....Were we to believe Rosenblum, the lesson of the Arizona copper workers' fight in 1983 is that strikes cannot be won today because of the Republican Party's influence in Washington and the inability of workers to extend solidarity.
Friday, October 11, 2013
Another View Of `Men Who Sailed Liberty Ships'
....The trade union bureaucracy, the Communist Party, and nearly every other current in the labor movement collaborated with the U.S. government to paint World War II as a "war for democracy," a fiction that remains common currency today. Immediately after World War II, after failing to keep the hot war going, the ruling classes of the United States and Great Britain jointly opened the cold war by equating the bloody crimes of fascism with communism. It was partly on that basis that the witch-hunt was able to register gains in the labor movement, including the seamen's unions, as early as 1946.
Another truth portrayed in the video is that despite services rendered to U.S. imperialism in World War II, the Communist Party took major blows in the postwar witch- hunt. As the film points out, in 1950 more than 2,000 seamen, many of them members of the Communist Party - but also members of the Socialist Workers Party and other union militants -lost their seamen's papers and right to sail at the hands of the U.S. Coast Guard, acting in the service of the employers and their government....
Veteran Communist John Enestvedt Celebrated
.... Enestvedt's "political confidence in the capacities of the working class were reinforced," stated SWP national secretary Jack Barnes in his letter to the meeting, "by the triumph of the Cuban socialist revolution at the opening of the 1960s, and he closely followed its course over the next 35 years.
"A number of us knew him first as a champion of and educator on the Cuban revolution," Barnes noted, "even before we knew him as a revolutionary farm activist."
In a 1982 letter, John emphasized, "The strong internationalism of Cuba, next door to the world's most powerful imperialist power...is a true contest between what socialism really is offering its working people, as against imperialism's program of mass deprivations and periodic wars, leading to a nuclear burnout of all life."
John embraced the Nicaraguan revolution....
The Assassination Of Malcolm X
.... Organizations that claim to advance the struggle of the oppressed and exploited are not helpless in the face of government disruption efforts. The leadership of every such organization that claims to fight for the oppressed has the responsibility to conduct itself in a manner that will make the movement, its organizations, and members as impervious as possible to the stock-and-trade of secret police operations: agent-baiting, poison pen letters, and the resolution of political differences by acts of thuggery, murder, and so on.
Thursday, October 10, 2013
The great Militant re-read: Socialists Respond To Oklahoma Bombing
.... In the days ahead, the labor movement and all supporters of democratic rights must be on the alert to protest the trampling of hard-won rights that will mark their "investigation" - the presumption of innocence; the right to due process; protection from illegal search, seizure, and wiretaps; freedom of association without infiltration by police informants and agents provocateurs; and many others.
The bombing of the building housing federal offices in Oklahoma City and the killing of scores of men, women, and children - whoever organized and carried it out - has nothing whatsoever to do with the fight against exploitation and oppression. These methods are ones that revolutionists and other class-conscious working people and fighting youth reject.
History Of Socialists' Work In Coalfields
.... Mine workers' history of struggle
"We came to Morgantown in 1977 to become part of a showdown that was shaping up in the nation's coal mines," Mailhot said. In response to the 1974-75 worldwide recession, the rulers dealt blows to the rights and living conditions of working people.
In 1977 the coal bosses association provoked a fight with the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), counting on "the desperately weak position" of the union as one Wall Street magazine put it at that time. What resulted, however, was a 110-day strike in which the ranks of the mine workers voted down two concession contracts. The miners also stood up to President James Carter's aid to the coal bosses when he ordered them back to work using the Taft-Hartely Act, declaring a "national emergency." The miners' slogan was "Taft can mine it - Hartley can haul it," reminiscent of the militancy of the 1943 strike slogan, "You can't mine coal with bayonets."
The great Militant re-read: James P. Cannon on boxing
If you follow me on Facebook you'll know that in the last few weeks I've been rectifying my politics back to my old party, the US Socialist Workers Party.
One of the most fruitful parts of the process has been my decision to reread online back issues of the SWP newspaper The Militant, online since 1995.
I'll be reposrting some articles, naturally.
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Cannon: Prize Fighting Is `Grisly Business'
http://www.themilitant.com/1997/6126/6126_30.html
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