People Before Profit blog

Boycotting Jim Crow: The Original Anti-Segregation Movement

Mon, 03 Jan 2011 13:30:00 +0000

Editor's note: Historian Blair L.M. Kelley is the author of the award-winning book Right to Ride: Streetcar Boycotts and African American Citizenship in the Era of Plessy v. Ferguson (University of North Carolina Press). Right to Ride won the 2010 Letitia Woods Brown Memorial Book Award, Association of Black Women Historians. Listen to the audio version of this interview here.

PA: What inspired you to write Right to Ride?

BLAIR KELLEY: It was really sort of a dual idea that drew me to the work. First, when I was an undergrad and working on my senior thesis, I was trying to do a project on Lani Guinier, who had just been a big part of the news during the Clinton Administration who withdrew her nomination to be Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. I wanted to add an historical level to the project, which was my thesis in the Department of African American studies. I wanted to look back at voting rights and Black dissent more widely, back maybe to Reconstruction. I had done a lot of research on the subject, and when I got to the turn of the 20th century the research sort of went quiet on me, from what I could find as an undergraduate, and I said to myself, “Wow, that’s weird!” Then I went to my professor and I asked him about it, and he said, “You do the work, you figure it out, you fill in the blanks.” So that kind of approach has always under-girded my attitude to the turn of the 20th century – trying to reconnect the stream of Black dissent from slavery and Reconstruction and on into the 20th century. We have a very vibrant history, and I just knew that there couldn’t be such a rich legacy on both sides of this time period, and that then everyone sort of gave up and quit and stopped trying. I really didn’t buy that argument.

Then I ran into the August Meier and Elliot Ludwick article on the Streetcar Boycotts while I was in graduate school, and it just didn’t make sense. How could you have this whole protest, and yet it was very conservative and not very political or interesting? There's nothing to see here, so move on. I didn’t believe that. Then as I looked at other people’s work to see what they found on the Streetcar Boycotts, everyone seemed to be citing Meier and Ludwick. So I thought that maybe if I went back and fleshed out this time period, if I fleshed out Plessy v. Ferguson and figured out what was really happening, I could find a different story. Not that I got a lot of encouragement from anyone for this project at the time I was a graduate student, but that is where my original questions began.

PA: This raises an issue you bring out in your introduction about how historians have really latched onto these categories of "accommodation" versus "resistance" but what special circumstances at the turn of the 20th century made these categories fluid?

BLAIR KELLEY: I teach my students that categories don’t work, that when you think about your own life you think of the dissonances, and that, given these dissonances, you should not think of things according to somebody’s hard and strict guidelines. When you look at real people, real people are messy; they don’t always make sense and they do not always perfectly adhere to a prescribed set of ideals. The notion, for instance, that Booker T. Washington begins to hold sway in the 1890s, and that everyone listens to everything he says and they become Washingtonian and just do his program. Because even when we look at Booker T. Washington himself, you don’t see that kind of coherence, let alone with other people. I don’t think there is necessarily something special about this particular time period.

I do know that they were facing a really formidable challenge, but they didn’t see themselves as automatically losing. We shouldn’t look at the situation in that light – where we know that that they won’t have a fulfillment of this movement. They saw hope and the possibility of defending their citizenship rights, and so they were willing to try to do a variety of different kinds of things to see if they would work. If Washingtonian ideals would help you get a school started in your community, cool, but that wouldn’t stop you from also being angry about the segregation of the streetcars in your neighborhood, and maybe you would boycott too. It’s not that once you choose one thing, then you suddenly can’t participate in another. I think that it is important for all of us to remember the messiness that comes with humanity.

PA: In the book you write about well-known figures like Ida B. Wells and W.E.B. Du Bois who have their own run-ins with transportation segregation. Interestingly, you note that this became part of their life's work but isn't much a part of our general knowledge about them. Why is that?

BLAIR KELLEY: I did an exhaustive amount of research trying to figure out where the most famous black activists of the time came out on this question, because I didn’t want to miss anything. I have this freaky obsession with making sure I do not get anything majorly wrong. I was coming to the conclusion that Du Bois was not vocal about this particular movement, that he was very much against the segregation of transportation, but that he was not specifically part of these larger of communities of protest – that he was generally supportive but not really touching down in this movement. But it took me years to where I felt comfortable enough to say that I knew for sure that he didn’t. In the meantime I got a lot of material about his approach.

But for Wells the train and streetcar protests were the starting point. I think it served as her first run-in with brute force and power in her own life. It was at a time when she was doing really well. She was well-educated and she had a new job; she was excited and she was young and doing her very best; I mean she was being a good citizen. And then in the midst of that she gets targeted and called names in court, when she had the bravery to go in there and sue for her rights. So for her I think it was one of her very first political lessons in this time period: that even when people are doing their best they may not be defended, they may not be embraced. In fact, doing your best may make you a target. It helped her, I think, in her later work to lend the critical eye of her own experience to the wider question of lynching, racial violence, and women’s rights.

For Du Bois, it is tough for me to know exactly how he felt about this particular protest, given that I don’t have it from him written down, but I do know that he saw segregation as awful. He is a lovely spokesperson for this time period in terms of how it felt and how it was particularly demeaning, because he always has that lovely insider-outsider eye on the African American experience in the South, and he served as a really great narrator for that experience in particular. But I hope the book doesn’t just stop there; I hope the book does more to tell us about other folks and their struggles against segregation.

PA: African Americans also found themselves caught in the conundrum that fighting segregation in court wasn't a sure way to win their rights.

BLAIR KELLEY: I would put it this way. The issue of Frederick Douglass being approached by the Citizen’s Committee in New Orleans was really interesting, given that he had the foresight to know that it might not work, that this could go in the wrong direction. Douglass had a much longer historical sweep and a longer understanding of the disappointments of the courts, being a person who lived through Dred Scott. It must have been truly awful to experience a court engaged in the wholesale stripping of African American rights in that decision. Douglass sort of saw Plessy coming down the line, that this was not going to go in the right direction. And it’s pretty amazing that I was able use him as a key reference point in the Plessy decision, reminding us of an earlier struggle, but also with an awareness that history doesn’t always have to move toward progress.

PA: How did class difference divide the boycott movement, and what were some of the ways African Americans sought to build unity?

BLAIR KELLEY: I began approaching the issue of class within the African American community, because it is central to how I think the “read” of Meier and Ludwick fails to fully account for how it must have felt to be in those particular circumstances. Here you had leaders who were turning against poor and working-class folks in their community, in the hope that the argument really was about people doing their best at all times, that if people are more controlled in their behavior, if they are really courteous on the streetcar, nothing bad will happen. We’ll be okay and our citizenship will be protected, if we can demonstrate that we are stellar citizens, and it’s these working-class folks who make us look less than stellar. But in the course of the movement I think a lot of people come to realize – some people know it from the very beginning and some people figure it out as it goes on – that that’s not the question, that segregation is happening in order to target African Americans and create a system of control over people who would achieve equally or above whites in society. So to separate them on the streetcar, no matter if they owned their own business or if they were a doctor or a lawyer, they would all experience the same thing, and their blackness would be a control. Just the stigma of their skin would be the most important thing about them, rather than any individual achievements. So as much people were saying that it’s these poor working-class folks who come home smelly from work on the streetcar who are making it harder for us, they weren’t really the target of these laws. They might be brought up as an excuse but they were not the reason for problem.

On the flip side, Meier and Ludwick also assume that poor and working-class people don’t care about dignity and the way they are treated. They assume that this was an essentially middle-class question. But I had the good fortune to find statistics that proved these boycotts had incredibly high participation and that working-class people were probably using these cars much more frequently than others because it was essential to their job mobility in these expanding cities. For them to participate came at a higher cost, and yet they are at the center of it, and they were only a success because of the presence of working-class folks in these New South cities. I sensed from the very beginning, and I was glad I could prove it with evidence, that there indeed was a tremendous concern by everyday folks with the quality of their everyday experience, and that they didn’t want to open up themselves and their children to demeaning and even violent treatment at the hands of the streetcar conductors.

PA: Can you talk about the leadership role of African American women in these boycott movements?

BLAIR KELLEY: African American women served this movement and led this movement in two particular ways. First there was the symbolism, particularly on the trains, of the ladies' cars and the smoking cars, where men held sway and where African Americans were often pushed no matter what their gender was. African American women were fighting for inclusion in the ladies’ cars, which were set aside for “women travelers and their gentleman companions.” When these cases went to court, African American women had the greatest success, because they could argue about the terms in which inclusion was granted on these trains. By bringing their womanhood into the question, at the center of the legal question, they were the ones with the greatest success. I talk in the book about imagining whether Tourgee and the Citizens Committee thought about whether a woman would have been a better candidate to take the case to court than Homer Plessy.

The other way in which women led and were at the heart of participation in the boycott movement was the way in which African American women used the cars. They needed to ride the cars to get to work, to go to church, and to maintain networks. Laundresses and maids needed to use the cars as a way to get around these cities, which were expanding dramatically during this period. The need for access drove them to a position of leadership, to where it ends up being a women’s question, because women used the cars and they spoke out in nearly every city, not by saying this was particularly a women’s problem and not a male problem – it was about the unique ways in which women needed access to the streetcars.

PA: Are interracial coalitions a part of this boycott movement?

BLAIR KELLEY: I think they were, in the larger community, fading away. So a person like John Mitchell, Jr., who was an office-holder in Richmond, Virginia in the late Reconstruction period and in the 1880s as well begins to get pushed out of Republican politics as these coalitions with whites begin to disappear and the Republican Party moved toward being a lily-white organization, where they would boot out Blacks and really reject Black participation in an effort to recruit white voters in an increasingly segregated South. Interracial coalitions were how many of these folks and communities knew how to do politics, and they were slipping away from them; they were just disappearing.

This was a period when coalitions with men who were concerned about the questions of race become more few and far between, with the grand exception of Albion Tourgee who maintained a pretty late engagement and a real conviction around questions of race. But there are fewer and fewer friends of African Americans during this time period, and I think we are catching the end of an era. We can see it in Du Bois’s attempt to bring the Niagara Movement out to Harper’s Ferry to remember John Brown, to recall an abolitionist tradition that was much more interracial and broad, something that they would finally get in the North with the NAACP just a few years later. But in my time period they are sort of struggling and trying to find it and were not able to.

PA: One of the underlying narratives of this story is that we might tend to see the end of Reconstruction as flowing inevitably into the period of the re-institution of white supremacy and Jim Crow. But I think the way this really works is that they really had to fight to reestablish this system, and that there was resistance to it in various ways all along the way. Do you agree with that, and does it have any relevance for today’s political terrain?

BLAIR KELLEY: I think it was very much a fight. It’s also an interesting read on the Southern white politics of the time. They were quite hesitant initially to just go whole hog and write down in law everything they were thinking, so they took incremental steps. They mirror other states in the writing of these laws, so that if you read all of the segregation laws together you see a sort of slow creep of pushing more and more, before Plessy and after Plessy, pushing more and more to be exhaustive and to build on one another, and to respond to the increasing efforts of Black dissent. And you do see a break and a battle around questions of race. It isn’t just that slavery continues on unceasingly. There is a big fight in front of them and a challenge in making segregation happen that speaks to the skillfulness of Black dissent, and the wisdom of how hard they were fighting to defend citizenship in the face of really awful and violent odds.

But I would also say that white supremacy vis-a-vis slavery, versus white supremacy vis-a-vis segregation, is a different animal. It is a new thing, and a response to the growth of Black urbanity in the postwar period. As Blacks moved to the cities they challenged physically, just by being there, the racial order in a really profound way. The success they can have in the city, the mobility they can have, and the anonymity that they can have in these urban spaces is a new thing. So white supremacy has to innovate a more modern way of controlling the Black body. Under slavery and in rural circumstances, the master, the overseer, and the patrollers have personal knowledge of people, and they can control them because they know who they were and they know who owns them, and it has this very one-on-one quality. But as Blacks move to the cities, they can move away from that feeling, and they are moving to the cities in greater and greater numbers throughout the time period of my book.

Segregation is a modern response to the question of race and racialized control, one that approximates that "hands on" thing and says that it doesn’t matter what you have achieved here in the city, it doesn’t matter what you are trying to do, you’re still not equal to whites. So segregation is necessary in these urban spaces to address a new challenge that African American are making, in New Orleans, Richmond, Savannah and in other places.

PA: Is there a way to think abstractly about the nature of these kinds of social dynamics, the politics of resistance, the politics of protest, and the politics of social change in a progressive direction, that we can apply to the contemporary period?

BLAIR KELLEY: I would say so. You know, just personally, every time I think, "Oh things are not going well," I think of my people and I take courage, because they faced things that are unthinkable today. If one of my students is in danger or threatened, I can call the police and the odds are that the police will come and help me. I can’t imagine living in a time period where that was pretty much not true, where you know you have no assistance from any networks of resistance nationwide and no civil society that supports you and the safety of your family and your students. They faced tremendous odds in trying to make movements, and yet they spoke out in the face of really awful violence, which I think undergirds my understanding of the political climate of the turn of the 20th century – the lynching and the race riots that punctuate the landscape. They saw that and they continued to fight. So it reminds us to be patient. It reminds us that struggle isn’t always instantly rewarded, that sometimes you fail when you struggle, but that you should continue on anyway, and it may take root and blossom in directions that you can’t predict at any given time, or that you couldn’t even see at any particular time. I think the protest community I write about in my book makes me feel much more patient about contemporary challenges and politics, and sad, too, because you hear the same stuff being recycled in an attempt to manipulate the political argument. The race-baiting hasn’t changed that much, and I think the need for bravery remains.

Audio: Boycotting Jim Crow: The Original Anti-Segregation Movement

Mon, 03 Jan 2011 13:29:00 +0000

On this episode we speak with historian Blair L.M. Kelley about her award-winning book Right to Ride: Streetcar Boycotts and African American Citizenship in the Era of Plessy v. Ferguson, recently out by University of North Carolina Press.

Download this episode (right click and save)

Eliminate Wage Discrimination: Pass the Paycheck Fairness Act

Mon, 03 Jan 2011 13:22:00 +0000

Women have struggled for equality throughout human history, but especially since the early emergence of the private property and class division. For a long time, equal pay has been a major part of this struggle. Though women have succeeded in enacting laws that are supposed to protect this right, in the United States women are still paid less than men who have the same qualifications and carry out equal work. More still needs to be done.

The Paycheck Fairness Act (PFA) is the genuine pathway to eliminating pay discrimination. It illustrates ongoing inequality: Sec. 2-2 of the PFA points out, “Despite the enactment of the Equal Pay Act of 1963, many women continue to earn significantly lower pay than men for equal work.” It will help in removing the legal obstacles that block women from regaining their rights to equal pay, those like the expiration date of filing the case of discrimination. It will help laws to efficiently represent justice. Shockingly, on November 17, the Senate failed to pass the PFA in a cloture vote.

If laws that protect women’s rights are out of date, or are weakened by the rapid changes in the overall social circumstances, an updating of these laws is essential and should be looked at as an urgent need. The PFA will fill one of the laws’ distressing gaps. It will inhibit penalties against workers who share the details of their compensations.

By stopping these penalties, PFA will help in preventing cases like the famous one of Lilly Ledbetter who discovered, after her retirement, that the Goodyear Company was paying her less than men in similar positions. She missed the case because she discovered that pay discrimination after the expired date of filing it. President Obama explained that PFA will let employees who are discriminated against regain their full loss without being stopped by the expiration date’s obstacle.

The PFA will also provide access that helps concerned authorities to safeguard pay fairness. Sec. 8 -1-B of the Paycheck Fairness Act demands the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to “issue regulations to provide for the collection of pay information data from employers as described by the sex, race, and national origin of employees.” All this, emphasizes the fact that updating the laws is important to fill in some gaps that might develop and those which were not taken in mind when issuing the old laws, which will be achieved by enforcing the PFA, and in the current order of society, it is the only way-out of pay discrimination against women.

It is worth mentioning that capitalism is the fundamental element of pay discrimination. Pay unfairness, in the main, is a major stream for the accumulation of capital and the base of the surplus value. This is the only explanation for the fact that women in America still suffer discrimination. Women work hard to be qualified to fulfill their commitments toward their families and the society, and accordingly, they deserve to get the same positions, jobs and equal pay. In a time of economic difficulties, women face a double suffering situation, and this unjust state worsens the impact of the recent recession on women and their families.

The fight against pay discrimination is a struggle toward ending the role of reaction in society. Besides the direct financial effects on them and their families, this discrimination has a latent impact on women’s concerns. It discourages some of them from majoring in fields like advanced science or engineering. Their choice of career may also be influenced by anti-women’s rights perceptions; that women don’t undertake important jobs. This blind notion is created by the same people who back discrimination against women and put them in this primitively driven cycle. So, we should march against this extreme rightism and push for passing the Paycheck Fairness Act.

Indeed, equal pay for equal work is not only a women’s rights issue, but it is a basic right that should be maintained for every employee. Humans are appraised by their achievements and the contribution that they give to the society, which is mostly in the form of work. So, pay discrimination means a double standard of evaluating these humans, a break with equality. Also, to defend their rights the employees should be aware of them. In his Equal Pay Statement, President Obama points out that by bringing the PFA into law, employees should be informed about their rights.

In a capitalist society, pay equality can be achieved only through legal means. Updating the existing laws is a serious need to keep the equal pay right active and efficient. There is an arsenal of laws that covers the issue, but it is disabled by the laws’ gaps. According to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the current Equal Pay Act grants equal pay for equal work. This act also refers to Title VII, another legal base upon which people who are discriminated against can file their claims. Thus, updating the laws is the solution, and it will be implemented by passing and enforcing the PFA.

Photo: Lilly Ledbetter speaks out on paycheck fairness. (Courtesy AFL-CIO)

Preserving Socialism in Cuba

Mon, 03 Jan 2011 13:21:00 +0000

Editor's note: The following is excerpted from a speech by Cuban President Raul Castro delivered at the closing of the recent session of Cuba's National Assembly on December 18, 2010.

As I made my way to this Assembly, seeing the date in the newspaper, December 18, a modest historical detail immediately came to mind, exactly 54 years ago, we didn't think we would live that long back then, in the circumstances we found ourselves, the nascent Rebel Army, the current revolutionary Armed Forces, and the Revolution itself which after the disaster and the great defeat suffered in a place known as Alegría de Pío, three days after the landing, December 5 of that year, over 13 days, wandering in small groups trying to get around the two lines encircling us, finally aided by campesinos, I was reunited with Fidel's small group.

It was already night when we met. After the initial embrace, I stepped back and the first question was, "How many guns do you have?" "Five," I answered. "With the two that I have, that's seven. Now, yes, we have won the war!" (Applause) And it appears, given what we've seen, that he was right.

It is a felicitous coincidence, and I wanted to begin my last comments during this event with this gratifying memory.

We have been meeting for several days now discussing matters which are extremely important for the future of the nation. This time, in addition to our customary work in commissions, the deputies have met in plenary in order to analyze details of the current economic situation, as well as budgetary proposals and the economic plan for the year 2011.

The deputies have also devoted long hours to the thorough evaluation and clarification of some doubts and concerns about the Draft Guidelines for the Economic and Social Policy of the Party and the Revolution.

Our media has given a broad coverage to these discussions in order to make it easier for the general public to receive this information.

Acceptable economic performance for 2010

Despite the impact of the world crisis on the national economy, the irregular rainfall pattern during the last 19 months – from November 2008 through June this year – and without denying our own errors, I can affirm that the performance of the 2010 economic plan can be deemed acceptable, considering the times in which we are living. We will attain the goal of 2.1 percent growth in the Gross Domestic Product, better known by its acronym (GDP); exports of goods and services have increased. The number of foreign visitors projected for the year has already been reached, while the current year has yet to end. Although once again, we will not be able to meet the planned revenue goals, we have strengthened the domestic financial balance and, for the first time in several years, we are beginning to see a favorable dynamic, still somewhat limited, in work productivity as compared to average wage.

Withholdings of foreign transfers or, what amounts to the same thing, the restrictions we were forced to impose at the end of 2008 on payments from Cuban banks to foreign suppliers - which will be discontinued next year – have continued to decrease. At the same time, significant progress has been achieved in the rescheduling of our debt with our principal creditors.

Once again I would like to thank our commercial and financial partners for their confidence and understanding; I confirm to them our most steadfast intention to honor our commitments in a timely fashion. The Government has given precise instructions to not take on new debts without guaranteeing their payment within the terms agreed upon.

Economic Targets for Next Year

As was explained by Vice President of the Government and Minister of Economy and Planning Marino Murillo Jorge, next year’s plan foresees a 3.1 percent GDP growth, which should be reached under circumstances no less complicated or tense.

The year 2011 is the first of five included in the midterm projection for our economy. During this period we shall be gradually and progressively introducing some new structures and concepts in the Cuban economic model.

During the coming year, we will move decisively to reduce superfluous expenses, thus promoting savings of all types of resources which, as we have said on several occasions, is the quickest and most reliable source of income at our disposal.

Likewise, we shall not overlook in the least social programs in the areas of health, education, culture and sports; we would rather raise their quality, since we have identified enormous reserves of efficiency through a more rational use of the existing infrastructure. We will also be increasing exports of goods and services, while continuing to concentrate investments in those areas showing the most rapid return.

Regarding the economic plan and the budget, we have insisted that the old story of non-compliance and overdrafts must come to an end. The plan and the budget are sacred. And I repeat, from now on, the plan and the budget will be sacred; they were drafted to be complied with, not to allow us to be satisfied with justifications of any sort or even with inaccuracies and lies, whether deliberate or not, when the goals previously set are not met.

The Consequences of Lying

At times, some compañeros, with no fraudulent intent, contribute inaccurate information received from their subordinates without previously checking it and so they fall into unconscious lying. But this false data could lead us to make erroneous decisions, with major or minor repercussions within the country. Whosoever acts in that manner is also lying, and whoever these persons may be they must be definitively and not temporarily removed from the position they hold and, after the analysis of the appropriate bodies, they must also be removed from the ranks of the Party, should they be members.

Lies and their harmful effects have accompanied humanity since we learned the art of speech in ancient times, motivating society’s condemnation. We recall that the eighth of the Ten Commandments of the Bible reads: "Thou shalt not bear false witness or lie". Likewise, the three basic moral ethical principles of the Inca civilization are stated as follows: do not lie, steal, or be lazy.

We must struggle to eradicate, once and for all, lies and deceit from cadres’ behavior at all levels. No wonder compañero Fidel in his brilliant definition of the concept of Revolution, pointed out, among other things: "never lie or violate ethical principles."

With the publication of the Draft Guidelines for the Economic and Social Policy on November 9th last, the train of the Sixth Party Congress has taken on steam, since now the true congress will be the open and honest discussions of these guidelines by Party members and the entire people. This genuine democratic exercise will allow us to further enrich that document and, without excluding divergent opinions, achieve national consensus about the need and urgency of introducing strategic changes in the way the economy functions, with the purpose of making Socialism in Cuba sustainable and irreversible.

We should not be afraid of differences of opinion and this directive, which is not new, should not be interpreted as being limited only to the discussions of the guidelines; differences of opinion, preferably expressed in the right place, time and form, at the right moment and in the correct form, will always be more desirable than false unanimity based on pretense and opportunism. Moreover it is a right no one should be denied.

The more ideas we are capable of inspiring in the analysis of a problem, the closer we will come to its appropriate solution.

The Economic Policy Commission of the Party and its 11 working groups have worked for months to draw up the above mentioned guidelines which, as we have explained, will constitute the central topic of the Congress, based on the conviction that the economic situation is the most important task of the Party and the Government and the basic assignment for cadres at all levels.

We cannot let ourselves be carried away by improvisation and haste

During the last few years we have been insisting that we could not let ourselves be carried away by improvisation and haste in this area, bearing in mind the magnitude, the complexity and the inter-relationship of the decisions to be adopted. For that reason, I think that we did the right thing when we decided to defer the Party Congress even though we had to patiently resist the honest, as well as ill-intentioned protests, both inside Cuba and abroad urging us to rush into the adoption of a score of measures. Our adversaries abroad, as we might expect, have challenged our every step, first by calling the measures cosmetic and insufficient and now trying to confuse public opinion by prophesying a sure failure and concentrating their campaigns on the extolling of alleged disappointment and skepticism with which they say our people have received this draft.

Sometimes it seems that their deepest desires prevent them from seeing reality. Making their true hopes evident, they blatantly demand that we dismantle the economic and social system which we created, as if this Revolution were willing to submit to the most humiliating surrender or, tantamount to the same thing, allow its destiny to be governed by degrading conditions.

Over the course of 500 years, from Hatuey to Fidel, our people have shed too much blood to accept the dismantling of what we have built with so much sacrifice.

The measures we are implementing are aimed at the preservation of socialism …I was not elected President to restore capitalism in Cuba

To those who may entertain such unfounded illusions, we must remind them once and again of what I said before this Parliament on August 1, 2009, and I quote: "I was not elected President to restore capitalism in Cuba nor to surrender the Revolution. I was elected to defend, maintain and continue improving socialism, not to destroy it", end of quote.

Today, I add that the measures we are implementing and all the modifications that need to be introduced in the updating of the economic model are aimed at the preservation of socialism by strengthening it and making it truly irrevocable, as was stated in the Constitution of the Republic at the behest of the vast majority of our population in the year 2002.

We have to put all the information, and the thinking behind every decision, on the table and discouraged the excessive secrecy to which we became accustomed during these 50 years that we have lived besieged by the enemy. Any State must reasonably keep some matters confidential; that is something no one can deny. But matters defining the political and economical course of the nation will not be secret. It is vital to explain, provide arguments and convince the people of the fairness, necessity and urgency of any measure, no matter how tough it appears to be.

The Party and the Communist Youth, as well as the Central Organization of Cuban Workers and the respective labor unions, along with the rest of the mass and social organizations, have the capacity to mobilize the support and confidence of the people through debate, free from unworkable dogmas and preconceptions which constitute a colossal psychological barrier, which we need to dismantle little by little, and together we will do it.

That is exactly the fundamental agenda which we have reserved for the National Conference of the Party to be held in 2011, after the Congress, at a date to be set later. On that occasion we will analyze, among other matters, modifications of the Party's methods and style of work since, as a result of the deficiencies found in the performance of Government administrative bodies, the Party has engaged in the exercise of functions beyond its duties, thus restricting and compromising its role as the organized vanguard of the Cuban nation and the supreme leadership of society and the State, as established by Article Five of the Constitution of the Republic.

The Party should lead and supervise and not interfere with the activities of the Government at any level: it is the Government that governs. Each body has its own norms and procedures, depending on their mission in society.

Transforming erroneous and unsustainable conceptions of socialism

It is necessary to change the mentality of cadres and of all compatriots in facing the new approach which is beginning to be sketched out. It is simply about transforming erroneous and unsustainable conceptions of socialism, that have become deeply rooted in broad sectors of the population over the years, as a result of the excessively paternalistic, idealistic and egalitarian approach instituted by the Revolution in the interest of social justice.

Many of us Cubans confuse socialism with giveaways and subsidies and equality with egalitarianism. Quite a few of us consider the ration book to be a social achievement that should never be eliminated.

In this regard, I am convinced that several of the problems we are facing today have their origin in this distribution mechanism. While it is true that its implementation was inspired by the wholesome idea of ensuring people a stable supply of foodstuffs and other goods to counter the unscrupulous hoarding by some for profit, it is an evident expression of egalitarianism that equally benefits those who work and those who do not, or those who do not need it, thus generating bartering and resale in an underground black market, etc, etc.

The solution to this complex and sensitive matter is not that simple since it is closely related to the strengthening of the role of salaries in society. That will only be possible if, at the same time, giveaways and subsidies are reduced and the productivity of work and the availability of products to the population are increased.

In this matter, as well as in the elimination of overstaffing, the Socialist State will not leave any citizen unprotected and via the social welfare system it will ensure that people who are unable to work receive the minimum required protection. In the future there will be subsidies, but not of products, but to Cuban men and women, who for one reason or another, really need them.

As is known, as of September the cigarette rations were eliminated. This product was received by only a part of the population. Obviously, due to its harmful effects to human health, it cannot be considered a basic commodity.

Next year – and as already said here during the discussions we've held – we cannot afford to spend around $50 million – $47 million to be exact – to import coffee, which has so far been distributed in rations to all consumers, including newborn children. Since this is an unavoidable necessity, we intend to mix it with peas, as we did through 2005, since they are much cheaper than coffee, almost $3,000 per ton, while the cost of peas is $390.

If we want to keep on drinking pure, un-rationed coffee, the only solution is to produce it in Cuba where it has been shown that all the required conditions for its cultivation exist, and where we can produce enough to satisfy the demand and even export, with the highest quality.

After the aggressive U.S. war on Vietnam, the heroic, undefeated Vietnamese people asked if we could teach them how to grow coffee and off we went; we taught them, we shared our experience. Today Vietnam is the second largest exporter of coffee in the world. And a Vietnamese official said to his Cuban colleague, "How is it that you taught us to grow coffee and now you are buying it from us?" I don't know what the Cuban might have answered. Surely, he said, "The blockade."

These decisions, and others that we will have to implement, even though we know they are not popular ones, are a must in order to be able to maintain and even improve the free public health, education and social security services for all of our citizens.

The construction of a new society from an economic point of view is, in my modest opinion, also a journey into the unknown.

The leader of the Cuban Revolution, compañero Fidel himself, in his historical speech on November 17, 2005, stated, and I quote: "Here is a conclusion I’ve come to after many years: among all the errors we may have committed, the greatest of them all was that we believed that someone really knew something about socialism, or that someone actually knew how to build socialism", end of quote. Hardly one month ago, exactly five years later, in his message on the occasion of the International Students Day, Fidel confirmed these ideas which maintain their validity.

I for one remember the idea of an award-winning Soviet scientist who, about half a century ago, was thinking that even though the possibility of a manned flight into space had been theoretically documented, it was still a journey into the unknown.

While we have counted on the Marxist-Leninist theoretical legacy, according to which there is scientific evidence as to the feasibility of socialism and the practical experience of the attempts to build it in other countries, the construction of a new society from an economic point of view is, in my modest opinion, also a journey into the unknown. Therefore every step must be carefully considered and planned before the next step is taken; mistakes are to be corrected quickly, in a timely fashion, not leaving the solution up to time, which allows them to worsen and, in the end, we are faced with a costlier bill.

We are fully aware of the errors that we have committed and the Guidelines precisely mark the beginning of the road to rectification and the necessary updating of our socialist economic model.

Nobody should claim that he or she has been deceived: the Guidelines indicate the road towards a socialist future, adapted to Cuba’s conditions and not to the capitalist and neo-colonial past which was defeated by the Revolution. Planning and not the free market shall be the distinctive feature of the economy. As was outlined in the third general guideline, the concentration of ownership shall not be allowed. This is as clear as day, but there is no one as blind as one who doesn’t want to see.

The building of socialism should proceed according to the special characteristics of every country. It is a history lesson that we have learned very well. We do not intend to copy from anyone; that brought us enough problems because, additionally, we copied badly; but we will not ignore the experiences of others and we will learn from them, even from the capitalists' positive experience.

The need for a change of mentality

Speaking about the necessary change of mentality, I shall mention one example: if we have come to the conclusion that self-employment constitutes one more opportunity for working-age citizens, with the goal of increasing the supply of goods and services to the population and remove the State from these activities so that it can focus on what is truly decisive, what the Party and the Government should do is facilitate the work rather than generating stigmas and prejudices against it. Therefore it is fundamental that we modify the existing negative attitude that quite a few of us have towards this form of private employment. When defining the Marx, Engels and Lenin features that ought to characterize the building of a new society, the classics of Marxist-Leninism – especially Lenin – stated, that the State, on behalf of all the people, should maintain the ownership of the fundamental means of production.

We turned this precept into an absolute principle and converted into state property almost all the country’s economic activity. The steps we have been taking and shall take in broadening and relaxing the regulation of self-employment are the result of profound reflection and analysis and we can assure you this time there will be no going back.

The Federation of Cuban Workers and its respective national unions are currently studying ways and means of organizing the provision of assistance to this labor force, promote full compliance with the Law and the payment of taxes and encourage these workers to eschew illegalities. We should defend their interests just as we do with any other citizen, as long as they observe the approved legal norms.

In this respect, the introduction of basic concepts about the taxation system at different educational levels becomes very important, so that younger generations are continuously and concretely taught about the application of taxes as the most universal form of redistribution of the national income, in the interest of covering social costs, including help to the most needy.

Across society as a whole, we need to develop the civic values of respect of and compliance by all taxpayers with their tax obligations; we should educate people in that culture and discipline, reward those who comply and sanction tax evasion.

Promotion of productive forces in our rural areas

Another area where there is still much to do, in spite of the advances made, is the attention to the different production modalities in agriculture to remove the existing obstacles to the promotion of productive forces in our rural areas so that, depending on the savings generated by reducing imports, farmers can receive fair and reasonable revenues for their hard work. However this does not justify the establishment of extremely high prices for the commodities consumed by the population.

At this point, two years since we began distributing idle land in usufruct, I think we are in a position to evaluate the allocation of additional areas, beyond the limits established by Decree-Law 259 of July 2008, to those agricultural workers who have achieved outstanding results in the intensive use of the lands they are responsible for.

I believe it is opportune to clarify that the lands distributed in usufruct are the property of the people and therefore, if these are required for other uses in the future, for the construction of a public work or a highway or whatever, the State would compensate those working the land in usufruct for their investments and pay them the value of the improvements made.

In due time, once we conclude the studies based on the experience we have been accumulating, we shall submit to the Council of State the appropriate proposals to modify the above mentioned Decree-Law, with Lugo Fonte, President of the National Association of Small Farmers representing campesinos.

The Lack of Knowledge about the Economy

One of the most difficult barriers to overcome in the effort to create a different vision -and we need to publicly recognize it as such - is the lack of knowledge about the economy among the people, including quite a few leading cadres who, demonstrating a supine ignorance of the subject, adopt or propose solutions to daily problems without stopping for a minute to evaluate their effects and costs, or without even knowing if there are resources assigned or a budget toward that end within the plan.

I am not uncovering anything when I state that improvisation in general, particularly when it comes to the economy, leads to certain failure regardless of the lofty ends one intends to attain.

On December 2, on the occasion of the 54th anniversary of the landing of the Granma, the official newspaper of our Party published an excerpt of the speech delivered by Fidel in 1976 on that same date when we were celebrating the twentieth anniversary of that event. Given its validity and relevance I find it appropriate to quote it: "The strength of a people and a revolution lies precisely in its capacity to understand and cope with difficulties. Despite everything, we will move forward on numerous fronts and we will struggle bravely to increase the economy’s efficiency, save resources, reduce non-essential costs, increase exports and create economic consciousness in every citizen. I said earlier that we are all politicians; now I add that we all need to be economists, I repeat economists, not economic reductionists; a mindset of savings and efficiency is different from a mindset of consumption," end of quote.

Economists, that doesn't mean we all need to go earn a degree in economics, we have plenty; [it means] understanding economic principles, not getting a doctorate.

The core of these guidelines which you have, and the definition of directives for economic development, is, at this time, produce that which can be exported, reduce imports and invest in works which give more rapid returns and, additionally, improve efficiency in the economy. Conserve resources, reduce nonessential costs - we've talked these days about all of that – increase exports and develop the economic awareness of every citizen and I repeat, "economist, not economic reductionist; a mindset of savings and efficiency is different from a mindset of consumption," end of quote. Spoken on December 2, 34 years ago.

Ten years later, on December 1 of 1986, during the postponed session of the Third Party Congress, Fidel stated, and I quote: "Many do not understand that the Socialist State, just as any other State or system, cannot deliver what it does not have. Much less is it going to have that which it does not produce if it gives away money without having a productive backing. I am sure that overstaffing, excess money paid out to people, idle stocks, and wasting of resources are all linked to the great number of unprofitable companies that we have in our country." end of the quote.

After 34 and 24 years respectively, since these two quotes which I just cited, these instructions given by the leader of the Revolution, these and many other problems are still with us.

Well, what did we do? Why were these instructions, or directives from the leader of the Revolution, not followed? We applauded the speeches, we shouted 'Long live the Revolution' and then things continued just the same.

He did what was required of him and I am trying to find an explanation. I say that with his genius, Fidel was breaking through, showing the way, and the rest of us didn’t know how to assure and consolidate the march forward in pursuit of those goals.

Neglecting mid and long term planning

We were in reality lacking in cohesion, despite the unity between the people and its Party, its leaders, its government, our fundamental strategic weapon which allowed us to survive, in a besieged fortress, facing the most powerful empire in history. But we lacked cohesion, organization and coordination between the Party and the government; in the midst of the threats and the daily emergencies we neglected mid and long-term planning; we did not act strongly enough against economic violations and errors committed by some leaders and we delayed correcting decisions that didn’t show the expected results, but survived.

On more than one occasion I have referred to the fact that in this Revolution almost everything has been said and that we should check which of the instructions given by the leader of the Revolution have been fulfilled and which have not, ever since he made his vibrant statement "History Will Absolve Me" through the present. We will retake Fidel’s ideas, which continue to be valid, and will not allow the same to happen to us again. That's why, the directives, the line, established by the Party and the government as to errors, violations, etc, etc. If we want to save the Revolution we have to implement what is decided and not allow that, after the Congress – which have been, up to now, in many cases, very eloquent – that the documents go to rest in the eternal slumber of the back drawer, as has been explained during these days of fruitful, democratic and truly profound discussion. This is how we hope the people will continue discussing the guidelines; we have around 100 days for this. Either we rectify the situation or the time is up as we close in on the precipice, we fall, we fall as previously said, with the effort of entire generations, from Hatuey who came from the Dominican Republic and Haiti – the first internationalist in our country – to Fidel who has guided us brilliantly through such complicated situations since the triumph of the Revolution.

We will never forget, the not-so-young, or those of us who are older, but who are still young and in the fight and the new generations, too - some of whom took the floor yesterday and spoke eloquently - the words from Fidel's first speech once he arrived in the capital, from Batista's main barracks, the old Columbia, today the Liberty City school. He said, from that place, "The Revolution has triumphed, our joy is boundless, but there is still much to be done. We make no mistake thinking that everything will be easy now; perhaps now everything will be more difficult." And this precise and visionary perspective has been borne out over fifty some years.

It wasn't going to be a bed of roses, we knew the power we were going to challenge; we could only count on the people and the weapons we had confiscated from Batista, later we would arm ourselves as best we could, fomenting and educating, as well, the great unity of our people, which we must always care for like the apple of our eye, like life itself. But this unity cannot be decreed. We will have more unity because it will be everyone's domain if absolutely democratic methods are used in all of the nation's political activity, from the Party nucleus to the highest bodies of state power, which is this assembly gathered here, with patience.

We have an educated country, with a high level of education and we have many positive things, gigantic advances have been achieved. It's not up to this body to make a list; you know them. Our press talks about this enough, the accomplishments of the Revolution, we talk about them a lot in speeches; but we have to get to the core of the problems, as has been done during this session of the parliamentary assembly.
That is to say that the questions we have analyzed and the errors we have criticized, cannot continue to occur, the life of the Revolution is at stake.

Errors themselves, if they are just honesty analyzed, can become experiences and lessons for teaching us how to eradicate them and avoid their replication. You must have heard the saying that humans are the only animals that trip over the same obstacle more than once? I know some people here who have tripped over the same obstacle five, six or ten times and, if we don’t stop them, they will continue to do so, and it’s not that they damage their ankles or toes, it is that the errors that they commit cost millions.

The enumeration made by the vice president himself, Murillo, minister of economy and planning, or that made by compañero Osvaldo Martínez, president of the Parliamentary Economic Affairs Commission, who has just spoken: we lost so many millions given the market price of sugar; all these years its price has been on the floor and now that it rose, because of failing to meet sugar targets, for x reasons, we lost so many millions of dollars; and in another activity, we received a lot less through not having met the targets.

I was saying to Machado, commenting while we were listening, commenting there beside him: if you add up everything that we have lost by failing to meet targets, you’ll see how many problems we could have solved. That is the case with everything.

Doing away with secretiveness

And for that, I am an out-and-out defender of doing away with secretiveness, although some secrets have to be kept, yesterday we were talking of some, that I am not thinking of making public; look at my speeches in the Assembly, and virtually nothing has been published in the press, I asked for it to be like that, precisely so as to be able to speak, the session was closed in order to discuss, as they say, to speak nakedly; there was no need to take off many clothes, but we discussed what had to be discussed. That’s the way it has to be.

I am a defender of the battle against secretiveness, because underneath that embroidered carpet are the faults that we have swept there, plus the interest in that being how things are and should continue to be. And I recall certain criticisms; "Yes, put that criticism in the paper," I instructed that myself, many years ago and naturally, there was no talk of any entity, but about a product etc. Immediately the grand bureaucracy began to move: "those things don’t help, they demoralize the workers." What workers are going to be demoralized? Like, on one occasion, in the large state dairy El Triángulo. It went on for weeks, because one of the trucks belonging to that dairy – it’s huge, it still is, I think it’s a genetic center now… (He is told that it is the Triunvirato). The Triunvirato, that’s correct, the Triángulo is in Camagüey. A little truck from there had broken down and so all the milk produced in the dairies in that area, from that place – not the complete enterprise – was thrown to some hogs that were being bred there.

It was then that I said to a secretary of the Central Committee responsible for agriculture at that stage, "Get to Granma, recount everything that is happening, make a criticism."

I stirred up the hornet’s nest; what they didn’t know is that it was I who had instructed it, and some of them came and even commented to me: "These things don’t help, because they demoralize the workers," etc.

Close to the city, to the capital of the province, throwing milk away there, throwing it to their hogs.

Secretiveness for that reason? No. Anyone who wants to keep his or her own deficiencies secret, let them fight and devote that huge effort to avoiding them – I’m referring to deficiencies.

That is to say that errors, if they are simply analyzed – as I was saying a few minutes ago – with honesty, can be transformed into experiences and lessons for overcoming them and not repeating them.

If we do not act in this way, we will be continually repeating the same errors. That is why I am saying that in Cuba there are animals – I am saying of man being the only animal which trips over the same obstacle twice, but in Cuba there are more.

Let us not forget the other Dominican, a great internationalist, chief of our Liberation Army, Generalissimo Máximo Gómez, who knew us well, he was married to a Cuban woman, his sons were born in the field of battle, many died of need, and Manana by his side, there behind him, wherever, and he said: "The Cubans either don’t arrive or they overreach." Isn’t that it? (Replies of Yes)

Let’s see if we overreach, but in the strict fulfillment of duty.

That is precisely the great usefulness of a thorough analysis of errors. That should become a permanent rule of conduct for all leaders.

The reality of figures prevails over all our hopes and dreams. Since our early years in first grade, when we studied elementary arithmetic, we learn that two plus two makes four, not five or six. You don’t have to be an economist to understand that. Therefore, if at any given time we have to do something in the economic and social field the cost of which cannot be covered by the resources available, we should do that bearing in mind the consequences and knowing, ahead of time, that, ultimately, bare facts will irremissibly prevail.

Cuba has tens and tens of thousands of professionals graduated by the Revolution in the specialties of economy, accounting and finances, just to mention some, and we haven’t known how to make proper use of their knowledge in the interest of the nation’s orderly development.

We have something that is very precious – which is human capital, which we must further unite…

We have something that is very precious – to which compañero Fidel has referred to on various occasions – which is human capital, which we must further unite, with the help of the National Association of Economists and Accountants (ANEC) in order to undertake the task of constantly and systematically instructing our educated public and their leaders at all levels in this subject. A large representation from the ANEC National Board took part in the first seminars that we organized to analyze these guidelines and many of their members are immersed in the process of discussions under way.

In this context, we should emphasize the decisive contribution made by thousands and thousands of accountants to recover the place they deserve in economic management which, as we well know, is an indispensable condition for ensuring success and order in everything that we intend to accomplish.

Our Approach to Youth

In these circumstances, nobody should lose sight of the relevance of keeping a differentiated approach to youth – I have moved on to another issue, that of current university graduates and technical students; in other words, a differentiated treatment or focus, like the one you saw in the first resolution from the Ministry of Labor – and in line with that, I must highlight the decision to exempt new graduates fulfilling their Social Service from the overstaffing reduction processes. If we don’t, they are going to be the first sacrificed.

Now then, we are not trying to assign them to jobs that have nothing to do with their professional profiles, as has occurred in the past, when they were even employed as doorpersons at some work places, because that period is precisely designed to train them in production and the provision of services, so that they can complement the theory which they learned in school with practice and cultivate in them a love of work. If we don’t do that we are sacrificing the immediate future, those who are going to continue.

No less important is the work to be carried out by the cadres and specialists involved in the drafting and review of legal documents, along with the modifications that are being implemented. For example, the issuance of almost 30 provisions – including decree-laws, government agreements and resolutions from various ministries and national institutes – have been required to create the legal framework for two guidelines (158 and 159), referring to self-employment, its taxation regime and the reduction of overstaffing.

Just a few days ago – look at this example – a resolution issued by the Ministry of Finances that modified the prices set by redistribution centers for a series of agricultural products had to terminate another 36 resolutions from that same entity, issued on different dates in previous years, but all valid. Who can take charge pf activities like the one of the prices of agricultural products, those who put a price on them and which are not within the demand and supply system; 36 documents? However many computers or whatever else we have, that’s impossible. And there are many decisions of this kind laid down in documents, one after another, one modifying another, etc. one replaced 36, but all of them in force.

Irrational prohibitions lead to violations and that in turn leads to corruption and impunity

These facts give you some idea of the work facing us in the area of juridical reorganization for the purpose of reinforcing the institutionalism of the country and eliminating so many irrational prohibitions that have been on the books for years, without bearing in mind existing circumstances, thus creating a real breeding ground for multiple, barely legal, actions that frequently give rise to corruption in different degrees. One can reach a life-tested conclusion: irrational prohibitions lead to violations and that in turn leads to corruption and impunity; that is why I believe that the population is right – and what people have posed since the analysis of the 2007 speech, which was not a speech that merited being discussed within the population, except that I said to them, "Express opinions on anything you want," and I reported the results of that survey here on one occasion. It was moreover, to have more experience for what we are doing now, and great experiences were attained, and many of the proposals made at that stage, are being repeated in these debates of the Guidelines; in other words they have spent years in their concerns about the mind-boggling procedures associated with housing and automobile sales between individuals, just to mention two examples, which are currently under study for their solution, but an orderly one. For that reason, we recalled yesterday, as Marino said, the state regulates its relations with the individual, but the state doesn’t have to interfere in anything that attempts to regulate the relations between two individuals, and that if I have a car, a little car or an almendrón as they are called now, and it is mine, I have every right to sell it to whomsoever I want, while complying with the regulations for the register of ownership.

At the same time, we must simplify and group together legislation in effect which is generally quite dispersed. The guideline documents are being drafted to be mastered by those responsible for their fulfillment, not for being filed away. As a result, we have to educate all the cadres and demand that they work with legal provisions that govern their functions and monitor that this complies as a requisite for suitability in occupying a determined position. We brought out an example yesterday or the day before, which was like a common denominator in all the provinces in a concrete fact. It was normal practice for all of them to file away any paper that arrived, and that was the other day and along the way.

It is worth remembering, once again, that ignorance of the law is no excuse for not following it and that, according to the Constitution, all citizens have equal rights and responsibilities, therefore whoever commits a crime in Cuba, regardless of the position he or she holds, whoever they may be, will have to face up to the consequences of their errors and the weight of justice.

Moving on to another matter, also part of the Guidelines, in next year’s plan, we have excluded 68 investments which are important for the country, because the established requirements were not met. These include funding definition, technical and project preparation, the definition of construction forces capable of undertaking them in the set term, and an evaluation of feasibility studies. We will not allow the wasting of resources directed toward investments resulting from spontaneity, improvisation and superficiality which, in more cases than not, have characterized the investment process. And when that was discussed in the last Council of Ministers and many of you heard it, that was the end of that, and anyone who violates it will have to bear the consequences of any kind.

In dealing with these subjects I have to refer to the decisive role to be played by Party cadres, the government, and the mass and youth organizations in the coordinated and harmonious management of the process of updating the Cuban economic model.

We have now a special and well-prepared battlefield to demonstrate that all this can be done, and to do it well, and neither overreach or fall short, as the Generalissimo said.

The Course of Gradual Decentralization

In the course of the gradual decentralization that we are undertaking, we have adopted different measures aimed at increasing the authority of administrative and business leaders, to whom we shall continue delegating powers. Simultaneously, we are improving control procedures and raising exigency to higher levels to confront manifestations of negligence, apathy and other conduct incompatible with public positions.

We have here, sitting in the first row, Gladys Bejerano, vice president of the Council of State who, as you know, is an efficient Comptroller General of the Republic.

One day when that Ministry existed – it is now dependent on the Council of State and, on behalf of this body, I am responsible for its daily functioning, as is the Attorney General’s Office of the Republic, and I give them tasks – within the MAC, the Ministry of Audit and Control – despite the fact that she couldn’t do much because all justifications were accepted and they always had some godfather, etc, the compañera Gladys Bejerano was not well regarded by some people. And always, when she controlled it, there was a little complaint from somebody, anyone, "Well, this doesn’t help." Some would say, "That demoralizes" – what is that! – "that compañera Gladys is very harsh, she says very harsh things." That is what we want, that is what I am demanding of you constantly.

So, on one occasion – I still didn’t have this responsibility – I said, "I believe that we should dissolve this Ministry." I saw happy faces, they were looking at each other; except for Gladys’ sad face, because it seemed as if we were disparaging her important work. I let almost one minute go by, a few seconds, and then I stated, "We are going to dissolve this Ministry, because it has equal hierarchy as other ministers, and we are going to make the Comptroller General of the Republic subordinate to the Council of State and we are going to propose her as Vice President." Their faces clouded again and she laughed happily again (Laughter). It isn’t a joke that I’m telling you (Applause), it is not a joke that I’m telling you.

So, I was saying that administrative leaders, ministers etc, provincial and municipal governments, are going to have increased authority and backing, and decentralizing faculties from above.

We have said that municipal government has to have faculties and resources, and we also talked of how to obtain them and that we will continue delegating resources. In parallel control procedures are to be improved, and exigency raised to higher levels to confront manifestations of negligence, apathy and other conduct incompatible with public positions.

Likewise, we are fully aware of the damage caused by the phenomenon of the "inverted pyramid" to the cadres policy over the years; in other words, when salaries are not related to the importance and hierarchy of leadership positions, nor is there adequate differentiation between some and others, all of which discourages the promotion of the most capable workers to senior responsibilities in enterprises and in ministries themselves. This is a basic matter that must be resolved according to what is indicated in Guidelines 156 and 161, referring to wages policy.

The time we have left is short, the task as gigantic one

The 6th Party Congress has to be, as a fact of life – and I have that constantly present in my mind – the last of the majority of us who belong to the Revolution’s Historical Generation. The time we have left is short, the task as gigantic one, and without the least shadow of immodesty, personal vanity or sentimentality, I think we have the obligation to take advantage of the weight of the moral authority that we possess before the people to leave the direction traced out and other important questions resolved.

We do not believe ourselves more intelligent or able than anyone else, or anything of the kind, but we strongly believe that we have the elemental duty to correct the errors that we have committed in these five decades of the building of socialism in Cuba and, to that endeavor we will employ all the energy that we left to us which, fortunately is more than a little.

We will redouble our perseverance and our intransigence against what is done wrong; ministers and other administrative and political leaders know they can count on our full support when, in the fulfillment of their duties, they educate, above all educate, and in turn are demanding of their subordinates and are not afraid of seeking out problems, because generally nobody wants to enter into that terrain; not afraid of seeking out problems in terms of confronting what is badly done, because at this moment, seeking out problems is one of the principal tasks in terms of overcoming all those deficiencies that we have mentioned.

Also, it is very clear to all of us that we are no longer in those initial years after the triumph of the Revolution in 1959 – in those first few months – when some of those holding government posts, particularly in that first government appointed by Urrutia, with the exception of Defense and Agriculture, because he was told, "leave them alone," thinking about agrarian reform and armaments taken or that we were going to take. I am talking about January 2; after Fidel spoke in Céspedes Park, he left for the enemy’s principal command post to talk with those soldiers so that they would join [the Rebel Army] – because there was a coup d’état in Havana – and we didn’t even know to handle the tanks, the artillery and other means that they had there. He let Urrutia and other compañeros who were leaders of the 26th of July Movement in that era at the University of Santiago de Cuba, appoint the government.

I was the bearer of that message to Urrutia, at dawn on January 2, because the event in the Plaza went on until after midnight, and I communicated to him, "Don’t touch, you are recommended not to touch the Ministry of Agriculture or the Ministry of Defense." That was the only thing that I said to him. And when I informed him on behalf of Fidel to appoint Colonel Rego Rubido, the man who had just surrendered to Fidel at Escandel Plateau on January 1, Urrutia went off and started pacing about the garage of the Vista Alegre house where I went to see him, a whole crowd surrounding the patio of the house saluting him, and the argument lasted for a while: "I can’t appoint a little soldier chief of the Rebel Army!" I said to him, "Look, President, Fidel knows what he’s doing. There’s coup d’état in Havana, he’s going to Bayamo to talk with Batista’s soldiers…" And there were those who joined along the way and in the course of the week that it took them to reach Havana, they arrived here in Columbia (Batista’s command headquarters) with little beards that they had let grow. Guillermo García came there with Fidel and others of those present here: Colomé Ibarra, Ramiro Valdés came with Che, Polito came with Fidel. I don’t know what Alvaro did, he was 15 years old. Did you stay there or come too? (He says that he remained in Santiago) You stayed in Santiago: you did well, because you’re a native of Santiago.

So there was no way, 5,000 enemy soldiers in the city and I barely had two or three body guards and nothing else; we created some columns, because we trained a good force for Fidel; Lussón went, he was chief of a more powerful column, of which Colomé formed part; Belarmino Castilla Mas was going there in another column, we put Efigenio into some old airplanes that we took from Batista, so that he could arrive and take the police headquarters in Havana. Efigenio Ameijeiras was chief of Column 6, facing Guantánamo, and I had made him chief of three columns surrounding the city, which we thought to take on January 2, having confirmed the treason of General Cantillo, and he had to begin to see what he was going to do. I went into the office of [Colonel Alberto del Río] Chaviano himself, the same office in which he interrogated me at the time of the Moncada Assault, I entered through the same door.

When I was a prisoner, fortunately many days after the end of the repression and slaughter of the compañeros who assaulted the Moncada, they didn’t strike me, they didn’t beat me up, I did not go through that experience. Within the circumstances I tried to conduct myself in as dignified a way as possible, without insolence, and they passed me through lines of soldiers who were insulting me and they asked the captain and the officers taking me, "Give him to me, Captain, to do justice."

Five years, five months and five days later, on January 1, we entered Santiago de Cuba and I went to the Moncada Garrison to talk to all those people, and now I entered the same place to cheers, and I had just one bodyguard, and I talked to them. The mission was to collect all the officers and take them to El Escandel, alongside Caney, so that they could talk with Fidel. I couldn’t get out of there, a crowd of soldiers and sergeants took charge of me and took me to their barrio, there beside the Moncada Garrison, and there I was, I couldn’t get out of there, they gave me coffee, etc, etc (They say something to him), eh? Gerolán? I’m talking to the troop and they begin: "Gerolán, Gerolán," and I asked Batista’s officers, who is this Gerolán? They didn’t take any notice; "Gerolán!" and me speaking at full pitch, from a balcony and, whatever, nobody told me who Gerolán was, and they wouldn’t let me speak. The man who came with me didn’t know either; until an officer, I think he was an accountant, something in logistics, a lieutenant or deputy-lieutenant, approached me and said, "Listen, Comandante, Gerolán is the little extra wage that they give them when they are on campaign," and I said, "And so, haven’t they paid them it?" They replied, "No, because here they didn’t even report the dead so that the chiefs could steal their money." So, I said, "Tomorrow, when the fortress is in our hands, Gerolán for all of you." Aaahhh! The world stopped in its tracks. I said, "What kind of a troop have we got in front of us here! (Laughter) We asked a bank for a loan and we paid them the Gerolán, those poor soldiers didn’t have… That’s what Guillermo wanted to remember.

Well, and what was the Gerolán? It was a bad syrup from there, which I think had special properties, what charlatans take.

So, I was also saying that it’s very clear to all of us that we are not in those initial days after the triumph.

Ah, well, I didn’t finish the story about Urrutia, right? The witness is Melba Hernández – who is not here today – whom I hadn’t seen since Mexico; later she was able to come and she was in the Third Front with Almeida (Bosque) and as those Vista Alegre houses have a garage from which a little stairway leads to the kitchen, she was waiting in the kitchen until that row was over, and I signaled to her to wait, and Urrutia was pacing up and down with his hands behind his back, and time is passing, until something of the gallego (native of Galicia) came out of me and I said a good few expressions to him that I cannot repeat here. I said, "Listen, I have been fighting against Batista for seven years, I’ve been in everything, in combats, imprisoned, in exile etc, you think that it doesn’t bother me that a little soldier’s going to lead the army? He is not going to command anybody; he’s going to consult with me on everything, because I’m going to have him there in the office, in the office of the regimental chief itself." And that’s how it was, the first order I gave him was, "We are going to pull out all those soldiers that there are here." And as the bridges were blown up and I didn’t want them to bump into Fidel there, although they were not armed, I used three frigates from Batista’s navy that were there, and set about sending them in groups of 500 to the center and west of the country, which was where they lived.

I said a quite a number of things to him. When I talked hard to him, "Fidel knows what he’s doing and I obey Fidel!" then he continued pacing about, and said, "All right, Comandante, we’re going to find a solution, I think that’s reasonable, don’t you think?" I said, "Yes, that’s what I think." "Well, all right." After that I gave Melba a kiss and went to fulfill my duty.

I was in Santiago, Fidel left me as chief of the eastern provinces, at that moment. I didn’t go to the swearing in, I was in the University of Santiago, and I didn’t go to that.

You have seen how we develop our meetings, right?

When I left, old Urrutia called me and said, "Comandante, I need you to appoint me an aide de camp, a commander aide de camp." I said, "I will send you one, President." I thought, who am I going to put there, gentlemen? – I had already divined the trouble we were going to have with this man; February, March, not four or five months had passed… you know the history – and I ran into Machado Ventura (Laughter), he was already going about with a Thompson, a Comandante, and I said to him, "Hey, Machado" – I didn’t want to recount this incident to him, I only told Fidel and nobody else, when I came to Havana in the February – "Hey, Machado, the president has asked for this and this, I think that you are the most suitable." "Noooo! What I’ve got to do is get myself a job as a doctor," Machado replied. I said, "Forget about that job, the trouble’s starting now." And he finally accepted.

Urrutia came to Havana and I stayed on in Oriente. By the time I came to Havana, in February, the problems were already beginning with Urrutia, which were not made public, the steps that Urrutia was taking, Urrutia’s total irrationality, even as a person. The first thing that he did was to keep Batista’s salary and the diplomatic expenses and, of course, he bought himself a little mansion just like Grau, it must be around here somewhere, although he went.

So, I said, "Well, let me call my friend Machado to see what’s going on," and when I called the Palace and asked for Machado, they said, "No, Machado left here some time back." I said, "Where’s Machado got to?" and I found him working as a doctor in La Habana municipality, that was it, right? (Machado affirms it). In other words, the man who I described as the first deserter from the modern Revolutionary Armed Forces. (Laughter) Just as well that he cleared that affront with his work afterward.

After laughing a bit at the cost of Machado, my friend, let’s continue.

It is also clear to all of us that we are not in the those initial years after the triumph in 1959, when certain people occupying government posts – and that’s where the anecdote about that government arose from – resigned in order to demonstrate their opposition to the first radical measures adopted by the Revolution, above all to the Agrarian Reform (Act), the first, on May 17, 1959, and at that time, that conduct was branded as counterrevolutionary. In other words, they resigned to demonstrate their opposition to radical measures, and we qualified that, "That is counterrevolutionary," but accepted their resignation.

Today, the real and honest revolutionary is the opposite; when a cadre at any level feels tired, or incapable of fully exercising his or her responsibility, or of fulfilling the new orientations that we are giving, the correct thing in that case is to present their resignation, with dignity and without any fear, which is always preferable to being dismissed.

Relevant disciplinary measures will be adopted if any infringements of the established rules are detected

In relation to this matter, I must make reference to three compañeros who occupied important positions in the leadership of the Party and the government and whom, given the faults that they committed, were asked by the Political Bureau to resign from their positions as members of that leading body, the Central Committee and deputies to the National Assembly of People’s Power. I am referring to Jorge Luis Sierra Cruz, Yadira García Vera and Pedro Sáez Montejo. The first two were also released from their responsibilities as minister of transport and of basic industry, respectively. Sierra assumed attributions to which he was not entitled, which led him to make serious errors of leadership, which we are now paying for. Yadira García’s extremely poor performance at the head of a ministry as important as basic industry, which includes oil, mining etc, particularly reflected in weak control over resources allocated to investments, propitiating the waste of these, as confirmed during the expansion of the Pedro Soto Alba nickel enterprise in Moa, in the province of Holguín. Both compañeros were severely criticized at joint meetings of the Political Bureau and the Executive Committee of the Council of Ministers.

For his part, Pedro Sáez Montejo, evidencing superficiality incompatible with his position as first secretary of the Communist Party in City of Havana, infringed Party working standards, which was discussed with him by a Political Bureau commission presided over by myself and made up by compañeros Machado Ventura and Esteban Lazo.

It is fair to confirm that the three acknowledged the errors pointed out to each one of them and adopted a correct attitude, a reason why the Political Bureau Commission decided to respect their condition as members of the Communist Party. Likewise, we deemed it appropriate to assign them to tasks related to their respective specialties, some, at the base level, and others, like Sierra, who is a mechanical engineer, in a little workshop of a general repair base for war tanks, a workshop of 11 or 14 compañeros who make parts, and he is heading them.

Personally, the three of them will continue to be my friends but my sole commitment is to the people, very particularly to those who have lost their lives in these 58 years of continuous struggle since the 1952 coup d’état. Having proceeded in this way with three high level leaders, let it be known that this will be the line to be followed by the Party and the Government with every cadre. We will demand more from them, but at the same time we will warn them and adopt any relevant disciplinary measure if any infringements of the established rules are detected.

As was established by the Law to Modify the Country’s Political and Administrative Division, in January of next year the new provinces of Artemisa and Mayabeque will be constituted. Their respective governments will begin to operate under new organizational and structural concepts, far more rational than the ones currently existing in Habana province.

All the functions, structures and staffing have been defined. We are still working of the definitions of their attributions as well as their relations with the Central State Administration, national enterprises and the political and mass organizations. We will follow very closely this experience so that it can be gradually implemented within all other local government bodies throughout the country in the course of the next five years. We defend the usefulness of continuing to gradually increase the authority of provincial and municipal governments by entrusting them with greater faculties for executing local budgets, to which part of the taxes generated in economic activity will be directed with the aim of contributing to their development.

A global gendarme

Relations with the peoples and governments of almost all nations are advancing in the midst of the agitated international situation.

The world has received with amazement the scandalous revelations of hundreds of thousands of U.S. government classified documents, some of them very recent, on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and then, on the most varied issues of its relations with dozens of states.

Although everybody is wondering what is really going on and how this could be related to the twists and turns of the politics of the United States, what has been disclosed to date demonstrates that that country, while dissimulating an amiable rhetoric, is essentially following the politics of always and acting as a global gendarme.

In relations with the United States, one cannot appreciate the slightest will to rectify its policy toward Cuba, not even to eliminate its most irrational aspects. It is evident that a powerful and reactionary minority that serves to sustain the anti-Cuban mafia continues to have a major influence on these issues.

The United States has not only disparaged the overwhelming demand of 187 countries to end the economic, commercial and financial blockade of our country, but in 2010, it reinforced its implementation and once again included Cuba on its spurious lists, through which it abrogates the right to qualify and denigrate other sovereign states in order to justify punitive actions or even acts of aggression.

The policy of the United States on Cuba does not have an ounce of credibility. It is left with no other remedy than to resort to lies in order to reiterate certain allegations, some of which stand out, given their scandalous falsity, such as the one asserting that Cuba is a country which sponsors international terrorism, tolerates the domestic traffic of children and women for sexual exploitation, flagrantly violates human rights and is responsible for significantly restricting religious freedoms.

The U.S. government is trying to hide its own sins and attempting to evade its responsibilities by allowing notorious international terrorists wanted by the legal systems of several countries to continue residing with impunity in that country while maintaining our five brothers unjustly imprisoned for fighting against terrorism.

In its slanderous campaigns concerning the situation of human rights in Cuba, the United States has found the connivance of European countries, characterized by their double standards and subjugated to U.S. imperialism, known for their complicity with the CIA secret flights, the creation of torture and detention centers, for placing the burden of the economic crisis on the lowest income workers and students, their violent repression demonstrators and implementation of discriminatory policies toward immigrants and minorities.

We will continue fighting, together with all Latin American nations, for an emancipating integration and, in the framework of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America, we will continue working to consolidate the solidarity and unity that will make us steadily stronger.

Thus, we will continue to support the sister nation of Haiti, where our health personnel, together with Latin American and Haitian doctors who graduated in Cuba, are selflessly confronting, in a humanitarian way, the cholera epidemic, the destruction caused by the earthquake and the sequels of hundreds of years of the exploitation and plunder of that noble people, who need from the international community resources for reconstruction and, especially, for sustainable development.

This is also a propitious occasion to convey, from this parliamentary meeting and on behalf of all Cubans, a message of support and solidarity to the sister people of Venezuela, who are suffering from the ravages of torrential rainfall with a large number of human and material losses. At a very early stage, the tens of thousands of Cuban cooperation workers who are providing services in that country were instructed to place themselves at the disposal of the Venezuelans and of President Hugo Chavez, for whatever might be necessary.

Next April marks the 50th anniversary of the proclamation of the socialist nature of our Revolution. On the sands of Playa Girón our forces fought for the first time to defend socialism and within barely 72 hours, led by the Comandante en Jefe in person, defeated the mercenary invasion sponsored by the U.S. government.

On the occasion of such a significant event, on April 16 we are organizing a military parade with the participation of troops and combat equipment, to be attended by delegates to the 6th Congress of the Communist Party who, that same afternoon, will come together to begin their work, which we hope to conclude on April 19, the day of the Bay of Pigs victory. We will begin by celebrating the proclamation of the socialist nature, Fidel’s speech at the funeral of the victims of the bombardment, which occurred the day before the Bay of Pigs attack, and we will conclude on the day of the victory. The close of the review will be led by tens of thousands of young people, representing the new generations, which are the guarantee of the continuity of the Revolution.

Photo by Hoyasmeg, cc by 2.0

Poem: La Casa Roja (The Red House)

Mon, 03 Jan 2011 13:05:00 +0000

Dedicated to the Los Angeles Workers’ Center

seven weeks

my father will receive a seven weeks
severance package for seven years of leg
problems, sleep and anxiety complications
spinal disc compression, a slowly growing
addiction to easily prescribed narcotics, the
fear of the factory closing down at the end
of the year, sending away all jobs to mexico
now fully realized – dreams of a union now
a distant memory, a haunting regret

tuition costs are set to increase overseas in
england and thousands of students march
some setting fires, occupying buildings, sit-ins
damaging society’s private fruit: the ancient
system of value and oppression: the justification
for police repression: the validation of
incarceration, expulsion, reprisal, societal
excommunication and exile for damaging

property

and in the states, tuition costs increase
8 to 15% for universities in california
dozens and hundreds protest but the vast
majority are quiet, their silence expanding
like an inhaling chest, not because of apathy
rather because of a systematic, contradictory
disease that has been plaguing us for
generations, an anti-education onslaught that
has left most students dulled with pain
indebted to the loans of financial institutions
and its finance capital: a modern educational
indentured servitude, dejected and exhausted
yet with fists clenched tight, knuckles white
and anger! – and anger

that goes nowhere

and my brothers that contemplate a higher
education are painted a better, more
affordable picture of joining the military
that mobile factory for a stretching empire
where its components are its consumables

as the ghosts from the streets of
los angeles and oakland crowd in front
of the workers’ center: hungarian immigrants
oscar grant, manuel jaminez, ruben salazar,
james davis, all circling a cigarette among
themselves, their eyes fixated on the red
house, peeking in through the windows
waiting, hoping and demanding that we
continue this torturous process of fighting, of
struggling, breathing without blinking, crying
without losing composure, compromising
without conceding

as protests vacillate from mass riots to
candle-lit vigils, as the tide of anger grows
then recedes then again grows, hardening and
maturing into revolutionary resolve, as the
individual wanes and dissolves into something
abstract, enhanced and

collective

it is a myth, a lie, when they say that our
bodies are filled with blood

we are made up of fire in its liquefied state
a red fire that has been keeping us alive from
the beginning, circulating throughout our
bodies; and when there’s injustice, our
reaction of painful squirming is only the fire
breaking the skin trying to get out

our bodies know nothing else other than the
red burns of struggle, of bubbling, boiling hot
revolution

Engels on Capital and Surplus Value

Mon, 03 Jan 2011 12:46:00 +0000

In chapters seven and eight of part two of Anti-Dühring ("Capital and Surplus Value"), Engels continues his role as Marx's bulldog. Again, Herr Dühring has gone too far in his criticisms of Marx and must be put in his place by sounder judgment and sharper intellect. Dühring has claimed Marx says that "capital is born of money" and the birth pangs took place at the "opening of the sixteenth century." Dühring calls Marx's ideas a mixture of history and logic which have become "bastards of historical and logical fantasy."

This upsets Engels to no end who himself responds that Dühring has "a crude and inept manner of expressing himself." Marx's real statement on this subject is found in Das Kapital vol. 1, part 2, chapter 4 "The General Formula For Capital" where he writes: "As a matter of history, capital, as opposed to landed property invariably takes the form at first of money; it appears as moneyed wealth, as the capital of the merchant and of the usurer. But we have no need to refer to the origin of capital in order to discover that the first form of the appearance of capital is money. We can see it daily under our very eyes. All new capital to commence with, comes on the stage, that is, on the market, whether as commodities, labour, or money, even in our days, in the shape of money that by a definite process has to be transformed into capital."

But how does this transformation take place. Capital is used to invest to make more money and more capital. So how do I turn money into capital? Engels says when I take my own commodities to market I sell them to get money to buy things I need to live on. This is simple exchange. The capitalist goes to market to buy things he does not to live on; he buys them in order to sell them for what he paid plus a profit – and increment in money. "Marx calls this increment SURPLUS VALUE."

But where does it come from? Capitalism results in an increase in the values in circulation so it can't come from cheating (that would effect the distribution not the amount of values) nor from buying under or selling above the values of the commodities because the sum of values still remains the same. Yet capitalists do accumulate riches by selling dearer than they have bought."This problem," Engels says,"must be solved, and it must be solved in a PURELY ECONOMIC way, excluding all cheating and the intervention of any force – the problem being: how is it possible constantly to sell dearer than one has bought, even on the hypothesis that equal values are always exchanged for equal values?"

The most important contribution of Marx to economic thought was the solution to this problem; Engels calls it "epoch-making." Here is the solution as presented by Engels. The increment doesn't take place in the money itself, nor in the price of the commodity sold (at this stage we are dealing with the exchange of equivalents: price = value, later we see how they can differ). But something does change in the bought commodity – not its exchange VALUE but its USE-VALUE. The increment takes place during the commodity's consumption; and not just any commodity, but a very specific one.

Here is what Marx says about this from Das Kapital vol. 1, chapter VI "The Buying and Selling of Labour Power": "In order to be able to extract value from the consumption of a commodity, our friend, Moneybags, must be so lucky as to find, within the sphere of circulation, in the market, a commodity, whose use-value, whose actual consumption, therefore, is itself an embodiment of labour, and, consequently, a creation of value. The possessor of money does find on the market such a special commodity in capacity for labour or labour-power."

But how is the value of labour-power determined? Again Marx: "The value of labour-power is determined, as in the case of every other commodity, by the labour-time necessary for the production, and consequently also the reproduction, of this special article. So far as it has value, it represents no more than a definite quantity of the average labour of society incorporated in it. Labour-power exists only as a capacity, or power of the living individual. Its production consequently pre-supposes his existence. Given the individual, the production of labour-power consists in his reproduction of himself or his maintenance. For his maintenance he requires a given quantity of the means of subsistence. Therefore the labour-time requisite for the production of labour-power reduces itself to that necessary for the production of those means of subsistence; in other words, the value of labour-power is the value of the means of subsistence necessary for the maintenance of the labourer."

This also includes the cost of raising a family of little baby laborers to take his place in the next generation. Suppose a worker could produce in six hours the value of goodies he needs to live on and Moneybags gives the worker the full value of his labor power. The goodies cost $60 and that is what the capitalist gives the worker, paying him $10 an hour. The worker has also made $60 worth of goodies for the capitalist. An even exchange – no increment for the capitalist.

What to do? The capitalist will hire the worker for $5 an hour for 12 hours. This is what free labor and the labor market are all about. After 12 hours the worker gets his agreed upon wage, buys his $60 of goodies and goes home. The capitalist however has been left with $60 from the first 6 hours AND $60 from the last six hours of the worker's toil. He sells the first $60 worth of goodies and gets his money back – and sells the surplus $60 of goodies and makes a profit; a profit he did not work for but that he expropriates from the surplus value created by the worker. And this, Engels says, is how the "trick has been performed. Surplus-value has been produced; money has been converted into capital." Marx has thus demonstrated how surplus-plus value is created and has revealed "the core around which the whole existing social order has crystallized."

Now, under capitalism there is a "prerequisite" without which the capitalist can not get his hands on surplus-value and that is he must go to market and hire a FREE LABOURER. That is, a worker who can sell his labour power as a commodity and it is the only commodity he can sell. This is the condition working people have found themselves in since the end of the fifteenth century and the disintegration of the feudal order. Marx says "It is clearly the result of a past historical development." Marx and Engels appeared after this transitional period had been underway for about 400 years and we are two centuries further on than they. The present great world wide capitalist depression may or maynot be the "final conflict" which will mark the disintegration of capitalism and the arrival of the socialist order but as Marxists we must always be open to that possibility and continue to hold down the fort.

What is the upshot of all of Dühring's criticism of Marx and his proposed explanation of how capitalism works? Well, we need not go over all of Dühring's arguments and bombast against Marx. Suffice it to say that Engels concludes that Dühring actually steals his ideas from Marx, puts them forth in his own words and style and attacks Marx to cover up his theft; as Engels puts it Dühring "commits a clumsy plagiarism of Marx."

Just what, then, is the difference in Dühring's conception of capital and Marx's? For Marx every class-dominated mode of production sweats surplus labour out of the productive class – be they slaves, serfs, or modern workers (wage slaves). But it is only when, under a regime based on commodity production for a market, when the means of production employ surplus labour in the form of surplus value, that we have capitalism. This is a specific historical stage in the evolution of production. Dühring says any system that uses "surplus labour in any form" produces capital. He thus blurs the distinctions between different modes of production and makes capital an eternal law of nature with regard to economic activity.

What is more, for Dühring surplus value becomes simply the earnings of capital and is equivalent to profit. Whereas Marx makes it very clear in volume one of Das Kapital that surplus value should NOT be confused with profit. Dühring appears to only credit the capitalist in his role as a manufacturer as generating profit (surplus value.) Since Dühring claims to be explaining what Marx believes, Engels points out that Dühring should have paid more attention to what Marx ACTUALLY wrote. The profit made by the MERCHANT, Marx clearly says, is also a part of surplus value and the merchant can make a profit only because the industrial or manufacturing capitalist sells his product to him BELOW its full value "and thus relinquishes to him a part of the booty."

There are other subforms of surplus value besides manufacture's and merchant's profit, e.g., interest and ground-rent. But the explanations of these subdivisions will have to await volumes two and three of capital: only the outlines are being laid down in volume one. The complete explanation awaits "a scientific analysis of competition" and we can't make that analysis until the real inner nature, the essence, of capital is revealed in volume one. Engels gives as an analogy the understanding we have of the seeming motions of the planets which is based on knowledge of their real motions "which are not directly perceptible to the senses." [Empiricists take note!] Nevertheless, Marx gives us enough information in volume one to at least grasp in broad outline the subforms of surplus value to be dealt with in the later volumes.

It is because he doesn't know how competition works and also doesn't understand what Marx has said about it in volume one of Das Kapital, that Herr Dühring can't figure out how capitalists get back all that they have put out plus the surplus product at prices way above "the natural outlays of production." Where does this profit come from? He can't answer this question so he flees from the field of economics to that of politics and claims that the capitalist imposes a surcharge on his products by means of force. But Engels says FORCE can seize wealth but cannot produce it. Not only that, but Dühring leaves unexplained the ORIGIN of force itself. Dühringian economics gets us nowhere.

But all is not lost for Herr Dühring. His research finally leads him to some correct answers, although his distinctive way of expressing himself is not as clear as we might wish. Engels provides two quotes from Dühring that are on the right track. "IN EVERY CASE THE NET PROCEEDS OBTAINED BY THE UTILIZATION OF LABOUR-POWER CONSTITUTE THE INCOME OF THE MASTER...." And: "The characteristic feature of earnings of capital is that they are AN APPROPRIATION OF THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF THE PROCEEDS OF LABOUR-POWER."

What, Engels asks, is the INCOME OF THE MASTER but the surplus product the worker makes after the deduction for wages? What is THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF THE PROCEEDS OF LABOUR-POWER but that part which comes after the worker has created the value of his own maintenance – i.e., surplus value? So where did Herr Dühring finally get a clue to the correct explanation of the relation between capital and surplus value? He got it, Engels says by "in his own style, DIRECTLY COPYING from CAPITAL"[i.e., volume one of Das Kapital]. So much for Herr Dühring's alternative theory of economics.

Photo by AFL-CIO, courtesy Flickr, cc by 2.0

Global Crisis, Occupation and Iraq

Fri, 31 Dec 2010 10:32:00 +0000

Editor's note: The following is a slightly edited and excerpted version of the original.

Contribution of the Iraqi Communist Party
12th International Meeting of Communist and Workers Parties
Johannesburg, South Africa
December 2010, Political Bureau – Central Committee of Iraqi Communist Party

We take this opportunity to express, from this international forum, our gratitude for the international solidarity extended to our Iraqi people, democratic forces and Communist Party in the ongoing struggle, under extremely difficult and complex conditions, to end the occupation, restore full national sovereignty and independence and build a unified democratic and federal Iraq.

The destructive consequences of the ongoing global financial crisis of capitalist economies give the main theme of this International Meeting renewed dimensions with greater relevance. This situation makes it more essential for our movement, with its communist and workers’ parties, in addition to the broad range of social forces and strata on the international level, that have been harmed by the hegemony of globalized capitalism with its neo-liberal model, to develop effective forms of organization and action for their struggle on the international level against this globalized capitalist onslaught.

As already pointed out in the 11th International Meeting, held in New Delhi late last year, there is a consensus that the current crisis is an expression of the internal contradictions of globalized capitalism. One of its main features is the dominance of the financial character (financialization) of capitalist economy, the free movement of capital across borders and the removal of all national regulations controlling it. This has led to an enormous expansion of speculative activities, at the expense of productive activities, and the diminished relative weight of real economy and reduced national sovereignty. All this has been associated with high levels of unemployment, sharp polarization in wealth and income distribution, and the fragmentation of the social fabric of society. This fragmentation will intensify with the failure of economies of capitalist countries to sustain their social welfare system, coupled with the vicious attack on this system, and transferring the burden of the crisis onto the tax-payers who have been forced to pay hundreds of billions of dollars to save bankrupt financial institutions. The latest such example is Ireland, with more economies in Europe threatened with a similar fate.

It is important to note that on the level of consciousness and ideas, the crisis has provided a fertile ground for the revival of extreme reactionary ideas (racism, chauvinism, extreme religious ideologies). All this has led to intensified contradictions and conflicts, with dominant capitalist forces resorting to blatant violence and local wars to suppress the forces opposed to them.

The contradictions of globalized capitalism have driven a broad and expanding spectrum of social forces to oppose it. Not only the working class and middle strata are involved, but also some capitalist strata are drawn into this opposition. The “cultural” dimension has also acquired a growing importance, as many social and political forces get involved in the struggle driven by the need to defend their ethnic or religious identity.

This complex scene opens up a big potential for developing protest movements that acquire an anti-capitalist content. But there are also ideological and political challenges that face the efforts to achieve the necessary alliances and unite the diverse demands in a coherent current that is opposed to imperialism and, at the same time, advocates a progressive political, economic and social project.

One of the biggest among these challenges and difficulties is to combine between the fight for national liberation, independence and getting rid of the hegemony of globalized capitalism and the struggle for democracy; both social and political. Disregarding any of these two closely interconnected aspects of struggle will lead to a serious imbalance and contradictory alignments. The struggle against imperialism must therefore be closely combined with the fight for democracy and peace.

It is also important to note the diverse nature of the forces and strata whose interests clash with those of globalized monopoly capitalism and its political power, and the relative weakness of social solidarity as a result of the changes brought about by modern technologies of production, make it necessary to create a variety of flexible forms of alliances and a variety of causes for which joint struggles are waged.

One other issue which also need to be addressed in analysis is the relationship between the class struggle and other struggles. The progressive dimension of these other struggles should be determined by their social content.

It is not be possible here go into more detail about these important issues. But it is important to stress that the global financial crisis has marked the failure of the extreme neo-liberal model of capitalism which had been dominant over more than two decades. This has opened up new prospects with promising potential for the resurgence and expansion of the struggles waged by forces that are not only opposed to globalism but to capitalism itself.

The most important conclusion to be drawn from the current global crisis is that the world will never be the same as it was before it blew up. A new balance of forces is expected to emerge despite all the obstacles and resistance put up by globalized capitalism, thus opening up new opportunities and providing possibilities for change and building a better world.

The current international climate has put forward, more than ever before, the need to develop Left alternatives and united action of progressive forces against war, neo-liberalism and imperialism, as well as combating far right and reactionary tendencies on the international level, and promoting socialist ideas and goals. This is closely interconnected with strengthening international solidarity against the warmongering policies of imperialism and the onslaught of capitalist globalization, and providing genuine support for ongoing struggles all over the world for peace, freedom, democracy and social progress.

The recent Meeting of Arab Left, held in Beirut (22-23 October 2010), stressed the need for the Left forces in the region to regain their role and develop a realistic program of national-social liberation, based on struggle for democratic change, employing legitimate means of struggle and taking into consideration the specifics of each country. Tackling the deep crises that are caused by the policies of Arab regimes and their subservience to global neo-liberal capitalism, especially poverty and unemployment, requires developing concrete proposals for a program of economic revival and social development, including comprehensive development as an alternative to the policies of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Achieving these objectives requires activating the role of the Left in the social movement and developing a critical political vision towards the existing regimes. The principal aim of a distinguished program for change to be adopted by the Left should be the setting up of a national democratic regime, with a socialist perspective, that constitutes an alternative to subservient regimes. In this context, the forces of the Left need to mobilize the workers, peasants and progressive intellectuals into a mass movement to achieve real democratic change. Major tasks for such a movement include the fight for both, closely interconnected, aspects of democracy: political and social. Democracy, and building a state of law and institutions, based on the principles of citizenship, is a firm guarantee against sectarian divisions. In this respect, it is of utmost importance for the Left to uphold and defend human rights and fundamental democratic and trade union rights, especially women’s rights, as part and parcel of the big national issues.

In addition to the destructive consequences of the deepening systemic crisis of globalized capitalism, there are also grave dangers to world peace. Over the past two decades, the unipolar world order led by the US that has resulted in grave violations of international legitimacy and resorting to war and aggression (as was the case in the invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003). As part of its attempts to impose its hegemony on the world, it has not hesitated to ignite the flames of “local” wars. Here again, the fight for peace and against the warmongering policies of imperialism is closely interconnected with the struggle for political democracy and social progress.

In this context, I would like to say a few words about the situation in Iraq.

Seven and a half years after the US war on Iraq, the collapse of the dictatorial regime, and occupation, the struggle to end the foreign military presence continues to be closely interconnected with the struggle to rebuild the new Iraqi state and determine both its content and character.

Under these complex and difficult conditions, a ferocious battle is continuing, not only over power and wealth, but also over formulating the political, economic, social and cultural orientation, that will determine the features of the new Iraqi state that will emerge. It can be said that national, democratic and social tasks combine and interact. Therefore, along with the task of ending the occupation and its legacy, restoring full national sovereignty and independence, we have the tasks of eliminating the legacy of decades of fascist-type dictatorship, restructuring Iraqi economy and rebuilding the state on a democratic federal basis. International and regional factors interfere, making the struggle even more complex and intensified. Our party has put forward its own vision, encapsulated in the Patriotic Democratic Project, that aims at building a modern democratic state; a state based on law and institutions and the principles of citizenship, ensuring democracy and social justice, as opposed to sectarian projects and a return to dictatorship, whether nationalist or religious.

The political vacuum that followed the Iraqi elections in March 2010, and continued for 8 months, helped anti-people forces to escalate criminal terrorist acts. Such heinous acts took place on 10th May 2010 in Baghdad, Hilla and Basra with at least 110 people killed in a series of bombings and armed attacks. In the city of Hilla, south of the capital, 40 workers were killed and 250 others were wounded when three car bombs exploded outside a textile factory, targeting workers as they were leaving the factory. These atrocities and their perpetrators must be strongly and unequivocally condemned by fraternal communist and workers parties, as well as all progressive and peace-loving forces.

Those barbaric attacks that targeted Iraqi workers exposed once again the true anti-people nature of the so-called "resistance" that claims to be fighting the occupation. It is made up of the most reactionary Islamists, remnants of Saddam's Baathist fascist-type regime and gangs of organized crime. Among their principal objectives is stirring up sectarian sedition, destroying national unity, and sabotaging the country's infrastructure. They have rendered, and continue to render, a free service to the American occupation by providing pretexts for its continuation and impeding the speedy eviction of foreign forces, achieving their complete withdrawal and eliminating the consequences of occupation.

Our Party, the leading force of the Left in Iraq, is currently engaged in relentless efforts to achieve unity in action of the democratic forces, and to transform the Democratic Current into an effective principal force in the ongoing intensified struggle over the future of Iraq. This vision requires greater efforts to involve the trade union movement and democratic organizations, especially those of women, youth, students and other civil society organizations, in mass struggles to defend human and democratic rights of workers and people. During recent weeks, conferences of democratic forces have been held in several provinces, as part of a process that will be culminated in a national conference to be held in Baghdad.

Iraqi Communists are determined to strengthen their links to the broadest popular masses, including workers, peasants, students and intellectuals, and all popular strata that aspire for freedom and democracy; taking up their demands, and defending their role in deciding our country’s destiny.

In the difficult struggle that lies ahead, we look forward to active and concrete solidarity from fraternal parties. This will acquire greater significance in the coming months, as Iraq prepares to end the US military presence by the end of 2011, continue the struggle to eliminate the legacy of occupation, restore its national sovereignty and independence, defeat sectarianism and anti-people forces, and build a unified democratic and federal Iraq.

Our Party has unlimited confidence in the Iraqi people and their ability to continue their struggle, despite all difficulties and obstacles, to defeat terrorism and sectarianism, eliminate the legacy of dictatorship and American occupation, restore full national sovereignty, lay the foundations for a state based on institutions, justice and law, and build a unified federal democratic Iraq.

Photo by FibonaccieBlue, courtesy Flickr, cc by 2.0

Individual and Society: The Dialectical Conception of History

Wed, 22 Dec 2010 10:34:00 +0000

Human beings and the process of production

The premise of all human society is the existence of living human individuals. The first fact to be established, therefore, is the physical constitution of individuals and their consequent relation to the rest of Nature. All historiography must begin from these natural bases and this modification in the course of history by human activity.

According to Marx in his critique of political economy, the conception of history rests on the exposition of the real process of production. It starts from the simple material production of life and the form of intercourse, created by this mode of production, i. e., at civil society in its various stages as the basis of all history. Life involves before anything else – eating and drinking, a habitation, clothing and many other things. So, the first historical act is the production of material life itself.

Work is humanity’s basic form of self realization. We cannot live without work. The way in which human's produce their means of subsistence depends in the first place on the nature of existing means which they have to reproduce. It is a definite form of activity of these individuals, a definite way of expressing their life, a definite mode of life.

According to that perspective, history may be divided roughly into several periods, for example, ancient civilization, feudalism and capitalism. Each of these periods is characterized by a predominant mode of production and based upon it a class structure consisting of a ruling and oppressed class. The struggle between these classes, determines the social action and relation among the human beings. In particular, the ruling class which owes its position to the ownership and control of means of productions, controls also the whole moral and intellectual life of the people.

As the materialist dialectic affirms, people enter into definite relations that are independent of their will. In other words, we can follow the movement of history by analyzing the structure of societies, the forces of production, and the relations of production, and not by basing our interpretation on people’s ways of thinking about themselves. Secondly, in every society there can be distinguished the economic base or infra-structured as it has come to be called, and the superstructure within which figures the legal and political institutions as well as ways of thinking, ideologies and philosophies. Thirdly, the mechanism of the historical movement is the contradiction, at certain movements in evolution, between the forces and relations of production. The forces of production seem to be essentially a given society’s capacity to produce, a capacity which is a function of scientific knowledge, technological equipment and the organization of collective behavior or labor.

Society and social classes

The relations of production which are not too precisely defined seem to be essentially distinguished by relations of property. However, relations of production need not be identified with relations of property; or at any rate relations of production may include in addition to property relations, distribution of national income which is itself more or less strictly determined by property relations.

Now it is easy to introduction the class struggle. A social class in Marx’s terms is any aggregate of persons who perform the same function in the organization of production. For instance, free person and slave, oppressor and oppressed. These classes are distinguished from each other by the difference of their perspective positions in the economy. A social class is constituted by the function, which its members perform in the process of production.

The position which the individual occupies in the social organization of production, indicates the class to which he or she belongs. The fundamental determinant of class is the way in which the individual cooperates with others in the satisfaction of his basic needs of food, clothing and shelter. Other index such as income, consumption, occupation are so many clues of his prestige symbols. Hence, according to Marx, the income or occupation of an individual is not an indication of his class-position i.e., of his or her role in the production process. The separate individual forms a class only in no so far as others have to carry on a common battle against another class; otherwise they are on hostile terms with each other as competitors. On the other hand, the class in its turn achieves an independent existence.

The development process of a social class depends upon the development of common conditions and upon the realization of common interests. Only when the members of a potential class enter into an association for the organized pursuit of their common aims, does a class in Marx’s sense exist. Economic conditions had first transformed the mass of the people of the country into workers. The determination of capital has created for this mass a common situation and common interests. This makes it already a class as against capital, but hot yet for itself. In this struggle this mass becomes united and constitutes itself as a class for itself. The interests it defends become class interests.

So, in that vision of history, revolutions are not political accidents, but the expression of historical necessity. Revolutions perform necessary functions and they occur when conditions for them are given. Capitalists relations of productions were first developed in the womb of feudal society. The French Revolution occurred when the new capitalists relations of production had attained a certain degree of maturity.

Dialectic and social change

It is not my consciousness that determines reality. On the contrary, it is the social reality that determines their consciousness. But the dialectical conception of history affirms that the law of reality is the law of change. There is a constant transformation in inorganic nature as well as in the human world. There is no eternal principle. Human and moral conceptions change from one age the next. Natural and social change occurs in accordance with certain abstract law. Beyond a certain point, quantitative changes become qualitative. The transformations do not occur imperceptibly a little a time, but at a given moment there is a violent, revolutionary shift.

As Marx wrote in his preface to Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, at a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come in conflict with the exiting relations of production within which they have been work hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an epoch of revolution social.

The dialectic conception of history comprehend the changes in the scope and social structure of advanced capitalism and the new forms of the contradictions characteristics of the latest stage of capitalism in its global framework.

Strange and Monstrous

Wed, 15 Dec 2010 14:48:00 +0000

Editor's note: This article was originally published in February 28, 1918 in response to criticisms about the Russian government's effort to negotiate a settlement with Germany to end its involvement in World War I.

The Moscow Regional Bureau of our Party, in a resolution adopted on February 24, 1918, has expressed lack of confidence in the Central Committee, refused to obey those of its decisions "that will be connected with the implementation of the terms of the peace treaty with Austria and Germany”, and, in an "explanatory note" to the resolution, declared that it “considers a split in the Party in the very near future hardly avoidable.”[1]

There is nothing monstrous, nor even strange in all this. It is quite natural that comrades who sharply disagree with the Central Committee over the question of a separate peace should sharply condemn the Central Committee and express their conviction that a split is inevitable. All that is the most legitimate right of Party members, which is quite understandable.

But here is what is strange and monstrous. An “explanatory note” is appended to the resolution. Here it is in full:

“The Moscow Regional Bureau considers a split in the Party in the very near future hardly avoidable, and it sets itself the aim of helping to unite all consistent revolutionary communists who equally oppose both the advocates of the conclusion of a separate peace and all moderate opportunists in the Party. In the interests of the world revolution, we consider it expedient to accept the possibility of losing Soviet power which is now becoming purely formal. We maintain as before that our primary task is to spread the ideas of the socialist revolution to all other countries and resolutely to promote the workers’ dictatorship, ruthlessly to suppress bourgeois counter-revolution in Russia.”

It is the words we have stressed in this passage which are—strange and monstrous.

It is in these words that the crux of the matter lies.

These words reduce to an absurdity the whole line put forward by the authors of the resolution. These words expose the root of their error with exceptional clarity.

“In the interests of the world revolution it is expedient to accept the possibility of losing Soviet power. . . .” That is strange, for there is not even any connection between the premises and the conclusion. “In the interests of the world revolution it is expedient to accept the military defeat of Soviet power” —such a proposition might be right or wrong, but it could not be called strange. That is the first thing.

Second thing: Soviet power “is now becoming purely formal”. Now this is not only strange but downright monstrous. Obviously, the authors have got themselves thoroughly entangled. We shall have to disentangle them.

As regards the first question, the authors’ idea evidently is that it would be expedient in the interests of tho world revolution to accept the possibility of defeat in war, which would lead to the loss of Soviet power, in other words, to the triumph of the bourgeoisie in Russia. By voicing this idea the authors indirectly admit the truth of what I said in the theses (on January 8, 1918, published in Pravda on February 24, 1918),[2] namely, that refusal to accept the peace terms presented by Germany would lead to Russia’s defeat and the overthrow of Soviet power.

And so, la raison finit toujours par avoir raison— the truth always triumphs! My “extremist" opponents, the Muscovites who threaten a split, have been obliged—just because they have got to the point of talking openly of a split—to be equally explicit about their real reasons, the reasons which people who confine themselves to general phrase-making about revolutionary war prefer to pass over in silence. The very essence of my theses and arguments (as anyone who cares to read attentively my theses of January 7, 1918, may see) is that we must accept this extremely harsh peace now, at once, while at the same time seriously preparing for a revolutionary war (and accept it, moreover, precisely in the interest of such serious preparations). Those who confined themselves to general phrase-making about a revolutionary war ignored or failed to notice, or did not want to notice, the very essence of my arguments. And now it is my “extremist” opponents, the Muscovites, whom I have to thank from the bottom of my heart for having broken the “conspiracy of silence” over the essence of my arguments. The Muscovites have been the first to reply to them.

And what is their reply?

Their reply is an admission of the correctness of my concrete argument. Yes, the Muscovites have admitted, we shall certainly be defeated if we fight the Germans now.[3] Yes, this defeat would certainly lead to the fall of Soviet power.

Again and again I thank my “extremist” opponents, the Muscovites, from the bottom of my heart for having broken the “conspiracy of silence” against the essence of my arguments, i.e., against my concrete statement as to what the conditions of war would be, if we were to accept it at once, and for having fearlessly admitted the correctness of my concrete statement.

Further, on what grounds are my arguments, the substantial correctness of which the Muscovites have been compelled to admit, rejected?

On the grounds that in the interests of the world revolution we must accept the loss of Soviet power.

Why should the interests of the world revolution demand it? This is the crux of the matter; this is the very essence of the reasoning of those who would like to defeat my arguments. And it is on this, the most important, fundamental and vital point, that not a word is said, either in the resolution or in the explanatory note. The authors of the resolution found time and space to speak of what is universally known and indisputable—of “ruthlessly suppressing bourgeois counter-revolution in Russia” (using the methods and means of a policy which would lead to the loss of Soviet power?), and of opposing all moderate opportunists in the Party—but of that which is really disputable and which concerns the very essence of the position of the opponents of peace—not a word!

Strange. Extremely strange. Did the authors of the resolution keep silent about this because they felt that on this point they were particularly weak? To have plainly stated why (this is demanded by the interests of the world revolution) would most likely have meant exposing themselves. . . .

However that may be, we have to seek out the arguments which may have guided the authors of the resolution.

Perhaps the authors believe that the interests of the world revolution forbid making any peace at all with imperialists? This opinion was expressed by some of the opponents of peace at one of the Petrograd meetings, but only an insignificant minority of those who objected to a separate peace supported it.[4] It is clear that this opinion would lead to a denial of the expediency of the Brest negotiations and to a rejection of peace, “even" if accompanied by the return of Poland, Latvia and Courland. The incorrectness of this view (which was rejected, for example, by a majority of the Petrograd opponents of peace) is as clear as day. A socialist republic surrounded by imperialist powers could not, from this point of view, conclude any economic treaties, and could not exist at all, without flying to the moon.

Perhaps the authors believe that the interests of the world revolution require that it should be given a push, and that such a push can be given only by war, never by peace, which might give the people the impression that imperialism was being “legitimised"? Such a “theory" would be completely at variance with Marxism, for Marxism has always been opposed to “pushing" revolutions, which develop with the growing acuteness of the class antagonisms that engender revolutions. Such a theory would be tantamount to the view that armed uprising is a form of struggle which is obligatory always and under all conditions. Actually, however, the interests of the world revolution demand that Soviet power, having overthrown the bourgeoisie in our country, should help that revolution, but that it should choose a form of help which is commensurate with its own strength. To help the socialist revolution on an international scale by accepting the possibility of defeat of that revolution in one’s own country is a view that does not follow even from the “pushing” theory.

Perhaps the authors of the resolution believe that revolution has already begun in Germany and has already reached the stage of an open, nation-wide civil war, that we must therefore devote our strength to helping the German workers, and must perish ourselves ("losing Soviet power") to save a German revolution which has already started its decisive fight and is being hard pressed? According to this theory, we, while perishing ourselves, would be diverting part of the forces of German counter-revolution, thereby saving the German revolution.

It is quite conceivable that, given these premises, it would not only be “expedient” (as the authors of the resolution put it) but a downright duty to accept the possibility of defeat and the possibility of the loss of Soviet power. But obviously these premises do not exist. The German revolution is ripening, but it has obviously not reached the stage of an explosion in Germany, of civil war in Germany. By “accepting the possibility of losing Soviet power", we certainly would not be helping the German revolution to reach maturity, but would be hindering it. We would be helping German reaction, playing into its hands, hampering the socialist movement in Germany and frightening away from socialism large masses of German proletarians and semi-proletarians who have not yet come over to socialism and would be scared by the defeat of Soviet Russia, just as the British workers were scared by the defeat of the Paris Commune in 1871.

Twist and turn them how you will, but you can find no logic in the authors’ contentions. There are no sensible arguments to support the view that “in the interests of the world revolution it is expedient to accept the possibility of losing Soviet power”.

"Soviet power is now becoming purely formal"—this, as we see, is the monstrous view the authors of the Moscow resolution have come to proclaim.

Since the German imperialists are going to make us pay indemnities and forbid us to carry on propaganda and agitation against Germany, Soviet power loses all significance and “becomes purely formal"—this is probably the line of “reasoning” of the authors of the resolution. We say "probably", for the authors offer nothing clear and specific in support of their thesis.

Profound and hopeless pessimism and complete despair—such is the sum and substance of the "theory” that the significance of Soviet power is purely formal, and that tactics which will risk the possible loss of Soviet power are permissible. Since there is no salvation anyway, then let even Soviet power perish—such is the sentiment that dictated this monstrous resolution. The allegedly “economic” arguments in which such ideas are sometimes clothed reveal the same hopeless pessimism: what sort of Soviet republic is it—the implication is—when not just tribute, but tribute on such a scale can be exacted from it?

Nothing but despair: we shall perish anyhow!

It is a quite understandable mood in the extremely desperate situation in which Russia finds herself. But it is not “understandable” among conscious revolutionaries. The typical thing about it is that here we have the views of the Muscovites reduced to absurdity. The Frenchmen of 1793 would never have said that their gains —the republic and democracy—were becoming purely formal and that they would have to accept the possibility of losing the republic. They were not filled with despair, but with faith in victory. To call for a revolutionary war, and at the same time to talk in an official resolution of “accepting the possibility of losing Soviet power", is to expose oneself completely.

Early in the nineteenth century, at the time of the Napoleonic wars, Prussia and a number of other countries suffered incomparably and immeasurably greater hardships and burdens of defeat, conquest, humiliation and oppression on the part of the conqueror than Russia is suffering in 1918. Yet the best men of Prussia, when Napoleon’s military jack boots trampled upon them a hundred times more heavily than we can be trampled upon now, did not despair, and did not say that their national political institutions were “purely formal”. They did not give up, did not succumb to the feeling: “We shall perish anyhow.” They signed peace treaties infinitely more drastic, brutal, humiliating and oppressive than the Brest Treaty, and then knew how to bide their time; they staunchly bore the conqueror’s yoke, fought again, fell under the conqueror’s yoke again, again signed the vilest of vile peace treaties, and again rose, and in the end liberated themselves (not without exploiting the dissensions among the stronger competing conquerors).

Why shouldn’t this be repeated in our history?

Why should we give way to despair and write resolutions—which, by heavens, are more disgraceful than the most disgraceful peace—saying that “Soviet power is becoming purely formal"?

Why shouldn’t the most crushing military defeats in the struggle against the giants of modern imperialism steel the national character in Russia, too, strengthen self-discipline, put an end to the bragging and phrase-making, teach fortitude and bring the people round to the correct tactics of the Prussians when they were crushed by Napoleon—the tactics of signing the most humiliating of peace treaties when you haven’t an army, then mustering your forces and rising again and again?

Why should we give way to despair at the first peace treaty, incredibly harsh though it be, when other nations were able staunchly to bear even bitterer misfortunes?

Is it the staunchness of the proletarian who knows that one must submit when strength is lacking, and is then nevertheless is able to rise again and again at any price and to build up strength under all circumstances, that corresponds to these tactics of despair, or, rather, the spinelessness of the petty bourgeois, who in our country, in the shape of the Left Socialist-Revolutionary Party, has beaten the record for phrase-making about a revolutionary war?

No, dear Moscow “extremist” comrades, every day of trial will drive away from you those very workers who are the most class-conscious and the staunchest. Soviet power, they will say, is not becoming, and will not become, purely formal; and not only now, when the conqueror is in Pskov and is making us pay a ten-thousand-million-ruble tribute in grain, ore and money, but even if he gets as far as Nizhni-Novgorod and Rostov-on-Don and makes us pay a tribute of twenty thousand million rubles.

Never will any foreign conquest render a popular political institution “purely formal” (and Soviet power is not only a political institution far and away superior to any thing known to history). On the contrary, alien conquest will only strengthen popular sympathy for Soviet power, provided—provided it does not indulge in reckless follies.

And to refuse to conclude even the vilest peace when you have no army would be a reckless gamble, for which the people would be justified in condemning the government that refused to do so.

Immensely more harsh and humiliating peace treaties than the Brest Treaty have been signed before in history (we gave some instances above) without discrediting the regime or turning it into a formality; they ruined neither the regime nor the people, but rather steeled the people, taught them the stern and difficult science of building up an effective army even in the most desperate conditions and under the heel of the conqueror.

Russia is making for a new and genuine patriotic war, a war for the preservation and consolidation of Soviet power. It is possible that another epoch will—like the epoch of the Napoleonic wars—be an epoch of liberation wars (not one war, but wars) imposed by aggressors upon Soviet Russia. That is possible.

And, therefore, more humiliating than any harsh or even extremely harsh peace, rendered imperative owing to the lack of an army—more humiliating than any humiliating peace is humiliating despair. We shall not perish even from a dozen obnoxious peace treaties if we take revolt and war seriously. No conquerors can destroy us if we do not destroy ourselves by despair and phrase-making.

Endnotes

[1] Here is the full text of the resolution: “Having discussed the activities of the Central Committee, the Moscow Regional Bureau of the R.S.D.L.P. expresses lack of confidence in the Central Committee in view of its political line and composition, and will at the first opportunity insist that a new Central Committee be elected. Further more, the Moscow Regional Bureau does not consider itself bound to obey unreservedly those decisions of the Central Committee that will be connected with the implementation of the terms of the peace treaty with Austria and Germany.” The resolution was adopted unanimously.

[2] See On the History of the Question of the Unfortunate Peace

[3] As to the counter-argument, that to avoid fighting was anyway impossible, the reply has been given by the facts: On January 8 my theses were read; by January 15 we might have had peace. A respite would have been certainly assured (and for us even the briefest respite would have been of gigantic significance, both materially and morally, for the Germans would have had to declare a new war), if . . . if it had not been for revolutionary phrase-making.

[4] This refers to the voting on the question of peace with Germany at a meeting of the Party Central Committee representing various trends in the Party on January 21 (February 3), 1918. Two “Left Communists", Osinsky (Obolensky) and Stukov, voted against any possibility of peace between socialist and imperialist countries. The majority of the “Left Communists", however, took an ambivalent stand. While admitting the possibility of peace being concluded between socialist and imperialist states, they voted against the immediate conclusion of peace with Germany (see Minutes of the Central Committee of the R.S.D.L.P.(B.), August 1917 to February 1918, 1958, pp. 190-91).

Photo by YLegrand, cc by 2.0

Out of the Red Megaphone: The Modernist Protest Music of a Lost Age

Tue, 14 Dec 2010 08:58:00 +0000

Original source: Cultural Worker

While not often recognized in recent times, art in its most fearless could once be found amidst the political actions of the global Communist movement, and in our own nation through the organizing of the Communist Party USA. The Party’s formative years of the 1920s and early ‘30s produced an agitational network of dissident writers, composers, painters, dancers, actors and filmmakers in a way few earlier Left movements could have imagined. Not simply producing artworks for specific campaigns or protests, many of the most dedicated would go on to become professional revolutionaries and walk among the leadership of the Communist International. The cultural workers of the cause produced an art that was as bold as the revolution that seemed within reach in that tumultuous age. A tapestry of free verse poetry and proletarian literature, avant garde street theatre, visual art that bridged the social realist and the surrealist, modern dance of social change, daring documentary film and a school of music composition which founded song by way of the discord and agitated rhythms of modern life. The challenge posed by such a vanguard art would never quite be resolved within the movement, but for a brief period, there seemed to be an unstoppable force which would seek to lead the populace to new levels of intellectualism--albeit of a most intrepid brand.

*****

The revolutionary song has always been called on to inspire and unite in the annals of social and political struggle, however, rarely has it been engineered as the aural aspect of a cultural revolution. Learning from earlier Left movements, particularly the use of song in the organizing of the Industrial Workers of the World, the Communist Party’s cultural brain trust sought a means toward collaboration between its already established poets and a group of sympathetic musicians seeking new inspiration during the latter 1920s period of growth. Working in tandem with young composers, Party cultural leaders Michael Gold and VJ Jerome began to write topical radical lyrics (or to translate those from across the ocean) in an effort to create a musical repertoire for the times. As this idea began to germinate, the Party’s national cultural organization, the John Reed Club, recognized the need to form a subsidiary Music Committee in May of 1931. While the Club, named for John Reed, the revolutionary writer who was one of the CP’s founders, is seen as a specifically literary organization, its mission was to organize artists of every genre. Shortly thereafter the JRC musicians, visual artists, dancers, film and photo artists, etc, branched out into their own affiliated organizations. So was the case with the Music Committee, which by June 14, was fully realized as the Workers Music League. The League was intent on focusing and consolidating all music activity of the Party but also to “formulate a systematic theoretical approach to proletarian music” (Reuss, Richard A, Reuss, Jo Ann C, American Folk Music and Left-Wing Politics, 1927-1957. MD: Scarecrow Press, 2000, page 48). The League included divisions for Communist composers, performing musicians and also music publishers. The WML also produced its own periodical, The Worker Musician. Quickly, very quickly thereafter, the WML established eighteen different branches throughout the major cities, with its flagship office being in New York City, where there was also a more specified Workers Musicians Club. In 1932, with the death of Pierre DeGeyter, composer of “L’Internationale”, the club was so renamed in his honor.

Many of the Pierre DeGeyter Club’s members, even if stemming from a politically progressive background, had begun with no specifically communist interests, but in the Party saw the radical leadership, necessary for the rescue of the nation during the darkest days of the Depression. Charles Seeger stated:

We felt urgency in those days…The social system is going to hell here. Music might be able to do something about it. Let’s see if we can try. We must try. (Charles Seeger quoted in David King Dunway, “Unsung Songs of Protest: The Composers Collective of New York”, New York Folklore 5 (Summer 1979), 2. Source: Lieberman, Robbie, My Song is My Weapon: People’s Songs, American Communism and the Politics of Culture, 1930-1950. Chicago: University of Illinois, 1995, page 29).

The movement musicians, largely from affluent or at least professional families, fought for balance in a rapidly changing world, but their music remained a product of the concert hall. With the wealth of radical folksingers that pervaded the movement in the latter half of the twentieth century, one would assume that musicians of protest were always based in the folk idiom. However in the decades before, the US Left’s musicians were initially imbedded in the art music of Europe. Appropriate to their day and ideology, the musicians affiliated with the Workers Music League looked to Paris and Berlin for the vanguard sounds of modernity. The Composers Collective of New York, an outgrowth of this Pierre DeGeyter Club, was founded as the realization of the new music in the service of the people.

Music is a Weapon in the Class Struggle

The Composers Collective was an ensemble of trained, professional musicians who were on the cutting edge of orchestral and chamber music as each composed in the modern genre: their works reflected the transformative wave of Expressionism and Futurism and realized in atonal and 12-tonal composition. It was the mission of the Collective to create the soundtrack to the social and political revolution they had dedicated themselves to, and it seemed just for the music to be evocative of the tumult. There was no consideration for what would be tuneful or catchy; the language of 20th century music, the Collective believed, was the musical voice of tomorrow---and the movement would have no trouble adapting to it. The repertoire was intended as the clarion call to a new, daring generation of radical intellectuals. It was not long before the Collective, responding to the urgent need to build a cadre of musical warriors, came to host a series educational seminars and programs designed for college campuses, union halls and community centers, as well as producing a series of formal concerts. Soon, they too would publish songbooks and their own magazine, Music Vanguard.

The members of the Collective, brandishing pedigrees from Julliard, Columbia, Harvard and Eastman, included Charles Lewis Seeger (1886-1979, who also served as a music critic for the Daily Worker and also wrote for Music Vanguard, usually as “Carl Sands”), Aaron Copland (1900-1990), Henry Cowell (1897-1965), Marc Blitzstein (1905-1964), Ruth Crawford (1901-1953), Earl Robinson (1910-1991), Elie Siegmeister (1909-1991) Wallingford Riegger (1885-1961), Lan Adomian (8/29/05), Norman Cazden (1914-1980) and others. Collectively, the group represented most of the nation’s most talented young composers, engaging in bold modernism which rebelled against the musical academic status quo, even if born of its formality. The group championed the works of the German composer Hanns Eisler (1898-1962), formerly of the German agit-prop troupe Das Rote Sprachrohr (the Red Megaphone), who came to prominence while collaborating with legendary poet-playwright Bertolt Brecht, and offered a music which was at once classical, cabaret and avant garde. Eisler had been one of the top students of Schoenberg, founder of the 12-tone school, but his immersion in the German Communist Party led him to forge a new sound, one which would reach across national borders.

Goals of the Collective included not only the composition of new works, but the performance of this modern, radical repertoire via their own ensemble (the composers alongside performer colleagues). In addition to achieving an artistic apex, the Collective saw their primary objective as performing for and with workers. To this extent, Collective members aided local choruses in the endeavor to create a solid musical-social experience. For the avant gardists, seeking out creative possibilities in revolutionary arts, this meant bringing experimental and modern sounds into the repertoire of such choruses. They had been influenced by the revolutionary choruses of Europe as well as the recently-arrived immigrant groups who sang complex European-based art music in their own language, such as the Freiheit Gesang Gang. The Communist Party’s greatest numbers early on could be found within the so-called “language federations”, thus the cultural practices of same were available to the brash, young Americans who’d found their way into Party circles via the arts.

The Composers Collective created a strong program to introduce music of expansive harmonies, metric and rhythmic complexity, and lengthy melodic statements with dramatic intervallic and dynamic properties to the US working class. As in the music of Hanns Eisler, they saw the need for their music for the masses to be free from bourgeois trappings and both politically and musically demanding. It had to reflect the urgency which spoke of both the social furor in the streets and the heart wrenching deprivation experienced by families across the nation. But in order to do this, their composition needed to include proletarian content as well---in the lyric and intent. As well intentioned as this quest may have been, it was far from successful in its appeal to the intended audience. As Robbie Lieberman wrote,

They expected to use their training to create mass song, to improve upon “The Internationale”, for revolutionary cause. The principal form of proletarian music activity at the time was the revolutionary chorus…Unlike groups in other fields, the collective cannot be criticized for a lack of concern with aesthetics. Ironically, the particular aesthetic mode in which the collective chose to work made its compositions even more inaccessible than were proletarian novels, plays and films. (Lieberman, page 29)

The Communist Party-based cultural groups often intertwined into a winding network of hierarchy, often affiliated directly with Soviet organizations which led in this cultural activism. The Workers Music League was the umbrella group above the Composers Collective of New York. The WML, in 1932, was a section of the Workers Cultural Federation, “the central organization of all music forces connected with the American revolutionary working class movement. Its aim is to coordinate, strengthen, and give both ideological and musical guidance to these forces” (The Red Song Book, NY: Workers Library Publishers, 1932). The WML itself grew out of a 1932 gathering of the Comintern’s cultural officers, with representatives from multiple nations present. Composer Jacob Schaeffer represented the US and he held a staff position within the Moscow-based International Music Bureau for several years.

In 1932 members of the Workers Music League, particularly the leaders of the Composers Collective, in an effort to teach some of the more accessible of the new revolutionary material to others, published The Red Song Book. This collection included twenty-six selections ranging from contemporary works to standards such as “L’Internationale” and “Hold the Fort”, as well as “The Preacher and the Slave” by Joe Hill and “The Soup Song” by Maurice Sugar (1911-1989; Sugar would go on to compose a much more serious labor anthem, “Sit Down!” by mid-decade). Among the newer works were“ The Comintern” by Hanns Eisler and V.J. Jerome , “I.L.D. Song” by songwriter Ella Mae Wiggins (1900-1929; an organizer with the National Textile Workers Union from Gastonia, North Carolina) and several pieces by composers Lan Adomian, Carl Sands (a pseudonym for Charles Seeger) and Jacob Schaefer.

It is notable that though these songs are all presented in music notation, not all would fit into the category of composition---some of the songs were picket line creations that may not have been immortalized beyond that particular strike had it not been for this effort. Of greatest importance was the fact that these songs were intended to be performed by workers at labor actions or meetings. The book opens with a section: Notes for Teaching Mass Songs and it reads—“Gather a group of comrades around you, and teach the songs as follows…” Hints for successful group singing are simply spelled out so that each song would be performed clearly and its lyric understood by all. These selections were not intended to be performed in idle settings.

Music Penetrates Everywhere

It Carries Words With It

It Fixes Them in the Mind

It Engraves Them in the Heart

Music is a Weapon in the Class Struggle

So began the Workers Music League’s second songbook, The Workers Song Book (NY: Workers Music League, 1934); the members of the League left no doubt in their expectations of their art. In this book’s opening credits, the WML is called “USA Section of International Music Bureau” and this book, clearly, is more focused on art song than its predecessor. The foreword explains that this is a book of compositions by the Composers Collective of New York and the songs are all arranged in a much more formal manner than the Red Song Book had been. “The Scottsboro Boys Shall Not Die” by L. E. Swift (Ellie Siegmeister) is a feature as is ”Song to the Soldier” with music by Lan Adomian and lyric by noted Communist poet Rose Pastor Stokes. Other stand-out pieces herein are ”Red Soldiers Singing” (music by Adomian, lyrics by Joseph Freeman, an editor of the New Masses) and what is perhaps the strongest selection, “God to the Hungry Child” with a lyric by the great poet Langston Hughes and music by Janet Barnes. Many of these songs are filled with changes of meter and key, as well as advanced harmonies, embracing the art music of Europe while seeking out a truly American voice.

On May 21, 1933 was the first American Workers Music Olympiad, occurring at the City College Auditorium, East 23rd Street at Lexington Avenue, in New York City, which showcased the work of Collective and WML members and an assortment of performing groups presenting music of various cultures. The League had created this event in response to the very bourgeois National Music Week, then in progress. On the program was the Pierre DeGeyter Club Orchestra, Jacob Schaefer’s Freiheit Mandolin Orchestra, (Schaefer’s chorus was also present, offering Yiddish language selections, one of which translates as “Whip a Capitalist!”), the Daily Worker Chorus, IWO children’s choirs, the Balalaika Orchestra from the Soviet Union, Lithuanian, Italian, Yiddish, Finnish, Ukranian and Yugoslav workers choruses hailing from different parts of the New York area. Featured was the series of compositions by the Collective’s members, including Ruth Crawford’s revolutionary songs “Sacco, Vanzetti” and “Chinaman, Laundryman,” which spoke of the harsh conditions Chinese workers were experiencing on a daily basis in the service industry. The finale was a thousand-voice chorus bellowing out stirring songs of revolution. (Tick, Judith, Ruth Crawford Seeger: A Composer’s Search for American Music, Oxford University Press, 1997, page 193-194)

The May Day issue of the New Masses included the article “Marching With a Song” by Ashley Pettis, which offered a quite fascinating look into the inner workings of revolutionary developments in music then occurring. She applauded the efforts of composers to create music, “which helps to unite and inspire masses of workers.” Pettis continued:

The necessity for this kind of music as a weapon in the class struggle daily becomes more apparent. As in Russia, the idea: ‘We must develop our musical resources for the building of socialism” has made music both a unique power and an integral part of the lives of the people, so we are witnessing in America the gathering together of groups of workers for the making of music which is expressive of their lives and aspirations. Most of these songs have been derived from the revolutionary music of foreign lands, but because of their universal content have served the purpose of inspiring and uniting groups of workers of diverse and far-removed peoples. In addition to the formation of workers' choruses in various cities recently, reports have come in of revolutionary songs improvised by the Negroes in the south, in conjunction with white workers. In New York and many other cities, revolutionary musical organizations are springing up under the name of "Pierre Degeyter Clubs," which are uniting the forces of class-conscious and politically-minded musicians. The functions of these groups are expanding daily through Service Bureaus, so that the activities of our musical craftsmen are becoming indissolubly linked with the lives of the workers in making available the best music to workers' organizations. In New York the Composers' Collective of Pierre Degeyter Club has already done valuable work in the production of a number of mass songs now being sung by workers' choruses.

Beyond simply uniting workers, Pettis’ article then describes the artistic merit of the new, radical concert music, albeit she stressed the need to keep it accessible to the voices of labor and community choirs:

The New Masses feels that the time is ripe for the development of music by the various composers of America for the constantly increasing number of singing workers; a music which is characteristic of them; truly representative of their waking consciousness and growing power; of their determination and hopes. With this in mind Alfred Hayes' poem, Into the Streets May First was sent out to the Composers' Collective of the Pierre Degeyter Club, New York, as well as to a group comprising some of the most accomplished musicians of America. It was originally planned to have a national general contest, but the time was too limited to do so and make a selection for performance and publication by May 1st. At a future date we hope to have a national contest in the production of mass songs…

The piece goes on to describe the high quality of the music sent in, and then breaks down the musical styling and individual qualities of the outstanding selections. After congratulating “Carl Sands” (Seeger) for his Stephan Foster-like contribution, she demonstrates concern for some of the more modernist pieces, but it’s clear that Party cultural circles continued to seek out familiar, worker-oriented statements amenable to mass singing while still embracing the boldness of Modernism:

Certain of the songs, such as those by Adohmyan (Adomian) and "XYZ" have marked excellence in the melodic and rhythmic conception, but from the standpoint of harmonic construction are perhaps too sophisticated and "modern" for singers in workers' groups for whom mass songs are written. It is not that experiments and "revolutionary" musical tendencies are to be discouraged or eliminated in the creation of such songs. But it absolutely necessary at the stage in the creation of the mass songs, to preserve the best of the old traditions, harmonic and melodic, at the same time injecting new life into these old forms so that the most unsophisticated singer may be drawn into the singing – in order that "he who runs" may sing! A completely new and different harmonic structure in songs which have which have "popularity" in the best sense as one of their principle aims, tends to repel. The undesirability of this is obvious. These songs with the addition of a less complex and "static" accompaniment, should prove to be practical and valuable compositions.

The imposing magnificence and effectiveness of Isadore Freed's score (with piano and drum or tympani accompaniment) mark it apart from all of the other songs entering the contest. It should be made available for every chorus in America. Such a work is both good propaganda and splendid art! Its performance should have an extraordinarily moving and stirring effect upon any audience. The harmonies are bold and flaming in color. Here indeed the "red flag leaps its red!" May we soon hear this composition in public performance…

For the practical purposes of our contest, the compositions of both Swift (Siegmeister) and Freed were too long. In fact Swift added a quatrain to the Hayes poem, which, when set to music in its entirety was too long for publication in The New Masses. The Swift song possesses a fine, marching swing, and has an interesting combination of "modern" revolutionary harmonic color with a melodic "catchiness" which shows the skill and experience of the composer of the "Scottsboro Song" in the writing of mass songs.

The ultimate winner of this contest was, of course, Copland. Pettis described the qualities of the work which make it important to the cultural work:

Aaron Copland's composition, published in this issue, is most certainly an interesting and practical example of mass song. Taking everything into consideration, the judges were unanimous in making this selection. It has vigor, directness. Its spirit is identical with that of the poem. The unfamiliar, "experimental" nature of the harmonics which occur occasionally, does not tend to make the unsophisticated singer question. Copland has chosen a musical style of time-honored tradition, but he has imbued it with fresh vitality and meaning. The subtle alteration of harmonies and melodic intervals in progressions of a familiar nature, save it from being relegated to the category of being platitudinous. The harmony structure, which in less skilful hands would have been mere "Pomp and Circumstance," here possesses freshness and newness! Some of the intervals may be somewhat difficult upon a first hearing or singing, but we believe the ear will very readily accustom itself to their sound…(Pettis, Ashley, “Marching With Song”, the New Masses, April, 1934)

On April 29, 1934, the Workers Music League and Composers Collective organized the Second American Workers Music Olympiad, which featured the premiere performance of Copland’s setting of “Into the Streets May First”, performed by an 800-voice chorus, comprised of all of the revolutionary choruses at the event and in the New York City area. The event also boasted an internationalist array of choruses and ensembles and members of the Collective acting as judges in a performance contest.

The Composers Collective, in and out of the League, continued to attempt the creation of an American proletarian music before finally recognizing the limitations in workers’ choruses when challenged with music of advanced harmony. Arthur Berger, a composer who stood as a fellow traveler in the movement who was also deeply involved in modern composition at the time wrote:

Many of us started to feel embarrassed at excluding the masses when we wrote music that they found inaccessible or accessible with difficulty. We need not have been card-carrying Party members, and we had no wish to over throw the American government. We had our infighting as followers of either Leon Trotsky or Joseph Stalin, but during the mid-thirties many of us viewed Socialism in Russia through rose-colored glasses…

Occasionally someone would assume a more active role, as when Aaron Copland wrote a song for the picket line, “Into the Streets May First,” …It is very surprising indeed that a composer who, as everyone knows, soon afterwards developed a manner that was so wide in its appeal and at the same time of such fine workmanship should so miscalculate the musical capacities of a worker on a picket line. (Berger, Arthur. Reflections of An American Composer. CA: University of California, 2002, pp 10-11)

Still, the impact of daring discordant sounds slicing into Marxist vocabulary would not be lost on the Collective’s members, nor would the powerful influence of Hanns Eisler.

Hanns Eisler

An expatriate living in the United States by the mid-1930s, Hanns Eisler’s interactions with the Collective became commonplace and, for a brief moment, it seemed that the goal of an American proletarian repertory would become a reality. Eisler toured the country, performing his material for audiences of workers and intellectuals alike, playing piano with New York baritone Mordecai Bauman (1912-2007) singing the melodies.

Eisler, too, featured prominently in the first recordings produced in this country specifically for Communists and fellow travelers. In 1935 he recorded four of his songs of revolutionary struggle, with vocalist Bauman, for the Timely Records label: “In Praise of Learning”, “Song of the United Front”, “Forward! We’ve Not Forgotten” and “Rise Up (“the Comintern Song”). All except the latter featured lyrics by Brecht; that of “Rise Up” was written by VJ Jerome. The recording ensemble that backed the vocalist and composer was dubbed The New Singers, a workers’ chorus led by Lan Adomian, and its second pianist was Marc Blitzstein. The Eisler material was supplemented by the same group’s recordings of “The Internationale” and Maurice Sugar’s “The Soup Song” (sang here not by Bauman but one Felix Groveman). Responses throughout the Left were highly enthusiastic. Music reviewer Anita Garret wrote in the Daily Worker that these records were the,

…first American phonograph discs to bear working class and revolutionary songs to the masses: These records can play a great role in popularizing working class music through mass organizations, at meetings and mass gatherings. The lack of a phonograph or radio pick-up should in no way deter workers from owning and spreading these songs wherever they may be. (Garret, Anita, the Daily Worker; source: Cohen, Ronald D, and Samuelson, Dave. Songs for Political Action, book within the box set of the same name, issued by Bear Family Records, 1996).

An advertisement from the period of the records’ release states that this set of ‘Workers Songs’ sold for seventy-five cents, for “each double-faced record”. What stands out in this ad, though, are the wonderfully detailed labels on each disc, including evocative illustrations such as marching masses, waving red banners, futuristic looking factory scenes, or a worker’s hand grabbing the wrist of a knife-wielding Nazi. Timely was located at 235 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, in the downtown Communist-friendly Greenwich Village area, but the message not confined to New York City. While not ever receiving widespread release, the records became quite popular in the homes of not only Communists, but other progressives, and were carried in Leftist book and record stores across the nation for years. Still, something was missing in the message.

A People’s Music

In this effort to forge a modernist music for the proposed workers’ revolution, the Collective had turned away from the folk forms that had proven successful decades earlier for the organizing campaigns of the Industrial Workers of the World. As the IWW were largely working in rural areas of the American west, the music written by their cultural workers, including the legendary Joe Hill, reflected the songs of the common people—hymns mostly, as well as popular tunes, music compatible to homegrown instruments, chants, barn dances and even whistling while one worked. But the Communist movement, in the Leninist model, strove for higher ground, the model for a proletariat as advanced intellectually as politically. In this respect, Composers Collective writings complained that folk songs were complacent and melancholy in nature, not a militant vehicle, and they could not conceive of the inherent radicalism in the genre. Thus little attention was paid to the entire genre.

But as early as 1933 Michael Gold had already begun to dedicate some of his Daily Worker column, “Change the World!”, to the importance of folk songs, a “people’s music,” and put out the call for, “a Communist Joe Hill.” Commenting on the need, Gold wrote:

Not to see what a step forward it is to find native musicians of the American people turning to revolutionary themes…is to be blind to progress (Gold, Mike, Daily Worker, January 1933).

By the mid-30s Charles Lewis Seeger introduced the folk singer Aunt Mollie Jackson (1880-1960) to other members of The Collective. Jackson, to the ears of these educated New York City musicians, was extremely rustic in her performance and appearance, the voice coarse and the presentation battered. Yet unlike anything they had produced, her songs offered a first-hand account of experiences in the ‘coal wars’ of Kentucky in which she worked as an organizer for the National Miners Union (a Communist alternative to the UMW), and where she was an inspiration for the struggling miners’ fight-back. Jackson had been a stalwart advocate for the Harlan County working class, but was ultimately forced to leave her home at the mortal threat of mine-owners’ thugs. She moved in New York’s Lower East Side, living in poverty, participating in sporadic Left and other folk song events, but her indirect influence spread far beyond her immediate grasp. According to historians Ronald Cohen and Dave Samuelson, the social circumstances of the time—the Depression as well as fears of fascism abroad---was enough for the nation as a whole to begin to seek out homespun culture, a truly American art in the face of fascist terror. And it soon became championed by academics and policy makers in the Roosevelt White House. It was not long before a growing list of radicals joined in.

The Fall of the American Proletarian Song

The strong program developed by largely Communist cultural workers which sought to create a modernist, American proletariat music would not survive the Popular Front. In fact, its death-knell would be heard as 1935--the first year of this people’s front movement-- came to a close. In December of that year, New York’s Town Hall played host to a Composers Collective concert which debuted “The Strange Funeral at Braddock”, composed by Elie Siegmeister to a poem by Mike Gold. The piece featured vocalist Mordecai Bauman and Siegmeister’s own piano; the subject matter is the horrible factory death of a steel worker reflecting on his homeland and family in the moments leading up to his demise. Bauman, filled with emotional fervor, offered a powerful voice to the poetry of Gold. The music is befittingly angular, with discordant harmonies, striking rhythmic pouncing and a foreboding, atmospheric chordal accompaniment, often in the form of tone clusters. Bauman could be heard making use of the German ‘sprechtesaang’ style—semi-sang/semi-spoken—in many places. Together with the poetry, it was a fairly perfect version of revolutionary music in the modern concert setting. While the composer’s goals may have been achieved, not so the poet’s: Gold argued against the use of avant techniques in revolutionary music and called openly for a program of folk-oriented music. In 1935 he wrote in the Daily Worker:

I think a new content often demands a new form. But when the new form gets so far ahead of all of us that we can’t understand its content, its time to write letters to the press…The nearest thing we’ve had to Joe Hill’s kind of folk balladry has been from southern mountaineer Communists as Aunt Molly Jackson and the martyred textile weaver Mary Wiggins. (Gold, Michael, Daily Worker, December 1935; source: Cohen, Ronald D, and Dave Samuelson, accompanying book to compact disc collection ‘Songs for Political Action’, Bear Family Records,1996, page 67)

That same year, in response to a directive by the Comintern, the Communist Party had dismantled the John Reed Club and most of its subsidiaries, too, were liquefied. As the international communist movement saw the pressing need to focus on the building of the Popular Front in the face of the rising fascist tide, its cultural programs followed suit and the once-overtly revolutionist groups came to dispense with militant radicalism--and the modernist intensity which accompanied it. Throughout the dissident hubs of America’s cities, a newfound interest in traditional folklore took the lead. Oft-times it was touched by African American forms--blues, jazz--and cabaret songs. Composers so touched by the powerful improvisatory nature of jazz and the vocal stylings of blues singers were successfully drawn in and the results were sometimes brilliant. But university-trained composers often had a hard time adapting to the country, folk and old-time sounds which ultimately dominated music of protest. The steel-stringed acoustic guitar would come to replace the concert grand piano in movement events just as the vernacular of the rural south and inner city industry took precedence over ivy-league repartee. In the throes of the Great Depression, and with the media becoming increasingly intertwined with government, the nation’s lumpen proletariat was either too broken to be moved by advanced harmony—or carefully taught to refute it.

Thus, the Composers Collective, this groundbreaking ensemble of politically dedicated modern classical composers, disbanded one year later. Some of its members, seeking out a more viable means to reach the worker, began to pursue the folk-oriented music that had earlier mystified them. The Collective members who were able to adapt now found their primary influences had moved from the modernists to the folk/protest singers. Others were dispirited enough to confine their creative output to music of a non-political ends, often thrusting themselves further into the ivory tower, far from the tumult below.

Charles Seeger would continue writing music criticism for the Daily Worker (under the nome de plum Carl Sands) and move into an important assignment with the Works Progress Administration and then the Library of Congress Folk Archive, where he worked as a folk-song musicologist. Rapidly, he became enamored with American culture and developed into one of the nation’s first successful folklorists. Incredulous as it may seem in recent years, Seeger managed to avoid the obvious Communist connections to much of his earlier work and rose to the level of government arts administrator within the Roosevelt presidency, an acclaimed scholar of American folk song. Seeger embarked on numerous folk song collecting journeys throughout the south, often with his then teenage son Pete in tow. Later he taught at Yale and also the Ethnomusicology Department of UCLA. Though his impact as a composer of dissonant music would continue to be felt in academic music circles, Seeger never returned to this activity.

Aaron Copland would, of course, achieve international acclaim for his brilliant orchestral works which personified Americana including ‘Appalachian Spring’ and ‘Billy the Kid’ among many others. Copland remained at the heart of concert music until his death and his music continues to be celebrated as quintessentially patriotic, but never blindly so. He had the visionary sense to carry the spirit of folk forms into his orchestral, choral and chamber compositions while not fully rejecting the modernism which he’d come to learn first while in Paris, studying with Nadia Boulanger, and then perfected within the flurry of revolutionary activity of the Collective. By the 1940s, Copland became a respected composer of film music, furthering the close association he’d held with important playwrights and actors a decade prior, including those of the Group Theatre. Though Copland experienced some years of oppression during the post-War red scare and was subject to FBI investigation (where, as a gay man and one with Communist associations, was a double threat), he ultimately moved into a position of elder statesman of concert music.

Elie Siegmeister, who’d also come through important studies with Boulanger, would take a similar if less renowned route than Copland. He created a body of work which infused Blues, Jazz and folk forms into the music of the so-called legitimate concert hall. However, during and beyond the Collective’s period, he also held the positions of musical director of both the Manhattan Chorus and the Daily Worker Chorus. Later, his sweeping orchestral pieces would be conducted by Toscanini and presented over the airwaves of major network radio. He also composed for film, received major grants and fellowships, and taught and lectured at noted universities.

Ruth Crawford, the first woman to be granted a Guggenheim Fellowship for music, would marry Seeger and become immersed in folk culture along with him. She toured the Deep South, learning the near lost music that was so provincial that it had not been heard outside of the hamlets it was created in. Crawford often notated the music and indications of performance practice as Seeger recorded it, assuring its continued presence in a rapidly changing world. Sadly, she would not continue her promising career as a composer but would instead be among the first to create a body of work for children, including songs which celebrated cultures of the world, producing several songbooks which have held a lasting importance in classrooms around the nation. Recording she and Seeger made of both her children’s songs and the traditional folk material remain important documents.

Earl Robinson, one of the group’s hardest radicals, had told the others that he simply could not write a mass song until he’d attended his first demonstration; soon, he’d composed an entire repertoire. After the Collective folded, he went on to lead various Communist Party-based vocal ensembles (including the American People’s Chorus) and remained within the circle for some years. Principally, he is recalled as the composer of several songs which have become quite legendary within and beyond the movement. Firstly, “Joe Hill,” written with noted poet Alfred Hayes, which celebrates the labor martyr and carried his legend through generations of activists. His piece “Ballad for the Americans,” with a rather expansive lyric by John La Touche, was premiered on the CBS network by progressive producer-commentator Norman Corwin in 1939 and featured the voice of the legendary Paul Robeson, another deeply relevant figure of Party cultural groups with whom Robinson sometimes toured. The composer also penned “The House I Live In,” most famously recorded by Frank Sinatra (on record and on film), and in the early 1970s his song “Black and White” was a hit by the rock band Three Dog Night.

Lan Adomian, following the dissolution of the Collective volunteered to fight with the Abraham Lincoln Battalion, serving in the Spanish Civil War. While hospitalized in Spain, recovering from battle wounds, he composed a song cycle written to the poetry of Miguel Hernandez. This led to a series of other works composed with Spain in mind, particularly after his return to the US, where he resumed his composition career with fervor. He also engaged in the composition of Jewish themed pieces, ultimately composing significant orchestral works for both film and concert hall. In the early 1950s, responding to the oppression of the anti-communist crusade, Adomian moved to Mexico as a means of self-exile, refuting the vicious tactics of the McCarthyites. Later, he would return to the United States and his compositional output included a wide range of orchestral and chamber pieces, works for opera and theatre, solo pieces, cantatas and choral works. Most notable were his series of pieces dedicated to the victims of the Holocaust, including ‘The Battle of Terezin’, inspired by the poem ‘The Butterfly’, written by a child victim of the Nazis.

Apart from Copland, perhaps the member of the Composers Collective best recalled is Marc Blitzstein. He would go on to compose the noted musical theatre works ‘The Cradle Will Rock’ and ‘Regina’, among many others. While the latter remains a classic of music theatre, it was the film adaptation of the former which has secured his place in cultural history: Blitzstein’s early work and life were colorfully illustrated in the Tim Robbins film ‘Cradle Will Rock’, which depicted the Right-wing shredding of the WPA Federal Theatre Project and the seeming impossibility of premiering the composer’s musical, ‘The Cradle Will Rock’ as initially planned by the Project. The true story is as fascinating as that which was depicted on screen: while federal authorities closed down the planned venue, the Maxine Elliot Theatre and complacent union bosses ordered their membership to not take part in a rogue production, the cast and musicians paraded through the streets of Manhattan and brought the show to another site, the dark Venice Theatre some twenty blocks south. To a full and quite curious house, Blitzstein performed all parts from a piano onstage, ultimately drawing out the actors and musicians, who, in order to not break union rules and be caught onstage or in the orchestra pit, performed from their seats in different parts of the hall—at the enthusiastic behest of the show’s director, Orson Welles. While the unions were angry with the composer for this wildly independent act, radical Blitzstein remained in ironically good enough standing with them, having joined the American Federation of Musicians Local 802, the Dramatists League and Actors Equity all on that some date (June 16, 1937) to secure his right to perform.

Following the powerful outcome of Cradle’s premier, Blitzstein focused his attention on the union organizing campaigns of resort workers in New York’s Catskill Mountains. He began composing the opera, ‘No For An Answer’, a musical depiction of the resort workers’ struggles and nightclub act (!) in 1937. Blitzstein envisioned ‘No’ as a piece between realism and satire, carrying the qualities of both burlesque and tragedy. He made plans with Welles to produce this for the Mercury Theatre in December of 1939, but Welles moved his company, lock stock and barrel, to Hollywood and onto ‘Citizen Kane’ before No could be realized. Blitzstein continued work on the piece but became embroiled in the harsh conflicts of the Hitler-Stalin pact in ’39; Blitzstein was Jewish and struggled for some means to justify this betrayal. That year he premiered some of the songs at a benefit for Spanish Civil War veterans and hunkered down to complete the full opera. It premiered in a semi-staged version (again, with the composer at the piano) featuring Carol Channing in her Broadway debut, on January 5, 1941. (Caldwell-Smith, Gaetana, “Theatre Review: No For An Answer,” Socialist Action magazine, December 2001; and uncredited entry on Marc Blitzstein’s website.)

Though Blitzstein became separated from the Communist Party in the 1940s, he was blacklisted after refusing to name names in his HUAC hearing; like several others of the Collective, Blitzstein was homosexual and especially targeted by the zealots. He then focused his attention on the off-Broadway theatre and into the early ‘60s became perhaps the strongest proponent of Brecht’s work, particularly ‘the Threepenny Opera’ which he’d translated and produced in Greenwich Village’s Theatre De Lys.

Of the members of the Composers Collective, only Henry Cowell would remain entrenched in experimental music throughout his career. One could hardly have expected less from the composer who was dubbed an ‘ultra-modernist’ as far back as the nineteen-tens, who had introduced the concept of playing on the strings of the piano and who had reached across cultures to champion world music early on. Cowell, more than the rest, was a hardcore avant gardist, even as he fought for the rights of labor. Of this, an associated progressive composer, Arthur Berger wrote:

Just what the nature of proletariat music should be—not only the worker songs but also the concert music for the masses—was a moot point in the early thirties. One of the leading spokesmen for the proposed genre was ironically one of our most far out composers, the experimentalist Henry Cowell, who had acquired an international reputation in the twenties… It was not too surprising that a modernist like Cowell should become involved in the proletarian cause since his music relied heavily in its choice of content on the vernacular, namely, his Irish heritage of reels and jigs on the one hand, the styles of Eastern music that he explored in his ethnic studies on the other. …His music was not considered forbidding in the way that the music of the “austere” Copland was. Dissonance was by no means the only thing that alienated people from modern music. (Berger, Arthur. Reflections of An American Composer. CA: University of California, 2002, pp 15-16)

The vision for a Communist avant garde would not truly end here, but, particularly in music, most cultural workers in this Popular Front period saw the need for art forms which held distinctly American aesthetic values. The work of the Composers Collective, if shunned in this period, offered inspiration to new generations of composers and performers who saw the need for their art to be as radical as their politics in the years to come.

The Americanization of Communist Song

As one might expect, the Party’s (and wider Left’s) acceptance of folk song and push toward peoples’ music also saw the Workers Music League transform into the American Music League. The Communist Party leaders saw that a familiar approach to socialist ideals would be able to reach the masses in way that European-fashioned talk of ‘proletariat revolution’ never could. Coming off of a quite revolutionary period, really since the Party’s 1919 founding, Communists needed to develop this new approach not only for the purposes of outreach to workers, but within inner-Party discussions as well; this was not just a policy change, but more of a philosophy change. A 1936 gathering in New York entitled “What is Americanism? A Symposium on Marxism and the American Tradition” explored this notion and the means required to build such a specifically American vision of communism. One of the speakers was theorist Theodore Dreiser who suggested that if “this powerful emotional force of Americanism” will aid in the expected transition from capitalism to socialism, then Party policy should immediately adapt and make specific use of terminology and form seen as commonplace and avoid all connections to foreign associations.

Noted literary critic Newton Arvin also spoke at this event, describing as the essential point of Americanism a “radical democratic and individual secularism”. He added, “Only socialism now promises to make possible a democratic and secular culture in which all individuals may be genuinely free and genuinely human, and far from spelling an abrupt past, it will to this extent be the only conceivable realization of it”. The very ingredient they sought, according to Arvin, was inherent in the essence of an American view of Marxism. (Partisan Review and Anvil 3, April 1936; source: Lieberman, Robbie, My Song is My Weapon: People’s Songs, American Communism and the Politics of Culture, 1930-1950, page 40)

In this regard, the American Music League introduced folk-style songs in the English language to both its choruses (including the American People’s Chorus) and its audiences alike, even if initially presenting these in formal, arranged settings. The influence of the AML and similar groups set the stage for the folk revival to come, particularly as more and more familiar US folk songs were introduced into the repertoire. Slowly, the fourth wall of the stage was dissolved and audience members began to sing along at concerts. Then there was no turning back. The Left’s involvement in Popular Front activities both led and complimented the rise of the Americanism which accompanied the Roosevelt Administration’s gains; across the country, people were celebrating their nation with its own music and art, and the Party engaged in this wholeheartedly.

In 1936, song collector Lawrence Gellert, in collaboration with Siegmeister, compiled Negro Songs of Protest, which must have been viewed as a highly dangerous document by the reactionaries of the 1930s. Gellert (brother of noted Communist artist Hugo) who’d been through the south recording African-American musicians for several years, had regularly been publishing articles in the Left press about his findings. The serious desire to understand and partake in the southern tradition of dissent embodied in the Black cultural experience--as opposed to music simply speaking of the mountains and plains—had an unexpected affect. The new focus on African American songs of struggle fortified the drive to organize workers in the region. Robin Kelley wrote of the southern CIO drives of the period in a piece in Hammer and Hoe magazine in the late 1930s:

Rooted in the same gospel past that begat Party songs such as “The Scottsboro Boys” and “We Got a Song”, CIO members added familiar spirituals such as “Hold the Fort” and “We Shall Not Be Moved” to the union’s vast repertoire, frequently altering the lyrics. During the late 1930s SWOC even had its own labor vocal group known as the Bessemer Big Four Quartet. Made up of Black gospel singers who had sung with the West Hyland Jubilee Singers during the 1920s, the Bessemer Big Four Quartet performed at union meetings and was heard occasionally on local radio broadcasts. (Hammer and Hoe, circa late 1930s, unspecified date or author; source: Cohen, Ronald D, and Dave Samuelson, accompanying book to compact disc collection ‘Songs for Political Action’, Bear Family Records,1996)

Not ‘is it good music?’ but ‘what is it good for?’

An indication of the impact of the Popular Front on radicals and on the Communist Party’s support of President Roosevelt was the fact that Charles Seeger, by 1936, was already an employee of the federal government, director of the Music Unit section of the Resettlement Administration, aiding migrating Southerners as they moved up and out of the Dustbowl. Into the later ‘30s, he became a director of the larger Works Progress Administration’s Music Project where he dispatched cultural field workers to poor communities to establish cultural programs. As part of his instruction to staff, he wrote a boldly collectivist manifesto which declared that music not as an end in itself, but a means to an end. He also advocated strongly for the place of popular and folk music and wrote that the role of a cultural field worker should focus on creating leadership within the communities they worked within, towards the goal of democratic actions via the music:

      The Purposes of Music

      1) Music, as any art, is not an end in itself but a means to an end.

      2) To make music is the essential thing; to listen to it is accessory.

      3) Music as a group activity is more important than music as an individual accomplishment.

      4) Every person is musical; music can be associated with most human activity, to the advantage to both parties to the association.

      5) The musical culture of the nation is, then, to be estimated upon the extent of participation of the whole population rather than upon extent of the virtuosity of as fraction of it.

      6) The basis for musical culture is the vernacular of the broad mass of the people—its traditional (often called “folk”) idiom; popular music and professional music are elaborate superstructures built upon the common base.

      7) There is no ground for the quarrel between the various idioms and styles, provided proper relationship between them is maintained---pop need not be scorned nor professional music artificially stimulated, nor folk music stamped out or sentimentalized.

      8) The point of departure for any worker new to a community should be the tastes and capabilities actually existent in the group; and the direction of the activities introduced should be more toward the development of local leadership than toward dependence upon outside help.

      9) The main question then should not be, “is it good music?”, but “what is it good for?”; and if it bids fair to aid in the welding of the people into more independent, capable, and democratic action, it must be approved.

      10) With these larger ends ever in view, musicians will frequently fid themselves engaged in other kinds of activity, among the other arts; this however, promotes a well-rounded social function in the community. (Seeger, Charles Lewis, “The Purposes of Music”, 1936; source: Seeger, Pete. Where Have All the Flowers Gone. 1993, MA: Sing Out)

1937 saw Timely Records issue a second collection of labor songs, a follow-up to the collection featuring Mordecai Bauman just two years prior. But with the change in cultural focus, the albums seem to have a vast distance between them. Bauman returned, yes, but the vocal group behind him this time was the rather amateur Manhattan Chorus, the membership of which was never identified in any documentation. The discordant harmonies of Eisler were no where to be found here; replacing the Euro-inspired modernist proletariat melodies are quite American sounding tunes which were designed to translate much easier to the worker; and they did (still, it is never explained as to why the chorus on the recordings seemed to stumble over such simple passages). Songs in this collection are “On the Picket Line,” the popular labor anthem “Hold the Fort,” Joe Hill’s “Casey Jones,” Maurice Sugar’s “Sit Down in a medley with “Hand Me My Union Card,” the classic “We Shall Not Be Moved” in a medley with “Join the Union” and Ralph Chaplin’s immortal “Solidarity Forever.”

As before, Elie Siegmeister acted as musical director, but Bauman had made his displeasure known. Like some of his compatriots, he wanted to have a clean, more professional sounding chorus singing with him. But the welcoming quality of the familiar and digestible songs, recorded in a nonplussed style, spoke volumes about the mission of creating a mass singing movement. While it may be odd to hear trained baritone Bauman declamating with care and vibrato such lines as “picket on the picket line”, the album offered the populace songs they could emulate at home---or at the next strike action. On that note, Communist Party functionaries saw the collection as a means of teaching US workers how to sing together toward radical ends. The Daily Worker’s review, as expected, was excellent:

Daily, on picket lines and demonstrations, the songs serve for mass singing. We have heard the records played at demonstrations and at diverse sorts of gatherings. Their effect is prompt and unfailing (McCall, Martin aka Max Margulis, record review, the Daily Worker, April 1937; source: Cohen, Ronald D, and Dave Samuelson, accompanying book to compact disc collection ‘Songs for Political Action’, Bear Family Records,1996, page 12)

1938 brought forth further Communist-associated mass singing opportunities. The Party’s tenth national convention included a section on the program in which Elie Siegmeister conducted a large chorus in folk song performance. From it grew the American Ballad Singers, an ensemble specializing in folk songs. And in this same period, Earl Robinson stood as musical director of the chorus of the Party’s International Workers Order (a workers’ fraternal organization, similar to the Workman’s Circle, which offered health coverage among other things), the IWO People’s Chorus. Its repertoire consisted entirely of folk music and encouraged participation. The Daily Worker wrote:

One of the most exciting manifestations of the growing People’s Front movement is the development of a real people’s culture in every artistic field. (Daily Worker, 1939, specifics unknown; source: ibid, page 13)

The Communist Party had maintained, during the entire Popular Front period, a leading voice in not only its activism but in its role as the primary founding and organizing entity for cultural work collectives. Artists of conscience came to the fellow traveler groups as well as formal CP associations in droves. But the late 1930s was a trying period for the Party as news of the Stalin trials and purges moved out of the realm of hushed disbelief and into the reality of global news broadcasts. Many protest artists who were integral parts of Party-led Popular Front groups such as the League of American Writers, the American People’s Chorus, the New Dance Group and the Workers Film and Photo League, became disenchanted and rapidly departed. Inner-Party turmoil and news of the Moscow Show Trials were enough to wound the Communist Party’s wide-spread cultural programs, but not actually bring about their demise. Still, the decade would end with a crushing blow. What was actually devastating to the Party was the polarizing Hitler-Stalin Pact of ‘39, producing at once overwhelming loss of the CPUSA’s Popular Front clout and the destruction of its alliances. Cultural workers in the ranks, like other members, tried to find rationale for the Soviet pact with the Nazis, an alliance which stood in obvious opposition to Marxist ideals; spiritually broken, most could not reconcile this. Members that remained with the Party did so with a vengeance and a new wave of revolutionary furor became the order of the day, shunning the alliances they’d worked so hard to build. For some Communists, this signaled a return to pre-Popular Front times, in which Communists wore their intense radicalism proudly and could refute the niceties of the past few years. For others, this was a giant step backward and an end to the solidarity, trust and progressive reform--- as well as seeming end to their honorable fight against fascism.

Six Songs for Democracy

During this period, while the Communist Party experienced unrest within its membership and of course on the part of the Popular Front, but it also continued to engage in a form of growth within its arts philosophy. The Spanish Civil War had been a rallying cry for Leftists in all quarters to speak out—or for many, to voluntarily take up arms against the fascists. Cultural workers, too, became involved in this battle of global proportions. It is a testament to the strength of the Party cultural workers in the US that they would engage in a project in honor of the Spanish Civil War during the period of the Nazi-Soviet Pact. The record set ‘Six Songs for Democracy’, issued by Keynote Records on July 4, 1940, it featured the brash, unrepentantly radical vocals of Ernst Busch, Berlin theatre singer and a powerful ally of Brecht and Eisler. His politics were matched by those of Brecht and he was forced to leave Berlin along with the rest in the playwright’s circle as the Nazis closed in. His place as the voice in this collection of Spanish Civil War songs is notable.

‘Six Songs for Democracy’ was a collection of international songs of revolution, actually recorded some two years prior, but released one year before the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. As is indicated in the liner notes of Erich Weinert, writing then from Barcelona in 1938, this collection of songs was composed on the battlefield, and reproduced here to inspire the fight-back all over:

Whenever, in the history of the world, freedom has arisen against unfreedom, justice against injustice, the spirit of the people’s uprising has been most clearly and splendidly reflected in its songs, which grew upon the soil of righteous indignation. They were written by the poets who sided with the people; and where there were no such poets the people wrote them themselves.

Innumerable songs arose during the war of the Spanish people against its enemies. And Spanish was not their only language; for the soldiers of the International Brigades contributed songs, in their own languages, which lived and became popular songs with the Spaniards.

In this album Ernst Busch has recorded some of the best and most popular songs of the 11th International Brigade, making the recordings under the most difficult circumstances. These records could not be made during times of peace. How often did the recording or manufacture have to be interrupted because Franco’s bombs were crashing down on Barcelona or the supply of electricity cut off!

But that lends these songs a peculiar charm. For they were created in the midst of the battle, on the firing line, as it were. We trust that they will again awaken, in the outside world, some of the fighting spirit, this fire, out of which they were born. (Weinert, Erich, ‘Six Songs for Democracy’ booklet, Keynote Records, 1940)

The songs in the collection are “Los Cuatro Generales” (“The Four Generals”), written to the tune of a Spanish folksong (unknown lyricist); the anthemic “Song of the United Front” by Brecht and Eisler—a big production number here, with Busch powerfully singing the song’s blatantly radical verses in various languages; “Song of the International Brigades” by Erich Weinert and Espinosa-Palacio; “The Thaelmann Column” by Karl Ernst and Peter Daniel; “Hans Beimler” by Ernst Busch to a tune by nineteenth century composer Freidrich Silcher; and “The Peat-Bog Soldiers”, a legendary song of the Borgermoor concentration camp, near Papenburg, Germany, sang by prisoners on a work detail. At the time, the actual composers’ names were unknown, so they go uncredited in this collection. The music was actually written by Rudi Goguel and the words by Johann Esser and Wolfgang Langhoff, in 1933, during their internment. The Nazi guards were initially unaware of the dissent expressed in these lyrics, mistaking the tune for a common work song. The prisoners sang it incessantly, while working grueling hours digging for peat and while marching to and from the bog, with tattered, cold, wet boots and clothing ill-fit for the brutal winter. However, once the Nazis became aware of the true nature of the song, they forbade it. The song was saved when a local shoe maker agreed to smuggle a copy out, hidden within the hollowed heel of a shoe. Among Leftists, this song stands out as one of the most important examples of the power of music as not only a dissident voice, but as a vehicle for survival.

The booklet which accompanied ‘Six Songs for Democracy’ also had an introductory statement by Paul Robeson. He wrote:

Here are the songs recorded during heavy bombardment, by men who were themselves fighting for the “Rights of Man”.

Valiant and heroic was the part played by the International Brigade in the glorious struggle of the Spanish Republic. I was there in the course of that struggle and my faith in man—in the eventual attaining of his freedom—was strengthened a thousand fold. This album helps sustain that faith. It’s a necessity. (Robeson, Paul, ‘Six Songs for Democracy’ booklet, Keynote Records, 1940)

*****

Though many of the composers associated with the Communist Party remained active in the Popular Front period, the folk orientation did not attract academic musicians. Much of the early ‘30s repertoire of the Composers Collective remained shelved as up and coming musicians came into the fold and focused on the more immediate folk sounds. Woody Guthrie would soon take his place as the “Communist Joe Hill” that Michael Gold had called for; groups like the Almanac Singers would morph into the popular conscience.

The irony of the Modern/Folk debate is that the experimental, radical nature of the avant garde touches artists on a visceral level—it brings forth new voices, new visions and can serve as a daring affront to the status quo. The modern forms created the boldest divorce from the status quo yet seen: dark commentaries on real life, coloring well outside of the lines. This was the apex of creativity and the establishment of the New Objectivity within the arts. As the cultural institutions which shunned such artistic boldness were embedded in the bourgeois world, the proponents of modernism should have been natural to revolutionary politics. And yet the movement’s accent on the modern, which advanced the creative visions of the masses even as it advanced art itself, was not continued—not even as secondary to the folk revival, with its automatic appeal. It would appear that there was room for both yet Left music programming became rather singular in scope.

The sound argument that familiar art forms were more digestible to workers was put forth, however, such attempts to rein in artists became a battle better left un-fought. The rigid Party line which became carried out by Messers Jerome and Gold established an intricate national arts structure, yet it also dampened creativity and strained relationships with progressive artists. The Party was in this era a component of a strong Communist International, which was by then firmly in the grip of the Stalin regime. Stalin’s emphasis on ‘socialist realism’ was in fierce opposition to modernist experimentation and it soon became strict policy across all Communist cultural fields. It is arguable that, as a means to quell dissent of any kind, Stalinist art was as bereft of revolution as the US commercial media.

The greatest irony is that during this same “Americanization” period of the Party, an influx of Leftist German expatriates flooded into this nation. These included expressionist painters, experimental film makers, atonal composers and cutting-edge poets and playwrights; the wealth of intellectuals included Bertolt Brecht and Hanns Eisler of course, as well as Kurt Weill, GW Pabst, Fritz Lang and many others who’d earned the highest respect in the movement for so many years. They were welcomed as authorities on the use of art as a weapon in the struggle against fascism, but their local counter-parts by then had no such adulation for their own experimental forays. While gifted cultural workers would continue to flow through Party-affiliated organizations, periodicals and events, over the years, others felt confined and quickly came into conflict with the established order. The debate raged on for several more years but the dye was cast.

One is reminded of the quandary experienced by John Reed, a founder of the American Communist movement. Amidst the fallout of the Russian Revolution he embarked on a cultural mission with the Comintern and quickly came to see the need for an unfettered artistic voice. Reed declared that in the absence of dissent there is no art…there is no revolution.

Photo: Ruth Crawford Seeger and family around 1937. The Seeger family was honored for its contributions to American music by the Library of Congress in 2007.