There's a neat new addition to the ortho-Maoist section of the blogosphere, Kasama, run by a guy called Mike Ely. The initial focus there is Ely's extensive critique of the Revolutionary Communist Party (USA) with which he was associated for many years. One theme which has come up in several comments is RCP leader Bob Avakian's recent "I blame the masses" speech. Some of those responding have pointed out that in an imperialist power like the US, even ordinary working people partake of imperial privileges and they share the responsibility for the global crimes of the US government unless they opt to stand against those crimes.
I would not deny the truth of both of these points, but I think we have to keep an eye on the other side of the coin as well, especially if we are talking about making revolutionary change in the US. Arguing the negative (yeah, I just saw The Great Debaters--don't miss it), James McMurtry:
You may well have heard this before and there are several video versions of it at YouTube, but this live one is my favorite, for the palpable bitterness and for the verse McMurtry botches in the middle.
January 9, 2008
"We Can't Make It Here"
January 6, 2008
State Repression: The Good News...
[This report came in yesterday from organizers for the National Jericho Movement. The wheels may be coming off of the ugly revanchist effort to railroad 8 former members of the Black Panther Party into jail on charges of killing a San Francisco police officer--in 1971. One clear motive of the state in pursuing this case is to counteract the reversal of verdicts in frame-up cases that had kept former Panthers jailed for decades, like Geronimo ji-Jaga. They may have picked up a rock only to drop it on their own feet, however, because the previous trial of one of the 8, Harold Taylor, was thrown out of court because he had been savagely tortured. Bringing the case back up now proves once again that torture is not reserved for Iraqis swept into Abu Ghraib, but is practiced by the police right here at home as a matter of course.]
Prosecutors in the San Francisco 8 case announced that they are filing an amended complaint, in effect dropping the conspiracy count against 5 of the brothers, because the statute of limitations (of 3 years on conspiracy) has expired. This is a result of defense motions filed recently that challenged the complaint on the basis of expired statute of limitations.
Ray Boudreaux, Richard Brown, Hank Jones and Harold Taylor now only face one count, the alleged murder of a San Francisco police officer in 1971. The case against Richard O'Neal must now be dismissed, since he was originally charged only in the second count.
The prosecutors will argue that the statute of limitations did not expire against Herman Bell, Jalil Muntaqim and Francisco Torres as they were not residents in California during the last 35 years. "This is a ridiculous argument," according to defense attorney Stuart Hanlon, "as these men were forcefully removed from the state against their will by being imprisoned. Following his acquittal on charges in New York State, Cisco Torres was living in New York City. All 3 were consistently available to California State prosecutors." This legal point will be argued in the upcoming San Francisco hearing on January 10th, and their lawyers will ask that the conspiracy count be dropped against the other 3 men.
This is a major victory in this case which rests on statements coerced under torture. "This is the first step in the government's case falling apart," Hanlon said.
...And The Bad
[This announcement of a Grand Jury investigation comes from ProLibertad, a group organized around the defense of Puerto Rican political prisoners (whose website seems to be down at the moment). It reports on a new stage in the repressive attacks on the Puerto Rican national liberation struggle ongoing since the murder of Filiberto Ojeda Rios over two years ago, a crime which has created an upsurge of national feeling in Puerto Rico and the diaspora. Is this a fishing expedition or a more concerted bid to quiet rebel voices? At the moment there's no way to tell, but in either case it requires a decisive response from all who stand with the Puerto Rican people and want to stop the growth of the repressive machinery of the US government.]
The FBI/NYPD Anti-Terrorism Task Force (Joint Terrorist Task Force) has been visiting Puerto Ricans and serving them with Grand Jury subpoenas. In one case they claimed to be investigating the “extremist group: The Welfare Poets”. Two others have been served with Grand Jury subpoenas to appear at the Federal Court at 225 Cadman Plaza East, Brooklyn on Friday, January 11, 2007 at 9:30 a.m. and, as of this communication, one is being sought to be served.
As was the case with the assassination of Machetero Leader Filiberto Ojeda Rios on September 23, 2005, a key historical date for the Puerto Rican Independence Movement, the FBI/U.S. Justice Department has chosen the date of January 11 for the Grand Jury hearing in New York, a date when independence forces celebrate the birth and contributions of Eugenio Maria de Hostos to the independence struggle against Spain.
To date, subpoenas to appear before the Grand Jury have been issued to: Tania Frontera, a graphic designer, pro-independence activist and participant in the Vieques struggle, activist and social worker Christopher Torres and filmmaker Julio Pabón, Jr. In addition, there are indications that Hector Rivera, one of the founders of the political/cultural group the New York based “Welfare Poets,” was visited to be served with a subpoena but was not home in NY at the time.
In Puerto Rico the group La Nueva Escuela convened a meeting with a broad range of pro-independence political forces to plan the response and mobilize legal and political resources. They also appealed to those active in the FBI Out of Puerto Rico campaign. A demonstration in front of the Federal Court House in San Juan has been called for January 10th.
In New York City on Saturday, December 29, 2007, Puerto Rican
pro-Independence activists, organizations and allies met with some of the subpoenaed activists, family members, legal advisors, friends and allies, to update themselves on the activities of the FBI/NYPD anti-terrorism agents leading to the Grand Jury hearings on January 11th. A call for a mass protest on January 11th at the Federal Court House in Cadman Plaza, Brooklyn was made, work committees were formed, a list of legal resources was presented and a general call outlined for support for these latest targets of Federal Grand Jury repression. A flyer is being drafted, and everyone is urged to mobilize.
January 1, 2008
Recommended Reading for 2008!
[The temptation is always to be contrarian about New Years, adapting a recent bit of folk wisdom slightly--Same Shit, Different Year. And 2008 does kinda look like it's going to bite the big one. Recession, the endless war, poor folks getting creamed while the elections suck all the oxygen away from popular struggle.
But it is still true that the start of a new year is a good time to take a little bit of a longer look ahead. In that spirit, I am posting--and let's be real clear here, strongly encouraging you to read--this very thoughtful look at the organizational tasks of revolutionary socialists in this country. It was published two months ago at the website of the Freedom Road Socialist Organization / Organización Socialista del Camino para la Libertad, but I think it deserves every bit of attention that can be directed to it. So even if you've already read it there once, I'm confident that another shot at it will richly repay the time you spend.]
The Life of the Party:
Thoughts on What We Are Trying To Build
Written by Khalil Hassan
Tuesday, 06 November 2007
With the publication of Which Way is Left?, the Freedom Road Socialist Organization takes an important step in advancing a strategy for a realignment and refoundation of the revolutionary Left. Central to this notion is the idea that it is not enough to struggle out differences in order to achieve unity. Unity must come about through an organized process of principled struggle--otherwise, what results will be chaos.
The unspoken question that in many respects haunts the discussion revolves around what we, in the radical and socialist Left, should be attempting to build. FRSO/OSCL calls for a party, yet many of us hear that even using that term unsettles many comrades who nevertheless seek tighter forms of organization.
Stanley Aronowitz offered an important contribution through the publication of his book Left Turn, which explicitly calls for a party of the radical Left. Aronowitz makes a strong case for such a party, though he seems to suggest both a party that can participate in the electoral realm--an unlikely possibility for an explicitly radical party at this moment in the USA--and a party that gives radical, socialist leadership to mass struggles. Aronowitz also offers a timely and devastating critique of post-modernism, a parasitic tendency within the Left. As such, this is a useful and generally positive intervention into a growing discussion of, quite literally, which way is Left.
The following represents some thoughts regarding what it is that we should be trying to build. In offering this discussion piece, I am not attempting to preempt any consideration of the strategy of unifying and reconstructing the radical Left. Rather this is hoped to be received as part of the discussion that needs to unfold. In the interests of space and conciseness, it is offered in the form of theses.
1. There is no forever model of a party generally and a party for socialism in particular. Political parties have ranged over time from the equivalent of clubs and associations to quasi-military formations to the party-blocs that we see in the USA. Their definition arose/arises from
* the actual political and economic conditions in their social formation,
* the historical moment,
* their ideological orientation,
* the nature of the enemy.
2. For the revolutionary Left in the advanced capitalist countries, the mythologizing of the Bolshevik Party of the Soviet Union brought with it largely devastating consequences. The deserved honor won by the Bolsheviks through the success of their revolution was unfortunately translated into the notion that all parties that identified with revolutionary socialism, and specifically what came to be known as Marxism-Leninism, had to conform to a certain structure and form. Rather than an examination of concrete conditions, the assumption that all revolutionaries had to adapt to the type of party that led the Russian Revolution prevailed. In the process, the history of that party was mythologized with significant pieces of information eliminated from history, e.g., the existence of factions and competing tendencies.
3. The social democrats have been haunted by a different problem, i.e., their assumption that the state is neutral leads them to underestimate repression and overestimate the ability to successfully conduct a reform struggle that will result in socialism. For the social democrats, then, their hope, even in the face of vicious repression, is that the state can serve as a neutral instrument that can be captured and used in order to introduce socialism. Thus, for the social democrats, the notion of the revolutionary transformation of society is at best a slogan and the class nature of the state becomes a point of difference they have with others on the radical Left.
While it is true that the capitalist state is built in order to serve to advance capitalism (and not necessarily any individual capitalist), it is also the case that the state remains a terrain of struggle. This means that socialists must be prepared to struggle within the existing state and struggle to gain control of the existing state even while recognizing that this state will ultimately need to be abolished. Without a protracted and sincere struggle to expand democracy and the control by the dispossessed, there will be no confidence in the program and direction articulated by the socialists. To put it another way, the socialists will not be considered to be serious political actors.
Social democrats, however, are generally unprepared for repression, assuming that at the end of the day all players will accept the viability and legitimacy of the democratic capitalist state. This is true of even very courageous leaders, such as the late Chilean President Salvador Allende, who tend to underestimate the willingness of the political Right to reject constitutional democracy.
4. The anarchists run up against problems of how to organize struggle as well as the problem of the transition after capitalism. The assumption by the anarchists is that capitalism can be immediately succeeded by the introduction of self-organized communities with little in the way of a state structure. Their prior problem, however, is how to organize protracted struggle against the forces of the political Right in the struggle against capitalism. To this the anarchists have few answers. At their best, the anarchists are audacious fighters against the oppressor, but they rarely size up the moment and determine the appropriate strategies and tactics. Thus, there is a tendency on the part of anarchists to romanticize particular tactics, e.g., civil disobedience, workplace seizures, etc., rather than to ascertain the tendencies reflected in the various forms of struggle the masses are engaged in at any particular moment.
In the current era anarchist-influenced proposals have emerged that suggest loose networks as the operative form of organization. In general this involves de facto coalitions working around various issues but where no one group or organizational body has authority over another and where there is no assumption of a long-term basis of unity. Networks have served an important function in building struggles around immediate issues, but they tend to be very difficult to sustain over the long term. Internally, there is no real process of building accountability. Related to this is the lack of a means to resolve political and ideological differences. Differences tend to be resolved by one or another group simply walking away from the network.
5. A 21st-century party for socialism builds itself on the experiences--positive and negative--of 20th century socialist initiatives. The work that we undertake does not start off in the middle of a void. It bases itself on conclusions that can be developed as a result of the experiences of the 20th century, a good deal of which are addressed in Which Way is Left?, as well as in other publications that explore these issues in much greater depth. In other words, one cannot pretend as if the experiences of the 20th century did not happen. The anarchist critique, for instance, is as powerful as it is precisely because of the problematic experiences of both revolutionary and non-revolutionary socialist (and national liberation-ist) organizational and state initiatives. Thus, it is ridiculous to pretend that we on the revolutionary Left can return to some pure era before all of the major contradictions within socialism emerged and construct organizations based on yet another myth. We must be looking forward, while at the same time keenly aware of the ground upon which we are and have been walking.
6. A party for socialism in the context of the USA does not construct itself as an electoral party. While it may be the case that at some point in the future due to particularities of the struggle that a party for socialism runs candidates for office in its own name, a party for socialism will need to make that decision based on an assessment of the moment. A party for socialism should be envisioned as a party that leads the struggle of the oppressed and dispossessed. It must be a party deeply rooted among the oppressed and not be a party of "outsiders."
Electoral work will remain a critical site of struggle for the Left, and precisely for that reason specific forms of electoral organization will be necessary. While ultimately there will more than likely need to be an electoral people's party, at this particular moment in time the conditions for such a party do not exist and the nature of the US electoral system makes the construction and sustainability of such a party problematic. Running candidates for office simply to promote the name of the party or the program of the party--be it a party for socialism or a mass electoral people's party--represents self-indulgence rather than Left electoral strategy.
7. A party for socialism must be a democratic, yet disciplined membership organization. The basic principles that Lenin laid out a century ago remain intact, i.e., that to be a member of the party, one must (a) agree with the program, (b) participate in a committee of the party, and (c) pay dues. These criteria are very important on multiple levels, including:
* It does not assume that someone joining the party has a full grasp of Marxism, though they must understand that the party is guided by a Marxist framework.
* Membership in the party necessitates active participation, though participation levels and rates will change over time. For instance, individuals with younger children will more than likely not have the time to be as active as those without. It would be both sexist/anti-family and insane to fail to recognize this. At the same time, being a member of a party for socialism would not be the equivalent of making an annual contribution to the party and then doing nothing.
* There is the assumption of continuous internal education. This does not mean relying on directives from the central committee, but the combination of building upon the existing knowledge of the members plus the addition of new information and analysis. The aim, then, is to help to construct a worldview and method of analysis within the membership that promote self-reliance and leadership development.
* The party must also be capable of making decisions and acting upon them. Within the Marxist-Leninist movement there was the assumption of what was called democratic centralism. This term has a bad name in many quarters today because under the banner of alleged "democratic centralism" various bureaucratic and intolerant practices were carried out that stifled membership democracy and creativity. At the same time, there must be a method for a party to make decisions and act upon them. Therefore:
o Decisions need to be made as a result of democratic discussion and voting. This means that there need to be regular congresses or conventions of the party.
o A process for constructing binding decisions must be created. This might mean that for certain decisions a "super-majority" is needed.
o When decisions are made, they are the decisions of the party. Individuals may disagree with those decisions, and in some cases individuals may have very principled objections to such decisions. In no case should a member of the party be able to act against the decisions of the party even if they publicly disagree with said decisions.
o Decisions, and for that matter the activity of the party, should be summarized and evaluated. This must be built into the work and functioning of the party.
* There should be the assumption that there will be tendencies within a party. Tendencies exist whether they are recognized or not. A tendency should not operate like a clique or faction, but it may have a program that it proposes in advance of a congress. There should be no efforts to abolish or restrict tendencies. This flows from an assumption that within a party for socialism there will be many points of disagreement even where there is overall agreement on the program of the party.
* Members of the party operating in the same social movements and/or struggles should meet on a regular basis to discuss how to advance the program of the party as well as how to advance the objectives of that social movement and/or struggle. It should never be assumed or practiced that social movements are mere recruitment grounds for a party.
* There will need to be term limits in leadership. Experience demonstrates that irrespective of discussion about leadership being judged based on political line, the reality is that there is strength in the incumbency. When someone is in office for a considerable period of time, it becomes that much more difficult to unseat them. Tendencies emerge towards cults of personality, and this stifles newer and younger leadership. Thus, the party leadership must be subject to rotation--not ridiculously short tenures, but something along the lines of no more than ten years in a particular position before someone has to step down and be unable to run for the same position for at least another internal election cycle. New ideas and new individuals must be encouraged to advance to positions of leadership.
8. A party for socialism should aim not only to be mass-based but to have a membership in the hundreds of thousands. A tendency from the 19th century called Blanquism has, over the years, infected much of the radical Left. It is the view that social transformation is brought about through the operations of small groups or conspiracies. Despite the fact that the Bolsheviks had to operate at times as an underground party, it was significant that Lenin regularly polemicized against such views. A party for socialism must aim to be a party in which there are masses directly involved. It needs to aim to reach the real leaders of the social movements and the key activists within said social movements. It should not position itself as an elite operating above the struggle.
The implications of a party of this scale are quite profound. As we attempted to emphasize in Which Way Is Left?, it means that such a party will have a variety of different sorts of members, many of whom will not only disagree with one another but not necessarily like one another. The critical condition, however, will be the ability of members of the party to operate together in line with the common program and direction of the party. Building a party on that scale means thinking very differently than we on the Left normally do about the minimum level of unity necessary in order to be in the same organization as other comrades.
9. The party for socialism must be as public as conditions allow. One of the most difficult dilemmas facing the radical Left in the USA, socialist and non-socialist, revolves around how public can be its activities in its own name. Specifically, can one be an open socialist and member of an openly socialist organization and not face either direct repression and/or marginalization? To a great extent this question revolves around one's analysis of the state.
The democratic capitalist State is not neutral. Its objective is to promote capitalism. As such, it will take steps, when necessary and possible, to repress certain levels of dissent, i.e., levels that appear to operate outside of the dominant capitalist consensus. This is not just repression of those of us on the Left, but also social movements that challenge--from the Left side of the political spectrum--the dominant ruling consensus.
The Left has often been challenged in the so-called mainstream for not being open with its views and organizations. At the same time, when being open, particularly in the South and the Southwest, it is not uncommon for the Left--and particularly the Left of color--to face swift and vicious suppression. There are countless examples of this, but one need only think of the notorious Counter-Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) in the 1960s and 1970s which aimed to repress the freedom movements of people of color, or the murders in Greensboro, North Carolina in November 1979 of members of the Communist Workers Party, murders that were proven to have taken place with the knowledge and acceptance of the forces of law and order.
For these reasons, a party for socialism, recognizing that the capitalist ruling groups will never voluntarily accept a popular mandate for a transition to socialism, must operate on the assumption that repression is a present and future reality. In other words, there will be repression; the question is of the scale of said repression rather than whether said repression will take place. At the same time, there will be vast differences between various parts of the USA, largely based on the relative strengths and weaknesses of the broader progressive social movements, making it possible to do open socialist work depending on conditions.
Therefore, there should not be a principle, for instance, of an underground party or a principle of a completely open party. There should, however, be an assumption that the party must protect its members, allies and work. The actual history of the USA shows that there is a high degree of intolerance by the ruling circles and the mainstream media for the Left in general and the radical Left in particular. At the same time, part of the reason-to-be for a party of socialism is to shift the ideological currents in society in favor of social transformation. This means that there must be an open presence to conduct such a battle.
10. There may be more than one party for socialism and, therefore, the socialist Left must be prepared to entertain the idea of a "front" of parties and/or organizations operating in concert. As we stated in Which Way Is Left?, the assumption that there will only be one leading party constitutes idealism and dogmatism. There are and will be differences within the socialist Left that may not be easily bridged. This may mean that separate organizations may need to exist for some time to come even if and when such organizations can agree on various forms of joint work. The conclusions from this include:
* Not all differences can be worked out, even between principled groups.
* Room must exist for both strategic and tactical alliances within the Left generally and the socialist Left in particular.
* We are familiar with tactical alliances that come together around a certain issue or issues. Such alliances will remain important.
* Strategic alliances must be forged on a greater scale within the general Left. Strategic alliances constitute conscious and formal agreements between organizations to work together on a set of long-term tasks. Such strategic alliances may result, at some point in the future, in a merger but they may not necessarily result in anything other than a long-term arrangement.
* Successful strategic alliances will more than likely necessitate an organizational framework in order to coordinate activities and work through differences and challenges. As exhibited in Nicaragua and El Salvador, for instance, this may take the form of a radical front that formally brings organizations together but does not necessarily result in a merger.
* Strategic alliances can also be constituted between different sections of the Left. For instance, a party for socialism might construct a strategic alliance with a party or organization that emerged out of a specific social movement, e.g., an oppressed nationality radical formation. While the concept of a merger should not be foreclosed, entry into a strategic alliance would not be grounded on the assumption of merger, though there would be sufficient grounding for a high level of working unity.
11. The conditions for the formation of a party should not be based upon the assumption of comprehensive unity on all of the major questions facing the Left. As we raised earlier, contrary to the practice of the US Left to elevate every political question to a splitting question, the single biggest challenge that the socialist Left faces is to ascertain what are the minimum conditions of unity. This means what are the specific questions around which there must be principled unity in order for a party to come into existence and operate successfully. It is this matter that should be foremost in the minds of the socialist Left, rather than operating on assumptions that there is clarity as to what those questions are as well as clarity as to the answers to such questions. As part of the debate that needs to take place, we will be elaborating our views as to what those questions are. At the general level, and for purposes of a very preliminary discussion, we would suggest consideration go to
* an analysis of the main trends in the global and domestic economies;
* an analysis of the state, and specifically the US state;
* agreement that the party for socialism must be grounded within the oppressed, and particularly within the working class;
* agreement on the centrality of the struggle against racism and national oppression particularly in light of both US history as well as the history of global imperialism;
* agreement on the centrality of the struggle against male supremacy, hetero-sexism, and all forms of gender oppression;
* agreement on the struggle against imperialism and, therefore, the need to build an internationalist party that supports struggles for national liberation and national sovereignty;
* agreement on the essential need to integrate the struggle for a sustainable environment and respect for nature into the struggle for socialism;
* agreement that 21st-century socialism cannot be socialism if it is not democratic and does not represent a period of the increasing of power of the working class and other oppressed strata over the conditions of their lives.
12. A party for socialism cannot replace social movements; and social movements, no matter how radical, cannot displace the role of a party. One aspect of the crisis of socialism has been a tendency for some comrades to believe that either a party is unnecessary because various social movements will advance social transformation or that a party will spontaneously emerge at the correct moment. History has demonstrated time and again a few lessons concerning radical parties and social movements:
* Social movements represent various tendencies and do not, generally speaking, have one comprehensive and overarching view of the tasks of social transformation. They tend, as they should, to focus on the particular objectives of the respective social movement. (Note: such objectives can be reform-oriented and/or radical.)
* Radical parties do not control when a social upsurge will arise. They can prepare for one and attempt to situate themselves in such a way in order to assist in the development of a social upsurge, but attempts at prediction are largely fruitless. Radical parties should place themselves in such a way that they provide material assistance to and leadership for the flowering of social movements.
* Radical parties rarely emerge spontaneously. Party formation as well as mergers may take place at unexpected moments driven by larger conditions. The case of Nicaragua points to this where the Sandinista movement had several distinct blocs that operated quite separately, but during the 1970s, driven by larger social forces--as well as natural forces such as the great 1972 earthquake--united in a reformed Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN). In either case, radical parties do not appear simply because the masses define a particular moment when such a party is necessary.
* While the construction of a party for socialism must be conscious, its ability to grow will depend on a combination of its ability to elaborate a line that corresponds to the actual social struggles in the USA and globally as well as its ability to understand that moment or conjuncture. Ultimately social upsurge will drive the ability of a party for socialism to succeed, and social upsurges cannot be willed into existence.
Khalil Hassan has been active in the US Left since the 1970s. He has had articles published in various sources including Monthly Review.
December 22, 2007
Letter to a Norwegian Historian
[This post requires a little background for non-Norwegian readers. It was written by Morten Falck, long the main science journalist at Aftenposten, Norway's leading daily, and a personal friend. Morten, his wife Sissel Henriksen, and most of my Norwegian acquaintances are members of a newly formed left-wing political party, Rødt (Red, in English). Rødt candidates won office in cities and towns across the country this year, and the party may well place several members in the Storting, Norway's parliament, in the national elections in 2009. The reactions were not unique, rather, typical. The next year a young pupil named Odd Hansen was thrown out of Teisen High School because he had long hair and a beard – and even wore spectacles. The teachers claimed it was impossible to teach such a pupil. Members of the Right: Jorun But the Bryn-Hellerud-section did not give up. One night the doorbell rang. Outside stood Tron Øgrim. He stepped out of his botfores (a sort of ankle-high lined winter galoshes), deposited his fur-coat, I brewed some tea (ordinary Earl Grey!) and we withdrew to the boy’s room. During teapot after teapot, night by night, we discussed topics like pacifism, war and peace, revolution, communism, socialism, the Chinese cultural revolution, economics, philosophy, materialism and idealism, dialectics and metaphysics, the atomic bomb, literature, art, environmentalism, and of course science fiction – or Tron would not have been Tron. This connection, which seems so evident to me, you don’t see. It even looks as though you don’t see the importance of the daily newspaper Klassekampen (Class Struggle). We started a daily newspaper, and have helped keep it going right up to the present. Its very existence, to the left of all the other daily newspapers on important questions like war & peace, anti-imperialism, the European Union – drives wedges in the ice that so easily covers the other newspapers. As long as Klassekampen has not turned totally loyal to the government, it opens breathing space and creates greater space for skeptical and diverse opinions in the other newspapers as well. It is peculiar that you, who work there as a journalist, are unable to see this. And that you don’t understand that this has been a struggle for greater democracy, greater freedom.
One of Rødt's predecessor organizations was the Worker's Communist Party of Norway (AKP in Norwegian), a major feature of the country's political life since the late '60s. Recent years have seen a spate of articles and books denouncing the AKP as 1. lunatic leftists single-handedly ruining Norway's near-perfect society and 2. totally ineffectual and insignificant. US residents used to seeing today's anti-war demonstrators dismissed as dirty, elitist, granola-eating, America-hating, tree-hugging 1960s leftovers will recognize the pattern--and the purpose: scaring people off from making common cause with a force threatening to the powers that be.
This open letter to one of those critical of the AKP was published in the daily Klassekampen and Morten, knowing I would be interested, kindly had an English translation awaiting me when I arrived in Oslo to attend the recent memorial service for Cde. Tron Øgrim.. Certain that I am not the only non-Norwegian who will find it fascinating, I got his permission to post it here. He has helped further by providing cool graphics, some never printed or posted before.]
A representative of the "social democratic paradise" seeks to engage the young Tron Øgrim in dialogue.
Dear Hans Petter Sjøli,
You have written a book about the history of the Norwegian Marxist-Leninist movement, Mao, Min Mao. That history is my history as well, and you have kindly mentioned my name en passant on page 24. That is why I write you this letter. For I do not recognise my own history in your rendering.
That is not primarily because of errors you make in the details, like when you tell us that the leftist scholar Gutorm Gjessing was a professor of biology. That certainly would have come as a surprise to him, sitting in his office at the ethnographic museum! Such errors could make me suspect you of sloppiness – but never mind, we can all make a mistake.
It is more serious when you write that the Socialist People’s Party (SF) in the 1960s was "a Mecca for industrious troublemakers from the 'east side' with a liking for green tea." (p. 19) Green tea? We had not even heard of the stuff in the Sixties. This kind of error shows me that you lack sufficient knowledge of the background. You seem to take the situation of today for granted, and make your assessments from that. But please remember that the Sixties was before we hit oil. It was before the Value Added Tax was introduced. It was back when Norway was a (relatively) poor country, and before the selection of commodities offered became overwhelming. The Sixties was another world.
You call yourself a historian, and claim to have researched the history of the Marxist-Leninist movement. But that makes your description of the Bryn-Hellerud-area of Oslo, a cradle of the movement, rather odd. "There are far more petty-bourgeois villas than worn city blocks or apartment buildings in the area," you tell us on page 22.
"Worn city blocks"? Here, far out in the rural Østre Aker district, where the apartment buildings sprouted from peasants' fields during the '50s and '60s? And why don’t you pose the question of who lived in these wooden houses that you call petty-bourgeois villas? And since you make a point of it – did the Marxist-Leninist movement have the most members in the apartment buildings or in the wooden houses?Petty bourgeous villas? Here is the Bryn Hellerud area seen from the west in 1951. The author, then six, moved into the apartment pointed out by the foremost red arrow in December 1951.
The Bryn match factory is pointed out by the red arrow in the center of the picture. Klosterheim is situated among the trees just beneath that. Tron Øgrim lived approximately where the red arrow in the upper left corner is pointing. The three red circles shows brick works along the Alna river and the railway, which can be seen running horizontally through the picture. Teisen high school is situated just outside of the picture to the left (in the opposite direction from the first red arrow), Bryn railway station, with the former brewery, and the then active textile mills along the Bryn falls are just outside the right picture frame.
Being a historian, you ought to know we are talking here of an old working class area, the scene of the famous match workers' strike of 1889, maybe the most famous strike in the whole history of the Norwegian working class, because it was the first woman workers' strike. It became an area of brick works, textile mills, chemical industry, breweries, etc. (The Bryn Temperence Union was founded prior to the 20th century by workers' wives who were infuriated because the brewery sold beer in pails to the brickworkers on payday. Bryn-Hellerud SUF, the core from which the young Marxist-Leninist movement sprang in Norway, held our meetings at Klosterheim, the hall of the Bryn Temperence Union.) Bryn was the first "railway station town" in Norway, as the station was established in the growing industrial center at the Bryn Falls. You will find plenty of sociological facts about the environment in Pål Steigan’s book At the Square of Heavenly Peace, which is listed among the sources in the back of your book..
Why are you placing quotation marks around "east side"? Maybe it is just a part of the rhetoric? Starting from page one you employ an ironic – not to say sarcastic – distancing toward the object of your research. A rather elaborate choice of words seems designed to lead the reader's thinking. (Just one example: “The chairman lit the path” (page 18) – to make us associate Mao Zedong with the ultra-left Peruvian guerrilla movement “Sendero Luminoso.” But historically and logically this is to turn things upside down.)
As research this does not call for much admiration. But it suits the pattern of the book. You start by claiming that "the movement – as far as one can call it by so great a name – achieved very little politically. It hardly affected the social development" in "this country, which in fifty years had changed from impoverished outcrop into a rich, modern and in every way successful society, governed by the workers movement's own party. The revolution had been completed. The Social Democratic Party had in many ways created a social democratic paradise. The working class had got a social and material lift unequalled in history. The social security net was in place…" (page 9-10)
With appropriate modesty you write that this is not the final history, just ”my attempt to understand the Marxist-Leninist movement.” (page 14). But both the ironic language and the prejudiced point of view are obstacles to understanding. You start from a picture of Norway that is unrecognisable, and renders the 1960s and the Marxist-Leninist movement incomprehensible.
I will thank you for making it so clear that you don’t understand, as well as for suggesting why. If history is to be comprehensible, it must be viewed against the preceding times, and every social movement must be understood in relationship to its own time, not the present of some historian living several decades later. Oh, yes, I do recognise the picture of Norway that you draw. They served it to us in school: "The class struggle is over. Norway is the perfect democracy, the best of all worlds." But it was precisely when reality broke the school-peddled myths that we became Marxist-Leninists. Allow me to get a little personal.
Understanding the sixties
On the 25th of January, 1965, Winston Churchill died. He was mourned by many in Norway. The department store Steen og Strøm in Oslo filled its big windows with pictures from his life. One late evening I came by, and stopped to look at the display.
Nedre Slottsgate (Lower Castle Street) lay desolate and quiet. Only a single, elderly gentleman in a gray coat and galoshes came walking through the sleet with a worn leather briefcase under his arm. "Lawyer," I thought.
He came up to me, tapped on my shoulder with a bony finger, nodded towards the picture behind the mirror glass pane, where Sir Winston stood bare-headed and unyielding among the brickheaps in a bombed London street – and said in a somewhat dry voice: “Young man, He didn’t have as much hair on his head as you. But he had so much more within!"
Did I glibly retort ”So that’s where he had it!”? Oh, no, not in my wildest dreams! I had not yet turned 19, and was not yet accustomed to being insulted in public just because I had let my hair grow till it covered the edge of my ears. But I was soon to learn that hair length made me a total outlaw. Nice, cultured grown-ups could freely shower me with disparaging remarks because my hair was longer than average. Elderly married couples would step demonstratively sideways out into the driveway, pointing their fingers and hollering when I was going for a walk with my parents through the quiet Sunday streets of Oslo the following summer (by then both hair and beard had grown longer still) "Hey! Is that a boy or a girl?"
The author, apparently a boy, 1968
But over the shimmering television screen flickered black-and-white images from the Vietnam war: Children burnt by napalm, captured guerilla fighters: young women and young men with their hands tied behind their backs – youths like us. They were communists, the Norwegian voices repeated after the American soundtrack. A specially vile type of communists, called “Vietcong”. But to me they looked like quite ordinary humans, like us. (At that time, the television still broadcast something called news, dealing with important events all over the world, and it was more than just headlines.)
There was an enormous gap between the suffocating, stagnant, unidirectional, official Norwegian "reality," where all problems, everything that did not "fit in" was swept under the carpet – and the reality that confronted us outside of schools, newspapers and public opinion. Out there, in the world, there was war! Out there, in reality, young girls who had unwanted pregnancies died from illegal attempts at abortion. To bear a child out of wedlock was still a scandal. There was no security. Outside, in the real world, there still existed enormous differences between the poor and the rich, and a quarter of a century after the start of the Second World War, the third one loomed as a substantial threat. The very end, nuclear war. And yet, my hair length was a bigger problem!
We had observed the 25th anniversary of the start of the Second World War and the 50th anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War, with television serials, radio-programs and movies. Strong anti-war movies like Oh, What a Lovely Warand King and Country. The Russian nuclear tests at Novaja Zemlya had added new and nervous terms like "Strontium 90" to our vocabulary, and the Cuban missile crisis was still fresh in memory. I, like many others, was an ardent pacifist. But the world was standing at the brink of war. Indeed, it was war. In Vietnam, my fellow adolescents were fighting for their lives and freedom against the United States of America, the very superpower of technology.
Merely twenty years had passed since my parents fought the same struggle against the German Nazi occupants. But still the important thing was that you dressed like your grandpa and wore a haircut like a US marine. Form was the important thing, the surface, the look of things, not the content. If we did not have the same conditions, we still were to look the same! Newly ironed tulle curtains, clean fingernails, membership in the state church. It was essential not to deviate. The pressure to conform was unbearable. No one asked for your opinion. The politicians took care of opinions on your behalf. And though the social democratic politician Einar Førde did not coin the sentence until much later, it was supposed that "We are all social democrats."
I commence
In 1965 I participated in my first march against the war in Vietnam. I dragged a friend along, for I knew no one there. But I had to participate in that demonstration. I had to express my opinion. So was I interested in politics, then? I was not. Art, literature, movies and theater, history – and biology, but not politics. But the world meant something to me, for that was where I intended to live.
The march started from the square outside of Centrum Cinema. A couple of hundred participants rallied there, serious grown-ups with hats and coats, some youths deep in parkas. They were strangers, unknown to me, but obviously many of them knew one another. That demonstration did not make me an activist.
But the next year I got acquainted with Bryn/Hellerud SUF.
1966 was a year of active recruiting for the Bryn/Hellerud local section of the Socialist Youth League, SUF. (The SUF was the youth section of the Sf, the Socialist People's Party, then the leftmost of Norway's large electoral parties.) My brother was elected editor of the school newspaper at Teisen High School, and became a member of Bryn/Hellerud. But I did not follow suit. I was older, had turned twenty, and taken the preliminary course of philosophy at the University, today called Examen philosophicum. I had objections, I didn’t like communism, I was concerned about the environment.
Bryn/Hellerud
local section of
the Socialist
Youth League, a
hothouse for
future leaders
of the AKP.
Gulbrandsen
Below: Tron
Øgrim
We discussed Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and the Swedish diplomat Georg Borgström's books on food supply for the world’s exploding population – and Reverend Malthus. Or if there was any hope for the great whales. Then Tron came armed with a copy of Scientific American. Tron was well prepared. In the end I had no arguments left, and only one road was open if I wanted to keep my self respect: I had to join. Tron made me a Marxist, and for that I will always be grateful. He taught me to see how the world works.
You wonder why we became Marxist-Leninists. But every opposition in the world was Marxist-Leninist. The Chinese Cultural Revolution was a revitalisation of Marxism-Leninism, it was seen as extremely liberating, and inspired uprisings and protest all over the world. Anti-imperialists the world over called themselves Maoists. It would have been a much greater mystery had we not become Marxist-Leninists.
Did we make a difference?
To see whether the Marxist-Leninist movement has had any significance, we have to look at Norway before the movement emerged, and see what changes have taken place.
I remember a discussion during a Norwegian lesson in high school, after an essay about whether women might or ought to be employed outside of home. It may have been in the autumn of 1963 or spring, 1964. We were 24 pupils in the English class, with a great majority of girls. But during that discussion only two – maybe three – were of the opinion that women ought to have their own occupation! One of the heavy counterarguments came from a boy who lived in the military apartments at Ulven. His mother had been away the preceding week, and there had been no one to empty the ashtrays!
The '60s really was another world, and I doubt you would have liked it there.
The fight for women’s equality with men met with opposition from broad sections of the official Norwegian society. It was far from evident that women were entitled to their own occupation. An individual woman’s right to decide for an abortion, which you may consider an evident democratic right, was actively sabotaged by the Socialist Left Party, which gave the individual conscience of a single, male Member of Parliament higher priority than the right of women to control their own bodies.
The fight for kindergartens for everyone has still not been won, and the fight for equality at work will probably go on for a long time yet. But today the demand for the six hour working day has wind in the sails, and it is generally accepted that women have the right to provide for themselves. Would the world have changed in the same way without us?
When the SUF raised the issue of Palestine, shock waves penetrated far into The Socialist People’s Party (our mother party). The party weekly Orientering and the party central committee took a clear stand against us. Now even the former conservative Prime Minister Kaare Willoch agrees with us. Do you think this has happened on its own?
When we supported the South Vietnamese resistance, the National Liberation Front (NLF), people asked “Are you a communist?!” to shut us up. The best answer was a clear and loud “Yes!”. That shut them up. It still is legitimate to be a communist in Norway. In the mid 1960s the Cold War was at its sharpest, and the shadow of McCarthyism loomed heavy im public opinion. It was close to sacrilege to criticize the USA, whatever the reason. Now, a great majority stands against the US war in Iraq. And everyone agrees that the US was a bandit and an aggressor in the Vietnam War. A lot of people also agree that the US is an imperialist state. Do you think that has happened by itself?
We headed into work places and met petrified unions whose leadership were shocked by any initiative from ordinary members. The members were to listen to their elected representatives, and apart from that, keep "order in the ranks." Newly employed at the Freia chocolate factory in the autumn of 1970, I took the podium and proposed that we should support the on-going strike among the bus and tram drivers of Oslo. My local union leader was married to a striking bus driver, but she was a member of the ruling social-democratic Labor Party, and so she (and the rest of the board) opposed the proposition. But they lost the vote. Their panic was palpable.
On page 47 you tell us: "Towards the end of 1969 [the organisation initiated] the most widespread strike activity in recent times in Norway." Don’t you think that all the strikes might have come as a result of actual unrest among the workers? We raised the fight for local mobilization, against the rule of pampered union bosses and suffocating Social Democratic control of the labor movement, we supported local demands and local actions. Today another climate has taken hold in Norwegian industry. Local initiatives are normal. Union bosses loyal to the government are no longer in monolithic control.
We broke the sixties’ dank conformity, we expanded democracy.
Keeping the EU's thumb off Norway
The fight against ruling class efforts to bring Norway into the European Economic Community (EEC) was critical, yet you focus on the slogan we used! You write that EEC was "the name the Vote No people used for the European Community (EU)." No! The name European Economic Community had been commonly used in Norwegian debate since the early Sixties. With the aim of sugaring the pill, the Norwegian Department of Foreign Affairs pushed Norwegian membership in 1971-1972 under such new banners as European Commonwealth (EF) and European Economic commonwealth (EØF), to draw on the Norwegian traditions of collectivity, but to no avail. The most rational name was of course that which had been used in the debate all along, and which people understood without further explanation. [During the 1994 effort to re-raise this question, when the AKP again played a leading role in urging our fellow Norwegians to Vote No, we used the term European Union, because that was the one evryone understood. It didn't help advocates of Norway joining--the proposal was still rejected.]
Falck, family and colleagues, again making no difference, during 2nd campaign to defeat EU membership, 1994
You serve up some figures (p. 68) to show that AKMED (The Worker’s Committee Against EEC and Inflation) had no following and no effect. I strongly doubt that your numbers are anything more than guesses. And the Marxist-Leninists worked not only within AKMED, but were active within all sectors of the broader people’s movement as well. We were activists, we mobilized the Norwegian people, and we were of great significance to the victory of September 25,1972.
It goes without saying that we were not alone in achieving this. Thousands of people made a giant contribution against the EEC, and can quite rightfully claim a part of the credit for the victory. But we were important to the outcome because we were active, we went out and discussed with people, we offered reasons and we pointed out connections, and we helped organize.
Yet the struggle against EEC membership was just the beginning. In its wake arose local struggles on every rock and in every alley, on every shore and in each fjord. While some kept busy ridiculing the struggle for Blowaway Commons [the Norwegian equivalent of East Nowhere--jh], we connected with and participated in these struggles to defend the living conditions of the Norwegian people. Some of them we lost, and many others we won. Thus we changed Norway, and made it possible to breathe. It is no longer required that you dress according to code and say the same things as your grandfather – or what is decided in the headquarters of the Social Democratic Party. You breathe so freely because we were there. We weren't alone. But we were the vanguard. There was no other political movement in Norway which did all that. We were the motor of all these struggles that changed Norway. Do you think it would have happened like that without us?
In the Sixties, few had even heard much about homosexuality. It could not be mentioned, and was even criminal for males. Now the Salvation Army is loosing support because of its discriminatory practice towards gay people. Isn’t that good? But without seeing the Sixties for what they were, you will not see the difference.
A daily full color newspaper called Class Struggle in a country with a population about 2/3 that of NYC!
Certainly you may insist that we made mistakes, that we were sectarian, and so on. Well, do it in a way that we can learn from, and I shall not protest. But give us credit for what good things we did. And if you are going to say something about Mao’s policies and writings, it would be wise to read him. If not, it will not be possible to understand what ignited us, and you make us look foolish, which we were not.
But you do suggest connections that did not exist. On page 48 you say that the militance of the SUF was partly responsible for the ruling Labor Party drawing over one million votes for the first time in the election of 1969. You know that is nonsense. Twelve years earlier, the Labour Party, with a two percent higher vote, fell short of a million. The numbers hide a growth in the electorate – and it may be a little hard to blame the Socialist Youth League for that? At least at such an early date?
Since I have embarked on the road of anecdote, let me end with a tale about the absolutely rigid and humourless discipline that ruled the AKP. For Klassekampen's Yule party in 1981, a special spoof edition of "Klampekassen" was produced without the knowledge of the editorial board. At that time I was an active book reviewer and participant in debates on the cultural pages, specialising in books on natural history. "Klampekassen" featured a parody of my work: a rave review of a (non-existent) must-have, 12-volume, popular work on the ticks of Norway. Editor Sigurd Allern evidently found it a little over the top, and came over to me during the party with an awkward apology. I will never forget the look on his face when I responded, "I wrote it myself."
We were disciplined because we were serious. But within that discipline, there were room for humour, hilarity, irony, creativity and laughter. Say what you will about the Workers Communist Party, but don’t ever call us tedious.
Morten Falck
December 7, 2007
Now That's What I Call Good News!!
Just checked my email from here in Oslo, and found a press release from Loretta Williams, Director of the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights in North America. Annually the Center gives its Outstanding Book Award to a number of works which promote justice and combat bigotry.
Among this year's winners will be Chip Smith's superb The Cost of Privilege. Words cannot describe how happy this makes me. This kind of recognition is extremely important for a book (unlike most on the list) that does not have the imprint of a mainstream publishing house like Simon & Schuster, a university press like Harvard's, or even a well-established left outfit like Pluto or South End. So if you have chosen to ignore the series of plugs we have given TCoP here since New Year's Day of this year, here's a wake-up call from the people who give one of the most prestigeous awards in the field.
To learn more, and to order The Cost of Privilege, click here. And bear in mind that it makes a nifty holiday gift, so click even if you already have your own copy!
And to check out the other worthy recipients of this year's Gustavus Myers Award, take a look at their website!
FotM Is 1! Taste the Revolution!
I had hoped to post something on December 1, which marked the actual first anniversary of this column, but I was out of the US at an anti-war conference in the UK and am now in Norway to attend a seminar being held in memory of Tron Øgrim, the Norwegian Red and polymath I mourned here in May.
It actually stunned me when I realized that in this short year, my two fellow Fire on the Mountain bloggers and I have posted 126 entries here. Not too damn shabby, if I do say so myself. And in the true five year plan spirit, we pledge to exceed this impressive rate over the coming year! (I can make this pledge without knowingly lying, because I have ready to go a several part piece by the excellent Morten Falck defending the Norwegian new communist movement against attacks from those eager to write it out of history, and the promise of a fabulous new addition to the FotM stable of bloggers.)
In my first post, I made the following mild declaration:
"I know, there is in Socialist Party circles an assembly of mockers. They deride aught that savors of sentiment. But we heed not their scoffing. We will not permit them to outface us. A songless Socialism is a wrangling, contentious, dismembered thing. A singing Socialism will be a socialism triumphant."
Bouck White, Letters from Prison, 1915
As the above suggests, this blog will try to avoid dry dogma and nit-picky polemic, plus which it will have a bunch of stuff about music, and culture more broadly.
Let us know in the comments section if you think that vow has been kept, and what else you'd like to see in future posts.
And in the meantime, enjoy these ads for Taybeh Beer, started by Palestinians who returned from the US to Ramallah after the Oslo accords to help jumpstart the Palestinian economy, and who have persevered in the face of unbelievable pressure from the Israeli occupation. (No, I haven't tried it and only heard of it from the splendid Sissel Henriksen, journalist at Klassekampen, Norway's finest daily newspaper.)
Read more!
