Make Trump an offer he can't refuse: the wall for the registry date

For Trump, "The Wall" has always been a bullshit issue: a symbol of "America First" white supremacy triumphant, and not at all a measure with any practical significance.

Why of no significance? Because the wall is already there. Some 702 miles, 1,130 kilometers, of physical barriers first proposed under Democrat President Jimmy Carter that began to be built under Democrat Bill Clinton.

It was called a "fence" mostly because calling it a wall when the commie one in Berlin was still a recent memory would have been a bad PR move.

But Trump does want to call it a "wall," I guess to prove he's just as mean as Stalin used to be. And replacing a few segments of existing metal spikes with metal spikes covered by concrete. Why? My guess is that is would be easier to engrave "TRUMP" in gold letters on a concrete surface, you know, for photo ops.

What Trump really wants is not a construction project, but to create a wall of racism, but for that reason, every dollar Congress approves for his phony physical wall is another brick in Trump's wall of bigotry and discrimination.

This is how legalization was done in the 1930s
and how it should be done now -- just register

Unless, of course, the money is solely for painting "TRUMP" in gold letters, because it is accompanied by a sweeping measure of acceptance and welcome for immigrants and their communities.

That's where "the date" comes in.

What date? The registry date.

WTF is a registry date and what good is it? I'll let the official U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services web site answer:

Aliens who have continuously resided in the United States since January 1, 1972, are of good moral character, and are not inadmissible, are eligible to adjust to legal permanent resident status under the registry provision. Before the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 amended the date, aliens had to have been in the country continuously since June 30, 1948, to qualify.

From back in the day when most people who had come to the United States were European, and the 1920s anti-immigrant hysteria had subsided, there is a provision in immigration law that says, basically, if you have been living permanently in the United States since a certain date, let the government know and you will be recognized as a permanent resident.

It is a simple, direct and effective mechanism for  mass legalization of immigrants based on the iron-clad logic that those who have been residing permanently in the United States are in fact permanent residents thereof.

So I think we should make Trump and offer he can't refuse: sign the change in the registry date and we'll give you the wall.

But if Trump doesn't want to, is there any way to stop him from refusing?

As of January 3, the Democrats have a majority in the House. Simply decide that nothing gets to the floor, goes to the Senate or gets to the President for his signature that does not include a sentence to the effect of: "The registry date is changed to January 20, 2017."

Nothing. Zero. Zip. No military spending. No disaster relief. No mother's day proclamation. Like, nada.

And why that date? I think January 20, 2017 --the day Trump became president-- would be a nice gesture of gratitude, allowing The Donald to add "no one is better at amnesty for illegal aliens" to the list of things that no one is better at than him. If he wants, he can even call it by its true name: justice for the undocumented.

--José G. Pérez

People not voting is the fault of the system and its politicians, not the people

I am fucking sick a tired of hearing congresscritters and other members of our political class, and their news media acolytes, attack the people for exercising their democratic right to give elections the finger.

Never mind this election we just had; look at the big one. For two years before a presidential election we are subjected to a constant 24 X 7 X 365 bombardment about how we get to decide the ultimate fate of life, the universe and everything!

No-one is allowed to say different. There's not even a single letter to the editor, never mind a columnist or TV gasbag that disagrees. When did you ever read a column saying, "don't vote. It only encourages them?" Or hear a TV or radio political pontificator explaining what you can hear on any bus in any American city: "If God had meant us to vote, she would have given us candidates."

Then comes the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November of a year divisible by four without a remainder. Almost 66 million vote for Queen Hillary, 63 million for Trumpus Maximus, and six million between them for the Greens and Libertarians, there to show how even weirdos, perverts and the clinically insane can have their own presidential candidates.

And, oh yeah. There's 100 million, give or take, who say, "take this election and shove it!"

Why would they say that? Well consider the numbers I reported above: 66 megavotes for Hillary. 63 for Trumpus, so The Donald is president.

Do you realize that in just about every  other country in the entire world, when they want to cram a president down your throat, at least they have the decency to pretend that the person got more votes?

And then there's the Senate. The nearly 40,000,000 people of California will once again be represented by Diane Feinstein, who will have the same exact status and power as John Barrasso, who is being sent to the Senate by the fewer than 600,000 people of Wyoming.

We have 500,000 --that's right, half a million-- elected positions in this country but the vast majority are not really elected, they're imposed by the dominant political machine in the area. Then there are the contested elections, where politicians sell themselves through a legalized system of bribery known as "campaign contributions" although there's also the modality where the rich people will buy both candidates and then let the people freely choose which one is better at fooling them.

Beyond "elections" we come to the Holy of Holies, John Roberts and the Supremes. It's a dictatorial constitutional convention with nine delegates appointed for life. I say dictatorial in the strictest, scientific sense of the word: an authority bound by no pre-existing laws. They "interpret" (invent) the constitution as it serves the purposes of the majority of these robed reactionaries of the ruling rich ... and whoever holds their puppet strings.

Liberals and self-styled "socialists" who berate the people for not exercising their "democratic" right to vote should concentrate instead on getting rid of our slave owner's constitution and replacing it with one that provides for a democratic republic instead. And I don't even mean a socialist one; just a plain old standard-issue bourgeois democracy would be a great advance.

--José G. Pérez

11-11-11 and the memory of a hundred years

It was on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month that the guns fell silent a century ago. The war to end all wars had ended. It would take but a few years to learn that it had been the overture, not the finale.

The First World War gave us a League of Nations, a ban on poison gas, restrictions on the ships and tonnage of navies. But World War One did not end the arrogance of the Great Powers that were great only in avarice and conquest.

Nor could it stop the advance of scientists. Their accomplishments would be feted in a quarter century by the radiance of a thousand suns burst at once into the sky of a cold New Mexico desert night.

A false dawn. Not dreams but nightmares. Remembrance Day they call it in many countries, that day 100 years ago when they told us it was the last day of the last war. Remember what came after.

--José G. Pérez

Trump's real program: not deporting immigrants, but keeping them 'illegal'

This may sound like an insane thing to say after a couple of weeks when Trump has promoted every anti-immigrant idea that self-hater Stephen Miller has been able to come up with, from overthrowing the most important amendment to the constitution in 200 years to ordering 15,000 troops to the border and telling them to feel free to open fire on unarmed civilians.

But President Trump's real, on-the-ground policy on "illegals" is exactly the same as every other president going back decades: not to get rid of the undocumented, but to keep them "illegal," bereft of rights so they can't defend themselves and can be easily ripped off and super-exploited.

Just look at it, as it plays out in real life: how many "illegals" were there before Obama was elected? More than eleven million. 

And how many were there when he left office, after the Great Recession and three million deportations? More than eleven million.

And how many are there now after two years of "Build the Wall" chanting and Trump's rule? More than eleven million.

And if you think that's going to change, do the math. If you leave aside those caught near the border shortly after crossing, how many people were deported each year under Obama, from the settled undocumented population inside the country?

Give or take, a quarter million a year. And how many are being deported now? Give or take, a quarter million.

So how long would it take to "solve" the problem by deporting all the undocumented? Forty-four years, give or take. And, mind you, that's assuming the government's figure of just over 11 million is right.

Because professors from MIT and Yale, utilizing "standard demographic principles" just published a study saying by the most conservative yardstick, the real number is almost 17 million, but with standard methodology, the number is 22 million, double the official estimate. If that's so, you'd need to be pretty unlucky to get deported before you died.

So has anything changed with Trump? Yes, most of all the rhetoric. Though we should remember Trump is not that unusual as a politician trying to whip up anti-immigrant sentiment. But his deportation policies have been more cruel and arbitrary than Obama's in order to spread fear throughout the entire immigrant community. As were Clinton's in relation to his predecessors.

But as for the rest of it, the real policy has been essentially the same for many decades: not to throw out the "illegals," but make sure that if they stay here, they stay "illegal," meaning super-exploitable and thus super-profitable for the bosses.

--José G. Pérez

The Democratic Socialists, the Democratic Party, and the tactic of critical support

In a previous post, I explained why I disagree with a statement put out by the New York City DSA criticizing Alexandria Ocasio Cortez for saying that she would support all the Democrats in November. I think it was OK. She has made her differences with the establishment Democrats perfectly clear, and no one who pays the slightest attention to politics could possibly believe that she supports Cuomo's policies.

But unless she went out of her way to denounce Cuomo in the general election, her support for his candidacy will be taken for granted: she is his running mate. And her denouncing Cuomo would not have made any sense to the people socialists are trying to reach.

But is it true that her statement about “rallying behind all Democratic nominees” in effect “erases” the message of the insurgent candidates against the party establishment, as the criticism of her asserts?

I don't think so. I believe people who follow politics in the slightest understand Ocasio represents a very different political approach from Cuomo's, despite what she said.

I want to suggest that the way to analyze this situation, from a Marxist point of view, is as an application of the tactic of "critical support."

Lenin, writing about Britain right after the Russian Revolution, urged his British comrades to back Labour Party candidates. He explained that "I want to support [Labour Party Leader] Henderson in the same way as the rope supports a hanged man."

What does that mean? That the objective of your “support” is precisely to hasten the day when someone like that won’t be able to fool enough people to stay in office.

Does this mean you really secretly want Cuomo's Republican opponent to win? Absolutely not. You really do want Cuomo to win, to show, for example, that he has no solution for the health care insurance crisis.

You might think, after two terms Cuomo has already shown that plenty!

But the issue is not what you or I understand, but how millions of ordinary people see things. They have barely begun to think through ideas like single payer medicare for all, a living minimum wage of $15 an hour, free college tuition, driving big money out of politics and especially how those things can be achieved.

The idea is to tell working people that don't yet agree with your more radical program that you won't stand in the way of what they view as a lesser-evil candidate like Cuomo in a two-way confrontation with the more reactionary candidate. 

Can't this be confusing, running in opposition to what Cuomo stands for, supporting his socialist opponent in the primary and then turning around and saying "vote Cuomo on November 6"? Actually, that is pretty standard in American politics. And Bernie Sanders did the same thing in 2016, and both clarity about his program being different, and his reputation for integrity, did not suffer in the slightest.

But why do this at all? Why not simply run as independents, as Bernie had always done before 2016? It's just a tactic, isn't it?

Two reasons:

First, Bernie has been an exception, unique. There have been hundreds, possibly thousands of campaigns run as independents or third party candidates in the last few decades, and I can't remember one that had even a smidgin of the support Bernie has garnered locally in elections before 2016. There have been a few other "independents" who have made it to Congress, but these have been traditional politicians who for some reason were on the outs with their party machines, not politically independent.

Second, because Bernie's 2016 campaign, not as an independent, but within the Democratic Party, changed things. It set a new pattern, created a new model. Millions of people rallied to his banner to support not just a candidacy, but become part of a movement. The big jump in DSA membership after the June New York congressional primary confirms that this is the shape the movement is taking right now. What we need to do is understand what it means..

As I explained in this post, I think what is involved is working people trying to grope their way to uniting as a class, to fight for a program that defends our interests.

To really do that, what we need is our own party, a workers party, not necessarily in the form of a ballot line (which is what most people in this country think of when you say "party") but a national organization or movement that acts in a coherent way explicitly in the name of working people.

But isn't it a contradiction to try to do that within the oldest capitalist party in existence, the Democratic Party? Absolutely. But we can't simply reject the contradiction. It must be overcome, the movement has to work its way through it. And there really is no point complaining that things ought not to have developed this way. They did.

In there any historical precedent for this, a working class movement gestating within a capitalist party? Actually that is not so unusual. But there is one historical example that I think is worth delving into, and it comes from the founders of the modern socialist movement Karl Marx and Frederick Engels.

Frederick Engels in the 1840s

The experience was recounted in 1884 by Engels in the article, "Marx and the Neue Rheinische Zeitung," dealing with events decades before, during the revolution of 1848.

The context was that towards the end of 1847, Marx and Engels  succeeded in convincing a group called The League of the Just to become the Communist League and adopt the Communist Manifesto as its program.

The Manifesto had just been published when a revolution broke out at the beginning of 1848 in France and soon spread to Germany. At Marx's initiative, the Communist League, composed mostly of Germans in exile, dissolved. The reason was that Germany was divided into many different states and principalities, making it impossible for a group to offer more than general guidance and ideas, but Marx believed a newspaper --the Neue Rheinische Zeitung-- was a better instrument to do that. Engels explains:

The proletariat [was] undeveloped ... having grown up in complete intellectual enslavement, being unorganised and still not even capable of independent organisation.... Hence, although in point of fact the mortal enemy of the [bourgeoisie], it remained, on the other hand, its political appendage.... Thus, the German proletariat at first appeared on the political stage as the extreme democratic party. 

In this way, when we founded a major newspaper in Germany, our banner was determined as a matter of course. It could only be that of democracy, but that of a democracy which everywhere emphasised in every point the specific proletarian character which it could not yet inscribe once for all on its banner.

I think the analogy with our days is in the extreme political underdevelopment of the American working class and what has been until now its "complete intellectual enslavement." Thus, now that the U.S. working class is beginning to come onto the political stage, it does so "as the extreme democratic party." The coincidence of the name "democratic party" is accidental, of course,  but the political similarity is not.

And note: this is not about a lesser evil strategy. Nor is the point to reform or transform the Democrats; it is about the working class being transformed through this and other experiences, cohering ever more clearly and consciously as an independent political force.  

What is most striking is that Engels says when Marx and his friends began their work in Germany, "our banner was determined as a matter of course." It could only be that of the working class movement that was beginning to emerge but was not recognized as such and instead viewed as the left of the bourgeois-democratic forces. Engels concludes:

If we did not want to do that, if we did not want to take up the movement, adhere to its already existing, most advanced, actually proletarian side and to advance it further, then there was nothing left for us to do but to preach communism in a little provincial sheet and to found a tiny sect instead of a great party of action.

That's the choice. We either accept the movement as it is as our starting point in order to help it go further, or we can stand on the sidelines shouting "correct" slogans at it.

And if we accept the movement as it is, it means accepting the tactic that Bernie pioneered in 2016, and that tactic of necessity implies going along with the results of the primary. We don't have to actively campaign for the likes of Cuomo, but we have to understand that from where Ocasio Cortez is now situated, it makes sense for her to have said what she did even if we as the DSA would not have put out a statement like that.

Socialists are getting a much broader and more sympathetic audience by running as Democrats given this new motion among working people, but offering "critical support" to traditional Democrats is an inescapable part of the tactic. It is built into the situation.

But we do so honestly, openly and transparently. We don't pretend differences with corporate Democrats have disappeared. We don't suggest the "lesser evil" is really OK after all. But we don't break with the working class people who are evolving towards political independence by trashing them for voting for Cuomo (which is the effect of denouncing him and opposing a vote for him).

--José G. Pérez

International Declaration against Fascism

[The following manifesto against the ultraright in Brazil is being circulated with a request that people add their names to the list of signers by emailing freelulabrasil@gmail.com and sgeral@mst.org.br.]

We, women and men, united in our commitment to democracy and human rights, express our unequivocal rejection of far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro, a contender in the second round of Brazil’s presidential elections on October 28.

The positions that this candidate has defended throughout his public life and during the current electoral campaign are based on xenophobic, misogynistic and homophobic values.

This far-right candidate openly defends the violent methods deployed by military dictatorships, including torture and assassinations.

Positions such as these are a threat to any free, tolerant and just society.

In the second round of the election, the people of Brazil will be making a choice of paramount importance, between liberty and pluralism and retrograde authoritarianism, with a lasting impact, not only for Brazil but also for Latin America, the Caribbean and the rest of the world.

We call on Brazilians to reflect on the gravity of this pivotal moment in history.

There can be no neutrality in the choice between democracy and fascism!

Russian woman indicted for criminal conspiracy to commit free speech

In a new attack on freedom of speech, Trump's Justice Department has indicted a Russian woman for a conspiracy to post things on the Internet that the U.S. government doesn't like.

"The strategic goal of this alleged conspiracy, which continues to this day, is to sow discord in the U.S. political system and to undermine faith in our democratic institutions," G. Zachary Terwilliger, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, said in a statement.

This campaign was focused on "a wide variety of topics, including immigration, gun control and the Second Amendment, the Confederate flag, race relations, LGBT issues, the Women’s March, and the NFL national anthem debate."

"Members of the conspiracy took advantage of specific events in the United States to anchor their themes, including the shootings of church members in Charleston, South Carolina, and concert attendees in Las Vegas; the Charlottesville ‘Unite the Right’ rally and associated violence; police shootings of African-American men; as well as the personnel and policy decisions of the current U.S. presidential administration," the Justice Department said in its press release.

It also praised the "exceptional cooperation" of Twitter and Facebook, making it clear that the Internet giants have become subsidiaries of the political police.

You might say, "but constitutional guarantees are only for American citizens" or "only apply within the United States." But that's not so. The First Amendment doesn't give any rights. It protects them by prohibiting the government from interfering with them.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Congress shall make no law. It is an absolute, categorical mandate. And the amendments adopted after the civil war extended the prohibition to all levels and branches of the government. Which part of "no law" doesn't the Justice Department understand?

The freedom of speech that is being attacked is our freedom of speech: there is only one. Consider, for example, the strategic aim of this conspiracy: "to sow discord in the U.S. political system and to undermine faith in our democratic institutions."

That description could well be applied to what I do day after day on Radio Información. I don't just sow discord or undermine, I promote protest and denounce the fraud of American democracy. Here are some things I've said just in the past week or so.

• They guy who lost the election is sitting in the White House. 
• Fewer than 600,000 people in Wyoming have the same representation in the Senate as the nearly 40 million people in California. 
• Republicans got 1.4 million fewer votes than Democrats in House races in 2012 but had 33 more seats.
• The Supreme Court is a committee of unelected politicians with lifetime terms that function  like a permanent constitutional convention accountable to no one.
• We have more than a half million elected positions, the huge majority of which are noncompetitive and simply filled by diktat by the dominant local machine. 
• For the more important positions, these are for sale to whatever stooge of the rich got the most bribes (so-called "campaign contributions").
• In a very few cases, the very rich buy both major candidates but let the people freely choose which one is better at fooling them.
• In other countries, at least they have the decency to pretend the guy they're shoving down  your throat got the most votes.
• American democracy? I think it's a great idea.

There's not a single activity that's been in  the press on the woman's supposed crimes that isn't simply organizing and paying people to say nasty things about the U.S. government, U.S. policies and U.S. Society. 

--José G. Pérez

The New York City DSA's infantile, sectarian criticism of Alexandria Ocasio Cortez

The New York City Democratic Socialists of America has issued a statement censuring comrade Alexandria Ocasio Cortez for saying in an  interview with CNN that she “look[s] forward to… us rallying behind all Democratic nominees, including the governor, to make sure that he wins in November"

It is unsigned but presented as a "NYC-DSA Statement" and it castigates Ocasio Cortez  for having violated "a responsibility to name our enemies."

"An endorsement for Cuomo suggests that working people across New York should accept him as an ally," and worse, Ocasio Cortez "erases the real distance between insurgent socialist candidates and the Democratic Party establishment."

The most troubling thing is that this statement reeks of factionalism, of people being lined up in some private little group built around an important “principle” like we must “name our enemy,” or that DSA members “who seek to speak on behalf of working people” must defend X, Y, or Z position. And it is a very transparent attempt to drive AOC out of the organization.

But the DSA is not and must not become a faction – and no one should be required to act as if they were in one. The DSA is the beginning of a party, and a party is not a faction.

A party, a genuine party represents a class, section of a class or some other social force. In the case of parties based on working people, ideally it is defined by its base, not what it says on some paper, but what its adherents believe and want. You can tell the DSA is the beginning of a party from the way people are joining – on pure class instinct and identification.

A faction is defined by its ideas. It’s borders are not set by class interest but by agreement with a whole litany of positions. No matter how big it is, a faction that sets itself up as a separate, independent organization with a position on everything under the sun that you have to accept is not a party but a sect.

Viewed as a whole, the far left in the United States mostly wasted the entire last 100 years precisely on this mistake.

We called it “Leninism,” and “building a party of a new type,” and only in the past decade or so have many of us learned that this was a bureaucratic fabrication and not what Lenin thought at all. In his very last major work, Left Wing Communism: an infantile disorder, Lenin wrote:

History, incidentally, has now confirmed on a vast and world-wide scale the opinion we have always advocated, namely, that German revolutionary Social-Democracy ... came closest to being the party the revolutionary proletariat needs in order to achieve victory.

Not "a party of a new type."

Alexandria was entirely within her rights to speak as she spoke. Even if the organization had adopted a position to not vote for "all Democratic nominees," an anti-endorsement, so to speak, she would still have been entirely within her rights to express her own views.

As for the specific infantile stupidity of creating a principle that you must never say vote for X if X is a bad person, people might want to read the Lenin pamphlet I just quoted, especially the part on "critical support."

In a separate post I will take up the question of electoral tactics, and then this idea of publicly pillorying one of your own members, without bringing charges, without giving her a chance to defend herself, on the basis of unstated rules about what you must and must not say if you are a candidate, or perhaps just if you're a Latina who is a candidate.

--José G. Pérez

The kidnapping of 43 Ayotzinapa students: We do not forgive. We do not forget

What does a country reap if it sows bodies?

September 26 is the fourth anniversary of the forced disappearance of 43 students from the  Ayotzinapa School for Rural Teachers, one of a series of such colleges set up in the wake of the Mexican Revolution.

For decades the successive Mexican governments have been in conflict with the schools and their mission to train teachers for Mexican rural communities and especially for Indigenous peoples. This has been true above all of the Raúl Isidros Burgos school of Ayotzinapa in the combative State of Guerrero, where Genaro Vásquez and Lucío Cabañas, two of the most important leaders of the armed resistance to the Mexican State during the dirty war of the 1970s that followed the Tlatelolco Plaza massacre of hundreds of students On October 2, 1968.

The 43 stuidents were kidnapped the night of September 26 by the police of the city of Iguala acting together with other government institutions and the drug cartels that supply and are financed by the U.S. market. This is just one incident of many that have cost the peoples of Latin America tens of thousands of lives due to the U.S. "War on Drugs." This half-century long fraud is used to as a weapon of imperialist domination of Latin Americas and domestically to repress and dominate the Latino and Black communities.

--José G. Pérez

A dishonest sliming of the DSA and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

On August 31, Counterpunch published a bizarre and dishonest racism-baiting attack on the Democratic Socialists of America by Andrew Stewart.

“Grappling with the racism of the DSA’s Founders” has the peculiarity that three of the five “founders” of the DSA --described by Stewart as “its early leaders/thinkers”—in reality had nothing to do with the DSA. So much so that one of them –Max Schactman—had been dead for a decade by the time DSA was founded in 1982.

The other two, Albert Shanker and Bayard Rustin, were close associates of Schactman. Rustin was the head of the Socialist Party and its successor organization, Social Democrats USA. Shanker was president of the New York teacher’s union from 1964 to 1985 and a close friend of Schactman’s, though as far as I know not actively involved in socialist groups like the SP during those years.

By the early 1970s these three were the political enemies of the figure most associated with the DSA’s founding, Michael Harrington.

Harrington and those three had all been part of the Socialist Party, a political current of anti-Stalinist socialists. Over time, the SP’s anti-Stalinism increasingly became plain right-wing anticommunism and even in domestic politics the group shed most vestiges of its socialist past, coming out against the antiwar movement and the Black movement.

But a small part of the SP led by Harrington resisted the drift to the right and instead began to move to the left under the impact of the antiwar and other protest movements of the 1960s, leading to a split in the early 1970s between the progressive minority that founded the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee, one the organizations that eventually joined to found of the DSA, and the right wing majority which, to make clear that they were not socialist and not a party became “Social Democrats USA” in 1972.

Max Shachtman: right-wing social democrat
supposedly cofounded DSA 10 years after he died

Stewart lies by saying the three from the right wing were founders of DSA. They were not. The purpose of the lie is to then saddle DSA with political responsibility for Schactman’s rabid anticommunism, Shanker’s reactionary teacher’s strike in New York in 1968 against Black and Latino control of the schools in their neighborhoods, and Bayard Rustin’s attacks on Black nationalism taking advantage of his well-deserved prestige as the key behind-the-scenes organizer of the 1963 March on Washington.

And if you insist that DSA is somehow responsible for the actions of those who years before the DSA existed were in the same group as Michael Harrington, then why not give DSA the credit for the 1963 "I have a dream" March of Washington, Shachtman’s leading role in resisting the rise of Stalinism in the 1920s and 1930s, and the things Shanker did to defend the legitimate interests of New York Teachers?

The reason, of course, in that this is an outrageous frame-up, the sort of thing I’d expect from Fox News or Inforwars, not a web site like Counterpunch.

Stewart also brings up Harrington’s opposition to the founding Port Huron Statement of Students for a Democratic Society in 1962. But Harrington later reversed course and the DSA was founded by the fusion of DSOC with the New American Movement, a group descended precisely from the early SDS.

Stewart begins his Philippic by trying to shield himself from the obvious criticism that this construct of his is based on events from a half century ago, has nothing to do with the real world DSA of today by admitting as much:

OK, with a serious dose of honest humility and respect, I will admit readily that the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) membership is doing some great stuff at the grassroots level.... So this polemic will be relegated entirely to the founding generation of Democratic Socialists of America and its early leaders/thinkers.

But he continues by assailing the DSA’s electoral work with the paper-thin disguise of countering “a meta-narrative” supposedly being foisted by Jacobin and other outlets. According to Stewart, this story holds that after decades of failed efforts by everyone from the Greens to the SWP and the Communist Party, in its first try the DSA “has finally … brought socialism into the mainstream electoral realm,” and concluding in ironic bold type: “And with that, dear comrades, we shall now proceed to construct the Socialist order!”

And, of course, of course, of course, he proceeds to deconstruct to his own fabrication:

I am compelled to recall the great quote of Amilcar Cabral, “Tell no lies, claim no easy victories.” … Unfortunately, we are not on the verge of a great socialist electoral upsurge.

But Stewart has nothing but his own straw man compelling his recollection of “the great quote of Amilcar Cabral,” (by which I assume he meant to say, “a quote from the great Amilcar Cabral” instead of implying that only once in his life did Cabral say anything memorable.)

Despite his disclaimers, the real target of Stewart’s attack is not people who have been dead for decades but today’s DSA. It has just reached 50,000 members and has growing political impact and recognition.

He betrays that the electoral success of some DSA members is a special concern (and provides another example of his dishonest methods) by recommending to us to his “recent dismantling of the mythic Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez candidacy over at Washington Babylon.”

That story, “How Long Was Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Planning Her Run For Public Office?” slimes her by implying she is a Kennedy family puppet.

It takes off from a tweet from her that mentions in passing her internship in Senator Ted Kennedy’s immigration office and leads to a Stewart rant about “the political circus known as the Kennedy family” and especially “the ne’er-do-well Patrick,” a carpet-bagging Boston Brahmin who had the temerity to move to Rhode Island and get elected to Congress.

But soon he remembers that he meant to talk about Ocasio-Cortez and not the Kennedys.

“An internship in Ted’s office was a great career booster in government agencies and/or the Democratic Party,” he snarks, adding:

Ocasio-Cortez worked in Kennedy’s office from early 2008, when she was 19, until his death in the summer of 2009. Prior to that, she was active in the National Hispanic Institute’s Lorenzo de Zalvala Youth Legislative Session.

Actually, in “early 2008” Ocasio would have been 18, not 19, since she was born in October 1989. And, of course, there’s that week-long Youth Legislative Session summer camp and never mind that the name is “Lorenzo de Zavala” and not “Zalvala” with an extra “L” as Stewart would have it. But what are facts to the rapier thrusts of this polemicist?

Put those two together, the internship and the summer camp, and the conclusion is supposedly inescapable: “this is the resumé of someone who wanted to run for public office as a teenager.” And worse.

I’d even have to wonder if she joined DSA because she saw a wellspring for free interns and staff for a campaign she has been planning since the Dubya administration.

Of course! The woman is so brilliant that she foresaw the radicalization of working class millennials that powered her campaign on the cheap even before the economic depression that sparked the radicalization had taken place. And so she positioned herself to take advantage of it by attending a “Boy’s State”-type summer camp in high school.

But despite that, don’t give Stewart all that bull about her brilliant primary victory.

Certainly the “miracle primary victory” narrative is partly mythological horse shit. AOC had connections within the Democratic Party and would have been able to target a vulnerable but liberal district like Joe Crowley’s…. That’s the MO of a Kennedy operation top-to-bottom, I’ve watched them do it forever.

So that explains it. Why is this woman sitting at the table instead of waiting on it, her previous job? Because Massa put her there.

I mean, you don’t really think a young, working-class Puerto Rican woman from the Bronx could have done it herself, do you?

I only have one more thing to say to Stewart about his attack on the DSA’s “racism”: for your next hatchet job, try getting a cleaver made of firmer stuff than bovine excrement. So you don’t get splattered.

--José G. Pérez

Will Russians hack elections again?

Well, if they do, it won't be "again."

There has been no evidence presented that the Russians did anything in 2016 save the normal spying all the "great" powers do to each other. And what they are accused of doing makes no sense. For example, we are told that the Russians had penetrated the Democratic National Committee (DNC) network by the summer of 2015, but all the FBI did was call the DNC computer help desk which did a quick check and finding nothing, forgot about it.

There was a second penetration of the DNC severs in the spring of 2016, which took much of the same material as the first one but was so incompetent that even the DNC noticed. Crowdstrike, a computer security firm was called in.  That led to the first very successful penetration finally being spotted, and both were supposedly cleared by completely nuking and rebuilding the DNC network (including each and every computer) in mid-June. Three days later, the head of the private security firm that cleared the system, who happens to be a Russian emigre who is active in anti-Putin groups, published all the details in the firm's blog.

Several things. First the FBI considered this sort of spying routine and could not even be bothered to walk the half mile to the DNC offices to discuss it with them. The reason they thought it was the Russians is because data was being sent to an IP address they thought was connected with Russia. That was all.

And having completely owned the DNC network by capturing or creating an admin login, Putin (and supposedly he ordered it personally) sends in a second group, who are so incompetent even the hapless DNC staff notices. That's simply not believable. It is a violation of the most obvious norms for spying to send in a second operation on top of one that already is getting *everything*.

The penetration is so sensitive that a private security firm headed by a Russian national takes care of it, not the FBI, NSA or CIA. Really?

And then contrary to even the most obvious principle of counter-espionage, full details are put on a blog three days later by the anti-Putin Russian who --what a coincidence!-- says it was Putin. And that way Putin can know how much we know and how we figured out it was him.

Meanwhile at Hillary headquarters top dog John Podesta gets an email claiming his gmail password has been compromised and please click here to change it. An aide checks with someone more competent in computers who tells them to follow this other link to change the password (the real link to Google) and to turn on two-factor authentication. So Podesta's people dig up the original phishing email, follow the fake link, give away access to the email account, and do not turn on two factor authentication.

This, we are told, was a sophisticated Russian attack called "spear phishing." But actually what was really involved is that Podesta and his people were brain dead. There can be no security mechanism that can cope with that level of stupidity.

Russians? It was probably a middle school student having fun with her iPad. Or the equivalent. Because a really serious intelligence operation would have used the penetration to get access to Hillary's network. But they didn't. They just took Podesta's emails from gmail servers.

Then the Russians take the stuff and leak it. The Russians could have leaked the secret contracts showing the DNC was in the tank for Hillary in February or March. Their slogan would have been  "Anybody but Hillary." But if they were going to try to knock her out, that was the moment to do it. Either that, or in October, with a classic October surprise.

But instead they give it to Wikileaks in the middle of the summer. They could have leaked it to the New York Times, CNN, the Guardian -- none of them would have refused the material and the Russians could easily have covered their tracks. The obvious explanation of why it went to Wikileaks is because almost certainly it wasn't the Russians but a lone hacker, perhaps an inside job, and Wikileaks has ways to receive leaks securely and anonymously, which major press outlets do not.

Well, the Russians were pretending to be a lone hacker. But if this was their cover story, it is idiotic to let the false story they were developing get in the way of using the devastatingly compromising material they got on Hillary in the most effective way.

The Facebook plot is even more ridiculous. The Kremlin was going to spend literally thousands of dollars, perhaps hundreds of thousands, to influence an American election. Really? A billion dollars or more were spent on the election. And the Russians supposedly thought they could make a difference?

And, again, absolutely no evidence of the nefarious Russian schemes has been given to the public.

Could the Russians have done anything more serious? You be the judge:

A couple of weeks ago at the annual Defcon hackathon in Las Vegas it took an 11 year old girl 10 minutes to hack into a  replica of the Florida statewide election system. Someone else took only two minutes to hack the voting machines being used in 18 states. Of course it's not fair to compare. The two minute hack was done by Rachel Tobac who is an adult and has her own security firm.

Supposedly the Russians, determined to have Trump instead of Hillary, passed on the obvious and multiple vulnerabilities that had already been covered in the U.S. press and instead focused on trolling with a half dozen invented characters and a couple of stolen identities which they needed to pay for Facebook Advertisement.

For sure. I honestly and sincerely believe that Ms. Goody Two Shoes, KGB Colonel Vladimir Putin, could not bring himself to steal the election and merely sought to influence the outcome.

Not.

Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, superstar: what Engels would have said about it

My mid-August post about the explosive growth of the Democratic Socialists of America, and the one a few days later called "Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, superstar," have drawn a number of responses, both in the comments here and also on Marxmail, an email list moderated by an old friend, the Unrepentant Marxist Louis Proyect. Marxmail has been ongoing for two decades and I must have posted hundreds of times to it, though not very much in recent years.

When I sent a link to my second post (the "superstar" one) I included an extensive and very Marxist-geeky comment trying to clarify and focus on a central point: there is something happening among working people, a change. That change is motion towards coming together as a class. 

Below is the comment I sent to Marxmail. It is more informal and profane than what I tend to post here, but I have kept it as I posted it, apart from fixing a few typos. It went out under the pen name "Joaquín Bustelo" which I used for pretty much anything I wrote on the Internet about politics for many years because of my job, but this is the "real" person behind both that pen name and this blog. The comment started started with the link to the "superstar" post. 

That's from my blog. And before you go apeshit, read it closely enough to understand that my point is that it is not about her, it is about us.

Honestly, I don't write this stuff to be provocative but I know many comrades profoundly disagree.

So what follows is an attempt to explain the main elements of my thinking about the course I have chosen, with special emphasis on how I believe it is fully in keeping with the way Marx and Engels approached these sorts of questions.

The core of my analysis is that Bernie's campaign, the DSA's growth, Ocasio's victory, etc., are all expressions of a movement in the working class, not a movement in the sense of a protest campaign but in the sense of a change or development in mass consciousness. This started with Occupy and was evidenced by its slogan we are the 99%, which tens of millions of people immediately identified with.

Both the Sanders and Ocasio campaigns were extremely aggressive and loud in identifying with the working class and emphasizing it through things like the contributions policy.

I know some comrades think that all this is a fake and a fraud, there is just an illusion of class identity. From my point of view that is really irrelevant in addressing the question of tactics. I think the clearest explanation of the right tactics is Engels's famous letter to Sorge about the Henry George candidacy for mayor of New York.

But you might object, what good is Engels's advise if we're dealing with a complete counterfeit? Well, here is how his letter starts: "The Henry George boom has of course brought to light a colossal mass of fraud and I am glad I was not there." He says it was not just a fraud but a colossal one so revolting that he was glad to be thousands of miles away.

So did he proclaim it a catastrophic setback for the class? Actually, quite the opposite. The next sentence after the one I just quoted says "But despite it all it has been an epoch-making day."

Not just a relative advance considering the nefarious circumstances but "epoch making." A "colossal mass of fraud" that was a world historic advance for the working class.

The next couple of sentences are the famous ones about how "the Germans" in the United States treat Marxism as a dogma instead of a guide to action. And then he presents the following approach to tactics. At the heart of it is how to deal with the contradiction between workers realizing they need to come together as a political force but beginning to do so around "a colossal mass of fraud."

The first great step of importance for every country newly entering into the movement is always the organisation of the workers as an independent political party, no matter how, so long as it is a distinct workers' party. And this step has been taken, far more rapidly than we had a right to hope, and that is the main thing. That the first programme of this party is still confused and highly deficient, that it has set up the banner of Henry George, these are inevitable evils but also only transitory ones. The masses must have time and opportunity to develop and they can only have the opportunity when they have their own movement--no matter in what form so long as it is only their own movement--in which they are driven further by their own mistakes and learn wisdom by hurting themselves.

Comrades will object that in no way can the Sanders campaign or Ocasio's be equated with Henry George's, there are no ongoing institutions, no mechanisms for discussion and decision making etc. But I think here it is very important to not project our understanding of "party" to what Marx and Engels were talking about in the 1840s when they first laid out their views.

If you re-read the Communist Manifesto which is where the whole concept of the centrality of the party in the worker's movement is first thoroughly dealt with, you will see there are references to concrete, existing parties in the last chapter. They mention two parties as worker's parties: the Chartists and the U.S. Agrarian Reformers. That last one is a somewhat mystifying reference because it is not exactly clear who they're referring to or what information they had that led them to call it a working class party.

But the Chartists Marx and Engels did know very well, and that was not a "party" as we would use the word today but a movement around a petition called the "People's Charter." There were various versions of the petition but the central and most important demands were all around elections: universal male suffrage, no property requirement to run for parliament, equal population in parliamentary districts, payment for MP's so workers could also be MP's, and other democratic reforms.

Chartism did not have a continuous national structure or leadership though there were a couple of national conferences. There were two big signature collecting campaigns and one or a couple big demonstrations. Some newspapers were associated with the movement but they belonged to individual publishers, not any collective body. I've not gone back to check the details, this is a recounting from memory, but the point is, this is something we would call a "movement" not "party." But it was generally recognized as representing the interests of the working class and presented an ambitious political program that was expected to shift the relationship of class forces greatly in favor of the workers.

The other "opposition parties" mentioned in Part IV seem to be mostly well defined and generally identified political trends but not structured organizations.

I think M&E's idea of "party" is a generalized, mass and cohered movement of the working class recognized as such, pushing for a broad, important series of policy changes or reforms in the political system. It does not necessarily imply a single national organization but it has to understand itself as a movement of the working class.

Notice in what I have quoted from very late (1886, almost four decades after the Manifesto), that Engels uses the terms movement and party interchangeably. Similarly, if you look at the Critique of the Gotha Programme, you'll see Marx referring to a program reflecting "the level of the party movement".

About a month after the letter to Sorge, Engels returns to the subject in a letter to Florence Kelley Wischnewetsky. Writing about a preface to a U.S. reprinting of The Condition of the Working Class in England, he says:

 My preface will of course turn entirely on the immense stride made by the American working man in the last ten months, and naturally also touch H.G. [Henry George] and his land scheme. But it cannot pretend to deal exhaustively with it. Nor do I think the time has come for that. It is far more important that the movement should spread, proceed harmoniously, take root and embrace as much as possible the whole American proletariat, than that it should start and proceed from the beginning on theoretically perfectly correct lines. There is no better road to theoretical clearness of comprehension than "durch Schaden klug werden" [to learn by one's own mistakes].

Note he again talks about it as a movement even though focused in the electoral arena. That, among other reasons, because there were no structures, mostly just local candidates sponsored by labor councils.

I think the important thing in evaluating campaigns like Bernie's is not what ballot line they are using but how clearly they identify as a *different* current counterpoised to the neoliberal corporate democrats and how fully it breaks with the Democratic Party "machine" and instead helps create a parallel "countermachine."

There is an obvious disadvantage to this and that is that it is a fucking mess, where it is very difficult to establish a clear, distinct "brand identity." This is not due to people being wrong-headed about tactics but --to be brutally frank-- the extreme political backwardness of the working class. This problem can't be solved by preaching at the class. Many of us on Marxmail were involved in such efforts for many years, and the actual results were nil.

So for right now, this tactical approach isn't a choice, an option, but a fact. It's what people have responded to, identified with.

The alternative to what Bernie did would have been another Nader-style and Nader-size campaign. But if anything should have been learned from so many efforts like that over the years, is that people do not understand the need to break with the two party system. And we should take Engels's advice: "do not make the inevitable confusion of the first start worse confounded by forcing down people's throats things which at present they cannot properly understand, but which they soon will learn."

I know some people have an almost religious bedrock opposition to having anything to do with anyone on a Democratic Party ballot line. It is unclean, a capitalist party, a bourgeois party, and we will catch leprosy if we touch it. We must break with bourgeois politics.

But all electoral politics are a bourgeois fraud, the anarchists are completely right about this, our disagreement with them is about tactics. And the biggest fraud of all is the United States, where the guy who lost the election is in the White House and the fewer that 600,000 people in Wyoming have the same weight in the Senate as the nearly 40 million in California.

We have more than a half million elected positions, but in reality most are not really elected, but in essence appointed by the dominant political mafia in the given area. And the few that are really elected are often sold to the highest bidder, although there is also the modality of the capitalists buying both candidates through a system of legalized bribery known as campaign financing and then letting the people choose which one is better at fooling them.

And when we get it all staffed, we have a multi-level government with overlapping jurisdictions and responsibilities. You have a problem with your kids school but the principal says, you have to deal with the board of Education on that one. The Board of Education tells you really it's the state government that can solve that, and when you get there they'll say, not its the feds, who in turn tell you that it's a local problem, and send you back to the board of ed who shrug their shoulders and say, OK if you feel that way, sue us. Which you do, starting in the local state courts, fighting appeals and re-appeals, and then perhaps having to take it to a District (federal) court, Circuit court of appeals, and the Supreme Court.

Taken as a whole, this system is, to put it mildly, a complete bourgeois fraud, a total fake. There is not an ounce of democracy in it. So for those worried about dirtying their hands with the Democratic Party, I'd say don't worry, because when you get involved in electoral politics, you dive head first into a pool full of shit. And 99% of socialist and "independent" election campaigns don't say word one about this fraud. Nor should they go preaching about it, except in very specific and limited ways (like the Electoral College). Because people will only begin to get it when there is an alternative.

A closely related point that I want to highlight is program. I believe there is an error in the post WWII 20th Century American Marxist Left and especially the Trotskyists, of fetishizing the formal, written "program," making "programmatic clarity" a central concern. I think it is clear beyond question that Marx and Engels stressed that the working class coming together as a class, cohering, was way above program, or, if you prefer, that was the essence of their program. The demands and measures would be worked out over time through practice as the political class movement developed.

The passage I already quoted from the second letter reflects that. But later on in that letter Engels expresses himself even more clearly;

What the Germans ought to do is to act up to their own theory --if they understand it, as we did in 1845 and 1848--to go in for any real general working-class movement, accept its faktische starting points as such and work it gradually up to the theoretical level.... But above all give the movement time to consolidate, do not make the inevitable confusion of the first start worse confounded by forcing down people's throats things which at present they cannot properly understand, but which they soon will learn.... The very first attempt--soon to be made if the movement progresses--to consolidate the moving masses on a national basis will bring them all face to face, Georgites, K. of L., Trade Unionists, and all; and if our German friends by that time have learnt enough of the language of the country to go in for a discussion, then will be the time for them to criticise the views of the others.

It is striking that Engels calls for subordinating programmatic clarity to the development of the actual movement. He says fighting around those things now will only get in the way.

But I think the most important point for us right now is where he calls on the followers of M&E in the United States to "go in for any real general working-class movement, accept its faktische starting points as such."

You might object, that was then there barely was a working class in a very few countries, the movement was in diapers. We are way past that stage. But I believe we are exactly at that stage, in diapers. It is very important to understand that before this decade there has not been a working class movement worthy of the name in this country that anyone on Marxmail could have experienced. Unless you were born before World War II.

 From my point of view, the real questions to be discussed are:

•  whether there is really a radicalization of the working class, developing class consciousness; 
• whether this found expression in Bernie's campaign (however mistakenly) simply because he stressed the class character of his candidacy so much. 
• whether this then transferred over into the growth of the DSA, in other words, whether the DSA is pulling people in by its efforts or whether they are being pushed in, so to speak, by the growing desire for activity and political organization that is a product of the radicalization. 
• and finally, whether it is also finding expression in campaigns like Alexandria Ocasio Cortez's.

I want to make clear that to the degree what I wrote could be taken to imply that I think that Bernie's campaign, the DSA, and Ocasio-Cortez's campaign were fake, frauds, etc., I did so only for arguments sake. I was saying that even if they were as bad as some comrades claim or as what Engels said about the Henry George movement, I would still insist that this is the right approach. But in reality I do not believe any of those terms or phrases apply.

Joaquín

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, superstar

Yes she's young, charismatic, boricua, bilingual, sharp as a scalpel and sassy as hell. But what's made her a superstar is not just that, but that she's got class. Working class.

"Una de las nuestras," one of ours, said a campaign button

Not her roots or her job, because it's not about her, it's about us. Occupy Wall Street was the first step, and perhaps the most important. "We are the 99%" showed that the working people are realizing that we are a "we," we have to defend our own interests against the very rich and their well-paid lackeys.

That realization has now led to an explicitly political movement  of working people determined to create our own political instrument, because both parties have been dominated by the interests of the 1%. Our working class political movement is what has made her a superstar.

Alexandria Ocasio may have contested a Democratic primary, but she refused to act like a mainstream Democratic candidate, begging for Corporate and Lobbyist money, or even hitting up her friends on Wall Street for that $2,700 maximum donation. But even if she had such friends it would not have done her any good once they saw her campaign based on a guaranteed job, a living wage of $15 an hour, Medicare for all and tuition-free access to higher education.

"Women like me aren't supposed to run for office. I wasn't born to a wealthy or powerful family: mother from Puerto Rico, father from the South Bronx." That's how her campaign video starts, and not because some consultant's idea played well with a focus group.

She wrote the script herself after two members of the Democratic Socialists of America in Detroit that started a video production company heard about her and offered their help. The streets are the ones she's walked, the people campaigning aren't actors shot on carefully prepared sets, they just shot her and her supporters as they really are.

It is that honesty and transparency that found fertile soil among regular people who have realized we need our own people in Congress, not "friends" who spend hours every day dialing for dollars.

Columnist Kruta terrified by right to healthcare & living wage

And that response is scaring the shit out of the right. Daily Caller columnist and Fox News contributor Virginia Kruta was aghast in a piece she wrote a couple of weeks ago about an Ocasio speech in support of another candidate.

"I saw something truly terrifying. I saw just how easy it would be ... to accept the idea that my children deserve healthcare and education," Kruta wrote.

Worse, "I saw how easy it would be, as someone who has struggled to make ends meet, to accept the idea that a 'living wage' was a human right." Fortunately, her faith in "our nation’s founding and its history" reminded her that in America, we still have the right to be ignorant, sick and impoverished.

Nevertheless, Kruta had her picture taken with the devil herself, "in part to remind myself of that time I crashed a rally headlined by a socialist, but also in part to remind myself that there, but for the grace of God, go I."

--José G. Pérez

.

What's behind the explosive growth of the Democratic Socialists of America?

On July 26, National Public Radio's website ran a story, "What You Need To Know About The Democratic Socialists Of America." A week earlier, Morning Edition had aired a substantial segment on the group, "Getting To Know The DSA." Two days earlier, CNN had taken its turn with "'We want to democratize everything': Inside DSA's rise with its leader."

Alexandria Ocasio Cortez

I think these and similar articles should lead socialists and activists in social movements to think about this: the DSA is closing in on 48,000 members. What's up with that?

Because a group with 4,000 members is double the size of one with 2,000 members, and one with 8,000 four times as large. But a group with 48,000 members is not just 24 times larger: it is a qualitatively different phenomenon.

DSA began to grow with the Bernie Sanders campaign, but membership really took off after November 2016. Responsible news organizations suggest it had started at around 5,000 and reached 32,000 by the end of 2017.

In 2018 it was 35,000 by April, then 39,000 on June 25, the day before Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's victory. A month later, on July 25, the National Office tweeted that the number had reached 47,000, including the  more than 1,000 people had signed up the day after her victory.

That this was due to the extensive and very favorable coverage of a young, articulate and charismatic Latina woman who had just sent the fourth-ranking House Democrat packing is obvious. But it is only part of the story.

The other part is that there were tens of thousands of people who saw that coverage and thought to themselves, "I should join that group," and 8,000 who actually went to the web site or got a hold of someone and joined.

This is a social and political phenomenon, not just individual decisions. A new mass socialist movement is emerging in this country, and that is a clear sign of increasing class consciousness among working people.

For many decades until the economic crash of 2008, there was no working class movement worthy of the name in the United States. By that I mean a grass-roots movement of working people, comparable to the Black movement or women's movement. I specifically do not mean the (mostly ossified) "organized labor movement" inherited from the 1930s.

Think about it: for decades there has been mass consciousness about the need to fight sexism, racism, ableism, etc., but nobody talked about "classism." People got denounced for "playing the race card" but not for "playing the class card." Gays were accused of practicing "identity politics" but who ever heard criticism of workers as such for indulging in "identity politics"?

That absence of the working class as a self-and-other recognized political force changed in 2011. The Occupy movement with its central slogan, "we are the 99%," was the first time in decades that there was a mass expression of at least rudimentary class consciousness. And look at the polls from the fall of 2011 that asked about Occupy and its issues. The movement immediately had the sympathy and support of tens of millions of people, and all it had done was to raise the flag of the working class and copy that old movie Network by shouting, we're mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore.

As soon as Occupy happened, mainstream political discourse got flipped on its head. Before, during the summer, there was much hand wringing about the deficit and the regretful suggestions that it would be necessary to reign in "entitlements" (cut Social Security and Medicare benefits).

A month afterwards (mostly empty) rhetoric about growing inequality was the talk of the town on the Potomac.

How could this happen so quickly? Because Occupy was a seed crystal dropped into a super-saturated solution of class grievance and resentment. Once it jelled,  it became a powerful political factor, even though the Occupy encampments themselves were dismantled in a couple of months.

Confirmation that working class consciousness is re-emerging in the United States and especially among younger workers came in the form of the Sanders campaign. He began very modestly on a quest to raise issues important for working people. People said he was a Don Quixote tilting at windmills, thinking they were giants.

And then the giants began to fall.

In a few weeks in the summer of 2015, Bernie went from being a crank to a serious candidate and then to a rock star who could fill  to overflowing the largest venues holding thousands of people.

That came overwhelmingly from below and from millennials. The Sanders campaign had an extremely sharp class edge, not just in "fight for $15" or "Medicare for all," but in the $27 shtick. That said this campaign is the property of the working people -- PAC money and the corporate control that comes with it not allowed.

And Sanders insisted in every speech that he could not change things. Only we could do so. This movement was of the working people, by the working people and for the working people.

The current DSA boom marks a third moment in this re-emergence of class consciousness. It is rooted in the change in the consciousness of masses of people captured in the slogan "we are the 99%." But it also marks a step forward over Occupy and even Sanders.

That because the DSA is an ongoing organization, one that is functioning at both the local and national levels, and one that is clearly a distinct political option, something like the tea party or its organized expression in Congress, the freedom caucus.

It is, in essence, the seedling of a worker's party, a class party, a self-and-other identified political expression or representation of a social force.

I know a lot of people, and especially long-time friends and comrades from the 20th Century left, will disagree violently with what I just said. They will be outraged that I could say a group that electorally operates almost exclusively within the Democratic Party is in any way, shape or form a workers party even in embryo. That the essence of a workers party is a break with bourgeois parties like the Democrats.

That deserves a very detailed discussion but for now, just three points:

First, lot of people misunderstand what Marx and Engels meant by the word "party." It was not necessarily and mostly not an electoral machine or identity, but rather a party in a more general sense, a side in a dispute or argument, like a party to a lawsuit. The Chartist Movement, which Marx said was the world's first working class party, resembled Occupy Wall Street much more than anything we would call a political party.

Second, you have to approach things dialectically. There is an obvious, blatant contradiction in a workers party gestating inside a bourgeois party. The role of socialists is not to denounce the existence of a contradiction but to work in and through it to a resolution.

Third, the mechanics of American elections are such that it is very difficult to break out of a two-party ballot line dynamic. But there is today a very clear recognition generally that there are different parties within the two major parties, for example the Tea Party and its associated "freedom caucus" in the House of Representatives. And there is a developing understanding of the two major "parties" as really alliances or blocs of different factions, and coverage of the different groups that are vying for domination of the alliance (and at this stage especially the republicans).

Past all that, there is something much more basic. We have to accept reality, that things have happened in  certain ways and forms and work from there, rather than insisting and demanding that they should have been some other way.

So never in a million years would I have arranged to have the beginnings of a reawakening of working class consciousness take the form of the Occupy movement, but that is what happened.

The same for Bernie. I would not have dreamed that a big step towards establishing the identity of the working class as a distinct political factor would be within the oldest bourgeois party in the world. But there it was.

And, finally, DSA. It does no good to insist it shouldn't have been what was regarded as a very mild and staid multi-tendency group with very loose organizational structures that would begin to grow into a real beginning of a mass socialist organization.

Yet IMHO, reality has already settled the question. This is the main form through which the process that began with Occupy is finding an outlet for right now.

This, in my view, also settles the question of the DSA's electoral tactics, at least at this point. Some 8,000 people joined in the last month, overwhelmingly because they identified with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's victory in New York and the approach that lay behind it. I feel safe in saying this is what they want to do: create two, three, many "Alexandrias."

And even if you think this is a bad idea, if you are a Marxist, a materialist and not an idealist, a preacher from some sect, you don't have a choice.

You have got to go through the experience with working people who are moving towards class political consciousness in this way, and then draw lessons on the basis of the common, lived experience. Engels once made the point that it is worse than useless to try to cram down people's throats things they can't possibly know for themselves right now, but will accept readily enough down the road. Worse than useless because you will only isolate yourself and not be heard when the time comes too draw the lessons.

--Jose G. Perez

From the archives:A critique of Stalin's 1913 essay on 'Marxism and the National Question'

[The following is an edited version  of an article that was written for a discussion inside the U.S. socialist organization "Solidarity" in 2005. I'm republishing it here in response to comrade Tim Horras (of the Philadelphia socialists) commenting very favorably on 1930s writings by Harry Haywood, a Black leader of the Communist Party, USA, who advocated Black communists oppose what Haywood called "petty-bourgeois nationalism" in the Black community. I disagree completely with those politics. The nationalism of the oppressed should be supported; the nationalism of the oppressor must be fought.

[I want to stress that this has little or no bearing on the Stalin-Trotsky disputes (between the mainstream pro-Moscow communism of the 1930s and later, on the one hand, and the dissident communists who looked to Leon Trotsky, on the other).]

One of the biggest sources of confusion in the Marxist movement on the national question is the 1913 Bolshevik pamphlet, “Marxism and the National Question.”

Although authored by Stalin, it has been looked to by pretty much the entire spectrum of the Communist left – including Trotskyists -- as an authoritative text.

What is a nation?

The heart of Stalin’s pamphlet is generally perceived to be his definition of “nation”:

A nation is a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture.(Emphasis in the original).

It is undoubtedly true that Stalin's pamphlet reflected the views the Bolsheviks at the time, and in reality, of much of the international current that Lenin called "revolutionary social democracy."

But I believe a reading of Stalin's pamphlet shows that it was a rigid and formalistic presentation of that position, and, at any rate, one that is today solely of historical interest, very much circumscribed to the European experience before World War I, dealing with it inadequately even then, with dubious politics for those days and with no political value for today.

Are Blacks a nation?

I'm not really very concerned with the right “definition” of the term “nation.”¹

That Blacks don't fit what’s been accepted as this “classic” Marxist definition of “nation” only shows that the classic definition is inadequate.

It is a goofy idea that somehow, because the Black community did not adjust itself to Stalin’s or the Bolshevik’s definition, we have “proved” that Blacks aren't a separate and distinct people, and therefore all revolutionary internationalists, and above all those from the white American nation, aren't absolutely duty-bound to support the struggle of Blacks as a people for their liberation by whatever means Black people themselves choose.

Because the truth points to itself. Black people are what they are, a separate and distinct people with a strong sense of self-identity in fighting for their liberation.

To say, sorry, but colonialism and imperialism have scattered you so much that you really don’t have a common territory or a fully developed class structure internal to the Black community and therefore you don’t qualify as a nation and don’t have the right to self-determination, that is a capitulation to imperialism and white supremacy via academic pedantry.

Moreover it highlights what is missing from Stalin’s definition that is central to understanding “nation” and the politics of the national question, and that is the subjective side of the question.

Basically, a community or population is not a nation until and unless it conceives of itself as having a common political project or destiny.

For example, Cuba existed as an island and a colony for hundreds of years before the consciousness emerged among these islanders that they were a separate and distinct people, something which as a widespread phenomenon did not take place until the early 1800’s.

And it wasn't until the second half of that century, under the impact of the antislavery revolution in the United States (so-called Civil War) that Cuba’s first War for Independence (known as the 10 year’s war) broke out, and it broke out as a struggle both for political independence and to abolish slavery.

Is nationalism always bourgeois?

But the problems with the analysis Stalin presents and the politics that flow from it are more important than the inadequacies of his definition.

Stalin says national movements are proper of the epoch of rising capitalisms. They are always bourgeois movements, in essence, moves by the bourgeoisie to consolidate a “home” market.

This described perfectly the historical evolution as rising and spreading capitalism overcomes localism and feudal divisions.

But he overlooks that what he is describing in his days is already a struggle between two “nationalisms,” that which he ascribes to the belatedly “rising” bourgeoisie, i.e., the nationalism of the oppressed nation, and the one he does not see, because he himself was infected with it to some degree, the nationalism of the bourgeoisie that has already risen, the nationalism of the oppressor nation.

He says even when other classes are drawn into a national movement, "In its essence it is always a bourgeois struggle, one that is to the advantage and profit mainly of the bourgeoisie."

He says, sure we're for self-determination, but that mostly as a way of trying to win workers away from nationalism, which is “always bourgeois.” And here he means the nationalism of the subjugated nation, for the nationalism of the subjugating nation for him does not exist.

What does exist is merely a “policy of national oppression,” which passes over into “a ‘system’ of inciting nations against each other, to a ‘system’ of massacres and pogroms.”

And he adds, “‘Divide and rule’ – such is the purpose of the policy of incitement.”

Thus his political prescription.

Noting that the 1905 Revolution and its temporary democratic conquests had awakened to political life the nations and nationalities oppressed by Tsarism, Stalin counterposes the class struggle of workers against bosses to the struggle for national liberation of these oppressed peoples.

Fighting ‘a wave of nationalism’

“The wave of nationalism swept onwards with increasing force, threatening to engulf the mass of the workers. And the more the movement for emancipation declined, the more plentifully nationalism pushed forth its blossoms.

“At this difficult time Social-Democracy had a high mission – to resist nationalism and to protect the masses from the general ‘epidemic.’ For Social-Democracy, and Social-Democracy alone, could do this, by countering nationalism with the tried weapon of internationalism, with the unity and indivisibility of the class struggle.”

To translate it to American terms, racism is a trick the bosses use to divide the workers: the strategic axis of a revolutionary policy is “Black and White, Unite and Fight!”

But the truth is that much more than “divide and rule,” was involved, and the policy was and remains inciting oppressor nations against oppressed nations. The tsarists weren't inciting Jewish pogroms against Russians. And by this way of formulating the question, “inciting nations against each other” what he is doing is putting an equals sign between the violence of the oppressor and the violence of the oppressed.

Stalin's pamphlet is completely blind to the nationalism of the oppressor. Consider this passage: “But the unity of a nation diminishes not only as a result of migration. It diminishes also from internal causes, owing to the growing acuteness of the class struggle.

“In the early stages of capitalism one can still speak of a ‘common culture’ of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. But as large-scale industry develops and the class struggle becomes more and more acute, this ‘common culture’ begins to melt away. One cannot seriously speak of the ‘common culture’ of a nation when employers and workers of one and the same nation cease to understand each other. What ‘common destiny’ can there be when the bourgeoisie thirsts for war, and the proletariat declares ‘war on war’?”

August 1914

Stalin's article is dated January 1913. In August, 1914, it was seen that all his claims that there was no "common culture" in the already developed, capitalist (in reality imperialist) nations between the working class and ruling class were false.

European social democracy's leaders, with a few, very few, honorable exceptions, rallied each to the defense of “their own” fatherland. There was no “war on war” but rather abject capitulation to the bourgeois nationalism of the imperialist powers, which Stalin never even mentions.

Why was Stalin unable to see it? Because at that time neither he nor the rest of the Bolsheviks understood imperialism, whose central characteristic is the division of the world between a handful of exploiting, oppressor nations and a big majority of exploited and oppressed nations, colonies, and peoples.

For Stalin, “national oppression” was mainly a policy deployed to divide the working class. Just as he did not see the nationalism of the oppressor he also didn't see the privileges of the oppressor nation, nor the super-exploitation of the oppressed.

How mistaken Stalin was is shown by his own summary of his political approach:

“The fate of a national movement, which is essentially a bourgeois movement, is naturally bound up with the fate of the bourgeoisie. The final disappearance of a national movement is possible only with the downfall of the bourgeoisie. Only under the reign of socialism can peace be fully established.

“But even within the framework of capitalism it is possible to reduce the national struggle to a minimum, to undermine it at the root, to render it as harmless as possible to the proletariat. This is borne out, for example, by Switzerland and America. It requires that the country should be democratized and the nations be given the opportunity of free development.”

What does this say? That Stalin and his friends didn't get it. They had absolutely no clue!

No greater proof of it can there be than that “America,” that blood-drenched white-supremacist European crime against humanity constituted as a colonial settler regime based on stealing half of Mexico, on genocide against the Indians, on the enslavement and lynching of Blacks, and on the imperialist domination of the rest of the hemisphere is held up as an example of … national harmony! Of rendering the national question “harmless.”

As if!

Fortunately when the cluetrain made its stop in August of 1914, Lenin did take delivery. All this utopian poppycock about reducing the national struggle to a minimum, undermining it at the root, rendering it harmless – which in practice become really just so many ways of telling oppressed people not to struggle as a people against “my” imperialism --  were rejected by Lenin.

Support to national movements

The policy of trying to win the workers of oppressed nations away from the national movements was replaced by a policy of wholehearted, unconditional support to the national revolutionary movements of oppressed peoples against imperialism, which was now seen clearly, not as a divide-and-rule “policy,” but as a new stage of capitalism.

In that framework, the workers of the oppressed nations had to be organized to vie with the bourgeoisie for leadership of the national movements; and the workers of the oppressor nations had to be trained in their internationalist duty to aid the colonial movement against “their own” nation.

Contrast Stalin’s –- and the Bolsheviks’ -- 1913 approach with that of Lenin in 1920, at the Second Congress of the Comintern, presenting his “Theses on the National and Colonial Question” (which, be it said in passing, recognized the question of “Negroes in America” as a national question, like the Irish question.)

“What is the most important, the fundamental idea of our Theses? It is the difference between the oppressed and the oppressor nations. We emphasise this difference – in contrast to the Second International and bourgeois democracy....

“Imperialism is characterised by the fact that the whole world is now divided into a large number of oppressed nations and a very small number of oppressor nations that are enormously rich and strong in the military sense.... This idea of the difference between nations, their division into the oppressed and the oppressors runs through all the Theses....”

“I would like to emphasise the question of the bourgeois-democratic movement in the backward countries.... We debated whether it is correct in principle and theoretically to declare that the Communist International and the Communist Parties have a duty to support the bourgeois-democratic movements in the backward countries, and the outcome of this discussion was that we came to the unanimous decision to talk not about the ‘bourgeois-democratic’ movement but only about the national-revolutionary movement.

“There can be no doubt of the fact that any nationalist movement can only be a bourgeois-democratic movement, because the great mass of the population of the backward countries consists of the peasantry, which is the representative of bourgeois capitalist relations.... But objections were raised that, if we say ‘bourgeois-democratic’, we lose the distinction between the reformist and revolutionary movement which has become quite clear in the backward countries and the colonies recently.... [W]e believed that the only correct thing would be to take this difference into consideration and to replace the words ‘bourgeois-democratic’ almost everywhere with the expression ‘national-revolutionary.”

Returning to Marx and Engels

I want to add one more thing, which is that the politics outlined in the Stalin pamphlet were no just thrown completely overboard by the Bolsheviks during and after World War I. Those prewar politics were also not the politics of Marx and Engels. Quite the contrary.

For example, Stalin denounces "the segregation of the workers according to nationality" in the working-class movement.

But in 1872, when the Irish workers within England were called to task before the General Council of the First International for forming separate Irish branches, and a motion was put that this violated the rules of the International, and refusing to submit to the British Federal Council, Engels rose to their defense.

He based his political approach on what Lenin also eventually come to see as central question, the difference between the nationalism of the oppressed and the nationalism of the oppressor, and defended the former while denouncing the latter.

Engels on ‘true internationalism’

“Citizen Engels said the real purpose of the motion, stripped of all hypocrisy, was to bring the Irish sections into subjection to the British Federal Council [of the International], a thing to which the Irish sections would never consent, and which the Council had neither the right nor the power to impose upon them...

“The Irish formed a distinct nationality of their own, and the fact that [they] used the English language could not deprive them of their rights... Citizen Hales had spoken of the relations of England and Ireland being of the most idyllic nature... but the case was quite different. There was the fact of seven centuries of English conquest and oppression of Ireland, and so long as that oppression existed, it would be an insult to Irish working men to ask them to submit to a British Federal Council.

“[The motion] was asking the conquered people to forget their nationality and submit to their conquerors. It was not Internationalism, but simply prating submission. If the promoters of the motion were so brimful of the truly international spirit, let them prove it by removing the seat of the British Federal Council to Dublin and submit to a Council of Irishmen.

“In a case like that of the Irish, true Internationalism must necessarily be based upon a distinct national organization, and they were under the necessity to state in... their rules that their first and most pressing duty as Irishmen was to establish their own national independence....”

One more thought.

In defining “nation” or talking about the nationalism of the oppressed, yes, even 100 years ago and certainly today, any definition that doesn't place the material reality of imperialism and imperialist domination, oppression and exploitation at the center of it has got to be wrong.

--José G. Pérez

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¹Some people make a distinction between a “nation” –a fully formed nation -- and “nationalities” as well as “national minorities.” Thus a “nationality” is a nationlike community of people but that lacks some of the characteristics of a fully formed nation; a “national minority” is a fragment of a nation’s population outside the “national” territory.

These are useful distinctions, but I mostly do not employ them in this article as they are not relevant to what I am addressing, which is our overall political approach and stance towards oppressed peoples (whether you would consider a given instance a fully formed “nation,” a “nationality” or “national minority.”)