Marching Left


Much is being said about the nature and purpose of the “Women’s March” and similar demonstrations of collective power.  The urban newspapers reflect only a fraction of what was said or felt by the working class.  The Charleston Gazette’s unchallenged “leaders” of the marches spoke of ‘unity, solidarity, and citizenship’ as the crux of their political strategy; yet, how that unity or solidarity might manifest was not to be found in print or in the speeches of those given the microphone.

“Citizenship is not a spectator sport,” Tara Martinez cried out to less than 2% of the population of West Virginia.  Even such an insignificant portion of the state’s population could barely fit in the capitol’s steps, but it isn’t as if the capitol was built for the working class to gather to it as the newspapers and the nonprofit leaders are suggesting.  This finds itself lending to the idea that is incessantly propagated; that is, the members of the legislature are by default our ‘public servants.’

To anyone who has studied the development of the United States or any nation-state for that matter, this comes simply as a farce.  Everything about our “representatives” suggests the opposite of a servant.  One who serves, and without a doubt the working women and men know what it is to serve, is one who helps or fulfills a useful purpose.  A servant comes to the one being served to ask what it is that he or she might accomplish.  If it were the legislators being the servants, then why must we come to them pleading that they “respect our rights.”  A master does not plead with the servant to serve, she demands of the servant.

What then is their position to the working class?  Behind the immense stone walls of the capitol sit the spokespeople and servants of the ruling, wealthy class.  It is with those insignificant few that our ‘servants’ go so that they may better serve them and their interests.

Meanwhile, organizers and leaders of the finest nonprofits a republic could afford make their appeals to the crowds.  They tell us to vote and make donations so that one day we’ll have a society built on the ideals of unity and solidarity for at least a term of four years.    Such lovely words they prepare for us so that we may remain silent; for they are interested in positioning and posturing to receive the most benefit from the institutions that the working class struggle against.  How could they do otherwise, if the people were allowed to openly criticize the government?  With that in mind, it is clear to see why they have little purpose, themselves, in criticizing the societal structures that built the political system we have become trapped.

So, who is the true servant in this relationship? If asked if they felt served, overwhelmingly, the people would answer in the negative.  The nonprofits would lay the blame at our feet because we don’t show up to vote, but such an argument ignores the nature of the system that generates discontent and frustration to the point that noncompliance is preferred.  The reality remains true; the government does not represent the working class.

Every day we serve the owners and rulers of society, and the governors in the state houses find in us only opportunity for competition of charisma and stage presence.  It is not difficult to imagine when one considers the avenues of holding representatives accountable for misrepresentation.   Notice the relationship the state’s officers have with us and our “public servants;”  on the one hand, they guard the meetings and routes of the legislators, while on the other, they survey our streets seeking those who break the laws our very own “public servants” write for us.  Such thoughtful servants we have!

No, it must be known that regardless of the size of our marches and the turnout of our votes, we shall receive not one benefit by their legislative pens, alone.  Yes, write your letters.  Tell the men and women who build castles for themselves your thoughts; for they should know, but only in our ability and willful determination can we expect to achieve our goals of such ends as creating a just and equal society.  We must build organizations that empower the working class and actually serve the public.   Then, we may fully ignore the government of the rich and express solidarity and unity with the oppressed peoples of the Earth.


Appalachia Stands with Standing Rock

                       “Water is sacred,” “Water is life,” read the signs held high outside the Army Corps of Engineers on the afternoon of the 15th. Such were the voices, too, as the Appalachian hill folk had gathered together to express their concerns for the environment and the struggle of the Standing Rock Water Protectors. Among those crowding the sidewalk in downtown Huntington, stood Autumn “Genenahgehneh” Lee, who is particularly close to the fight for indigenous rights.

                             As a member of the Haudenosaunee Nation, and president of the Marshall University Native American Student Organization, the Standing Rock resistance hits close to home. “It’s a way to get through this,” she said of the Standing Rock resistance, “there are daily ceremonies; morning, afternoon, and evening. Singing and praying are ways of keeping the native culture alive. But people from all around the world have come to Standing Rock. A lot of people see the importance of the fight for water not only for themselves but for future generations. It’s the base of so many things in our lives.” When considering the relationship we have with water, those statements are not grandiose for any purpose of hyperbole, but for the simple truth of the matter.

                            “It’s greater than water. Treaties are being broken. The [US] government is silent, and the police are treating Standing Rock like a warzone, and the Protectors meet that warfare with song and prayer only.” To those knowledgeable of American history, it is simply a continuation of the past policies. Regardless of the stance taken by the indigenous, their rights were secondary to the direction of the United States and industrial development. “For lack of a better term,” she said of the clearly racist conduct, “it’s racist. The pipeline was originally to pass through Bismarck, but the majority white population rejected it. Now, they’ve diverted DAPL into Sioux territory, despite the rejection and outright resistance of the Sioux people, but the United States has never honored treaties.”

                            “Regardless of background, people are seeing this, not as an indigenous issue, but as a human issue.” She lives in Appalachia, which, as a region, has become an iconic example of the impact on the environment from carbon-based resource extraction. “People in WV understand the importance of having access to clean water,” speaking of the large turnout to the rally, “Energy infrastructure of the past generations is dangerous, not only for humanity, but for the workers involved. There is a lot of risk in extracting coal and oil, but it has become part of an identity for West Virginians. The reliance on coal for energy and income has clouded their judgment.”

                           With the election cycle complete in the Mountain State, her words ring true. So much  economic life had centered on extracting coal, and those with a mind for governing were eager to have “Friends of Coal” at their side, but it is hard to blame the miners looking for an out in a region swept with poverty. Work in the coal fields is considered a blessing, when the only other viable alternative is to leave home in search of employment or seek higher education, at the cost of inescapable debt.

                          “Education is very important.” When people come in uneducated on an issue, they often go out on the wrong side of history.” Educating people on the history of her people and other indigenous nations is a primary concern for Autumn. “The land is part of our identity, and water is part of the balance of all life. Without healthy, clean water, life on land cannot be healthy. Everything is connected.” Yet, the police and the construction workers don’t see their relationship to the Earth as one being mutual.“I was watching the live stream of the police attacks, and an officer had taken a drum from a Protector who was singing. That was like someone taking a Bible out of a Christian’s hands, and when the police found out what they had done, it was returned, but that is part of the struggle of education,” she explained, “connecting the cultural identities of different peoples. When you get on a personal level with people, you are better able to reason with them.”

                         That is where they stand, in the streets of Huntington and in the waters of Standing Rock to bring awareness and support for the cause of not only the indigenous but the health of our water.

                          But, where do you stand? Are you opposed to the rights of the indigenous peoples? Would you see the fresh waters of this world polluted? No? Then, Standing Rock needs you to stand with them. Particularly, they need support in the form of supplies. Winter in North Dakota is harsh and long, and the protectors will need gear for winter, among other necessities.

                standing-rock-sioux         In the interest of common humanity, do this. We cannot afford to give an inch in the battle for water. The Standing Rock protectors can be directly reached through their website,

Solidarity, forever.

How to Fight Fascism!


Leon Trotsky

From Whither France?, 1934


* * *




“The united front is a barrier against fascism”;
“the united front will not permit…”;
“the fascists will not dare”, etc. 












The French Stalinists now argue that the militia did not safeguard the German proletariat from defeat. Only yesterday they completely denied any defeat in Germany and asserted that the policy of the German Stalinists was correct from beginning to end. Today, they see the entire evil in the German workers’ militia (Rote Front) [i.e., Red Front Fighters: Communist-dominated militia banned by the social- democratic government after the Berlin May Day riots of 1929]. Thus, from one error they fall into a diametrically opposite one, no less monstrous. The militia, in itself, does not settle the question. A correct policy is necessary. Meanwhile,the policy of Stalinism in Germany (“social fascism is the chief enemy”), the split in the trade unions, the flirtation with nationalism, putschism) fatally led to the isolation of the proletarian vanguard and to its shipwreck. With an utterly worthless strategy, no militia could have saved the situation.



























“Arm the proletariat and the revolutionary peasants!”








Oregon standoff & the role of the State

Heavily armed right-wingers have occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge outside of Burns, Ore., since Jan. 2, declaring they are ready to “kill or be killed.” Ammon Bundy and his brothers, leaders of the takeover, are demanding the federal government turn over millions of acres of publicly owned and federally administered land to ranching, lumber…

Source: Oregon standoff & the role of the State

Venezuela must learn from Indonesia

Jan. 2016 Venezuela


The 50th anniversary of one of the biggest political massacres of the 20th century passed in the West almost without notice. In 1965, a military coup in Indonesia, backed by the United States, unleashed a slaughter that consumed over one million lives. The aim of the insurgent generals was annihilation of the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI).

Two articles* in the December 2015 edition of the New York-based Monthly Review magazine remind us of that gargantuan tragedy. The PKI was then the largest CP in the world. Like its sister Stalinist parties globally, it rejected revolution.

The PKI adhered strictly, one could say dogmatically, to the parliamentary path to socialism. It embraced Joseph Stalin’s infamous two-stage theory. Bourgeois democracy and sovereignty, the so-called first stage, became its entire agenda. That meant slavish support for liberal nationalist Sukarno, whose soaring political rhetoric appealed to a radical working-class base.

Sukarno was a firebrand left nationalist. He was the architect of the anti-colonial Non-Aligned Movement founded in Bandung in 1956. But he was no Marxist. Transnational corporations and imperialist governments had no reason to fear fundamental system change at the hands of Sukarno, or the PKI. Nonetheless, big business wanted them gone—if only to reduce organized resistance to the exploitation of rural and urban workers in the ports, and on the rubber and tin estates.

For 50 years American politicians and conservative academics denied Washington’s complicity with the massacre of masses of communist militants, their families and innocent bystanders.

By endorsing the manufactured threat of a left-wing military coup (i.e., the inept Sept. 30 Movement), and covertly supplying arms to rightist General Nasution, U.S. Ambassador Marshall Green and Secretary of State Dean Rusk fueled the annihilation of the peaceful PKI. The American Embassy, in an effort to make sure the bloody job was completed, turned over lists identifying thousands of PKI leaders and activists to Indonesian army intermediaries. Time magazine in 1966 called it “the West’s best news for years in Asia.”

The sadistic political scheme was much like what Washington and Henry Kissinger did for General Augusto Pinochet in 1973 in Chile. Kissinger was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize in 1973, ostensibly for his part in winding down the lost U.S. war in Vietnam.

Those were heinous acts, high crimes against humanity, a political holocaust. But the tragedy is that a huge and powerful workers’ party in Indonesia put its faith in a patently false strategy for power—reliance on the capitalist state. The PKI presumed that Capital would abide by democratic constitutionality and the due process of law. Salvador Allende’s Popular Unity government made the same presumption.

Is this tragedy repeating now in Venezuela? Of course, no two political situations are the same. Jakarta and Caracas are separated by a great big ocean and a half-century of class struggle.

Still, comparisons can be instructive. In fact, they are a vital way to learn from history.

Venezuela, for nearly 18 years, has been at the forefront of a wave of left populism across Latin America. It led in re-distributing wealth and raising living standards of the poor and working people. Oil revenues funded free health care, free university education, and cheap groceries sold at government supermarkets.

But when Capital went on strike, hoarded food, and other vital commodities, and spurred hyper-inflation and corruption, the governing socialists led by Hugo Chavez, who died on March 5, 2013, and his successor Nicolas Maduro, did not mobilize the working class to seize the banks, big industry, and giant land estates in order to inaugurate a planned economy under workers’ control.

The Chavistas did not follow the path blazed by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara in the Cuban Revolution over 50 years ago. The Venezuelan government played by the rules of the system. But its bourgeois opposition wrecked havoc in the economy and poisoned public confidence.

Now, as a result of the legislative election on Dec. 6, right-wing parties control the national assembly, and wage war on the executive branch. Impeachment proceedings and constitutional referenda are around the corner, while life for the majority continues to deteriorate.

To paraphrase Che, this is not a revolution, but a caricature of one. If the revolutionary potential of the working class has not yet been squandered in Venezuela, it must now be unleashed. If the right wing is allowed to consolidate its victory, and reverse the fragile gains of Chavismo, even if it does not lead to a bloodbath on the scale of Indonesia, the return to brutal neoliberal policy will nonetheless be the fruit of deadly illusions in the parliamentary path to socialism.

From Jakarta to Caracas, the only solution is socialist revolution.

* ”No Reconciliation without Truth: An Interview with Tan Swie Ling on the 1965 Mass Killings in Indonesia,” by Intan Suwandi, and “The United States and the 1965-1966 Mass Murders in Indonesia” by Bradley Simpson. Both articles are in the December 2015 edition of Monthly Review, Vol. 67, No. 7.

Photo: Caracas protest against the recent removal of portraits of Hugo Chavez and Simon Bolivar from the National Assembly building. From Reuters.