samedi 19 novembre 2016
Psychological warfare onto Venezuelan people
More
socialism to be worked out, ask the people
By Daniel
Paquet dpaquet1871@gmail.com
La Nouvelle Vie
Réelle: http://.lnvr.blogspot.com
Venezuelan
national bourgeoisie had never whatsoever agreed upon with the people’s regime
established by Hugo Chavez alongside with democratic sections of the army. Some years ago, there was a failed attempt to
overthrow his government. Later on,
Chavez deceased and the Right expected that it would be then easier to topple
the leadership and replace him. Tough
luck (!), it did not occur that way. However,
like good pupils of Nazi Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels, they disseminate
(up to recently) every lie possible, in ‘professional’ manner, to contest the
Madero government and destabilize the country, hoping to bring back to power
the national bourgeoisie allied to US imperialism. What kind of slander, would you honestly ponder
upon?
The
answer: just like anywhere else in the
world, while aimed at local ‘consumption’.
Here is a classic piece in UK:
“Pity the luckless children of Aleppo,
If only the bombs raining down on
them, killing their parents, maiming their friends, destroying their
hospitals – if only those bombs were British or, better still, American. Then the streets of London would be jammed
with protesters demanding an end to their agony. Whitehall
would be a sea of placards, insisting that war crimes were being committed and
that these crimes were Not in Our Name. The protesters would wear Theresa May masks
and paint their hands red. And they
would be doing it all because, they’d say, they could not bear to see another
child killed in Aleppo. But that is not
the good fortune of the luckless children of that benighted city. Their fate is to be terrorized by the wrong
kind of bombs, the ones dropped by Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Putin.”[1]
(sic)
This ‘allegation’
has nothing to do with the bombings, but denunciate the British Stop the War Coalition that mobilized
the people in UK to condemn Russia and let Vladimir Putin off the hook. But was it not the West that engineered the
war in Syria? Any citizen, in Europe
especially, in Canada and USA as well, should feel concerned by the war waged
onto Syria. In parallel, everyone should
be part of the solution in Venezuela by preventing well-to-do elite and US to
move further with their maneuvers against the socialist power in this South-American
country.
On the other
hand, “it is impossible, because civilized society is split into antagonistic,
and, moreover, irreconcilably antagonistic classes, the ‘self-acting’ arming of
which would lead to an armed struggle between them. A state arises, a special power is created, special
bodies of armed men, and every revolution, by destroying the state apparatus,
clearly demonstrates … how the ruling class strives to restore the special
bodies of armed men which serve it, and how the oppressed class strives to
create a new organization of this kind, capable of serving not the exploiters
but the exploited.”[2]
The
situation is such because, “the first fact that has been established with
complete exactitude by the whole theory of development, by science as a whole –
a fact that was forgotten by the utopians, and is forgotten by the present-day
opportunists who are afraid of the socialist revolution – is that, historically,
there must undoubtedly be a special stage or a special phase of transition from capitalism to
Communism. Marx continues: ‘between capitalist and communist society
lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the
other. There corresponds to this also a
political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary
dictatorship of the proletariat.’”[3]
Nevertheless,
Marx recognized that in the case of the Commune
de Paris (1871), “armed Paris was the only serious obstacle in the way of
the counter-revolutionary conspiracy.” [4]
Further,
“the National Guard (in Paris) reorganized themselves and entrusted their
supreme control to a Central Committee elected by their whole body, save some
fragments of the old Bonapartist formations. (…) Out of 300,000 National guards, only 300
responded to this summons to rally around little Thiers against themselves. The
glorious working Men’s Revolution of March 18 took undisputed sway of Paris. The Central Committee was its provisional
government. (…) From March 18 to the entrance of the Versailles troops into
Paris, the proletarian revolution remained so free from the acts of violence in
which the revolutions – and still more the counter-revolutions – of the ‘better
classes’ abound. (…) Even the sergents-de-ville, instead of being
disarmed and locked up, as ought to have been done, had the gates of Paris
flung open wide for their safe retreat to Versailles. (…) This indulgence of
the Central Committee – this magnanimity of the armed working men (was)
misinterpreted as mere symptoms of conscious weakness.”[5]
“But it
would be ludicrous today to attempt recounting the merely preliminary
atrocities committed by the bombarders of Paris and the fomenters of a
slaveholders’ rebellion protected by foreign invasion. Amidst all these horrors, Thiers, forgetful of
this parliamentary laments on the terrible responsibility weighing down his
dwarfish shoulders, boasts in his bulletins that l’Assemblée siège paisiblement (the Assembly continues meeting in peace.”[6]
“Only when
we have established this life-giving principle (i.e. solidarity) on a sound basis
among the numerous workers of all countries will we attain the great final goal
which we have set ourselves. The
revolution must be carried out with solidarity; this is the great lesson of the
French Commune, which fell because none of the other centers – Berlin, Madrid,
etc. – developed great revolutionary movements comparable to the mighty
uprising of the Paris proletariat.”[7]
“By
dictating the republic to the Provisional Government and through the
Provisional Government to the whole of France, the proletariat stepped into the
foreground forthwith as an independent party, but at the same time challenged
the whole of bourgeois France to enter the lists against it. What it won was the terrain for the fight for
its revolutionary emancipation, but by no means this emancipation itself.”[8]
“With (the)
general prosperity, in which the productive forces of bourgeois society develop
as luxuriantly as it at all possible within bourgeois relationships, there can
be no talk of real revolution. Such a
revolution is only possible in the periods when both these factors, the modern productive forces and the bourgeois productive forms come in collision with each other. (…)
From it all attempts of the reaction to hold up bourgeois development
will rebound just as certainly as all moral indignation and all enthusiastic
proclamations of the democrats. A new revolution is possible only in
consequence of a new crisis. It is,
however, just as certain as this crisis.”[9]
Venezuela and
Socialism
“Modern
socialism is, in its essence, the direct product of the recognition, on the one
hand, of the class antagonism existing in the society of today between
proprietors and non-proprietors, between capitalists and wage-workers; on the
other hand, of the anarchy existing in production. But, in its theoretical form, modern
socialism originally appears ostensibly as a more logical extension of the
principles laid down by the great French philosophers of the eight-centh
century. Like every new theory, modern
socialism had, at first, to connect itself with the intellectual stock-in-trade
ready to its hand, however deeply its roots lay in material economic
facts. The great men, who in France
prepared men’s minds for the coming revolution, were themselves extreme
revolutionists. They recognized no external
authority of any kind whatever. Religion
natural science, society, political institutions – everything was subjected to
the most unsparing criticism: everything
must justify its existence before the judgment seat of reason or give up existence. Reason became the sole measure of
everything.”[10]
“The
materialist conception of history starts from the proposition that the
production of the means to support human life and, next to production, the
exchange of things produced, is the basis of all social structure; that in ever
society that has appeared in history, the manner in which wealth is distributed
and society divided into classes or orders is dependent upon what is produced,
how it is produced, and how the products are exchanged. From this point of view the final causes of
all social changes and political revolutions are to be sought, not in men’s
brains, not in men‘s better insight into
eternal truth and justice, but in changes in the modes of production and exchange.
They are to be sought not in the philosophy, but in the economics of each particular epoch.”[11]
“The state
is, therefore, by no means a power force on society from without, just as
little is it ‘the reality of the ethical idea,’
the image and reality of reason,’ as Hegel maintains. Rather, it is a product of society at a
certain stage of development; it is the admission that this society has become
entangled in an insoluble contradiction with itself, that it is cleft into
irreconcilable antagonisms which is it powerless to dispel. But in order that these antagonisms, classes
with conflicting economic interests, might not consume themselves an society in
sterile struggle, a power seemingly standing above society became necessary for
the purpose of moderating the conflict, of keeping it within the bounds of
‘order’; and this power, arisen out of society, but placing itself above it,
and increasingly alienating itself from it, is the state.”[12]
We dealt
with philosophy and politics, but we shall not forget and “we all know the
dictum of Clausewitz, one of the most famous writers on the philosophy and
history of war, which says: ‘War is a continuation of policy by other means’.”[13]
Let us
deepen our knowledge on Historical Materialism, and namely the character of
wars.
“From the
point of view of Marxism, that is, of modern scientific socialism, the main
issue in any discussion by socialists
on how to assess the war and what attitude to adopt towards it is this: what is the war being waged for, and what
classes staged and directed it. We
Marxists do not belong to that category of people who are unqualified opponents
of all war. We say: our aim is to achieve a socialist system of
society, which, by eliminating the division of mankind into classes, by
eliminating all exploitation of man by man and nation by nation, will
inevitably eliminate the very possibility of war. But in the war to win that socialist system
of society we are bound to encounter conditions under which the class struggle
within each given nation may come up against a war between the different
nations, a war conditioned by this very class struggle. Therefore, we cannot rule out the possibility
of revolutionary wars, i.e., wars arising from the class struggle, wars waged
by revolutionary classes, wars which are of direct and immediate revolutionary
significance. Still less can we rule this
out when we remember that though the history of European revolutions during the
last century, in the course of 125-135 years, say, gave us wars which were mostly
reactionary, it also gave us revolutionary wars, such as the war of the
French revolutionary masses against a united monarchist, backward, feudal and
semi-feudal Europe.”[14]
Socialism
is not a sanguinary regime, but it must defend the gains the revolution and
amplify the achievements of the people, of the working class and the betterment
of its daily life.
“We are
constantly witnessing attempts, especially on the part of the capitalist press-
whether monarchist or republican –, to read into the present war (1917) an
historical meaning which it does not possess.”[15]
For
instance, we may take the time to analyze the conclusions of NATO and US
imperialism in general about the current war in Syria, and the supposedly secret
agenda of Russia.
“British
foreign secretary Boris Johnson’s suggestion that the UK, US and other allies
are re-examining ‘military options ‘in Syria has sharply focused minds on a
phenomenon western politicians have spent the last 15 years trying not to think
about: post-Soviet Russia’s determined drive to re-establish itself as a major
global power and the willingness of its ruthless and tactically astute leader,
Vladimir Putin, to employ almost any means, including use of force, to achieve
that end. Military options are indeed
being discussed again in Washington. The
key question is no longer how best to remove the Syrian dictator, Bashar
al-Assad. It is how to stop the Russian military.”[16]
(sic!)
War onto
Syria is reactionary. War onto Russia is
reactionary. Let Mr. al-Hassad come up with
a political solution to the crisis in his country! We shall consider that “socialism means the
abolition of classes. The dictatorship
of the proletariat has done all it could to abolish classes (in Russia). But classes cannot be abolished at one stroke.”[17]
Latin
America, guerilla and traditional warfare
“… the
degree of wealth and education connected with (the) stage of social development
is… required… in order to provide the required number of trained officers and
to give the soldier himself the required degree of intelligence. (…) The considerable extension of patrol and
foraging expeditions, outpost duties, etc., the greater activity demanded of
every soldier, the more frequent recurrence of cases in which the soldier has
to act on his own and has to rely on his
own intellectual resources, and, finally, the great importance of skirmish
engagements in the fighting, the success of which depends on the intelligence,
the coup d’oeil and the energy of
each individual soldier – all this presupposes a greater degree of education of
the non-commissioned officer and rank-and-file soldier.”[18]
“Like
mobility, the mass character of means of attack is necessarily the result of a higher
stage of civilization, and, in particular, the modern (19th century) proportion
of the armed mass to the total population is incompatible with any state of
society inferior to that of the emancipated bourgeoisie. (…) The emancipation of the proletariat, too,
will have its particular military expression; it will give rise to a specific,
new method of warfare. Cela est clair. It is even possible
already to determine the kind of material basis this new warfare will have. (…)
Without the electric telegraph (Internet, nowadays, -Ed.) it is quite
impossible to direct (the armies); and since in the case of such masses it is
impossible for the strategist and the tactician (who is in command on the
battlefield) to be one and the same person, division of labour comes into
effect here. (…) At that time (1789, the
Great French Revolution, -Ed.) – at least between 1792 and 1794 – the
proletariat was in such a state of ferment and tension as will only recur in
the near future. At that time it already
became evident that in revolutionary wars with violent internal convulsions the mass of the proletariat is needed for
use within the country. (…) Hence
the proletariat will be able to send only a small contingent to the active
army; the main source of the levy remains the mob and the peasants. That is to say, the revolution will have to
wage war with the means and by the methods of the general modern warfare. Summa
summarum, the revolution will have to fight with modern means of war and
the modern art of war against modern means of war and the modern art of war.”[19]
Since they
are now negotiations in Venezuela between the legitimate government and the
Right, it would be premature to torpedo those talks by threats. Thus, it is
highly responsible for the forces of the left to demonstrate its willingness to
come up to a fair solution in the spirit of peace and progress for the
people. But, we must keep an eye opened.
Archives: La Vie
Réelle (in French) www.laviereelle.blogspot.com
Pour la KOMINTERN now ! www.pourlakominternnow.blogspot.com
La Nouvelle Vie
Réelle www.lnvr.blogspot.com
Ideological
Fightback (USA) http://ideologicalfightback.blogspot.com
[1] Freedland,
Jonathan, Russia is the key to stopping
war in Syria, The Guardian Weekly, Comment&Debate, London, 21.10.16,
page 18
[2] Lenin,
V.I., The State and revolution,
Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1970, page 7
[3] Ibidem, The State and revolution, page 73
[4] Marx, The Civil War in France, The Third
Address, May 1871, www.marxists,org, 2011-11-06, page 1 of 10
[5] Ibidem, The Civil War in France, page 2 and ss.
[6] Ibidem, The Civil War in France, page 9 of 10
[7] Tucker,
Robert C., The Marx-Engels Reader,
W.W. Norton&Company, New York-London, 1978, page 524
[8] Ibidem, The Marx-Engels Reader, page 587
[9] Ibidem, The Marx-Engels Reader, page 593
[10] Ibidem, The Marx-Engels Reader, page 683
[11] Ibidem, The
Marx-Engels Reader, page 700-701
[12] Ibidem, The Marx-Engels Reader, page 752
[13] Marx,K; Engels, F.; Lenin, V. On Historical Materialism, Progress
Publishers, Moscow, 1972, page 521
[14] Ibidem,
Lenin, On Historical Materialism,
pages 520-521
[15] Ibidem,
Lenin, On Historical Materialism,
page 522
[16] Tisdali,
Simon, West ponders Putin problem,
The Guardian Weekly, Analysis, London, vol. 195, no. 20, 21-37 october 2016,
front page
[17] Ibidem,
Lenin, On Historical Materialism,
page 645
[18] Marx, Karl;
Engels, Friedrich, Collected Works,
volume 10, 1849-1850, International Publishers, New York, 1978, pages
550-551
[19] Ibidem, Collected Works, volume 10, pages 553,
555, 556
mercredi 16 novembre 2016
Chapter Two: Pioneer Marxists in the United States (1848-1860)
2. Pioneer Marxists in the United States (1848-1860)
The foundation of scientific socialism dates from the publication of The Communist Manifesto in 1848 by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels.1 These two great scientists were the first to explain that socialism, contrary to the ideas of the Utopians, was not the invention of dreamers, but the inevitable outcome of the workings of modern capitalist society. They discovered the laws of capitalist development and proved that the growth of capitalist society, with the class struggle going on within it, must inevitably lead to the downfall of capitalism, to the victory of the working class, to the dictatorship of the proletariat and socialism. They taught that the proletariat was the grave digger of capitalism and that its victory would rid humanity of all exploitation.
The doctrines of scientific socialism were introduced into the United States during the decade preceding the Civil War. The objective conditions had become ripe for them. Industry was growing rapidly and despite the restrictive power of the slavocracy, American capitalism had already reached fourth place among the industrial nations of the world. During this decade the volume of manufactured goods doubled, railroad mileage increased from 9,000 to 31,000, annual coal production (50,000 tons in the 1830's) reached 14 million in 1850, and a tremendous advance took place in the concentration and centralization of capital. The discovery of gold in California had given a big stimulus to general capitalist development. The working class had also become numerically stronger, and class relations were sharpening. Immigrants, mostly skilled workers and farm hands, were pouring into the country at double the rate of the preceding decade, and already about one-third of the population was depending upon manufacturing for its livelihood.
Marxism took root in the United States after the working class had already experienced two deep economic crises. The workers had long undergone severe exploitation at the hands of the employers, they had built many trade unions and local labor parties, waged innumerable hard-fought strikes and political campaigns, and won various important concessions in sharp class struggle. As we have seen, the most developed thinkers among them had already begun to attack the capitalist system as such and to seek a way of escape from its evils. The acceptance of Marxist socialism by these advanced sections of the working class was, therefore, the logical climax of the whole course of social development in the United States since the Revolutionary War. It was further stimulated by the current revolutionary events in Europe—the Chartist movement in England and the revolutionary struggles in France, Germany, and Ireland—with all of which the awakening American working class felt a vivid and direct kinship.
The traditional charge by employers that Marxist socialism, because it originated in Europe, is therefore alien to the United States, is typically stupid. As well assert the same of the alphabet, the multiplication table, the law of gravity, and a host of other scientific principles and discoveries, all of which also developed outside of the United States. "Marxism is no more alien to the United States because of the historically conditioned German origin of its founders, or the Russian origin of Lenin and Stalin, than is the American Declaration of Independence because of the British origin of John Locke, and the French origin of the Encyclopedists.2
GERMAN MARXIST IMMIGRANTS
Marxist thought, based on the generalized experiences of the toiling masses of all countries and worked into a science on European soil, was transmitted to the American working class by the stream of political immigrants, mainly German, who came to this country following the defeat of the European revolutions of 1848. During the 1830's about 2,000 German immigrants arrived yearly, but after 1848 this stream became a torrent of over 200,000 annually throughout the 1850's. There were also large numbers of Irish immigrants, and Italian and French as well (the latter particularly after the Franco-Prussian war and the defeat of the Commune in 1871); but it was the Germans who remained the most decisive force in developing Marxist thought in the United States throughout most of the rest of the nineteenth century. They were the earliest forerunners of the modern Communist Party.
The Germans settled chiefly in such main industrial centers as New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Milwaukee, and Cincinnati. Many entered industry as skilled mechanics and soon began to exert a strong influence on the development of the trade union movement. While most of them considered themselves Socialists and revolutionaries, they brought along with them a wide variety of political ideas, and they reflected the many ideological divisions that existed in their homeland. Their primary preoccupation was with events in the old country, but many of the Germans, in the early 1840's, began to be drawn into American political affairs.
In 1845 a group of Germans formed the Social Reform Association, as part of the National Reform Association. The principal figure in this movement was Hermann Kriege, once a co-worker with Marx, who later swallowed the doctrines of George Henry Evans, a labor editor who had become a land reformer. Kriege was probably the first radical exponent of "American exceptionalism." In substance he was already generating the notion that there existed in the United States a capitalist system fundamentally different from that of Europe, and he developed the theory that because of the great mass of free land, the American workers need not follow the revolutionary course of their European brothers. He declared that if the 1,400,000,000 acres of United States lands were distributed to the poor, "an end will be put to poverty in America at one stroke."3 Marx castigated Kriege for this opportunism and riddled his agrarian illusions.
Another important figure among the early circles of German immigrant workers was Wilhelm Weitling. After an earlier visit, he returned to the United States in 1849. Weitling was one of the first revolutionary leaders to come from the ranks of the workers. He took a position midway between Utopian and scientific socialism. His plan for a "labor exchange bank," previously indicated, attracted much working class support, and for the next decade it proved to be a confusing element in the developing Marxist movement.
WEYDEMEYER, PIONEER OF AMERICAN SOCIALISM
Joseph Weydemeyer, born in Germany, an artillery officer who had participated in the Revolution of 1848, was the best-informed Marxist early to immigrate to the United States.4 More than any other, he contributed toward laying the foundations of scientific socialism in the new world. Arriving in 1851, Weydemeyer stood out as the leader among the American Marxists, which then included such men as F. A. Sorge, Adolph Douai, August Willich, Robert Rosa, Fritz Jacobi, and Siegfried Meyer, most of whom had known and worked with Marx personally in Germany. Sorge, like Weydemeyer, was a well-developed Marxist. Marx and Engels long carried on a voluminous correspondence with him.5
Weydemeyer and his co-Marxists found the Socialist movement in the United States in confusion. There were the disintegrating effects of Weitling's labor exchange bank scheme; Kriege was advocating his agrarian panacea; Willich and Gottfried Kinkel were seeking to transform the movement simply into a campaign to advance the revolution in Germany; and there were various groups of Utopians and anarchists.
Of all the groupings only the German Sports Society, the Turnverein, organized in 1850, had a relatively sound program. Founded upon advanced socialist ideas, this body opposed conspiratorial groups and proposed instead a broad democratic movement rooted among the masses. While these Marxists supported the free soil and other reform movements, they warned that these were not the path to socialism and they emphasized that the emancipation of the working class could only be achieved in struggle led by the proletariat against the capitalist class.
Weydemeyer, a close co-worker of Marx and Engels and well-grounded in Marxist theory, was singularly qualified to undertake the task of clarifying the ideology of the budding American Socialist movement. He was an extremely capable and energetic organizer, and he had spent three years in underground work in Germany, where in the face of the fierce Prussian terror, he had continued to spread the works of Marx and Engels. A gifted polemist, Weydemeyer ably defended Marxism against many distortions. He possessed the ability to apply Marxist principles to American conditions. He avoided the errors of the Utopians, of the radical agrarians, and also those of the "exceptionalists," who believed that the workings of American bourgeois democracy on the land question would solve the problems of the working class. Marx considered Weydemeyer as "one of our best men," and had agreed to his going to the United States only because of the growing importance of America in the world labor movement.
THE PROLETARIAN LEAGUE
The Proletarian League, founded in New York in June 1852, was the first definitely Marxist organization on American soil. It was composed of seventeen of the most advanced Marxists in New York City, at the initiative of Weydemeyer and Sorge. The rising tide of labor struggle and organization, and the rapidly developing strike movement in the United States, together with the foundation by Marx of the German Workers Society in Europe, gave the immediate impetus to the formation of the pioneer Proletarian League.
In starting the League, and in the ensuing work of that organization, the Marxists, then called Communists, based themselves upon the newly-published Communist Manifesto. This historic document, which still serves as a guide for the world's Socialist movement, furnished a clear and basic program for the young and still very weak American movement. Marx and Engels, who always paid very close attention to developments in the United States, were prompt in seeing to it that copies of the great Manifesto were sent to Weydemeyer and his co-workers.
The Communist Manifesto, among its many fundamental political lessons, teaches that "the emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class itself";6 that "every class struggle is a political struggle";7 that the building of a political party of the most advanced section of the workers is fundamental to the success of the Socialist movement; that the proletariat, in its struggles, must make alliances with other progressive forces in society; that the Marxists have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole; that Communists must fight for the immediate as well as the ultimate interests of the working class; and that socialism can be established only through the abolition of the capitalist system.
Die Revolution, the first American Marxist paper, founded in 1852 and edited by Weydemeyer, popularized this basic program. In the first of the only two issues of the paper there appeared, years before it was published in Europe, Marx's classic historical work, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. During the following year this original Marxist journal was succeeded by another, Die Reform, also with Weydemeyer as its guiding spirit. This paper, finally a daily, became the leading labor journal in the United States.
As consistent Marxists, the League members did not live in an ivory tower. Together with centering major attention upon theoretical clarification, they also, in the spirit of The Communist Manifesto, participated actively in the struggles of the working class. In all this work Sorge played a role second only to that of Weydemeyer, and thenceforth, for over a generation, he was to be a tower of strength in the political movements of the American working class.
In line with their general policy of supporting the workers' struggle, the Marxists, small though they were in number, issued in March 1853 a call through the trade unions of German-speaking workers for the formation of one large workers' union. Consequently, over 800 workers gathered in Mechanics' Hall, New York, and launched the American Labor Union. The platform of this organization, avoiding the utopian-ism of Weitling and the "ultra-revolutionary fantasies" of Willich and Kinkel, adopted a short program of immediate demands. This first American Marxist program of immediate demands had the weakness of not being specific and also of ignoring the basic issue of slavery. The organization was composed almost exclusively of German workers. It was a sort of labor party, with affiliated trade unions and ward branches. Its life span was short.
While stressing the united political action of all workers, the American Labor Union directed its energies to the organization of new workers in each craft. Its program called for the immediate naturalization of all immigrants, passage of federal labor laws, removal of burdensome taxes, and the limitation of the working day to 10 hours. It gave active support to the many strikes of the period. And upon its initiative, representatives of 40 trades with 2,000 members launched the General Trade Union of New York City.
The impact of these movements made itself felt among the English-speaking workers in other cities. Through the efforts of two leading Marxists, Sam Briggs and Adolph Cluss, the Workingmen's National Association was set up in the city of Washington in April 1853. The organization, however, died during the same year. The American Labor Union was reorganized in 1857 as the General Workers' League, but it, too, died out by 1860.8
FORMATION OF THE COMMUNIST CLUB
The severe economic crisis that struck the country in the autumn of 1857 sharply changed the character of the workers' struggles. Although it hit the native workers hard, causing them much suffering, it was the newly-arrived immigrants who felt the brunt of the depression. The major struggles of the period were waged by the unemployed, and they developed into battles of unprecedented scope and sharpness. In the forefront of these struggles stood the Marxists who, though few in number, were able to give the workers clear-sighted and militant leadership. Big demonstrations of the unemployed, led by the Communists, took place in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Newark, and here. They demanded relief and denounced the ruling class and its system that created starvation amid plenty. So outstanding was the role of the Marxists in this period that all important struggles of the time were labeled "Communist revolts" and attempts at revolution.
To better co-ordinate their activities the Marxists reorganized their forces, forming the Communist Club in New York on October 25, 1858. Friedrich Kamm was elected chairman and Fritz Jacobi secretary, although Sorge was the real leader of the organization. A Communist Club resolution proclaimed as the aims of the Communists: "We recognize no distinction as to nationality or race, caste, or status, color, or sex; our goal is but reconciliation of all human interests, freedom, and happiness for mankind, and the realization and unification of a world republic."9
The Communist Club of New York, exercising national leadership, began to establish communication with similar but smaller groups springing up in other major centers, notably Chicago, Milwaukee, and Cincinnati. With many leading Marxists, including Weydemeyer, who had moved to the Middle West, the center of the movement also soon shifted to Chicago, where the Arbeiter Verein (Workers' Club) was coming forward as the most effective socialist organization of the period.
Developments abroad and the growing movement for international solidarity occupied much of the attention of the Marxists in the United States. The formation of an international committee in London in 1856 to commemorate the great French revolution, stimulated these trends. Consequently, an American Central Committee of the International Association was set up, with contacts in many cities. One of its first and most successful undertakings was a mass meeting to commemorate the historic June days of the 1848 Revolution in France. Another event, in April 1858, was a big torchlight parade in honor of Felice Orsini, the Italian patriot who had attempted the assassination of Napoleon III. All of these activities brought the German Marxists into contact with other working class forces, and consequently helped to prepare the groundwork for the International Workingmen's Association, founded in 1864 and later known as the First International.
LAYING THE THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS OF MARXISM IN THE UNITED STATES
The early Marxists were confronted with the task of developing the ideological, tactical, and organizational bases for Marxism in America. As yet, however, this movement was not united ideologically, nor was it organized into a national party. This meant that first of all the Marxists themselves had to master the teachings of Marx and Engels. This implied, furthermore, acquiring the ability to apply the principles of Marxism to the specific conditions in this country. They also had to lay the foundations of a national Marxist political party. All this called for the most persistent struggle to free the minds of the workers from the many Jeffersonian, bourgeois agrarian illusions which persisted with particular stubbornness among them.
The needs for ideological clarification and political organization were freshly stressed when, with the easing of the economic crisis of 1857, various petty-bourgeois conceptions began to make themselves increasingly felt afresh in the thinking of the workers. These were also reflected in growing confusion and friction in the Marxist movement. Thus, some of the leaders did not push the fight against slavery, although claiming to be true disciples of Marx; also various Utopian sects reappeared, and Weitling's harmful notions sprang up again in new garb.
In undertaking their great tasks of ideological and organizational development, the early Marxists were favored by the fact that in the decade before the Civil War many of the fundamental problems of Marxist theory—its philosophy, political economy, and revolutionary tactics —had been developed by Marx and Engels. In addition to the famous Manifesto, they had also completed such basic works as Wage-Labor and Capital, Ludwig Feuerbach, The Eighteenth Brumaire, and The Peasant War in Germany. The American movement also had the tremendous advantage of close personal contact with Marx and Engels, who both carefully observed and advised on its development.
The great problem of the Marxists in the United States, of course, was to apply Marxist principles to specific American conditions. Here the early Marxists were faced with many objective and subjective difficulties. These difficulties, in their essence, continued constantly to reappear in new forms and under new conditions, and they have persisted in many ways down to the present day.
Already in the 1850's the Marxists noticed a seeming contradiction between the great militancy and fighting capacity of the American working class, and the slowness with which the workers developed a class-conscious outlook toward politics and society. They noted the contradiction between the highly advanced development of American capitalism and the subjective backwardness of the labor movement. Some of the German immigrants' tried to explain this on the basis of a supposed innate political inferiority of the American working class, while others concluded that Marxism had no validity in the new, democratic United States.
Combating such illusions, the early Marxist leaders pointed out the destructive effects upon labor of slavery in the South. They pointed out further that the existence of the free land in the West, by absorbing masses from the East, hindered the development of class consciousness and of a stable working class, and that the current petty-bourgeois Jeffersonian ideas among the workers stemmed from the Revolution of which the bourgeoisie were the ideological leaders, and also from the whole history of the country. They also gave a Marxist explanation of the recurrent economic crises, which deeply perplexed the workers and the whole American people.
So powerful were the current bourgeois illusions and disintegrating influences among the workers that Engels, in 1892, wrote as follows to Hermann Schlueter: "Up to 1848 one could only speak of the permanent native working class as an exception; the small beginnings of it in the cities in the East always had still the hope of becoming farmers or bourgeois."10
The pioneer Marxists, Weydemeyer, Sorge, and the others—greatly aided by the many new books, articles, letters, and the personal advice of Marx and Engels, fought on two ideological fronts—against the "lefts," who believed that political activity was futile and that Socialism was to be brought about by conspiratorial action and by directing themselves exclusively to supporting revolutionary movements in Germany; and also against the rights, who toyed with agrarian panaceas, sought to tie the workers to corrupt bourgeois politicians, and denied the role of Marxism in the United States.
The Marxists especially attacked the budding theories of "American exceptionalism," advocated by those who, like Kriege, sought to liquidate Marxism by arguing that communism was to be achieved in the United States by a different route from that in Europe—through agrarian reform. Of great help in this struggle were the current writings of Marx and Engels. They pointed out that the establishment of a bourgeois democracy, such as existed in the United States, did not abolish but greatly intensified all the inherent contradictions, and that the forces making for the speedier development of American capitalism were also producing more clear-cut class divisions and sharpening all class relations. They pointed out that the "land of opportunity" was also the classical land of economic crises, unemployment, and of the sharpest extremes between the wealth of the few and the poverty of the great masses.
One of the difficulties peculiar to early Marxism was that its founders, nearly all German immigrants, were striving to introduce their Socialist ideas into a labor movement speaking a different language and having a background and traditions which they little understood. Many of these immigrants also thought that their own stay in America was only temporary, until victory was won in Germany. These circumstances provided fertile ground for sectarian tendencies, which manifested themselves in strong trends among the Socialist-minded German workers to stay apart by themselves and to consider the American workers as politically immature. This sectarianism was a very serious obstacle to the bringing of Socialist ideas to the masses of native workers, and for a full generation Engels thundered against it.
The early Marxists carried on a great deal of propaganda on the need of the workers to act politically in their own interests. They stressed the importance of the workers fighting the employers on all levels; they exposed the fallacy of separating the political from the economic struggles; they showed that every economic struggle, such as the 10-hour day fight, when the working class fought as a class against the ruling class, was a political struggle.
The developed Marxists of the decade just prior to the Civil War were only a handful; yet, for all their weakness, they made tremendous contributions to the young American labor movement. They were pioneer builders of the trade unions; they fought in the front line of every struggle of the workers; they helped break down the barriers between native and immigrant workers; along with native Abolitionists, they were militant fighters against Negro slavery; they helped to build up a solid and influential labor press; and above all, they created the first core of organized Marxists in America, and they spread far and wide the writings of Marx and Engels. The extent of the general influence of the pioneer Marxists may be gauged from the fact that many young trade unions of the period, in their preambles, used The Communist Manifesto as their guide.
For all their relative sensitivity to the position of the white workers, the Negroes, the immigrants, and other oppressed sections of the population, the pioneer Marxists did not, however, become aware of the "significance of the struggle of the Indian tribes, who during these years were being viciously robbed and butchered by the ruthless white invaders of their lands. Indeed, in the whole period from Jefferson right down to our own day, the long series of workers' trade unions and political parties have almost completely ignored the plight and sufferings the abused and heroic Indian peoples. The story of labor's relations with the Indians is practically a blank.
2. Pioneer Marxists in the United States (1848-1860)
 |
| Adolph Douai, early American Marxist, friend of Karl Marx, teacher and founder of first Kindergarten in the US. |
The doctrines of scientific socialism were introduced into the United States during the decade preceding the Civil War. The objective conditions had become ripe for them. Industry was growing rapidly and despite the restrictive power of the slavocracy, American capitalism had already reached fourth place among the industrial nations of the world. During this decade the volume of manufactured goods doubled, railroad mileage increased from 9,000 to 31,000, annual coal production (50,000 tons in the 1830's) reached 14 million in 1850, and a tremendous advance took place in the concentration and centralization of capital. The discovery of gold in California had given a big stimulus to general capitalist development. The working class had also become numerically stronger, and class relations were sharpening. Immigrants, mostly skilled workers and farm hands, were pouring into the country at double the rate of the preceding decade, and already about one-third of the population was depending upon manufacturing for its livelihood.
Marxism took root in the United States after the working class had already experienced two deep economic crises. The workers had long undergone severe exploitation at the hands of the employers, they had built many trade unions and local labor parties, waged innumerable hard-fought strikes and political campaigns, and won various important concessions in sharp class struggle. As we have seen, the most developed thinkers among them had already begun to attack the capitalist system as such and to seek a way of escape from its evils. The acceptance of Marxist socialism by these advanced sections of the working class was, therefore, the logical climax of the whole course of social development in the United States since the Revolutionary War. It was further stimulated by the current revolutionary events in Europe—the Chartist movement in England and the revolutionary struggles in France, Germany, and Ireland—with all of which the awakening American working class felt a vivid and direct kinship.
The traditional charge by employers that Marxist socialism, because it originated in Europe, is therefore alien to the United States, is typically stupid. As well assert the same of the alphabet, the multiplication table, the law of gravity, and a host of other scientific principles and discoveries, all of which also developed outside of the United States. "Marxism is no more alien to the United States because of the historically conditioned German origin of its founders, or the Russian origin of Lenin and Stalin, than is the American Declaration of Independence because of the British origin of John Locke, and the French origin of the Encyclopedists.2
GERMAN MARXIST IMMIGRANTS
Marxist thought, based on the generalized experiences of the toiling masses of all countries and worked into a science on European soil, was transmitted to the American working class by the stream of political immigrants, mainly German, who came to this country following the defeat of the European revolutions of 1848. During the 1830's about 2,000 German immigrants arrived yearly, but after 1848 this stream became a torrent of over 200,000 annually throughout the 1850's. There were also large numbers of Irish immigrants, and Italian and French as well (the latter particularly after the Franco-Prussian war and the defeat of the Commune in 1871); but it was the Germans who remained the most decisive force in developing Marxist thought in the United States throughout most of the rest of the nineteenth century. They were the earliest forerunners of the modern Communist Party.
The Germans settled chiefly in such main industrial centers as New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Milwaukee, and Cincinnati. Many entered industry as skilled mechanics and soon began to exert a strong influence on the development of the trade union movement. While most of them considered themselves Socialists and revolutionaries, they brought along with them a wide variety of political ideas, and they reflected the many ideological divisions that existed in their homeland. Their primary preoccupation was with events in the old country, but many of the Germans, in the early 1840's, began to be drawn into American political affairs.
In 1845 a group of Germans formed the Social Reform Association, as part of the National Reform Association. The principal figure in this movement was Hermann Kriege, once a co-worker with Marx, who later swallowed the doctrines of George Henry Evans, a labor editor who had become a land reformer. Kriege was probably the first radical exponent of "American exceptionalism." In substance he was already generating the notion that there existed in the United States a capitalist system fundamentally different from that of Europe, and he developed the theory that because of the great mass of free land, the American workers need not follow the revolutionary course of their European brothers. He declared that if the 1,400,000,000 acres of United States lands were distributed to the poor, "an end will be put to poverty in America at one stroke."3 Marx castigated Kriege for this opportunism and riddled his agrarian illusions.
Another important figure among the early circles of German immigrant workers was Wilhelm Weitling. After an earlier visit, he returned to the United States in 1849. Weitling was one of the first revolutionary leaders to come from the ranks of the workers. He took a position midway between Utopian and scientific socialism. His plan for a "labor exchange bank," previously indicated, attracted much working class support, and for the next decade it proved to be a confusing element in the developing Marxist movement.
WEYDEMEYER, PIONEER OF AMERICAN SOCIALISM
Joseph Weydemeyer, born in Germany, an artillery officer who had participated in the Revolution of 1848, was the best-informed Marxist early to immigrate to the United States.4 More than any other, he contributed toward laying the foundations of scientific socialism in the new world. Arriving in 1851, Weydemeyer stood out as the leader among the American Marxists, which then included such men as F. A. Sorge, Adolph Douai, August Willich, Robert Rosa, Fritz Jacobi, and Siegfried Meyer, most of whom had known and worked with Marx personally in Germany. Sorge, like Weydemeyer, was a well-developed Marxist. Marx and Engels long carried on a voluminous correspondence with him.5
Weydemeyer and his co-Marxists found the Socialist movement in the United States in confusion. There were the disintegrating effects of Weitling's labor exchange bank scheme; Kriege was advocating his agrarian panacea; Willich and Gottfried Kinkel were seeking to transform the movement simply into a campaign to advance the revolution in Germany; and there were various groups of Utopians and anarchists.
Of all the groupings only the German Sports Society, the Turnverein, organized in 1850, had a relatively sound program. Founded upon advanced socialist ideas, this body opposed conspiratorial groups and proposed instead a broad democratic movement rooted among the masses. While these Marxists supported the free soil and other reform movements, they warned that these were not the path to socialism and they emphasized that the emancipation of the working class could only be achieved in struggle led by the proletariat against the capitalist class.
Weydemeyer, a close co-worker of Marx and Engels and well-grounded in Marxist theory, was singularly qualified to undertake the task of clarifying the ideology of the budding American Socialist movement. He was an extremely capable and energetic organizer, and he had spent three years in underground work in Germany, where in the face of the fierce Prussian terror, he had continued to spread the works of Marx and Engels. A gifted polemist, Weydemeyer ably defended Marxism against many distortions. He possessed the ability to apply Marxist principles to American conditions. He avoided the errors of the Utopians, of the radical agrarians, and also those of the "exceptionalists," who believed that the workings of American bourgeois democracy on the land question would solve the problems of the working class. Marx considered Weydemeyer as "one of our best men," and had agreed to his going to the United States only because of the growing importance of America in the world labor movement.
THE PROLETARIAN LEAGUE
The Proletarian League, founded in New York in June 1852, was the first definitely Marxist organization on American soil. It was composed of seventeen of the most advanced Marxists in New York City, at the initiative of Weydemeyer and Sorge. The rising tide of labor struggle and organization, and the rapidly developing strike movement in the United States, together with the foundation by Marx of the German Workers Society in Europe, gave the immediate impetus to the formation of the pioneer Proletarian League.
In starting the League, and in the ensuing work of that organization, the Marxists, then called Communists, based themselves upon the newly-published Communist Manifesto. This historic document, which still serves as a guide for the world's Socialist movement, furnished a clear and basic program for the young and still very weak American movement. Marx and Engels, who always paid very close attention to developments in the United States, were prompt in seeing to it that copies of the great Manifesto were sent to Weydemeyer and his co-workers.
The Communist Manifesto, among its many fundamental political lessons, teaches that "the emancipation of the working class must be the act of the working class itself";6 that "every class struggle is a political struggle";7 that the building of a political party of the most advanced section of the workers is fundamental to the success of the Socialist movement; that the proletariat, in its struggles, must make alliances with other progressive forces in society; that the Marxists have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole; that Communists must fight for the immediate as well as the ultimate interests of the working class; and that socialism can be established only through the abolition of the capitalist system.
Die Revolution, the first American Marxist paper, founded in 1852 and edited by Weydemeyer, popularized this basic program. In the first of the only two issues of the paper there appeared, years before it was published in Europe, Marx's classic historical work, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. During the following year this original Marxist journal was succeeded by another, Die Reform, also with Weydemeyer as its guiding spirit. This paper, finally a daily, became the leading labor journal in the United States.
As consistent Marxists, the League members did not live in an ivory tower. Together with centering major attention upon theoretical clarification, they also, in the spirit of The Communist Manifesto, participated actively in the struggles of the working class. In all this work Sorge played a role second only to that of Weydemeyer, and thenceforth, for over a generation, he was to be a tower of strength in the political movements of the American working class.
In line with their general policy of supporting the workers' struggle, the Marxists, small though they were in number, issued in March 1853 a call through the trade unions of German-speaking workers for the formation of one large workers' union. Consequently, over 800 workers gathered in Mechanics' Hall, New York, and launched the American Labor Union. The platform of this organization, avoiding the utopian-ism of Weitling and the "ultra-revolutionary fantasies" of Willich and Kinkel, adopted a short program of immediate demands. This first American Marxist program of immediate demands had the weakness of not being specific and also of ignoring the basic issue of slavery. The organization was composed almost exclusively of German workers. It was a sort of labor party, with affiliated trade unions and ward branches. Its life span was short.
While stressing the united political action of all workers, the American Labor Union directed its energies to the organization of new workers in each craft. Its program called for the immediate naturalization of all immigrants, passage of federal labor laws, removal of burdensome taxes, and the limitation of the working day to 10 hours. It gave active support to the many strikes of the period. And upon its initiative, representatives of 40 trades with 2,000 members launched the General Trade Union of New York City.
The impact of these movements made itself felt among the English-speaking workers in other cities. Through the efforts of two leading Marxists, Sam Briggs and Adolph Cluss, the Workingmen's National Association was set up in the city of Washington in April 1853. The organization, however, died during the same year. The American Labor Union was reorganized in 1857 as the General Workers' League, but it, too, died out by 1860.8
FORMATION OF THE COMMUNIST CLUB
The severe economic crisis that struck the country in the autumn of 1857 sharply changed the character of the workers' struggles. Although it hit the native workers hard, causing them much suffering, it was the newly-arrived immigrants who felt the brunt of the depression. The major struggles of the period were waged by the unemployed, and they developed into battles of unprecedented scope and sharpness. In the forefront of these struggles stood the Marxists who, though few in number, were able to give the workers clear-sighted and militant leadership. Big demonstrations of the unemployed, led by the Communists, took place in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Newark, and here. They demanded relief and denounced the ruling class and its system that created starvation amid plenty. So outstanding was the role of the Marxists in this period that all important struggles of the time were labeled "Communist revolts" and attempts at revolution.
To better co-ordinate their activities the Marxists reorganized their forces, forming the Communist Club in New York on October 25, 1858. Friedrich Kamm was elected chairman and Fritz Jacobi secretary, although Sorge was the real leader of the organization. A Communist Club resolution proclaimed as the aims of the Communists: "We recognize no distinction as to nationality or race, caste, or status, color, or sex; our goal is but reconciliation of all human interests, freedom, and happiness for mankind, and the realization and unification of a world republic."9
The Communist Club of New York, exercising national leadership, began to establish communication with similar but smaller groups springing up in other major centers, notably Chicago, Milwaukee, and Cincinnati. With many leading Marxists, including Weydemeyer, who had moved to the Middle West, the center of the movement also soon shifted to Chicago, where the Arbeiter Verein (Workers' Club) was coming forward as the most effective socialist organization of the period.
Developments abroad and the growing movement for international solidarity occupied much of the attention of the Marxists in the United States. The formation of an international committee in London in 1856 to commemorate the great French revolution, stimulated these trends. Consequently, an American Central Committee of the International Association was set up, with contacts in many cities. One of its first and most successful undertakings was a mass meeting to commemorate the historic June days of the 1848 Revolution in France. Another event, in April 1858, was a big torchlight parade in honor of Felice Orsini, the Italian patriot who had attempted the assassination of Napoleon III. All of these activities brought the German Marxists into contact with other working class forces, and consequently helped to prepare the groundwork for the International Workingmen's Association, founded in 1864 and later known as the First International.
LAYING THE THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS OF MARXISM IN THE UNITED STATES
The early Marxists were confronted with the task of developing the ideological, tactical, and organizational bases for Marxism in America. As yet, however, this movement was not united ideologically, nor was it organized into a national party. This meant that first of all the Marxists themselves had to master the teachings of Marx and Engels. This implied, furthermore, acquiring the ability to apply the principles of Marxism to the specific conditions in this country. They also had to lay the foundations of a national Marxist political party. All this called for the most persistent struggle to free the minds of the workers from the many Jeffersonian, bourgeois agrarian illusions which persisted with particular stubbornness among them.
The needs for ideological clarification and political organization were freshly stressed when, with the easing of the economic crisis of 1857, various petty-bourgeois conceptions began to make themselves increasingly felt afresh in the thinking of the workers. These were also reflected in growing confusion and friction in the Marxist movement. Thus, some of the leaders did not push the fight against slavery, although claiming to be true disciples of Marx; also various Utopian sects reappeared, and Weitling's harmful notions sprang up again in new garb.
In undertaking their great tasks of ideological and organizational development, the early Marxists were favored by the fact that in the decade before the Civil War many of the fundamental problems of Marxist theory—its philosophy, political economy, and revolutionary tactics —had been developed by Marx and Engels. In addition to the famous Manifesto, they had also completed such basic works as Wage-Labor and Capital, Ludwig Feuerbach, The Eighteenth Brumaire, and The Peasant War in Germany. The American movement also had the tremendous advantage of close personal contact with Marx and Engels, who both carefully observed and advised on its development.
The great problem of the Marxists in the United States, of course, was to apply Marxist principles to specific American conditions. Here the early Marxists were faced with many objective and subjective difficulties. These difficulties, in their essence, continued constantly to reappear in new forms and under new conditions, and they have persisted in many ways down to the present day.
Already in the 1850's the Marxists noticed a seeming contradiction between the great militancy and fighting capacity of the American working class, and the slowness with which the workers developed a class-conscious outlook toward politics and society. They noted the contradiction between the highly advanced development of American capitalism and the subjective backwardness of the labor movement. Some of the German immigrants' tried to explain this on the basis of a supposed innate political inferiority of the American working class, while others concluded that Marxism had no validity in the new, democratic United States.
Combating such illusions, the early Marxist leaders pointed out the destructive effects upon labor of slavery in the South. They pointed out further that the existence of the free land in the West, by absorbing masses from the East, hindered the development of class consciousness and of a stable working class, and that the current petty-bourgeois Jeffersonian ideas among the workers stemmed from the Revolution of which the bourgeoisie were the ideological leaders, and also from the whole history of the country. They also gave a Marxist explanation of the recurrent economic crises, which deeply perplexed the workers and the whole American people.
So powerful were the current bourgeois illusions and disintegrating influences among the workers that Engels, in 1892, wrote as follows to Hermann Schlueter: "Up to 1848 one could only speak of the permanent native working class as an exception; the small beginnings of it in the cities in the East always had still the hope of becoming farmers or bourgeois."10
The pioneer Marxists, Weydemeyer, Sorge, and the others—greatly aided by the many new books, articles, letters, and the personal advice of Marx and Engels, fought on two ideological fronts—against the "lefts," who believed that political activity was futile and that Socialism was to be brought about by conspiratorial action and by directing themselves exclusively to supporting revolutionary movements in Germany; and also against the rights, who toyed with agrarian panaceas, sought to tie the workers to corrupt bourgeois politicians, and denied the role of Marxism in the United States.
The Marxists especially attacked the budding theories of "American exceptionalism," advocated by those who, like Kriege, sought to liquidate Marxism by arguing that communism was to be achieved in the United States by a different route from that in Europe—through agrarian reform. Of great help in this struggle were the current writings of Marx and Engels. They pointed out that the establishment of a bourgeois democracy, such as existed in the United States, did not abolish but greatly intensified all the inherent contradictions, and that the forces making for the speedier development of American capitalism were also producing more clear-cut class divisions and sharpening all class relations. They pointed out that the "land of opportunity" was also the classical land of economic crises, unemployment, and of the sharpest extremes between the wealth of the few and the poverty of the great masses.
One of the difficulties peculiar to early Marxism was that its founders, nearly all German immigrants, were striving to introduce their Socialist ideas into a labor movement speaking a different language and having a background and traditions which they little understood. Many of these immigrants also thought that their own stay in America was only temporary, until victory was won in Germany. These circumstances provided fertile ground for sectarian tendencies, which manifested themselves in strong trends among the Socialist-minded German workers to stay apart by themselves and to consider the American workers as politically immature. This sectarianism was a very serious obstacle to the bringing of Socialist ideas to the masses of native workers, and for a full generation Engels thundered against it.
The early Marxists carried on a great deal of propaganda on the need of the workers to act politically in their own interests. They stressed the importance of the workers fighting the employers on all levels; they exposed the fallacy of separating the political from the economic struggles; they showed that every economic struggle, such as the 10-hour day fight, when the working class fought as a class against the ruling class, was a political struggle.
The developed Marxists of the decade just prior to the Civil War were only a handful; yet, for all their weakness, they made tremendous contributions to the young American labor movement. They were pioneer builders of the trade unions; they fought in the front line of every struggle of the workers; they helped break down the barriers between native and immigrant workers; along with native Abolitionists, they were militant fighters against Negro slavery; they helped to build up a solid and influential labor press; and above all, they created the first core of organized Marxists in America, and they spread far and wide the writings of Marx and Engels. The extent of the general influence of the pioneer Marxists may be gauged from the fact that many young trade unions of the period, in their preambles, used The Communist Manifesto as their guide.
For all their relative sensitivity to the position of the white workers, the Negroes, the immigrants, and other oppressed sections of the population, the pioneer Marxists did not, however, become aware of the "significance of the struggle of the Indian tribes, who during these years were being viciously robbed and butchered by the ruthless white invaders of their lands. Indeed, in the whole period from Jefferson right down to our own day, the long series of workers' trade unions and political parties have almost completely ignored the plight and sufferings the abused and heroic Indian peoples. The story of labor's relations with the Indians is practically a blank.
1 During these early decades, revolutionary Socialists called themselves Communists. As Marx pointed out, this was because the Utopians and opportunists had discredited the name of Socialist. During the period of the Second International, however, from 1889 to 1914, when opportunists and revolutionaries found themselves within one organization, the terms Socialist and Social-Democrat again came into general use. After the Russian Revolution, for the same reasons that had originally moved Marx to adopt the term Communist, the Bolsheviks ceased calling themselves Social-Democrats and resumed the designation of Communists. The name Communist is also more accurate scientifically.
2 V- J- Jerome in The Communist, Sept. 1939, p. 836.
3 Cited by V. I. Lenin, Selected Works, Vol. 12. p. 299, N. Y., 1943.
4 Karl Obermann, Joseph Weydemeyer: Pioneer of American Socialism, N. Y., 1947.
5 See Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Letters to Americans, N.Y. 1952
6 Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The Communist Manifesto, p. 6, N. Y., 1948 (Preface to the English edition of 1888).
7 Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto, p. 18.
8 Foner, History of the Labor Movement in the US., pp. 232-33.
9 Obermann, Joseph Weydemeyer, p. 96.
10 Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Correspondence, p. 496, N. Y., 1942.
lundi 14 novembre 2016
Voulez-vous? Do
you wish...?
A
post-November 8th Election Day in United States
By Daniel Paquet and The New York
Times International Edition (Paris)
DAMON WINTER
Adjusting to 4 years of Trump in charge “We talked about the work ahead
of us, and the importance of bringing the nation together. This needs to be a
time of redemption, not a time of recrimination.”
The American political establishment reeled as leaders in both parties
began coming to grips with the reality of four years of President Donald J.
Trump in the White House, a once-unimaginable scenario that has now plunged the
United States and its allies and adversaries into a period of deep uncertainty
about the policies and impact of his administration.
Meanwhile scores of people, mostly youth, hit
the road to protest the election of Mr. Trump.
That is the real fight! How long
will the protesters hold on? It depends
of their organization. Do they have
leaders, sound leaders? Situation in
U.S.A. may look like what is going on in Europe, for instance in France with
the growing popularity of Marine LePen and elsewhere, in Germany or Hungary, or
Poland.
“On 8 June
of 2010 an amendment to Article 256 of the Criminal Code came into force in
Poland, provoking an outcry in progressive circles. It proposed to punish ‘whomsoever shall, with the aim of propagandising, produce, import, buy,
stock, transport or send objects bearing symbols... or comprising communist
symbols’.”[1]
Leaders in the United States and abroad wished Donald J. Trump well,
including Hillary Clinton, who said Americans owed the president-elect “an open
mind and a chance to lead.”
Democrats, who will be out of power in both the White House and Congress
for the first time since 2006, were particularly crestfallen on Wednesday that
Hillary Clinton had a slender lead in the popular vote but lost in the
Electoral College, a fate similar to Al Gore’s in 2000.
On campuses nationwide, students marched against Mr. Trump with signs
bearing slogans like “Not my president,” and protesters in Oakland, Calif.,
smashed windows and set fire to garbage bins. On Wednesday night, thousands of
people protested in several cities, including Chicago, Philadelphia, Seattle
and New York, where demonstrators converged in Midtown Manhattan in front of
Trump Tower, the home of the president-elect.
With millions of other voters euphoric at the election of a true
political outsider as president, the clear divide over Mr. Trump inspired pleas
of unity from his two biggest opponents, President Obama and Mrs. Clinton. At
separate news conferences, they urged Americans to come together for the sake
of the republic, and for the good of Mr. Trump’s presidency.
“We are all now rooting for his success,” said Mr. Obama, who planned to
meet with Mr. Trump at the White House on Thursday. “The peaceful transfer of
power is one of the hallmarks of our democracy. And over the next few months,
we are going to show that to the world.”
Mrs. Clinton, in her first remarks to supporters after the election,
said Americans owed Mr. Trump “an open mind and a chance to lead.” Choking back
tears at times, she said she was “sorry that we did not win this election for
the values we share and the vision we hold for our country.”
“This is painful, and it will be for a long time,” Mrs. Clinton said,
standing beside her husband, former President Bill Clinton, in a tableau that
underscored the end of a nearly 25-year era in which the Clintons dominated
American politics.
The clash between excitement and dread was especially palpable over the
likelihood that Mr. Trump, at the head of a unified Republican government,
would try to reverse Obama administration policies and appoint a conservative
Supreme Court justice. The House speaker, Paul D. Ryan, indicated on Wednesday
that Republicans would try to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and Democrats
privately began strategizing to thwart that agenda. Republicans also expanded
their power in state capitals, and Democrats pledged resistance.
Foreign leaders who have had tense relations with Mr. Obama were
particularly welcoming to Mr. Trump. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of
Israel called Mr. Trump “a true friend” of Israel, while President Vladimir V.
Putin of Russia said he hoped to have a “constructive dialogue” with him. Mr.
Trump and Mr. Putin had previously spoken warmly of each other, to the
consternation of both Democratic and Republican leaders, but Trump advisers
said on Wednesday that the two leaders had not talked by phone yet.
“Can we speak of outright fascism today in the
US? Not yet! But we now can see elements and many
characteristics, such as the protection of the corporate power, extreme US nationalism
and the dominant role of the US military.
However finance capital (primarily
transnational corporations and the banks) have concluded that as yet, the traditional
right wing, assisted by the neo-cons, can rule with the semblance of bourgeois
democracy, without resorting yet to ‘extreme dictatorship that outright fascism
represents. This is what Dimitrov called
the ‘preparatory stage’.”[2]
This is the
old story of ‘good cop-bad cop’.
Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, whose immigration policies Mr.
Trump has dismissed as “insane,” offered her cooperation but emphasized the
importance of human rights, while President François Hollande of France noted
that some of Mr. Trump’s views might test “the values and the interests that we
share with the United States.” And Mexican officials congratulated Mr. Trump
but said they would not pay for his proposed border wall, as he has flatly
insisted they will.
“As we all
know – or should know – immediately after World War II and the defeat of
Nazism, CIA protected and brought to the USA General Reinhard Gehlen, the
German Army’s intelligence chief for the Eastern Front. Others that were brought over to work for
NASA include the war criminals SS Major Werner Von Braun, the Hitler rocket
scientist and the butcher of Lyon, Klaus Barbie, among scores of other Nazis
and SS officers.”[3]
By the way, the Communist Party of Poland is a
legal party registered as a Marxist-Leninist party since 2002. This is a warning for the US people since
according to Warsaw University student (also leader of the CPP), Monika
Karbowska, “these
attacks on democratic freedoms are aimed at ‘silencing all opposition by terrorising the population’.[4]
Among the candidates for cabinet secretaries and advisers are members of
Mr. Trump’s inner circle, aides said, including Senator Jeff Sessions of
Alabama, a crucial adviser on policy issues; Steven Mnuchin, a businessman who
was Mr. Trump’s national finance chairman; Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former
mayor of New York; Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey; and Newt Gingrich, a
former speaker of the House.
“(Polish)
trade unionists, militant cadres and other supporters of an alternative world
are also hobbled in this way’, while backed by US imperialism and NATO. (...) It’s
25 years since they opened this cycle of repression. It has led to the ultra-liberalisation and
Americanisation of Poland. Today we’re back
to repression because America wants war, continue Mrs. Karbowska.”[5]
Advisers said he had also started thinking about ways to unite the
country. Democratic leaders quickly embraced a policy priority that Mr. Trump
highlighted in his victory speech: infrastructure spending.
Still, more than a third of Americans said in exit polls on Tuesday that
they would be frightened of a Trump presidency. Among those who voted for Mrs.
Clinton, the feeling was almost unanimous: 92 percent said Mr. Trump scared
them.
Anxieties ran strong among Hispanics, African-Americans, Muslims, immigrants, women and others who had felt disparaged or demonized by Mr. Trump, who used harsh and racially charged language in ways that upended mainstream politics. The fact that Mr. Trump had been endorsed by a Ku Klux Klan newspaper, even if he rejected it, symbolized the sense of shock that he would now lead a vibrantly diverse democracy.
Anxieties ran strong among Hispanics, African-Americans, Muslims, immigrants, women and others who had felt disparaged or demonized by Mr. Trump, who used harsh and racially charged language in ways that upended mainstream politics. The fact that Mr. Trump had been endorsed by a Ku Klux Klan newspaper, even if he rejected it, symbolized the sense of shock that he would now lead a vibrantly diverse democracy.
“While
there may be other valid descriptions of the concept of fascism, I like the one
that Gerogi Dimitrov used at the 13th
Plenum of the Communist International (Komintern) in 1935: ‘the open terrorist dictatorship of the most
reactionary, most chauvinistic and most imperialist elements of finance
capital.’ He also emphasized
that fascism can assume ‘different forms’ in different countries, depending
upon the historical, social, and economic conditions, as well as national and
cultural characteristics. Dimitrov also
noted that where there is no broad base, and there may be an acute struggle
within the fascistic bourgeoisie itself,
parliaments and other bourgeois parties may continue to exist with a modicum
of legality.”(NSC, S)
Many conservatives felt just as strongly, but in the opposite direction.
The conservative radio host Laura Ingraham was overcome with emotion on her
show Wednesday. “You’re bringing tears to my eyes,” she told the Republican
strategist Ed Rollins as she exulted over the meaning of Mr. Trump’s win.
Jacob Stout, 20, who owns a small contracting business in Danville, Ky.,
said the result thrilled him because of the promise of bold action in
Washington. “I’m excited, man. I’m not going to lie,” he said. “We’ve seen,
especially the last eight years, talk but not drastic change that benefits the
citizens. The idea that a citizen would be taking the presidency as opposed to
a politician, I think that’s got people excited.”
His wife, Chloe Joslin, 24, was more tempered in her expectations, even
though she also voted for Mr. Trump.
“Oh my goodness, you see people who are disowning friends over who they
are voting for,” said Ms. Joslin, a communications instructor. “It’s been a
very heated race.”
Politicians also joined business leaders, as well as the many Americans
with retirement and savings accounts, in keeping a nervous eye on the world
financial markets, fearing the sort of backlash that wounded Britain after its
vote in June to leave the European Union. While some business leaders worried
that the nation would slide into recession, others were hopeful that Mr.
Trump’s proposals of tax cuts, infrastructure spending and relaxed regulations
would be welcomed by the markets, which reversed sharp declines.
Political activity and reactions in both parties were in a state of
suspended animation as Republicans and Democrats began anticipating Mr. Trump’s
moves. Mr. Ryan said at a news conference Wednesday that Mr. Trump had a
“mandate” for his vision of government, but was sparing on the details of how
they would work together. Mr. Ryan stopped campaigning for him last month after
revelations that Mr. Trump had boasted about sexual assault.
Mr. Ryan said that he had “spoken with Donald twice in the last 18
hours.”
“We talked about the work ahead of us, and the importance of bringing
the nation together,” he said. “This needs to be a time of redemption, not a
time of recrimination.”
Mr. Ryan could have been hinting at his own fate. There are more than a
few restless conservatives in his conference in the House who were agitating
for his ouster before the election because of his failure to fully embrace Mr.
Trump. And whether that discontent will die down is far from clear.
Other Republicans who made their reservations about Mr. Trump proudly
known before the election tried to be gracious, though some sounded more sceptical
than optimistic.
Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska, who became a public face of the anti-Trump faction on Capitol Hill, said he and his family had asked God to steer Mr. Trump in the right direction. “We pray that he will lead wisely and faithfully keep his oath to a Constitution of limited government,” Mr. Sasse said in a statement. Then he promised to hold Mr. Trump to his word. “Starting today, I will do everything in my power to hold the president to his promises,” he said.
Blog: Communist News www.dpaquet1871.blogspot.com
Montréal, Canada
Party of Communists USA
Post Office Box 140434, Staten Island, NY
10314-0434
www.partyofcommunistusa.org 1(718)979-6563
Inscription à :
Articles (Atom)