Defending the Legacy of the USSR

The USSR fell more than 20 years ago. Capitalists rejoiced, and quickly proclaimed communism dead. They said that it was all over, the story written, the song sung. All that was left was for liberal “democracy” to flourish bringing untold riches to the people of the world. Well, at least those who “work hard”. (i.e. get born white, into the right family in the right country etc etc etc.) Political scientists like Francis Fukuyama gleefully declared the “END OF HISTORY” in booming voices like that of a motion picture voice over artist. The curtain fell on socialism. All that was left was the bloody teeth of a capitalist Moloch waiting to enslave us all. Even socialists bought into this narrative, deciding that revolution was pointless, and that they had no choice but to drop their protest signs, their political activism and join the work a day world as willing wage slaves. They joined social democratic parties, the democratic parties and other right wing organizations. It was over.

Not as over as you think

For all their caterwauling  cries of the end of history, the liberals and conservatives forgot one thing. History is all about two steps forward, one step back. Let me give you a good example. The French Revolution tore down the old aristocratic privilege, it killed the king and proclaimed the rights of man. There were excesses. There were problems. Innocent people died. Then after a few short years, the revolution fell. It collapsed under its own weight, the people exhausted and the chaos triumphant. Napoleon Bonaparte would take power as an emperor, and control the country for many years. France went through a century of instability and uncertainty. So, the revolution was a waste then? No, it most certainly was not. Napoleon was able to take power for a number of reasons, but one of the main reasons is that the old system had died. In its place was a vacuum, one that he exploited for his own gain. However, it is of note that France no longer had a hereditary monarch. The legacy of the French Republic had been born. The French Revolution, for all its flaws, for all its excesses, had changed the world, it had altered the course of human history forever. The age of the divine right of kings was over, the age of aristocratic privilege was dying, the age of feudalism was on its way out the door. And that’s nothing to sneeze at.

In a similar vein, the USSR came into existence. While socialism was aimed at developed industrial capitalist countries, the Bolsheviks had a dream of a socialist Russia. They were sick of the aristocratic autocracy under which they suffered, and they wanted to create a better world. They were not an industrialized country. They were seen as a backwards feudal backwater of a country, neither Europe or Asia, stuck perpetually at a cultural crossroads. They were, in a sense, a mess. Yet, they believed in a better world. In the Czar’s Russia, unless you were a member of the aristocracy, you lived a nasty, brutish and short life working for your feudal masters. Just how bad was it? Most of the population were uneducated illiterate peasants. In the mid-19th century the Czar abolished serfdom, but did it in such a way that it further impoverished them. There was no freedom of speech, no freedom of thought, no freedom of any kind whatsoever. Only the rich and the noble had a chance at succeeding. High death rates, crushing poverty and hopelessness were the order of the day. Then, one day, the people had just about had enough. A revolution was born of the abuses heaped upon them by their unfeeling psychopathic rulers. The world would never be the same.

Seeing the USSR in its historical setting

There is much hypocrisy in those from the West who hate the USSR. They have had their brains washed with anti-communist propaganda, they have had their thoughts filled with fear at the inkling of a socialist revolution, even one that would benefit them personally. The USSR did amazing. It took a backwards feudal dictatorship, and brought about a very egalitarian society. It took an almost completely illiterate population, and taught them to read, write and even become scientists and doctors. It raised the standard of living at a ridiculously fast pace. It raised the life expectancy by decades, lowered the infant mortality rate and gave equal rights to women. It ended the mass killings of Jews, and would go on to defeat Hitler in WW2. After the country suffered heavy losses in WW2, they rebuilt it again this time stronger than before. A right to a home and food and education. A right to a voice in your government, a right to a good standard of living and a stake in your own means of production. Were there problems? Oh yes, there were. It wasn’t a perfect country, such a paradise doesn’t exist. However, while the US was segregating its population, the USSR was preaching the equality of all men regardless of the color of their skin. While the US was killing the Vietnamese in droves and destroying their land, the USSR was defending their right to self determination. While the US was still lynching blacks, the USSR was giving a free university education to anyone who wanted one. While the US ignored its lower classes, the USSR was pushing ahead into space. To look at the USSR and think it was a hell hole is to believe blindly the bullshit narrative spit out by those who hate progress and have nothing but contempt for the working classes. Can we learn from the USSR? Yes, we can, we can learn a lot. Do I want the USSR back? No, I want something even better. I want to build on the past revolutions, not relive them. We move forward into the future, building a better world.

In conclusion, yes, I defend the legacy of the USSR. Although flawed, it provided an example of the fact that the Bourgoise liberal “democracy” road was not the only one possible. It inspired millions of people to rise up, overthrow their oppressors and establish socialism. The legacy of the USSR lives on all around the world. Communism isn’t dead, it’s just incubating. This capitalist system is tottering, marching blindly to its own destructive end. Revolution rises from the ashes of the last, creating a dawn that will once again shake the world to its core. Hold the revolution in your heart, and work for a better world.

 

 

Just a note here, I will be writing a piece soon on social democracy, and liberal “democracy”. Don’t miss it.

 

Hope for a Hopeless World

It’s common knowledge that the world today is in bad shape. Worldwide war, warmongering, overblown nationalism, starvation, sickness, poverty, wealth disparity, hate, racism, police brutality, recession, depression and too many more to list. It seems sometimes that the world has entered the post-modern apocalypse we always feared. Sure, we have our twitter, our iPhones, our apps and our laptops. We have our cheap goods at walmart produced with slave labor. We have our movies to entertain us and our dime a dozen novels to read on our shiny new kindles. we have our TV and our Starbucks and our glittery worship of vacuous celebrities. And it just seems so, so empty. There doesn’t seem to be any way out of the doldrums. We are told time and time again, by people such as Francis Fukuyama, that this is the end of history. There is no more progress, there is no other alternative. We just have to fall in lockstep with our system, because there can never be any other. I’m here to tell you that history has just begun.

Looking Back

Before we look to the future, and since we’ve taken a look at the less than stellar present, let’s take a quick stroll down history lane. Yeah, things are bad right now. The world has a lot of problems, a lot of pain, a lot of suffering. However, things are better now than they’ve ever been in history. You don’t believe me? Ask the ancient Romans, who although having running water, heated baths and paved roads, could never dream of the luxuries that we now enjoy on a daily basis. The Romans had a slave state, so if you weren’t lucky enough to be among the members of the ruling class, life really sucked for you. It was truly brutish and short. The middle ages was a time of superstition, rule by religious authority, and death. Lots and lots of death. Executions in public squares, the Black Death, autocratic kings and queens, endless wars and the feudal system. Oh boy, the feudal system. The rulers had lost much of the technology of the Greeks and Romans and Egyptians, but for the serf life was much more harsh. You could expect a short nasty life, working your fingers to the bone every day just to make the ruling class richer and more comfortable. Your wife might die in childbirth, most of your children by the time they turned 5. Then came the age of enlightenment! Oh grand theories of science and art, philosophy and exploration! (Ignoring the rape, theft and murder that came from those colonizing missions for a moment) Galileo! Copernicus! Thomas Paine! The world moved beyond the feudalistic system of old, through the new mercantilism, and right into capitalism. Once again revolutions led the way, violent or by threat of violence. Old regimes overthrown, new inventions, the moveable type, the explosion in literacy rates and on and on and on. Yet life was still nasty, brutish and short. Women couldn’t vote, there was widespread slavery and abuse, no votes for the poor, the workers who made the economy hum and grow. Then came the industrial revolution (I know, I’m moving through this pretty fast) children working in mines, Chinese immigrants in the US dying building the transcontinental railroad, while being discriminated against and denied rights as citizens.  Now we are here again in the present. We have come a long way. Did that help cheer you up a little bit? If no, the next part just might.

Historical Materialism

What’s that you say? What’s historical materialism? Well, without getting into a major philosophical dissertation, it’s basically what I just wrote above, in a nutshell. You see, the universe is in constant flux. It’s always changing. Changes in our societies, our politics, our economies are no different. There is a war going on, a struggle between two things. One is called the thesis, the other antithesis. The thing, and the opposing thing. This is how things change. The fight between the aristocracy and the growing burgers, townspeople who were beginning production of goods, ended with the abolition of the aristocratic class as the ruling class. That new ruling class grew, and became the giant capitalist class we know today. And the working class? Those who, not owning the means of production must sell their labor? Well, we’re still selling our labor aren’t we? We still live in the capitalist system. However. Marx explained that we already see the seeds of the destruction of this exploitative capitalist order. We see it because of the contradictions in capitalism that will bring it down. We are once again engaged in class warfare, and history has shown us that the result of that battle between thesis and antithesis produces the answer, the synthesis. The answer to the problem. That answer is socialism, the democratic control of the means of production. You see, it may be hard to see it from day to day when you’re struggling, but we are moving forward. The whole weight of history is behind us, and we cannot lose. Things are changing, and they’re changing perhaps even faster than you think. Things are getting better. So keep your chin up comrades, and keep fighting. In the meantime my fellow workers of the world, how about uniting?

If you’d like to read a more in-depth body of work about historical materialism, or any other concept in Marxism, here are a couple of websites for you to check out:

http://www.PSLweb.org

http://www.marxists.org

Have a great day, and happy reading!

Columbus Day: U.S. capitalism built on slavery, genocide

Columbus Day: U.S. capitalism built on slavery, genocide.

Columbus Day: U.S. capitalism

built on slavery, genocide

No reason to celebrate

 

By Peta Lindsay

 

October 7, 2012

 

This article first appeared in the October 2004 issue of Socialism and Liberation magazine.

The second Monday of October is Columbus Day, celebrated as a federal holiday in the U.S. since 1971. This day marks the anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s 1492 landing in the Americas, his “discovery of the New World” for the benefit of the Spanish monarchy.

Columbus Day is a day of parades, pageants and retail shopping bargains across the nation. Schools close and

American Indian Movement marches in San Francisco October 1992, to commemorate 500 years of resistance. Photo: Bill Hackwell

government employees get the day off. But exactly who and what are being celebrated?

To celebrate Columbus is to celebrate a legacy of genocide, slavery, rape and plunder. It commemorates the violent and bloody accumulation of capital for the ruling classes of Europe and, later, the U.S.

Columbus’ voyage was financed by the Spanish monarchy. Spain was then a newly unified nation-state in competition with other European powers to expand its domain and amass great wealth. The purpose of his expedition was to establish an alternative trade route to the East and return with riches. Gold and silver were of particular interest to Columbus.

When he landed in the islands now known as the Bahamas, Columbus encountered the Arawak Indians, whose kindness and generosity he noted in his journal and letters. Columbus quickly took a group of Arawaks captive, hoping they could lead him to gold. He then sailed to Hispaniola-Haiti and the Dominican Republic-where he enslaved even more Indians.

After returning to Spain and reporting on the incredible wealth in the islands of the “New World,” the monarchs gave Columbus 17 ships and more than 1,200 men to plunder the Caribbean. His new expedition went from island to island gathering slaves and gold with unprecedented brutality.

Opening the continent to slavery

Columbus was the first European slave trader in the Americas. He sent more slaves across the Atlantic Ocean than any individual of his time-about 5,000.

He and his men captured and enslaved the Arawak people almost as soon as they landed. Some were sent to Spain and others served Columbus on the islands. In 1496, Columbus jubilantly wrote Spain’s King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella about the possibilities for exploitation in the West Indies: “In the name of the Holy Trinity, we can send from here all the slaves and brazil wood which could be sold.”

In Hispaniola, Columbus and the Spanish set up a system that made every Indian over the age of 14 responsible for gathering a certain amount of gold each month. They received copper tokens to hang around their necks if they succeeded. If an Indian was caught without a token, the Spanish cut off their hands and let them bleed to death.

Such murder and torture occurred frequently because the Spanish wildly overestimated how much gold existed on the island. Gathering enough gold to satisfy the Spanish conquerors was an impossible task.

When it became clear there was no more gold to take, the Spanish started a form of plantation slavery, known as the ecomienda system. This system thrived by working Indian slaves to death on large, privately owned estates. Indian slave labor was later used in gold and silver mines.

Sexual slavery was also widespread among the Spanish settlers. In 1500, Columbus wrote: “A hundred castellanoes are as easily obtained for a woman as for a farm, and it is very general and there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten are now in demand.”

Bartolomé de Las Casas, a Spanish priest sympathetic to the plight of Indians, described the terrible violence against them: “[the Spanish] rode the backs of the Indians as if they were in a hurry,” and they “thought nothing of knifing Indians by tens and twenties and of cutting slices off them to test the sharpness of their blades.”

When the Arawaks tried to escape enslavement, they were hunted and killed. The Spanish sent hunting dogs to rip them apart. When the Arawaks tried to organize armed uprisings, they were crushed by the settlers’ advanced weaponry. Arawaks taken prisoner in battle were hanged or burned alive. Many turned to suicide out of misery and desperation.

The diseases brought by the colonizers rapidly felled the Indians. Through out the Americas, millions died from smallpox, influenza, viral hepatitis and other illnesses. European rodents and livestock wreaked havoc on the ecosystem of the Americas, which sustained the native population.

A brutal legacy

Columbus and his followers massacred an entire people. Some estimate that the pre-Columbian population on the island of Hispaniola was as high as 8 million. By 1516, the Indian population dropped to 12,000. Only 200 remained by 1542. Not one Arawak Indian was left alive on the island by 1555.

The atrocities committed by Columbus and his men were by no means isolated occurrences. Columbus set the model for other Europeans who sought to dominate the “New World.” The same method of terrifying, enslaving and slaughtering Indians was employed by all explorers portrayed as heroes in U.S. history books.

In 1519, Spanish explorer Hernán Cortés and his fellow villagers waged a scorched-earth campaign against the Aztec empire, overcoming fierce resistance and looting everything they could find. Francisco Pizarro carried out a similar extermination against the Inca empire in Peru.

Captain John Smith from England helped colonize what is now the U.S. state of Virginia for profit. In 1624, he glowingly referenced the Spanish method for dealing with indigenous people: “… you have twenty examples of the Spaniards [and] how they got the West Indies and forced the treacherous and rebellious infidels to do all manner of drudgery work and slavery for them, themselves living like soldiers off the fruits of their labors.” The model of limitless brutality to accumulate resources can be seen through out U.S. history.

Slavery fueled capitalist profits

When it became clear that Indians were dying out too quickly to be useful laborers, settlers turned to the transatlantic slave trade. Settlers reaped huge profits from African slaves who were imported to provide labor to maintain the colonies. Plantation slavery soon spread throughout the Americas, providing agricultural production for the colonizers at very little cost.

It is impossible to know how many Africans were forced into slavery in the Americas from the time of Columbus

In this 1862 photograph, the members of this family represent five generations of slavery. Photo: Timothy O’Sullivan

through the 19th century. Slave traders would often record fewer slaves than they actually transported to keep insurance costs down. They also wanted to avoid criticism for exceeding the maximum capacity of their ships’ holds. For example, in 1788, a British House of Commons committee discovered that the slave ship The Brookes-built to carry a maximum of 451 people-carried more than 600 Africans across the Middle Passage.

Slave traders failed to note when slaves died on the high seas. Due to the brutal and unsanitary conditions on slave ships, nearly 1 in 5 slaves died this way.

Although Britain officially banned the slave trade in 1807, many Africans were illegally kidnapped and transported to the Americas thereafter. At least 12 million Africans were taken to the Americas as slaves.

The slave trade provided the European and U.S. ruling classes with centuries of free labor. In the 1600s, the Spanish began using African slaves in gold and silver mines. Most European colonies used the plantation system to produce sugar, cotton, tobacco, indigo, rice and other crops for export to the European market. This process provided Europe with enough material wealth to spur the rapid advances in technological development and production known as the Industrial Revolution.

Even today some U.S. companies can trace their success to profits made from slavery. A 2002 lawsuit against AETNA insurance, CSX and Fleet Boston sought reparations for African Americans from these companies based on their participation in the slave system. AETNA made its money insuring slaves as the property of their masters. CSX is the present permutation of a company that used slave labor to lay railroad tracks. Fleet Boston is a bank that was founded by a slave trader.

The lawsuit is important because it raises the African American community’s just demand for reparations and at tacks the greedy profiteers of slavery. It insists that African Americans be compensated for centuries of forced labor and discrimination. These historical conditions created the economic disparity faced by African Americans in the U.S. today.

It is not only specific companies that owe reparations; the U.S. government must pay as well. Slave labor built the White House. The so-called “founding fathers” of America owned slaves. For nearly 100 years, the U.S. government and their capitalist partners reaped massive profits dripping with the blood of African slaves.

Genocide and slavery in the name of capitalist accumulation was practiced in the Americas and the rest of the colonized world. Karl Marx wrote in “Capital”: “The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skinned, signaled the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production.”

Columbus and those like him are heroes to the capitalists. They understand that the cruelty and exploitation that marked the colonization of the Americas benefited them. The capitalists’ unyielding search for profits and superprofits leaves them neither conscience nor morality.

Although legal chattel slavery no longer exists in the Americas, capitalist exploitation of poor and oppressed people continues to this day. This is the legacy of Christopher Columbus. For that reason, the masses of people who suffer exploitation have no reason to celebrate on Columbus Day.

Content may be reprinted with credit to LiberationNews.org

Bay Area cops kill Black man in front of his own home

Bay Area cops kill Black man in front of his own home.

By William West

September 11, 2012

Community protest against police shooting in Vallejo

In the early hours of Sept. 2, the Vallejo Police Department claimed its fifth shooting fatality in four months. Mario Romero, a 23-year-old African-American father, died after two cops fired 31 rounds into his vehicle.

Romero and his brother-in-law, 21-year-old Joseph Johnson, were sitting in Romero’s car talking in front of Romero’s house. Suddenly, a police cruiser pulled up in front of the car and a bright light was shined into the eyes of the two men. The cops started screaming at them to put their hands up but never identified themselves as police.

The police claim that Johnson put his hands up but that Romero opened the car door and appeared to be exiting. The cops maintain that they saw a gun in Romero’s waistband as he was exiting while simultaneously claiming that their view of Romero was obscured by the open car door. Under this pretext the police justify their shooting Romero.

After being shot, police say Romero appeared to be clutching something from behind the car door. They say he did not put his hands up when ordered to do so a second time, so the cops then fired a total of 31 rounds into the vehicle, killing Romero and severely wounding Johnson. After the shooting, the cops allege they found a pellet gun, which is neither dangerous nor illegal, in Romero’s car. No actual gun was found in the car.

What the cops did not know was that there was a witness in the house. The bright lights and screaming that preceded the shooting awoke Cynquita Martin, Romero’s sister. She looked out her window and saw cops pointing guns at her brother and brother-in-law as they sat in the car. She says that the cops started shooting instantly after ordering the men to put their hands up. Romero never even began to leave the car. After firing several rounds at the two men, Martin said one of the cops “hopped on top of the car and he was just letting his gun loose. He was just shooting and shooting.”

After hearing Martin’s account of the events, the police acknowledged that one of the cops jumped on top of the car after the shots were fired but claimed the officer was checking to see whether there was anyone else in the vehicle beside Romero and Johnson. This is hardly a more comforting account of the incident. From his hospital bed, Johnson has backed Martin’s version of events. He maintains that there was no pellet gun in the car and that neither he nor Romero ever exited the vehicle.

Romero’s relatives have set up daily protests outside the Vallejo Police Department. Martin has been a vocal leader, demanding answers: “All this inside stuff—all these internal investigations—they aren’t working. We need answers. This needs to end.”The family has found support from Adam and Jeralynn Blueford, who have become leaders of the anti-police brutality movement in the Bay Area since their son Adam was killed by an Oakland cop on May 6.

Vallejo police chief Joseph Kreins made this disgusting defense of the officers involved in the shooting: “When dealing with violent confrontations, our officers are trained to use whatever force is reasonable and necessary to effect an arrest or eliminate a threat. In this case, [the officers] fired several rounds, stopped firing, re-evaluated the threat and then continued firing until they perceived that the threat was no longer imminent.”

In other words, when cops accost a person of color, and “feel threatened,” it is alright for them to shoot that person until they are certain the person is dead.

Martin has said: “It’s unjust that [Romero] couldn’t come home. This is supposed to be his safe place. When you go home that’s supposed to be your safe place. And they took that away from all of us in this house.”

Content may be reprinted with credit to LiberationNews.org.

Is Obama a Socialist?

It started in the 2008 election, and has persisted even today. Four years later, we’re still hearing right wingers angrily denouncing Obama as an “America hating socialist”, and one who wants to see this country fail and on and on. Very seldom do we ever hear anyone address this seriously, or even hardly at all. So for the fun (and education of it) let’s examine closely what being a socialist means, and if Obama meets that definition.

Socialism: What is it?

It would seem that many people in the US are a bit ignorant of what the word socialism means. Let’s consult a dictionary first:
From Merriam-Websters:

so·cial·ism noun \ˈsō-shə-ˌli-zəm\
Definition of SOCIALISM

1
: any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods
2
a : a system of society or group living in which there is no private property
b : a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state
3
: a stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done

What does this mean?

OK, so basically, socialism means collective or government control of the means of production. There are different ideologies and parties that claim to be varying forms of socialism. You have Democratic Socialists, Social Democrats (not really socialists, but for the sake of argument we’ll group them in here) among others, like libertarian socialists, also known as anarchists. Do Obama’s policies have any links to these political ideologies at all?

What Obama has done while in office has been nothing short of capitalist in nature. From a slew of FTAs (Free Trade Agreements) to drones attacking people in Pakistan with more stealth and precision than George W. Bush, Obama has proven himself time and again to be on the capitalist side of the fight. He talks about building jobs, but continues the 10 year old tax cut for the wealthy that Bush began. He has mostly kept the military at it’s current level, with only minimal cutbacks. He has instituted a weak health care reform plan that will probably be knocked down and out by the Republicans. In fact, the health care reform law was very capitalist in nature from the start. It is in effect a huge kickback to insurance companies by making everyone buy PRIVATE insurance.

He has hired people for his administration at top levels that come directly from firms like Goldman Sachs, he has maintained the embargo against Cuba. He has caved in almost every instance to the Republicans, even when he had the political power to accomplish something good. He has allowed cuts in education, in social programs and has maintained basically a majority of Bush policies in almost every regard.

He has not overseen the nationalization of industry. While he did bail out the car companies, banks and insurance firms, these were merely hundreds of billions in injected capital, not an actual government takeover. Certainly none of those helped the common people in a real or lasting way, but sure did make some good money for his friends at the top of those companies.

In short, Obama has been, and continues to be a very conservative president. He advocates capitalism, is hardly even an advocate of Keynesian Economics and is just as war mongering as his predecessor.

Let’s lay this to rest. Socialists such as myself are sick of hearing how socialist Obama supposedly is. The facts tell us that he is not a socialist, not on the side of the working class, and not worthy of our support. The Communist Party USA may support him, but only because they’re defeatists who think that since the GOP is worse they have no obligation to fight for anything better than the status quo. Reject this argument, Obama is not a socialist, nor should anyone consider him one. We fight for a radically different America where common citizens get bailouts, not giant cash hungry corporations. We fight for a future where education and health care are considered human rights, not merely a bottom line for a corporation. We fight for food, housing and clothing for every singe person within our borders. We fight for a future free from war and imperialism. Obama stands for NONE of that. Reject both capitalist imperialist parties, and vote for a real socialist in 2012.

Peta Lindsay 2012! http://www.votepsl.org

The revolutionary origins of Memorial Day and its political hijacking

The revolutionary origins of Memorial Day and its political hijacking.

The revolutionary origins of Memorial Day and its political hijacking

A day celebrating Black liberation utilized for white supremacy

By Ben Becker

MAY 26, 2012

 

The way the Civil War became officially remembered — through Memorial Day celebrations— was based on the erasure of the Black veteran and the liberated slave.

What we now know as Memorial Day began as “Decoration Day” in the immediate aftermath of the U.S. Civil War. It was a tradition initiated by former slaves to celebrate emancipation and commemorate those who died for that cause.

 

These days, Memorial Day is arranged as a day “without politics”—a general patriotic celebration of all soldiers and veterans, regardless of the nature of the wars in which they participated. This is the opposite of how the day emerged, with explicitly partisan motivations, to celebrate those who fought for justice and liberation.

 

The concept that the population must “remember the sacrifice” of U.S. service members, without a critical reflection on the wars themselves, did not emerge by accident. It came about in the Jim Crow period as the Northern and Southern ruling classes sought to reunite the country around apolitical mourning, which required erasing the “divisive” issues of slavery and Black citizenship. These issues had been at the heart of the struggles of the Civil War and Reconstruction.

 

To truly honor Memorial Day means putting the politics back in. It means reviving the visions of emancipation and liberation that animated the first Decoration Days. It means celebrating those who have fought for justice, while exposing the cruel manipulation of hundreds of thousands of U.S. service members who have been sent to fight and die in wars for conquest and empire.

 

The first Decoration Day

 

As the U.S. Civil War came to a close in April 1865, Union troops entered the city of Charleston, S.C., where four years prior the war had begun. While white residents had largely fled the city, Black residents of Charleston remained to celebrate and welcome the troops, who included the TwentyFirst Colored Infantry. Their celebration on May 1, 1865, the first “Decoration Day,” later became Memorial Day.

 

Historian David Blight retold the story:

 

During the final year of the war, the Confederates had converted the planters’ horse track, the Washington Race Course and Jockey Club, into an outdoor prison. Union soldiers were kept in horrible conditions in the interior of the track; at least 257 died of exposure and disease and were hastily buried in a mass grave behind the grandstand. Some 28 black workmen went to the site, re-buried the Union dead properly, and built a high fence around the cemetery. They whitewashed the fence and built an archway over an entrance on which they inscribed the words, “Martyrs of the Race Course.”

 

Then, black Charlestonians in cooperation with white missionaries and teachers, staged an unforgettable parade of 10,000 people on the slaveholders’ race course. The symbolic power of the low-country planter aristocracy’s horse track (where they had displayed their wealth, leisure, and influence) was not lost on the freed people. A New York Tribune correspondent witnessed the event, describing “a procession of friends and mourners as South Carolina and the United States never saw before.”

 

At 9 a.m. on May 1, the procession stepped off led by 3,000 black schoolchildren carrying armloads of roses and singing “John Brown’s Body.” The children were followed by several hundred black women with baskets of flowers, wreaths and crosses.

 

Then came black men marching in cadence, followed by contingents of Union infantry and other black and white citizens. As many as possible gathered in the cemetery enclosure; a childrens’ choir sang “We’ll Rally around the Flag,” the “Star-Spangled Banner,” and several spirituals before several black ministers read from scripture. (“The First Decoration Day,” Newark Star Ledger)

 

The battle over the ‘memory’ of the Civil War

 

Blight’s award-winning “Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory” (2001) explained how three “overall visions of Civil War memory collided” in the decades after the war.

 

The first was the emancipationist vision, embodied in African Americans’ remembrances and the politics of Radical Reconstruction, in which the Civil War was understood principally as a war for the destruction of slavery and the liberation of African Americans to achieve full citizenship.

 

The second was the reconciliationist vision, ostensibly less political, which focused on honoring the dead on both sides, respecting their sacrifice, and the reunion of the country.

 

The third was the white supremacist vision, which was either openly pro-Confederate or at least despising of Reconstruction as “Black rule” in the South.

 

Over the late 1800s and the early 1900s, in the context of Jim Crow and the complete subordination of Black political participation, the second and third visions largely combined. The emancipationist version of the Civil War, and the heroic participation of African Americans in their own liberation, was erased from popular culture, the history books and official commemoration.

 

In 1877, the Northern capitalist establishment decisively turned their backs on Reconstruction, striking a deal with the old slavocracy to return the South to white supremacist rule in exchange for the South’s acceptance of capitalist expansion. This political and economic deal was reflected in how the war was commemorated. Just as the reunion of the Northern and Southern ruling classes was based on the elimination of Black political participation, the way the Civil War became officially remembered—through Memorial Day celebrations—was based on the elimination of the Black veteran and the liberated slave.

 

The spirit of the first Decoration Day—the struggle for Black liberation and the fight against racism—has unfortunately been whitewashed from the modern Memorial Day.

As Blight explains, “With time, in the North, the war’s two great results—black freedom and the preservation of the Union—were rarely accorded equal space. In the South, a uniquely Confederate version of the war’s meaning, rooted in resistance to Reconstruction, coalesced around Memorial Day practice.” (“Race and Reunion,” p. 65)

 

The Civil War whitewashed

 

In the statues, anniversary parades and popular magazines, the Civil War was portrayed as an all-white affair, a tragic conflict between brothers. To the extent the role of slavery was allowed in these remembrances, Lincoln was typically portrayed as the beneficent liberator standing above the kneeling slave.

 

The mere image of the fighting Black soldier pierced through this particular “memory,” which in reality was a collective and forced “forgetting” of the real past. Portraying the rebellious slave or Black soldier would unmask the Civil War as a life-and-death struggle against slavery, a true social revolution, and a reminder of the political promises that had been betrayed.

 

While African Americans and white radicals continued to uphold the emancipationist remembrance of the Civil War during the following decades—as exemplified by W.E.B. DuBois’ landmark “Black Reconstruction”—this interpretation was effectively silenced in the “respectable” circles of academia, mainstream politics and popular culture. The white supremacist and reconciliationist retelling of the war and Reconstruction was only overthrown in official academic circles in the 1950s and 1960s as the Civil Rights movement shook the country to its core, and more African Americans fought their way into the country’s universities.

 

While historians have gone a long way to expose the white supremacist history of the Civil War and uncover its revolutionary content, the spirit of the first Decoration Day—the struggle for Black liberation and the fight against racism—has unfortunately been whitewashed from the modern Memorial Day.

 

So let’s use Memorial Day weekend to honor the fallen fighters for justice worldwide, to speak plainly about this country’s historic crimes, and rededicate ourselves to take on those of the present.

 

Content may be reprinted with credit to LiberationNews.org.

Occupy the workplace!

Occupy the workplace!.

Occupy the workplace!

Workers have strategic power once organized

APRIL 29, 2012

 

Auto workers occupy their factory in the Flint sit-down strike of 1936-37. In the following months, the tactic spread across the country (see below).

 

Striking electrical workers at the St. Louis Emerson plants, 1937

 

Woolworth retail workers in New York City celebrate a victorious sit-down strike, 1937.

 

This article was published in the ‘May Day Means Unity!’ Edition of Liberation.

View the complete issue.

On the surface, working people appear to have no power. The super-rich, the employers and the politicians—backed up by the cops, the courts and the jails—seem to hold all the strings, to control everything. On the national level, corporate bosses decide what will be produced, who will work and who will not. Their hired hands in Washington decide who gets bailed out and who gets sold out.

 

At the level of the individual workplace, the owners exercise the same sort of domination. Since we live under a legal system that above all recognizes the private property rights of individuals and corporations, owners are given absolute control over who gets hired and fired, how much to pay, the enforcement of arbitrary rules, the reviews of employees, the organization of the business, and when to relocate or shut down a business altogether. At work, the reality of this system—as a dictatorship of the capitalist owners—is clearly revealed.

 

Unions and the strike weapon

 

The main way that workers have typically fought the employers’ dictatorship is by organizing labor unions. As long as workers are not organized, they have no power. A worker either has a union and collective bargaining rights, or the worker is essentially reduced to individual begging. As the famous union song “Solidarity Forever” goes, “For what force on Earth is weaker than the feeble strength of one—but the union makes us strong.”

 

Unions allow workers to feel their collective power at the bargaining table and when they use their ultimate weapon—the strike. It is the workers who make society run and who can bring it to a halt. If the owners of a hotel or a factory or any corporation were not to show up on a given day, operations would be largely unaffected. If the workers don’t show up, operations stop.

 

In other words, the working class, which appears to have no power, really possesses the greatest power of all. If workers unite on a political or economic issue and withhold their labor, the power of the working class becomes instantly recognized.

 

One example was the 2005 strike by New York City transit workers, who were resisting givebacks demanded by the mayor and city government. The corporate media in the city, which fawns on the Wall Street looters, universally portrayed the workers defending their pensions and health care benefits as the worst kind of criminals. Despite huge fines and threats of jail for its leaders, the union showed that New York cannot run without the workers.

 

The opportunity now exists to advance the struggle, but it will require creativity and boldness.

Taking organization to the next level

 

Labor unions continue to be the largest organizations of workers in the United States, and have a vital role to play in the protection of workers’ interests. A chief task of any new social movement of poor and working people will be to defend and rebuild existing workers’ organizations and form new unions in the expansive service sectors where the vast majority of workers are unorganized.

 

But the unions have been severely weakened over several decades. Declining membership and subservience to the political program of the Democratic Party have left the AFL-CIO crippled as it tries to survive in the face of ruthless corporate assaults.

 

A chief factor that has weakened labor is the global mobility of capital. Capitalists tell workers that to remain “competitive” and keep their jobs, they must accept lower and lower wages. They threaten to shut down if workers dare to fight back. The message is clear: Resistance is futile.

 

While unions have given workers an opportunity to respond collectively, they generally accept the numberone rule of capitalism: The owner has the final say and ultimate control over production. Labor unions soften exploitation by fighting for higher wages and better benefits and working conditions, but accept that the factories, offices, machinery and decisions to employ are the exclusive property of the private owners.

 

To resolve the problems of global capitalism in the interests of working people requires as a major first step the advancement of a radical idea, backed up by radical action—that workers have a right to control their jobs.

 

Sit-down actions: The original ‘occupy movement’

 

In 1934, the Great Depression had been going for nearly five years, unemployment was officially over 20 percent and millions of people had become homeless. Nearly every attempt to organize unions had been defeated. Because of the high numbers of unemployed, those with jobs generally had less confidence to struggle for better conditions and pay. They knew they could easily be replaced.

 

But that year saw a remarkable and highly unusual development: In three cities—Minneapolis, San Francisco and Toledo, Ohio—there were general strikes. The strikes were led by truckers, dock workers and auto workers, respectively, but brought in workers from every industry.

 

This new surge led to the formation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations in 1936, and then the historic 43-day Flint Sit-down Strike. When General Motors, anticipating a strike, attempted to move equipment out of a major auto factory in Flint, the workers seized first one

 

GM plant and then another, and courageously held both for more than a month. Communists played a critical role in leading these actions.

 

Up until that time, the huge auto industry had no recognized unions, and conditions on the assembly lines were extreme. But, following their victory, hundreds of sit-down strikes broke out in every kind of corporation from factories to hospitals, retail stores and more. During that year, 5 million workers joined unions, a 250 percent increase in the number of union members in the country.

 

The sit-down strike, the occupation of a workplace, was a new tactic for labor. If they had gone out on strike in the traditional manner, with picket lines outside the factory gates, it is likely that the capitalists and the police forces would have found it much easier to disperse them.

 

Workers’ control

 

The opportunity now exists to advance the struggle, but it will require creativity and boldness. Popularizing the idea that workers have a right to control their workplaces, while remaining within the confines of the capitalist system, would still be a very significant step for the class struggle. Instead of accepting cuts, layoffs and shutdowns, workers can fight to assert their own “property right” to their jobs based on the extra value their labor has created beyond what they are paid in wages. If a business is going bankrupt, workers can assert their right to control it because they are its principal creditors who repeatedly “loan” their labor in advance of payment.

 

In fact, toward the end of the 1937 Flint sit-down strike, Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins defended the occupying workers and declared that a job was a “property right.” It was only the mass struggle of the workers that led a high-ranking government official to make such a statement.

 

In 2009, the workers at Republic Windows and Doors in Chicago revived the sit-down tactic when the company threatened to shut down and throw them out of work. The workers returned to occupy the same factory this year to press their demands again.

 

A battle over whose rights come first—those of the capitalists to their private property versus the rights of the workers to a job, housing, food, health care and so forth—has the potential to bring about a mass transformation in consciousness. That is exactly what happened in the course of the Flint strike seven decades ago, and it can happen again.

 

Content may be reprinted with credit to LiberationNews.org.

Scientific Socialism

Recently I have had several run ins with people who call themselves Hoxhaists. Only they don’t like being called that. Hoxhaists are those who follow the tendency of the Albanian Party of Labor, which was led by one Enver Hoxha. There are those who make grand statements of “Red Love” “Red Salute” etc, while viciously attacking any communist who doesn’t agree with them. If you think that socialism should be scientific, if you think that material conditions can be different for one country than another, then you are like me. If you think that Marxism should have an orthodoxy, that anyone who disagrees with you is anti-communist, then you are no friend of mine. Look throughout the history of communism, and you will see that many many times communists allied with social-democrats, with different tendencies, all towards common goals. What does matter in the struggle? What is important to communists? What is important is the struggle for the liberation of the working class. What is important is people, not hard line adherence  to an idealist concept. I am a dialectical materialist, an historical materialist. I think that humanity is evolving, is changing. Marxists must too evolve and change with the times, changing our ideas as new evidence and understanding emerges, or becomes clear. Some socialists claim that socialism can only occur within a Soviet-style government, and they bash such communist parties as the Communist Party of Japan, that is trying to achieve their goals peacefully by working through the bourgeois democratic system. I do not condemn either system, every people have their own path of struggle, their own evolutionary road to travel. Be wary of anyone that says the whole world must be a certain way, by a certain time, led by certain people.

Those who are dogmatic, who do not believe in scientific socialism, who think that socialism can be achieved in a fortnight with no struggle or evolution are not only deluding themselves, they are confusing and teaching nonsense to other people as well. Those dogmatist assholes are interested in one thing, and one thing only: a fanciful pipe dream of a utopia in which they reign supreme and there is no one to prick their over-inflated egos. If we are serious about social and economic revolution, we should be open minded, and flexible. Science owes only an allegiance to rationality, materialism,and reason.

I stand for one thing, and one thing only. The advancement of the class struggle, by any and every means necessary. That will differ from country to country. Does that make me less of a communist? I think not. I think it means that I am the friend of any worker who struggles against their chains. And when it comes down to it, that is all that really matters.