".... even those workers who were illiterate were not ignorant."

An excellent political overview of the last eighty years, as well as a powerful picture of the life of a U.S. communist.

Jay
24 March
_________________

Sam Stark: A Life Dedicated To Workers Party  

BY DAVID CREED

LOS ANGELES - A celebration at the Pathfinder bookstore here June 1 [1997] honored the life and political contributions of Sam Stark, a longtime member of the Socialist Workers Party who died from complications of a stroke on May 2 at the age of 86. Some 40 people attended the event, including his son Sherman Stark, other relatives, friends, and comrades of the SWP and Young Socialists.

Eli Green, a member of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers, chaired the event. On display were front pages of the Militant highlighting major world political events that Sam participated in over his six decades in the communist movement. Messages from comrades who knew and worked with Stark over the years were read throughout the meeting.

Laura Anderson, a young airline worker and member of the International Association of Machinists, gave opening remarks. She read a message from Betsy McDonald, who worked with Stark as a member of the Los Angeles SWP branch for many years. "No assignment was drudgery," McDonald said. "Even the simplest tasks were important to Sam... I think his lighthearted ways and sense of humor contributed to his proletarian perseverance and staying power."

Francisco Picado, a member of the SWP National Committee who is currently working a stint in the printshop that produces Pathfinder Press titles in New York, also spoke at the event.

"The most important thing that I and others from my political generation can thank Sam for is his contribution to the steady, disciplined functioning that is essential to build a proletarian vanguard," said Picado. In a message to the meeting, Betsey Stone and Joel Britton noted that "Sam was a vital part of regularizing hours during which you could be sure the bookstore would be open."

A reminder of the importance of having the bookstore open at regular hours occurred during the event. Ten people, most of them youth, came in, bought $100 worth of revolutionary books and stayed for the celebration. Some attended a Young Socialists class on the Nicaraguan revolution afterward.

Turn to industry in 1980s

Having radicalized as a youth through experiences in his native Nicaragua, Picado joined the communist movement in Los Angeles at the height of the Nicaraguan and Grenadian revolutions in the early 1980's. "Sam not only embraced these revolutions, but many other young immigrant workers like me who came around thirsty for politics," he noted.

Picado was convinced to join the effort in Los Angeles for some party members to get into union-organized garment plants to be able to carry out political work among this layer of the working class, composed mostly of recent immigrants and members of oppressed nationalities, with lower wages than many other industrial workers.

"There were some folks in the party at the time who disagreed with the Nicaraguan, Grenadian, and Cuban revolutions and opposed forming fractions in the industrial unions," Picado noted. "They boycotted and split from the party in this period. Some of them argued especially against the turn to the needletrade unions, saying it was not worthwhile to orient to workers who were illiterate and ignorant. Sam and his companion May Stark not only disagreed with these faint-hearts, but would sell the Militant and Perspectiva Mundial in the garment district with me and others.

"Neither was proficient in Spanish," he continued, "but they would give me competition selling Perspectiva Mundial. They along with the leadership of the branch understood that even those workers who were illiterate were not ignorant. They couldn't read a book, but they could organize a demonstration or a fight. The intense political fight around this issue in the branch and the building of these industrial fractions in Los Angeles forged my loyalty to the SWP."

John Benson, a leader of the Los Angeles branch of the SWP and member of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers union, spoke about how Sam became a communist and his experiences in the communist movement dating back to the 1930s Depression.

Stark was born on March 16, 1911, in New York. His family immigrated to the United States from Warsaw because his father faced the Czar's draft. Sam left school after the eighth grade to help support the family, first working at his father's bed repair and sales store. He began boxing and had three professional fights. Sam did experience some difficulty finding work. Some places made clear that "Christians only need apply." Finally, he found work as a delivery driver in the garment center in New York.

As the depression deepened, Sam began to look for answers to the crisis of the 1930's. His brother had joined the Communist Party earlier and explained to Sam that capitalism was the source of the crisis and the Russian revolution pointed the way toward a solution for working people. Sam joined the Communist Party in 1934.

As the Spanish revolution was heading toward defeat as a result of the betrayals by the Stalinist, anarchist, and centrist misleaderships, Sam began to disagree with the Communist Party's policies. He especially opposed their use of force against those who disagreed with them. He began reading Leon Trotsky's articles in the Socialist Appeal, the name of the Militant at that time. He was expelled from the CP in 1938 and soon joined the SWP.

One of his first activities in the SWP was a rally in 1939 to protest a meeting of the German-American Bund and other fascist organizations at Madison Square Garden. Some 50,000 workers showed up to protest the fascists, in an action initiated by the SWP. Quoting from a Socialist Appeal article describing the antifascist demonstration, Benson said, " `Surrounded by an unbreakable phalanx one SWP speaker after another lifted on the shoulders of huskies made terse and militant speeches to the workers who cheered so lustily they could be heard, literally, from blocks away.' Sam Stark was one of those huskies."

While in the Bronx branch of the SWP Sam was asked to help a new member, Mamie Ordin (later known as May), study the Socialist Appeal. She became his lifetime companion. Like Sam, May Stark remained an active member of the Socialist Workers Party until her death in 1996.

As the preparations for the imperialist slaughter of World War II picked up, many middle class elements who had been attracted to the U.S.S.R. became panicked, refused to continue defending the Soviet Union, and buckled under the pressure of the U.S. war drive, especially after the 1939 Stalin-Hitler pact. This was reflected in the SWP and led to a split. The party's majority turned to the working class and young members began working in basic industry. Sam and May were part of this majority.

Following W.W.II the U.S. rulers were unable to stop the struggles of colonial people for independence or overthrow the Russian revolution. Sam welcomed the rise of the colonial revolution, especially the Chinese revolution.

Victimization by political police
The rulers began preparations for new wars. As part of these preparations the Truman administration began restricting democratic rights and attacks on labor's right to organize and strike. "Sam had direct experience with the political police several times in the 1950s," said Benson. "They visited his home asking questions, but as a worker communist he knew that you can't talk to the political police of the capitalist class, and refused to cooperate."

At this time Sam was member of the United Rubber Workers, working at the Firestone tire plant in Los Angeles. At the height of the Korean War, Sam was a committeeman in his local union and was elected delegate to the 1952 California CIO Convention. He was fired from this job after the FBI visited the plant. Sam would find work for several weeks or months and then be fired. Finally he began working as a cabinet maker and remained in the Carpenters Union until his death.

Sam's experience with anti-Semitism made the fight for Black rights especially important to him. He was a member of the NAACP and worked alongside other members of SWP to help build the beginnings of the what became the civil rights movement.

In their letter, Stone and Britton said of Sam's work in the 1960's, "Sam had been inspired to redouble his party- building efforts when the Cuban revolution and the movement against the Vietnam war led to an increase of recruitment of youth in the 1960s. One of his weekly tasks in the mid-1960s was to visit several bookstores in the Los Angeles area, which took the Militant and some of our pamphlets and books on consignment. He was proud of the Socialist Workers Party's support to Malcolm X and the nationalist awakening in the Black community. Some of the bookstores he serviced so consistently with gratifying results were in the Black community."

Andrea Morell, a member of the Los Angeles branch of the SWP from 1970-1972, sent a message. She described this period, including the bombing of Cambodia and subsequent student strike, the Chicano moratorium, the imposition of the War Powers Act in Quebec, firebombings of the offices of the Party and YSA by counterrevolutionary Cuban exiles, and the opening battles to win women's right to choose abortion. Morell wrote, "Sam and May were veteran communist workers who, by their presence in our movement, were testimony not only to the revolutionary capacity of working people but to their ability to construct the needed revolutionary instrument."

In the mid-1960s Sam supported a position that the Chinese Communist Party ceased to be Stalinist and became a revolutionary party in order to carry out the Chinese Revolution. Most members of the SWP who held this view quit and joined Progressive Labor, a Maoist split from the Communist Party (CP). "Sam opposed this, saying, " `They left the CP because it was not Stalinist enough,' " Benson stated.

Gale Shangold, a member of the Union of Needletrades Industrial and Textile Employees, and the chairperson of the SWP in southern California, also spoke at the event. She made a fund appeal for Pathfinder Press in honor of Sam's life, which raised $680 for the publisher of the revolutionary books Stark worked so hard to distribute.

Carlos Hernandez, a member of the Los Angeles chapter of the Young Socialists, read a message from Diana Newberry, a YS leader and member of the SWP National Committee who worked with Sam in Los Angeles several years ago. "Comrades like Sam and May were like magnets to me," Newberry wrote. "They were talking about revolution and were inspired by struggles taking place in the U.S. and around the world. Sam was able to remain a rebel because he had a party and a program. He had a lifetime of experiences to contribute and he welcomed the youth that were coming into the movement. This is what is available to youth today. A party of equals who draw on the strengths of each individual to build a movement that will lead our class to the socialist revolution."

Hernandez, a recent graduate at Occidental College, added that he had seen and talked with Sam at that school's library, where Sam regularly went to read and study. "He had a reputation among the students of reading every periodical available."

"Sam considered he had the most fulfilling life one could choose, " said Benson in his closing remarks. "He never lost confidence in his party or the working class. His attitude towards the party is best put in his own words: `The party enriches you. It doesn't take from you. It gives to you.' "

http://www.themilitant.com/1997/6125/6125_14.html

Fascism: Some necessary historical context

Leon Trotsky Takes Up Fight Against Fascism

BY HILDA CUZCO

What is fascism and how can it be combated? That question is on the minds of growing numbers of workers and youth around the world, from the 50,000 who marched against the National Front in Strasbourg, France, March 29 to the protesters who dogged Patrick Buchannan during his 1996 presidential bid in the United States.

The best way to get some answers is to dig into the writings of Leon Trotsky. After the death of Bolshevik leader V.I. Lenin in 1924, Trotsky, a central leader of the Russian revolution, took up the task of defending the revolutionary course against the bureaucratic caste lead by Joseph Stalin. Until his death in 1940 at the hands of a Stalinist agent, he fought to build the kind of international leadership needed to lead the working class and its allies to take power in a time of capitalist crisis, rising fascist forces, revolutionary possibilities, and impending imperialist war.

One of the points Trotsky stresses is that fascism is not just a military dictatorship, but a movement whose sole objective is to crush the workers' organizations and atomize the working class. Its foundation is the petty bourgeoisie. In contrast, "A military dictatorship is purely a bureaucratic institution, reinforced by the military machine and based upon the disorientation of the people and their submission to it," he explained in the article titled "American Problems." "After some time their feelings can change and they can become rebellious against the dictatorship." (Writings of Leon Trotsky, 1939-40, page 338)

Betrayal of Social Democrats, Stalinists

Fascism was able to triumph in Italy, Germany, and elsewhere as a result of the betrayals of the main workers parties-the Social Democracy and the so-called Communist parties that looked to the Stalinist regime in Moscow. The leaders of these parties, which held the allegiance of millions of workers, refused to mobilize an effective defense against the fascist gangs. Such a struggle would have shifted the relationship of forces in favor of the working class and opened the possibility for a revolutionary offensive.

In "A declaration to the Congress Against Fascism," written in April 1933, Trotsky points out the treacherous role of the Social Democratic bureaucracy that opened the road to fascism in Germany. "The top layers of the German Social Democracy are now trying to adapt themselves to Hitler's regime in order to preserve the remainder of their legal positions and the benefits that accrue from them. In vain! Fascism has brought with it a swarm of starved and ravenous locusts who demand and will obtain the monopoly of jobs and sinecures for themselves. The destitution of the reformist bureaucracy, a secondary result of the defeat of the proletarian organizations, represents the payment for the uninterrupted chain of treachery of the Social Democracy since August 4, 1914." (Writings of Leon Trotsky (1932- 1933), page 174).

Meanwhile, the Communist Party in Germany refused to recognize the actual danger of fascism and instead denounced the social democracy as being "social fascists," no better than Hitler's forces. In the "Turn in the Communist International and the German Situation," September 1930, Trotsky blasts the CP for not organizing a fight against fascism and calling for a united front of all the workers parties. "If the Communist Party, in spite of the exceptionally favorable circumstances, has proved powerless to seriously shake the structure of the social democracy with the aid of the formula of `social fascism,' then the real fascism now threatens this structure, no longer with wordy formulas of so-called radicalism, but with the chemical formulas of explosives....

"The policy of a united front of the workers against fascism flow from this situation. It opens up tremendous possibilities to the Communist Party. A condition for success, however, is the rejection of the theory and practice of `social fascism,' the harm of which becomes a positive menace under the present circumstances." (The Struggle against Fascism in Germany, page 70)

The need for united workers' defense

On Feb. 6, 1934, fascist riots imposed the bonapartist government of Gaston Doumergue in France. In the October 1934 article "Whither France?" Trotsky emphasizes the need to lead an organized defense against fascist forces through workers militias. " `We need mass self-defense and not the militia,' we are often told" by the CP and the Socialist Party, Trotsky wrote. "But what is this `mass self-defense' without combat organizations, without specialized cadres, without arms? To give over the defense against fascism to unorganized and unprepared masses left to themselves would to play a role incomparably lower than the role of Pontius Pilate. To deny the role of the militia is to deny the role of the vanguard. Then why a party? Without the support of the masses, the militia is nothing. But without organized combat detachments, the most heroic masses will be smashed bit by bit by the fascist gangs. It is nonsense to counterpose the militia to self-defense. The militia is an organ of self-defense." (Leon Trotsky on France, p. 44).

Building a revolutionary party was key to fighting fascism, Trotsky emphasized. "In every discussion of political topics the question invariably arises: Shall we succeed in creating a strong party for the moment when the crisis comes? Might not fascism anticipate us? Isn't a fascist stage of development inevitable? The successes of fascism easily make people lose all perspective, lead them to forget the actual conditions which made the strengthening and the victory of fascism possible," he wrote in 1940. "No occupation is more completely unworthy than that of speculating whether or not we shall succeed in creating a powerful revolutionary leader-party. Ahead lies a favorable perspective, providing all the justification for revolutionary activism. It is necessary to utilize the opportunities which are opening up and to build the revolutionary party." (Struggle against Fascism in Germany, pages 447, 452)  
 

http://www.themilitant.com/1997/6116/6116_29.html

Socialists reject conspiracy theories

Socialist: `Reject CIA Conspiracy Theory'  

BY GALE SHANGOLD
1996

LOS ANGELES - "Working people should totally reject the barrage of conspiracy theories that are running rampant now," said Thabo Ntweng, Socialist Workers candidate for Congress in the 35th Congressional District. In a recent interview, Ntweng responded to the articles in the San Jose Mercury News alleging that a Nicaraguan drug network with ties to the CIA opened the first crack cocaine pipeline to the Los Angeles Black community.

The newspaper articles by staff writer Gary Webb rehash news about Nicaraguan "contra" operations to profit from the selling of drugs after the U.S. government had officially cut off aid to these counterrevolutionary forces in the 1980s.

"My campaign," said Ntweng, "was for a period of time dead wrong on this issue. Our initial campaign statement said, `Visible united action is key to expose who okayed the racist decision to `target' South Central for cocaine sales to fund the U.S. dirty war against the Nicaraguan people and their government.' We also said the CIA-contra operation `opened the floodgates to crack addiction, ruining lives of tens of thousands of Blacks, many of them young.'

"Rather than a conspiracy or a racist plot," explained Ntweng, "drugs were sold where money could be made quickly, easily, profitably - where there were already middlemen, a distribution network, and a market."

The U.S. government also organized funding for the contras from contributions from wealthy U.S. capitalists, from the royal family in Saudi Arabia, and from arm sales to Iran, later known as "Contragate."

"My campaign attended two public meetings called after the San Jose Mercury News articles appeared, each of which attracted well over 1,000 Black community residents. My campaign statement painted these meetings in a positive light rather than describing them as Democratic Party get-out-the-vote operations from start to finish," said Ntweng.

Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters of Los Angeles and wealthy businessman Daniel Bakewell of the Brotherhood Crusade organized the meetings and encouraged people to reelect President William Clinton.

Another public meeting conducted by Rep. Juanita Millender- McDonald, another Democrat, was a "Congressional Inquiry into Alleged Central Intelligence Agency Involvement in the South Central Los Angeles Crack Cocaine Drug Trade." The October 19 hearing was hosted by the Congressional Black Caucus, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, and the House Select Committee on Intelligence. About 800 people heard day-long testimony from a parade of professors, writers, lawyers, cops, and community activists.

Ntweng said that "workers and others went to these meetings looking for solutions to the real problems they face in their communities. They were presented with nothing but conspiracy theories that are a total diversion from a real fight for Black rights." These so-called theories point workers away from developing a materialist understanding the how the social and economic crises they face are rooted in class-divided society, and how they can be part of organizing a movement to change it, the SWP candidate said.

Ntweng also commented on the demands of the southern California SWP campaign statement which read, "Open all the contra-drug files now! Make the CIA, DEA, FBI, National Security Council come clean! Arrest and prosecute the government drug traffickers!"

"These demands foster the illusion that demands around drugs can be realized under capitalism. In fact, drugs are a major capitalist business. The cops and other government agencies are up to their ears in it; we shouldn't act shocked at that," said Ntweng.

"As capitalism declines alcoholism and other social ills proliferate, including drug abuse." The demands also perpetuate the illusion that the CIA and other government cop formations can be reformed. "These cops exist entirely in order to uphold capitalist rule. There is no way for them to come clean," Ntweng pointed out.

"This also leads me to say why it was such an error in the campaign statement to quote from Malcolm X completely out of context, thereby giving a wrong impression on what Malcolm X had to offer on this topic.

The statement read, "The capitalist system, as Malcolm X taught, aims to turn `victims into criminals.' " By presenting Malcolm X's view in this light, the statement echoed the liberal approach to working people - that we are victims, first and last, Ntweng argued.

"Lifting that quote out of its context gives the impression that Malcolm looked at Blacks as victims instead of people who have the capacity to struggle and win.

"Malcolm X put forward that workers and youth cannot blame others for conditions such as drug abuse. He pointed out that we don't have to accept the alienation and degradation that the capitalist system brings us. We can fight for our rights and assert our humanity and self-worth in that process. Blacks are a vanguard section of the working class that will be in the forefront of the battles that are coming," said Ntweng.

Ntweng explained that it is widely recognized and accepted that the CIA has a sordid history of secret actions around the world and is assigned its share of Washington's ongoing attempts to eliminate threats to U.S. dominance. "But it is dead wrong to say that the CIA poured drugs into Black community in order to devastate it as the conspiracy theories do.

"Instead of repeating these stories we need to understand that Blacks face devastating conditions not because of some plot, but because of the day-to-day workings of capitalism, which profits off the exploitation of Blacks and other oppressed nationalities. Racism is also used by the ruling class to keep the working class divided.

"Capitalism is in a crisis. That is why we see increased assaults, including the resegregation of the Black community, a rise in racist police brutality, and high unemployment hitting Blacks the hardest," said Ntweng.

Ntweng maintained that misleaders such as Waters don't point out the real enemy of Blacks: the government and all its agencies, the Democratic and Republican parties, and the wealthy ruling class that they represent.

"It is an election year and no accident that liberals in San Jose `exposed' this issue," Ntweng continued. "They want to get votes for Democrats by painting Republicans as a special threat for working people. But it is Clinton who is leading the charge against immigrant rights, attacking gay rights by signing the Defense of Marriage Act, cutting the social wage with the Welfare Reform Act, and opening the door to attacks on affirmative action."

Ntweng campaigned outside of the congressional inquiry and commented, "I got a good response from people attending this event when I explained that we have to fight against the whole capitalist system. That is why I am a socialist.

"At the same time we can and must participate in the concrete struggles of the day that can push the rulers back - like defending affirmative action, calling for equal rights for immigrants, and opposing U.S. war moves against Cuba, Iraq, and elsewhere. And we need to break from relying on both the Democratic and Republican parties, which are a major obstacle to all struggles of working  people."

Gale Shangold is a member of Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees Local 482.  
 

http://www.themilitant.com/1996/6039/6039_3.html

The capitalist "culture war"

Returning to my project of rereading The Militant newspaper, I found these formulations valuable. 

.... The ruling class of the United States and the parties and newspapers that are chattel to them have a big problem: the bosses can't make profits any more at a satisfactory rate. They have "downsized" and shut down factories to the limit. Now they are undercutting basic democratic rights and slashing social services that workers won in struggle; rights that in the eyes of many come with being human. This will not pass without resistance. But since one of our biggest weapons as working people is unity of our class, the employers aim to keep us divided. Workers are forced to compete against each other for survival and blame each other in a system where better economic conditions for our class and a stable future are impossible.

The culture war, in a nutshell, is the ideological preparation by the bosses' class to make us think that certain layers of the working class are responsible for bringing the nation down due to lack of moral values. It is a bourgeois tool to soften labor resistance to capitalist austerity....

Full:  http://www.themilitant.com/1996/6035/6035_32.html

Maidan today: no fascists in sight

The most useful service the US Socialist Workers Party and its international collaborators have provided concerning events in Ukraine is to send a team of worker-correspondents from The Militant there for first-hand reports.

The first report can be read here.

One of the most remarkable facts the story provides is this: workers from all over Ukraine are still encamped in the Maidan square.  They continue to organize food and medical work in tents set up near the burned Trade Unions House.

As a former coal miner told the reporting team, “While we watch Russia.... we also watch the politicians of the new government. Most of them are not much different from those who fled.”

All the petty bourgeois right and left, from Lyndon LaRouche to Workers World Party, have proclaimed the triumph of fascism in Kiev.  But self-organized workers occupy Maidan, as they have for the last three months.  There are no government-directed fascist street-fighting units sweeping them off the streets. 

Actual fascists are denouncing the mass mobilizations that caused Yanukvich to flee.

A friend on Facebook commented earlier today:

Interesting facts on some real fascists denouncing the so-called "neo-nazi coup" in Ukraine:

"The Eurasian ideology draws an entirely different lesson from the twentieth century. Founded around 2001 by the Russian political scientist Aleksandr Dugin, it proposes the realization of National Bolshevism. Rather than rejecting totalitarian ideologies, Eurasianism calls upon politicians of the twenty-first century to draw what is useful from both fascism and Stalinism. Dugin’s major work, The Foundations of Geopolitics, published in 1997, follows closely the ideas of Carl Schmitt, the leading Nazi political theorist. Eurasianism is not only the ideological source of the Eurasian Union, it is also the creed of a number of people in the Putin administration, and the moving force of a rather active far-right Russian youth movement. For years Dugin has openly supported the division and colonization of Ukraine.

"...Glazyev’s book Genocide: Russia and the New World Order claims that the sinister forces of the “new world order” conspired against Russia in the 1990s to bring about economic policies that amounted to “genocide.” This book was published in English by Lyndon LaRouche’s magazine Executive Intelligence Review with a preface by LaRouche. Today Executive Intelligence Review echoes Kremlin propaganda, spreading the word in English that Ukrainian protesters have carried out a Nazi coup and started a civil war."

[Source: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/mar/20/fascism-russia-and-ukraine/]

Mention of Carl Schmitt send me back to the pages devoted to him in Georg Lukac's book The Destruction of Reason [1962]; a scan of the Schmitt pages can be found here.
 
Dugin had this to say several months ago about the protestors in Ukraine:

....First of all, all these groups hate Russia and the Russian president. This hate makes them comrades. And the left wing liberal groups are not less extremist than the neo-Nazi groups. We tend to think that they are liberal, but this is horribly wrong. We find especially in Eastern Europe and Russia very often that the Homosexual-Lobby and the ultranationalist and neo-Nazi groups are allies. Also the Homosexual lobby has very extremist ideas about how to deform, re-educate and influence the society. We shouldn´t forget this. The gay and lesbian lobby is not less dangerous for any society than neo-Nazis."

A responsibility of communists explaining events in Ukraine to fellow workers is not to ape the rhetoric and rationalizations of Russia's capitalist leaders and their publicists (like Dugin), using facts and spin of "fascism triumphant" promoted by the Putin regime to further Moscow's centuries-old domination of Ukraine.

In all questions of analysis, it is important to work from facts and not preconceptions.  Jack Barnes said something similar pertaining to the U.S class struggle:

...It is important to be concrete about where we find ourselves today along the long-term curve of capitalist development worldwide, as well as in class politics in the United States. Otherwise, we will speak in formulas, instead of presenting a sharp, clear analysis, a communist program. We won’t be able to accurately explain what we need to do now to build a proletarian party in this country. This dialectic between the international program and national terrain of communists’ march toward state power applies to party building everywhere in the world. But nowhere are the consequences of failing to act on that class reality more damaging to revolutionary prospects and proletarian integrity than in the strongest bastion of world imperialism, the U.S.A. In the closing paragraphs of the draft political report before this convention, we address this question directly. Thinking and acting along proletarian internationalist lines, we say, is and will remain not only a special responsibility but a special challenge for revolutionists who live and work in the United States: [We] carry out our political activity not only in the wealthiest country on earth, but in one that has not experienced war on its own soil since 1865. It is a country in which there have been bloody class battles and proletarian social movements, but there has never been a revolutionary situation or workers’ insurrection. It is a country that has seen genocidal treatment of native populations and organized murderous violence over decades by reactionary outfits such as the Ku Klux Klan, as well as systematic brutality by cops, National Guardsmen, and employer goons—but has experienced only limited combat in the streets and on the picket lines between fascist gangs and defense guards of labor and the oppressed.[22]

 Along the road to a revolutionary situation, the working class in the United States, together with its broad political vanguard, will go through all these combat experiences. Each of them will take concrete forms, not identical to what has happened anywhere else or ever before in history. There will be unique combinations. Certain stages of class politics will be truncated and combined, others extended. Some will be accelerated, “with a truly American speed,” to use Trotsky’s phrase.[23] But communist workers in the United States will experience all these forms of political struggle before the revolutionary battle for power is posed. The working class in this country will face efforts by the capitalist rulers, their government, and ultrarightist forces to smash the labor movement. Bonapartist regimes, whether installed with electoral cover or through open military coups, will use the power of the imperialist state and heightened levels of demagogy against organizations of workers and farmers. In order to maintain capitalist rule, the propertied families of the bourgeoisie will accept methods they themselves fear and seek to avoid in more tranquil times. They will promote the rise of fascist demagogues and movements, including their most virulent form: national socialist organizations that seek a mass base among the insecure middle classes and layers of demoralized workers by combining radical, anticapitalist verbiage with appeals to the most reactionary—and deadly—nationalist, racist, anti-Semitic, and antiwoman prejudices and superstitions."

"Capitalism’s Long Hot Winter Has Begun" - (http://www.pathfinderpress.com/site/winter.html)

The Militant's invaluable first-hand reporting from Maidan concludes with this paragraph, more concrete and useful today than any statements by Putin's supporters among the US left today.

“I hope that these events and the Maidan will help change the consciousness of the workers, get them more involved,” said Anya Tchaikovska, who used to work in a bus and construction equipment depot and has been volunteering for the last four months to help coordinate food supplies. “If workers’ demands are not met, there will have to be another Maidan,” she said. 

Contribute to 'Militant' reporting team in Ukraine

Contribute to ‘Militant’
reporting team in Ukraine
 
As Moscow moves with troops to rip Crimea from Ukraine and maintain Russian domination of the country, a team of worker-correspondents from the U.S., Canada and the United Kingdom are on the scene to report on the conditions of life and range of views among workers, farmers, youth and others — and to talk with them about workers’ struggles and efforts to build proletarian parties in the countries they are from. They will be traveling to different parts of the Ukraine, speaking to people of various national backgrounds and solidarizing with the fight to defend Ukrainian sovereignty. Their first eyewitness report appears in this issue.

Help defray the substantial costs of this unique coverage.

Send a check or money order to: The Militant, 306 W. 37th St., 13th floor, New York, NY 10018.
 

http://www.themilitant.com/2014/7812/781259.html

Differences in U.S. ruling class today

.... The Obama administration is in some respects like none other before it. The president is neither an experienced businessman, a tested general or a seasoned bourgeois career politician. Presiding over the government on behalf of the capitalist ruling class, the heart of the Obama administration beats with that of the self-styled cosmopolitan meritocracy, drawn not from the big owners of capital but from the highly-paid professional, academic and administrative layers of the middle classes.

Divorced from the processes of capitalist production, these social layers serve to maintain the social relations of capitalist production. Existing solely at the behest of the propertied rulers, they are insecure, bourgeois-minded in values and moral outlook, but lacking the confidence of the bourgeoisie. This shapes their world view and approach to U.S. foreign policy.

Obama’s foreign policy is marked by the notion that Washington’s interests can be advanced best through dialogue and acknowledgement that U.S. meddling is the cause of the world’s problems.

“America is not the crude stereotype of a self-interested empire,” said Obama in his Cairo University speech of June 2009.

“Our efforts must be measured against the history of putting American troops in distant lands among hostile populations,” he said at the National Defense University last year. U.S. military action “risks creating more enemies and impacts public opinion overseas.”

But the weakness it projects and the consequences for U.S. capitalist interests — from Iraq to Afghanistan to Libya and Syria — has led to growing opposition within the ruling class.

The administration’s response to conflicts in the world shows a lack of confidence and unpredictability. Its first inclination has been to rely heavily on hunter-killer operations by special forces and aerial drones, avoiding any boots on the ground. But when plans go awry and things appear out of control, the administration has shown a tendency to lash out with dangerous consequences.

‘Based on fantasy’

The New York Times praised the Pentagon’s proposals Feb. 26 as “a military budget to fit the times.” But the Washington Post, a prominent liberal newspaper that has backed Obama, ran an editorial March 2 headlined, “President Obama’s Foreign Policy Is Based on Fantasy.”
“For five years, President Obama has led a foreign policy based more on how he thinks the world should operate than on reality,” the Post said.

It’s time for “a more interventionist phase,” wrote conservative columnist Max Boot in the Weekly Standard. “There is an opening here for a presidential contender smart enough to grasp it. If history is any judge, the swing back to interventionism is coming, and soon.”

History also shows how the army’s size can change rapidly. In 1945 at the end of World War II it reached 6 million, rising from well below half a million five years earlier. After then downsizing to about half a million in 1950, it rose over the next two years to 1.6 million during the Korean War. Similarly, during the Vietnam War troop levels were below 1 million in 1965, but up to 1.6 million three years later.

Doubts about Afghan troop ‘surge’

Obama ran for president in 2008 calling for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq and reinforcing those in Afghanistan. At the end of 2009 he ordered a 30,000-troop “surge” there. But the president “did not really believe the strategy he had approved would work,” wrote Robert Gates, former defense secretary under Obama, in his recently published memoirs.
“When he finally terminated the surge he did so in the middle of the 2012 fighting season. Militarily incoherent — but politically convenient. It allowed Obama to campaign for reelection proclaiming that ‘the tide of war is receding,’” wrote Charles Krauthammer in the American Conservative.

“Don’t ‘Iraq’ Afghanistan,” headlined a Jan. 20 Army Times editorial, drawing a parallel between the Taliban reasserting its dominance once U.S. forces leave with the resurgence of al-Qaeda forces in Iraq’s Anbar province, where U.S. troops fought hard battles to defeat them nearly 10 years ago.

In Syria, despite tough talk about drawing a “red line” over Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons, Obama signed a deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Syrian regime’s ally, for removal of these weapons that strengthened Assad’s hold on power.

The military cutbacks don’t represent a march toward a peaceful America. The most powerful ruling class in history finds its interests around the world more, not less, threatened — and will do what is necessary to protect them.

Full:  http://www.themilitant.com/2014/7811/781105.html