The Revolutionary Party & Its Role in the Struggle for Socialism

Editors’s Note: Can spontaneous revolts make revolution? That is the question. And while an all-out uprising can indeed topple a tyrant, without a vanguard revolutionary party, “the system” (the underlying web of social power relations) is bound to remain in place. In the essay below, Jim Cannon, a veteran fighter for socialism and a Trotskyst, analyzes the value of organizing a vanguard party. —PG

James P. Cannon

V. Lenin at his office in the Kremlin, 1918. As usual, perusing the papers to understand contemporary events.

First Written: 1967
Published: International Socialist Review, Vol.28 No.5, September-October 1967, and later included in the anthology 50 Years of World Revolution (1917-1967)(Merit Publishers: New York, 1968).
Source: Fighting for Socialism in the ‘American Century’ © Resistance Books ©2000 permission granted by Resistance Books for use by the James P. Cannon Internet Archive in 2003.
TranscriptionHTML Markup: David Walters

The greatest contribution to the arsenal of Marxism since the death of Engels in 1895 was Lenin’s conception of the vanguard party as the organiser and director of the proletarian revolution. That celebrated theory of organisation was not, as some contend, simply a product of the special Russian conditions of his time and restricted to them. It is deep-rooted in two of the weightiest realities of the 20th century: the actuality of the workers’ struggle for the conquest of power, and the necessity of creating a leadership capable of carrying it through to the end.

Recognising that our epoch was characterised by imperialist wars, proletarian revolutions, and colonial uprisings, Lenin deliberately set out at the beginning of this century to form a party able to turn such cataclysmic events to the advantage of socialism. The triumph of the Bolsheviks in the upheavals of 1917, and the durability of the Soviet Union they established, attested to Lenin’s foresight and the merits of his methods of organisation. His party stands out as the unsurpassed prototype of what a democratic and centralised leadership of the workers, true to Marxist principles and applying them with courage and skill, can be and do.

Limited as it was to a single country, the epoch-making achievement of the Bolsheviks did not conclusively dispose of further dispute over the nature of the revolutionary leadership. That controversy has continued ever since. Fifty years afterwards there is no lack of sceptics inside the socialist ranks who doubt or deny that a party of the Leninist type is either necessary or desirable. And even where Lenin’s theory is clearly understood and convincing, the problem of the vanguard party remains as urgent as ever, since it has yet to be solved in the everyday struggle against the old order.

A correct appreciation of the vanguard party and its indispensable role depends upon understanding the crucial importance of the subjective factors in the proletarian revolution. On a broad historical scale, and in the final accounting, economic conditions are decisive in shaping the development of society. This truth of historical materialism does not negate the fact that the political and psychological processes unfolding within the working masses more directly and immediately affect the course, the pace, and the outcome of the national and world revolution. Once the objective material preconditions for revolutionary activity by the workers have reached a certain point of maturity, their will and consciousness, expressed through the intervention of the organised vanguard, can become the key component in determining the outcome of the class struggle.

The Leninist theory of the vanguard party is based on two factors: the heterogeneity of the working class and the exceptionally conscious character of the movement for socialism. The revolutionising of the proletariat and oppressed people in general is a complex, prolonged, and contradictory affair. Under class society and capitalism, the toilers are stratified and divided in many ways; they live under very dissimilar conditions and are at disparate stages of economic and political development. Their culture is inadequate and their outlook narrow. Consequently they do not and cannot all at once, en masse and to the same degree, arrive at a clear and comprehensive understanding of their real position in society or the political course they must follow to end the evils they suffer from and make their way to a better system. Still less can they learn quickly and easily how to act most effectively to protect and promote their class interests.

This irregular self-determination of the class as a whole is the primary cause for a vanguard party. It has to be constituted by those elements of the class and their spokesmen who grasp the requirements for revolutionary action and proceed to their implementation sooner than the bulk of the proletariat on both a national and international scale. Here also is the basic reason that the vanguard always begins as a minority of its class, a “splinter group”. The earliest formations of advanced workers committed to socialism, and their intellectual associates propagating its views, must first organise themselves around a definite body of scientific doctrine, class tradition, and experience, and work out a correct political program in order then to organise and lead the big battalions of revolutionary forces.

The vanguard party should aim at all times to reach, move, and win the broadest masses. Yet, beginning with Lenin’s Bolsheviks, no such party has ever started out with the backing of the majority of the class and as its recognised head. It originates, as a rule, as a group of propagandists concerned with the elaboration and dissemination of ideas. It trains, teaches, and tempers cadres around that program and outlook which they take to the masses for consideration, adoption, action, and verification.

The size and influence of their organisation is never a matter of indifference to serious revolutionists. Nonetheless, quantitative indices alone cannot be taken as the decisive determinants for judging the real nature of a revolutionary grouping. More fundamental are such qualitative features as the program and relationship with the class whose interests it formulates, represents, and fights for.

“The interests of the class cannot be formulated otherwise than in the shape of a program; the program cannot be defended otherwise than by creating the party”, wrote Trotsky in What Next?— “The class, taken by itself, is only raw material for exploitation. The proletariat acquires an independent role only at that moment when, from a social class in itself, it becomes a political class for itself. This cannot take place otherwise than through the medium of a party. The party is that historical organ by means of which the class becomes class conscious.”1

Marxism teaches that the revolution against capitalism and the socialist reconstruction of the old world can be accomplished only through conscious, collective action by the workers themselves. The vanguard party is the highest expression and irreplaceable instrument of that class consciousness at all stages of the world revolutionary process. In the prerevolutionary period the vanguard assembles and welds together the cadres who march ahead of the main army but seek at all points to maintain correct relations with it. The vanguard grows in numbers and influence and comes to the fore in the course of the mass struggle for supremacy which it aspires to bring to a successful conclusion. After the overthrow of the old ruling powers, the vanguard leads the people in the tasks of defending and constructing the new society.

A political organisation capable of handling such colossal tasks cannot arise spontaneously or haphazardly; it has to be continuously, consistently and consciously built. It is not only foolish but fatal to take a lackadaisical attitude toward party-building or its problems. The bitter experiences of so many revolutionary opportunities aborted, mismanaged, and ruined over the past half century by inadequate or treacherous leaderships has incontestably demonstrated that nonchalance in this vital area is a sure formula for disorientation and defeat.

Lenin’s superb capacities as a revolutionary leader were best shown in his insistence upon the utmost consciousness in all aspects of party-building, from capital issues of theory and policy to the meticulous attention given to small details of daily work. Other parties and kinds of parties are content to amble and stumble along, dealing empirically and in a makeshift manner with problems as they arise. Lenin introduced system and planning into the construction and activity of the revolutionary party on the road to power, not only into the economy such a party was later called upon to direct. He left as little as possible to chance and improvisation. Proceeding from a formulated appraisal of the given stage of the struggle, he singled out the main tasks at hand and sought to discover and devise the best ways and means of solving them in accord with the long-range goals of world socialism.

The vanguard party, guided by the methods of scientific socialism and totally dedicated to the welfare of the toiling masses and all victims of oppression, must always be in principled opposition to the guardians and institutions of class society. These traits can immunise it against the infections, and armour it against the pressures, of alien class influences. But the Leninist party must be, above all, a combat party intent on organising the masses for effective action leading to the taking of power.

That overriding aim determines the character of the party and priority of its tasks. It cannot be a talking shop for aimless and endless debate. The purpose of its deliberations, discussions, and internal disputes is to arrive at decisions for action and systematic work. Neither can it be an infirmary for the care and cure of sick souls, nor itself a model of the future socialist society. It is a band of revolutionary fighters, ready, willing, and able to meet and defeat all enemies of the people and assist the masses in clearing the way to the new world.

Much of the New Left, imbued with an anarchistic or existentialist spirit, denigrate or dismiss professional leadership in a revolutionary movement. So do some disillusioned workers and ex-radicals, who have come to equate conscientious dedication to full-time leadership with bureaucratic domination and privilege. They fail to understand the interrelations between the masses, the revolutionary class, the party, and its leadership. Just as the revolutionary class leads the nation forward, so the vanguard party leads the class. However, the role of leadership does not stop there. The party itself needs leadership. It is impossible for a revolutionary party to provide correct leadership without the right sort of leaders. This leadership performs the same functions within the vanguard party as that party does for the working class.

Its cadres remain the backbone of the party, in periods of contraction as well as expansion. The vitality of such a party is certified by the capacity to extend and replenish its cadres and reproduce qualified leaders from one generation to another.

The vanguard party cannot be proclaimed by sectarian fiat or be created overnight. Its leadership and membership are selected and sifted out by tests and trials in the mass movement, and in the internal controversies and sharp conflicts over the critical policy questions raised at every turn in the class struggle. It is not possible to step over, and even less possible to leap over, the preliminary stage in which the basic cadres of the party organise and reorganise themselves in preparation for, and in connection with, the larger job of organising and winning over broad sections of the masses.

The decisive role that kind of party can play in the making of history was dramatically exemplified by the Bolshevik cadres in the first world war and the first proletarian revolution. These cadres degenerated or were destroyed and replaced after Lenin’s death by the totalitarian apparatus of the Soviet bureaucracy fashioned under Stalin. The importance of such cadres was negatively confirmed by the terrible defeats of the socialist forces in other countries, extending from the Germany of 1918 to the Spain of 1936-1939, because of the opportunism, defects, or defaults of the labour leaderships.

Contrary to the opinions of some other students of his remarkable career, I believe that Trotsky’s most valuable contribution to the world revolutionary movement in the struggle against Stalinism and centrism was his defence and enrichment of the Leninist principles of the party, culminating in the decision to create new parties of the Fourth International along these lines. Trotsky was from 1903 to 1917 opposed in theory and practice to Lenin’s methods of building a revolutionary party. It is a tribute to his exemplary objectivity and capacity for growth that he wholeheartedly came over to Lenin’s conceptions in 1917, when he saw them verified by the developments of the revolution at home and abroad.

From that point to his last day Trotsky never for a moment wavered in his adherence to these methods of party-building. After correcting his mistake in that department, he became, after Lenin’s death in 1924, the foremost exponent and developer of the Bolshevik traditions of the vanguard party in national and international politics.

Most people think that Trotsky’s genius was best displayed in his work as theorist of the permanent revolution, as the head of the October uprising, or as creator and commander of the Red Army. I believe that he exercised his powers of revolutionary Marxist leadership most eminently not during the rise but during the recession of the Russian and world revolutions, when, as leader of the Left Opposition, he undertook to save the program and perspectives of the Bolshevik Party against the Stalinist reaction, and then founded the Fourth International once the Comintern had decisively disclosed its bankruptcy in 1933. The purpose of the new International was to create and coordinate new revolutionary mass parties of the world working class.

Trotsky summarised his views on the momentous importance of the vanguard party in the “Transitional Program” he drafted for its founding congress in 1938. He asserted that “the historical crisis of mankind is reduced to the crisis of the revolutionary leadership”. The principal strategic task for our whole epoch is “overcoming the contradiction between the maturity of objective revolutionary conditions and the immaturity of the proletariat and its vanguard (the confusion and disappointment of the older generation, the inexperience of the younger generation)”.[1]

He pointed out that the vanguard party was the sole agency by which this burning political problem of the imperialist phase of world capitalism could be solved. More specifically, he stated categorically: “… the crisis of the proletarian leadership, having become the crisis in mankind’s culture, can be resolved only by the Fourth International”, the World Party of the Socialist Revolution.[2]

Have the major experiences in the struggle for socialism, since this was written, spoken for or against Trotsky’s pregnant political generalisations? Has the crisis of mankind, or the crisis of the proletarian leadership, been overcome?

The fact is it has grown ever deeper and more acute with the advent of nuclear weapons and the failures of the established parties to overthrow capitalist imperialism and promote the progress of socialism.

In the revolutionary resurgence in Western Europe opened by Mussolini’s deposition in July 1943, which signalled the eclipse of fascism, to the ousting of the Communists from the coalition cabinets in France and Italy in 1947, the Stalinist and Social Democratic parties repeated their previous treachery and impotence by refusing to pursue a revolutionary policy directed toward the conquest of power in a highly revolutionary situation. These defaults and defeats permitted capitalism to be restabilised in the second most important sector of that system.

In the colonial countries from 1945 on, Communist leaderships, handcuffed or misled by Kremlin diplomacy, have been responsible for many setbacks and disasters. These have stretched from the compromise of the Indochinese Communists with the French imperialists in 1945 to political subservience to such representatives of the “progressive” bourgeoisie as Nehru in India, Kassim in Iraq, Goulart in Brazil, and Sukarno in Indonesia. The terrible reverses of the colonial freedom struggle, culminating in the Indonesian butchery of 1965, owing to such false leadership, provide powerful evidence that the need for new and better leadership is as urgent in the “Third World” as elsewhere.

The conquest of power by the Communist parties of Yugoslavia, China, North Korea, and North Vietnam has induced not a few radicals and ex-Trotskyists to assume or assert that Lenin’s teachings on the party, and Trotsky’s reaffirmation of them, are out of date. These developments prove, they argue, that it is a waste of time, a useless undertaking, to try to build independent revolutionary parties of the Leninist type as Trotsky advised, since the exploiters can be overthrown with other kinds of parties, especially if these are supported by a powerful workers’ state like the Soviet Union or China.

What substance do these arguments have? It should first be observed that Trotsky himself foresaw and allowed for such a possibility. In the “Transitional Program” he wrote: “… one cannot categorically deny in advance the theoretical possibility that, under the influence of completely exceptional circumstances (war, defeat, financial crash, mass revolutionary pressure, etc.), the petty-bourgeois parties including the Stalinists may go further than they themselves wish along the road to a break with the bourgeoisie.”[3]

In the postwar years these exceptional conditions in the more backward countries have been the prostration and collapse of the most corrupt colonial bourgeoisies, the weaknesses of the old imperialist powers in Europe and of Japan, and the mighty upsurge of the indigenous peasant and proletarian masses. Certain Communist leaderships were confronted with the alternatives of being crushed by reaction, outflanked by the revolutionary forces, or taking command of the national liberation and anticapitalist struggles. After some hesitation and vacillation, and against the Kremlin’s advice, the Communist leaders in Yugoslavia, China, and Vietnam took the latter course and led the proletariat and peasantry to power.

In its resolution on “The Dynamics of World Revolution Today”, adopted at the 1963 Reunification Congress, the Fourth International has taken into account this variant of political development as follows: “The weakness of the enemy in the backward countries has opened the possibility of coming to power with a blunted instrument.”[4]

However, this factual observation does not dispose of the entire question, or even touch its most important aspects. The deformations of the regimes emanating from the revolutionary movements headed by the Stalinised parties, and the opportunism and sectarianism exhibited by their leaderships since assuming power, notably in Eastern Europe, Yugoslavia, and China, demonstrate that the need for organising genuine Marxist parties is not ended with the overthrow of capitalist domination. The building of such political formations can become equally urgent as the result of the bureaucratic degeneration and deformation of postcapitalist states in an environment where imperialism remains predominant and backwardness prevails.

This was first recognised in the case of the Soviet Union by Trotsky in 1933. That political conclusion retains full validity for all those workers’ states governed by parties that fail to uphold or foster a democratic internal regime or pursue an international revolutionary line. The experience of the Polish and Hungarian uprisings of 1956, and restriction of the de-Stalinisation processes in the Soviet Union, alike demonstrate the need for an independent Marxist-Leninist party to lead the antibureaucratic revolution to the end.

The keynote of the reunification document is that “the building of new mass revolutionary parties remains the central strategic task” in all three sectors of the international struggle for socialism: the workers’ states, the colonial regions, and above all in the advanced capitalisms.

If Yugoslavia and China are cited to show that any party will do in a pinch, the example of Cuba is often brought forward as proof that no party at all is required in the struggle for power, or that any kind of improvised political outfit will do the job. First of all, this involves a misconstruction of the political history of the Cuban Revolution. The July 26 Movement had a small, close-knit nucleus of leaders, subjected to military discipline by the imperatives of armed combat. They had to construct a broader leadership in the heat of civil war against Batista. Once the Cuban freedom fighters had become sovereign in the country, they found not only that they could not dispense with a vanguard party, but that they desperately needed one. They have therefore proceeded to construct one along Marxist lines and are still engaged in that task nine years after their victory.

Wouldn’t their difficulties have been lessened before and after the taking of power if they had been able to enter the revolution with a more powerful cadre and party? But the default of the Cuban Stalinists foreclosed that more favourable possibility. Moreover, it should be recognised that, since the Cuban experience, both the imperialists and their native satellites under Washington’s direction are much more alerted and prompt to take repressive measures to nip rebellion in the bud.

The circumstances of the struggle for power in the highly industrialised countries are vastly different from those in colonial lands, where the native upper classes are feeble, isolated, and discredited, and where the impetus of the unsolved tasks of the democratic revolution reinforces the claims of the wage workers. It would be foolish and fatal to hold that the workers in the imperialist strongholds will be able to get rid of capitalism under the direction of the bureaucratised, corrupt, and ossified Social Democratic or Communist parties, or any centrist shadow of them. Here the injunction to build revolutionary Marxist parties is absolutely unconditional.

The difficulties encountered by the Trotskyist vanguard over the past three decades show that there are no easy or simple recipes for solving the multiple problems posed by this necessity. The major obstacle to building alternative leaderships in most of these countries is the presence of powerful and wealthy Labor, Social Democratic, or Communist organisations which exercise bureaucratic control over the labour movement, but for traditional reasons continue to exact a certain loyalty from the workers. Under such conditions it is often advisable for the original corps of revolutionary Marxists to enter and work for extended periods within such mass parties.

It should never for a moment be forgotten that the prime objective of such a tactical entry is the creation, consolidation, and expansion of the initial cadres and the growth of ties with the most advanced elements. It is not an end in itself. The immediate aim is to transform a propaganda group into a force capable of influencing, organising, and directing broad masses in action. The ultimate goal is to create a new mass party of the working class along this road.

Experience has shown that there are many pitfalls in implementing an entrist tactic. As a result of prolonged immersion in reformist work and overadaptation to a centrist environment, the fibre of the revolutionary cadre may become corroded and its perspectives dimmed and even lost. Total immersion in such a milieu has many liabilities and dangers. It is therefore essential that entrist work be complemented by a sector of open public work through which the full program and policies of the Fourth International can at all times be made accessible to the advanced workers.

It is also possible (We have seen such cases!) for entrism to be conducted in an impatient and inflexible way. Then, when adequate results are not quickly forthcoming, the group can prematurely revert to an independent organisational status. If persisted in, such a sectarian course can, under cover of a falsetto ultraleft rhetoric, lead to self-isolation and impotence. It can help the reformist and Communist bureaucrats by leaving them in uncontested command of the situation and narrowing the channels of contact and communication between the revolutionary Marxists and the best militants in the traditional parties.

Both through independent or entrist activities, as the given situation warranted, the American Trotskyists have been busy building a revolutionary Marxist party in the United States ever since they discarded the prospect of reforming the Communist Party in 1933. The Socialist Workers Party regards itself as the legitimate inheritor of the finest traditions of the socialist movement of Debs, the Socialist Labor Party of De Leon, the IWW of St. John and Haywood, and the early Communist Party. It has drawn upon and benefited from the good and bad experiences of these pioneer attempts to create the party needed by the American workers to lead their revolution.

The history of American communism since its inception in 1919 has been a record of struggle for the right kind of party. All the other problems have been related to this central issue.

Everything that has been done since October 1917 for the advancement of socialism in this citadel of world capitalism and counterrevolution has been governed by this necessity of building the vanguard party, and whatever will be accomplished in the future will, in my opinion, revolve around it. The key to the victory of socialism in the United States will be the fusion of American power, above all the potential power of its working class, with Russian ideas, first and foremost the organisational principles of Lenin’s Bolshevism.

The Leninist party proved indispensable in Russia, where the belated bourgeoisie was a feeble social and political force. It will be a million times more necessary in America, the home of the strongest, richest, and most ruthless exploiting class. The Bolshevik conception of the party and its leadership originated and was first put to the test in the weakest and most backward of capitalist countries. I venture to predict that it will become naturalised and find its fullest application in the struggle for socialism in the most developed country of capitalism.

The revolutionists here confront the most highly organised concentration of economic, political, military, and cultural power in history. These mighty forces of reaction cannot and will not be overthrown without a movement of the popular masses, black and white, which has a centralised, disciplined, principled, experienced Marxist leadership at its head.

It is impossible to stumble into a successful revolution in the United States. It will have to be organised and directed by people and a party that have at their command all the theory, knowledge, resources, and lessons accumulated by the world working class. Its know-how and organisation in politics and action must match and surpass that of its enemies.

Those who claim that a Leninist party is irrelevant or unneeded in the advanced capitalisms are 100% wrong. On the contrary, such a party is an absolutely essential condition and instrument for the promotion and triumph of the socialist revolution in the United States, the paragon of world capitalism. Just as the overturn inaugurated by the Bolsheviks under Lenin and Trotsky in 1917 was the first giant step in the world socialist revolution and renovation, so the Leninist theory of the party, first vindicated by that event, will find its ultimate verification in the overthrow of imperialism in its central fortress and the establishment of a socialist regime with full democracy on American soil.

Nothing less than the fate of humanity hinges upon the speediest solution of the drawn-out crisis of proletarian leadership. This will have to be done under the banner and through the program of the parties of the Fourth International. The very physical existence of our species depends upon the prompt fulfilment of this supreme obligation. No greater task was ever shouldered by revolutionists of the Marxist school—and not too much time will be given by the monopolists and militarists at bay to carry it through.

On this fiftieth anniversary of the imperishable October Revolution, which has shaped and changed all our lives, our motto is: “To work with more energy toward that goal and win it for the good of mankind.”

Endnotes

[1] See The Transitional Program

[2] See The Transitional Program

[3] See The Transitional Program

[4] Dynamics of World Revolution Today (Pathfinder Press: New York, 1974), p.29.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

American Trotskyist and a leader of the Socialist Workers Party.

Born on February 11, 1890 in Rosedale, Kansas, he joined the Socialist Party of America (SPA) in 1908 and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in 1911. He was personally trained by “Big Bill” Haywood, a top IWW leader, and was an IWW organizer throughout the Midwest from 1912 through 1914.[1] Following his expulsion from the Communist Party USA in 1928, Cannon was national secretary of the Communist League of America, Workers Party of the United States and Socialist Workers Party until his retirement and move to California in 1953. He was national chairman emeritus of the SWP when he died in Los Angeles on August 21, 1974.

 

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Ernest Mandel On Vanguard Parties

Theory : Ernest Mandel Archive

Editor’s Note:  Mandel’s main thesis that you cannot have a spontaneous socialist revolution has been amply borne out in the last 36 months with serious “spontaneous” revolts in several countries of the Middle East (notably Egypt, Tunisia, and Bahrain) and Europe (France, Britain, Greece, and Spain), that eventually petered out with no discernible change in those nations’ underlying power structure. None of those revolts was able to topple the existing framework of social relations because they were largely “leaderless”, they lacked a tough, disciplined and politically sophisticated vanguard social formation to unify the forces and strategize in a more efficient and above all resilient way. Thus, at best, the henchman of the moment fell (i.e., Mubarak), or some ministers paid with their jobs,  but behind the new masks the status quo ante continues. —PG

Ernest Mandel | Originally Published by International Viewpoint

Ernest Mandel (5 April 1923 - 20 July 1995)

  

To approach the problem of parties, party-building, and the necessity of the revolutionary vanguard party, is to point to the peculiarities of a socialist revolution (or if you do not like the word “revolution,” a socialist transformation of bourgeois society).

The socialist revolution is going to be the first revolution in the history of mankind which tries to reshape society in a conscious way according to a plan. It does not go into all the details, of course, which depend on concrete conditions and on the changing material infrastructure of society. But at the very least it is based on a plan of what a classless society has to be and how you can get there. It is also the first revolution in history which needs a high level of activity and of self-organization of the whole toiling population, that is to say, the overwhelming majority of men and women in society. It is from these two key features of a socialist revolution that you can immediately draw a series of conclusions.

You cannot have a spontaneous socialist revolution. You cannot make a socialist revolution without really trying. And you cannot have a socialist revolution commandeered from the top, ordered around by some omniscient leader or group of leaders. You need both ingredients in a socialist revolution: the highest level of consciousness possible, and the highest level of self-organization and self-activity by the broadest possible segment of the population. All the problems of the relations between a vanguard organization and the masses stem from that basic contradiction.

If we look at the real world, the real development in bourgeois society for the last hundred and fifty years (more or less since the origin of the modern labor movement), we again see this striking contradiction. It helps us overcome one of the main disputes about the working class and the labor movement which has been going on a long time, and which is right in the middle of the political debate today. Is the working class an instrument for revolutionary social change? Is the working class integrated in bourgeois society? What has been its real role for the last hundred and fifty years? What does the historical balance sheet tell us about these questions?

The only conclusion you can draw from the real historical movement is that by and large, in day-to-day life, what Lenin called trade union consciousness dominates the working class. I would call it elementary class consciousness of the working class. This does not lead to permanent, day-to-day revolt against capitalism, but it is absolutely essential and necessary, as Marx pointed out many times, for an anticapitalist workers’ revolt to occur sometime. If the workers do not fight for higher wages, if they do not fight for a shorter workday, if they do not fight for, let us say it in a provocative way, day-to-day economic issues, they become demoralized slaves. With demoralized slaves you are never going to make a socialist revolution, or even to acquire elementary class solidarity. So they have to fight for their immediate demands. But the fight for these immediate demands does not lead them automatically and spontaneously to challenge the existence of bourgeois society.

The other side of the story is also true. Periodically, the workers do revolt against bourgeois society, not by a hundred, five hundred, or a thousand, but by the millions. After all, the history of the 20th century is the history of social revolutions. Anybody who denies that should read the history books again, not to mention the newspapers. There has been hardly a single year since 1917, and in a certain sense since 1905, without a revolution somewhere in the world in which the workers participated in a rather important way. It is true that they did not always constitute the majority of the revolution’s combatants.

But that is going to change because the working class has become a majority in society in practically all the important countries of the world. So periodically, the workers do revolt against bourgeois society, as the statistics of the last twenty years in Europe attest. There was a real workers’ challenge against the basic setup of capitalism in 1960-61 in Belgium, in 1968 in France, in 1968-69 in Italy, in 1974-75 in Portugal, partially in Spain in 1975-76. And what was going on in Poland in 1980-81, if not a challenge against capitalism, was certainly a challenge for socialism. So this is a completely different picture from a permanently passive, integrated, bourgeoisified working class. More than 45 million workers have actively participated in these struggles.

Coming out of all these basic conceptual distinctions we can conclude the necessity of a vanguard formation nearly immediately. You need a vanguard organization in order to overcome the dangerous potential brought about by the uneven development of class militancy and class consciousness.

If the workers would be at the highest point of militancy and consciousness all the time, you would not need a vanguard organization. But, unfortunately, they are not and cannot be there under capitalism. So you need a group of people who embody a permanently high level of militancy and activity, and a permanently high level of class consciousness. After each wave of rising class struggle and rising class consciousness, when a turning point arrives and the actual activity of the masses declines, consciousness falls to a lower level and activity falls to nearly zero. The first function of a revolutionary vanguard organization is to maintain the continuity of the theoretical, programmatical, political, and organizational acquisitions of the previous phase of high class activity, and of high working class consciousness. It serves as the permanent memory of the class and of the labor movement, memory which is codified, one way or another, in a program in which you can educate the new generation which then does not need to start from scratch in its concrete way of intervention in the class struggle.

This first function, then, is to assure a continuity of lessons drawn from the accumulated historical experience, because that is what a socialist program is: the sum total of the lessons drawn from all the experiences of real class struggles, real revolutions, and real counterrevolutions in the last hundred and fifty years. Very few people can cope with that and nobody, absolutely nobody, can cope with that alone. You need an organization, and given the world nature of this experience, you need both a national and a worldwide organization to be able to constantly assess that sum total of historical and current experience of class struggle and revolution, to enrich it by new lessons coming out of new revolutions, to make it more and more adequate to the needs of class struggles and revolutions going on right at this time.

There is a second dimension. It is the organizational dimension, which is really not solely organizational, but is, in reality, also political. Here we come to that famous question of centralization. Revolutionary Marxists stand for democratic centralism. But the word centralization is not to be taken in the first place as an organizational dimension, and in no way whatsoever is it essentially an administrative one. It is political. What does “centralization” mean? It means centralization of experience, centralization of knowledge, centralization of conclusions drawn out of actual militancy.

Here, again, we see a tremendous danger for the working class and the labor movement if there is no such centralization of experience: this is the danger of sectorialization and fragmentation, which does not enable anyone to draw adequate conclusions for action.

If we have women militants engaged only in feminist struggles, if we have youth militants engaged only in youth struggles, if we have students engaged only in student struggles, if we have immigrant workers engaged only in immigrant worker struggles, if we have oppressed nationalities engaged only in oppressed nationalities’ struggles, if we have unemployed engaged only in unemployed struggles, if we have trade unionists engaged only in trade union struggles, if we have unorganized, un-unionized, essentially unskilled workers engaged only in their own struggles, if we have political militants engaged only in election campaigns or in the publication of newspapers, and if each of them operates separately from each other, they operate only on the basis of limited and fragmented experience and they cannot (for basic, I would say, epistemological reasons) draw correct conclusions from their own experience. They have fragmented struggles, fragmented experience, fragmented partial consciousness. They only see part of the whole picture. The conclusions which they come up with will be, you can say a priori, at least partially wrong. They cannot have an overall, total correct view of reality because they see only a fragmented part of that reality.

The same thing is true, of course, from an international point of view. If you concentrate only on Eastern Europe, you have a partial view of world reality. If you concentrate only on the underdeveloped, semicolonial, dependent countries, you have a partial view of world reality, If you concentrate only on the imperialist countries, you have a partial view of world reality. Only if you bring together the experience of the concrete struggles conducted by the real masses in the three sectors of the world (which are also called the three sectors of world revolution), then you have an overall, correct view of world reality. That is the big advantage of the Fourth International, because it is an international organization, which has comrades actually fighting, not only theoretically analyzing, in all these three sectors of the world, and it is concretely related to the struggles in all these three sectors of world revolution. This superiority is not due to the great intelligence of leaders of the Fourth International. It is just due to that elementary centralization of concrete experience of struggles on a global scale, added to a correct historical program.

That is what centralization is all about. It means that, I would not say the best because that is exaggerated, but at least good fighters in the unions, good fighters among unskilled workers and the unemployed, good fighters among oppressed nationalities, good fighters among women, youth, and students, good anti-imperialist fighters, good fighters in all these sectors of actually militant, oppressed, and exploited people in each state and on a world scale, come together to centralize their experiences in order to compare the lessons of their struggles on a statewide and worldwide scale, draw relevant conclusions, examine and reexamine in a critical way at each stage their program and their political line, in the light of the lessons to be drawn out of all these experiences, in order to have an overall view of society, of the world, of its dynamics, and of our common socialist goal and how to get there. That is what we call, in our jargon, a correct program, a correct strategy, and correct tactics. Given the uneven development of class consciousness, and the uneven and discontinuous level of class activity, this cannot be done by the masses in their totality. To believe otherwise is just a utopian and spontaneist daydream.

This can only be done by those people who claim for themselves the terribly “elitist” merit of being active in a more permanent way, in a more continuous way, than others. That is the only quality they claim for themselves, but it is a quality which is proven in life. And all those who do not have that quality also prove it in practice by ceasing political activity. All those who do have that quality, however, continue to fight even when the masses periodically stop fighting, do not stop developing class consciousness when the masses do (anybody who challenges this right challenges an elementary democratic and human right), continue to elaborate politics and theory,. and constantly attempt to intervene in society in a permanent and continuous way. Out of that “merit,” however modest and limited it is, grow a series of concrete and practical qualities which then constitute the basis for the justification of a vanguard organization.

As I said before, there is a real contradiction in the relationship between a vanguard organization and the broader masses. There is a real dialectical tension, if we can call it that, and we have to address ourselves to that tension. First of all, I used the words “vanguard organizations”; I did not use the words “vanguard parties.” This is a conceptual difference I introduce on purpose. I do not believe in self-proclaimed parties. I do not believe in fifty people or a hundred people standing in Market Square beating their breasts and saying, “We are the vanguard party.” Perhaps they are in their own consciousness, but if the rest of society does not give a damn about them, they will be shouting in that marketplace for a long time without this having any result in practical life, or worse, they will try to impose their convictions on an unreceptive mass through violence. A vanguard organization is something which is permanent. A vanguard party has to be constructed, has to be built through a long process. One of the characteristics of its existence is that it becomes recognized as such by at least a substantial minority of the class itself. You cannot have a vanguard party which has no following in the class.

A vanguard organization becomes a vanguard party when a significant minority of the real class, of the really existing workers, poor peasants, revolutionary youth, revolutionary women, revolutionary oppressed nationalities, recognizes it as their vanguard party, i.e., follows it in action. Whether that must be ten percent or fifteen percent, that does not matter, but it must be a real sector of the class. If it does not exist, then you have no real party, you have only the nucleus of a future party. What will happen to that nucleus will be shown by history. It remains an open question, not yet solved by history. You need a permanent struggle to transform that vanguard organization into a real revolutionary vanguard party rooted in the class, present in the working class struggle, and accepted by at least a real fraction of the real class as such.

Here we have to bring in another concept. I said before that the class is not permanently active and permanently on a high level of class consciousness. Now I have to introduce a distinction. The mass of the class is not, but the class is not homogeneous, not only because there are individuals who are members of different political groupings, at different levels of political awareness, under different influences of bourgeois ideology, but also because it has a differentiation going on within its own massive framework. There is a process of social and of political differentiation going on in the real working class all the time. There is a mass-vanguard distillation going on in the working class during certain periods. Lenin wrote a lot about it; Trotsky wrote a lot about it; Rosa Luxemburg, surprised as some of you may be, wrote a lot about it. People who have the ambition of being active in building revolutionary organizations, as I am, can give you the names, addresses, and telephone numbers of these vanguard workers in their own countries. It is not a mysterious question. It is a practical problem. Who are these vanguard workers in Belgium, France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, West Germany? They are those who are leading real strikes, who are organizing trade union militant oppositions, who are preparing mass demonstrations and mass struggles, who are differentiating themselves from the traditional bureaucratic apparatus.

It is both a social differentiation and a political differentiation, although one can discuss the exact weight of each element, which is not identical in each situation. But the layers as such are very real. The dimension of the layers are different in different periods. The “Revolutionary Obleute,” as they are called in Germany, of the trade unions and the big factories of Berlin who were leading the November 1918 revolution and building the Independent Socialist Party, who afterwards moved to the Communist Party when the left wing of the Independent Socialist Party fused with the Communist Party at the Congress of Halle, were a very concrete layer in German society, not only in Berlin, but also in many of the industrial areas of the country. Everybody knew them, they were not an unknown quantity. They were tens and tens of thousands of people. If you look at the vanguard of the German working class fifteen years later, say around 1930-33, this layer had strongly decreased in number, but it was still there.

If you study Russia, you see the same thing. In 1905, everybody knew these people. They were those who were leading the strikes, the real mass struggles at rank-and-file levels against the czar. They were, in their majority, outside of Social Democracy before 1905, tended to come to Social Democracy during the 1905-06 revolution, and again partially left the party (Mensheviks as well as Bolsheviks) in the period of reaction. They reentered politics and grew on a massive scale in 1912 and especially with the beginning of the February 1917 revolution, and then, the majority of them were absorbed by the Bolshevik Party after April 1917, after the Bolshevik Party took a straight and clear line for “All Power to the Soviets,” that is to say, for the dictatorship of the proletariat.

One can discuss whether the Bolsheviks became a vanguard party in the true sense of the word in 1912-13, or only in 1917. I would tend to say that they became that in 1912-13; otherwise it would have been very difficult for them to grow as quickly as they did in the spring of 1917. But that is just a point of historical analysis. The real notion is that of the fusion in real life between this vanguard layer of the working class, the real leaders of real struggles of workers at factory and neighborhood levels, of woman’s struggles, of youth struggles, of national minority struggles, and the political vanguard organization. When that fusion has taken place, at least in part, you have a real vanguard party, recognized as such by a significant minority of the class. It will then become a majority probably only during the revolutionary crisis itself, on the condition of following a correct political line. If you do not have that fusion, you have only the nucleus of a future vanguard party, you have a vanguard organization, which is a precondition for that fusion at a later stage.

This becomes a third dimension: the self-organization of the class. Self-organization of the class goes through different forms at different stages of the class struggle. The most elementary self-organizations are trade unions. Then you have mass political parties at different levels of consciousness, bourgeois labor parties, independent labor parties, and revolutionary workers’ parties. Only under conditions of revolutionary crises do you have the highest level of self-organization; this is the Soviet type of organization, which is to say, workers’ councils, people’s councils, call them what you want, popular committees.

Why do I say highest? Because they engulf the great majority of the workers which generally, under non-revolutionary conditions, you find neither in trade unions nor in political parties.

Direct self-organization through a workers’ council type of self-organization of the class is the highest form, not because I have a theoretical or ideological or moral or sentimental predilection for them-which of course I have-but for the simple, objective reason: they organize a much higher percentage of the workers and the exploited masses. Under normal conditions, unrestricted by bureaucratic apparatuses and leadership, they should organize up to 90 to 95 percent of the exploited masses, which you never find in trade unions or political parties. So they are the highest forms of self-organization.

Furthermore, there is absolutely no contradiction between the separate organizations of revolutionary vanguard militants and their participation in the mass organizations of the working class. On the contrary, history generally confirms that the more conscious and the better you are organized in vanguard organizations, the more constructively you operate in the mass organizations of the working class. This means that you have to avoid the theoretical underpinnings of sectarianism, that you have to respect workers’ democracy, socialist democracy, soviet or workers’ councils’ or popular councils’ democracy, in a very thorough way. But this being said, there is no contradiction whatsoever.

Again, the only right you claim for yourself inside the unions, inside the mass parties, inside the soviets, is to be a more devoted, a more energetic, a more dedicated, a more courageous, a more lucid, a more self-denying builder of the unions, builder of the mass parties, builder of the soviets, defender of the general interests of the working class, without attributing to yourself any special privilege towards your fellow workers, except the right to try to convince them.

Our stance for working class democracy, for socialist democracy, for socialist pluralism, is based on a programmatic understanding that there are no contradictions between the interests of communists, vanguard militants, the working class, and the labor movement in its totality. There are no conditions in which we subordinate the interests of the class as a whole to the interests of any sect, any chapel, any separate organization. It is out of a theoretical understanding of that truth that we can fight enthusiastically, that we can fight with devotion and with deep understanding for the workers’ united front, for a policy of unification of all different tendencies of the labor movement and the working class for common goals, because we believe that the victory of socialism is impossible without the victory of the fight for these common goals.

There is also a basic theoretical underpinning of this stance. We do not believe that Marxism is a full, final doctrine, dogma, or Weltanschauung. We do not believe that the Marxist program, which embodies the continuity of the experience of the actual class struggle and real revolutions of the last one hundred and fifty years, is a definitely closed book. If you would believe that, then the best revolutionary Marxist would be a parrot who would just read by memory, or expect the answer having fed all the lessons into a computer. For us, Marxism is always open because there are always new xperiences, there are always new facts, including facts about the past, which have to be incorporated in the corpus of scientific socialism. Marxism is always open, always critical, always self-critical.

It is not by accident that when Marx was called to answer the question in the drawing room game “What is your main life dictum?” he gave as the answer, “De omnibus est dubitandum” (“You have to doubt everything”). This is really the opposite attitude of the one which is so often stupidly and foolishly attributed to Marx, that he was building a new religion without God. The spirit to doubt everything and to put into question everything that you yourself have said is the very opposite of religion and of dogma. Marxists believe that there are no eternal truths, and no people who know everything. The second stanza of our common anthem, The Internationale, starts with the wonderful words, in French:

Il n’y a pas de sauveur suprème Ni Dieu, ni César, ni tribun, Producteur sauvons – nous nous mêmes Decrétons le salut commun.

In German it is even clearer:

Es rettet uns Kein hoh’ires Wesen, Kein Gott, Kein Kaiser, Kein Tribun Uns aus dem Elend zu erlosen, Konnen wir nur selber tun.

Only the whole mass of the producers can emancipate themselves. There is no God, no Caesar, no unfailing Central Committee, no unfailing Chairman, no unfailing General Secretary or First Secretary who can substitute for the collective efforts of the class. That is why we try simultaneously to build vanguard organizations and mass organizations.

You cannot trick the working class or “lead” the working class to do something which it does not want to do. You have to convince the working class. You have to help the working class understand collectively and massively the need for a socialist transformation of society, for the socialist revolution. That is the dialectical relationship between the vanguard party and the mass self-organization of the working class.

And that is why, for us, socialist pluralism, the debate, even when it takes an unhealthy and unhappy form of factionalism and bickering which gets on the nerves of all serious militants (I completely sympathize with them, because it is largely a waste of time), is an unavoidable price to be paid for keeping up that self-critical process. If nobody is, in advance, in possession of the whole truth and nothing but the truth, if each situation has always to be reexamined in a critical way against new experiences of working class struggle and of real revolutions, then of course you need criticism, you need the confrontation of different proposed solutions, you need variants. It is not a luxury just in order to be truthful to an abstract formula of workers’ democracy. NO! It is an absolutely essential precondition for making a victorious revolution which will lead to a classless society.

Revolution is not a goal in itself. Revolution is an instrument, like a party is an instrument. The goal is building a socialist classless society. Everything we do, even today, even with shorter term perspectives like leading the masses in their day-to-day struggles, can never be done in such a way that it conflicts basically with the longer term goal which is the goal of self-emancipation of the working class, and self-emancipation of all the exploited, by building a classless society without exploitation, without oppression, without violence of men and women against each other. Socialist democracy is not a luxury but an absolute, essential necessity for overthrowing capitalism and building socialism. Let me give two examples.

We understand today the functional aspect of socialist democracy in post-capitalist society (the societies of EasternEurope,the SovietUnion,China,Vietnam,andCuba). Without socialist pluralistic democracy you cannot find correct solutions for the basic problems of socialist planning. No party can substitute for the mass of the people to determine what the mass of the people want as priorities in the form of consumption, the division between the consumption fund and the investment fund, between individual and collective consumption, between the productive and unproductive consumption fund, between the productive and unproductive investment fund, and so forth. Nobody can do that. Again, to believe otherwise is a utopian daydream.

And if the mass of the people do not accept your choice of priorities, no power on earth, even the biggest terror of Stalin, can force them to do the one key thing that you need to build socialism: have a constructive, creative, and convinced participation in the production process. There is one form of opposition that the bureaucracy has not succeeded in crushing. It is becoming bigger and bigger: the opposition which expresses itself by not caring about what is going on in production. You know the famous joke they tell in Eastern Germany: The journalist comes to a factory and asks the director: “Comrade manager, how many workers are working in your factory?” He answers, “Oh, at least half of them.” This is reality in all the bureaucratized so-called socialist countries. No terror can overcome that. Only socialist democracy can overcome that, only pluralism, only the possibility of the mass of the producers and the consumers to choose between different, variants of the plan which conforms the most to their interests as they understand them.

Socialist democracy is not, a luxury and its need is not limited to the most advanced industrial countries. It is true of China; it is true for Vietnam. It is the only way to rapidly correct the disastrous effects of grave mistakes of policy. Without pluralism, without a broad public debate, without a legal opposition, it might take 15 years, it might take 25 years, it might, take 30 years before you correct those mistakes. We have seen the historical record and it shows the terrible price the working class has to pay if you take such a long time before you correct your mistakes.

Mistakes in themselves are unavoidable. As Comrade Lenin said, the real key for a revolutionary is not that he avoids making mistakes (nobody avoids making mistakes) but how he goes about correcting them. Without internal party democracy, without the right to demonstrate, without the non-banning of factions or parties, without free public debate, you have great obstacles in correcting mistakes and you will pay a heavy price for this. So we are absolutely in favor of the right, to different tendencies, full internal democracy, and the non-banning of factions or parties.

I do not say the right to factions, because that is a false formulation. Factions are a sign of illness in a party. In a healthy party you have no factions; a healthy party from the point of view of both the political line and the internal party regime. But the right not to be thrown out of the party, if you create a faction, is a lesser evil than being thrown out and stifling the internal life of a party through excessive forbidding of internal debate.

It is not an easy question, especially in a proletarian party. The more revolutionary vanguard organizations are rooted in the working class, the less is their number of students and other non-proletarian members (I do not say that it is bad to have students or intellectuals; you need them, but they should not be the majority in a revolutionary organization).

The more workers you have in your organization, the better you are implanted in the working class, the more likely you are to come up with the concrete problems of the class. Within that general framework is to be placed the functional nature of a vanguard organization for the class struggle, for the revolution, and for building socialism. You should never forget that there is a strict dialectical interrelation between the three. Otherwise we get off the track and we do not fulfil the historical role which we want to fulfil: to help the masses, the exploited and the oppressed of the world, build a classless society, a world socialist federation.

 

 

Ernest Mandel was a key Marxist economist and politcal theorist and longstanding leader of the Fourth International. He died in 1995.

 

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Something to cheer: LANDMARK AGREEMENT MOVES 757 SPECIES TOWARD FEDERAL PROTECTION

On July 12, 2011, the Center for Biological Diversity struck a historic legal settlement with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, requiring the agency to make initial or final decisions on whether to add hundreds of imperiled plants and animals to the endangered species list by 2018. The Endangered Species Act is America’s strongest environmental law and surest way to save species threatened with extinction.

The agreement caps a decade-long effort by the Center’s scientists, attorneys and activists to safeguard 1,000 of America’s most imperiled, least protected species including the walrus, wolverine, Mexican grey wolf, fisher, New England cottontail rabbit, three species of sage grouse, scarlet Hawaiian honeycreeper, California golden trout, Miami blue butterfly, Rio Grande cutthroat trout, 403 southeastern river-dependent species, 42 Great basin springsnails and 32 Pacific Northwest mollusks.

The Center’s wrote scientific petitions and/or filed lawsuits to win federal protection for each of the 757 species.

Click to see the species in alphabetical order, by year of their protection decision, by taxon or via an interactive state-by-state map.

Here are a few highlights:

 

American wolverine: A bear-like carnivore, the American wolverine is the largest member of the weasel family. It lives in mountainous areas of the West, where it depends on late-spring snowpacks for denning. The primary threats to its existence are shrinking snowpacks related to global warming, excessive trapping and harassment by snowmobiles.

The Center for Biological Diversity and allies petitioned to list the wolverine as an endangered species in 1994. It was placed on the candidate list in 2010. Under the agreement, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will propose it for protection (or determine it does not qualify) in 2013 and finalize the decision in 2014 if warranted.
 
 

Black-footed albatross: A large, dark-plumed seabird that lives in northwestern Hawaii, the black-footed albatross is threatened by longline swordfish fisheries, which kill it as bycatch.

The Center for Biological Diversity and allies petitioned to list this albatross as an endangered species in 2004. It is not on the candidate list. Under the agreement, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will propose it for protection, determine it does not qualify, or find that it is warranted but precluded for protection in 2011.
 
 

Cactus ferruginous pygmy owl: A tiny desert raptor, active in the daytime, the cactus ferruginous pygmy owl lives in southern Arizona and northern Mexico. It is threatened by urban sprawl and nearly extirpated from Arizona.

The Center for Biological Diversity petitioned to list it as an endangered species in 1992. It was protected in 1997, then delisted on technical grounds in 2006. The Center repetitioned to protect it in 2007. It is not on the candidate list. Under the agreement, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will propose it for protection (or determine it does not qualify) in 2011 and finalize the decision in 2012 if warranted.
 

Scarlet Hawaiian honeycreeper (‘i’iwi): This bright-red bird hovers like a hummingbird and has long been featured in the folklore and songs of native Hawaiians. It is threatened by climate change, which is causing mosquitoes that carry introduced diseases — including avian pox and malaria — to move into the honeycreeper’s higher-elevations refuges. It has been eliminated from low elevations on all islands by these diseases.

The Center for Biological Diversity petitioned to list it as an endangered species in 2010. It is not on the candidate list. Under the agreement, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will propose it for protection (or determine it does not qualify) in 2016 and finalize the decision in 2017 if warranted.
 

Ashy stormy petrel: A small, soot-colored seabird that lives off coastal waters from California to Baja, Mexico, the ashy storm petrel looks like it’s walking on the ocean surface when it feeds. It is threatened by warming oceans, sea-level rise and ocean acidification.

The Center for Biological Diversity petitioned to list it as an endangered species in 2007. It is not on the candidate list. Under the agreement, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will propose it for protection (or determine it does not qualify) in 2013 and finalize the decision in 2014 if warranted.
 

Greater and Mono Basin sage grouse: Sage grouse are showy, ground-dwelling birds that perform elaborate mating dances, with males puffing up giant air sacks on their chests. The Mono Basin sage grouse lives in Nevada and California. The greater sage grouse lives throughout much of the Interior West. Both are threatened by oil and gas drilling, livestock grazing, development and off-road vehicles.

The Center for Biological Diversity and allies petitioned to list the Mono Basin sage grouse as an endangered species in 2005. It was placed on the candidate list in 2010. Under the agreement, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will propose it for protection (or determine it does not qualify) in 2013 and finalize the decision in 2014 if warranted.

The greater sage grouse was petitioned for listing in 2002 and placed on the candidate list in 2010. Under our agreement, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will propose it for protection (or determine it does not qualify) in 2015 and finalize the decision in 2016 if warranted.
 

Mexican gray wolf: Exterminated from, then reintroduced to the Southwest, the Mexican gray wolf lives in remote forests and mountains along the Arizona/New Mexico border. It is threatened by legal and illegal killing, which has hampered the federal recovery program, keeping the species down to 50 wild animals.

The Center for Biological Diversity and allies petitioned to list it as an endangered species separate from other wolves in 2009. It is not on the candidate list. Under the agreement, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will propose it for protection (or determine it does not qualify) in 2012 and finalize the decision in 2013 if warranted.
 

Pacific fisher: A cat-like relative of minks and otters, the fisher is the only animal that regularly preys on porcupines. It lives in old-growth forests in California, Oregon and Washington, where it is threatened by logging.

The Center for Biological Diversity petitioned to list the fisher as an endangered species in 2000. It was placed on the candidate list in 2004. Under the agreement, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will propose it for protection (or determine it does not qualify) in 2014 and finalize the decision in 2015 if warranted.
 

Miami blue butterfly: An ethereal beauty native to South Florida and possibly the most endangered insect in the United States, the Miami blue was thought extinct after Hurricane Andrew in 1992 but rediscovered in 1999. It is threatened by habitat loss and pesticide spraying.

It was petitioned for listing as an endangered species in 2000 and placed on the candidate list in 2005. The Center for Biological Diversity petitioned to list it on an emergency basis in 2011. Under the agreement, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will propose it for protection (or determine it does not qualify) in 2012 and finalize the decision in 2013 if warranted.
 

Oregon spotted frog: The Oregon spotted frog lives in wetlands from southernmost British Columbia through Washington and Oregon to northernmost California. It is threatened by habitat destruction and exotic species.

The Oregon spotted frog was placed on the candidate in 1991. The Center for Biological Diversity petitioned to list it as an endangered species in 2004. Under the agreement, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will propose it for protection (or determine it does not qualify) in 2013 and finalize the decision in 2014 if warranted.
 

Pacific walrus: A large, ice-loving, tusk-bearing pinniped, the Pacific walrus plays a major role in the culture and religion of many northern peoples. Like the polar bear, it is threatened by the rapid and accelerating loss of Arctic sea ice and oil drilling.

The Center for Biological Diversity petitioned to list it as an endangered species in 2007. It was placed on the candidate list in 2011. Under the agreement, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will propose it for protection (or determine it does not qualify) in 2017 and finalize the decision in 2018 if warranted.
 

Rio Grande cutthroat trout: Characterized by deep crimson slashes on its throat — hence the name “cutthroat” — the Rio Grande cutthroat is New Mexico’s state fish. It formerly occurred throughout high-elevation streams in the Rio Grande Basin of New Mexico and southern Colorado. Logging, road building, grazing, pollution and exotic species have pushed it to the brink of extinction.

The Center for Biological Diversity petitioned to list it as an endangered species in 1998. It was placed on the candidate list in 2008. Under the agreement, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will propose it for protection (or determine it does not qualify) in 2014 and finalize the decision in 2015 if warranted.
 

403 Southeast aquatic species: The southeastern United States contains the richest aquatic biodiversity in the nation, harboring 62 percent of the country’s fish species (493 species), 91 percent of its mussels (269 species) and 48 percent of its dragonflies and damselflies (241 species). Unfortunately, the wholesale destruction, diversion, pollution and development of the Southeast’s rivers have made the region America’s aquatic extinction capital.

In 2010, the Center for Biological Diversity completed a 1,145-page, peer-reviewed petition to list 403 Southeast aquatic species as endangered, including the Florida sandhill crane, MacGillivray’s seaside sparrow, Alabama map turtle, Oklahoma salamander, West Virginia spring salamander, Tennessee cave salamander, Black warrior waterdog, Cape Sable orchid, Clam-shell orchid, Florida bog frog, Lower Florida Keys striped mud turtle, Eastern black rail, and Streamside salamander.

None of the Southeast aquatic species are on the candidate list. Under the agreement, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will issue initial listing decisions on all 403 plants and animals in 2011.
 

42 Great Basin springsnails: Living in isolated springs of the Great Basin and Mojave deserts, springsnails play important ecological roles cycling nutrients, filtering water and providing food to other animals. Many are threatened by a Southern Nevada Water Authority plan to pump remote, desert groundwater to Las Vegas.

In 2009, the Center for Biological Diversity petitioned to list 42 springsnails as endangered species, including the duckwater pyrg, Big Warm Spring pyrg and Moapa pebblesnail. None are on the candidate list. Under the agreement, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will issue initial listing decisions on all 42 species in 2011.
 

32 Pacific Northwest mollusks: The Pacific Northwest is home to a unique diversity of mollusks found nowhere else on Earth. With colorful names like the evening fieldslug, cinnamon juga, Chelan mountainsnail and masked duskysnail, these species recycle nutrients, filter water and provide important prey for birds, amphibians and other animals. Many species threatened by logging, pollution and urban sprawl.

In 2008, the Center for Biological Diversity petitioned to list 32 Washington, Oregon and Northern California mollusks as endangered species. None are on the candidate list. Under the agreement, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will issue initial listing decisions on all 32 species in 2011.
 

 

 

 

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Chasing People Like Animals—on Land and, Increasingly, at Sea

Border Wars

September 7, 2011

Border Patrol arrest. Credit: www.digitaljournal.com

John Randolph, a musician and migrant rights activist, is hardly a recognizable name in discussions on matters of immigration and boundary enforcement in the United States, but he should be. This is due to a combination of his 26 years as an agent of the U.S. Border Patrol and, later, of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), as well as his present-day willingness to challenge the conventions of mainstream debate and to expose the futility and inhumanity of the status quo. 

Last week, Randolph authored a rather startling piece  for the Huffington Post in which he speaks of how, during his many years as a federal agent, he hunted and caught “many people.” The vast majority of them, he writes, “were good, hard working” individuals. This, and the violence and injury that he saw, eventually led him “to wonder why immigrants had to be chased like animals, and why I was being paid to chase them.”

He now understands the U.S.-Mexico boundary as functioning “to keep the good people from both sides from joining together, from knowing each other, and from prospering,” and sees efforts to interdict drugs and migrants as destined to fail.

While Randolph hunted migrants on land, the Border Patrol is increasingly tracking them at sea. As boundary and immigration enforcement has intensified across the U.S. Southwest, growing numbers of migrants are using small boats to reach destinations along California’s Pacific Coast. Reports indicate that migrant boats are showing up along beaches in Los Angeles, and as far north as Santa Barbara (more than 200 miles from the U.S.-Mexico divide).

In addition to illustrating the deep resolve of migrants and their smugglers, these sea voyages exhibit their endless ingenuity and adaptation to the obstacles U.S. authorities throw in their way.

Undoubtedly the rise in attempts to enter the United States surreptitiously via the sea will lead to calls for ever-more resources for the Border Patrol and its “sister” agencies in the Department of Homeland Security. 

Former agent John Randolph (Credit: www.watchnewspapers.com)

And undoubtedly the ratcheting up of the regime of enforcement and exclusion will lead to greater levels of suffering among migrants—to say nothing of the harm caused “at home” by the diversion of resources that could otherwise be used to address so many pressing needs, especially of those existing on the socio-economic margins of U.S. society.

To move beyond the treadmill that is the U.S.-Mexico boundary and immigration enforcement apparatus requires, among other things, that we embrace John Randolph’s challenge. “After twenty-six years of chasing people on the behalf of the U.S. government,” he writes, “finally, I have to ask our politicians this question: How many more people will die until our system fundamentally changes?”

It will be a great day when those in the halls of power feel compelled to even consider such a question.

 

For more from the Border Wars Blog, visit nacla.org/blog/border-wars. And now you can follow it on twitter @NACLABorderWars.

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Chile’s Commander Camila, the student who can shut down a city

  • guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 24 August 2011

    • Vallejo making a peace sign with spent teargas canisters.

    Chilean student leader Camila Vallejo sits among a peace sign created from empty teargas canisters used by police against protesters. Photograph: Roberto Candia/AP

    Not since the days of Zapatistas’ Subcomandante Marcos has Latin America been so charmed by a rebel leader. This time, there is no ski mask, no pipe and no gun, just a silver nose ring.

    Meet Commander Camila, a student leader in Chile who has become the face of a populist uprising that some analysts are calling the Chilean winter. Her press conferences can lead to the sacking of a minister. The street marches she leads shut down sections of the Chilean capital. She has the government on the run, and now even has police protection after receiving death threats.

    Behind her youthful looks dwells a serious social thinker.

    Vallejo has impressed many for her beauty. She resembles a younger Catherine Zeta-Jones. "You have to recognise that beauty can be a hook. It can be a compliment, they come to listen to me because of my appearance, but then I explain the ideas."

    Yet six months ago, no one had heard of Camila Vallejo, the 23-year-old spearheading an uprising that has shaken not only the presidency of the billionaire businessman Sebastián Piñera, but the entire Chilean political class. Opinion polls show that 26% of the public support Piñera and only 16% back his recently ousted Concertación coalition.

    Wednesday saw the start of a two-day nationwide shutdown, as transport workers and other public-sector employees joined the burgeoning student movement in protest.

    “There are huge levels of discontent,” said Vallejo in a recent interview. “It is always the youth that make the first move … we don’t have family commitments, this allows us to be freer. We took the first step, but we are no longer alone, the older generations are now joining this fight.”

    Elected as only the second female leader in the 105-year history of the University of Chile’s student union, Vallejo, who is also a member of the Chilean Communist party, is the face of a movement the likes of which has not been seen since the last years of Augusto Pinochet in the 80s.

    Hundreds of thousands of high-school and university students have refused to go to lessons since early June, calling for better and more affordable education and an end to a two-tier system that creates a few wealthy, elite colleges amid many underfunded public ones. Vallejo has organised several cacerolazos – protests in which participants bang pots and pans. Some demonstrations have turned violent.

    “We don’t want violence, our fight is not versus the police or to destroy commercial shops … our fight is to recover the right to education, on that we have been emphatic and clear,” said Vallejo as she stood outside the presidential palace.

    The government has rushed out a number of initiatives to try to head off protests, promising to amend Chile’s constitution to include a guarantee of quality education and cutting interest rates on student loans from 6.4% to 2%. But the promise of an extra 1.9 trillion Chilean pesos (£2.5bn) in education spending has done little to quell the uprising. Few analysts believe the students will back down despite a heavy police presence at recent demonstrations.

    As she spoke, Vallejo was surrounded by students laying out a huge peace sign made up of hundreds of empty teargas canisters that had been used against students.

    “Here we have more than 50m pesos’ worth of teargas bombs,” said Vallejo. “Imagine how much was used on the regional or the national level? This is unacceptable, we want to reiterate our demand that we made to the minister of the interior that he step aside.”

    Tatiana Acuña, a government official in the ministry of culture, was recently fired for suggesting that the assassination of Vallejo would end the protests. On Tuesday, Chile’s supreme court ordered police protection for the student leader.

    Vallejo has become a cult figure – with odes on YouTube and predictions that her charisma may well catapult her into Chilean politics. “We are all in love with her,” said the Bolivian vice-president, Álvaro García Linera.

    At a recent gathering of Bolivian youth leaders he urged students to follow the example of the youth movements in the rest of South America. “You need to talk about what is happening in Argentina, Brazil or Chile, where there is a young and beautiful leader, who is leading the youth in a grand uprising,” said García Linera.

    Vallejo said on the subject of her looks: “You have to recognise that beauty can be a hook. It can be a compliment, they come to listen to me because of my appearance, but then I explain the ideas. A movement as historical as this cannot be summarised in such superficial terms.

    “We do not want to improve the actual system; we want a profound change – to stop seeing education as a consumer good, to see education as a right where the state provides a guarantee.

    “Why do we need education? To make profits. To make a business? Or to develop the country and have social integration and development? Those are the issues in dispute.”

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