BY MICHAEL BARKER
The mainstream media and Blairite elites in the Labour movement continue to paint socialists who support the ideas of Leon Trotsky as a toxic breed apart from Labour. When interviewed on Channel 4 News last week, Peter Taaffe the General Secretary of the Socialist Party was asked “do you think that Jeremy Corbyn wants someone back [in the Labour Party] who calls for a violent revolution to restore workers democracy?”
Here the journalist in question, Cathy Newman, was clutching at much chewed over liberal-straws by equating the demand for a political revolution with violence. As Taaffe pointed out, he had not called for a violent revolution, and she provided no evidence for this either, as she was merely repeating the well-worn lie that the Russian Revolution of 1917 was born soaked in blood. On this question, “Can a socialist revolution be peaceful?” the Irish Socialist Party explain:
“Socialism is a democratic movement for a democratic society and its program can only be realised with the support of the majority. In this context, the question of violence becomes a question of the resistance of the capitalist minority to submit to the will of the majority.
“This was very much the case in the 1917 Russian Revolution. Despite what many bourgeois historians and history textbooks try to portray, the Bolsheviks patiently waited and agitated until they had majority support before they took power, and the violence that happened was orchestrated by a counterrevolutionary minority against them.”
Hence Taaffe patiently explained to the misinformed Channel 4 journalist:
Newman: Loyally shilling for the system. Insulting anything that smacks of leftism.
“When I talk about revolution, I talk about a mass movement of working people organising to take power, and to take the resources of that society into their own hands. Bernie Sanders, in the US, spoke about the need for a political revolution. In my opinion, the movement around Jeremy represents that in Britain — an attempt to mobilise to take power away from the ruling-class.”
Cathy Newman then impolitely put it to Taaffe, “so would you describe yourself as a Trot?” to which he responded:
“Well, a Trot is used today as a term of abuse to stop people from thinking about the ideas that we put forward. I would say that I adhere to many of the ideas and methods of Leon Trotsky, but we [the Socialist Party] don’t live in the past, we don’t live in Russia, we live in Britain. We stand for the policies that address the issues of ordinary working people today.”
People like Deputy Labour Party leader Tom Watson, however, continue to fearmonger about so-called Trot-infiltrators burrowing away (“twisting arms”) within the Labour Party. In fact, the Blairites in the party are so concerned with democracy, that perhaps for the first time in history they “illegally banned its own members from voting in an election it promised them a vote in, then spent the money it took from those members on appealing to the High Court to try and keep the ban.” This led Mark Steele to suitably satirize these “extreme measures,” which apparently are…
“…essential because, as Tom Watson explained, the Labour election has been undermined by “Trotsky entryists twisting arms of young members”. This explains why Corbyn is expected to win again, because the 300,000 new members of Labour are powerless before the arm-twisting might of Britain’s 50 Trotsky entryists.
“Some people may wonder why these arm-twisters never overturned Tony Blair during the 15 years he was leader. That is because the Trotsky entryists were living in a city under the ground guarded by men in yellow boiler suits, perfecting their evil arm-twisting machine, cackling ‘soon we will unleash our power on Ipswich Constituency Labour Party then nothing can stop us… mwahaha’…”
[dropcap]B[/dropcap]ut Trotskyists like the predecessor of the Socialist Party, the Militant, have always played a central part in promoting working-class interests within the Labour Party.
Longstanding Labour Party activist Neil Fletcher recently had this interesting letter published in the Observer (August 14) where he explained:
“I became a Trotskyist after leaving grammar school but have continued to share the values and perspective of the socialist pioneer. I remain committed to the abolition of all grammar schools too. In 1974 I joined the local Labour party on the very day Ted Heath called a general election. I have remained a party member and avowedly a Trotskyist. During 42 years’ Labour party membership I have been (inter alia) constituency secretary, and ward political activities officer. I served eight years as a Camden councillor (for some time as deputy leader) and for 11 years as an elected member of the Inner London Education Authority (for three years as leader).
“Over the years I have never wavered in my belief that international socialism is crucial if the people are to take power away from the wealthy, the global corporations and the corrupt bigots who hate workers, the poor and the disadvantaged. Trotsky remains an inspiration. He detested Stalin and his violent abuse of state power; he was as a result murdered by a Stalinist assassin; he loved literature and was a believer in its power to elevate culture above social elitism. Trotsky wrote that the ‘moral grandeur of the proletarian revolution consists in the fact that it is laying the foundations of a culture which is above classes and which will be the first culture which is truly human’ (Introduction to Literature and Revolution). Not bad, eh? He was probably a Guardian reader too.”
On the same letters’ page, current Socialist Party member, Bob Labi, who served as the editor of Left, the Labour Party Young Socialists paper between 1971 and 1977, reviewed the successes of the Militant supporters in the past and outlined the link between the Trot-hating purger-in-Chief Tom Watson of old and the Trot-hating Tom Watson of today.
“While it is true that in the mid-1960s Labour’s youth movement massively declined (Letters, 12 August), the Labour Party Young Socialists grew dramatically in the 1970s and 1980s when it was led by supporters of Militant who had become its leadership in 1970. This revival came from a combination of increasing class struggle, radicalisation in society and serious campaigning. Soon nearly 2,000 young people were attending the LPYS’s annual conferences. This growth continued and the LPYS reached a high point of 581 branches in 1985, the time of the miners’ strike, youth protests against Thatcher etc.
“However, the growing offensive against the left by the pro-capitalist wing of the Labour party inevitably had a damaging impact on the LPYS. As it became clear that expulsions of individuals would not tame the LPYS the Labour party right wing resorted to rule changes. In 1987 the LPYS’s age limit was cut from 26 to 23 and most of its democratic structures were removed, with the result that by 1990 it only had 52 branches left, a reduction of 90% in five years. Tom Watson, then the Labour party’s youth officer, presided over the LPYS’s final liquidation and its replacement by Young Labour, an organisation without fully democratic structures and controlled by the party leadership. Watson’s support now for limiting the franchise for Labour’s leadership election shows his preference for top-down methods when he and his supporters cannot build grassroots support.”
NOTE: ALL IMAGE CAPTIONS, PULL QUOTES AND COMMENTARY BY THE EDITORS, NOT THE AUTHORS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michael Barker recently stood as parliamentary candidate for the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition (TUSC) in Leicester East.
SOURCE: COUNTERPUNCH
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ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL-QUOTES BY THE EDITORS, NOT THE AUTHORS.
ALL IMAGES AND CAPTIONS BY THE EDITORS NOT THE AUTHORS
By Mateo Pimentel and Edward Martin
“Had you rather Caesar were living and die all slaves, than that Caesar were dead, to live all free men?” – Shakespeare, The Life and Death of Julius Caesar (1)
“For if they do these things when the wood is green, what will happen when it is dry?” – Luke 23:31
The folks supporting Donald Trump, the GOP nominee, are fairly easy to grasp. Many of them share the same racist proclivities of the voters that have turned out for GOP candidates in elections past. And many of them have the same ultranationalist affinities for authoritarian troglodyte candidates, a problem that has become a trademark of the Republican political agenda. But, oddly enough, these are not the real pariahs this election cycle. In truth, it is the leftists in this country – people who have either passed as liberals, or been tolerated by the liberal camp for the last eight years – that have been fated to be the political black sheep of 2016.
“I knew Eleanor Roosevelt, Michelle, and you are no Eleanor Roosevelt!”
In a spectacle riddled with runaway displays of imbecility, political chicanery, delusions, and hypocrisy, not to mention appalling mediocrity, Michelle’s widely applauded appearance is one of the enduring mysteries. Why, pray tell, is this woman so popular? She is simply the spouse of a man who has betrayed everything even a modest liberal would stand for, and certainly has no distinctive contribution (besides her fortunate marriage to the man who would be president) that would qualify her for any honors, except the fawning of the utterly corrupt media, over services rendered by her husband to a criminal plutocratic status quo. Eleanor, at least, stood by the side of a giant, and though FDR could be said, too, to have been in some ways no better than the best of bourgeois politicians, whatever hat entails, having saved capitalism from itself at a time of crisis, his historical imprint is immeasurably superior than the wholly media-created Obama.
As Hillary & Co. struggles to win the hearts and minds of millions of disenchanted Americans, her cult of curiously ignorant followers continues to bemoan the left, which will not support #her. In fact, they are so vociferous that one might think the left had actively begun stumping for Trump! Any disdain for the anti-Hillary left notwithstanding, the truth remains that HRC is the one who deserves the lion’s share of the blame for such a mediocre march towards the White House.
By voting for the so-called “lesser evil” this year – as opposed to, say, organizing and building a new politics – self-described liberals and progressives do nothing to defeat the Trump carcinogens that already riddle Hillary and the DNC. How about the grassroots movement Bernie led?
If at first some on the left were willing to back Bernie (despite a handful of warranted reservations about the capital “D” affixed to his name), it was partly in light of either a Hillary of Trump presidency that this choice was made: The other candidates were, in and of themselves, two sound reasons to back Bernie. And this very choice, that is, to support a fairly mainstream Democratic candidate like Bernie, gave Hillary and her cult hope that Berners, as well as some of the accompanying leftward folks, would eventually be brought back into the fold.
SIDEBAR
PATRICE GREANVILLE
The Bankruptcy of the Liberal temperament—in full view, once again for all to see
SARAH SILVERMAN SHOWS SHE'S JUST ANOTHER STATUS QUO DEMOCRAT—I GUESS WE NEVER KNEW YA, SARAH DEAR
Hollywood liberals have come out in force for Hillary—the Clinton disease having a particular hold on this segment of the perennially self-pampering, self-deluding segment of this privileged population, but, romantics that we are, we held some reluctant paltry hope that obvious brainies like Sarah Silverman, who's Jewish, a professional comedian, and (at least in her comedic persona) apparently rather cynical about reality (always a good prospect for breaking out of the imperial brainwash) would show even a feeble sign of revulsion at the pathetic spectacle put up by the more hypocritical side of the duopoly. Alas, it was not to be, as Silverman (flanked by longtime faux progressive Al Franken, now a career politician, and a mediocrity to boot, again denying his promise as a quirky comic) proceeded to browbeat the misguided Sandernistas for their supposedly childish petulance in refusing to "grow up" and fall in with the rest of the assembled sheeple so loudly applauding the standard bearer of corporatist America as she prepares to deliver us from the demonic forces of Trumpism.
The limits to Silverman's brain power was seen in the fact that she started by supporting Sanders to begin with, a transparent establishmentarian. But she compounded this by following the duopoly script of crying for unity in the face of a larger evil.
The contrast between the promise and the reality is so brusque that we may be forgiven for asking the obvious question: What prompts these ghastly exhibitions of arrogant, political imbecility in people we would otherwise classify as "sharp"; people who seem congenitally "cool", and who have shown so many times their ability to cut through hypocrisy like a laser through a big hunk of butter? The only answer I have is temperament, that elusive, hard to quantify feature in every creature, especially humans, whose cultural matrix is so complicated as to permit a multitude of surprises. For it is only temperament—character moulded by upbringing, social class, and biographical evolution, and not lack of information—that can explain these shameful episodes. Against this, lacking an overwhelming media presence, the left message has no chance. Reality can get through these thick, complacent skulls, but it won't happen until (a) it is way too late to do anyone any god; or (b) the culture itself has advanced so much that they will look in the mirror and see a dinosaur looking back in shock and disgust. Maybe.
As many radicals will attest, the bourgeois temperament —marinated in ignorance, intellectual laziness, timidity, and galactic self-complacency—is a hard illness to cure. The prognosis is always dire.—PG
SIDEBAR ENDS HERE. REGULAR TEXT RESUMES
But then the DNC revealed its true character—and not just once, with Bernie backing Hillary, but twice, with #her shameless Wall Street pick for VP. And certainly the Debbie Wasserman Schultz ordeal – a virtual coup against Bernie and the folks that funded him – has put the icing on the corrupt cake that the DNC has been baking for the last two presidential terms (nay, actually much longer, since the “Third Way” and the Clintonites became the default leadership position for the party), which it thought it would force-feed voters this year. Indeed, it seems that all along the DNC has conspired to “deal #her in”—never mind every single contemptible black mark against her, which the Hillary filigree so wantonly continues to ignore. Of course, none of this was lost on Trump, who made clear in a nationally televised speech or two that the DNC is riddled with shills for Hillary.
But for those on the left who will continue to participate in this horse-and-pony show, settling for Hillary chiefly because she is someone other than Trump is a miserable, unacceptable, and psychologically and emotionally reviling logic, to say the least. So, in the eyes of the HRC cult, and in the public sphere of the liberal domain where many of the left have been able to move about rather freely, those who will not kowtow to Hillary (i.e., to the totalizing narrative that compels so many unthinking Democrats to abide by a falsely dichotomous reality of lesser-evil voting) are the ones to be hanged for their crimes against progress in 2016. And here is how Hillary & Co. spins it: The left has effectively picked Trump as their president, cursing #her cult to second place in the competition!
Ostensibly, then, the left is the Judas Iscariot of the 2016 US presidential elections, though it has hardly sold its soul for a sack of silver—a thing that seems much more in keeping with the protocol of the Hillary campaign. Sadly, though, the HRC cult does not even have the common decency to treat the American left as any other kind of literary figure, such as Brutus, say, from Shakespeare’s The Life and Death of Julius Caesar. Brutus certainly plotted against Caesar, and was even collusive in his death; but his actions were far more noble in their political underpinnings (or so we are told by a long line of aristocratic historians from antiquity on down, who have made it their personal project to vilify Julius Cesar, a figure comparable to the Gracchi in progressive populism, and something that Shakespeare inevitably picked up—Eds.) than that of Judas, who, like so many HRC cult members, ironically, was in it for pride and the political purchase that a sack of silver might eventually afford him.
Another word on pride: The point of the capitalist American empire is to expand; this is fundamentally a matter of pride for the HRC cult. But by voting for the so-called “lesser evil” this year – as opposed to, say, organizing and building a new politics – self-described liberals and progressives do nothing to defeat the Trump carcinogens that already riddle Hillary and the DNC. How about the grassroots movement Bernie led? All of that money, it turns out, was funneled right into the big money machine that will not relent in supporting America’s would-be empress, Shillary Clinton. And the #ImWithHer Democrats are upset about the perceived intransigence of the left? How simple are these people?
[dropcap]F[/dropcap]or now, despite the disdain of the Hillary contingent, the left trudges on like the protagonist in Plato’s allegorical cave. The heroine emerges from the den of political ignorance only to see things for what they really are, and only to grasp the truth of things as it actually is: Hillary and Trump are one and the same! Armed with this knowledge, Plato’s protagonist marches back into the cave, though she knows her life is imperiled by returning. Similarly, the left has seen the 2016 US presidential elections rouse for what it really is, and for what it has always been: A lie that cries, “Hillary or bust!” And like the heroine who slinks back into the dark folds of the cave in order to fight the darkness the blinds her contemporaries, the left need contain no regard whatsoever for how much discomfort it causes the HRC cult, especially not as the left continues to educate, organize, agitate, and work against both Hillary and Trump in these upcoming months.
Though Hillary supporters do not recognize it now, they would do well to understand sooner than later that, like Judas, they are going to have to live with their complicity in the wicked political choices they have scheduled to make. Ultimately, by voting for #her, they achieve little more than the allegorical Judas did when he betrayed his friend with a kiss. Indeed, in the case of the HRC cult, theirs is a political suicide, and something arguably much worse than what Judas did when he hanged himself from a tree.
NOTE: ALL IMAGE CAPTIONS, PULL QUOTES AND COMMENTARY BY THE EDITORS, NOT THE AUTHORS
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Edward Martin is Professor of Public Policy and Administration, Graduate Center for Public Policy and Administration at California State University, Long Beach, and co-author of Savage State: Welfare Capitalism and Inequality. Mateo Pimentel lives on the Mexican-US border. You can follow him on Twitter @mateo_pimentel, or read more at www.guerrillaprose.info.
(1) Julius Caesar is one of those figures condemned by cumulative negative historiography, something that can happen to any major historical personage as a result of class bias, in this case unbroken aristocratic hostility toward a tribune of the people by successive “gentlemen historians”, which Caesar was in his time, as revealed by the patient research of Michael Parenti and published in his seminal work, The Assassination Of Julius Caesar: A People’s History Of Ancient Rome.
Publishers Weekly said this about this book:
Why did a group of Roman senators gather near Pompey’s theater on March 15, 44 B.C., to kill Julius Caesar? Was it their fear of Caesar’s tyrannical power? Or were these aristocratic senators worried that Caesar’s land reforms and leanings toward democracy would upset their own control over the Roman Republic? Parenti (History as Mystery, etc.) narrates a provocative history of the late republic in Rome (100-33 B.C.) to demonstrate that Caesar’s death was the culmination of growing class conflict, economic disparity and political corruption. He reconstructs the history of these crucial years from the perspective of the Roman people, the masses of slaves, plebs and poor farmers who possessed no political power. Roughly 99% of the state’s wealth was controlled by 1% of the population, according to Parenti. By the 60s B.C., the poor populace had begun to find spokesmen among such leaders as the tribunes Tiberius Gracchus and his younger brother, Gaius. Although the Gracchi attempted to introduce various reforms, they were eventually murdered, and the reform movements withered. Julius Caesar, says Parenti, took up where they left off, introducing laws to improve the condition of the poor, redistributing land and reducing unemployment. As Parenti points out, such efforts threatened the landed aristocracy’s power in the Senate and resulted in Caesar’s assassination. Parenti’s method of telling history from the “bottom up” will be controversial, but he recreates the struggles of the late republic with such scintillating storytelling and deeply examined historical insight that his book provides an important alternative to the usual views of Caesar and the Roman Empire.
It is sad that many leftist writers, no doubt convinced by the cumulative “consensus”, have also joined this aristocratic tradition.
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