From The Marxist Archives- In Honor Of The 97^th Anniversary Of The Russian October Revolution- Leon Trotsky On The Lessons Of The Russian Revolution

Workers Vanguard No. 968

5 November 2010

In Honor of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution

For New October Revolutions!

(From the Archives of Marxism)

 

November 7 (October 25 by the calendar used in Russia at the time) marks the 93rd anniversary of the Russian Revolution. Led by the Bolshevik Party of V.I. Lenin and Leon Trotsky, the workers’ seizure of power in Russia gave flesh and blood reality to the Marxist understanding of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Despite the subsequent Stalinist degeneration of the Soviet workers state, culminating in its counterrevolutionary destruction in 1991-92, the October Revolution was and is the international proletariat’s greatest victory; its final undoing, a world-historic defeat. The International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist) fought to the bitter end in defense of the Soviet Union and the bureaucratically deformed workers states of East Europe, while calling for workers political revolutions to oust the parasitic nationalist Stalinist bureaucracies that ruled these states. This is the same program we uphold today for the remaining workers states of China, North Korea, Vietnam and Cuba.

Having been expelled from the USSR in 1929 by Stalin, Trotsky spent the remainder of his life in exile. In November 1932, he gave a speech to a Danish social-democratic student group in Copenhagen. He outlined the political conditions and the social forces that drove the Russian Revolution, stressing the decisive role of the Bolshevik Party. Illuminating the worldwide impact of the Russian Revolution and its place in history, Trotsky underlined the necessity of sweeping away the decaying capitalist order and replacing it with a scientifically planned international socialist economy that will lay the material basis for human freedom.

The ICL fights to forge workers parties modeled on Lenin and Trotsky’s Bolsheviks to lead the struggle for new October Revolutions around the globe.

* * *

Revolution means a change of the social order. It transfers the power from the hands of a class which has exhausted itself into those of another class, which is on the rise....

Without the armed insurrection of November 7, 1917, the Soviet state would not be in existence. But the insurrection itself did not drop from Heaven. A series of historical prerequisites was necessary for the October revolution.

1. The rotting away of the old ruling classes—the nobility, the monarchy, the bureaucracy.

2. The political weakness of the bourgeoisie, which had no roots in the masses of the people.

3. The revolutionary character of the peasant question.

4. The revolutionary character of the problem of the oppressed nations.

5. The significant social weight of the proletariat.

To these organic pre-conditions we must add certain conjunctural conditions of the highest importance:

6. The Revolution of 1905 was the great school, or in Lenin’s words, the “dress rehearsal” of the Revolution of 1917. The Soviets, as the irreplaceable organizational form of the proletarian united front in the revolution, were created for the first time in the year 1905.

7. The imperialist war sharpened all the contradictions, tore the backward masses out of their immobility and thereby prepared the grandiose scale of the catastrophe.

But all these conditions, which fully sufficed for the outbreak of the Revolution, were insufficient to assure the victory of the proletariat in the Revolution. For this victory one condition more was needed:

8. The Bolshevik Party....

In the year 1883 there arose among the emigres the first Marxist group. In the year 1898, at a secret meeting, the foundation of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party was proclaimed (we all called ourselves Social-Democrats in those days). In the year 1903 occurred the split between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. In the year 1912 the Bolshevist fraction finally became an independent Party.

It learned to recognize the class mechanics of society in struggle, in the grandiose events of twelve years (1905-1917). It educated cadres equally capable of initiative and of subordination. The discipline of its revolutionary action was based on the unity of its doctrine, on the tradition of common struggles and on confidence in its tested leadership.

Thus stood the Party in the year 1917. Despised by the official “public opinion” and the paper thunder of the intelligentsia press, it adapted itself to the movement of the masses. Firmly it kept in hand the control of factories and regiments. More and more the peasant masses turned toward it. If we understand by “nation,” not the privileged heads, but the majority of the people, that is, the workers and peasants, then Bolshevism became in the course of the year 1917 a truly national Russian Party.

In September 1917, Lenin, who was compelled to keep in hiding, gave the signal, “The crisis is ripe, the hour of the insurrection has approached.” He was right. The ruling classes had landed in a blind alley before the problems of the war, the land and national liberation. The bourgeoisie finally lost its head. The democratic parties, the Mensheviks and social-revolutionaries, wasted the remains of the confidence of the masses in them by their support of the imperialist war, by their policy of ineffectual compromise and concession to the bourgeois and feudal property-owners. The awakened army no longer wanted to fight for the alien aims of imperialism. Disregarding democratic advice, the peasantry smoked the landowners out of their estates. The oppressed nationalities at the periphery rose up against the bureaucracy of Petrograd. In the most important workers’ and soldiers’ Soviets the Bolsheviki were dominant. The workers and soldiers demanded action. The ulcer was ripe. It needed a cut of the lancet.

Only under these social and political conditions was the insurrection possible. And thus it also became inevitable. But there is no playing around with the insurrection. Woe to the surgeon who is careless in the use of the lancet! Insurrection is an art. It has its laws and its rules.

The Party carried through the October insurrection with cold calculation and with flaming determination. Thanks to this, it conquered almost without victims. Through the victorious Soviets the Bolsheviki placed themselves at the head of a country which occupies one sixth of the surface of the globe....

Let us now in closing attempt to ascertain the place of the October Revolution, not only in the history of Russia but in the history of the world. During the year 1917, in a period of eight months, two historical curves intersect. The February upheaval—that belated echo of the great struggles which had been carried out in past centuries on the territories of Holland, England, France, almost all of Continental Europe—takes its place in the series of bourgeois revolutions. The October Revolution proclaims and opens the domination of the proletariat. It was world capitalism that suffered its first great defeat on the territory of Russia. The chain broke at its weakest link. But it was the chain that broke, and not only the link.

Capitalism has outlived itself as a world system. It has ceased to fulfill its essential mission, the increase of human power and human wealth. Humanity cannot stand still at the level which it has reached. Only a powerful increase in productive force and a sound, planned, that is, Socialist organization of production and distribution can assure humanity—all humanity—of a decent standard of life and at the same time give it the precious feeling of freedom with respect to its own economy. Freedom in two senses—first of all, man will no longer be compelled to devote the greater part of his life to physical labor. Second, he will no longer be dependent on the laws of the market, that is, on the blind and dark forces which have grown up behind his back. He will build up his economy freely, that is, according to a plan, with compass in hand. This time it is a question of subjecting the anatomy of society to the X-ray through and through, of disclosing all its secrets and subjecting all its functions to the reason and the will of collective humanity. In this sense, Socialism must become a new step in the historical advance of mankind. Before our ancestor, who first armed himself with a stone axe, the whole of nature represented a conspiracy of secret and hostile forces. Since then, the natural sciences, hand in hand with practical technology, have illuminated nature down to its most secret depths. By means of electrical energy, the physicist passes judgment on the nucleus of the atom. The hour is not far when science will easily solve the task of the alchemists, and turn manure into gold and gold into manure. Where the demons and furies of nature once raged, now rules ever more courageously the industrial will of man.

But while he wrestled victoriously with nature, man built up his relations to other men blindly, almost like the bee or the ant. Belatedly and most undecidedly he approached the problems of human society. He began with religion, and passed on to politics. The Reformation represented the first victory of bourgeois individualism and rationalism in a domain which had been ruled by dead tradition. From the church, critical thought went on to the state. Born in the struggle with absolutism and the medieval estates, the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people and of the rights of man and the citizen grew stronger. Thus arose the system of parliamentarism. Critical thought penetrated into the domain of government administration. The political rationalism of democracy was the highest achievement of the revolutionary bourgeoisie.

But between nature and the state stands economic life. Technology liberated man from the tyranny of the old elements—earth, water, fire and air—only to subject him to its own tyranny. Man ceased to be a slave to nature, to become a slave to the machine, and, still worse, a slave to supply and demand. The present world crisis testifies in especially tragic fashion how man, who dives to the bottom of the ocean, who rises up to the stratosphere, who converses on invisible waves with the Antipodes, how this proud and daring ruler of nature remains a slave to the blind forces of his own economy. The historical task of our epoch consists in replacing the uncontrolled play of the market by reasonable planning, in disciplining the forces of production, compelling them to work together in harmony and obediently serve the needs of mankind. Only on this new social basis will man be able to stretch his weary limbs and—every man and every woman, not only a selected few—become a full citizen in the realm of thought.

—“Leon Trotsky Defends the October Revolution” (Militant, 21 January 1933)

 **********

In Defense Of The October Russian Revolution Of 1917- Comrade Markham’s Tale-Take One

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman  

 

Comrade Markham had been born a “red diaper baby.” I will explain what that means in a minute but first to that Comrade Markham moniker. That name is the only name I have known him by ever since I ran into him at an anti-war planning session over in Cambridge a couple of years back, back in the fall of 2012, when we were trying, people like Comrade Markham, the guys from Veterans for Peace, guys and gals from some socialist groups and the usual Quakers, traditional peace activists who always sign on to these efforts, to organize against the latest governmental war cries. Although the previous decade or so had seen anti-war mobilizations, great and small, mainly small, this session was planning a rally to oppose President Obama’s then latest attempt to intervene in the civil war in Syria. Comrade Markham, then eighty-seven years old and still trying to change this wicked old world for the better rather than sitting in some assisted living hellhole wasting away, had introduced himself to the group under that moniker and although I had not seen him around before, had no sense of his history then, others greeted and addressed him by that name without a snicker.

 

Of course as I found out later that moniker was not his real name but had been the one that he had used in his long-time membership in the old American Communist Party, not the current version which is kind of out in limbo, but the one that we who came of age in the 1960s had cut our teeth on as the great “red menace,” who were taking “Moscow gold,” taking Stalin and his progeny’s gold,  in order to undermine the American way of life and so we had to be ever vigilant in the red scare Cold War night. He had used the name so long that he knew no other to be called and in my associations with him as he told me his story that is what I always called him. Someday I suppose we will find out his real name but his story, an unusual American story, is what matters and what will be forever his memorial.

 

But back to that “red diaper baby” designation I promised to tell you about. Now I had heard that designation before, back in the late 1960s when Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was cutting a big swath through the political landscape, especially among students. A fair number of the emerging leaders had had parents who belonged to the Communist Party or some other left-wing organization and were not like many of us the first generation of radicals in our families. Thus the red diaper baby designation which in some cases gave those who had grown up in that political milieu an unwarranted standing based on some usually long past affiliation by their now bourgeois parents. What made Comrade Markham unique in my experience is that he was a red diaper baby from parents who had helped establish the Communist Party in America back around 1920 (or one of the two but that story of the hows and whys of two are beyond what I want to tell you about here except in passing).

 

That thread of history intrigued me, his whole story intrigued me as I pieced it together, and so after a couple of those planning sessions I asked him to sit down with me wherever he liked and tell me his story. We did so in several sessions most of them held in the Boston Public Library where he liked go and check out books, magazines and newspapers about the old days, about the time of his activist political prime. What I did not expect to get was an almost chemically pure defense of the Soviet Union, of the Soviet experience, through thick and thin until the end in 1990 or so. That is why his story appears here as a running personal commentary on this 97^th anniversary year of the Russian October Revolution of 1917.

 

    

 

***The Girl With The Bette Davis Eyes-Bette Davis’ Dark Victory

DVD Review

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

Dark Victory, starring Bette Davis, George Brent, Humphrey Bogart, 1939

Early on, probably before the “talkies ” way back in the silent movie days before the late 1920s Hollywood bet that providing film fare with heart-breaking stories would fill the seats, would have mothers weeping into handkerchiefs, father trying to control that lump forming in their throats, and have children squirming in their seats as well not quite sure what response they should be sending about how that scene affected them. Yes, I am sure Hollywood made that bet early on and needed no test audience, needed no pollster to help them figure that out although when you think about it that drawing tissues and the like would have been harder to do in the silent era since all you would have had were actors emoting like crazy, maybe over-emoting and causing some confusion about whether to laugh or cry from the few that I have seen, and those silly placards cluing you into what you were supposed to feel.

Hollywood is still making them so that that money in the bank heart-breaking story still plays well today, although the storyline has to have a feel good sense that people can relate to. And that notion was true back in the 1930s when the film under review, Dark Victory, was being shown in theaters. The film stars a young Bette Davis, emoting like crazy although we have her words to guide us as to why she was doing so, a solid man of the world George Brent who falls in love with her as he tries to save her, and a young Humphrey Bogart, who had teamed with Ms. Davis before as Duke Mantee , a career criminal and very nasty guy to cross before they finally took him down, to her wanderlust Western wayward girl, Gabby, in The Petrified Forest , and plays an uncharacteristic love-smitten with Bette role as a horse trainer in Bette’s employ and that a part of the film that seemed misplaced as against the main drama) worked up the hankie brigade in overdrive.    

Bette Davis, the girl with the Bette Davis eyes, naturally, those doe-like eyes that command “pretty please” to every passing male, played a young well-to-do Long Island socialite and huntswoman (is that the way to say it), Judy, with time on her hands and worlds to conquer who kept getting severe headaches for unknown reasons. Being young and spirited she tried to shuffle it off as nothing but they persisted. Finally she was forced marched to the doctor, a handsome brain specialist played by George Brent (who was built for these helpful doctor/lawyer/professional roles) who finds that she has a brain tumor which he at first believed could be operated on successfully but in the end provide inoperable. Such things happen in life although when they happen to the young, act against the natural order of things where everybody should get old before there time is up, they are particularly poignant and hence under that sign the drama unfolds here.

Of course we are talking about a spirited young woman (I am being kind) and so she had a problem dealing with the whole thing. The problem was, well two problems, really, no, three problems, first the doctor insisted that Judy not be told that she has a terminal condition (which when she did find out by accident sent her into a drunken rage), second, Judy, grateful Judy, Judy who knew a good catch when she saw one, in fell in love with the doctor (and he her, although we will not get into the ethics of the situation or the natural bond between patient and doctor which can produce such social complications), and third, when she found out that she was going to die (after she got over her rage) she denied reality for a long as she could. Tried to live that socialite-huntswoman (I hope that’s right) to the hilt to defy the gods. But like all things Hollywood our Judy as time got short bucked up at the end, marries her doctor love and for as long as she was able made him a proper wife. And in the end, a bit drawn out cinematically even for a heart-rending story if you ask me, she summoned up the courage to die with dignity… No wonder the handkerchiefs were out in force for this melodrama.             

As The 100th Anniversary Of The First Year Of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars) Continues ... Some Remembrances-Poets’ Corner  

In say 1912, 1913, hell, even the beginning of 1914 before the war clouds got a full head of steam in the summer they all profusely professed, artists who saw the disjointedness of modern industrial society and put the pieces to paint, sculptors who put twisted pieces of metal juxtaposed to each other, writers of serious history books proving that, according to their Whiggish theory of progress,  humankind had moved beyond war as an instrument of policy, writers of not so serious novels drenched in platitudes and hidden gabezo love affairs put paid to that notion in their sweet nothing words that man and woman had too much to do to denigrate themselves by crying the warrior’s cry and the maidens strewing flowers on the bloodlust streets, musicians whose muse spoke of delicate tempos and sweet muted violin concertos, and poets, ah, those constricted poets who bleed the moon of its amber swearing, swearing on a stack of seven sealed bibles, that they would go to the hells before touching the hair of another man, that come the war drums they would resist the siren call, would stick to their Whiggish, Futurist, Constructionist, Cubist, world and blast the war-makers to hell in quotes, words, chords, clanged metal, and pretty pastels.

And then the war drums intensified and they, they made of ordinary human clay as it turned out, poets, artists, sculptors, writers, serious and not, musicians went to the trenches to die deathless deaths in their thousands for….            

LANGEMARCK AT YPRES


This is the ballad of Langemarck,
  A story of glory and might;
Of the vast Hun horde, and Canada's part
  In the great grim fight.

It was April fair on the Flanders Fields,
  But the dreadest April then
That ever the years, in their fateful flight,
  Had brought to this world of men.

North and east, a monster wall,
  The mighty Hun ranks lay,
With fort on fort, and iron-ringed trench,
  Menacing, grim and gray.

And south and west, like a serpent of fire,
  Serried the British lines,
And in between, the dying and dead,
And the stench of blood, and the trampled mud,
  On the fair, sweet Belgian vines.

And far to the eastward, harnessed and taut,
  Like a scimitar, shining and keen,
Gleaming out of that ominous gloom,
  Old France's hosts were seen.

When out of the grim Hun lines one night,
  There rolled a sinister smoke;--
A strange, weird cloud, like a pale, green shroud,
  And death lurked in its cloak.

On a fiend-like wind it curled along
  Over the brave French ranks,
Like a monster tree its vapours spread,
  In hideous, burning banks
Of poisonous fumes that scorched the night
  With their sulphurous demon danks.

And men went mad with horror, and fled
  From that terrible, strangling death,
That seemed to sear both body and soul
  With its baleful, flaming breath.

Till even the little dark men of the south,
  Who feared neither God nor man,
Those fierce, wild fighters of Afric's steppes,
  Broke their battalions and ran:--

Ran as they never had run before,
  Gasping, and fainting for breath;
For they knew 't was no human foe that slew;
  And that hideous smoke meant death.

Then red in the reek of that evil cloud,
  The Hun swept over the plain;
And the murderer's dirk did its monster work,
  'Mid the scythe-like shrapnel rain;

Till it seemed that at last the brute Hun hordes
  Had broken that wall of steel;
And that soon, through this breach in the freeman's dyke,
  His trampling hosts would wheel;--

And sweep to the south in ravaging might,
  And Europe's peoples again
Be trodden under the tyrant's heel,
  Like herds, in the Prussian pen.

But in that line on the British right,
  There massed a corps amain,
Of men who hailed from a far west land
  Of mountain and forest and plain;

Men new to war and its dreadest deeds,
  But noble and staunch and true;
Men of the open, East and West,
  Brew of old Britain's brew.

These were the men out there that night,
  When Hell loomed close ahead;
Who saw that pitiful, hideous rout,
  And breathed those gases dread;
While some went under and some went mad;
  But never a man there fled.

For the word was "Canada," theirs to fight,
  And keep on fighting still;--
Britain said, fight, and fight they would,
Though the Devil himself in sulphurous mood
  Came over that hideous hill.

Yea, stubborn, they stood, that hero band,
  Where no soul hoped to live;
For five, 'gainst eighty thousand men,
  Were hopeless odds to give.

Yea, fought they on! 'T was Friday eve,
  When that demon gas drove down;
'T was Saturday eve that saw them still
  Grimly holding their own;

Sunday, Monday, saw them yet,
  A steadily lessening band,
With "no surrender" in their hearts,
  But the dream of a far-off land,

Where mother and sister and love would weep
  For the hushed heart lying still;--
But never a thought but to do their part,
  And work the Empire's will.

Ringed round, hemmed in, and back to back,
  They fought there under the dark,
And won for Empire, God and Right,
  At grim, red Langemarck.

Wonderful battles have shaken this world,
  Since the Dawn-God overthrew Dis;
Wonderful struggles of right against wrong,
Sung in the rhymes of the world's great song,
  But never a greater than this.

Bannockburn, Inkerman, Balaclava,
  Marathon's godlike stand;
But never a more heroic deed,
And never a greater warrior breed,
  In any war-man's land.

This is the ballad of Langemarck,
  A story of glory and might;
Of the vast Hun horde, and Canada's part
  In the great, grim fight.

_Wilfred Campbell_

Free Chelsea Manning - President Obama Pardon Chelsea Manning Now!

Amnesty renews call on US govt to free Manning

Join us in urging President Obama to Pardon Chelsea Manning!

July 30, 2014 by the Chelsea Manning Support Network

One year after Chelsea Manning’s conviction, Amnesty International is still calling on the US government to grant her clemency.  Amnesty demands that Chelsea be freed immediately, and for the US government to, “implement a thorough and impartial investigation into the crimes she uncovered.”  Read the full statement from Amnesty International below or click here to view it on amnesty.org:

Exactly one year after Chelsea Manning was convicted of leaking classified government material, Amnesty International is renewing its call on the US authorities to grant her clemency, release her immediately, and to urgently investigate the potential human rights violations exposed by the leaks.

Chelsea Manning has spent the last year as a convicted criminal after exposing information which included evidence of potential human rights violations and breaches of international law. By disseminating classified information via Wikileaks she revealed to the world abuses perpetrated by the US army, military contractors and Iraqi and Afghan troops operating alongside US forces.

“It is an absolute outrage that Chelsea Manning is currently languishing behind bars whilst those she helped to expose, who are potentially guilty of human rights violations, enjoy impunity,” said Erika Guevara Rosas, Americas Director Amnesty International.

“The US government must grant Chelsea Manning clemency, order her immediate release, and implement a thorough and impartial investigation into the crimes she uncovered.”

After being convicted of 20 separate charges Chelsea Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison, much longer than other members of the military convicted of charges such as murder, rape and war crimes.

Before her conviction, Chelsea Manning had already been held for three years in pre-trial detention, including 11 months in conditions which the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture described as cruel and inhumane.

Chelsea Manning has always maintained that her motivation for releasing the documents to Wikileaks was out of concern for the public and to foster a meaningful debate on the costs of war and the conduct of the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Notable amongst the information revealed by Private Manning was previously unseen footage of journalists and other civilians being killed in US helicopter attacks.

Chelsea Manning is now actively engaged with her lawyers in fighting her conviction.

“The US government appears to have its priorities warped. It is sending a worrying message through its harsh punishment of Chelsea Manning that whistleblowers will not be tolerated. On the other hand, its failure to investigate allegations that arose from Chelsea Manning’s disclosures means that those potentially responsible for crimes under international law, including torture and enforced disappearances, may get away scot-free,” said Erika Guevara.

“One year after the conviction of Chelsea Manning we are still calling on the US government to grant her clemency in recognition of her motives for acting as she did, and the time she has already served in prison.” 

Amnesty International has previously expressed concern that a sentence of 35 years in jail was excessive and should have been commuted to time served. The organization believes that Chelsea Manning was overcharged using antiquated legislation aimed at dealing with treason, and denied the opportunity to use a public interest defence at her trial.

In addition, there is little protection in US law for genuine whistleblowers, and this case underlines the need for the US to strengthen protections for those who reveal information that the public has the right to know.

It is crucial that the US government stops using the Espionage Act to prosecute whistleblowers like Chelsea Manning.

Join us in urging President Obama to Pardon Chelsea Manning!

Markin comment   
There is no question that now that her trial, if one can called what took place down in Fort Meade a trial in the summer of 2013 rather than a travesty, that a year after her conviction on twenty plus counts and having received an outrageous thirty-five year sentence essentially for telling us the truth about American atrocities and  nefarious actions in Iraq, Afghanistan and wherever else the American government can stick its nose that Chelsea Manning's case has dropped from view. Although she occasionally gets an Op/Ed opportunity and has several legal moves going from action to get the  necessary hormonal treatments reflecting her real sexual identity to now preparing the first appeal of her conviction to another military tribunal the popular uproar against her imprisonment has become a hush. While the appeals process may produce some results, perhaps a reduction in sentence, the short way home for her is a presidential pardon right now. I urge everybody to sign on to the Amnesty International petition above to put the pressure on President Barack Obama for clemency.                   

 

In Boston 

Encuentro 5 & Mesa sin Fronteras

p r e s e n t

Peña Latinoamericana
When: Sat. Nov. 08 | 7:00 - 11:30 pm
Where: at e5 9 Hamilton Place, Boston, MA 02108

Refreshments Provided

$5 suggested donation.  No one turned away.

 Join us for a night of folklore, storytelling, arte y amor, the poetry of struggle bringing histories to life, and life to our circles of song. 

 A Peña is a gathering of musicians, artists, and friends who come to share their work and to play together. Peñas take historical root from Chilean social gatherings during the 60s and early 70s that expressed the spirit of creativity and resistance in melody, poems, and artwork. 

Please feel free to bring your own stories, songs, poems, or artwork to share.

www.encuentro5.org

Revolution: The term November Revolution may refer to:

• October Revolution of 1917, also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution, Red October or the Bolshevik Revolution, which happened in October according to the Julian calendar, but in November according to the Gregorian calendar. Because of this, it is sometimes called the November Revolution, although modern usage favours October Revolution
• The German Revolution (German: Novemberrevolution) German Revolution of 1918–1919, a politically driven civil conflict in Germany that ended World War I
• Mexico’s Revolution Day November 20. (Dia de la Revolución) is a national public holiday that celebrates a 10-year revolution that began in 1910 to end the struggle against dictator José de la Cruz Porfirio Díaz Mori.

Encuentro 5 & Mesa sin Fronteras

p r e s e n t a

 Peña Latinoamericana  
Cuando: Sáb. Oct. 11 | 7:00 - 11:30 pmDónde: e5 9 Hamilton Place, Boston, MA 02108

 Habrá aperitivos

Donativo sugerido $5:00. Nadie será rechazado

Ven a compartir una noche de folklore, narrativa de arte y amor. La poesía de la lucha que traen las historias y vidas en los ciclos de la canción.

La Peña es un encuentro de músicos, artistas y amigos que vienen a compartir su trabajo y música juntos. Peñas surgieron a raíz de las de reuniones político-sociales chilenas durante los años 60 y principios de los 70 que expresan el espíritu de la creatividad y la resistencia en forma melódica, poemas y obras de arte.

Por favor, trae tus historias, canciones, poemas, obras de arte o para compartir con otros.

www.encuentro5.org

Revolución:
El término revolución de noviembre puede referirse a:
• Revolución de Octubre de 1917, también conocido como la Gran Revolución Socialista de Octubre, Octubre Rojo o la Revolución Bolchevique, Todo lo que sucedió en octubre según el calendario juliano, en noviembre según el calendario gregoriano. Debido a esto, se le llama a veces la revolución de noviembre, aunque el uso moderno Favorece Revolución de Octubre
• La revolución alemana (alemán: Novemberrevolution) Revolución alemana de 1918-1919, un conflicto civil impulsado políticamente en Alemania a finales de la Primera Guerra Mundial
• Revolución de México el día 20 de noviembre (Día de la Revolución) Esta revolución comenzó en 1910 para poner fin a la lucha contra el dictador José de la Cruz Porfirio Díaz Mori.

-- 

Sandra Harris

sharris@tecschange.org

617-230-9332

Great minds discuss ideas;

average minds discuss events;

small minds discuss people.

NEVER FORGET GREENSBORO 1979

 

 

 

Markin Comment (reposted from 2007):

 

REMEMBER SLAIN LABOR MILITANTS-CESAR CAUCE, MICHAEL NATHAN, BILL SAMPSON SANDI SMITH AND JIM WALLER

 

For those too young to remember or who unfortunately have forgotten the incident here is a capsule summary of what occurred on that day bloody day:

 

On November 3, 1979 in Greensboro, North Carolina, five anti-racist activists and union organizers, supporters of the Communist Workers Party (CWP), were fatally gunned down by Ku Klux Klan and Nazi fascists. Nine carloads of Klansmen and Nazis drove up to a black housing project-the gathering place for an anti-Klan march organized by the CWP. In broad daylight, the fascists pulled out their weapons and unleashed an 88-second fusillade that was captured on television cameras. They then drove off, leaving the dead and dying in pools of blood. From the outset, the Klan/Nazi killers were aided and abetted by the government, from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agent who helped train the killers and plot the assassination to the "former" FBI informer who rode shotgun in the motorcade of death and the Greensboro cop who brought up the rear. The five militants listed above died as a result.  The Greensboro Klan/Nazis literally got away with murder, acquitted twice by all-white juries.

 

This writer has recently been raked over the coals by some leftists who were appalled that he called for a “no free speech platform” for Nazis and fascists Rather, this writer argued that labor should mobilize its forces and run these vermin off the streets whenever they raise their heads. Despite recent efforts to blur the lines of the heinous nature and political motivation of these murders in Greensboro in some kind of truth and reconciliation process militant leftist should etch in their brains the reality of the Klan/Nazis. There is nothing to debate. The niceties of parliamentary democracy have no place in a strategy to defeat these bastards.   

Additional Markin comment in 2014:

The events of Greensboro, North Carolina in November 1979, today more than ever as we gear up our struggles in the aftermath of the spark of the Occupy movement a few years back now when it looked for a minute like we would have a movement of similar magnitude as the social explosions of the 1960s before the police acting as storm troopers like something out of Nazi Germany stomped on us, the Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown incidents (to name just the most notorious) which have exposed for all to see that rather than a post-racial world we are still mired in the old time plantation mentality when it comes to the value of black life,  and as we begin, once again to oppose the American war machine in the Middle east, should be permanently etched in our minds. We had best know how to deal with the fascists and other para-military types (including the police now fully militarized like in the storming of the Occupy sites and most recently in Ferguson) that rear their heads when people begin to struggle against the bosses.  

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Markin comment on the article below:

Every year, and rightfully so, we leftist militants, especially those of us who count ourselves among the communist militants, remember the 1979 Greensboro, North Carolina massacre of fellow communists by murderous and police-protected Nazis, fascists and Klansmen. That remembrance, as the article below details, also includes trying to draw the lessons of the experience and an explanation of political differences. For what purpose? Greensboro 1979-never again, never forget-or forgive.

Although right this minute, this 2014 minute, the Nazis/fascists are not publicly raising their hellish ideas, apparently “hiding” just now on the fringes of society waiting to pounce (although the anti-immigrant border vigilantes give a recent taste of what they are capable of provoking to a willing audience), this is an eternal question for leftists. The question, in short, of when and how to deal with this crowd of locust. Leon Trotsky, one of the great leaders of the Russian revolution in 1917 and others, notably his followers in the American Socialist Workers Party back then, had it right back in the late 1920s and early 1930s-smash this menace in the shell. 1933, when they come to power, as Hitler did in Germany (or earlier, if you like, with Mussolini in Italy) is way too late, as immediately the German working class found out as its independent organizations were decimated and presses destroyed, including its Social-Democratic and Communist sympathizers who should have known found out, and later many parts of the rest of the world. That is the when.

For the how, the substance of this article points the way forward, and the way not forward, as represented by the American Communist Party’s (and at later times other so-called “progressives” as well, including here the Communist Workers Party) attempts to de-rail the street protests and rely, as always, on the good offices of the bourgeois state, and usually, on this issue the Democrats. Sure, grab all the allies you can, from whatever source, to confront the fascists when they raise their heads. But rely on the mobilization of the labor movement on the streets to say what’s what, not rely on the hoary halls of bourgeois government and its hangers-on, ideologues, and lackeys.

******

Should Fascists Be Allowed the Right of Free Speech?

A Working Class Point of View on the Question That Was
Brought to the Fore Again by the Professional Democrats
When the Nazis Mobilized at the Garden_

-Reprinted from the Socialist Appeal, 3 March 1939

It seems that the only point of importance that the Professional Liberals and Democrats could see in the big mobilization of the Nazis at Madison Square Garden last week, was their "right of free speech and assembly."

Mayor LaGuardia kept reiterating emphatically that his attachment to Democracy compelled him to grant the Fascists the right to hold their meeting and provide them with extraordinary police protection.

The American Civil Liberties Union rushed into print to insist that the right of free speech be extended to the Hitlerites.

One of the numerous committees of the Jewish bourgeoisie, anxious to demonstrate that it loves fairness above all else, did likewise.

Even the wretched little Jewish anarchist weekly published in New York indignantly reproached the Trotskyists for the lack of sense in "demanding the right of free speech and assembly for oneself and at the same time trying to prevent the freedom of speech of our opponents..."

Freedom for Nazis But Not for Pickets

Before going further into the consideration of the question of "free speech for Fascists," it is interesting and important to record the fact that all the above-mentioned who showed such touching concern for the "democratic rights" of the Nazis, are entirely unconcerned with the brutal police suppression of the picketing rights of the workers who assembled outsidethe Garden.

The Mayor simply refused to see a delegation which came to protest against the violence of the police who rode down and slugged the picketers.

The American Civil Liberties Union, apparently exhausted by its noble efforts in behalf of the Nazis, didn't utter a peep about the democratic rights of free speech, assembly and picketing being denied the 50,000 anti-Fascists who came to protest the Nazi rally. Ditto for the Jewish committee.

As for the anarchist Freie Arbeiter Stimme, it says not a word about the police assaults, but villainously insinuates that the Terrible Trotskyists were really at fault because, Mr. Police Commissioner, they planned a violent attack on the Nazis who were innocently celebrating Washington's Birthday. Unbelievable, but here are its exact words: "But there are times when people who endeavor to do social work, must reflect ten times, a hundred times, before they come out with an appeal for acts of violence."

What the Problem Really Involves

The question of "democratic rights for the Nazis" cannot be resolved on the basis of Liberal phrasemongers. All such a discussion can produce is a bewildering tangle of words and abstractions. At a more decisive stage, as all recent experience has proved, it produces a first class disaster not only for the working class but also for the Professional Liberals and Democrats themselves.

How many of them, indeed, are there in concentration camps, in prison and in exile who are continuing the thoroughly futile and abstract discussion over whether or not the Fascist gangsters should be granted the "democratic rights of free speech and assembly"!

And what is most decisive—this is the point which leads us directly to a solution of the problem that seems to agitate so many people—is the fact that in Italy, in Germany, in Austria, in Czechoslovakia, in Spain, the Democrats were so concerned with preserving the "rights" of the Fascists that they concentrated all their attacks and repressive measures upon those workers and those labor organization which sought to conduct a militant struggle against the Fascists and for the preservation and extension of their truly democratic rights and institutions.

It is when the bourgeois "democrats" like Giolitti in Italy and Bruening in Germany, had done all in their power to smash' the most progressive and active sections of the working class—as LaGuardia and his police tried to do on a smaller scale in New York last week—that the Fascists concluded successfully their march to totalitarian power. Whoever forgets this important lesson from abroad, is a fool. Whoever tries to keep others ignorant of this lesson, is a rogue.

A Simple Example

Let us take a simple example which every worker has ex¬perienced dozens of times.

A strike is called. The authorities promptly jump into the situation in order to protect the "democratic rights" of the scabs and the company gunmen who guard them. The "right to work" of the scab, which is guaranteed by the capitalist govern¬ment, amounts in reality to his "right" to starve out the striking workers and reduce them to helpless pawns of the employers.

Millons of workers have learned the futility and deceptiveness of the academic discussion of the scab's "democratic rights," as well as of appealing to the government and its police to "arbitrate" the dispute involved. They try to solve the question, as they must, in the course of struggle. The workers throw their picket-lines around the struck plant. The conflict between the scab's "right" to break a strike and the workers' right to live, is also settled on the course of struggle—in favor of those who plan better, organize better, and fight better.

Same Rule Applies on Broader Scene

The same rule applies in the struggle against the much bigger scab movement that Fascism represents. The workers who spend all their time and energy in the abstract discussion of the Nazis' "democratic rights"—to say nothing of working themselves into a lather in defense of these "rights"—will end their discussion under a Fascist club in a concentration camp.

The workers who delude themselves and waste their time begging the capitalist Democrats in office to "act" against the Fascists, will end up in the same place, just as the workers of Italy, Germany and Austria did.

The workers have more vital concerns. They are and should be interested in defending and expanding their democratic rights. But not in any abstract sense. These rights are the concrete rights of free speech, assembly, press, the right to organize, strike and picket, without which an independent working class simply cannot exist.

A decaying capitalism—of which Fascism is only a natural product—seeks constantly to restrict and destroy these rights, which are not truly genuine even in "normal" times. These rights can only be defended from the assaults of capitalism and its ugly offspring, Fascism, in the same way in which they were first acquired: by the tireless, aggressive, unbending, independent struggle of the working class.

The wailing and weeping about the Nazis' "rights" can safely be left to the prissy Liberals and the phony Democrats.

The self-preservation of the working class demands that it cut through all abstract chatter and smash the Fascist gangs by decisive and relentless action.

As The 100th Anniversary Of The First Year Of World War I (Remember The War To End All Wars) Continues ... Some Remembrances-Poets’ Corner  

In say 1912, 1913, hell, even the beginning of 1914 before the war clouds got a full head of steam in the summer they all profusely professed, artists who saw the disjointedness of modern industrial society and put the pieces to paint, sculptors who put twisted pieces of metal juxtaposed to each other, writers of serious history books proving that, according to their Whiggish theory of progress,  humankind had moved beyond war as an instrument of policy, writers of not so serious novels drenched in platitudes and hidden gabezo love affairs put paid to that notion in their sweet nothing words that man and woman had too much to do to denigrate themselves by crying the warrior’s cry and the maidens strewing flowers on the bloodlust streets, musicians whose muse spoke of delicate tempos and sweet muted violin concertos, and poets, ah, those constricted poets who bleed the moon of its amber swearing, swearing on a stack of seven sealed bibles, that they would go to the hells before touching the hair of another man, that come the war drums they would resist the siren call, would stick to their Whiggish, Futurist, Constructionist, Cubist, world and blast the war-makers to hell in quotes, words, chords, clanged metal, and pretty pastels.

And then the war drums intensified and they, they made of ordinary human clay as it turned out, poets, artists, sculptors, writers, serious and not, musicians went to the trenches to die deathless deaths in their thousands for….            

CANADA TO ENGLAND


Great names of thy great captains gone before
  Beat with our blood, who have that blood of thee:
  Raleigh and Grenville, Wolfe, and all the free
Fine souls who dared to front a world in war.
Such only may outreach the envious years
  Where feebler crowns and fainter stars remove,
  Nurtured in one remembrance and one love
Too high for passion and too stern for tears.

O little isle our fathers held for home,
  Not, not alone thy standards and thy hosts
    Lead where thy sons shall follow, Mother Land:
Quick as the north wind, ardent as the foam,
  Behold, behold the invulnerable ghosts
    Of all past greatnesses about thee stand.

_Marjorie L.C. Pickthall_