. Cabet built a mass utopian-socialist movement on the basis of class collaborationist!!, pacifist anti-revolutionism and bourgeois philanthropism. Known as "Father Cabet" for his appeals to Christianity, he espoused "communism with a human face."
Above all Cabet was consciously anti-violent. Week after week his paper, Le Populaire, carried letters, for example, £rom wives of the Lyons silk-weavers who said,
"In the old days our husbands were communists and they believed in violence. We had to worry about the police coming at night and arresting our husbands. Now they have been converted to your kind of communism and we don't have to worry about that anymore."
Among the inner circle of Cabet was Herman Ewerbach, who was one of the leaders of the League of the Just, translated Cabet's writings into German and sought to give his movement an international dimension.
The other mass movement was Chartism, which during the 1840's was an extremely complex political phenomenon. Between 1839 and 1842 Chartism had been both an inclusive mass organization and, in its basic thrust, a revolutionary movement. After the defeat of the general strike of 1842 the Chartist movement moved to the right, became more exclusive and its leadership—around Feargus O'Connor —became bonapartist. O'Connor degenerated into cooperativism—raising, and apparently mismanaging, money to buy all the land in England in order that the workers could become smallholders. His schemes were not only Utopian but also downright shoddy.
Now, Chartism is complex largely because O'Connor was by no means the most right-wing leader arising out of the reaction to revolutionary Chartism. On the contrary, there were a whole series of Chartist leaders who wanted to liquidate Chartism entirely and form a political bloc with the liberal bourgeoisie. O'Connor staunchly opposed that. So, in one sense, he stood for class independence, even though relative to the earlier period he had moved far to the right and abandoned an insurrectionary perspective for petty-bourgeois cooperativism.
Chartism also contained a consciously Jacobin communist left wing led by Julian Harney. Yet in the 1840's Harney was reduced to being the left-wing lieutenant of O'Connor. Nevertheless, I would argue that in some ways Harney during this period [1843-44] was the most advanced socialist of his day; he believed in a mass organization of the proletariat, class independence and violent revolution. The problem was that Harney was not a factional politician. Or, to use a Spartacist characterization, he did not draw the proper organizational conclusions from his political ideas. Instead of fighting O'Connor—a fight he might well have lost—Harney attempted to placate O'Connor and do his own thing, which was mainly acting as an honest broker to the left-wing exiles in London. In particular, with the left wing of the Polish immigrants, some French Babouvists and German communists, he put together something in 1845 called the Fraternal Democrats, which, its name to the contrary, represented communism, although not Jacobin communism.
League of the Just
Now we come to the League of the Just and the Communist League. And again we must double back in time to the 1830's in Paris. At that time Paris had an enormous German population, and there was an inclusive ^organization closely affiliated with the French Society for the Rights of Man known as the League of Exiles. Just as during 1832-34 in the Society for the Rights of Man there was a parallel factional struggle in the League of Exiles between the Jacobin communists led by Buonarroti and the revolutionary bourgeois democrats. The factional struggle in the Society for the Rights of Man was arrested by the state suppression of that organization. But the German group was clandestine to begin with, since they were worried about being deported back to Germany. So that factional struggle- went to a conclusion in a split; the communists, the German artisan and communist intellectuals, took the majority, while Jacob Venedy, who was later a liberal delegate to the Frankfurt parliament of 1848, led the minority.
The German Jacobin communists reorganized as a secret paramilitary organization called the League of the Just. The organization, of course, contained a large number of German artisans, who were not steeped in the rationalist tradition of the French communist movement, so that the League of the Just remained impregnated with religious fundamentalism. There were not only atheists and rationalists and materialists but also Utopian Christian socialists such as Wilhelm Weitling, who wrote revolutionary propaganda couched in the language of Christian messianism. A self-taught tailor, Weitling wrote psalms and nursery rhymes such as "I want to be like Jesus who was also a communist, "for which Weitling was arrested for blasphemy. It was very powerful propaganda, for Weitling believed it himself. And it was effective in recruiting to communism backward German workers who had been raised as Lutherans and still believed in the Bible.
When Buonarroti died, his base was taken over by the young Auguste Blanqui. The leading cadres of the League of the Just participated in the Blanquist putsch of 1839, and as a result of the ensuing repression many of them were banished from France. So he remained in Paris, but others went to London and Switzerland. This exile tended to color very strongly the political groupings.
The Paris section of the League of the Just fell under the influence of the Cabet movement and, therefore, rejected the insurrectionary traditions of Blanquism in favor of goody-goody class collaborationism of the worst
kind. In Switzerland—which was kind of the Berkeley of Metternich's Europe-there were all sorts of odd communist sects, and Weitling degenerated into setting up study circles to preach the secret gospel about how Jesus Chris really wants you to be a communist Weitling genuinely believed communism was the Second Coming, but he was not a pacifist. He ran somewhat amok yet he had great authority. In 1843 Man declared that Weitling was the great representative of German worker communism.
The London branch of the-League of the Just was by far the most important. It was led by Karl Schapper, who has a fascinating history. While a student in 1834 Schapper was won to revolutionary democracy and soon thereaftei joined a small German revolutionary organization. Then, with about 20 01 30 other guys Schapper attempted to seize a police station in Frankfurt It didn't work. He was on the lam ii Switzerland, where he joined with the democratic-nationalist Mazzini, am with about 300 others they attempted to invade Italy. It didn't work. Got to Paris, joined the League of the Just allied with Blanqui, and this time, with a thousand men, attempted to overthrow the French state. It didn't work. He was on the lam again, and made his way to< Britain. Now, I would like to say that upon arriving in London he and 1500( guys attempted to overthrow Queen Victoria, but he changed his line Schapper was a genuinely heroic figure Engels writes that he and his partners had fights, and they took on 300 guys. But in any case Schapper decided that his politics were not working very well. He was not an intellectual, but he was a thoughtful man, and he asked himself, "Why have all these move¬ments failed?" Obvious question. He created an organization called the German Workers Educational Society and arrived at a position which I would characterize as between Cabet and Chartism. Schapper concluded that in order for a revolution to succeed the revolutionaries had first to win over the masses. He in fact denied the struggle for revolution, arguing that once the communists had their democratic rights to organize and educate the masses, that would be adequate to bring about communism. Schapper thus wrote, "The German communists agree with English socialists in thinking that communism could be obtained by peaceful means and free discussion alone." The London-based section of the League of the Just led by Schapper thus was influenced, on the one hand, by the Cabet movement and, on the other, by British Chartism. From the Cabet movement they derived their rejection of revolution, which Schapper tended to associate with putschism, that is, with the only historic experience which they had. Also, from the Cabet movement Schapper acquired an emphasis on propaganda and education— virtually the linear recruitment of the working masses, one by one, to communism through enlightenment. Indeed, his organization was called the German Workers Educational Society. From the Chartist movement Schapper derived a strong rejection of class collaborationism, which characterized the Cabet movement in France. So his movement was very much the German Workers Educational Society, although they were certainly willing to associate with bourgeois radical intellectuals who had come over to communism—like Engels. Moreover, the German Workers Educational Society broadly embraced the traditions of French enlightenment and rejected Christianity. They were pacifists and propagandists, but proletarian pacifists and propagandists. In that sense Schapper and his followers were closer to Barney. They completely rejected barracks socialism, communalism and the equality of want. Again and Once Again Factional Struggle In 1844 Weiting, the overwhelmingly prominent political personality in German communism, was released from prison in Switzerland and went into exile in London. Weitling at once joined his old comrades now in the German Workers Educational Society. Well, they soon discovered that they were old comrades in the League of the Just but they were no longer comrades now. A factional struggle developed in 1845 pitting Weitling against Schapper. This faction fight involved only a very small group of individuals, but they were poli¬tical personalities who had not only enormous capacity but also great reputations. Interestingly enough, this factional struggle was recorded in writing, mainly because these people were very concerned with doctrine and ideas. And we in the Spartacist League owe thanks to comrade Vladimir Zelinski for translating from the German the discussion within the London branch of the League of the Just. It is a very interesting discussion that without propaganda you get nothing: It begins with Schapper asserting that everything must be based on reason. At that time there was among the workers a very strong sense that they were deprived of access to bourgeois culture. The workers’ educa¬tional organizations, such as the German Workers Educational Society, were not simply front groups to secure legal functioning. Rather, they provided the workers in the age before mass public education with a means to learn. (In fact, the origins of the massive German Social Democratic Party were a small educational society of workers who wrote to Ferdinand Lassalle, “Would you teach us what you know?" > Lassalle came, and mat's the beginning of the German Social Democracy.)
So this is Schapper:
"The reason for the failure of communism is lack of knowledge, lack of enlightenment. It was only the French Revolution which began to create a certain degree of enlightenment. Only through the struggle of opinion will communism develop firm roots."
But Weitling, the fundamentalist rabble-rouser, replies:
"Reason will play a pitiful role. The greatest deeds will result from the power of emotion. The crown of thorns of the martyrs wins more adherents than the moral needs of poets and orators."
In response Schapper emphasizes that without propaganda you get nothing:
"Communism could hitherto not be created because understanding was not sufficient. Our generation will no more realize communism than did the previous ones. Our activity is for the coming generation. These will carry through in practice what we have hitherto been able to propagate only by means of enlightened propaganda ... Let us build our guard against revolutions, where through them mankind is brought back again into servitude."
Weitling replies simply by praising revolution: "Revolutions come like a thunderstorm. No one can foretell their effects."
Now, with historical hindsight, we can discern that the Schapper tendency was more serious, even though Weitling aptly criticizes Schapper for relegating the revolutionary struggle to the distant future.
In 1845, therefore, the German communist movement had arrived at a Hobson's choice: either passive and pacifistic propagandist!! seeking to educate the entire working class, or revolutionary communist messianism, which did not even have the virtue of good military organization. Weitling never organized any unsuccessful putsches, because he was incapable of organizing anything.
In 1845, therefore, the German communist movement had arrived at a Hobson's choice: either passive and pacifistic propagandist!! seeking to educate the entire working class, or revolutionary communist messianism, which did not even have the virtue of good military organization. Weitling never organized any unsuccessful putsches, because he was incapable of organizing anything.
It is at this point that Marx enters the history of the communist movement. And—to sort of give the show away— Marx is important and became a leader because he found a way out of that dilemma, that false counterposition of propaganda and revolutionary action.
One of the declared purposes of this space is to draw the lessons of our left-wing past here in America and internationally, especially from the pro-communist wing. To that end I have made commentaries and provided archival works in order to help draw those lessons for today’s left-wing activists to learn, or at least ponder over. More importantly, for the long haul, to help educate today’s youth in the struggle for our common communist future. That is no small task or easy task given the differences of generations; differences of political milieus worked in; differences of social structure to work around; and, increasingly more important, the differences in appreciation of technological advances, and their uses.
There is no question that back in my youth I could have used, desperately used, many of the archival materials available today. When I developed political consciousness very early on, albeit liberal political consciousness, I could have used this material as I knew, I knew deep inside my heart and mind, that a junior Cold War liberal of the American for Democratic Action (ADA) stripe was not the end of my leftward political trajectory. More importantly, I could have used a socialist or communist youth organization to help me articulate the doubts I had about the virtues of liberal capitalism and be recruited to a more left-wing world view.
As it was I spent far too long in the throes of the left-liberal/soft social-democratic milieu where I was dying politically. A group like the Young Communist League (W.E.B. Dubois Clubs in those days), the Young People’s Socialist League, or the Young Socialist Alliance representing the youth organizations of the American Communist Party, American Socialist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S.) respectively would have saved much wasted time and energy. I knew they were around but just not in my area.
The archival material to be used in this series is weighted heavily toward the youth movements of the early American Communist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S). For more recent material I have relied on material from the Spartacus Youth Clubs, the youth group of the Spartacist League (U.S.), both because they are more readily available to me and because, and this should give cause for pause, there are not many other non-CP, non-SWP youth groups around. As I gather more material from other youth sources I will place them in this series.
Finally I would like to finish up with the preamble to the Spartacist Youth Club’s What We Fight For statement of purpose for educational purposes only:
"The Spartacus Youth Clubs intervene into social struggles armed with the revolutionary internationalist program of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. We work to mobilize youth in struggle as partisans of the working class, championing the liberation of black people, women and all the oppressed. The SYCs fight to win youth to the perspective of building the Leninist vanguard party that will lead the working class in socialist revolution, laying the basis for a world free of capitalist exploitation and imperialist slaughter."
This seems to me be somewhere in the right direction for what a Bolshevik youth group should be doing these days; a proving ground to become professional revolutionaries with enough wiggle room to learn from their mistakes, and successes. More later.
*******
Marxism And The Jacobin Communist Tradition-Part Four-The Origins Of The Communist League ("Young Spartacus-July-August 1976)
By Joseph Seymour
EDITOR'S NOTE: As a special feature Young Spartacus has been serializing the lectures on "Marxism and the Jacobin Communist Tradition" presented by Spartacist League Central Committee member Joseph Seymour at the regional educational conferences of the Spartacus Youth League during the past year. The talk reproduced in this issue was given at the SYL Midwest Educational held in Chicago over the weekend of April 16-18. The first part of the series, which appeared in our Febru¬ary issue, was devoted to the Great French Revolution and its insurrectionary continuity through the conspiratorial Jacobin communists Babeuf and Buonarroti. The next section, appearing the following month, discussed the Carbonari Conspiracy, the French Revolution of 1830 and Buonarroti, the Lyons silk weavers uprising and the Blanquist putschin!839. The third installment in the April Young Spartacus analyzed Chartism in Britain. The concluding portion of the presentation on the origins of the Communist League will appear in our next issue. To preserve the character of the verbal presentation stylistic alterations have been reduced to a minimum.
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This talk is the fourth part of a projected seven-part SYL class series, entitled "Marxism and the Jacobin Communist Tradition." As such, the full significance of this presentation today cannot be understood without knowing something about the first three, which have been encapsulated in Young Spartacus, and then hearing the next three.
The basic theme, of the talk is how the communist movement was generated and conditioned by the epoch of the bourgeois-democratic revolution; how Marx assimilated that tradition, how Marxism was tested and in many ways found faulty by the revolutions of 1848, after which the bourgeois-democratic revolution in West Europe was off the historical agenda, and how Marx fundamentally changed his conception of political strategy between 1850 and 1853. This talk, therefore, deals with the origins of Marxism, the development of Marx' political strategy up to the eve of 1848 and its encapsulation and codification in the Communist Manifesto, which was published a few months before the outbreak of the February revolution in Paris in 1848.
First I'm going to discuss the general character of the European left in the 1840's. Next I'm going to go back [to the 1830'sJ and trace the history of the League of the Just, which, becoming the Communist League in 1847, was the inclusive organization of all German communist activists and which was the organization through which Marx became a communist leader in 1847. Then we're going to go back again to the ever-popular question of the "young Marx" and the origins of Marxism in the narrow sense—Hegel and all that. And finally I'll try to tie it all together in 1846, when Marx became a Marxist and found himself on the political stage as a communist factionalist.
Now, before we get into this talk, I want to make one point about method. As both political activists and living human beings we tend to have a fairly good natural sense of the importance of time in politics. You know that the American political scene looked somewhat different five years ago than today; that Maoism, for example, represented something rather different in 1971 than Maoism today.
But when we reflect on the revolutionary movement of Europe in 1815, in 1820, in 1830, in 1840, we lose the sensitivity to time of a working politician. Unless one struggles to think contemporaneously, then I believe the origins of Marxism will appear very obscure, simply because the French political alignment was very different in 1840, say, than in 1844, and again very different than in 1847. The period before 1848 was an extremely volatile period, during which politics was much more unstable than in the U.S. or even West Europe today and in which the political alignments on the left, including Marx1 opponents, changed. Marx praised Proudhon in 1842 and polemicized against him in 1847, because in that short period Proudhon's politics had radically changed. So, while some of my talk may seem antiquarian—you know, this happened in 1843 and then that happened in 1844—you should realize that a year is a long time in a faction fight, no less so in 1846.
Revolutionary Politics Before Marx
Marxism developed in a period of relative depression throughout the international workers and revolutionary movement. The period 1830 to 1842— that is, the period beginning with the successful bourgeois-democratic revolution in France and ending with the suppression of the Chartist general strike in Britain—represents a certain kind of cycle of revolution and counterrevolution. It began with a series of relatively successful bourgeois -democratic revolutions or revolutionary movements and it ended with the communist-centered proletarian movements, even the massive Chartist movement, going against the bourgeoisie and getting smashed.
As a consequence, all the leading revolutionary cadres and all the political tendencies in the mid-1840's, when Marx and Engels first came on the scene, were profoundly shaped by these defeats. Etienne Cabet—a leader of the Society for the Rights of Man [formed 1832] and the most important socialist in France in the 1840's, had been sent into exile after the 1834 Lyons silk-weavers' uprising. Feargus O'Connor, the leader of the Chartists, was sent into exile after 1839 [the Chartist agitation to petition Parliament, leading to isolated uprisings] and imprisoned after 1842 [the Chartist insurrectionary general strike]. Karl Schapper, who was the leading cadre of the League of the Just, had also been sent into exile as a result of his role in the Blanquist putsch of 1839. So that unless one understands that the leadership of the principal revolutionary tendencies in the 1840's were rebounding against a series of defeated minority actions, that their attitudes and ideologies were profoundly shaped by that experience, then the political world that Marx entered and what Marx contributed become essentially incomprehensible.
Moreover, you need to realize the scale of the revolutionary movements at that time. Before 1848 there were only two mass movements of the left: the movement of Etienne Cabet in France and Chartism in Britain. All the other tendencies were either propaganda groups, such as the League of the Just; or literary sects, such as German True Socialism; or simply literary figures, such as Proudhon. These two mass organizations, therefore, exerted a profoundly shaping influence upon the League of the Just, whose main cadres were in exile in France and Britain. It is important, then, to have at least a working knowledge of the Cabet movement and Chartism in the 1840's.
Reaction to the Reaction
Etienne Cabet, as I said, was a leader of the Society of the Rights of Man who was forced into exile following the repression of 1835. Cabet returned to France at a time when all the revolutionary communist sects had been
driven underground in the wake of the 1839 Blanquist putsch. Cabet built a mass utopian-socialist movement on the basis of class collaborationist!!, pacifist anti-revolutionism and bourgeois philanthropism. Known as "Father Cabet" for his appeals to Christianity, he espoused "communism with a human face."
Above all Cabet was consciously anti-violent. Week after week his paper, Le Populaire, carried letters, for example, £rom wives of the Lyons silk-weavers who said,
"In the old days our husbands were communists and they believed in violence. We had to worry about the police coming at night and arresting our husbands. Now they have been converted to your kind of communism and we don't have to worry about that anymore."
Among the inner circle of Cabet was Herman Ewerbach, who was one of the leaders of the League of the Just, translated Cabet's writings into German and sought to give his movement an international dimension.
The other mass movement was Chartism, which during the 1840's was an extremely complex political phenomenon. Between 1839 and 1842 Chartism had been both an inclusive mass organization and, in its basic thrust, a revolutionary movement. After the defeat of the general strike of 1842 the Chartist movement moved to the right, became more exclusive and its leadership—around Feargus O'Connor —became bonapartist. O'Connor degenerated into cooperativism—raising, and apparently mismanaging, money to buy all the land in England in order that the workers could become smallholders. His schemes were not only Utopian but also downright shoddy.
Now, Chartism is complex largely because O'Connor was by no means the most right-wing leader arising out of the reaction to revolutionary Chartism. On the contrary, there were a whole series of Chartist leaders who wanted to liquidate Chartism entirely and form a political bloc with the liberal bourgeoisie. O'Connor staunchly opposed that. So, in one sense, he stood for class independence, even though relative to the earlier period he had moved far to the right and abandoned an insurrectionary perspective for petty-bourgeois cooperativism.
Chartism also contained a consciously Jacobin communist left wing led by Julian Harney. Yet in the 1840's Harney was reduced to being the left-wing lieutenant of O'Connor. Nevertheless, I would argue that in some ways Harney during this period [1843-44] was the most advanced socialist of his day; he believed in a mass organization of the proletariat, class independence and violent revolution. The problem was that Harney was not a factional politician. Or, to use a Spartacist characterization, he did not draw the proper organizational conclusions from his political ideas. Instead of fighting O'Connor—a fight he might well have lost—Harney attempted to placate O'Connor and do his own thing, which was mainly acting as an honest broker to the left-wing exiles in London. In particular, with the left wing of the Polish immigrants, some French Babouvists and German communists, he put together something in 1845 called the Fraternal Democrats, which, its name to the contrary, represented communism, although not Jacobin communism.
League of the Just
Now we come to the League of the Just and the Communist League. And again we must double back in time to the 1830's in Paris. At that time Paris had an enormous German population, and there was an inclusive ^organization closely affiliated with the French Society for the Rights of Man known as the League of Exiles. Just as during 1832-34 in the Society for the Rights of Man there was a parallel factional struggle in the League of Exiles between the Jacobin communists led by Buonarroti and the revolutionary bourgeois democrats. The factional struggle in the Society for the Rights of Man was arrested by the state suppression of that organization. But the German group was clandestine to begin with, since they were worried about being deported back to Germany. So that factional struggle- went to a conclusion in a split; the communists, the German artisan and communist intellectuals, took the majority, while Jacob Venedy, who was later a liberal delegate to the Frankfurt parliament of 1848, led the minority.
The German Jacobin communists reorganized as a secret paramilitary organization called the League of the Just. The organization, of course, contained a large number of German artisans, who were not steeped in the rationalist tradition of the French communist movement, so that the League of the Just remained impregnated with religious fundamentalism. There were not only atheists and rationalists and materialists but also Utopian Christian socialists such as Wilhelm Weitling, who wrote revolutionary propaganda couched in the language of Christian messianism. A self-taught tailor, Weitling wrote psalms and nursery rhymes such as "I want to be like Jesus who was also a communist, "for which Weitling was arrested for blasphemy. It was very powerful propaganda, for Weitling believed it himself. And it was effective in recruiting to communism backward German workers who had been raised as Lutherans and still believed in the Bible.
When Buonarroti died, his base was taken over by the young Auguste Blanqui. The leading cadres of the League of the Just participated in the Blanquist putsch of 1839, and as a result of the ensuing repression many of them were banished from France. So he remained in Paris, but others went to London and Switzerland. This exile tended to color very strongly the political groupings.
The Paris section of the League of the Just fell under the influence of the Cabet movement and, therefore, rejected the insurrectionary traditions of Blanquism in favor of goody-goody class collaborationism of the worst
kind. In Switzerland—which was kind of the Berkeley of Metternich's Europe-there were all sorts of odd communist sects, and Weitling degenerated into setting up study circles to preach the secret gospel about how Jesus Chris really wants you to be a communist Weitling genuinely believed communism was the Second Coming, but he was not a pacifist. He ran somewhat amok yet he had great authority. In 1843 Man declared that Weitling was the great representative of German worker communism.
The London branch of the-League of the Just was by far the most important. It was led by Karl Schapper, who has a fascinating history. While a student in 1834 Schapper was won to revolutionary democracy and soon thereaftei joined a small German revolutionary organization. Then, with about 20 01 30 other guys Schapper attempted to seize a police station in Frankfurt It didn't work. He was on the lam ii Switzerland, where he joined with the democratic-nationalist Mazzini, am with about 300 others they attempted to invade Italy. It didn't work. Got to Paris, joined the League of the Just allied with Blanqui, and this time, with a thousand men, attempted to overthrow the French state. It didn't work. He was on the lam again, and made his way to< Britain. Now, I would like to say that upon arriving in London he and 1500( guys attempted to overthrow Queen Victoria, but he changed his line Schapper was a genuinely heroic figure Engels writes that he and his partners had fights, and they took on 300 guys. But in any case Schapper decided that his politics were not working very well. He was not an intellectual, but he was a thoughtful man, and he asked himself, "Why have all these move¬ments failed?" Obvious question. He created an organization called the German Workers Educational Society and arrived at a position which I would characterize as between Cabet and Chartism. Schapper concluded that in order for a revolution to succeed the revolutionaries had first to win over the masses. He in fact denied the struggle for revolution, arguing that once the communists had their democratic rights to organize and educate the masses, that would be adequate to bring about communism. Schapper thus wrote, "The German communists agree with English socialists in thinking that communism could be obtained by peaceful means and free discussion alone." The London-based section of the League of the Just led by Schapper thus was influenced, on the one hand, by the Cabet movement and, on the other, by British Chartism. From the Cabet movement they derived their rejection of revolution, which Schapper tended to associate with putschism, that is, with the only historic experience which they had. Also, from the Cabet movement Schapper acquired an emphasis on propaganda and education— virtually the linear recruitment of the working masses, one by one, to communism through enlightenment. Indeed, his organization was called the German Workers Educational Society. From the Chartist movement Schapper derived a strong rejection of class collaborationism, which characterized the Cabet movement in France. So his movement was very much the German Workers Educational Society, although they were certainly willing to associate with bourgeois radical intellectuals who had come over to communism—like Engels. Moreover, the German Workers Educational Society broadly embraced the traditions of French enlightenment and rejected Christianity. They were pacifists and propagandists, but proletarian pacifists and propagandists. In that sense Schapper and his followers were closer to Barney. They completely rejected barracks socialism, communalism and the equality of want. Again and Once Again Factional Struggle In 1844 Weiting, the overwhelmingly prominent political personality in German communism, was released from prison in Switzerland and went into exile in London. Weitling at once joined his old comrades now in the German Workers Educational Society. Well, they soon discovered that they were old comrades in the League of the Just but they were no longer comrades now. A factional struggle developed in 1845 pitting Weitling against Schapper. This faction fight involved only a very small group of individuals, but they were poli¬tical personalities who had not only enormous capacity but also great reputations. Interestingly enough, this factional struggle was recorded in writing, mainly because these people were very concerned with doctrine and ideas. And we in the Spartacist League owe thanks to comrade Vladimir Zelinski for translating from the German the discussion within the London branch of the League of the Just. It is a very interesting discussion that without propaganda you get nothing: It begins with Schapper asserting that everything must be based on reason. At that time there was among the workers a very strong sense that they were deprived of access to bourgeois culture. The workers’ educa¬tional organizations, such as the German Workers Educational Society, were not simply front groups to secure legal functioning. Rather, they provided the workers in the age before mass public education with a means to learn. (In fact, the origins of the massive German Social Democratic Party were a small educational society of workers who wrote to Ferdinand Lassalle, “Would you teach us what you know?" > Lassalle came, and mat's the beginning of the German Social Democracy.)
So this is Schapper:
"The reason for the failure of communism is lack of knowledge, lack of enlightenment. It was only the French Revolution which began to create a certain degree of enlightenment. Only through the struggle of opinion will communism develop firm roots."
But Weitling, the fundamentalist rabble-rouser, replies:
"Reason will play a pitiful role. The greatest deeds will result from the power of emotion. The crown of thorns of the martyrs wins more adherents than the moral needs of poets and orators."
In response Schapper emphasizes that without propaganda you get nothing:
"Communism could hitherto not be created because understanding was not sufficient. Our generation will no more realize communism than did the previous ones. Our activity is for the coming generation. These will carry through in practice what we have hitherto been able to propagate only by means of enlightened propaganda ... Let us build our guard against revolutions, where through them mankind is brought back again into servitude."
Weitling replies simply by praising revolution: "Revolutions come like a thunderstorm. No one can foretell their effects."
Now, with historical hindsight, we can discern that the Schapper tendency was more serious, even though Weitling aptly criticizes Schapper for relegating the revolutionary struggle to the distant future.
In 1845, therefore, the German communist movement had arrived at a Hobson's choice: either passive and pacifistic propagandist!! seeking to educate the entire working class, or revolutionary communist messianism, which did not even have the virtue of good military organization. Weitling never organized any unsuccessful putsches, because he was incapable of organizing anything.
In 1845, therefore, the German communist movement had arrived at a Hobson's choice: either passive and pacifistic propagandist!! seeking to educate the entire working class, or revolutionary communist messianism, which did not even have the virtue of good military organization. Weitling never organized any unsuccessful putsches, because he was incapable of organizing anything.
It is at this point that Marx enters the history of the communist movement. And—to sort of give the show away— Marx is important and became a leader because he found a way out of that dilemma, that false counterposition of propaganda and revolutionary action.
Thursday, July 19, 2012
The Latest From The Private Bradley Manning Support Network-Free Bradley Manning Now! -Motion Hearings July 16-20
Click on the headline to link to the Private Bradley Manning Support Network for the latest information on his case and activities on his behalf .
Click on the headline to link to the Private Bradley Manning Support Network for the latest information on his case and activities on his behalf .
*********
We of the anti-war movement were not able to do much to affect the Bush- Obama Iraq war timetable but we can save the one hero of that war, Private Manning. The entry below can serve as a continuing rationale for my (and your) support to this honorbale whistleblower.
From the American Left History Blog, March 28, 2012
Why I Will Be Standing In Solidarity With Private Bradley Manning On Wednesday April 25th - A Personal Note From An Ex-Soldier Political Prisoner
Markin comment:
Last year I wrote a little entry in this space in order to motivate my reasons for standing in solidarity with a March 20th rally in support of Private Manning at the Quantico Marine Base in Virginia where he was then being held. I have subsequently repeatedly used that entry, 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, as a I have tried to publicize his case in blogs and other Internet sources, at various rallies, and at marches, most recently at the Veterans For Peace Saint Patrick’s Day Peace Parade in South Boston on March 18th.
After I received information from the Bradley Manning Support Network about the latest efforts on Private Manning’s behalf scheduled for April 24th and 25th in Washington and Fort Meade respectively I decided that I would travel south to stand once again in proximate solidarity with Brother Manning at Fort Meade on April 25th. In that spirit I have updated, a little, that earlier entry to reflect the changed circumstances over the past year. As one would expect when the cause is still the same, Private Manning's freedom, unfortunately most of the entry is still in the same key. And will be until the day he is freed by his jailers. And I will continue to stand in proud solidarity with Private Manning until that great day.
*****
Of course I will be standing at the front gate to the Fort Meade , Maryland on April 25th 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 they are no crime. No crime at all in my eyes or in the eyes of the vast majority of people who know of the case and of its importance as an individual act of resistance to the unjust and barbaric American-led war in Iraq. 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 cards. American imperialism’s gun-toting house of cards, but cards nevertheless.
Of course I will also be standing at the front gate of Fort Meade, Maryland on April 25th because I am outraged by the treatment meted out to Private Manning, presumably an innocent man, by a government who alleges itself to be some “beacon” of the civilized world. Bradley Manning had been held in solidarity at Quantico and other locales for over 500 days, and has been held without trial for much longer, as the government and its military try to glue a case together. The military, and its henchmen in the Justice Department, have gotten more devious although not smarter since I was a soldier in their crosshairs over forty years ago.
Now the two reasons above are more than sufficient for my standing at the front gate at Fort Meade on April 25th 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 additional reason though, a very pressing personal reason. As mentioned above I too was in the military’s crosshairs as a citizen-soldier during the height of the Vietnam War. I will not go into the details of that episode, this comment after all is about brother 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 get through the tough days inside. So on April 25th I will be just, once again, as I have been able to on too few other occasions over years, paying my dues for that long ago support. You, Brother Manning, are a true winter soldier. We were not able to do much about the course of the Iraq War (and little thus far on Afghanistan) but we can move might and main to save the one real hero of that whole mess.
Private Manning I hope that you will hear us and hear about our rally in your defense outside the gates. 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 high heaven against this gross injustice-Free Private Manning Now!
Click on the headline to link to the Private Bradley Manning Support Network for the latest information on his case and activities on his behalf .
*********
We of the anti-war movement were not able to do much to affect the Bush- Obama Iraq war timetable but we can save the one hero of that war, Private Manning. The entry below can serve as a continuing rationale for my (and your) support to this honorbale whistleblower.
From the American Left History Blog, March 28, 2012
Why I Will Be Standing In Solidarity With Private Bradley Manning On Wednesday April 25th - A Personal Note From An Ex-Soldier Political Prisoner
Markin comment:
Last year I wrote a little entry in this space in order to motivate my reasons for standing in solidarity with a March 20th rally in support of Private Manning at the Quantico Marine Base in Virginia where he was then being held. I have subsequently repeatedly used that entry, 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, as a I have tried to publicize his case in blogs and other Internet sources, at various rallies, and at marches, most recently at the Veterans For Peace Saint Patrick’s Day Peace Parade in South Boston on March 18th.
After I received information from the Bradley Manning Support Network about the latest efforts on Private Manning’s behalf scheduled for April 24th and 25th in Washington and Fort Meade respectively I decided that I would travel south to stand once again in proximate solidarity with Brother Manning at Fort Meade on April 25th. In that spirit I have updated, a little, that earlier entry to reflect the changed circumstances over the past year. As one would expect when the cause is still the same, Private Manning's freedom, unfortunately most of the entry is still in the same key. And will be until the day he is freed by his jailers. And I will continue to stand in proud solidarity with Private Manning until that great day.
*****
Of course I will be standing at the front gate to the Fort Meade , Maryland on April 25th 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 they are no crime. No crime at all in my eyes or in the eyes of the vast majority of people who know of the case and of its importance as an individual act of resistance to the unjust and barbaric American-led war in Iraq. 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 cards. American imperialism’s gun-toting house of cards, but cards nevertheless.
Of course I will also be standing at the front gate of Fort Meade, Maryland on April 25th because I am outraged by the treatment meted out to Private Manning, presumably an innocent man, by a government who alleges itself to be some “beacon” of the civilized world. Bradley Manning had been held in solidarity at Quantico and other locales for over 500 days, and has been held without trial for much longer, as the government and its military try to glue a case together. The military, and its henchmen in the Justice Department, have gotten more devious although not smarter since I was a soldier in their crosshairs over forty years ago.
Now the two reasons above are more than sufficient for my standing at the front gate at Fort Meade on April 25th 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 additional reason though, a very pressing personal reason. As mentioned above I too was in the military’s crosshairs as a citizen-soldier during the height of the Vietnam War. I will not go into the details of that episode, this comment after all is about brother 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 get through the tough days inside. So on April 25th I will be just, once again, as I have been able to on too few other occasions over years, paying my dues for that long ago support. You, Brother Manning, are a true winter soldier. We were not able to do much about the course of the Iraq War (and little thus far on Afghanistan) but we can move might and main to save the one real hero of that whole mess.
Private Manning I hope that you will hear us and hear about our rally in your defense outside the gates. 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 high heaven against this gross injustice-Free Private Manning Now!
From The Boston Globe-Green Party selects Jill Stein for presidential run
Click on the headline to link to the Green Party website for their complete program.
Markin comment:
I place some material in this space which may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. Off hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these entries. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts.
**********
Green Party selects Jill Stein for presidential run
July 15, 2012|Lisa Kocian-Boston Globe
Lexington physician Jill Stein was nominated for president by the Green Party of the United States at its national convention Saturday in Baltimore.
A third-party candidate for governor of Massachusetts in 2002, Stein easily won the Green Party nomination and will appear with running mate Cheri Honkala on ballots in 21 states. Green Party officials said they hope to increase that to 45 states by November.
Stein acknowledged in a phone interview that she is the underdog candidate in the presidential race, but said that her campaign will resonate with Americans who feel that the two-party system is not representing their interests.
“I think we have underdog voters, these days,” said Stein, 62. “We have underdog citizens. The 99% is the underdog. It’s not a bad position to be in.”
She received 193.5 out of 294 delegate votes Saturday, or about 66 percent, to win the nomination. Among Stein’s competitors for the nomination was comedian Roseanne Barr, but by the time of the convention it was clear that Stein would win easily, said Scott McLarty, a media coordinator for the Green Party.
“Dr. Stein, first of all, is enormously intelligent, and she articulates the platform of the Green Party of the United States very well,” McLarty said in a phone interview from the convention Saturday. “The United States desperately needs another party. We need a party that represents Main Street instead of Wall Street.”
This is the first time a Green candidate has qualified for federal matching funds, said McLarty. The party first gained federal recognition in 2001.
Stein supports the party’s Green New Deal, which outlines ideas to “create 25 million jobs, end unemployment, and transition the country to a green economy,” according to her website.
“The proposal also guarantees a halt to foreclosures and evictions, tuition-free public education from preschool through college, and Medicare for all, and an end to corporate domination of democracy,” according to her website.
Stein said she plans on running a traditional campaign, traveling around the country talking to voters. While her campaign does not have money to buy major television spots, she said, she will use social media to help draw Americans disenchanted with the current state of politics.
“The message is propagating itself,” she said. “People are very hungry for what we are talking about. They’re coming to find us.”
Stein won 3 percent of the vote when she ran for governor in 2002 against eventual winner Mitt Romney, now the Republican Party’s nominee for president. She ran as the Green-Rainbow candidate for state representative in 2004, and for secretary of state in 2006.
Honkala is an antipoverty activist who serves as national coordinator for the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign, according to Stein’s website.
McLarty rejected the notion that Stein could be a spoiler by siphoning votes from President Obama this November. “We are unable to take any votes away from Mr. Obama, because Mr. Obama doesn’t own any votes but his own,” said McLarty. “It’s important we break away from this two-party system.’’
Markin comment:
I place some material in this space which may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. Off hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these entries. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts.
**********
Green Party selects Jill Stein for presidential run
July 15, 2012|Lisa Kocian-Boston Globe
Lexington physician Jill Stein was nominated for president by the Green Party of the United States at its national convention Saturday in Baltimore.
A third-party candidate for governor of Massachusetts in 2002, Stein easily won the Green Party nomination and will appear with running mate Cheri Honkala on ballots in 21 states. Green Party officials said they hope to increase that to 45 states by November.
Stein acknowledged in a phone interview that she is the underdog candidate in the presidential race, but said that her campaign will resonate with Americans who feel that the two-party system is not representing their interests.
“I think we have underdog voters, these days,” said Stein, 62. “We have underdog citizens. The 99% is the underdog. It’s not a bad position to be in.”
She received 193.5 out of 294 delegate votes Saturday, or about 66 percent, to win the nomination. Among Stein’s competitors for the nomination was comedian Roseanne Barr, but by the time of the convention it was clear that Stein would win easily, said Scott McLarty, a media coordinator for the Green Party.
“Dr. Stein, first of all, is enormously intelligent, and she articulates the platform of the Green Party of the United States very well,” McLarty said in a phone interview from the convention Saturday. “The United States desperately needs another party. We need a party that represents Main Street instead of Wall Street.”
This is the first time a Green candidate has qualified for federal matching funds, said McLarty. The party first gained federal recognition in 2001.
Stein supports the party’s Green New Deal, which outlines ideas to “create 25 million jobs, end unemployment, and transition the country to a green economy,” according to her website.
“The proposal also guarantees a halt to foreclosures and evictions, tuition-free public education from preschool through college, and Medicare for all, and an end to corporate domination of democracy,” according to her website.
Stein said she plans on running a traditional campaign, traveling around the country talking to voters. While her campaign does not have money to buy major television spots, she said, she will use social media to help draw Americans disenchanted with the current state of politics.
“The message is propagating itself,” she said. “People are very hungry for what we are talking about. They’re coming to find us.”
Stein won 3 percent of the vote when she ran for governor in 2002 against eventual winner Mitt Romney, now the Republican Party’s nominee for president. She ran as the Green-Rainbow candidate for state representative in 2004, and for secretary of state in 2006.
Honkala is an antipoverty activist who serves as national coordinator for the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign, according to Stein’s website.
McLarty rejected the notion that Stein could be a spoiler by siphoning votes from President Obama this November. “We are unable to take any votes away from Mr. Obama, because Mr. Obama doesn’t own any votes but his own,” said McLarty. “It’s important we break away from this two-party system.’’
From The Jazz Archives-"Jazz's Secret Hotspot"-Lenox's Music Inn
Click on the headline to link to a Boston Sunday Globe article, dated July 8, 2012 entitled Jazz's Secret Hotspot.
Markin comment from the American Left History blog:
When The Jazz Age Was In Full Bloom- Duke Ellington At Harlem’s Cotton Club
CD Review
Jungle Nights In Harlem, Duke Ellington and his Cotton Club Orchestra: 1927-1933, Bluebird, 1991
As I have mentioned in previous reviews of various classical jazz artists I came to an appreciation of that musical art from one source, and one source only- Lady Day, Billie Holiday. Along the way I started to get interested in her various back-up musicians which led me to the likes of Lester Young, Johnny Hodges, Artie Shaw and others. And, of course, when you get to Johnny Hodges you naturally have to think of the Duke- Ellington that is. And there you have it, except, that I doubled, no I tripled, my appreciation of the Duke around the time of the centenary of his birthday in 1999.
And I was not wrong to do so, although the CD under review falls more into a piece of jazz history, black musical history, Jazz Age history, Harlem history and, most importantly, Cotton Club history than a source of understanding his huge place in the jazz pantheon. For those unfamiliar with that New York City venue, the Cotton Club, that is the place when all the jazz greats of the 1920s and 1930s aspired to perform- and whites, at least certain whites like those rich ones that the author F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote about, went to “kick up their heels”, “get their kicks”, and, maybe, get “kicked” away from the downtown squares. And Duke and his orchestra (including the aforementioned Johnny Hodges, Barney Bigard, Harry Carney, and Cootie Williams among others) was the most serious feature in those days. Wouldn’t you pay big money, and gladly, to hear that sound in those surroundings? I think so.
Now, just a note for history's sake, or for the sake of a nod to political correctness. The term “jungle music” has always, as far as I know, had negative connotations about black music or black-related music like rock and roll, and still does. But, my friends, these were the terms of usage for what was going on then so accept it as a piece of history. But, also know this: do not miss out on a piece of our common history, jazz, racial, and social by missing Duke and the guys performing “Mood Indigo”, “Black and Tan Fantasy”, or “The Duke Steps Out” and the others here.
Markin comment from the American Left History blog:
When The Jazz Age Was In Full Bloom- Duke Ellington At Harlem’s Cotton Club
CD Review
Jungle Nights In Harlem, Duke Ellington and his Cotton Club Orchestra: 1927-1933, Bluebird, 1991
As I have mentioned in previous reviews of various classical jazz artists I came to an appreciation of that musical art from one source, and one source only- Lady Day, Billie Holiday. Along the way I started to get interested in her various back-up musicians which led me to the likes of Lester Young, Johnny Hodges, Artie Shaw and others. And, of course, when you get to Johnny Hodges you naturally have to think of the Duke- Ellington that is. And there you have it, except, that I doubled, no I tripled, my appreciation of the Duke around the time of the centenary of his birthday in 1999.
And I was not wrong to do so, although the CD under review falls more into a piece of jazz history, black musical history, Jazz Age history, Harlem history and, most importantly, Cotton Club history than a source of understanding his huge place in the jazz pantheon. For those unfamiliar with that New York City venue, the Cotton Club, that is the place when all the jazz greats of the 1920s and 1930s aspired to perform- and whites, at least certain whites like those rich ones that the author F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote about, went to “kick up their heels”, “get their kicks”, and, maybe, get “kicked” away from the downtown squares. And Duke and his orchestra (including the aforementioned Johnny Hodges, Barney Bigard, Harry Carney, and Cootie Williams among others) was the most serious feature in those days. Wouldn’t you pay big money, and gladly, to hear that sound in those surroundings? I think so.
Now, just a note for history's sake, or for the sake of a nod to political correctness. The term “jungle music” has always, as far as I know, had negative connotations about black music or black-related music like rock and roll, and still does. But, my friends, these were the terms of usage for what was going on then so accept it as a piece of history. But, also know this: do not miss out on a piece of our common history, jazz, racial, and social by missing Duke and the guys performing “Mood Indigo”, “Black and Tan Fantasy”, or “The Duke Steps Out” and the others here.
From The Archives-The Struggle To Win The Youth To The Fight For Our Communist Future-Marxism And The Jacobin Communist Tradition-Part Three-"Chartism" (Young Spartacus-April 1976)
Markin comment on this series:
One of the declared purposes of this space is to draw the lessons of our left-wing past here in America and internationally, especially from the pro-communist wing. To that end I have made commentaries and provided archival works in order to help draw those lessons for today’s left-wing activists to learn, or at least ponder over. More importantly, for the long haul, to help educate today’s youth in the struggle for our common communist future. That is no small task or easy task given the differences of generations; differences of political milieus worked in; differences of social structure to work around; and, increasingly more important, the differences in appreciation of technological advances, and their uses.
There is no question that back in my youth I could have used, desperately used, many of the archival materials available today. When I developed political consciousness very early on, albeit liberal political consciousness, I could have used this material as I knew, I knew deep inside my heart and mind, that a junior Cold War liberal of the American for Democratic Action (ADA) stripe was not the end of my leftward political trajectory. More importantly, I could have used a socialist or communist youth organization to help me articulate the doubts I had about the virtues of liberal capitalism and be recruited to a more left-wing world view.
As it was I spent far too long in the throes of the left-liberal/soft social-democratic milieu where I was dying politically. A group like the Young Communist League (W.E.B. Dubois Clubs in those days), the Young People’s Socialist League, or the Young Socialist Alliance representing the youth organizations of the American Communist Party, American Socialist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S.) respectively would have saved much wasted time and energy. I knew they were around but just not in my area.
The archival material to be used in this series is weighted heavily toward the youth movements of the early American Communist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S). For more recent material I have relied on material from the Spartacus Youth Clubs, the youth group of the Spartacist League (U.S.), both because they are more readily available to me and because, and this should give cause for pause, there are not many other non-CP, non-SWP youth groups around. As I gather more material from other youth sources I will place them in this series.
Finally I would like to finish up with the preamble to the Spartacist Youth Club’s What We Fight For statement of purpose for educational purposes only:
"The Spartacus Youth Clubs intervene into social struggles armed with the revolutionary internationalist program of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. We work to mobilize youth in struggle as partisans of the working class, championing the liberation of black people, women and all the oppressed. The SYCs fight to win youth to the perspective of building the Leninist vanguard party that will lead the working class in socialist revolution, laying the basis for a world free of capitalist exploitation and imperialist slaughter."
This seems to me be somewhere in the right direction for what a Bolshevik youth group should be doing these days; a proving ground to become professional revolutionaries with enough wiggle room to learn from their mistakes, and successes. More later.
***********
Marxism And The Jacobin Communist Tradition-Part Three-"Chartism" (Young Spartacus-April 1976)
By Joseph Seymour
EDITOR'S NOTE: In this series Young Spartacus has made available for our readers a presentation on the origins of Marxism given by Joseph Seymour, a Central Committee member of the Spartacist League, at the Spartacus Youth League West Coast educational conference held in Berkeley during January. The talk, "Marxism and the Jacobin Communist Tradition," attempts to debunk the academic/New Left emphasis on Marxism as a self-contained derivation from Hegelian philosophy. Comrade Seymour demonstrates the decisive influence of the experiences, programs and world-views of two preceding generations of revolutionary militants who struggled to fuse the bourgeois-democratic revolution with an egalitarian collectivist social order.
We have serialized the presentation in three parts. The first part discussed the Great French Revolution and the legacy of its insurrectionary and most radical wing maintained by the revolutionaries Babeuf and Buonarroti. The second installment analyzed the Carbonari conspiracy, the French revolution of 1830 and the continuity of insurrectionary communism; Blanquism. Like the first two parts, this concluding section on British Chartism follows this verbal presentation with only minimum editorial alterations.
********
In the literature on the origins of Marxism the element which I believe is most unappreciated, most misunderstood and most neglected is the shaping impact of the British working-class movement. For it was not the French but the British working class which had forged the most class-conscious and mass revolutionary organizations.
Without his assimilation of the British experience, through his close collaboration with the leaders of Chartism and Engels, Marx could not have learned what is essential in Marxism: the centrality of the mass organizations of the proletariat, the importance of the industrial revolution, the significance of the industrial proletariat. Simply on the basis of the German and French experience Marx could not have transcended a more sober version of Blanquism.
In British Chartism, and only in Chartism, there was a mass, national organization of the proletariat with a revolutionary thrust. At that time the French proletariat remained insufficiently differentiated from the bourgeois-democratic revolutionary movement as a whole. While less selfconsciously world historic than French communism, British Chartism nevertheless was far more class conscious, far more proletarian and far more massive in character. In this sense, Chartism was a more advanced political movement.
The bourgeois-democratic revolution eclipsed
The British revolutionary movement partially parallels but also sharply contrasts with the French. I will emphasize the contrasts, for they provide the complement which represents the
synthesis of 1840's Marxism.
In the early nineteenth century France was not a feudal society, although a feudal order did control the state apparatus. The French plebeian masses and revolutionary petty-bourgeoisie tended to be organized from the top down by a bourgeoisie prepared to engage in insurrection against the feudal state apparatus, provided they could control the struggle.
But in Britain, since the bourgeois-democratic revolution had occurred early on, there was at this time no feudal order. Rather, the state apparatus was controlled by a landed capitalist class which came into conflict with the rising industrial and commercial class. Given the existence of a semblance of representative government, the tendencies toward bourgeois-democratic revolution after the seventeenth century were muted, except for the one brief crisis in the years 1831-32. From its inception the British bourgeois-democratic revolutionary movement was plebeian. Whereas in France one had a tendency for generals without armies, in Britain the tendency was for armies without generals.
In the early nineteenth century the British working-class movement was characterized by geographical dispersion and a lack of a centralized national organization. But there was a richness, solidity and depth in local organizations which manifested a complete interpenetration of economic and political tasks. In this period the "trade union" was as much an instrument for insurrectionary action as for elementary wage struggles. And in Luddism it was both. The British working class could go from straight trade unionism to cooperativism to democratic agitation to insurrection within the same organizational framework. There was no conception that the organizations of the working class had two purposes— one aimed at the state, the other at the employer. That's a post-1848 phenomenon.
In Britain, unlike France, the revolutionary plebeian masses were dispersed. Since the French bourgeoisie had not yet shed its revolutionary role, Paris was a revolutionary city, as well as a manufacturing city, in a sense that London was not. The British pre-industrial proletariat to a great extent constituted the rural weavers all across northern England—the Lyons silk-weavers writ large. So London was conservative, while the centers of revolution were the small impoverished weaving villages, the mining towns in Wales and Scotland, and the early manufacturing centers like Manchester.
Owenism and the 1832 crisis
During the 1820's the British trade unionists en masse embraced Owenism. A pacifist socialist doctrine, Owenism played in the British context the same role as Saint Simonism in France.
Yet in many respects Owenism was its polar opposite. Saint Simonism was technocratic state socialism which appealed to the democratic intelligentsia. Owenism represented cooperativism which appealed to artisans who were being ruined by the industrial revolution. But this combination of cooperativism and trade unionism was the ideological form and movement by which the British proletariat in its mass came to socialist consciousness.
In 1831-32, partly under the influence of the French revolution of 1830, the British liberal bourgeoisie, with its base in the industrial and commercial classes, was prepared to threaten insurrection to achieve parliamentary reform and topple the parasitic state apparatus. In contrast to France, the workers movement was sufficiently developed that although it, of course, allied with the British liberal bourgeoisie, it did so through its own independent class organizations. All the Owenite socialist trade unionists formed the National Union of the Working Classes as primarily an organization for agitation in favor of universal suffrage. So, the alliance with the bourgeoisie maintained a clear class line.
The period 1831-32 was the only point in modern British history when a bourgeois-democratic revolution might have been possible. Had the Duke of Wellington prevailed, Britain probably would have been shaken by a revolution on an even more radical scale than the 1848 French revolution. But the British landed class lost its nerve and capitulated; they extended the franchise, eliminated the rotten boroughs and gave power to the Whigs, the party of the industrial and commercial classes.
So the bourgeoisie betrayed their proletarian allies, just as the French bourgeoisie led by Lafayette had done in 1830. The franchise which they accepted extended the electorate to little more than ten percent, totally excluding the mass of the proletariat.
This was a great betrayal and was generally recognized as such at the time. In fact, the most advanced elements in the British movement compared the Whigs to the Lafayetteists in France. This was a great blow to the working-class movement. It took about five years for the British working class to regroup, recover and again agitate for universal suffrage.
The movement against the new poor law
The new regime, while liberal in its slight expansion of the franchise and freedoms of expression, pursued directly anti-proletarian laissez faire economic policies. The first measure of the government as a result of the Reform Act was to smash the trade unions and to revoke the "poor laws." Administered by the Anglican Church, "poor law" relief was a form of welfare for those who could not support themselves, an institution going back to Tudor times.
The origin of Chartism as a revolutionary movement lies in the mass
agitation against the new "poor law" legislation, which required recipients
to live sexually segregated in virtue prisons—an 1834 version of force sterilization. The attitude of the British working masses was defiance: "If the government attempts this, we will fight to the death." The mass movement against the "poor law" swept the nor them weaving villages, not when the "poor law" was passed, but a few years later, when Britain entered a severe depression and the masses were appealing for welfare relief.
The early leader of the movement against the new laws, interesting! was not an Owenite but a traditional Methodist minister named J.R. Steven He opposed the elimination of the "po< laws" not in the name of progress b from the traditions of Tory radicalisr "How can you do this to the people England? These laws have stood fi 300 years!" Listen to a typical fire-breathing speech by J.R. Stevens 1839:
"Men of Norwich, fight with your swords, fight with your pistols, fight with your daggers. Women, fight with your nails and teeth [a traditional!! male chauvinist was he, indeed!]. Hu bands and wives, brothers and sister we will war to the knife, so help r God."
—quoted in Mark Hovell,The Chartist Movement
J.R. Stevens was arrested, yet the anti-"poor law" agitation was successful. The regime retreated and never instituted the new "poor law,” although the legislation was not formal repealed.
Contradictions of Chartism
In 1839 the anti-"poor law" movement intersected another, very different political movement. The London labor aristocracy, which had formed the leadership of the National Union of the Working Classes, reconstituted itself as the London Workingmen's Association to propagandize for universal suffrage. While based on a six-point democratic Charter, the London Workingmen's Association restricted its membership to workers. When the violently insurrectionary but defensive "poor law" mass movement was deflected into this movement for universal suffrage and democratic electoral reforms, this intersection produced Chartism.
Chartism embodied a tension which paralleled Blanquism, although in an inverse fashion. Blanquism was based on a communist program, while remaining within the political compass of the bourgeois-democratic revolution. Chartism based itself on a bourgeois-democratic program, while representing a purely proletarian, insurrectionary movement.
The stated program of Chartism was not different from English bourgeois radicalism. But its working-class forms of organization, its ulterior socialist program and the violent tone of its propaganda repelled the liberal bourgeoisie. Here is an example of typical Chartist propaganda:
"But though the employment of physical force is as remote as possible from our wishes, the time may come, may perhaps be near, in which the defense of all that is dear to us will compel us to have recourse to it. If our rights as citizens and as men are threatened to be eternally withdrawn from us, if the burden of the nations are always to be disproportionally thrown upon the working classes while property is suffered to remain untaxed, if we are evermore forbidden to purchase our bread in the cheapest market, if a knot of poor law commissioners is always to treat poverty as a crime and to cut asunder the marriage tie, if our addresses to the legislature continue to be visited with contempt and the hope of redress becomes extinguished in our bosoms, then, sir, we honestly tell you we do not mean to submit. On the heads of our oppressors be the guilt and the consequences."
—quoted in Dorothy Thompson, The Early Chartists
Although Chartism had a straightforward democratic program, which even sections of the liberal bourgeoisie could accept, they were not prepared to associate with this kind of propaganda and movement. This was the fundamental contradiction in Chartism: it was a working-class movement with an insurrectionary thrust and an ulterior "levelling11 program, taut with a strictly bourgeois-democratic formal program.
The revolutionary climax: 1839-42
Within Chartism there were four main tendencies. The extreme left were London-based Jacobin communists, led by Bronterre O'Brien, who had translated Buonarroti's work on Babeuf, George Julian Harney and Dr. John Taylor, who had fought with Byron in Greece. They were intensely internationalist and steeped in the French revolutionary tradition. They were reinforced by a group of emigres from the Polish national revolution of 1830, who throughout this period played the role of a revolutionizing and internationalizing factor.
The Chartist masses in the weaving villages of the north were originally organized by Tory radicals like J.R. Stevens. However, this constituency was captured by an Irish nationalist demagogue, named-Feargus O'Connor, who eventually went insane and who displayed • irrationality even in this period.
The right wing of the Chartist movement was based on the London labor aristocracy, which produced quality consumer goods for the wealthy bourgeois market. This wing of the movement was led by William Lovett, who was the original leader of Chartism.
Chartism also had a radical bourgeois appendage, standing outside the workers movement, led by a funny-money crank named Thomas Atwood. He was a banker who argued, "We'll eradicate poverty, unemployment, everything. All we have to do is print more money."
In 1839 the Chartists led a mass campaign to petition parliament. The Chartists convened a series of democratic mass meetings and elected the General Convention of the Industrious Classes, which was the first national, inclusive body with all tendencies, with the proletariat represented more or less in proportion to their strength at the base level.
As it became more and more certain that the petition was going to be rejected, as the hour approached, the Convention faced the question, "What to do next?" The Jacobin communists like Harney and O'Brien began making speeches in favor of insurrection. In response, the bourgeois component split from the Convention.
Significantly, Lovett and the labor aristocracy remained in the Convention to the end. In fact, when Dr. John Taylor, Lovett's main factional opponent, was arrested for agitation, Lovett took the lead in defending him, thereby provoking his own arrest. This strikingly demonstrates the intense class solidarity of Chartism.
A revolutionary crisis had opened. But this crisis was defused by the absence of leadership in the Convention as well as by the competent leadership of the liberal government.
The Convention vacillated. First they voted to call a general strike if the petition was rejected. The very next day, however, they voted to rescind the call for a general strike. Then they voted to undertake a series of economic measures, such as boycotting taxed goods and withholding certain tax payments. But since their constituency was largely unemployed and appealing for welfare under the poor laws, such measures could not be effective. These were weapons suitable to bourgeois radicals, but not to the workers movement.
After the rejection of the petition, the enormous mobilizations and expectations raised by the Convention dissipated in a series of isolated skirmishes and uncoordinated attempts at insurrection. The Jacobin Chartists with the Polish exiled revolutionaries evidently plotted an insurrection but were incapable of mustering the forces and support.
I believe that in 1839 there was the possibility of an uprising like the
Lyons silk weavers' insurrection, but raised to the tenth power. If the government had committed an atrocity, mass violence would certainly have erupted. Of course, there was no possibility of a proletarian revolution in 1839. But there could have been amass proletarian upheaval.
Now, working-class history all too often is discussed in terms of "maturity" and "immaturity." Such terms have an organic, unconscious connotation-the workers movement simply develops automatically. This abstracts from the crucial mechanisms through which historical experiences are transmitted from one proletarian generation to the next.
But in dealing with Chartism in 1839 I believe that the failure of the movement genuinely reflects the "immaturity" of the British working-class movement. Chartism at this time represented the first mass, national working-class movement encompassing all the proletarian tendencies. In the absence of an evolved leadership, and the kinds of historical experiences to produce that leadership, the Chartist* movement could not have generated simply through factional struggle a more competent and capable leadership. Chartism foundered through the several-sided "immaturity" of the working class, not a crisis of leadership in the sense that this is applicable to the present working-class movement.
Revolutionary continuity
In 1842 Chartism passed through another revolutionary climax, which I cannot delve into during this talk. After 1842 the main leadership of Chartism around O'Connor, an unstable and irrational man, attempted to turn the movement into cooperativism. His so-called Chartist land plan involved purchasing land and swindling; finally, O'Connor went bankrupt.
But the left wing of Chartism led by Julian Harney reacted to the defeat in 1842 by turning in a very different direction, a response which contains useful lessons for us today.
Harney realized that after the defeats of 1839 and 1842, the latter quite bloody, the British workers movement was in a depression. Yet Chartism retained its mass following and very considerable organizational resources.
Harney realized that revolutionary upheavals were imminent throughout Europe. Moreover, London was a major center for French, German, Italian and Polish revolutionary exiles. So, Harney devoted his main energies inthe!840's toward these circles and toward revolution in Metternichean Europe, turning his great Chartist newspaper, The Northern Star, into the most internationalist working-class press of its day.
I'll conclude this presentation with an anecdote. But the anecdote illustrates the theme of this entire series of talks: that Marxism originated not as a self-contained derivation from Hegelian philosophy, but required an assimilation of the experiences and programs of the previous generations of revolutionary militants who sought to fuse the bourgeois-democratic revolution with a collectivist social order.
Friedrich Engels at the age of 23 was sent from the University of Berlin to Manchester to learn business at one of his father's factories. Being a Utopian socialist Engels first associated himself with the Owenites and contributed to the Owenite press, the New Moral World.
Soon Engels visited Julian Harney in London. Engels explained German True Socialism and described the Hegelian Left, but Harney comprehended very little. Then Engels declared that history had already demonstrated that the bourgeoisie was no longer progressive, that the working class was progressive, and that once the bourgeoisie could be convinced of this they would relinquish power to the proletariat.
Harney, with ten years as a working-class agitator and numerous imprisonments, looked up at him. And he said, "Nonsense.' We're going to have to throw them out.1" The educators too must be educated.
One of the declared purposes of this space is to draw the lessons of our left-wing past here in America and internationally, especially from the pro-communist wing. To that end I have made commentaries and provided archival works in order to help draw those lessons for today’s left-wing activists to learn, or at least ponder over. More importantly, for the long haul, to help educate today’s youth in the struggle for our common communist future. That is no small task or easy task given the differences of generations; differences of political milieus worked in; differences of social structure to work around; and, increasingly more important, the differences in appreciation of technological advances, and their uses.
There is no question that back in my youth I could have used, desperately used, many of the archival materials available today. When I developed political consciousness very early on, albeit liberal political consciousness, I could have used this material as I knew, I knew deep inside my heart and mind, that a junior Cold War liberal of the American for Democratic Action (ADA) stripe was not the end of my leftward political trajectory. More importantly, I could have used a socialist or communist youth organization to help me articulate the doubts I had about the virtues of liberal capitalism and be recruited to a more left-wing world view.
As it was I spent far too long in the throes of the left-liberal/soft social-democratic milieu where I was dying politically. A group like the Young Communist League (W.E.B. Dubois Clubs in those days), the Young People’s Socialist League, or the Young Socialist Alliance representing the youth organizations of the American Communist Party, American Socialist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S.) respectively would have saved much wasted time and energy. I knew they were around but just not in my area.
The archival material to be used in this series is weighted heavily toward the youth movements of the early American Communist Party and the Socialist Workers Party (U.S). For more recent material I have relied on material from the Spartacus Youth Clubs, the youth group of the Spartacist League (U.S.), both because they are more readily available to me and because, and this should give cause for pause, there are not many other non-CP, non-SWP youth groups around. As I gather more material from other youth sources I will place them in this series.
Finally I would like to finish up with the preamble to the Spartacist Youth Club’s What We Fight For statement of purpose for educational purposes only:
"The Spartacus Youth Clubs intervene into social struggles armed with the revolutionary internationalist program of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. We work to mobilize youth in struggle as partisans of the working class, championing the liberation of black people, women and all the oppressed. The SYCs fight to win youth to the perspective of building the Leninist vanguard party that will lead the working class in socialist revolution, laying the basis for a world free of capitalist exploitation and imperialist slaughter."
This seems to me be somewhere in the right direction for what a Bolshevik youth group should be doing these days; a proving ground to become professional revolutionaries with enough wiggle room to learn from their mistakes, and successes. More later.
***********
Marxism And The Jacobin Communist Tradition-Part Three-"Chartism" (Young Spartacus-April 1976)
By Joseph Seymour
EDITOR'S NOTE: In this series Young Spartacus has made available for our readers a presentation on the origins of Marxism given by Joseph Seymour, a Central Committee member of the Spartacist League, at the Spartacus Youth League West Coast educational conference held in Berkeley during January. The talk, "Marxism and the Jacobin Communist Tradition," attempts to debunk the academic/New Left emphasis on Marxism as a self-contained derivation from Hegelian philosophy. Comrade Seymour demonstrates the decisive influence of the experiences, programs and world-views of two preceding generations of revolutionary militants who struggled to fuse the bourgeois-democratic revolution with an egalitarian collectivist social order.
We have serialized the presentation in three parts. The first part discussed the Great French Revolution and the legacy of its insurrectionary and most radical wing maintained by the revolutionaries Babeuf and Buonarroti. The second installment analyzed the Carbonari conspiracy, the French revolution of 1830 and the continuity of insurrectionary communism; Blanquism. Like the first two parts, this concluding section on British Chartism follows this verbal presentation with only minimum editorial alterations.
********
In the literature on the origins of Marxism the element which I believe is most unappreciated, most misunderstood and most neglected is the shaping impact of the British working-class movement. For it was not the French but the British working class which had forged the most class-conscious and mass revolutionary organizations.
Without his assimilation of the British experience, through his close collaboration with the leaders of Chartism and Engels, Marx could not have learned what is essential in Marxism: the centrality of the mass organizations of the proletariat, the importance of the industrial revolution, the significance of the industrial proletariat. Simply on the basis of the German and French experience Marx could not have transcended a more sober version of Blanquism.
In British Chartism, and only in Chartism, there was a mass, national organization of the proletariat with a revolutionary thrust. At that time the French proletariat remained insufficiently differentiated from the bourgeois-democratic revolutionary movement as a whole. While less selfconsciously world historic than French communism, British Chartism nevertheless was far more class conscious, far more proletarian and far more massive in character. In this sense, Chartism was a more advanced political movement.
The bourgeois-democratic revolution eclipsed
The British revolutionary movement partially parallels but also sharply contrasts with the French. I will emphasize the contrasts, for they provide the complement which represents the
synthesis of 1840's Marxism.
In the early nineteenth century France was not a feudal society, although a feudal order did control the state apparatus. The French plebeian masses and revolutionary petty-bourgeoisie tended to be organized from the top down by a bourgeoisie prepared to engage in insurrection against the feudal state apparatus, provided they could control the struggle.
But in Britain, since the bourgeois-democratic revolution had occurred early on, there was at this time no feudal order. Rather, the state apparatus was controlled by a landed capitalist class which came into conflict with the rising industrial and commercial class. Given the existence of a semblance of representative government, the tendencies toward bourgeois-democratic revolution after the seventeenth century were muted, except for the one brief crisis in the years 1831-32. From its inception the British bourgeois-democratic revolutionary movement was plebeian. Whereas in France one had a tendency for generals without armies, in Britain the tendency was for armies without generals.
In the early nineteenth century the British working-class movement was characterized by geographical dispersion and a lack of a centralized national organization. But there was a richness, solidity and depth in local organizations which manifested a complete interpenetration of economic and political tasks. In this period the "trade union" was as much an instrument for insurrectionary action as for elementary wage struggles. And in Luddism it was both. The British working class could go from straight trade unionism to cooperativism to democratic agitation to insurrection within the same organizational framework. There was no conception that the organizations of the working class had two purposes— one aimed at the state, the other at the employer. That's a post-1848 phenomenon.
In Britain, unlike France, the revolutionary plebeian masses were dispersed. Since the French bourgeoisie had not yet shed its revolutionary role, Paris was a revolutionary city, as well as a manufacturing city, in a sense that London was not. The British pre-industrial proletariat to a great extent constituted the rural weavers all across northern England—the Lyons silk-weavers writ large. So London was conservative, while the centers of revolution were the small impoverished weaving villages, the mining towns in Wales and Scotland, and the early manufacturing centers like Manchester.
Owenism and the 1832 crisis
During the 1820's the British trade unionists en masse embraced Owenism. A pacifist socialist doctrine, Owenism played in the British context the same role as Saint Simonism in France.
Yet in many respects Owenism was its polar opposite. Saint Simonism was technocratic state socialism which appealed to the democratic intelligentsia. Owenism represented cooperativism which appealed to artisans who were being ruined by the industrial revolution. But this combination of cooperativism and trade unionism was the ideological form and movement by which the British proletariat in its mass came to socialist consciousness.
In 1831-32, partly under the influence of the French revolution of 1830, the British liberal bourgeoisie, with its base in the industrial and commercial classes, was prepared to threaten insurrection to achieve parliamentary reform and topple the parasitic state apparatus. In contrast to France, the workers movement was sufficiently developed that although it, of course, allied with the British liberal bourgeoisie, it did so through its own independent class organizations. All the Owenite socialist trade unionists formed the National Union of the Working Classes as primarily an organization for agitation in favor of universal suffrage. So, the alliance with the bourgeoisie maintained a clear class line.
The period 1831-32 was the only point in modern British history when a bourgeois-democratic revolution might have been possible. Had the Duke of Wellington prevailed, Britain probably would have been shaken by a revolution on an even more radical scale than the 1848 French revolution. But the British landed class lost its nerve and capitulated; they extended the franchise, eliminated the rotten boroughs and gave power to the Whigs, the party of the industrial and commercial classes.
So the bourgeoisie betrayed their proletarian allies, just as the French bourgeoisie led by Lafayette had done in 1830. The franchise which they accepted extended the electorate to little more than ten percent, totally excluding the mass of the proletariat.
This was a great betrayal and was generally recognized as such at the time. In fact, the most advanced elements in the British movement compared the Whigs to the Lafayetteists in France. This was a great blow to the working-class movement. It took about five years for the British working class to regroup, recover and again agitate for universal suffrage.
The movement against the new poor law
The new regime, while liberal in its slight expansion of the franchise and freedoms of expression, pursued directly anti-proletarian laissez faire economic policies. The first measure of the government as a result of the Reform Act was to smash the trade unions and to revoke the "poor laws." Administered by the Anglican Church, "poor law" relief was a form of welfare for those who could not support themselves, an institution going back to Tudor times.
The origin of Chartism as a revolutionary movement lies in the mass
agitation against the new "poor law" legislation, which required recipients
to live sexually segregated in virtue prisons—an 1834 version of force sterilization. The attitude of the British working masses was defiance: "If the government attempts this, we will fight to the death." The mass movement against the "poor law" swept the nor them weaving villages, not when the "poor law" was passed, but a few years later, when Britain entered a severe depression and the masses were appealing for welfare relief.
The early leader of the movement against the new laws, interesting! was not an Owenite but a traditional Methodist minister named J.R. Steven He opposed the elimination of the "po< laws" not in the name of progress b from the traditions of Tory radicalisr "How can you do this to the people England? These laws have stood fi 300 years!" Listen to a typical fire-breathing speech by J.R. Stevens 1839:
"Men of Norwich, fight with your swords, fight with your pistols, fight with your daggers. Women, fight with your nails and teeth [a traditional!! male chauvinist was he, indeed!]. Hu bands and wives, brothers and sister we will war to the knife, so help r God."
—quoted in Mark Hovell,The Chartist Movement
J.R. Stevens was arrested, yet the anti-"poor law" agitation was successful. The regime retreated and never instituted the new "poor law,” although the legislation was not formal repealed.
Contradictions of Chartism
In 1839 the anti-"poor law" movement intersected another, very different political movement. The London labor aristocracy, which had formed the leadership of the National Union of the Working Classes, reconstituted itself as the London Workingmen's Association to propagandize for universal suffrage. While based on a six-point democratic Charter, the London Workingmen's Association restricted its membership to workers. When the violently insurrectionary but defensive "poor law" mass movement was deflected into this movement for universal suffrage and democratic electoral reforms, this intersection produced Chartism.
Chartism embodied a tension which paralleled Blanquism, although in an inverse fashion. Blanquism was based on a communist program, while remaining within the political compass of the bourgeois-democratic revolution. Chartism based itself on a bourgeois-democratic program, while representing a purely proletarian, insurrectionary movement.
The stated program of Chartism was not different from English bourgeois radicalism. But its working-class forms of organization, its ulterior socialist program and the violent tone of its propaganda repelled the liberal bourgeoisie. Here is an example of typical Chartist propaganda:
"But though the employment of physical force is as remote as possible from our wishes, the time may come, may perhaps be near, in which the defense of all that is dear to us will compel us to have recourse to it. If our rights as citizens and as men are threatened to be eternally withdrawn from us, if the burden of the nations are always to be disproportionally thrown upon the working classes while property is suffered to remain untaxed, if we are evermore forbidden to purchase our bread in the cheapest market, if a knot of poor law commissioners is always to treat poverty as a crime and to cut asunder the marriage tie, if our addresses to the legislature continue to be visited with contempt and the hope of redress becomes extinguished in our bosoms, then, sir, we honestly tell you we do not mean to submit. On the heads of our oppressors be the guilt and the consequences."
—quoted in Dorothy Thompson, The Early Chartists
Although Chartism had a straightforward democratic program, which even sections of the liberal bourgeoisie could accept, they were not prepared to associate with this kind of propaganda and movement. This was the fundamental contradiction in Chartism: it was a working-class movement with an insurrectionary thrust and an ulterior "levelling11 program, taut with a strictly bourgeois-democratic formal program.
The revolutionary climax: 1839-42
Within Chartism there were four main tendencies. The extreme left were London-based Jacobin communists, led by Bronterre O'Brien, who had translated Buonarroti's work on Babeuf, George Julian Harney and Dr. John Taylor, who had fought with Byron in Greece. They were intensely internationalist and steeped in the French revolutionary tradition. They were reinforced by a group of emigres from the Polish national revolution of 1830, who throughout this period played the role of a revolutionizing and internationalizing factor.
The Chartist masses in the weaving villages of the north were originally organized by Tory radicals like J.R. Stevens. However, this constituency was captured by an Irish nationalist demagogue, named-Feargus O'Connor, who eventually went insane and who displayed • irrationality even in this period.
The right wing of the Chartist movement was based on the London labor aristocracy, which produced quality consumer goods for the wealthy bourgeois market. This wing of the movement was led by William Lovett, who was the original leader of Chartism.
Chartism also had a radical bourgeois appendage, standing outside the workers movement, led by a funny-money crank named Thomas Atwood. He was a banker who argued, "We'll eradicate poverty, unemployment, everything. All we have to do is print more money."
In 1839 the Chartists led a mass campaign to petition parliament. The Chartists convened a series of democratic mass meetings and elected the General Convention of the Industrious Classes, which was the first national, inclusive body with all tendencies, with the proletariat represented more or less in proportion to their strength at the base level.
As it became more and more certain that the petition was going to be rejected, as the hour approached, the Convention faced the question, "What to do next?" The Jacobin communists like Harney and O'Brien began making speeches in favor of insurrection. In response, the bourgeois component split from the Convention.
Significantly, Lovett and the labor aristocracy remained in the Convention to the end. In fact, when Dr. John Taylor, Lovett's main factional opponent, was arrested for agitation, Lovett took the lead in defending him, thereby provoking his own arrest. This strikingly demonstrates the intense class solidarity of Chartism.
A revolutionary crisis had opened. But this crisis was defused by the absence of leadership in the Convention as well as by the competent leadership of the liberal government.
The Convention vacillated. First they voted to call a general strike if the petition was rejected. The very next day, however, they voted to rescind the call for a general strike. Then they voted to undertake a series of economic measures, such as boycotting taxed goods and withholding certain tax payments. But since their constituency was largely unemployed and appealing for welfare under the poor laws, such measures could not be effective. These were weapons suitable to bourgeois radicals, but not to the workers movement.
After the rejection of the petition, the enormous mobilizations and expectations raised by the Convention dissipated in a series of isolated skirmishes and uncoordinated attempts at insurrection. The Jacobin Chartists with the Polish exiled revolutionaries evidently plotted an insurrection but were incapable of mustering the forces and support.
I believe that in 1839 there was the possibility of an uprising like the
Lyons silk weavers' insurrection, but raised to the tenth power. If the government had committed an atrocity, mass violence would certainly have erupted. Of course, there was no possibility of a proletarian revolution in 1839. But there could have been amass proletarian upheaval.
Now, working-class history all too often is discussed in terms of "maturity" and "immaturity." Such terms have an organic, unconscious connotation-the workers movement simply develops automatically. This abstracts from the crucial mechanisms through which historical experiences are transmitted from one proletarian generation to the next.
But in dealing with Chartism in 1839 I believe that the failure of the movement genuinely reflects the "immaturity" of the British working-class movement. Chartism at this time represented the first mass, national working-class movement encompassing all the proletarian tendencies. In the absence of an evolved leadership, and the kinds of historical experiences to produce that leadership, the Chartist* movement could not have generated simply through factional struggle a more competent and capable leadership. Chartism foundered through the several-sided "immaturity" of the working class, not a crisis of leadership in the sense that this is applicable to the present working-class movement.
Revolutionary continuity
In 1842 Chartism passed through another revolutionary climax, which I cannot delve into during this talk. After 1842 the main leadership of Chartism around O'Connor, an unstable and irrational man, attempted to turn the movement into cooperativism. His so-called Chartist land plan involved purchasing land and swindling; finally, O'Connor went bankrupt.
But the left wing of Chartism led by Julian Harney reacted to the defeat in 1842 by turning in a very different direction, a response which contains useful lessons for us today.
Harney realized that after the defeats of 1839 and 1842, the latter quite bloody, the British workers movement was in a depression. Yet Chartism retained its mass following and very considerable organizational resources.
Harney realized that revolutionary upheavals were imminent throughout Europe. Moreover, London was a major center for French, German, Italian and Polish revolutionary exiles. So, Harney devoted his main energies inthe!840's toward these circles and toward revolution in Metternichean Europe, turning his great Chartist newspaper, The Northern Star, into the most internationalist working-class press of its day.
I'll conclude this presentation with an anecdote. But the anecdote illustrates the theme of this entire series of talks: that Marxism originated not as a self-contained derivation from Hegelian philosophy, but required an assimilation of the experiences and programs of the previous generations of revolutionary militants who sought to fuse the bourgeois-democratic revolution with a collectivist social order.
Friedrich Engels at the age of 23 was sent from the University of Berlin to Manchester to learn business at one of his father's factories. Being a Utopian socialist Engels first associated himself with the Owenites and contributed to the Owenite press, the New Moral World.
Soon Engels visited Julian Harney in London. Engels explained German True Socialism and described the Hegelian Left, but Harney comprehended very little. Then Engels declared that history had already demonstrated that the bourgeoisie was no longer progressive, that the working class was progressive, and that once the bourgeoisie could be convinced of this they would relinquish power to the proletariat.
Harney, with ten years as a working-class agitator and numerous imprisonments, looked up at him. And he said, "Nonsense.' We're going to have to throw them out.1" The educators too must be educated.
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
From #Un-Occupied Boston (#Un-Tomemonos Boston)-General Assembly-An Embryo Of An Alternate Government Gone Wrong-What Happens When We Do Not Learn The Lessons Of History- The Pre-1848 Socialist Movement-Auguste Blanqui 1833-Democratic Propaganda
Click on the headline to link to the Occupy Boston General Assembly Minutes website. Occupy Boston started at 6:00 PM, September 30, 2011.
Markin comment:
I will post any updates from that site if there are any serious discussions of the way forward for the Occupy movement or, more importantly, any analysis of the now atrophied and dysfunctional General Assembly concept. In the meantime I will continue with the “Lessons From History “ series started in the Fall of 2011 with Karl Marx’s The Civil War In France-1871 (The defense of the Paris Commune). Right now this series is focused on the European socialist movement before the Revolutions of 1848.
****
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The Occupy Movement And All Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Occupy Protesters Everywhere!
********
Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
********
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 instead on organizing the unorganized and on other labor-specific causes (good example, the November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio, bad example the Wisconsin gubernatorial recall race in June 2012).
*End the endless wars!- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan! Hands Off Iran! U.S. 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!
************
From #Un-Occupied Boston (#Un-Tomemonos Boston)-General Assembly-An Embryo Of An Alternate Government Gone Wrong-What Happens When We Do Not Learn The Lessons Of History- The Pre-1848 Socialist Movement
http://wiki.occupyboston.org/wiki/GA/Minutes
Click on the headline to link to the Occupy Boston General Assembly Minutes website. Occupy Boston started at 6:00 PM, September 30, 2011.
Markin comment:
I will post any updates from that site if there are any serious discussions of the way forward for the Occupy movement or, more importantly, any analysis of the now atrophied and dysfunctional General Assembly concept. In the meantime I will continue with the “Lessons From History “ series started in the Fall of 2011 with Karl Marx’s The Civil War In France-1871 (The defense of the Paris Commune). Right now this series is focused on the European socialist movement before the Revolutions of 1848.
****
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The Occupy Movement And All Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Occupy Protesters Everywhere!
********
Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
********
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 instead on organizing the unorganized and on other labor-specific causes (good example, the November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio, bad example the Wisconsin gubernatorial recall race in June 2012).
*End the endless wars!- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan! Hands Off Iran! U.S. 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!
**************
Auguste Blanqui 1833-Democratic Propaganda
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Translated: for marxists.org by Mitch Abidor;
CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2004.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Citizen:
The sympathies of the masses, tempered anew by a system of terror, are reawakening more lively than ever. They are a spring that compression has made more energetic and that only asks to be released. It is up to us to favor this movement of expansion. If the doctrinaires were able to flatter themselves that they had crushed democracy with no chance of return it’s because the late catastrophe permitted them to put a halt to propaganda.
Re-establish it and we will move forward.
For the aristocracy is powerless to fight against republicans on the field of ideas. If the press is still an arm in its hands it’s because it uses it to spread slander while we, with the sole force of our doctrines of equality and fraternity, are sure to carry the masses along.
But it’s necessary that our voice reach them.
Let us then unite our efforts, citizen, in order to destroy the most odious of monopolies, the monopoly on enlightenment. Let us prove to the proletarians that that they have the right to ease with freedom; to free, common and equal education; to intervene in the government, all of which are forbidden them.
As you see, citizen, we have less a political change in mind than a social re-foundation. The extension of political rights, electoral reform, and universal suffrage can be excellent things, but only as means, not as goals. What our goal is is the equal sharing of the charges and benefits of society, is the total establishment of the reign of equality. Without this radical reorganization all formal modifications in government will be nothing but lies, all revolutions nothing but comedies performed for the benefit of the ambitious.
But it isn’t enough to vaguely declare that all men are equal; it’s not enough to combat the slanders of the evil, to destroy prejudices, and the habits of servility carefully maintained among the people. Through principles it’s necessary to replace the prejudices in their hearts. It’s necessary to convince the proletarians that equality is possible, that it is necessary. They must be penetrated with the sentiment of their dignity and clearly shown their rights and duties.
This must be the direction of our efforts. They will only be effective with the cooperation of all republicans: we appeal to their devotion and ask for their active and disinterested cooperation.
It is evident that new writings with the goal we have just indicated from a republican pen would be the object of perpetual harassment, whatever their moderation. We have resolved to foil the zeal of the police. What is important to us above all is to enlighten the masses. Trials, imprisonments and fines would quickly smash our efforts, despite all of our patriotically inspired perseverance.
We will limit ourselves to propagandizing by reprinting fragments of the best works published in the interests of the people, works that have freely circulated for some time.
We will select those that most clearly deal with the great questions of EQUALITY AND LIBERTY.
Those that tend to establish as the sole basis for social institutions the principle of the BROTHERHOOD of man and as sole guarantee of their lasting quality the responsibility of power.
If the ideas developed by these diverse writings are not always as up to date as those most advanced in their interest in the future might hope, it should be remembered that public instruction is in such a sad state that those truths that are old for the enlightened are new to the proletarian.
The writings we will publish will have four in-12 pages and will appear irregularly in such a way as to form a brochure of ninety-six pages at the end of the year.
For 1 fr. 25 c. 100 copies will be received at home.
It is possible to subscribe for a smaller number.
Those citizens in Paris and the departments who want to second us in these efforts are requested to send their exact names and addresses to Rouanet’s bookstore, Rue Verdelet, no. 6
L-Auguste Blanqui, Hadot-Desages
Our publications will appear irregularly, twice a month.
Since most writings cannot reach the people, who don’t have the means to pay for them, the particular goal that we have proposed is to remedy this situation by a free distribution to proletarians. Those citizens who want to second us in our work should spread among the people the copies they have received buy giving them out.
In order to receive the publications at home it is necessary to subscribe for twenty copies of each publication, postage costs not permitting us to send fewer than this. Subscribers for fewer than twenty copies must get them at the office, Rouanet’s , Rue Verdelet, No 6.
Markin comment:
I will post any updates from that site if there are any serious discussions of the way forward for the Occupy movement or, more importantly, any analysis of the now atrophied and dysfunctional General Assembly concept. In the meantime I will continue with the “Lessons From History “ series started in the Fall of 2011 with Karl Marx’s The Civil War In France-1871 (The defense of the Paris Commune). Right now this series is focused on the European socialist movement before the Revolutions of 1848.
****
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The Occupy Movement And All Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Occupy Protesters Everywhere!
********
Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
********
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 instead on organizing the unorganized and on other labor-specific causes (good example, the November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio, bad example the Wisconsin gubernatorial recall race in June 2012).
*End the endless wars!- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan! Hands Off Iran! U.S. 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!
************
From #Un-Occupied Boston (#Un-Tomemonos Boston)-General Assembly-An Embryo Of An Alternate Government Gone Wrong-What Happens When We Do Not Learn The Lessons Of History- The Pre-1848 Socialist Movement
http://wiki.occupyboston.org/wiki/GA/Minutes
Click on the headline to link to the Occupy Boston General Assembly Minutes website. Occupy Boston started at 6:00 PM, September 30, 2011.
Markin comment:
I will post any updates from that site if there are any serious discussions of the way forward for the Occupy movement or, more importantly, any analysis of the now atrophied and dysfunctional General Assembly concept. In the meantime I will continue with the “Lessons From History “ series started in the Fall of 2011 with Karl Marx’s The Civil War In France-1871 (The defense of the Paris Commune). Right now this series is focused on the European socialist movement before the Revolutions of 1848.
****
An Injury To One Is An Injury To All!-Defend The Occupy Movement And All Occupiers! Drop All Charges Against All Occupy Protesters Everywhere!
********
Fight-Don’t Starve-We Created The Wealth, Let's Take It Back! Labor And The Oppressed Must Rule!
********
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 instead on organizing the unorganized and on other labor-specific causes (good example, the November, 2011 anti-union recall referendum in Ohio, bad example the Wisconsin gubernatorial recall race in June 2012).
*End the endless wars!- Immediate, Unconditional Withdrawal Of All U.S./Allied Troops (And Mercenaries) From Afghanistan! Hands Off Pakistan! Hands Off Iran! U.S. 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!
**************
Auguste Blanqui 1833-Democratic Propaganda
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Translated: for marxists.org by Mitch Abidor;
CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2004.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Citizen:
The sympathies of the masses, tempered anew by a system of terror, are reawakening more lively than ever. They are a spring that compression has made more energetic and that only asks to be released. It is up to us to favor this movement of expansion. If the doctrinaires were able to flatter themselves that they had crushed democracy with no chance of return it’s because the late catastrophe permitted them to put a halt to propaganda.
Re-establish it and we will move forward.
For the aristocracy is powerless to fight against republicans on the field of ideas. If the press is still an arm in its hands it’s because it uses it to spread slander while we, with the sole force of our doctrines of equality and fraternity, are sure to carry the masses along.
But it’s necessary that our voice reach them.
Let us then unite our efforts, citizen, in order to destroy the most odious of monopolies, the monopoly on enlightenment. Let us prove to the proletarians that that they have the right to ease with freedom; to free, common and equal education; to intervene in the government, all of which are forbidden them.
As you see, citizen, we have less a political change in mind than a social re-foundation. The extension of political rights, electoral reform, and universal suffrage can be excellent things, but only as means, not as goals. What our goal is is the equal sharing of the charges and benefits of society, is the total establishment of the reign of equality. Without this radical reorganization all formal modifications in government will be nothing but lies, all revolutions nothing but comedies performed for the benefit of the ambitious.
But it isn’t enough to vaguely declare that all men are equal; it’s not enough to combat the slanders of the evil, to destroy prejudices, and the habits of servility carefully maintained among the people. Through principles it’s necessary to replace the prejudices in their hearts. It’s necessary to convince the proletarians that equality is possible, that it is necessary. They must be penetrated with the sentiment of their dignity and clearly shown their rights and duties.
This must be the direction of our efforts. They will only be effective with the cooperation of all republicans: we appeal to their devotion and ask for their active and disinterested cooperation.
It is evident that new writings with the goal we have just indicated from a republican pen would be the object of perpetual harassment, whatever their moderation. We have resolved to foil the zeal of the police. What is important to us above all is to enlighten the masses. Trials, imprisonments and fines would quickly smash our efforts, despite all of our patriotically inspired perseverance.
We will limit ourselves to propagandizing by reprinting fragments of the best works published in the interests of the people, works that have freely circulated for some time.
We will select those that most clearly deal with the great questions of EQUALITY AND LIBERTY.
Those that tend to establish as the sole basis for social institutions the principle of the BROTHERHOOD of man and as sole guarantee of their lasting quality the responsibility of power.
If the ideas developed by these diverse writings are not always as up to date as those most advanced in their interest in the future might hope, it should be remembered that public instruction is in such a sad state that those truths that are old for the enlightened are new to the proletarian.
The writings we will publish will have four in-12 pages and will appear irregularly in such a way as to form a brochure of ninety-six pages at the end of the year.
For 1 fr. 25 c. 100 copies will be received at home.
It is possible to subscribe for a smaller number.
Those citizens in Paris and the departments who want to second us in these efforts are requested to send their exact names and addresses to Rouanet’s bookstore, Rue Verdelet, no. 6
L-Auguste Blanqui, Hadot-Desages
Our publications will appear irregularly, twice a month.
Since most writings cannot reach the people, who don’t have the means to pay for them, the particular goal that we have proposed is to remedy this situation by a free distribution to proletarians. Those citizens who want to second us in our work should spread among the people the copies they have received buy giving them out.
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From The "RAY O' LIGHT newsletter"-In Celebration of International Working Women's Day-The Courageous Journey of Cindy Sheehan in the Heartland of World Capitalism-
Markin comment:
I place some material in this space which may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. Off hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these entries. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts.
********
The Latest From The “Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox” Blog
http://www.cindysheehanssoapbox.com/
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.
*************
RAY O' LIGHT newsletter
March-April 2012 Number 71 Publication of the Revolutionary Organization of Labor, USA
In Celebration of International Working Women's Day-
The Courageous Journey of Cindy Sheehan in the Heartland of World Capitalism
by RAY LIGHT
As the day approaches for the Celebration of International Working Women's Day on March 8th, 2012, the year in which our next U.S. Presidential Election will take place, it is fitting and proper that we recognize, honor and heed the wisdom of Gold Star Mother Cindy Sheehan, a heroine of legendary courage.
In an extremely moving Mother's Day "Soap Box" Column in 2009, Cindy Sheehan began: "I think many of us know the origins of Mother's Day were for Peace and a universal declaration that we mothers won't send our children to die in wars or kill the children of other mothers." She concluded the column, as follows: "No matter what you personally think of our new president, the Robber Class wars for profit are continuing as bad or even worse than during the last regime and mothers are still losing their children all over the world by and for the empire." ("The More Things Change..." 5-10-09)
Today the Obama Administration maintains a combined military force (U.S. soldiers and even more private mercenaries) of over 200,000 in Afghanistan alone, continues its bestial drone war against the people of Pakistan, has just "completed" a war against Libya that, like Iraq under Bush, seems destined to continue long after their respective chief's of state (Gadhafi and Saddam Hussein) were deposed and murdered on the strength of U.S.-led foreign imperialist intervention, is establishing a large new military presence in Australia as part of a renewed massive U.S. military presence in the Pacific aimed against China and East Asia, and has accelerated the rapid elimination of the civil rights of the people of the USA and rapid militarization of U.S. society itself (begun under Hush) that featured the National Defense Authorization Act (NI)AA) signed into law by Obama on the last day of 2011, less than two months ago.
In this grim setting, Cindy Sheehani entitled a recent thought-provoking "Soap Box" column, "h'cpuhln-dii /or President?" (2-9-12) Sister Sheehan's starting point is: "When I opposed the wars and oppression of civil rights here at home during the Hush scandal, there was a certain segment of the population I knew I could always count on to be in solidarity with me: Liberal Democrats." She continues, "I attended HUGE protests in 2005-2006 before the Democrats took control of Congress in the elections of 2006 - but after that, the protests began to weaken or evaporate."She then cites a Wanliin^loii /'(«/ poll showing that the majority of "liberal" Democrats favor keeping the (iiiantanamo torture facility open, the drone bombing campaigns that have increased by at least 300% since the Bush years, and "the Presidential Assassination Program where Obama can have any American executed by his order."
Sister Sheehan believes that,"... it really doesn't matter who is in the White House - the Empire will crush everyone it rolls over without any qualms - and those people and their loves, dreams, struggles, and especially their lives, always, always, always matter. Period."
On this basis, Sister Sheehan argues that, "to most 'liberal' Democrats, killing by the Imperial Army is only considered wrong if a Republican does it... we are at least able to predict that if a Republican is elected, we will see people out in the streets protesting those murders."
In her own unique way, Cindy Sheehan is teaching a valuable political lesson about the "Republicrat" (Republican-Democratic Party political duopoly) government rule on behalf of Wall Street and U.S. imperialism. And, viewed from her consistent and principled anti-imperialist war stand, she has even begun to expose the role of phony "leftist" organizations in defense of the U.S. Empire. For example, she explains the fact that "the anti-war movement has continued its tailspin because it was mostly populated by 'liberal' Democrats, or other Democratic functionaries like the Communist Party, USA." (My emphasis)
Where does Cindy Sheehan's Strength, Wisdom and Integrity come from?
Like the working class mother who is the main character in Maxim Gorky's classic revolutionary 1907 novel, The Mother, Cindy Sheehan's wisdom stems, in the first place, from deep love and respect for her son, Casey. In both the Gorky novel and in the real life of Cindy Sheehan, love for a son drew the mother into the midst of the political struggles of her society.
In Gorky's more than one hundred year old novel, the male and female revolutionaries are impressively depicted as sharing the responsibility for the conduct of the revolutionary struggle. In the novel, the son has become a revolutionary working class leader in the struggle against the Russian Tsarist Regime. The Mother follows her wonderful son into the ranks of the revolution where she comes into her own as a dignified human being dedicated to the just struggle for freedom for all the oppressed and exploited from tyranny.
In sharp contrast, Cindy Sheehan's son, Casey, grew up (as did Cindy herself) in a non-revolutionary period in the USA, a period of real reaction in the belly of the beast of the world's hegemonic imperialist power. Casey became a U.S. soldier who was part of the U.S. imperialist military occupation of Iraq. So Cindy Sheehan's path toward anti-imperialist and pro-revolutionary activism where she has come into her own as a dignified human being dedicated to the just struggle for freedom for all the oppressed and exploited from tyranny was vastly different, though no less courageous, than the path traversed by The Mother conceived by Maxim Gorky.
On April 4, 2004, Casey was killed by al Sadr resistance fighters only five days after his arrival in Iraq. With the help of a fiercely honest poem by her daughter, Carly,* Cindy Sheehan became transformed through her grief at the loss of Casey, in her own words, "... from an ordinary human being into a crusader";"... from a private mother into a public peace mom;""... from a shy and horrible public speaker into a brave and powerful orator;... from a nonwriter into an able author on fire for the truth." (pages 59 and 60, Peace Mom, 2006)
*One stanza: "Have you ever heard the sound of taps playing at your brother's grave? They say he died so the flag will continue to wave. But I believe he died because they had oil to save. Have you ever heard the sound of taps playing at your brother's grave?" The poem concludes with the line: "Have you ever heard the sound of a nation being rocked to sleep?"
With incredible honesty and courage, Cindy Shoehan confronted the first and most fundamental truth: "I have never called 'terrorists' freedom fighters. I have called the resistance lighters who killed Casey such [freedom fighters], but they are fighting to get the occupying forces out of their country and have a legitimate right to wage a resistance against occupiers. I don't like that they are killing our children, for God's sake, they killed my oldest child; my sweet and wonderful Casey. However, our government is committing war crimes and crimes against humanity against the people of Iraq." (page 102, Peace Mom)
At the end of 2008, she was even more explicit: "The right of a population to resist being occupied by a foreign country/military/corporation is a basic human right that has been enshrined in international law. I recognize that the person who killed my son, Casey, in Iraq had every right to do so. I am not in any way happy about it, but if Casey's commander-in-chief and vice commander-in-chief had not placed him (immorally and illegally) in the country of Iraq to be an occupier, then the Iraqi would not have killed him. George and Dick knowingly put Casey in harm's way and I won't rest until I see justice for Casey's (and over one-million others) murder. That is also my right: redress for wrong and to see justice finally consummated." ("Occupier/ Occupied," 12-28-08)
It was on this rock-solid basis that, in August 2005, Cindy Sheehan traveled to Crawford, Texas (accompanied by a small band of determined anti-war activists) to demand an answer from President George W. Bush, face to face at his sprawling home ranch, regarding the purpose for which he had sent her deceased son into harm's way in Iraq. This simple but bold action placed Cindy Sheehan in a formidable status from which to deal with Bush. And George W. Bush, coward that he is, was afraid to meet with Cindy Sheehan eyeball to eyeball.
As she has pointed out, if Bush had just met with her it probably would have defused the movement around her before it ever got started. The 26 day encampment which became known around the world as "Camp Casey" never would have been born. And the tremendous boost that the new anti-war heroine contributed to the weak but growing antiwar movement would have been avoided by the U.S. imperialist chieftain. With the U.S. war in Iraq going against the U.S. imperialist army, Cindy Sheehan became a powerful voice for global justice and peace.*
*In 2006, at the World Social Forum in Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez with Cindy Sheehan at his side, told the packed crowd that Cindy Sheehan was "Mrs. Hope" while U.S. President George W. Bush was "Mr. Danger."
With her fearlessness and her clear eyed principles, sister Sheehan was also able to quickly learn from her own political experience. After Casey's death, she initially gave George W. Bush the benefit of the doubt about having a non-political "human" motive for meeting with the families of dead soldiers. Then she heard Bush use these meetings for political gain in his next State of the Union Message, even while he never attended any soldiers' funeral services and didn't allow caskets or even photos of the deceased to be shown on television.
She campaigned against Bush in the 2004 election and supported Democratic candidate John Kerry. Thereafter she was once again self-critical, declaring that she would never again support a pro-war democrat after Kerry said he would have waged these same imperialist wars that Bush waged only he would have prosecuted them more successfully.
The turn against her and toward a passive attitude toward U.S. imperialist war in Afghanistan and Iraq on the part of the U.S. antiwar movement (as it began a rapid decline) ironically took place with the 2006 election victory for the Democratic Party in both houses of Congress! This victory was largely seen by liberals, revisionists, Trotskyites and other opportunists as an outcome that would result in the winding down of these wars. Instead, as we had predicted, the emergence of a Democratic majority in the House and Senate provided U.S. imperialism with greater flexibility; it allowed U.S. imperialism through the close cooperation of the Republican President and the Democratic Congress to carry out the "surge" in Iraq. And, as Cindy Sheehan pointed out, the U.S. anti-war movement has been in a "tailspin" ever since.
In 2008, having met with Hillary Clinton and having already dealt with her pro-Bush war criminal role as a U.S. Senator, Cindy also saw through Democratic candidate Obama. She was supportive (as were we) of Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney, an Afro-American former Congresswoman from Georgia who had strongly opposed and exposed the U.S. imperialist character of the Bush-led wars and continues today to oppose Obama's wars on Libya, etc.
In 2008, Cindy Sheehan learned and helped many of us learn the full extent of the political bankruptcy of the so-called "U.S. Left."*
*In 2007, we had written,"... the USA today has a solidly imperialist bourgeois electoral system that promotes two wings of an imperialist bourgeois war party, an imperialist bourgeois mass media ... and even to some extent an imperialist bourgeois proletariat and anti-war movement..." ("2007 Country Report - USA," Ray O' Light Newsletter #45, July-August 2007)
The 2008 Cindy Sheehan Campaign to take Nancy Pelosi's Congressional Seat
At the time of the 2008 U.S. election, Nancy Pelosi was the Speaker of the House of Representatives and thus second in line of Presidential Succession, after only the sitting Vice President. By virtue of her position, since the president was a Republican, she was also the leader of the national Democratic Party* Her lofty and powerful position in the U.S. government and the Democratic Party, however, could only be maintained if she were re-elected to her House seat, representing approximately one-four hundred and thirty-fifth of the U.S. population, not a huge number of people. Moreover, her Congressional district covered much of San Francisco, California, among the most "anti-war" of all the 435 Congressional districts in the USA. Finally, as pointed out above, following the 2006 election when the Democrats won majority control of both houses of Congress, rather than stopping the imperialist wars against Afghanistan and Iraq and bringing the U.S. troops home, as so many had anticipated, the Congressional Democrats, led by Pelosi, provided fresh support for the Bush-Cheney Regime that was manifested in an immediate troop "surge" in Iraq.
It was in this setting that the by now renowned anti-war heroine, Cindy Sheehan, living in the Pelosi district, launched her campaign to win the Congressional seat and retire the war criminal Pelosi.** What a great opportunity for the relatively weak U.S. anti-war movement and organized left to strike a powerful blow against the U.S. Empire and its brutal imperialist wars on the oppressed peoples! Our small vanguard organization struggled mightily with Bay Area opportunists from the CPUSA, from Workers World Party, from the Afro-American "left," from the U.S.-Philippine radical movement, and a host of other organizations and individuals, attempting to rally them to roll their sleeves up and get involved in the Sheehan Congressional campaign. All to no avail!
Our small organization did what we could to support the campaign including hands-on campaign work. But almost no other left
*In that role, Pelosi publicly promised before the 2006 election that the Democratic Party would not seek impeachment charges against Bush and Cheney, if the Democrats were to win a Congressional majority.
**In the aftermath of the 2008 election, with both a Democratic President and a larger Democratic majority in Congress, the Republican Party in its desperation leaked the fact that U.S. imperialism would have preferred to leave in the shadows. Nancy Pelosi, as the leader of the "opposition" party, had been briefed about the torture being used by the Bush Regime from the beginning of the War of Terror and, at the very least by her silence, had given her consent to its use.
organizations in the Bay Area or around the country saw the Sheehan campaign as a real opportunity to advance proletarian international solidarity with the oppressed peoples in Afghanistan, Iraq, Colombia, the Philippines and elsewhere being terrorized and murdered by "our own" imperialists. They refused to see or to act on this great opportunity, provided by Cindy Sheehan and her campaign, to strike a powerful blow against U.S. imperialism. They refused to take on the Democratic Party and thus strike a powerful blow against Wall Street's "Republicrat" political rule.
Nancy Pelosi, the arch war criminal, waltzed back into Congress. Yet, despite the abandonment of her campaign by the organized U.S. left and her shoestring budget and barebones staff, Cindy Sheehan won a larger percentage of the vote than the Republican candidate, underscoring the opportunity that was missed.
Cindy Sheehan, through her own political experience, has thus come to deeply understand the depth of the opportunist betrayal of the U.S. and international working class and oppressed peoples and the valuable service that the opportunists provide to the U.S. Empire. No wonder her recent observation about the right revisionist CPUSA as an organization of "Democratic functionaries" is so accurate.
And despite the best efforts of all kinds of slick opportunists - from gentle and kind to brutal and bullying — starting with Democratic Party liberal operatives, despite personal attacks including from her husband's family, and myriad other obstacles, she has continued on her principled and at times lonely march against U.S. imperialist war abroad and at home.
Some Political Lessons of Cindy Sheehan for the Global Anti-Imperialist and International Communist Movements
The courage and fearlessness of Cindy Sheehan, to me, reaches its height with her acknowledgment and public recognition of her own share of responsibility in the death of her beloved son, Casey! As she courageously expressed it, "Yes, before I could blame George Bush, or the media, or Congress, or the American people, for Casey's death, I had to realize that I also had quite a bit of my dear boy's blood on my own hands." (page 130, Peace Mom) It is because of this ultimate self-criticism that Cindy Sheehan has had the incredible strength to keep her eye on the prize and persevere in her principled and consistent communist movement.*
Indeed, those proletarian fighters in the USA and around the world who are serious about rebuilding a substantial international communist movement have a number of things to learn from sister Cindy Sheehan.
1. Sister Sheehan recognizes the relative responsibility of all U.S. citizens for the imperialist wars against the peoples of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, et al. She recognizes that her privileged comfortable apathy had helped lay the basis for Casey to go into the U.S. military in the first place. She recognizes the role of T.V. and mass entertainment, commercialism and material obsession that helped keep someone like her from dealing seriously enough with the politics of U.S. society until after Casey's death. This position is in stark opposition to the bourgeois approach of all kinds of opportunists and bourgeois nationalists in state power who have been so ready to dissociate the masses of imperialist society from a "handful" of evil rulers. One example: At the beginning of Chinese rapprochement with President Nixon and U.S. imperialism, Chinese Premier Chou En-lai proposed a toast to the "Great American People" at a time when U.S. imperialism, backed by U.S. society, was carrying out one of the most barbaric imperialist wars in history against the heroic Vietnamese people. If the masses and the working class in an imperialist country have no responsibility for the criminal conduct of its ruling class and government, how will they ever be able to become responsible for overthrowing and smashing them?
Sister Sheehan's approach reflects the greater responsibility for the criminal conduct of U.S. imperialism of the more privileged sectors of U.S. imperialist society, the educators, the mass media, the Democratic and Republican Party functionaries, the "Republicrat" chieftains like the Clintons, Kerry, Obama, John Boehner and Nancy Pelosi, the two George Bushes, Dick Cheney, John McCain and ultimately the Corporate CEOS of Halliburton, Lockheed-Martin, and the bankers on Wall Street.
*One is reminded of the U.S. working class heroine, Crystal Lee Sutton, the real "Norma Rae," who in the midst of the bitter unionization campaign in a small North Carolina mill town in the 1970's sat her three children down and told them exactly who their daddies were and how they came to be, pre-empting any attempt by the powers that be to try to shame or blackmail her into submission. Thereafter, sister Crystal was fearless and never lost sight of the prize of power for poor and working people no matter the obstacles.
2. Related to point #1, Sister Sheehan's courageous approach to the killing of her son, Casey, by Iraqis fighting for their freedom, provides a model for the revolutionary approach to imperialist occupation troops. It is remarkable that Sister Sheehan insists that she is a pacifist, while recognizing that the person in Iraq who killed her son had "every right to do so." Her principled approach to the imperialist military forces is the only approach that leads to decisive national democratic and socialist military victory over imperialism instead of a negotiated compromise settlement that fails to dislodge the old comprador and imperialist-sponsored ruling system and keeps the working class and the masses from really coming into their own and taking power.
3 Sister Sheehan's approach to the U.S. Empire, her clear call for the
revolutionary defeat of "her own" imperialist state, is exemplary. In
the first place, her approach exposes the opportunist treachery of
all those in state power or in control of significant areas who seek
rapprochement with U.S. imperialism instead of national liberation
from U.S. imperialism (which paves the way to socialism).
4 Sister Sheehan's approach to the people of the USA, "her country,"
and her approach to the people of the rest of the world is a
tremendous example of genuine internationalism. Says Sister
Sheehan," I went from being the mom who did everyone's laundry,
packed lunches, kissed boo-boos, tucked in at night, cleaned up the
messes, to being someone who fights for all humanity's children not
just her own." (ibid., pages 127 and 128)
Cindy Sheehan's internationalist approach to the children of the world challenges the communists of the world to become consistent proletarian internationalists. Such forces understand and operate on the basis of the fact that the struggle for socialism is a global struggle and that our struggle against monopoly capitalism and imperialism and all the comprador, semi-feudal and other reactionary forces connected to international capital is interconnected. A defeat in one area of the world is a defeat for all. And a victory in one area of the world is a victory for all.
Finally, in Commemoration of International Working Women's Day in 2012, let all the women and men who are inspired by the courage and convictions and the political life of Cindy Sheehan express our determination to follow in her footsteps. Let us live like Cindy, with our heads held high and our backs straight and fight together for a better future for all humanity.
I place some material in this space which may be of interest to the radical public that I do not necessarily agree with or support. Off hand, as I have mentioned before, I think it would be easier, infinitely easier, to fight for the socialist revolution straight up than some of the “remedies” provided by the commentators in these entries. But part of that struggle for the socialist revolution is to sort out the “real” stuff from the fluff as we struggle for that more just world that animates our efforts.
********
The Latest From The “Cindy Sheehan’s Soapbox” Blog
http://www.cindysheehanssoapbox.com/
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.
*************
RAY O' LIGHT newsletter
March-April 2012 Number 71 Publication of the Revolutionary Organization of Labor, USA
In Celebration of International Working Women's Day-
The Courageous Journey of Cindy Sheehan in the Heartland of World Capitalism
by RAY LIGHT
As the day approaches for the Celebration of International Working Women's Day on March 8th, 2012, the year in which our next U.S. Presidential Election will take place, it is fitting and proper that we recognize, honor and heed the wisdom of Gold Star Mother Cindy Sheehan, a heroine of legendary courage.
In an extremely moving Mother's Day "Soap Box" Column in 2009, Cindy Sheehan began: "I think many of us know the origins of Mother's Day were for Peace and a universal declaration that we mothers won't send our children to die in wars or kill the children of other mothers." She concluded the column, as follows: "No matter what you personally think of our new president, the Robber Class wars for profit are continuing as bad or even worse than during the last regime and mothers are still losing their children all over the world by and for the empire." ("The More Things Change..." 5-10-09)
Today the Obama Administration maintains a combined military force (U.S. soldiers and even more private mercenaries) of over 200,000 in Afghanistan alone, continues its bestial drone war against the people of Pakistan, has just "completed" a war against Libya that, like Iraq under Bush, seems destined to continue long after their respective chief's of state (Gadhafi and Saddam Hussein) were deposed and murdered on the strength of U.S.-led foreign imperialist intervention, is establishing a large new military presence in Australia as part of a renewed massive U.S. military presence in the Pacific aimed against China and East Asia, and has accelerated the rapid elimination of the civil rights of the people of the USA and rapid militarization of U.S. society itself (begun under Hush) that featured the National Defense Authorization Act (NI)AA) signed into law by Obama on the last day of 2011, less than two months ago.
In this grim setting, Cindy Sheehani entitled a recent thought-provoking "Soap Box" column, "h'cpuhln-dii /or President?" (2-9-12) Sister Sheehan's starting point is: "When I opposed the wars and oppression of civil rights here at home during the Hush scandal, there was a certain segment of the population I knew I could always count on to be in solidarity with me: Liberal Democrats." She continues, "I attended HUGE protests in 2005-2006 before the Democrats took control of Congress in the elections of 2006 - but after that, the protests began to weaken or evaporate."She then cites a Wanliin^loii /'(«/ poll showing that the majority of "liberal" Democrats favor keeping the (iiiantanamo torture facility open, the drone bombing campaigns that have increased by at least 300% since the Bush years, and "the Presidential Assassination Program where Obama can have any American executed by his order."
Sister Sheehan believes that,"... it really doesn't matter who is in the White House - the Empire will crush everyone it rolls over without any qualms - and those people and their loves, dreams, struggles, and especially their lives, always, always, always matter. Period."
On this basis, Sister Sheehan argues that, "to most 'liberal' Democrats, killing by the Imperial Army is only considered wrong if a Republican does it... we are at least able to predict that if a Republican is elected, we will see people out in the streets protesting those murders."
In her own unique way, Cindy Sheehan is teaching a valuable political lesson about the "Republicrat" (Republican-Democratic Party political duopoly) government rule on behalf of Wall Street and U.S. imperialism. And, viewed from her consistent and principled anti-imperialist war stand, she has even begun to expose the role of phony "leftist" organizations in defense of the U.S. Empire. For example, she explains the fact that "the anti-war movement has continued its tailspin because it was mostly populated by 'liberal' Democrats, or other Democratic functionaries like the Communist Party, USA." (My emphasis)
Where does Cindy Sheehan's Strength, Wisdom and Integrity come from?
Like the working class mother who is the main character in Maxim Gorky's classic revolutionary 1907 novel, The Mother, Cindy Sheehan's wisdom stems, in the first place, from deep love and respect for her son, Casey. In both the Gorky novel and in the real life of Cindy Sheehan, love for a son drew the mother into the midst of the political struggles of her society.
In Gorky's more than one hundred year old novel, the male and female revolutionaries are impressively depicted as sharing the responsibility for the conduct of the revolutionary struggle. In the novel, the son has become a revolutionary working class leader in the struggle against the Russian Tsarist Regime. The Mother follows her wonderful son into the ranks of the revolution where she comes into her own as a dignified human being dedicated to the just struggle for freedom for all the oppressed and exploited from tyranny.
In sharp contrast, Cindy Sheehan's son, Casey, grew up (as did Cindy herself) in a non-revolutionary period in the USA, a period of real reaction in the belly of the beast of the world's hegemonic imperialist power. Casey became a U.S. soldier who was part of the U.S. imperialist military occupation of Iraq. So Cindy Sheehan's path toward anti-imperialist and pro-revolutionary activism where she has come into her own as a dignified human being dedicated to the just struggle for freedom for all the oppressed and exploited from tyranny was vastly different, though no less courageous, than the path traversed by The Mother conceived by Maxim Gorky.
On April 4, 2004, Casey was killed by al Sadr resistance fighters only five days after his arrival in Iraq. With the help of a fiercely honest poem by her daughter, Carly,* Cindy Sheehan became transformed through her grief at the loss of Casey, in her own words, "... from an ordinary human being into a crusader";"... from a private mother into a public peace mom;""... from a shy and horrible public speaker into a brave and powerful orator;... from a nonwriter into an able author on fire for the truth." (pages 59 and 60, Peace Mom, 2006)
*One stanza: "Have you ever heard the sound of taps playing at your brother's grave? They say he died so the flag will continue to wave. But I believe he died because they had oil to save. Have you ever heard the sound of taps playing at your brother's grave?" The poem concludes with the line: "Have you ever heard the sound of a nation being rocked to sleep?"
With incredible honesty and courage, Cindy Shoehan confronted the first and most fundamental truth: "I have never called 'terrorists' freedom fighters. I have called the resistance lighters who killed Casey such [freedom fighters], but they are fighting to get the occupying forces out of their country and have a legitimate right to wage a resistance against occupiers. I don't like that they are killing our children, for God's sake, they killed my oldest child; my sweet and wonderful Casey. However, our government is committing war crimes and crimes against humanity against the people of Iraq." (page 102, Peace Mom)
At the end of 2008, she was even more explicit: "The right of a population to resist being occupied by a foreign country/military/corporation is a basic human right that has been enshrined in international law. I recognize that the person who killed my son, Casey, in Iraq had every right to do so. I am not in any way happy about it, but if Casey's commander-in-chief and vice commander-in-chief had not placed him (immorally and illegally) in the country of Iraq to be an occupier, then the Iraqi would not have killed him. George and Dick knowingly put Casey in harm's way and I won't rest until I see justice for Casey's (and over one-million others) murder. That is also my right: redress for wrong and to see justice finally consummated." ("Occupier/ Occupied," 12-28-08)
It was on this rock-solid basis that, in August 2005, Cindy Sheehan traveled to Crawford, Texas (accompanied by a small band of determined anti-war activists) to demand an answer from President George W. Bush, face to face at his sprawling home ranch, regarding the purpose for which he had sent her deceased son into harm's way in Iraq. This simple but bold action placed Cindy Sheehan in a formidable status from which to deal with Bush. And George W. Bush, coward that he is, was afraid to meet with Cindy Sheehan eyeball to eyeball.
As she has pointed out, if Bush had just met with her it probably would have defused the movement around her before it ever got started. The 26 day encampment which became known around the world as "Camp Casey" never would have been born. And the tremendous boost that the new anti-war heroine contributed to the weak but growing antiwar movement would have been avoided by the U.S. imperialist chieftain. With the U.S. war in Iraq going against the U.S. imperialist army, Cindy Sheehan became a powerful voice for global justice and peace.*
*In 2006, at the World Social Forum in Venezuela, President Hugo Chavez with Cindy Sheehan at his side, told the packed crowd that Cindy Sheehan was "Mrs. Hope" while U.S. President George W. Bush was "Mr. Danger."
With her fearlessness and her clear eyed principles, sister Sheehan was also able to quickly learn from her own political experience. After Casey's death, she initially gave George W. Bush the benefit of the doubt about having a non-political "human" motive for meeting with the families of dead soldiers. Then she heard Bush use these meetings for political gain in his next State of the Union Message, even while he never attended any soldiers' funeral services and didn't allow caskets or even photos of the deceased to be shown on television.
She campaigned against Bush in the 2004 election and supported Democratic candidate John Kerry. Thereafter she was once again self-critical, declaring that she would never again support a pro-war democrat after Kerry said he would have waged these same imperialist wars that Bush waged only he would have prosecuted them more successfully.
The turn against her and toward a passive attitude toward U.S. imperialist war in Afghanistan and Iraq on the part of the U.S. antiwar movement (as it began a rapid decline) ironically took place with the 2006 election victory for the Democratic Party in both houses of Congress! This victory was largely seen by liberals, revisionists, Trotskyites and other opportunists as an outcome that would result in the winding down of these wars. Instead, as we had predicted, the emergence of a Democratic majority in the House and Senate provided U.S. imperialism with greater flexibility; it allowed U.S. imperialism through the close cooperation of the Republican President and the Democratic Congress to carry out the "surge" in Iraq. And, as Cindy Sheehan pointed out, the U.S. anti-war movement has been in a "tailspin" ever since.
In 2008, having met with Hillary Clinton and having already dealt with her pro-Bush war criminal role as a U.S. Senator, Cindy also saw through Democratic candidate Obama. She was supportive (as were we) of Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney, an Afro-American former Congresswoman from Georgia who had strongly opposed and exposed the U.S. imperialist character of the Bush-led wars and continues today to oppose Obama's wars on Libya, etc.
In 2008, Cindy Sheehan learned and helped many of us learn the full extent of the political bankruptcy of the so-called "U.S. Left."*
*In 2007, we had written,"... the USA today has a solidly imperialist bourgeois electoral system that promotes two wings of an imperialist bourgeois war party, an imperialist bourgeois mass media ... and even to some extent an imperialist bourgeois proletariat and anti-war movement..." ("2007 Country Report - USA," Ray O' Light Newsletter #45, July-August 2007)
The 2008 Cindy Sheehan Campaign to take Nancy Pelosi's Congressional Seat
At the time of the 2008 U.S. election, Nancy Pelosi was the Speaker of the House of Representatives and thus second in line of Presidential Succession, after only the sitting Vice President. By virtue of her position, since the president was a Republican, she was also the leader of the national Democratic Party* Her lofty and powerful position in the U.S. government and the Democratic Party, however, could only be maintained if she were re-elected to her House seat, representing approximately one-four hundred and thirty-fifth of the U.S. population, not a huge number of people. Moreover, her Congressional district covered much of San Francisco, California, among the most "anti-war" of all the 435 Congressional districts in the USA. Finally, as pointed out above, following the 2006 election when the Democrats won majority control of both houses of Congress, rather than stopping the imperialist wars against Afghanistan and Iraq and bringing the U.S. troops home, as so many had anticipated, the Congressional Democrats, led by Pelosi, provided fresh support for the Bush-Cheney Regime that was manifested in an immediate troop "surge" in Iraq.
It was in this setting that the by now renowned anti-war heroine, Cindy Sheehan, living in the Pelosi district, launched her campaign to win the Congressional seat and retire the war criminal Pelosi.** What a great opportunity for the relatively weak U.S. anti-war movement and organized left to strike a powerful blow against the U.S. Empire and its brutal imperialist wars on the oppressed peoples! Our small vanguard organization struggled mightily with Bay Area opportunists from the CPUSA, from Workers World Party, from the Afro-American "left," from the U.S.-Philippine radical movement, and a host of other organizations and individuals, attempting to rally them to roll their sleeves up and get involved in the Sheehan Congressional campaign. All to no avail!
Our small organization did what we could to support the campaign including hands-on campaign work. But almost no other left
*In that role, Pelosi publicly promised before the 2006 election that the Democratic Party would not seek impeachment charges against Bush and Cheney, if the Democrats were to win a Congressional majority.
**In the aftermath of the 2008 election, with both a Democratic President and a larger Democratic majority in Congress, the Republican Party in its desperation leaked the fact that U.S. imperialism would have preferred to leave in the shadows. Nancy Pelosi, as the leader of the "opposition" party, had been briefed about the torture being used by the Bush Regime from the beginning of the War of Terror and, at the very least by her silence, had given her consent to its use.
organizations in the Bay Area or around the country saw the Sheehan campaign as a real opportunity to advance proletarian international solidarity with the oppressed peoples in Afghanistan, Iraq, Colombia, the Philippines and elsewhere being terrorized and murdered by "our own" imperialists. They refused to see or to act on this great opportunity, provided by Cindy Sheehan and her campaign, to strike a powerful blow against U.S. imperialism. They refused to take on the Democratic Party and thus strike a powerful blow against Wall Street's "Republicrat" political rule.
Nancy Pelosi, the arch war criminal, waltzed back into Congress. Yet, despite the abandonment of her campaign by the organized U.S. left and her shoestring budget and barebones staff, Cindy Sheehan won a larger percentage of the vote than the Republican candidate, underscoring the opportunity that was missed.
Cindy Sheehan, through her own political experience, has thus come to deeply understand the depth of the opportunist betrayal of the U.S. and international working class and oppressed peoples and the valuable service that the opportunists provide to the U.S. Empire. No wonder her recent observation about the right revisionist CPUSA as an organization of "Democratic functionaries" is so accurate.
And despite the best efforts of all kinds of slick opportunists - from gentle and kind to brutal and bullying — starting with Democratic Party liberal operatives, despite personal attacks including from her husband's family, and myriad other obstacles, she has continued on her principled and at times lonely march against U.S. imperialist war abroad and at home.
Some Political Lessons of Cindy Sheehan for the Global Anti-Imperialist and International Communist Movements
The courage and fearlessness of Cindy Sheehan, to me, reaches its height with her acknowledgment and public recognition of her own share of responsibility in the death of her beloved son, Casey! As she courageously expressed it, "Yes, before I could blame George Bush, or the media, or Congress, or the American people, for Casey's death, I had to realize that I also had quite a bit of my dear boy's blood on my own hands." (page 130, Peace Mom) It is because of this ultimate self-criticism that Cindy Sheehan has had the incredible strength to keep her eye on the prize and persevere in her principled and consistent communist movement.*
Indeed, those proletarian fighters in the USA and around the world who are serious about rebuilding a substantial international communist movement have a number of things to learn from sister Cindy Sheehan.
1. Sister Sheehan recognizes the relative responsibility of all U.S. citizens for the imperialist wars against the peoples of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, et al. She recognizes that her privileged comfortable apathy had helped lay the basis for Casey to go into the U.S. military in the first place. She recognizes the role of T.V. and mass entertainment, commercialism and material obsession that helped keep someone like her from dealing seriously enough with the politics of U.S. society until after Casey's death. This position is in stark opposition to the bourgeois approach of all kinds of opportunists and bourgeois nationalists in state power who have been so ready to dissociate the masses of imperialist society from a "handful" of evil rulers. One example: At the beginning of Chinese rapprochement with President Nixon and U.S. imperialism, Chinese Premier Chou En-lai proposed a toast to the "Great American People" at a time when U.S. imperialism, backed by U.S. society, was carrying out one of the most barbaric imperialist wars in history against the heroic Vietnamese people. If the masses and the working class in an imperialist country have no responsibility for the criminal conduct of its ruling class and government, how will they ever be able to become responsible for overthrowing and smashing them?
Sister Sheehan's approach reflects the greater responsibility for the criminal conduct of U.S. imperialism of the more privileged sectors of U.S. imperialist society, the educators, the mass media, the Democratic and Republican Party functionaries, the "Republicrat" chieftains like the Clintons, Kerry, Obama, John Boehner and Nancy Pelosi, the two George Bushes, Dick Cheney, John McCain and ultimately the Corporate CEOS of Halliburton, Lockheed-Martin, and the bankers on Wall Street.
*One is reminded of the U.S. working class heroine, Crystal Lee Sutton, the real "Norma Rae," who in the midst of the bitter unionization campaign in a small North Carolina mill town in the 1970's sat her three children down and told them exactly who their daddies were and how they came to be, pre-empting any attempt by the powers that be to try to shame or blackmail her into submission. Thereafter, sister Crystal was fearless and never lost sight of the prize of power for poor and working people no matter the obstacles.
2. Related to point #1, Sister Sheehan's courageous approach to the killing of her son, Casey, by Iraqis fighting for their freedom, provides a model for the revolutionary approach to imperialist occupation troops. It is remarkable that Sister Sheehan insists that she is a pacifist, while recognizing that the person in Iraq who killed her son had "every right to do so." Her principled approach to the imperialist military forces is the only approach that leads to decisive national democratic and socialist military victory over imperialism instead of a negotiated compromise settlement that fails to dislodge the old comprador and imperialist-sponsored ruling system and keeps the working class and the masses from really coming into their own and taking power.
3 Sister Sheehan's approach to the U.S. Empire, her clear call for the
revolutionary defeat of "her own" imperialist state, is exemplary. In
the first place, her approach exposes the opportunist treachery of
all those in state power or in control of significant areas who seek
rapprochement with U.S. imperialism instead of national liberation
from U.S. imperialism (which paves the way to socialism).
4 Sister Sheehan's approach to the people of the USA, "her country,"
and her approach to the people of the rest of the world is a
tremendous example of genuine internationalism. Says Sister
Sheehan," I went from being the mom who did everyone's laundry,
packed lunches, kissed boo-boos, tucked in at night, cleaned up the
messes, to being someone who fights for all humanity's children not
just her own." (ibid., pages 127 and 128)
Cindy Sheehan's internationalist approach to the children of the world challenges the communists of the world to become consistent proletarian internationalists. Such forces understand and operate on the basis of the fact that the struggle for socialism is a global struggle and that our struggle against monopoly capitalism and imperialism and all the comprador, semi-feudal and other reactionary forces connected to international capital is interconnected. A defeat in one area of the world is a defeat for all. And a victory in one area of the world is a victory for all.
Finally, in Commemoration of International Working Women's Day in 2012, let all the women and men who are inspired by the courage and convictions and the political life of Cindy Sheehan express our determination to follow in her footsteps. Let us live like Cindy, with our heads held high and our backs straight and fight together for a better future for all humanity.
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