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The Sino-Soviet Split as Revisionism versus Global Race War

Published November 26, 2020 Marxism , Nationalism , Theory Leave a Comment

…the second world conference of Communist parties was held in Moscow in November 1960. Though its proceedings were secret, enough information leaked out afterward to make clear this was a vituperative, no-holds-barred fight between the Soviet and Chinese representatives and their respective supporters. The Peking representatives denounced the attitude of the Soviet government toward their country and the Soviet support for India. They accused the Soviet Communist party of fostering a political line that encouraged surrender to the imperialists. They demanded greater militancy and willingness to take risks, arguing that talk of peaceful coexistence [which the USSR was pursuing the US] was useful only to secure the moral disarmament of the capitalist peoples and the material disarmament of their governments. The Chinese struck out at Khruschev’s criticism of Stalin’s “cult of personality” and accused him and his followers of revisionism and opportunism. Khruschev and his supporters gave as good as they got. Khruschev called Mao Tse-tung a “megalomaniac warmonger” and accused the Chinese of failing completely to understand the nature of modern war and its dangerous consequences. The Soviet representatives accused the Chinese of trying to disrupt various Communist parties and slandering Khruschev and seeking to have him purged from his posts in Moscow. This was clearly the bitterest and stormiest meeting in the history of the world Communist movement. The document that emerged from it as the platform of world Communism was a compromise so worded that each side could point to it and claim that its own position had been vindicated and supported. This document was a device aimed at avoiding an open break, not a means for healing the chasm that had developed.

Finally he [Khruschev] came to the nub of the matter. “The left sectarian disorder is fed by nationalism, and in turn it feeds nationalism.” By this statement he really accused the Chinese of serving their own national interests under the guise of being ultra-revolutionary Communists.

The Chinese point of view was expressed in a number of lengthy statements. Here we shall present only the key points made by Peking in these declarations.

First, Peking made clear that it regarded the struggle in the underdeveloped countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America as the center of all revolutionary activity in the world, declaring that to further this struggle it was necessary to be prepared to take risks of a spark setting off a general conflagration. The Soviet effort to curb the militancy of revolutionaries in these countries was denounced bitterly. Later Moscow was to charge that by this line the Chinese were trying to make themselves the heads of an Asian-African-Latin American bloc based on racism—on a struggle of non-whites against whites—rather than on Marxist principles of class struggle between workers and employers.

Without naming the Chinese directly, a Soviet commentator writing in the spring of 1963 described the Chinese policy at the Afro-Asian Peoples Conference held in Moshi, Tanganyika in February 1963, a meeting where the right of Soviet delegates to participate was contested on the ground that they came from Europe not Asia:

Some of the more chauvinistically-inclined leaders would like to direct the solidarity movement not against imperialism, colonialism and its agents, but against all white people. They are ready to sacrifice the truth, as they did, so far cautiously, in Moshi, and to shrug their shoulders at the participation (even though only partial) of international organizations such as the World Council of Peace. … They sacrifice the truth because they pretend the liberation of Asia, Africa and Latin America is possible even without the participation of progressive organizations throughout the world, without those white people who because of their views actively fight against imperialism and its colonial attributes.

The Russian reply of March 30, 1963 was a lengthy and mildly worded exposition of the Soviet ideological position. … This letter was written after the Afro-Asian Solidarity meeting in Moshi, Tanganyika at which the Chinese had shown they had looked on the Russian as whites having no place in Asia. Hence, in one of the most significant sentences of the Soviet letter, the men in Moscow warned: “The militant call ‘Workers of all countries, unite!’ formulated by Marx and Engels means that at the basis of this unity lies anti-imperialist class solidarity and not any principle of nationality, color or geographical location. The German magazine, Christ und Welt, reported on July 5, 1963 that Chinese delegates at the Afro-Asian Journalists Conference in Djakarta in the spring of 1963 declared that Russia would have to return the former Chinese areas of Siberia if it wished to be welcomed at Afro-Asian meetings. The Chinese called the delegates from Soviet areas in Asia ‘marionettes of a white imperialist power.’”

On June 14, 1963, they [the Chinese leaders] sent the Soviet leaders their answer to Moscow’s March 30 letter. …

On the major policy issues dividing the two sides, the Chinese broadside repeated the customary demands for greater militancy, the old skepticism of peaceful transition from capitalism to socialism, the usual advocacy of reliance on armed revolution and the like. But it was on the issue of the struggle in Asia, Africa and Latin America that the Chinese laid down their harshest dictum, one which came close to accusing Premier Khruschev of being an advocate of continued colonialism and white supremacy. The passage merits quotation:

The various types of contradictions in the contemporary world are concentrated in the vast areas of Asia, Africa and Latin America; these are the most vulnerable areas under imperialist rule and the storm centers of world revolution dealing direct blows at imperialism…

The anti-imperialist revolutionary struggles of people in Asia, Africa and Latin America are pounding and undermining the foundations of the rule of imperialism and colonialism, old and new, and are now a mighty force in defense of world peace. In a sense, therefore, the whole cause of the international proletarian revolution hinges on the outcome of the revolutionary struggles of the peoples in these areas who constitute the overwhelming majority of the world’s population. Therefore, the anti-imperialist revolutionary struggle of the people in Asia, Africa and Latin America is definitely not merely a matter of regional significance but one of overall importance for the whole cause of proletarian revolution.

Certain person’s now go so far as to deny the great international significance of the anti-imperialist revolutionary struggles of the Asian, African and Latin American people and on their pretext of breaking down the barriers of nationality, color and geographical location, are trying their best to efface the line of demarcation between the oppressed and oppressor nations and between oppressed and oppressor countries and to hold down the revolutionary struggles of the peoples in these areas. In fact, they cater to the needs of imperialism and create a new ‘theory’ to justify the rule of imperialism in these areas and the promotion of policies of old and new colonialism. Actually, this ‘theory’ seeks not to break down the barriers of nationality, color and geographical location but to maintain the rule of the ‘superior nations’ over the oppressed nations. It is only natural that his fraudulent ‘theory’ is rejected by the people in these areas.

Here the Chinese were hitting the Soviet leaders at an extremely important and sensitive point. The Chinese demand could be read as urging that the Communist movement concentrate not only against Western imperialism, but also against the Russian position in Asia, against rule by the “superior” Russian nation over the Uzbecks, the Turkmens, the Bashkirs, the Yakuts and the numerous other Asian nations incorporated in the Soviet Union.

The Soviet reply to the Chinese was published on July 14 [1963]…. The next long section of the letter deals with the Chinese demand for primacy of revolution in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Before taking up this issue, the Soviet statement had already thrown out broad hints that the Chinese were really anti-white racists, declaring, for example, that the Chinese

…came out against the participation of representatives…of the European socialist countries in the Third Afro-Asian Conference in Moshi [Tanganyika]. The leader of the Chinese delegation told the Soviet representative that ‘there was nothing for whites to do.’ At the journalists’ conference in Jakarta, the Chinese representatives followed a line against allowing Soviet journalists full participation on the ground that the Soviet Union is not an Asian country!

The Soviet letter also points to the racist implications of the favorite Chinese slogan, “The wind from the East will prevail over the wind from the West,” noting that slogan was one “lacking all class content.” But it is in the refutation of the Chinese demand for a special position for Asia, Africa and Latin America that the Soviet statement makes the sharpest accusations that the Chinese have deserted Marxism-Leninism for a racist approach. Peking, the Soviet letter charges, is trying “to win popularity among the peoples of Asia, African and Latin America in the easiest way.” The Chinese, by insisting on the national liberation movement as the decisive force in the struggle against imperialism, are actually “isolating the national-liberation movement from the international working class and its offspring, the world system of socialism.” The Chinese are violating the Leninist injunction that the working class must head the struggle against imperialism, the Soviet letter charges, and “the Chinese comrades want to ‘correct’ Lenin and prove that it is not the working class but the petty bourgeoisie or the national bourgeoisie, or even ‘certain patriotic-minded kings, princes and aristocrats,’ who should be the leaders of the world struggle against imperialism.” And this hinting that racism rather than Marxism animates the Chinese, the Soviet letter asks darkly:

What is the explanation for the false tenets of the Chinese Communist party leadership on the vital problems of our time? Either the complete estrangement of the Chinese comrades from actual reality, a dogmatic bookish approach to the problems of war, peace, and revolution, a lack of understanding of the concrete conditions of the modern epoch: Or do other goals, having nothing in common with revolution, hide behind the deafening noise about ‘world revolution’?

On October 1, 1963, another bitter Chinese article assailed the Soviet leaders as “apologists of neocolonialism.” It accused them of having failed in their obligations to the Algerian revolution and of working with the United States to use the United Nations to put down the Congolese people’s armed struggle against colonialism. The Soviet leaders’ policy and purposes in giving aid to newly independent nations was declared “open to suspicion” since these leaders “often take an attitude of great power chauvinism and national egoism in matters concerning aid to newly independent countries, harm the economic and political interests of the receiving countries, and as a result discredit the socialist countries.” But the most serious attack came on the subject of racism. The Soviet leaders were accused of emulating German Kaiser Wilhelm II in his strictures a half century ago about the “yellow peril.” The motives of Soviet leaders in attacking alleged Chinese racism were described in these terms:

When they peddle the ‘theory of racism,’ describing the national liberation movement in Asia, Africa and Latin America as one of the colored against the white race, the leaders of the Communist party of the Soviet Union are clearly aiming at inciting racial hatred among the white people of Europe and North America, at diverting the people of the world from the struggle against imperialism, and at turning the international working class movement away from the struggle against modern revisionism.

The Chinese summed up their case in October by declaring Khruschev had joined in a new “Holy Alliance” with President Kennedy against the people of the world, hinting broadly that the goal is a Soviet-American condominium over all mankind.

On October 1, 1972, China celebrated the twenty-third anniversary of its Communist regime. … The occasion was marked in Moscow, too. A statement of congratulation to the Chinese people was issued, a statement that included a reference to the “complete theoretical incompetence of Maoism and its incompatibility with scientific socialism.”

= = =

Harry Schwartz, Tsars, Mandarins and Commissars: A History of Chinese-Russian Relations, Revised Edition (Anchor: Garden City, NJ, 1973); 200; 210–11; 219–20, 223, 230–31; 233, 238–40; 256–57; 282

Max Shachtman on Democratic Workers Councils and the “Workers’ Government”

Published May 28, 2020 Marxism , Theory Leave a Comment

Shall economic life be democratically managed and controlled?

Absolutely! It is the maintenance of capitalist domination of society that demands, more and more, the abandonment of democracy. A Worker’s Government would have to extend democracy continually, not merely because it is a desirable ideal, but because it is indispensable to the planning of production for use. …

If, however, production were carried on for use, to satisfy the needs of the people, the question immediately arises: Who is to determine what is useful and what would satisfy these needs? Will that be decided exclusively by a small board of government planners? No matter how high-minded and wise they might be, they could not plan production for the needs of the people. Production for use, by its very nature, demands constant consultation of the people, constant control and direction by the people. The democratically-adopted decision of the people would have to guide the course of production and distribution. Democratic control of the means of production and distribution would have to be exercised by the people to see to it that their decision is being carried out.

Otherwise, the government and its planning would undergo a complete perversion of its purpose. At best, we would have a benevolent regimentation of the people “for their own good.” A government which declares itself to be “for” the workers, but is not a government of and by the workers, is a Workers Government only in name. Instead of being regulated by the blind market, as under capitalism, production would be regulated by the autocractic, uncontrolled will of a bureaucracy. Economic distortions, social conflict, exploitation and oppression would inevitably result. Production for use, aimed at satisfying the needs of society and freeing all the people from class rule, would be impossible.

Democratic control, the continual extension of democracy, is therefore an indispensable necessity under a Workers Government. The idea of a Workers Government is this inseparably connected with the idea of nationalization of the means of production and exchange, the centralized organization and planning of production and distribution, and the continual extension of democracy and democratic control. No one of these can exist in the absence of others. To have democratic control of industry, there must be planning of production. To plan production, the economic machinery of the country must be socially owned and centrally operated. To nationalize the means of production and exchange, a Worker’s Government must be established with power to act. For it to be a Workers’ Government, it must be democratically run and controlled by workers. None of these is possible without having all. ….

[Shachtman then argues that initially the Workers’ State would have to remain an instrument of force, in order to hold back reactionary attempts to end the revolution; and that the new State would inherit social inequality from the prior, capitalist society—something the Workers State would struggle against.]

These characteristics of the Workers’ Government show its similarities with the preceding state. But it is in its fundamental differences with it that the workers’ state shows, as the founders of scientific socialism have put it, that it is no longer a state in the classic sense of the word. A whole world of difference separates the two.

First, the force at the disposal of the workers’ state would not reside in bodies of armed men separated from the people, and under capitalism or feudalism or slavery. The arms would be in the hands of the workers themselves. The government which could summon these arms into action would be in the hands of the workers themselves.

Second, the state power would no longer be the instrument of an exploiting minority for the domination of the exploited majority. For the first time in history, the state would be in the hands of the majority to be used whenever necessary against the reactionary or anti-social minority.

Third, the state power would no longer be governed by a special or professional bureaucracy. It would be ruled and controlled by the people. It would have no permanent officials, and all elected officers would be subject to immediate recall by their electors. By virtue of its system of democratic representation, which will be dealt with in detail further on, every worker will participate directly in the affairs of government, from the humblest to the most prominent.

# # #

The parliamentary form of government, supposed to be the best expression of the will of the people, is nicely suited to cover up the actual rule of the enormously wealthy minority which monopolizes industry, banking and transportation.

The workers cannot possibly rule by means of such a governmental machine. It will have to be replaced from top to bottom by an entirely different form and machinery of government. A workers’ government has as its main task the centralization and planned organization of production, under democratic control, for the welfare of the people. This task can be accomplished only if there is a form of government suited to it.

If the workers are to be assured of control of the administration of industry, and if the centralized planning of production and distribution is to be under their democratic control, it follows that the government must be based directly on the workers and under their constant control. The only way in which this can be effectively done is by having the government elected directly by the workers in the industries. Just how would this work?

Every factory and other center of production or distribution would be administered by a Council, elected by the workers and subject to recall at any time. These Workers’ Councils themselves would run the factory and see to it that the plans [145] and other decisions of the national planning council, or board, are carried out promptly and properly. At the same time, however, these Councils, which are the direct representatives of the producers, would have to have the power to participate democratically in the selection of the national planning council and in the decisions that it makes. Without such democratic participation and control, planning would soon become bureaucratic and would not represent the interests of the masses.

The municipal, state and federal governments would therefore be composed of direct representatives of the Workers’ Councils, elected by popular ballot and likewise subject to recall at any time. (In the agricultural regions, the Councils would of course be elected by the agricultural workers and farmers.) The National Congress of Councils would elect its officers, committees and boards, again under its direct control and subject to recall. Legislative and executive functions would be exercised by a single power. The decisions of the Council government would not be carried out by a professional bureaucracy, separated from the people and beyond their control. They would be carried out, instead, by the state, municipal and industrial Councils, composed of workers themselves and constantly subject to their control.

Only under such a form of government can we have a genuine workers’ democracy, in which millions and ten of millions actually rule, in contrast with the most advanced capitalist democracy in which thousands, or tens of thousands at most, are the actual rulers.

If the laws adopted or the work carried out by the National Councils’ Congress are not satisfactory, it can be recalled and replaced by the direct action of the Workers’ Councils, without having to wait for two or four or even six years to change the government. If the decisions and plans of the National Congress are satisfactory, but are not being carried out satisfactorily by the Municipal or Factory Council, the latter can be recalled and replaced by the same direct action.

Every worker becomes a direct part of the government administration. His power is not confined to marking a ballot once a year. He exercises his power, his control, his participation in making decisions and carrying them out, every day in the year, year-in and year-out.

= = =

From Max Shachtman, The Fight for Socialism: The Principles and Program of the Workers Party (New York: New International Publishing Co, 1946).

first section is from “Chapter VII: A Workers Government and Socialism”: pp. 115, 116-17, 125.

second section is from “Chapter VIII. The Need for a Revolutionary Party”: pp. 144-46.

Transcriptions from the original book; it is available online as both text and PDF at Marxists.org.

1970s Soviet Antisemitism

Published November 15, 2019 Antisemitism , Marxism , Zionism/Israel/Palestine Leave a Comment

The antisemitism of Stalin’s Doctors’ Plot — and to a lesser extent the Polish, Czech and other pseudo-antizionist antisemitic purges of the 1950s and ’60s — are remembered today. However, much less attention is paid to the Soviet Union’s conspiracy theory turn starting in the 1960s, where the previous hegemony of Orthodox Marxism was rivaled by various pro-Soviet conspiracy theories, often anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist in character. As part of this a vicious antisemitism – usually cloaked in anti-zionist terms – returned as well, and was exported to Soviet-allied groups in the Arab world, including the PLO. With the revival of antisemitism in Russia after the Soviet collapse, this period of Soviet antizionism can be seen as part of an unbroken link in the history of Russian antisemitism.

Roland Evans and Robert Novak, “Moscow vs Zionism”

“For one thing, the official state newspapers [of the Soviet Union]—Pravda and Izvestia—have been preaching fearsome anti-zionism for years. Following the first Brussels Conference On Soviet Jewry in 1971, Pravda labeled Zionism “an enemy of the people”—a phrase echoing the great purge of the 1930s. After a brief respite, the new, more virulent anti-Zionist campaign was triggered by the second Brussels conference.

The new state-supported campaign is manifested by an official Communist Party lecturer named Valery Yemelyanov, a candidate of economic sciences and a professor in the prestigious Institute of Foreign Languages. What makes Yemelyanov’s anti-Zionist campaign so insidious is that his harshest rhetoric came in a Moscow interview with a newspaper closely connected to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

Yemelyanov delivered opinions that must have startled even anti-Israel PLO activists who are trying to establish a mini-state of their own on the Israeli-occupied West Bank. “World Zionism has become a great power in the world,” he said, elaborating as follows in a breathtaking spiral of charges:

Eighty-percent of the economy of non-Communist nations is concentrated in the hands of “Zionist capitalists.” 95% of the propaganda efforts undertaken in the capitalist world are concentrated in the hands of the Zionists, 99% in the United States.

In words reminiscent of the notorious “Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion,” Yemelyanov told his PLO interviewers that the world Zionist organization “works in a strictly secret framework” which includes “all the presidents and parliaments of the developed capitalist countries.” The only way to fight this “world” Zionist movement is to establish a world countermovement with the Arabs themselves should lead “because they are the prime objective of the Zionist movement and the leaders of the world struggle against one of its agents—the state of Israel.”

Such nonsense would not be worth a second glance were it not for the likelihood….that behind it is the weight of the Soviet state and its multiple propaganda apparatus.

Yemelyanov’s appeal directly to militant PLO members is obviously designed to thwart American efforts to find a political solution to the Arab-Israeli wares. As such, it plays on… anti-Israeli Arab passions (Deeply felt by all Palestinians) in a way calculated to arouse them to the highest pitch.”

from “Moscow vs Zionism,” Roland Evans and Robert Novak
“World Front” syndicated column, November 14-15, 1976.

= = =

More on Yemelyanov

“Evidence that the Soviet new right wants a “final solution of the Jewish problem” is found… in the secret memorandum presented to the 25th Soviet Communist Party congress in 1975, a partial text of which reached Israel early this year.

Its author is Yemelyanov, a well-known ideological lecturer. The memorandum claims “that the Jewish Masonic order, B’nai B’rith, is the visible top of the invisible international Judaeo-Masonic pyramid ruling the non-Communist world and influencing Soviet policies through its agents inside the USSR.’

To deal with the Jewish menace, Yemelyanov proposes: ‘The creation of a world-wide anti-Zionist and anti-Masonic front on the model of the anti-fascist fronts of the 1930s and 1940s because the threat of Zionist rule over the world planned for the year 2000 threatens all the gentiles on our earth irrespective of their race, religion and party affiliation.’

Like Hitler, “Yemelyanov does not spell out in detail how he proposes to eliminate the Jewish menace. But he argues throughout his memorandum that Soviet Jews must not be expelled or allowed to leave, for those who go to Israel reinforce the potential of a fascist state, while the others who emigrate to the United States or other Western countries reinforce the Judaeo-Masonic pyramid.”

from “Behind the Headlines Anti-semitism May Replace Marxism-leninism As Official Soviet Creed,” JTA, December 27, 1978, http://www.jta.org/1978/12/27/archive/behind-the-headlines-anti-semitism-may-replace-marxism-leninism-as-official-soviet-creed

= = =

Ruth Okuneva, “Anti-Semitic Notions: Strange Analogies”

Excerpts from various works of Soviet propaganda, compiled by Russian historian Ruth Okuneva.

* “The chief strategic aim of the Zionist movement is the establishment of its domination of the world.”

* “Their obsession with the idea of world domination is the primary cause of the crimes which humanity has witnessed.”

* “… [A] group of people who profess a doctrine which alleges that they have been chosen by God to dominate the world.”

* “To sow poison and demonization,” i.e., to corrupt and destroy society, to deceive the peoples… the Zionists could not do this without having control of the most powerful propaganda apparatus—the mass media. That is why their first objective is to always take control of the newspapers and magazines, telegraph agencies, publishing houses, radios and television, the entire history of the world. In this pursuit they have already achieved a great deal.

* “Zionism is fascism… The basic content of Zionism is anticommunism, implacable hostility to the Soviet Union and other socialist countries, to the international revolutionary movement, and to all the anti-imperialist forces today.”

* “If we review the Torah form the standpoint of modern civilization and progressive Communist morality, it proves to be an unsurpassed textbook of blood-thirstiness and hypocrisy, treachery, perfidy, and licentiousness—of every vile human quality.”

* “The peculiarities of Jewish religion are hatred of mankind, preaching genocide, cultivating a love for power, and glorifying criminal means of achieving power.”

* “The chauvinistic idea of world domination has been particularly repulsive; formulated in the ‘Holy Scriptures,’ it has been reflected in their prayers.”

* “[I]n official abstracts of the prescripts of Judaism, repeated emphasis is given to the ‘exclusiveness’ of the Jews, their innate superiority to the goyim, their right to world domination.”

* “‘God’s chosen people’ have their own laws, their own sphere, their own destiny, whereas the despised goyim are suited only to be ‘tools with the power of speech,’ slaves.”

* “The Jews want to have slaves, but the slaves must not be Jews.”* “The teachings of Judaism are pervaded with hatred for the work and contempt for the man who spends his day in toil. The entire ideology of Judaism is not imbued with the idea of work, but with a narrow practicality, the means for making a profit, a mania for silver, the spirit of egoism, and the craving for money.”

* “The Talmud teaches that one is forbidden to steal only from a khaver (a fellow man). One is permitted to take everything from anyone else (goyim), because God has reserved all non-Jewish wealth for the Jews.”

From Ruth Okuneva, “Anti-Semitic Notions: Strange Analogies, 1980s” in Marvin Perry and Frederick M. Schweitzer, eds., Antisemitic Myths: A Historical and Contemporary Anthology (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008), pp. 251–53. Taken in turn from Theodore Freedman, ed, Anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union (NY: ADL, 1984).

Seymour Martin Lipset on the Black Panthers and Antisemitism

Published May 5, 2019 Antisemitism , Marxism , Nationalism , Zionism/Israel/Palestine Leave a Comment

Thus Stokeley Carmichael who was a leader of both the Student Nonviolent (now “National”) Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and of the Black Panthers before abandoning the struggle in America for residence abroad, accounted for the resentment expressed toward Jews by black militants as a result of “the exploitation [of blacks] by Jewish landlords and merchants,” in an article published in The New York Review of Books in 1966. Elsewhere, he wrote: “You let just one Negro get a Molotov cocktail and throw it at some Jew’s liquor store and they call out the whole damn National Guard.” In an interview with David Frost on April 13, 1970, Carmichael declared that, in his judgment, Adolf Hitler “was the greatest white man.” He went on to say that he could not describe men like Johnson, Nixon, Truman or Churchill as “great people,” since they “were doing things against my people.”

The most overt expressions of anti‐Semitism have come generally from the most militant of the black organizations, the one with closest ties to sections of the white New and Old Lefts, the self‐described Marxist‐Leninist Black Panther party. The party goes out of its way to identify as Jews those in the Establishment who oppose it and who happen to be Jews. Thus, in the Dec. 21, 1968, issue of The Black Panther, Eldridge Cleaver attacked Judge Monroe Friedman, who presided over the Oakland, Calif., trial of Huey Newton in the following terms: “If the Jews like Judge Friedman are going to be allowed to function, and come to their synagogues to pray on Saturdays, or do whatever they do down there, then we’ll make a coalition with the Arabs, against the Jews….”

The Panthers have even argued that Judge Julius J. Hoffman gave the Jewish defendants in the Chicago conspiracy trial better treatment than he gave Bobby Seale. Connie Matthews, international coordinator of the party, wrote in The Black Panther of April 25, 1970, that there was an alliance between the Jewish judge and the Jewish defendants:

“It was a Zionist judge, Judge Hoffman, who allowed the other Zionists to go free but has kept Bobby Seale in jail and sentenced him to four years for contempt charges. Bobby Seale alone stands trial again in April on conspiracy charges. With whom did he conspire? The Zionists?

“The other Zionists in the… trial [i.e., Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin] were willing and did sacrifice Bobby Seale and his role in the conspiracy trial to gain publicity.”

Now clearly Rubin and Hoffman are in no way “Zionists.” This is simply a code word for Jew, just as it has become in Eastern Europe.

Though opposed to all capitalists, the Panthers single out Jewish businessmen for attack. Thus, a statement in the May 19, 1970, issue of the party newspaper declares that they are against “Zionist exploitation here In Babylon, manifested in the robber barons that exploit in the garment industry and the bandit merchants and greedy slum lords that operate in our communities.” In describing a tenants’ action in Atlantic City against a landlord, an article in the June 13, 1970, Black Panther praises the tenants for “gathering together to form a United Front against Zionist Pig Sobel….” The article concludes with the exhortation: “ALL POWER TO THE PEOPLE — DEATH TO THE ZIONIST PIGS.” And as if to prove that the reference to Sobel was not fortuitous, the paper a week later carried a story on “Substandard Housing in America” which referred to buildings “owned by a Zionist by the name of Rosenbaum.”

= = =

from Seymour Martin Lipset, “The Socialism of Fools,” New York Times, January 3, 1971, page 6.

James and Grace Lee Boggs on race, radicalism, and standpoint perspective (1974)

Published October 9, 2015 Marxism , Nationalism , Theory Leave a Comment

Most rebels, black or white, react to an idea purely in terms of the social position of the person advancing the idea. Usually they will not even consider an idea unless it comes from someone in the most oppressed strata of society. They never stop to consider that any ideas of serious value will have to be highly advanced ideas — they cannot be ideas of the past, because, like it or not, the United States is a highly advanced country, and one in which the contradictions are not material or economic, but within the realm of human choice. ….

How to project an advanced idea in tune with our unique stage of human development is a serious revolutionary problem…. Malcolm X used to chide the masses, because he began with the idea that the masses are not perfect, and that they had to be transformed. He had the courage to attack the Establishment while chiding the masses for their backwardness, their superstitions, their myths and fears. Malcolm realized that the masses would have to repudiate much of what they had accepted as normal and natural, and transform themselves into new people with new values, and with a new vision, of new tasks to be performed, if black people were ever to be free. In fact, Malcolm repudiated his own past as inconsistent with a new life and new values.

But in the years since Malcolm’s death, when we should have been developing a new revolutionary vision, we have wasted our time in so much rhetoric that black and white radicals today make a virtue of irresponsibility and a virtue of vice – so long as it is the vice of an oppressed person. Today anything can be called revolutionary, regardless of how inhumane it is, so long as an oppressed militant is involved. The result is that, despite the spreading militancy and rebellion, we are moving further away from, rather than closer to, the revolutionary goal of building a new society.

= = =

James and Grace Lee Boggs, Revolution and Evolution in the Twentieth Century (New York and London: Monthly Review Press, 1974), 191-92.

David Macey – Foucault, the French Communist Party, and the Doctor’s Plot (1993)

Published September 14, 2015 Antisemitism , Marxism , Theory Leave a Comment
Tags: #foucault, Althusser, antisemitism, DoctorsPlot, PCF

Foucault approached the final hurdle of the agrégation in spring 1950. This was also the year in which he finally joined the PCF. The Parti Communiste Français [PCF] had emerged from the war as the single most important political grouping in France, and was able to win five million votes in 1945. By the middle of 1947, its membership reached a high point of 900,000. Authoritarian, highly centralised and disciplined, the Party was a classic Stalinist formation, complete with a somewhat absurd personality cult dedicated to its secretary-general, Maurice Thorez. It was also highly patriotic and still enjoyed and exploited the reputation it had won in the wartime Resistance; this was le parti des fusillis—the party which had lost more members than any other to German repression. …

This was the party which Foucault chose to join in 1950. He took out his Party card at the urging of Althusser, who had taken the same decision two years earlier. In subjective terms, Foucault’s newfound commitment was largely a reaction to the apocalyptic despair he had felt as an adolescent living through a disastrous war. Politics had little meaning when the only choice available was one between Truman’s America and Stalin’s Russia. …

Many of those who joined the PCF at roughly the same time as Foucault left it after only a few years. Mass resignations followed the revelations about Stalin’s Russia made in Khrushchev’s ‘secret report’ to the Twentieth Party Congress of the CPSU [Communist Party of the Soviet Union] in 1956, and Soviet intervention in Hungary that same year led to many more departures. In Foucault’s case, the disaffection set in earlier. At the beginning of 1953, Pravda announced the arrest of nine doctors on very serious charges. They had allegedly murdered Zhdanov, had planned to murder a number of Soviet marshals and had plotted against the life of Stalin himself. Immediately after Stalin’s death from natural causes on 3 March, Pravda announced that the nine had been released and rehabilitated; they had been the victims of a machination. Seven of the nine were Jewish. In. France, the PCF’s press covered the ‘doctors’ plot’ in slavishly pro-Soviet terms, commenting that the security services of the USSR had ‘picked off the murderers in white coats, the secret agents recruited among the Zionists and Jewish nationalists’ and implying that the entire plot had been hatched in Tel Aviv.

Foucault attended a meeting at which André Wurmser attempted to justify the arrest of the nine. Wurmser laid down the Party line, and his audience of normaliens did their best to believe the unbelievable. For Foucault, believing the unbelievable was a way of existing within the Party: continued membership was the source of such tension that it became an exercise in ‘dissolving the ego’. After the death of Stalin, the PCF let it be known that there had been no plot, that it had been pure invention. The ENS [École Normale Supérieure, where Foucault was a student] cell wrote to Wurmser to ask for an explanation, but received no reply. Shortly afterwards, Foucault quietly left the PCF. The incident left a ‘bitter taste’ in his mouth, and resulted in both a life-long loathing for the PCF and a distinctly jaundiced view of the USSR.

The ‘doctors’ plot’ had revealed the existence of an ugly strand of anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union. The French Party press was not to be outdone in the matter of anti-Semitism. According to Annie Besse, writing in Cahiers du communisme, ‘Hitler…refrained from harming the Jews of the big bourgeoisie… Who will ever forget that Leon Blum, his wife at his side, contemplated from the windows of his villa the smoke from the ovens of the crematoria!’ Zionism was ‘a mask behind which to conceal espionage operations against the Soviet Union’. Whether Foucault ever read these statements is not known, but in 1953 he was already denouncing the ‘odious’ attitude taken towards Israel by both the superpowers. His pro-Israeli sentiments were as unswerving as his dislike for the PCF, and it is difficult to believe that there was no connection between the two.

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from David Macey, The Lives of Michael Foucault: A Biography (NY: Pantheon Books, 1993), pages 37-38, 39-40.

Deleuze: Nietzsche is “the dawn of counterculture” (1973)

Published January 27, 2015 Counterculture & Punk , Marxism , Nietzsche , Philosophy , Theory Leave a Comment
Tags: continental philosophy, counterculture, freud, marx, nietzsche

“Probably most of us fix the dawn of our modern culture in the trinity Nietzsche-Freud-Marx. And it is of little consequence that the world was unprepared for them in advance. Now, Marx and Freud, perhaps, do represent the dawn of our culture, but Nietzsche is something entirely different: the dawn of counterculture.”

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Gilles Deleuze, “Nomad Thought,” in David B. Allison, ed., The New Nietzsche: Contemporary Styles of Interpretation (New York: Delta/Dell, 1977), page 142. Translated from the French by Allison; original is “Pensée nomade,” in Nietzsche aujourd’hui (Paris: Union Générale d’Editions, 1973).

Ian Bone: How Crass’s Penny Rimbaud Saved EP Thompson from Being Decapitated by Class War

Published June 6, 2014 Anarchism , Counterculture & Punk , Marxism Leave a Comment
Tags: ClassWar, EPThompson, IanBone, PennyRimbaud, punk

[Ian Bone describes how Class War is being confrontational towards speakers at a CND rally in Hyde Park in October, 1983]

Next up is silver-mained EP Thompson, author of The Making of the English Working Class, a book we all hold in great esteem and whose mob traditions we even feel we’re part of. But no matter—[Class War’s] Doc Whelan’s limited patience threshold has well and truly been breached. He has a glass cider flagon which he was reserving for Kinnockio [Neil Kinnock] but decided ‘some fucking professor’ will do just as well for a target. He has a sighting heave with a piece of concrete which whistles past EP Thompson’s locks on a still rising trajectory. He starts to spin like a hammer thrower with the flagon as the hammer. EP Thompson’s health is seriously at risk, and I’m doing fuck all to protect one of my favorite writers from decapitation. Thankfully, others aren’t so paralyzed. A firm arm grabs Doc’s wrist—a move usually likely to incur the dreaded Whelan forehead crunching down on the bridge of your nose. Doc recognizes the owner of the arm as Penny Rimbaud. ‘He’s not the one that deserves that,’ says Penny, ‘save it for later.’ Wise words and Doc concurs.

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Ian Bone, Bash the Rich: True-Life Confessions of an Anarchist in the UK (Bath, UK: Tangent Books, 2006), pp 139-40.

Dorothy Healey on Angela Davis and Eastern European political prisoners

Published April 12, 2014 Marxism Leave a Comment
Tags: AngelaDavis, DorothyHealey, PoliticalPrisoners

The Angela Davis defense campaign had been the biggest [U.S. Communist] Party-initiated movement of the entire decade, and it was the one occasion on which the Party was really attuned to the political mood of the younger Left. It had a big effect on the Party and brought in a number of young recruits. Indeed, whatever political credibility the Party had to draw upon from the early 1970s was largely a product of that campaign. Certainly nothing else it has done since compares with the importance of Angela’s defense campaign in terms of image and the ability to interest outsiders. Angela Davis, not Gus Hall, has been the most attractive public face the Party has had to offer. But one of the sadder aspects of the whole episode was the impact it had on Angela herself. She felt that it was the Party and the Soviet Union which saved her life. She became unwilling to consider any criticisms of those she regarded as her saviors. When she was released from prison, the first thing she did was embark upon a tour of the Soviet Union, eastern Europe, and Cuba to thank them for supporting her during the trial.

Miss Charlene Mitchell, a close friend of Angela Davis, the black militant, said today that Miss Davis would not be responding to the appeal for help from Mr. Jiri Pelikan, one of the leading figures in the “Prague Spring” now living in exile.

Miss Davis, she said, did not think that people should leave socialist countries to return to the capitalist system. This was a retrograde step, and even if such people said they were communists they were still acting in opposition to the “socialist system,” objectively speaking.

In his appeal, which was published in The Times today, Mr. Pelikan asked Miss Davis to call for the release of political prisoners in Eastern Europe as well as in capitalist countries.

Miss Mitchell, who said she was acting as a spokesperson for Miss Davis, took the line that people in Eastern Europe got into difficulties and ended in jail only if they were undermining the government. —(Manchester) Guardian, July 29, 1972.

While Angela was on her tour and not always available to western reporters, Charlene and other Communist leaders sometimes put words in her mouth, denying that there was any political repression within the Soviet bloc. Not that Angela was willing to do anything to challenge that view. In fact, within the next few years, she accommodated herself to the stalest clichés in the Party’s outlook. She remains to the present an important public figure, able to attract larger audiences than any other Party leader. But rarely if ever in her speeches and writings today will you see evidence of the kind of fresh thinking of which she was once capable. Whether she is capable of breaking free from the Party orthodoxy is a question still to be answered.

& & &

Dorothy Ray Healey and Maurice Isserman, California Red: A Life in the American Communist Party (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1990/1993), pages 220–21.