He was the author of two leaflets calling for a general strike against the US intervention of spring –summer 1918 against the Russian Revolution. These called for a social revolution in the United States. The paper was folded up tightly and posted in mailboxes around New York and the leaflets each had a print run of 5,000. The federal and local authorities began to be on the lookout for the authors of this propaganda. He was arrested on the 24th August 1918 along with Jacob Schwartz. The two were beaten with fists and blackjacks on the way to the police station. There further beatings were dished out. The arrest of the Frayhayt group signaled the start of massive repression of the anarchist movement in the United States. The Abrams case as it became known was a was a landmark in the suppression of civil liberties in the USA. Schwartz died in October due to the severe beatings he had received, although the authorities put it down to Spanish influenza…

On October 25th 1918 Jack , together with Sam Lipman and Hyman Lachowsky, was sentenced to 20 years hard labor and fined $ 1000 on charges of “anti-American activities.”, whilst Mollie Steimer received fifteen years and a $500 fine… In mid-1919 was filed an appeal, and in the meantime Jack and the others were released.

Socialist Party leader Norman Thomas was one of the people active in the campaign that led to this release. The Supreme Court upheld the conviction, but was notable for the dissenting opinion of Oliver Wendell Holmes (joined by  Louis Brandeis):

we should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions we loathe and believe to be fraught with death, unless they so imminently threatened immediate interference with the lawful and pressing purposes of the law that an immediate check is required to save the country.

The best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out. “That at any rate is the theory of our Constitution.

Anyway, the group tried to escape to Mexico but got waylaid and some went to Russia, where (ironically, considering the defence of the revolution had got them locked up) they witnessed the deepening repression of the Bolshevik state, and before long were deported from there too. Eventually, in 1926, Mary and Jack Abrams wound up in Mexico, in Cuernavaca, not far from Mexico City, where he joined a group of Spanish anarchist exiles, Tierra y Libertad (Land and Freedom).

Steimer’s route to Mexico was even more complex, also via Russia, where she was imprisoned by the GPU (forerunner of the KGB), to Berlin, from which she fled when Hitler came to power, to France, where she was again interned in  Camp Gurs as a German. (She must have been there, May-June 1940, at the same time as Hannah Arendt. I wonder if they met?) Then to Vichy – according to Wikipedia “Steimer was aided principally by May Picqueray (1893-1983), the militant anarchist editor of Le Refractaire, who had previously assisted the couple by protesting their imprisonment in Russia by the Bolsheviks in 1923.”

And finally to Mexico City, where her and Fleshin had a photo studio, SEMO. Here‘s two of their 1952 photo of the opera singer Maria Callas:

And here’s Fleshin at his trade:

They retired to Cuernavaca in 1963.

Ron Radosh, the red diaper baby turned anti-Communist, was a nephew of Jack Abrams, and in his memoir Commies he writes:

My first remembrance of the many visits we made to Mexico City is from 1945, when I was nine. As others were gathering in Times Square to celebrate the end of World War II, we saw the giant parade that wound through downtown Mexico City. Abrams took me to the major sites and to children’s films, willingly spending hours with me while my parents went off to experience Mexico’s revolutionary culture. In a later visit, either 1949 or 1950, Abrams, who had learned from my parents that I had already begun to circulate in the orbit of New York’s young Communist movement, did his best to warn me about the ethics and true nature of Stalin’s regime.

As we all walked through the streets of beautiful Cuernavaca (now a famous tourist resort), my parents spotted the painter David Alfaro Siqueras, one of the founders of the Mexican muralist school. The famed artist approached Abrams to say hello, and much to my shock, Abrams refused to shake his hand and exchange greetings. “I don’t talk to murderers,” he shouted at Siqueras, and turned and walked away. When he had calmed down, Abrams told me about Siqueras’s role in the attempted murder of Leon Trotsky at his estate in the Coyocan suburb of Mexico City, when the painter led a group of machine-gun-toting raiders in a failed effort to kill the exiled Bolshevik.

Abrams often socialized and became friends with other exiles, despite occasionally severe political differences. He was a regular guest at Trotsky’s walled-in compound, where the two played chess and argued about Bolshevism. After his death, Trotsky’s widow presented Abrams a set of Trotsky’s favorite Mexican-made dishware as a remembrance of their solidarity and friendship—a gift which Abrams later passed on to my parents. Often in later years, I would serve cake to my Stalinist friends on these plates, and after they admired the beauty of the design and craftsmanship, I would tell them whose dishes they were eating from, and watch them turn pale.

Abrams also befriended the great painter Diego Rivera, who spent his years moving from Bolshevism to Trotskyism and back to official Soviet Communism. Despite these twists and turns, and probably because at critical moments Rivera had opposed Stalin, Abrams maintained the relationship. Once, he took me to meet the artist and watch him paint the murals—some of the last he was to create—in the Del Prado Hotel in the main part of the city. In later years, the hotel would cover the murals with curtains because of embarrassment about their anti-Catholic and revolutionary themes. Rivera gave Abrams some of his paintings, one of which Abrams gave to my parents. My mother kept it in her New York City apartment.

Abrams gave the twelve year old Radosh a copy of Franz Borkenau‘s The Spanish Cockpit, presenting the anti-Stalinist view of the Spanish revolution and civil war.

Further reading: Abrams, Jack. J. Aybrams-bukh dos lebn un shafn fun an eygnartike perzenlikhkayt. [Jack Abrams Book, The Life And Works Of A Peculiar Personality] Mexico City: Centro Cultural Israelita de Mexico, 1956. 329pp [via YAB] If anyone has this, and wants to write a guest post based on it, please get in touch!

This article appears in Solidarity.  Feel free to add your comments below.

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It was a beautiful May morning, one of the first warm and sunny days we’ve had all year. In Clerkenwell Green, hundreds of people were assembling for the annual official London May Day march. Many of you will not have been there — in fact there were very few trade unionists at all on this year’s march.

So let me tell you who was there — the twentieth century’s greatest serial killer, Joseph Stalin. Stalin was on several banners, and not only his image side by side with Lenin and Mao, but huge banners just with his picture alone — and quotations from his writings.

As I marched along with some trade union leaders and a traditional brass band, I could not help feeling ashamed at what the march would have looked like to onlookers, of whom there were many along the route. Ashamed and disgusted.

It’s disgusting because holding aloft iconic images of Stalin at a trade union march shows a complete lack of moral judgement. Seventy years ago, it may have been understandable — the second world war was raging, the Soviet leadership had not yet acknowledged Stalin’s crimes. But after 1956, anyone who still believed that Stalin was a great revolutionary leader was delusional.

Many of the marchers holding hammer-and-sickle flags or Stalin images would have been from various far-Left Turkish organizations and maybe in Turkey, there is no strong anti-Stalinist left. (Not that that’s an excuse for their igorance.)

But there were also British far-Leftists, supporters of tiny fringe groups proud of their adulation for a man who is responsible for millions of deaths of innocent people, a man who contributed so much to destroying everything the Russian revolution had achieved, killing off the entire Bolshevik party in the process.

The British anti-Stalinist Left was represented by “Trotskyist” groups like the Socialist Workers Party and Socialist Party, who were there in strength, manning their book stalls, selling their newspapers. But there was no evidence that they challenged the Stalinists or even politely asked them to put their repulsive banners away. It seemed as if the Trotskyists and Stalinists were happy to march side by side, letting bygones be bygones. No enemies on the left and all that.

This in intolerable. If there are some, few individuals with personal “issues” who need to express themselves through things like the “Stalin Society”, that may be their right. But that doesn’t mean that they are welcome at our May Day celebrations. They are not welcome.

We must make an effort to ensure that this disgrace never repeats itself and that in 2014, there will be no banners with Stalin’s picture at the London May Day march and rally.

How do we do this? We begin by debating and confronting the Stalinist Left, demolishing their arguments and educating their members and periphery. We fight them on their turf and we fight them seriously. This is a fight over historical memory, over truth, and it is a fight we must win in order to cleanse and revitalise the Left.

At our own events such as a May Day march, we must take a firm stand of no platform for totalitarianism — no portraits of Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot or Kim Jon Il to be displayed. Enough is enough.

And finally, we must compell the leadership of the TUC and the unions to take May Day seriously. They must wrest it from the hands of the lunatics and the fringe. They must bring the hundreds of thousands of trade unionists who have marched under the TUC banner in recent years to come out on May Day too. The trade union leadership must help us to reclaim the holiday.

Stalin’s portrait must never again be paraded through the streets of London.

Related articles

• From the archive of struggle no.75: anti-Stalinist Leninism in the 1930s (MIA special) (poumista.wordpress.com)
• New Stalin statue erected in Russia (stalinsmoustache.wordpress.com)
• Yet more for the Stalin fan club (stalinsmoustache.wordpress.com)
• Stalin’s bunker (welcometopaul.wordpress.com)
• From the archive of struggle no.76: Poumism and Shachtmanism (poumista.wordpress.com)
• Ideological Sociopath: Stalin Reads Machiavelli (frontpagemag.com)
• Russian lawmaker decries Stalin busts for sale (upi.com)

Some months later, in 2009, Shaun went back to fill in the gaps.

It’s been a while since I wrote about Thomas “Red” Cushing. I promised to do so a lot earlier but hey ho! This is the first of a group of posts covering Red Cushing’s time between leaving Spain disillusioned and his time in Sachsenhausen with Yakov Stalin. This is taken from his autobiography “Soldier For Hire” (John Calder 1962)

After arriving in Victoria (stopping only to belt a Daily Worker seller in Paddington see Red Cushing and the Spanish Civil War Part III), he made his way to Cardiff to enlist in the Royal Iniskilling Fusiliers. After a relatively uneventful time (for Red that is!) involving a few boxing matches, and a fair bit of drinking, he was posted to Darlington and then Hereford to man a searchlight unit, he was sent to France as part of the British Expeditionary Force.

He spent four months digging fortifications until the Wehrmacht decided it wanted to spend its 1940 summer holiday at the French seaside. Like many other members of the BEF the next few weeks were a story of chaos, desperate fallbacks and futile attempts to regroup. Near Douai his unit did manage to blow a bridge taking several German armoured vehicles with it.

Caught behind the German lines Cushing and several other soldiers found shelter in a bistro cellar filled with an impressive range of drink. Building a bar out of a few crates Cushing and comrades embarked on what he described the greatest drinking bout of the century. Cushing was still resolved to do his duty. He was determined to fight out the war to the last bottle.

Alas things did not work out quite that way….

Shaun stopped here, and left us all for weeks before continuing:

After capture and several days of marching, Cushing and his comrades were herded into rails trucks and taken toStalag VIII(b) near Lamsdorf. In Silesia (now called Lambinowice). Not being an officer he was required to work so after fumigation and shaving and looking, as he put it, like a snooker ball he was drafted into a stone quarrying party.

Needless to say he found the food and lodgings rather below par and being a free spirit, he decided to escape. Obviously his attempts were unsuccessful or he wouldn’t have ended up in Sachsenhausen and got into a scrape with Yakov Stalin! During his third and final attempt he made it as far as the Carpathian Mountains. There he encountered a farm dog “about the size of the Hound of the Baskervilles”. To escape he tried to scale a high fence but his battle blouse got caught on a pointed picket post. It was in that ignominious position that he was recaptured. He was awarded 28 days solitary confinement for his troubles.

He was then sent to work in a coal mine where he was assigned as an assistant to a humourless but even tempered worker called Willi. Cushing found this mix a perfect opportunity for mischief.

One day Willi was engaged in making modification to roof supports. He called down to Cushing in guttural English “Thomas, the saw you will give Ja?”After weighing the request Cushing provided a hammer.

“Nein, Nein Thomas. The saw, Die Sage Verstehst?” Cushing responded “Ja ich verstehe” going through the motions of a man sawing, then promptly handed Willi some wood.Willi, with the patience of a saint, stopped his work and came down to show him what he wanted.

Cushing would do this time and time again. When Willi wanted nails, he would get a hammer and so on. The effect was that Willi spent more time explaining things to Red than actually doing any work.

Believing Red to be an utter idiot, Willi would spend a lot of time regaling him with the latest Nazi propaganda, particularly tales of hardship and starvation in England.. Nothing Red said in answer would change his view (and why would it when the Reich was on a roll at that time). Tiring of the Crapology, as he called it, Red found the perfect way of putting one over him, proving in the process that Britain’s larder was not quite as empty as it was portrayed.. He persuaded the other prisoners to let him have a complete Red Cross parcel.

When eating a lunch of ersatz coffee and black bread with a little Speck, Willi demanded “Thomas, this war how long it last, eh?

“Oh probably another 10 or 11 years Willi”

“Nein, nein In England everybody hungry is.. Doctor Goebbels says”

“Up Dr Goebbels lulu, have a look at this little lot” At this point he opened the parcel to display a treasure trove of goodies, including tea, sugar cocoa (and of course lots of span and bully beef).“One parcel a week Willi for every British POW in Europe”

Red’s trick had the desired result: Willi and the other workers realised that their propaganda was an exaggeration and was to be taken not with a pinch of salt but with a whole mine’s worth.

The JLC’s call for a posthumous medal of freedom for the great Bayard Rustin.

Ross Wolfe: Some preliminary thoughts on Endnotes’ critique of Platypus (for the pointyheads amongst you)

Coatesy on Applebaum on totalitarianism and on the Movement for Workers’ Control.

.

Red Cushing’s first account of his encounter with Yakov Stalin appears in his autobiography “Soldier for Hire” (pp166):

“The first newcomer to arrive was posted to our hut. He introduced himself clicking his heels and uttering a Russian name that meant nothing to any of us… He explained later that it was the family name of Joseph Stalin and that he was the son of the Russian dictator. While serving as a lieutenant in an anti tank battery, he had been captured near Smolensk.

“Right from the first his behaviour struck me as distinctly odd. I often caught him pacing up and down our hut as if he had something on our mind…. For all his political moonshine, Jacob (Yakov) had many likeable qualities… and in time we may have become firm friends. One evening, however, at the end of an unusually long brooding spell, he suddenly rushed outside, sprinted across the compound, scrambled up the wall and attempted to crawl to the perimeter wire. A shot rang out, followed by a blinding flash, and poor Jacob hung there his body horribly burned and twisted. . We heard afterwards that the sentry’s bullet had got him fractionally before he was electrocuted”.

Cause 3: A fight over fa dirty toilet

18 years later in 1980 Cushing, then in retirement in County Cork, gave a second, slightly expanded account in a Sunday Times article (as with my earlier posts on Red Cushing, I am extremely grateful to Ciaran Crossey’s magnificent website Ireland and the Spanish Civil War). Here is an edited extract:

Joseph Stalin died in 1953 with one abiding regret: he had been unable to discover the fate of his eldest son, Jakov. All Stalin knew was that he had been captured by the Germans at the Siege of Smolensk in 1941, and held in a prisoner of war camp. Rumours that he had died there conflicted with stories that he had escaped. The Russian leader was unable to establish the truth, and though towards the end of this life, he offered a reward of a million roubles, no information was forthcoming.

The story was well known to his erstwhile American and British allies: In July 1945 an Anglo-American team sifting through German unearthed the full details of the story. Realising the implications the British Foreign Office reacted quickly, and on July 27, 1945, Michael Vyyyan, a senior Foreign Office official, wrote to his opposite number in the American State Department. “Our own inclination here is to recommend that the idea of communicating to Marshal Stalin should be dropped…It would naturally be distasteful to draw attention to the Anglo-Russian quarrels which preceded the death of his son.”

According to these records, Jakov Stalin committed suicide in a particularly horrifying manner, in the bleak surroundings of Sachsenhausen Camp. The only surviving witness to the incident Thomas ‘Red’ Cushing, still talks of the extraordinary pressures which drove Stalin to his death ‘I remember it as if it were yesterday,’ said Cushing. ‘It was one of the saddest events of my life.’

Yakov Dzugashvili Stalin arrived towards the end of 1942 and billeted with Molotov’s nephew, Cushing and the other Irish POWs. Relations between the Russian and Irish prisoners deteriorated quickly in the claustrophobic atmosphere of the camp. The Irish suspected Kokorin, a small self-centred man anxious to curry favour with the German guards, of passing information to the Gestapo. They were equally contemptuous of Jakov. Unlike Kokorin, he became increasingly aggressive in his defence of Russian communism, continually ‘shouting bolshevist propaganda’, according to a statement Cushing made. There was a constant barrage of accusations between the two sides.

In early 1943, the atmosphere was poisonous. Small events sparked off violent quarrels. There were rows over the distribution of Red Cross parcels, and petty disputes about national habits. The incident that triggered off the final tragedy of Jakov Stalin was typical: it concerned the latrines.

On the afternoon of Wednesday, April 14, 1943, in a particularly heated exchange, Cushing accused Stalin’s son of refusing to flush the lavatory and of deliberately fouling the wooden seat. The row spread quickly to the other prisoners. Murphy accused Jakov of the same behaviour. Outside the hut, O’Brien confronted Kokorin with the allegation that he defecated on the ground and fouled the latrine used by the British soldiers. O’Brien called Kokorin ‘a bolshevist shit’; Kokorin called O’Brien ‘an English shit.’ A fight broke out and O’Brien hit Kokorin. 

The precise role-played in these exchanges by Jakov Stalin, and indeed his responsibility for them, remains unclear. What does seem certain, however, is that the accumulated effect of constant bickering, rows, accusations – and finally the fight – broke the spirit of a man already suffering from confused emotions about his loyalties, his background and his future.

That evening, at curfew, Jakov refused to go back into the hut. He demanded to see the camp commandant, claiming he was being insulted by the British prisoners, and when his request was turned down, he appears to have gone berserk.Wildly waving a piece of wood, he ran about the area of the camp, shouting in broken German, to the SS guards on duty, ‘shoot me, shoot me’. Then, in what appears to have been a clear desire to kill himself, he turned and ran towards the three-stage electrified fencing-surrounding perimeter.

Cushing himself saw what happened: “I saw Jakov running about as if he were insane. He just ran straight onto the wire. There was a huge flash and all the searchlights suddenly went on. I knew that was the end of him… Afterwards the Germans tried to make me take him off the wire and wrap his body in a blanket. It was the first time I felt sorry for the poor bastard.”

Once again make of this what you will. There is no doubt that Yakov Stalin died in Sachsenhausen in 1943. There is also no doubt that Cushing, Walsh, O’Brian and Murphy were there at the same time. Languishing in a concentration camp, it’s no surprise that his mental state was at a low ebb. As for the last straw? I would not be surprised if it was a fight over a toilet rather than the Katyn massacre but then again what do I know….

We’ll go back later to his other war-time escapades, but you might also want to read another of Shaun’s posts: about Yakov’s son, Yevgeny Dzhugashvili, and his denial of Stalin’s murderousness, nicely entitled “Polishing turds in Moscow court rooms“.

Related articles

• Joseph Stalin’s hated son surrendered to the Nazis, archives reveal (independent.ie)
• Stalin’s son was a war deserter: German magazine claims dictator’s child surrendered to Nazi forces (dailymail.co.uk)

Added to the archive of the Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista/Workers Party of Marxist Unification a section of the Spanish Revolution History Archive is the complete run of the POUM’s English Language publication edited in Barcelona by American revolutionary socialists Lois and Charles Orr: The Spanish Revolution.

Spanish Revolution was the English language publication of the P.O.U.M. Edited by Lois and Charles Orr. In 1936 they had setup within the ranks of the Socialist Party of America the Revolutionary Policy Committee of the Socialist Party of the U.S. While the P.O.U.M. itself was never Trotskyist, many in the ranks of Trotskyism, and those near it politically, supported the publication.

Russell Blackwell, who was in Spain as a supporter of the P.O.U.M wrote, 30 years later for the Greenwood Reprints of The Spanish Revolution, the following:

Spanish Revolution faithfully reported events during its period of publication from the point of view of the P.O.U.M. Its first issue appeared on October 21, 1936, at a time when the revolutionary process was already beginning to decline. Its final issues dealt with the historic May Days of 1937 and the events immediately following, which led to the Stalinist takeover.

These 28 issues of The Spanish Revolution  were digitized by Marty Goodman of the Riazanov Library Project

They are all digitised as whole pdfs for each issue.

Other stuff:

Added to the Andrés Nin Archive. [Nin was the leader of the POUM.]

• Andres Nin Calls for the Spanish Opposition Press (1931)
• Mistakes of Comrade Maurin (1931)

Added to the Leon Trotsky Archive. [Texts from early in the break of the Left Opposition from Stalinism and the descent of Spain into Civil War.]

• A New Slander Against D.B. Riazanov (1931)
• Ten Commandments of the Spanish Communist (1931)
• Result of Spanish Elections (1931)
• A Letter About the Spanish Revolution (1931)
• Against National Communism! (1931) (alternative translation)

Added to the Max Shachtman Archive [From 1931, when Shachtman was with Cannon in the Left Opposition, to 1941 when he had broken with him.]

• America’s “Pacifism” in Europe and … Litvinov’s (1931)
• Stanley Disappoints Lovestone (1931)
• Paterson on Strike (1931)
• Stalin’s “New Economic Policy” (1931)
• Stalin in 1921 (1931)
• The Anonymous Factional Struggle in the Party (1931)
• The War Today Is What It Was Yesterday – Imperialist! (1941)
• “Mixed Wars” and the War Today (1941)
• The Organizer of Victory and the Organizer of Defeat (1941)
• The Cannonites and Iran – Silence Is Golden (1941)
• On Some Aspects of the Russian Question (1941)

Added to the Workers Age archive are the full years for 1934 & 1935. Workers Age was the organ of the Communist Party, USA (Opposition), a group lead at various times by Ben Gitlow and Jay Lovestone. Affiliated to the so-called “International Right Opposition” they aligned politically with old Bolshevik N. Bkharin in his fight with Joseph Stalin over the direction of the U.S.S.R. [Thanks to Marty Goodman of the Riazanov Library Project and D. Walters from the Holt Labor Library]

Added to the C.L.R. James Archive. [From 1941, when James was still in Shachtman's Workers Party.]

• From Jobs to the Struggle for Socialism (1941) (as J.R. Johnson)
• We Must Strike a Mighty Blow at Jim-Crow Now (1941) (as J.R. Johnson)
• All Out July 1 for the March on Washington (1941) (as J.R. Johnson)
• Beware of Those Pushing You Into the War (1941) (as J.R. Johnson)
• Negroes, We Can Depend Only on Ourselves! (1941) (as J.R. Johnson)
• Negro Protest Runs Too Deep to Be Squashed (1941) (as J.R. Johnson)

Added to the Hal Draper Archive. [Draper was also in the WP in 1941]

• The Cannonites and Defense of the Soviet Union – From Shamefacedness to Solid Brass (1941) (as Paul Temple)

Related articles

• The Revolution In Spain in ’36 (kevindoylewriter.wordpress.com)

Related articles

• This Is The Only Known Footage of George Orwell (blogs.smithsonianmag.com)
• Is a BBC statue the right way to honour a Lefty? (standard.co.uk)

Part 2 deals with Cushing joining the International Brigade (after hearing in a New York bar about “General O’Duffy’s Blue Shirts”, Catholic Irish Republicans fighting in Spain on the fascist side), becoming platoon leader in Number One Company, the Lincoln Washington Battalion, and his scrapes with the Communist Party commissars who sought to discipline the Brigadiers.

We had no idea what the overall situation was. Any information about the general course of the war was carefully withheld from us by the Party leaders. Gradually it dawned on these political panjandrums that what they needed in Spain was less tub-thumping and more military know-how, so at last they decided to ship me back to the States with a view to recruiting some young men with initiative and leadership qualities.

Part 3 sees Red’s disillusionment tempting him to join the French Foreign Legion, but deciding that war with fascist Germany was the enemy he should be fighting, leading him to return to Britain to sign up there:

I travelled to England by way of Paris and Dieppe, disembarking at Newhaven and proceeding to Victoria… As I was leaving Victoria, with a view to catching a ‘bus to Paddington. a slimy-looking character tried to sell me The Daily Worker. His smug references to the Spanish Civil War so incensed me that I hauled off and belted him one. I derived a great deal of personal satisfaction out of that blow, throwing into it all the anger and disgust I felt about Communist mismanagement in Spain. It symbolised for me my complete repudiation of the Party line…

Jams concludes, tempting us on to the next intallment:

Related articles

• Joseph Stalin’s hated son surrendered to the Nazis, archives reveal (independent.ie)
• The son Josef Stalin despised (express.co.uk)
• Surrender or Capture?: Files Shed Light on Fate of Stalin’s Son (warhistoryonline.com)

Digesting some of the material about the collapse of the British SWP. Here are some of the links that are relevant beyond UK sectariana but of interest to those interested in Marxist theory and Trotskyist history more broadly. For those interested in the gory details, go to Jim Jepps’ ever-growing link list, from which a couple of the items below are pilfered, or to Mikey’s tabloid version. Apologies this is so un-chronological, with stuff from January through to April.

Leninism, vanguardism, party democracy, activist culture:

• Phil (A Very Public Sociologist): Life on the revolutionary treadmill; SWP, Rape, and Revolutionary Justice; Where now for the SWP?; British Trotskyism after the Cold War; the SWP, an obituary.
• Paul Cotteril (Though Cowards Flinch): The SWP meltdown, institutional legitimacy and the broader lesson for the left
• Lives running: Workers’ democracy and the politics of wrath
• Anna Chen: People’s Assembly and Nechayev’s Catechism: be very afraid …
• Soviet Goon Boy: Reflections on the SWP crisis; The bureaucratic imperative; From the vaults: “Democracy in the International Socialists”, 1975; Order prevails in Vauxhall; Building the leadership; The age gap, and why it matters; The uses of paranoia. Interesting reflections in some of these on the precedent from Gerry Healy’s WRP.]
• Corey Ansel: Sherry Wolf – Writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear
• Keith Watermelon: The SWP in crisis, what do socialists say?
• Ed Maltby and Martin Thomas: Politics without oxygen
• John Riddell:  Party democracy in Lenin’s Comintern – and now
• Tim Nelson: Rosa Luxemburg and the Revolutionary Party
• Louis Proyect: A Reply to Alex Callinicos; Mike Gonzales and the ideological priesthood
• Norman Geras: Leninism forever?
• Paul LeBlanc: Leninism is unfinished (reply by Louis Proyect)
•  Tom Walker: Lenin versus Leninism
• Gregor Gall: Democracy and the left
• Tendance Coatesy: The International Marxist Group and the SWP Crisis.
• International Socialists: Is Zinovievism finished?

Theorising Marxism and feminism:

• Camilla Power: ‘Feminism is a dirty word’. What would Marx and Engels think today?
• Radical Anthropology Group: SWP ‘expulsions’ for discussing rape – not for the first time! (1991)
• Yassamin Mather: Sexism: Macho culture and the lessons we can learn from the Middle East

Tony Cliff, founding figure of the British International Socialists. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The “IS tradition”:

• Captain Jack: The SWP and the IS tradition.
• JOAQUÍN BUSTELO: On The Two Souls of Socialism (2005)
• Roobin: Some thoughts on IS theory

The radical movement in Britain

• 10 years on, a comment on the British SWP, Mike Marqusee
• SPGB: An open letter
• Hatful of History: Is this a turning point for the British left?

Historical Materialism journal:

• Delhi HM committee: Disentangling the Delhi HM Conference from the SWP Crisis
• Ross Wolfe: Hysterical Materialism etc

Some miscellaneous reading:

From Mehmet Ali to Mubarak: a history of Egyptian nationalism.

Trotsky’s killer in Santa Fe Haagen-Dazs.

Ross Wolfe on utopia and programme.

From Insurgent Notes: Matthew Quest: C.L.R. James’s Conflicted Intellectual Legacies on Mao Tse Tung’s China; John Garvey: Trotsky Reconsidered: Claude Lefort’s Perspective. [Hat tip: Ent.]

From Critique Sociale: Victor Griffuelhes et l’action syndicaliste; Lire Rosa Luxemburg : entretien avec Peter Hudis.  [Hat tip: Ent.]

Michael Löwy: Der Urkommunismus in den ökonomischen Schriften von Rosa Luxemburg – Für eine romantisch-revolutionäre Geschichtsauffassung (1989)   [Hat tip: Ent.]

Flesh is Grass: The Spirit of ’45.

Interview with Noah Gataveckas on the Ted Grant and the spectre of Trotsky.

Peter Camejo: Problems of Vanguardism (1984)

Dave Renton revisits dissident Marxism.

Related articles

• On Changing the World – by Michael Lowy (rikowski.wordpress.com)
• Internalizing Our Own Oppression (moorbey.wordpress.com)
• Insurgent Notes – Issue 8 (March 2013) (rikowski.wordpress.com)
• After the SWP crisis (degenerateleftie.wordpress.com)
• Muckety this! Karl Lagerfeld to Leon Trotsky (news.muckety.com)
• A reading guide for students of Marxism (louisproyect.wordpress.com)
• Trotsky and the Manchester Guardian questionnaire: From the archive, 1 March 1923 (guardian.co.uk)
• The Legacy of Leon Trotsky (ranksavagespit.wordpress.com)
• Trotsky by Robert Service (cain423.typepad.com)

On Monday, I posted that my friend Shaun Downey – described by Francis Sedgemore as “ Gentleman and Blogger of the Parish of Romford” - has died. Shaun was what I have called before a “citizen scholar”, a polymath, who rigorously researched and shared his passions. Among his interests were military history, anti-fascist partisans and Irish Republicanism.

When blogs are not attended, there is a terrible tendency for them to be hacked and become fonts for spam, which is a shameful fate for someone who has passed. Mindful of that, and in tribute to him, I have decided to re-post over time a long series he wrote on an extraordinary figure, Red Cushing. Here is the first installment, from August 2008. Shaun italicised his quotes rather than indenting them, so I have indented the whole post to make its authorship as clear as possible. I have added a couple of hyperlinks and two pieces of punctuation.

This post was inspired by recent posts by two of my favourite bloggers: Roland Dodds on the vandalising of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion memorial and Bob from Brockley’s Spanish Civil War in San Fransisco.

Irishman Thomas “Red” Cushing is almost certainly resting in his grave now (if he were still alive he would be in his late 90s) but he definitely had a life less ordinary. In the first 35 years of his life he was an IRA member, had a yoyo career in the US army with a sideline of training Sandino’s forces; served in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade (his sobriquet refers to his hair not his political allegiance, he has bolshie, not a Bolshevik!), joined the British army, taken prisoner during the fall of France…. and then his adventures really began!

I first came across his name in “Renegades: Hitler’s Englishmen”, Adrian Weale’s excellent account of the Britisches Freikorps (the BFC) and other British traitors of WWII Cushing was mentioned in respect of the Reich’s farcical attempt to raise an Irish legion. He also appears in Mark Hull’s “Irish Secrets: Espionage in Wartime Ireland” and Terrence O’ Reilly’s “Hitler’s Irishmen”. However, he was no traitor himself and he continued his career in the British Army into the 1960s

Cushing wrote an account of his rollercoaster life in the book “Soldier For Hire”. It is long out of print but fortunately it is not hard to track down a reasonably inexpensive copy. The chapter “No Castles in Spain” which covers his time in Spain is very handily reproduced on Ciaran Crossey’s superb Ireland and the Spanish Civil War website. Plagiarism is not intended but I have a damaged wrist and anything that will cut down my typing is a godsend at the moment!

… While on demob leave, I stayed at the Army and Navy Club in Lexington Avenue, New York. I took the opportunity of visiting all the army posts where I had friends. To keep myself solvent I boxed a few times. Then, one morning in 1936, I wandered as far as the Army Base in Brooklyn, hoping to bump into somebody I knew…

My luck was out… I finished up in a saloon bar, sitting at the same table as five or six young fellows, listening to their conversation and occasionally chipping in when the talk became general. Somehow we had got on to the subject of soldiering abroad. During a lull in the discussion, an unmistakably military figure detached itself from the bar and slid easily into the seat next to mine.

‘I’m recruiting for the Lincoln Washington Battalion, now serving in Spain,’ he announced without preamble. ‘Any of you guys interested?’ ‘What are the prospects?’ I asked him. He shrugged. ‘Well, I guess that depends on what you can do. Have you soldiered before?’

I fished from my wallet the army documents I carried around with me and dropped them on the table in front of him. He scrutinised them in silence, lingering especially over an impressive list of courses I had passed. At last he looked up and eyed me appraisingly. ‘Seems to me you’re the type we want, brother. Can’t guarantee it, but with these qualifications you should swing a commission.’

‘Never mind the commission. My interests are tipple and bananas.’

… First we went to a building on the Grand Concourse, where I was medically examined and pronounced physically fit. Then, we proceeded to a dingy office not far from Union Square. There I completed a sort of application form, signed on the dotted line and was duly inducted. I received a cash advance of fifty dollars and was warned to hold myself in readiness… A day or two later, my instructions arrived. I was ordered to report to an address on Eighth Avenue and Sixteenth Street… I was introduced to a number of curious characters, all belonging to the school of thought that condemns soap and water as capitalist luxuries. Even before they opened their mouths, I knew what I had let myself in for. I had stepped into a gathering of Communist Party members.

Although I had no time for such crapology, I decided to ride along with them and find out how they ticked. I therefore listened patiently to my long-haired friend’s appreciation of the situation. .. I had been appointed conducting officer and was responsible for shepherding forty volunteers from New York to the Spanish front.

…The ‘Commissar’, as I had mentally labelled him, next led me into a dance hall, where I passed on his information to my comrades… When I first saw them, my heart sank. There were intellectuals, students from Columbia University and a generous sprinkling of Bowery bums and dead-beats, who had evidently espoused the Communist cause in order to be issued with meal tickets…. When I had finished, the Commissar gave them a long political speech, loaded with the usual Communist clichés. The workers of the world had to unite, fight for freedom, win a lasting peace and had nothing to lose but their chains. The students and the self-styled intelligentsia lapped it all up, but the talk made little impression on the bums. The squad was then dismissed and the Party members gathered round me, eager to give me a propaganda injection.

‘Gentlemen,’ I said to the shower of nanny goats, ‘I’m a professional soldier, not a politician. I’ve volunteered to go to Spain simply for the experience. As far as I’m concerned, you can stick your Communist racket up your jaxies! So cheerio, comrades! I’ll be seeing you at nine o’clock to-morrow morning.’ With an ironic bow to the Commissar, I made a quick exit…

To be continued

There are a couple of interesting comments on the post:

 Joseph Conlon said…

My dad met Red Cushing. We have a photo of him on our bathroom wall at home. I’m just reading the book ‘Soldier For Hire’ and its great so far.

I asked my dad today – Red’s dad seems like a bit of a nutter to which her replied “yes but Red’s daughter was even worse”… guess I have got more to find out…

Peter said…

I was Red Cushing’s platoon commander 9n Germany (Berlin) and Korea in the 1950′s. I have many stories about him – most of which revolved around his problem with “the drink” (he really loved his beer!). He was truly a one of a kind character, and I’m pleased to see that people are still interested in his exploits.

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The material here focuses on three overlapping currents in this anti-Stalinist left. The first is the POUM, the Spanish party whose name this blog’s is taken from, who fused the “left” and “right” opposition in Spain to the official Stalinist Communist party, to form a democratic mass movement of radical socialism, before being liquidated by the Stalinists in during the Spanish Civil War.

The second is the Trotskyist movement, Communism’s “left” opposition. While Trotsky supplied much of the intellectual justification for Stalin’s brutal misrule in the Soviet Union, his sharp critique of the degeneration of the Stalinist state made him a criminal in the dictatorship. His followers have formed one of the main planks of anti-Stalinist socialism globally. The material below focuses mainly on American Trotskyists, but particularly those who developed beyond the rigid and damaging orthodoxies of “official” Trotskyism.

Parallel to Trotsky’s Left Opposition, the Right Opposition called for a more democratic path to socialism, and was bitterly excluded from the Communist movement. Unlike Trotksyism, it leaves little organisational trace today, and so its history remains more deeply buried.

In the period from 1930 to 1940, these currents moved from composing a dissatisfied internal dissident streak within Stalinism, to a fully developed critical analysis of Stalinism. From 1940 to 1950, they several different interesting directions forward, some positively, others less so. Between them (along with anarchist, democratic socialist and left communist currents not represented here), they constitute a significant part of the heritage of anti-Stalinism that continues to be relevant to thinking about the task of reforging a radical movement today.

The POUM

Added to the Spanish-language Archivo Andreu Nin and English-language Andrés Nin Archive:

• The Tasks of Spanish Communists (1931)
• Hacia una nueva etapa de la Alianza Obrera (1936)

The Catalan Andreu (or Andres in Spanish) Nin i Pérez was a left dissident in the Communist Party, forming a left opposition group Communist Left of Spain (ICE), which merged with the Right Opposition party Bloque Obrero y Campesino, to form the Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification (POUM) in 1935.

Added to the new Julián Gorkin Archive in the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL):

• The Fall of Primo De Rivera and its Consequences (1930)
• In Spain after the Fall of the Dictatorship (1930)

While Nin came to the POUM from the left, Gorkin came from the right.  He was an increasingly anti-Stalinist Communist, expelled from the party in 1929. Based at this point in Paris, where he was a writer, he returned to Spain after the fall of Primo de Rivera. He joined the Communist Madrileña Association, then founded in October 1932 the Madrid section of the Iberian Communist Federation. This was linked to the Bloc Obrer i Camperol (BOC) of Joaquin Maurin, which was in turn linked to the international Right Opposition within the Communist movement, in turn merging with Nin’s group to form the POUM in 1935.

Added to the French language “G. Munis” archive:

• Pour la Révolution sociale, pour la victoire militaire Vive le Front Révolutionnaire ! (janv. 1937)/Les erreurs et les particularités du POUM (février 1937)/Le mot dordre dactualitLe (février 1937)/Interview parue dans « La Lutte ouvrière » (avril 1937)/Seule la lutte organisée des masses pourra arrêter la progression de la contre-révolution stalino-bourgeoise (août 1937)
• La lutte simultanée contre le fascisme et contre le gouvernement Negrín-Prieto-Staline établit la ligne de démarcation entre les révolutionnaires et les traîtres (février 1938)/Interviews de Munis : Leçons dune déons (février 1939)/Une opinion non conformiste (avril 1939)
• Genèse de lunité se (septembre 1943)/Quelques réflexions sur la guérilla (avril 1944)/Le Socialist Workers Party et la guerre impérialiste (novembre 1944)
• Quatre mensonges et deux vérités (janvier 1949)

Grandizo Munis, Mexican-born, was a member of Nin’s Izquierda Comunista de España, the left-wing half of what became the POUM. Within the POUM, he always represented its left/Trotskyist-leaning opposition, pushing it away from joint action with other Republicans towards a more purist revolutionary position. As such, he was close to the anarchists of the Friends of Durruti. He escaped into France and then to Mexico, where he spoke at Trotsky’s funeral. Later, he moved away from Trotskyism, taking up the position that that the USSR was no longer a workers’ state of any kind, but state capitalist. Although close to Natalya Sedova (Trotsky’s widow) and Max Shachtman (see below), he moved further away from Trotskyism after the war.

Trotskyists and dissident Trotskyists

Added to the Leon Trotsky Archive:

• Notes of a Journalist (1931)
• The Question of Trade Union Unity (1931)
• The Successes of Socialism and the Dangers of Adventurism (1931)
• The Trial of the Russian Mensheviks (1931)
• The Case Of Comrade Ryazanov (1931)

Added to the Leon Sedov Archive in the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL):

• The Life of the Exiled and Imprisoned Russian Opposition (1930) (as N. Markin)

Leon Sedov was the son of Trotsky and Natalia Sedova. He suffered bitterly at the hands of the Stalinists, who eventually killed him tragically young.

Added to the Christian Rakovsky Archive:

• The Russian Bolshevik-Leninists on the Present Situations (with V. Kossior & N. Muralov) (1930)

Rakovsky, a Bulgarian born in the 1870s, was involved in the Communist movement in Russia, but dissenting from it as Stalinism became increasingly brutal and totalitarian. Wikipedia: “He came to oppose Joseph Stalin and rallied with the Left Opposition, being marginalized inside the government and sent as Soviet ambassador to London and Paris, where he was involved in renegotiating financial settlements. He was ultimately recalled from France in autumn 1927, after signing his name to a controversial Trotskyist platform which endorsed world revolution. Credited with having developed the Trotskyist critique of Stalinism as “bureaucratic centrism”, Rakovsky was subject to internal exile. Submitting to Stalin’s leadership in 1934 and being briefly reinstated, he was nonetheless implicated in the Trial of the Twenty One (part of the Moscow Trials), imprisoned, and executed by the NKVD during World War II.”

Added to the Max Shachtman Archive:

• On the Proposal for a New Farmer-Labor Party Fraud (1930)
• The Plot Against the Soviets (1930)
• 13 Years of Russian Revolution! (1930)
• Stalin Grants Two Interviews (1930)
• On the “Sectarians” … (1931)
• The Right Wing Liquidators and the S.P. “Militants” (1931)
• Illinois Miners’ Convention (1931)
• Republican Revolution in Spain (1931)
• The Daily Worker Explains Some Differences (1931)
• The Theory of Stalinism and the Revolution in Spain (1931)
• Weisbord – Cult of Confusionism (1931)
• Fascism and the World War – Article Two (1940)
• Fascism and the Imperialist War – Article Three (1940)
• Fascism and the World War – Article Four (1940)
• Is Russia a Workers’ State? (1940)
• How Not to Make a United Front (1941)

Shachtman was one of the leading figures of American Trotskyism, but in the late 1930s, with his colleague James Burnham, Shachtman and his new Workers Party moved away from orthodox Marxism, from defence of the USSR and from the Trotskyist movement. Later, he would develop the concept of the Third Camp and then move further away from the Leninist left. Most of the figures featured here broke with orthodox Trotskyism in the 1930s, but all moved in different directions.

Added to the Hugo Oehler Archive in the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL):

• Social Reformism in the United States (1930)
• The I.W.W. and the Unemployment Problem (1931)
• Miners’ Revolt Checked at Muste Convention (1931)

Oehler was a pioneer, with Shachtman, of American Trotskyism, later breaking with the movement to found the Revolutionary Workers League, rejecting the “French turn” to enter mainstream labour parties. The RWL drew close to the POUM in the later 1930s.

Added to the Russell Blackwell (Rosalio Negrete) Archive in the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL):

• Julio A. Mella (1931) (obituary)
• The Agrarian Congress in Puebla (1931)

Blackwell was an American Communist who settled in Mexico, becoming a Trotskyist late in the 1920s. The texts on ETOL date from his orthodox Trotskyist period in the early 1930s. In 1934, “[Hugo] Oehler and Tom Stamm and one third of the Workers Party set up the Revolutionary Workers League in which Blackwell became involved. For several months he dealt with correspondence with and the translating and publishing of the left of the POUM. Refused a passport to Spain because of his revolutionary record, he stowed away on a French ship bound for France. When it was discovered he spoke only Spanish, he was deported to Spain on arriving in France. With Oehler he went to Spain and established contact with the Cell 72 group (the POUM left) in Barcelona. He was arrested twice by the GPU (Russian secret police) working through the Spanish police and twice released on the intervention of the US authorities.” In Spain, he became an anarchist, before his escape to America. He set up the Libertarian League in July 1954 in New York along with Sam and Esther Weiner (Dolgoff).

Mella was a Cuban Communist exiled in the 1920s to Mexico, where he continued to be active in the Communist movement, increasingly on the party’s left, leading to denunciations from the right as a “Trotskyist”. He was eventually expelled from the party and then assassinated by agents of Machado’s authoritarian regime in Cuba.

Added to the new Jan Frankel Archive in the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).

• In the International – “Austro-Oppositionism” (1931)

Frankel was an Austrian Jewish Communist then Left Oppositionist very close to Trotsky, living with him in Turkish and Mexican exile, although later breaking with the movement to join the Shachtman-Burnham group.

Added to the Hal Draper Archive:

• We Say That This Country Belongs to the Workers (1940) (as Paul Temple)
• What’s This Noise About Providing Jobs for All of Us? (1940) (as Paul Temple)
• Fact Is That Classes Exist and the Boss Class Knows It (1940) (as Paul Temple)
• Our Battle Line Is the Picket Line (1941) (as Paul Temple)
• We’d Like to Know Their War Aims (1941) (as Paul Temple)
• During World War I They Proved Labor Is a Power (1941) (as Paul Temple)
• A Thrilling Drama of the War and Labor (1941) (as Paul Temple)

Added to the T.N. Vance Archive in the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL):

• American Capitalism Gets an Outline of Its Economic Program for the War (1941) (as Frank Demby)
• Stalin Supplies the Hitler War Machine (1941) (as Frank Demby)
• Stalin Orders Labor Peonage (1940) (as Frank Demby)

TN Vance aka Ed Sard is essentially remembered now for his development of the concept of the “Permanent War Economy”, which suggested that capitalism could only survive by massive arms expenditures and an imperialist policy aimed at controlling the world’s raw materials – a theory taken up in Britain by Tony Cliff as he evolved away from orthodox Marxism in the early period of the International Socialists (IS), forerunners of today’s SWP. This is a theory that now licenses the SWP’s fundamentalist “anti-imperialist” position. Wikipedia:

The PAE [theory of the permanent arms economy] originated with a member of Max Shachtman’s Workers’ Party/Independent Socialist League named Ed Sard in 1944. Sard, writing as Walter J. Oakes, argued in Politics [edited by Dwight MacDonald]  that the PAE was to be understood as allowing capitalism to achieve a level of stability by preventing the rate of profit from falling as spending on arms was unproductive and would not lead to the increase of the organic composition of capital. Later in 1951 in New International, this time writing as T. N. Vance, Sard argued that the PAE operated through its ability to apply Keynes‘ multiplier effect.^[110] Although briefly mentioned by Duncan Hallas in a Socialist Review of 1952 the theory was only introduced to the [International Socialists] by [Tony] Cliff in 1957.^[111]

In his May 1957 article “Perspectives of the Permanent War Economy”,^[112] Cliff offered the PAE to readers in a version derived from Sard’s earlier essays but without reference to Keynes and using a Marxist theoretical framework.

(See also Ernest Haberkern ”Prophets of the ‘Permanent War Economy‘” Monthly Review 2009.)

• “the newspaper of the Workers Party (U.S.) and Independent Socialist League from 1940 through the Autum of 1958. Writers for this paper included, among others, Max Shachtman, James T. Farrell, C.L.R. James, Raya Dunayevskaya, Hal Draper, and Irving Howe. The 19 years of Labor Action represents approx. 1,000 issues published, over half of which are full broadsheet in size. Presented in beautifully digitally optimized PDFs, the work was a joint project between the Riazanov Library Project and the Holt Labor Library. We encourage the free and widespread distribution of this historic archive.”

Added to the Martin Abern Archive in the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL):

• One Year of the Workers Party (1941) (as Harry Allen) Here, Abern describes the first year of Shachtman’s WP. after it broke from Cannon’s SWP.

Added to the B.J. Widick Archive in the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL):

• Aircraft Worker Sees Victory for CIO in Douglas Drive (1941) (as Jack Wilson)
• Conscription Threat Fails To Balk Ryan Strike Plans (1941) (as Jack Wilson)
• Hollywood Swings Into the War Drive (1941) (as Jack Wilson)
• Labor Organizes as War Industries Boom (1941) (as Jack Wilson)
• CIO Organization March Has Ford Company on the Run (1941) (as Jack Wilson)
• CIO Workers March on Every Front (1941) (as Jack Wilson)
• Consolidated Aircraft Uses AFL Union to Block CIO Organization March (1941) (as Jack Wilson)
• On Freedom of the Press and Movies (1941) (no author named)
• What’s for the Army Officer Ain’t for the Buck Private (1941) (as Jack Wilson)/ Calif. Labor Takes to the Picket Line (1941) (no author named)/ Shop Steward System Is Vital to the Union (1941) (as Jack Wilson) /On Life and Democracy in the Army (1941) (as Jack Wilson) / Open-Shoppism Gets a Terrific Jolt (1941) (no author named)/ We Are Proud of American Labor’s Victories (1941) (as Jack Wilson)/ AFL-CIO Ranks Stand Solid Against Shipyard “Yellow-Dog” Contract (1941) (as J.W.) / Bridges Hearings Reek of Frame-Up (1941) (as Jack Wilson)/ The Cost of Living Shoots Skyward (1941) (as Jack Wilson)/ Shipyard Workers Defy Jingo Intimidation in Coast Strike (1941) (as J.W.)

Widick was a Trotskyist who followed Shachtman away from the orthodox mainstream. After the war he was active in the United Auto Workers Union and was close to Walter Reuther, Irving Howe, Michael Harrington and others. In other words, he took the opposite direction out of Trotskyism from Oehler and Blackwell, through the “French turn” towards democratic socialism and mainstream politics. He died in 2008. Howe and Albert Glotzer – see below – took the same direction. [More here, here.]

Added to the Irving Howe Archive in the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL):

• YPSL Speaker Blasts AYC Line  (1941)

Added to the Albert Glotzer Archive in the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL:

• The Trend of the Economic Crisis (1931)/Gandhi Makes His Peace with Imperialism (1931)
• War With Spain – Empire Comes of Age (1941) (as Albert Gates)

Added to the Dwight Macdonald Archive in the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL):

• Labor Action Bookshelf – 1 (1940)
• Labor Action Bookshelf – 2 (1941)
• Labor Action Bookshelf – 3 (1941)
• Labor Action Bookshelf – 4 (1941)

Added to the C.L.R. James Archive:

• Marcus Garvey (1940) [French]
• Negroes! Beware the Imperialist Use of Ethiopia! – 2 (1941) (as J.R. Johnson)
• We Must Aid Africa’s Anti-War Militants (1941) (as J.R. Johnson)
• Negro Committee Asks Jobs for 100 Bus Drivers (1941) (as J.R. Johnson)
• It Is Up to The Transport Workers Now! (1941) (as J.R. Johnson)
• Guard Against the Trap Set by Henry Ford (1941) (as J.R. Johnson)
• Ireland and the Revolutionary Tradition of Easter Week (1941) (as J.R. Johnson)
• Merguson Has an Obligation to the Negroes (1941) (as J.R. Johnson)
• Negro Masses and the Struggle for World Socialism (1941) (as J.R. Johnson)
• A New Joke – “Jim-Crow Helps The Negro Race” (1941) (as J.R. Johnson)
• Ford Tries to Feed the Negro Poisoned Bait (1941) (as J.R. Johnson)
• Marshall Field, Negro-Hater, Turns “Friend” (1941) (as J.R. Johnson)
• Judas Pickens Takes the Stump for War Bonds (1941) (as J.R. Johnson)
• Max Eastman Dives Into Jingo Waters – So Perish All Traitors! (1941) (as J.R. Johnson)

These texts are form when James, the great Trinidadian Marxist, had joined Shachtman’s Workers Party, but was also involved in his own Johnson-Forest Tendency within it (with Raya Dunayevskaya – aka Forest).

Right Opposition

Added to the new Kurt Landau Archive in the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL):

• The International Conference of the Rights (1931)

Landau was an Austrian left oppositionist (in fact, at the far left edge of the Austrian left opposition). He fell out with Trotsky and was close with other left dissidents, such as Alfred Rosmer, Mika Etchebehere, Lucien Constant and Andreu Nin. He went to Spain, where he joined the POUM, and was murdered by the Stalinists there. Here he describes, critically, the March 1930 founding conference in Berlin of the International Right Opposition.

“Added to the USA History Publications Section are the complete 2 year run of Revolutionary Age, the newspaper of the Communist Party of the U.S.A. (Majority Group) lead by Jay Lovestone. The Majority Group represented the American supporters of the Right Opposition to Stalin in the U.S.S.R. lead by N. Bukharin.”  Revolutionary Age lasted from 1920 to 1932.

Added to the Peter Petroff Archive:

• Stalin versus Marx, Social-Democrat, June 1930

Not technically a Right Oppositionist, but he sits better here than elsewhere in this post. Petroff was a Russian Marxist based in Clydeside before the revolution and again afterwards. He was close to Lenin and fought valiantly in the Civil War, but on Lenin’s death had bad relations with the Communist Party, and remained close to comrades in the British Labour Party, as well as to Sylvia Pankhurst. By 1930, along with his wife Irma, he was a full-scale anti-Stalinist, and this short text is a brilliant denunciation of Stalinsim.

Bebo Valdés: Diane

Bebo Valdés & Diego El Cigala: Veinte Anos

Mari Boine: Cuovgi Liekkas

Mor Karbasi: La Pluma

Rajna: Epidauros

Mindful of the fact that neglected blogs are so easily hacked and stolen, I plan to re-post, with attribution, Jams’ series of extraordinary posts on the great Red Cushing, over the next couple of weeks.

Evan Daniel, Queens College, City University of New York

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From the Modern School:

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Meanwhile, last month “marked the 130th birthday of pioneering Austrian sociologist, philosopher, and curator Otto Neurath, who in the 1930s, together with his wife Marie, invented ISOTYPE — the vintage visual language of pictograms that gave rise to modern infographics.” Check out some interesting examples via Maria Popova.

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01 Jan 1938 A portrait of Hungarian-born photojournalist Robert Capa (1913 – 1954) used to introduce an article, featuring his pictures of the Spanish Civil War, in Picture Post, 3rd December 1938. (Photo by Pict… Read more By: Picture Post Collection: Hulton Archive People: Robert Capa

Via Jonathan Woods, who has the full un-watermarked image.

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