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| Willie Cotton, SWP candidate for lieutenant governor of New York, speaks at June 24 protest against antisemitism. “Working class and unions must rally against Jew-hatred and pogroms,” Steve Clark told conference. (Photo: MILITANT/ELIZABETH LARISCY; Caption: The Militant) |
For some reason all the links in this post were erased. I've tried to restore some of them, but that's still a work in progress.
Sometimes I think Comrade Jack Barnes doesn't believe his own bullshit. He and his fellow Troika members, Mary-Alice Waters and Steve Clark, propose a long list of incredible propositions. It is hard to take them seriously.
Our recent post concerned the first installment of Steve Clark & Roy Landerson's account of the Socialist Workers Party's (SWP) International Conference. Today we consider the sequel by the same authors, entitled ‘Live a life focused on conquering workers power from capitalists, war makers’ — Cuban Revolution set example for fighters. It reports on speeches by Comrades Mary-Alice and Steve.
Mary-Alice's remarks, in defense of the Cuban "Revolution," are full of howlers. For example, whatever the justification--or lack thereof--for Washington's blockade, the notion that it is "'saving' them from the government they have freely chosen for nearly seven decades" is absurd. Since Castro has come to power there has never been a free election in Cuba. That Cubans would in their majority vote for little food, no clean water, no transport, no jobs and now almost no electricity is beyond belief. The Castro kleptocrats are not that popular.
The Party is mustering a massive defense in opposition to the US blockade--or at least it's trying to. In its current issue The Militant does not mention any US demonstrations on behalf of Cuba. Of course the reason is obvious--a failed state such as Cuba does not inspire many people. So they're taking a different approach: pointing out the most important gains of the Cuban "Revolution." Americans are not asked to rally around the Cuban flag for any straightforward materialist reasons--all of which are in short supply. Instead these dialectical materialist Marxists are inspired by "...the proletarian internationalist example revolutionary Cuba has set from Latin America, to Vietnam, to Africa and beyond."
Cuba has apparently not contributed anything of actual material benefit to humanity--and certainly not to Cubans. But their spiritual contribution--in the form of solidarity--is enormous. It's solidarity all the way down.
The former Portuguese colonies of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde fought for independence beginning in the 1960s. They were both successful in 1975 after the fascist Salazar regime was overthrown in Portugal. In Guinea-Bissau there was much violence; in Cape Verde the effort was mostly peaceful. Today, according to Wikipedia, Cape Verde is a stable parliamentary democracy with a growing economy. Guinea-Bissau is ruled by a military junta and is among the poorest countries in the world.
It's that Cuban effort in Guinea Bissau that thrills Comrade Mary-Alice. Indeed, as detailed by Wikipedia, the rebels claimed assistance from Cuba, among other countries. Pathfinder Press, the Party's publishing house, has released a new book touting the heroism of a certain Victor Dreke, entitled Cuba and the Independence War in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde, also written by Mr. Dreke. According to Mary-Alice, (emphasis mine)
Now it gets weird: Somehow selling copies of this book is what is meant by the obscure slogan Deeper into the working class. As quoted above, comrades are not just supposed to read the book, but also to "use it." The so-called "revolutionary" effort fighting a guerilla war in the jungle in a country that was then and still is one of the poorest in the world--from that experience comrades are to draw lessons about current American politics! Go figure.
That, as best I can determine, is the extent of the Party's defense of the Cuban "Revolution."
The problem, per Comrade Waters, is "...that for the past 67 years, since the triumph in Cuba, there has “not been a single victorious socialist revolution anywhere in the world.'" For anybody who fancies themselves as a revolutionary socialist worker-Bolshevik that's got to be a real downer.
Our recent post concerned the first installment of Steve Clark & Roy Landerson's account of the Socialist Workers Party's (SWP) International Conference. Today we consider the sequel by the same authors, entitled ‘Live a life focused on conquering workers power from capitalists, war makers’ — Cuban Revolution set example for fighters. It reports on speeches by Comrades Mary-Alice and Steve.
Mary-Alice's remarks, in defense of the Cuban "Revolution," are full of howlers. For example, whatever the justification--or lack thereof--for Washington's blockade, the notion that it is "'saving' them from the government they have freely chosen for nearly seven decades" is absurd. Since Castro has come to power there has never been a free election in Cuba. That Cubans would in their majority vote for little food, no clean water, no transport, no jobs and now almost no electricity is beyond belief. The Castro kleptocrats are not that popular.
The Party is mustering a massive defense in opposition to the US blockade--or at least it's trying to. In its current issue The Militant does not mention any US demonstrations on behalf of Cuba. Of course the reason is obvious--a failed state such as Cuba does not inspire many people. So they're taking a different approach: pointing out the most important gains of the Cuban "Revolution." Americans are not asked to rally around the Cuban flag for any straightforward materialist reasons--all of which are in short supply. Instead these dialectical materialist Marxists are inspired by "...the proletarian internationalist example revolutionary Cuba has set from Latin America, to Vietnam, to Africa and beyond."
Cuba has apparently not contributed anything of actual material benefit to humanity--and certainly not to Cubans. But their spiritual contribution--in the form of solidarity--is enormous. It's solidarity all the way down.
The former Portuguese colonies of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde fought for independence beginning in the 1960s. They were both successful in 1975 after the fascist Salazar regime was overthrown in Portugal. In Guinea-Bissau there was much violence; in Cape Verde the effort was mostly peaceful. Today, according to Wikipedia, Cape Verde is a stable parliamentary democracy with a growing economy. Guinea-Bissau is ruled by a military junta and is among the poorest countries in the world.
It's that Cuban effort in Guinea Bissau that thrills Comrade Mary-Alice. Indeed, as detailed by Wikipedia, the rebels claimed assistance from Cuba, among other countries. Pathfinder Press, the Party's publishing house, has released a new book touting the heroism of a certain Victor Dreke, entitled Cuba and the Independence War in Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde, also written by Mr. Dreke. According to Mary-Alice, (emphasis mine)
“Party members and supporters have already been working with others to organize events to get this book into the hands of working people and students, encouraging them to read and use it. ...“And we’re just barely out of the starting blocks.”
Today on Amazon the book is ranked at a bit over a million on the bestseller list (#1 is the top spot), which from my experience means they last sold a copy from that platform about a month ago--hardly an impressive launch off those starting blocks.
Admittedly, Amazon is not the important distribution channel for Pathfinder titles. Instead comrades go hawking books door to door on semiannual subscription drives, during which they also sell books. They set themselves a quota to sell something over a 1000 copies during a 10-week drive. It's more than they sell on Amazon--but probably not a lot more. The odds of this book going viral are very long indeed.Now it gets weird: Somehow selling copies of this book is what is meant by the obscure slogan Deeper into the working class. As quoted above, comrades are not just supposed to read the book, but also to "use it." The so-called "revolutionary" effort fighting a guerilla war in the jungle in a country that was then and still is one of the poorest in the world--from that experience comrades are to draw lessons about current American politics! Go figure.
That, as best I can determine, is the extent of the Party's defense of the Cuban "Revolution."
The problem, per Comrade Waters, is "...that for the past 67 years, since the triumph in Cuba, there has “not been a single victorious socialist revolution anywhere in the world.'" For anybody who fancies themselves as a revolutionary socialist worker-Bolshevik that's got to be a real downer.
Only two?
And the two outstanding socialist revolutions and proletarian leaderships of the 20th century, led by Lenin and by Fidel Castro, were Russian and Cuban.
What happened to China? When I was a comrade the Party championed the "Chinese Revolution" of 1949, however deformed it may have been by Stalinism. For decades after the end of the Cold War, the Party was claiming that no true counterrevolution had happened--that China and the ex-Soviet space were all still socialist under the skin. It was nonsense, but the Party held to it for decades as detailed in Comrade Barnes' 1998 book US Imperialism Has Lost the Cold War. But no more--China is now a full-on capitalist country, run by the hopelessly misnamed Chinese Communist Party. The Long March has been airbrushed out of history. (For the record, in my view China is not socialist, but also not capitalist. I'd call it mercantilist--a form of pre-capitalism.)
Making a bit more sense, Mary-Alice says
More than three decades after the fall of hated Stalinist regimes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, these petty-bourgeois radical currents look to China as the principal alternative to what they see as U.S. imperialism’s “unipolar” world. Beijing is both the Stalinists’ new capital of “world socialism” and creditor-in-chief of “the Global South,” the wished-for capitalist counterweight to U.S. imperialist dominance.She is on to something here. There are lots of petty-bourgeois radicals floating around, notably on the progressive Left in the Democrat Party, and certainly in the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). But I don't see many of them claiming a Maoist heritage. Maoism, as an ideology, seems moribund.
Instead I see much of the Left coalescing around some variant of Trotskyism--Trotsky being the only dead Russian unsullied by not being a mass murderer. (This, in my opinion, was only because he never had the opportunity.) Perhaps I'm biased due to the nature of my blog--I study Trotskyists--but I haven't encountered much conversation about the virtues of Maoism anywhere.
Speaking of petty-bourgeois radicals who claim to be Trotskyist, there's no better example than Left Voice--a quality blog run by a collective of very petty-bourgeois academics from New York City. Mary-Alice's next paragraph is absolutely right on the money!
What’s new today is the convergence of these [petty-bourgeois] currents with the sharp rise of reactionary, Islamist, Jew-hating organizations and actions around the world, which has accelerated since the Oct. 7, 2023, pogrom against Israel.
It's an unholy alliance between so-called progressives (including pseudo-Trotskyists) and Islamic fascism. On this the SWP and I are in full agreement. Killing all the Jews won't solve ANY of the world's problems--especially not for Palestinians! Both the Islamists and the progressive Left are using the Jews as a scapegoat. However crazy the reasoning, kudos to the Socialist Workers Party for seeing this for what it is: a plea for mass murder.
Steve Clark, the junior Troika member, argues that the Iran war is actually two wars in one. The first war is an existential fight for Israel to exist. Should Israel lose this war then all the Jews in Palestine will be exterminated. Comrade Clark takes the Iranian government seriously when they demand Death to Israel.
The second war, happening at the same time, is happening because the US--or more precisely US imperialism is trying to conquer Iran to steal its oil. "Topmost for the U.S. ruling families are their own imperial interests in oil and gas resources, other lucrative markets, arms sales, and control over strategic sea routes and straits worldwide." The imperialists don't really care if all the Jews are killed--no sweat off their back. Apparently the Iranian threat of Death to America is just idle propaganda, and they don't really mean it.
This is just unbelievable. In truth, both Israel and the USA are threatened by an Iranian nuclear weapon, and it is essential for both countries to eliminate that threat.
I don't know how much of this Jack Barnes actually believes. It's all some very weird shit. There are people who think Comrade Jack is a secret Republican--and surely his positions on progressives' antisemitism, his opposition to wokeness, and his muscular defense of Israel will buttress their case.
But then there's all the other stuff. I don't know what to make of it.
Further Reading:
A lot of revisionist history from the SWP and the far left regarding Cape Verde. Although many Cape Verdeans got involved in revolutionary resistance in other Portuguese colonies, none of these wars came to Cape Verde. Defeat of the Portuguese came when Portugal simply handed things over to the small underground movement. The new government was indeed Communist, at least on paper, but it was about as benign as a Communist government could get. Pretty much left people alone, didn't expropriate everything in site, didn't force anyone on collective farms. Biggest source of income for the islands was remittances from the diaspora, and people coming home to retire. Cape Verde gave free houses to anyone who wanted to retire there, and you didn't have to be Cape Verdean. No doubt the program paid for itself.
ReplyDeleteMany of the DSA people are former Trotskyists. Bernie Sanders was never one, but apparently friendly with them, since he let his name be used as an elector in the 1980 campaign. I was so worried sick he was going to get the nomination in 16 and again in 2020. Bernie's Cuba fetish is bad enough, but if you look at the SWPs positions they took on Iran. The said the US imperialists should concede all the Iranian demands - give them the Shah, pull the Navy out of the Persian Gulf, apologize to Iran and pay whatever billions they demanded in ransom for the hostages. I dreaded to think what Trump would have done with that. It's not like I had admiration for the Shah. I wouldn't have let him in if I were President. But to demand the US turn someone over they gave refuge so he could be tortured and murdered?
ReplyDeleteChinese Communist Party should change their name to Crony Capitalist Party. Is Mercantilism a form of an government in and of itself or is it a way - a terrible way - of managing trade? Britain's mercantilism doesn't get nearly the credit - or blame - that I believe it should for the American Revolution. Don't tax my tea was the equivalent of a bumper sticker slogan. But for the elites who called the shots, the Stamp Act was more of a symptom than the disease itself. If the Crown moved to the center and offered free trade, I believe they would have won over, or at least gone a long way to mollify elite opinion. Better still, give us what they were to give Canada in the future. But the only reason they did that is they had to learn the hard less of losing those 13 stubborn colonies.
ReplyDeleteI think China fits my def'n of fascism. They're more Mussolini than Marx. See here: https://trotskyschildren.blogspot.com/2014/01/fascism.html
DeleteDefinitely fascist. And scary. Add to this the fact that China is less of a nation state than it is a civilization state - the Middle Kingdom looking at a world of barbarians.
DeleteDid Fred Halstead stay with the party to the end? I see he died in 1988.He's listed in Wikipedia as being a former textile worker and bar room bouncer. Was he an actual worker, or were these jobs something he took on for working class cred? He did great damage to the antiwar movement leading Student Mobilization Against the War, doing his best to be a Hanoi Hawk while telling his followers he just wanted to bring the boys home. I in no way think that plunge into Vietnam was a good idea. People were right to protest. But too many of those protesters allowed themselves to be used for SWP propaganda. Sorry if I'm off topic here, but I can't find an answer to that anywhere including a search of this blog.
ReplyDeleteFred Halstead was a genuine proletarian all his life, unlike the poseurs of the present-day SWP. He was with the party til the end, although according to some he had his qualms.
DeleteI don't know the answer to your question, but I believe a commenter had some useful info. I'm trying to find the post where that comment can be found.
ReplyDelete