Impresiones de la ocupación de Wall Street

Por Alex Steiner

06 de octubre 2011

Traducción de Antonio Baluarte

En el centro de Manhattan está Wall Street , preñado de la historia de los Estados Unidos. Aunque hoy en día Wall Street se conoce como el corazón financiero del capitalismo estadounidense,  comenzó como una muralla, al límite norte del asentamiento original holandés de Nueva Amsterdam. Los jóvenes manifestantes que se encuentran ahora en la tercera semana de su ocupación de Zuccotti Park eligieron su campamento también. Apenas a tres cuadras de sus tiendas de campaña se encuentra la razón de ese símbolo del capitalismo americano, el New York Stock Exchange.

En diagonal, a través de la calle de las columnas de mármol de la Bolsa de Valores,hay una gigantesca estatua del fundador de la república estadounidense, George Washington. Él está de pie en las escalinatas del Federal Hall, el lugar donde fue juramentado como el primer Presidente de la República. Otro padre fundador está enterrado aún más cerca del sitio del campamento de los manifestantes - Alexander Hamilton, el arquitecto de los Estados Unidos , del First National Bank, está descansando en el cementerio de Trinity Church. 

Otro bloque más o menos por la calle y la vuelta de la esquina de la Bolsa de Valores se encuentra levantadas las gigantescas murallas fortificadas de la Reserva Federal de Nueva York, sede de lo que es quizás el mayor tesoro de lingotes de oro en el mundo, por un valor aproximadamente de 7.000 toneladas. Más que esto, aquí es donde la mayor parte de la política económica de los Estados Unidos se lleva a cabo, a partir de la fijación de los tipos de cambio de monedas extranjeras a la transferencia de miles de millones de dólares entre los bancos sobre una base diaria. El edificio también organizó, junto con el Departamento del Tesoro en Washington, algunos de los encuentros que reunió a los jefes de la Reserva Federal y el Tesoro con el CEO de los mayores bancos del país para elaborar los términos de lo que eventualmente se convirtió en el plan de rescate del TARP de los bancos tras la crisis provocada por el colapso de Lehman Brothers en 2008.

Esto nos lleva a una consideración de lo que está pasando en el Zuccotti Park. Varios miles de manifestantes están diciendo que han tenido suficiente. Están cansados ​​de ver a miles de millones de dólares que se utiliza para rescatar a los bancos cuyas prácticas fraudulentas en los años anteriores los dejó en posesión de bienes masivos, cuyo valor bajó repentinamente a cero. Al otro lado del rescate bancario realizado tanto por las administraciones de Bush y Obama, ha sido el empobrecimiento de decenas de millones de personas, especialmente de los jóvenes. Mi impresión, como resultado de hablar con algunos de los manifestantes y la audiencia que entrevisté es que la gran mayoría de los ocupantes de Wall Street no ve ningún futuro para sí mismos en virtud de este sistema económico conocido como capitalismo.

También me impresionó el espíritu de la inventiva y la lucha de estos jóvenes. Ellos, frente a grandes dificultades, han sido capaces de mantener una ciudad de carpas en el centro de Manhattan, en un inhóspito "parque" que es en realidad una plaza de concreto con poco o nada de servicios, que no sean la hierba y los árboles, y no hay baños públicos o fuentes de agua. Lo que sí hay son  algunas mesas y sillas que normalmente son ocupadas por los trabajadores de oficina sorbiendo su café de la mañana, los jugadores de ajedrez o sitios de tomar de los magnates de Wall Street para los cuartos. De alguna manera este grupo ha logrado alimentarse a sí mismo, con la ayuda de los vecinos que han donado alimentos.

Se las arreglaron para mantener seca  la cara en las implacables lluvias de otoño en Nueva York,  gracias a unas lonas que ellos han secuestrado. Sin electricidad, han conseguido crear un centro de comunicaciones, alimentado por un generador portátil, donde varias personas están ocupadas en la cima dándolo vuelta durante todo el día, llueva o haga sol, esparciendo su mensaje a los sitios de redes sociales en todo el mundo.

Se han creado comités encargados de confección de carteles, impresión de una versión satírica de The Wall Street Journal, y la organización de las marchas y actos de desobediencia civil. Hay un ruido constante de tambores y otros instrumentos en una esquina donde puedes encontrar juerguistas traspasado por los sonidos rítmicos. Hay incluso una biblioteca libre repleta de libros donados, disponible para quien quiera leerlos. Lo más destacado de cada noche es lo que ellos llaman una "Asamblea General", un experimento de participación democrática donde todo el mundo que quiera puede hablar y contribuir a la discusión. A las decisiones se llega a través de un torturante proceso de consenso.


La policía ha prohibido el uso de megáfonos o equipos de audio por lo que es extremadamente difícil de mantener reuniones al aire libre. Sin embargo, los manifestantes han vuelto a encontrar una ingeniosa manera de sortear este obstáculo legal para la democracia participativa. Una persona habla, la  que es a su vez, estrechamente rodeada de cientos de facilitadores. Luego, estos animadores hacen eco con su voz, de las palabras del hablante, de manera que la multitud que los rodea puede conocer de la demanda. El procedimiento me recuerda a la brillante película de Truffaut, Fahrenheit 451, (basada en una historia igual de brillante, de Ray Bradbury), donde en un futuro cuando la lectura o la impresión de los libros están prohibidos, un grupo de personas que se dedican a la preservación de la literatura mediante memorizar libros enteros que ya no pueden ser impresos o a los cuales ya no se puede  acceder físicamente. Se han convertido en libros de vida así como a los facilitadores en la Ocupada Wall Street se han convertido en megáfonos vivientes.

La política de los manifestantes, en la medida en que la articulan, es ciertamente ingenua y contradictoria. He visto pronunciamientos que a la vez que sonaban muy radicales, llamando a poner fin a la plutocracia que maneja este país, junto con otros signos ("Emitir la ley para trabajos  ya") que indica que la luna de miel con Obama en que muchos jóvenes en 2008, aunque mal herida, no puede ser completamente terminada para algunos. Los manifestantes OWS han hecho hincapié en que  desprecian el proceso político y han evitado deliberadamente la presentación de una serie de demandas. Lo que indica claramente han sido inspirados por el ejemplo de las manifestaciones masivas en la plaza Tahrir de El Cairo a principios de este año y la plaza Syntagma, en Atenas. Ellos consideran  su acción como la chispa de la Revolución Americana.

Esta no es una revolución  pero es imposible predecir cómo este movimiento va a mostrar sus efectos. Hay indicios de que los manifestantes han aprovechado una vena de la ira contra las injusticias de la vida en la  América del siglo XXI que ha estado hirviendo a fuego lento durante años. Sus acciones ya han inspirado a otras protestas en otras ciudades. Asistimos una vista previa de esta acción en los plantones en Madison, Wisconsin, a principios de este año. Desafortunadamente ese movimiento fue desviado por la burocracia sindical y el Partido Demócrata que incitaron abandonar sus protestas y poner su energía en una campaña de más valor. A los manifestantes OWS no será tan fácil desviarlos. Sin embargo, su rechazo de la acción política es a la vez su fuerza y ​​su debilidad.

Lo que se considera la política normal en este país, el apoyo a uno u otro de los dos partidos burgueses, sin duda merece una dosis fuerte de desprecio. Pero que por sí misma hace poco para lograr el tipo de sociedad más justa que los manifestantes imaginan. De hecho, puede servir como una invitación para los demagogos y oportunistas de varias clases para venir y llenar el vacío. Y aunque he visto pocos indicios de  la confluencia habitual de los grupos de la izquierda en el campamento, su presencia se hincha cada vez que hay una marcha de protesta o alguna otra acción. El partido neo-estalinista de los Trabajadores del Mundo se ha manifestado al igual que la Organización Socialista Internacional (ISO). Hubo mucho entusiasmo hoy en la anticipación de los representantes de los sindicatos a venir mañana para mostrar su apoyo.

 Por supuesto, los publicistas de la burocracia sindical que se unirán a la marcha de mañana van a estar aquí para tratar de canalizar este movimiento hacia atrás en la seguridad de convertir las protestas en inofensivas y por el apoyo al Partido Demócrata. La ingenuidad evidenciada en los manifestantes, que  podrían esperar otra cosa de la burocracia sindical, no es sorprendente. Ellos vienen de una generación casi totalmente desprovista de cualquier cultura o de educación política histórica.

Los que han entrado en contacto con la política, ha sido en gran medida a los movimientos de protesta de la última década, el movimiento anti-guerra, el movimiento de justicia global, etc.  han recogido una educación en gran medida gracias a los sitios de redes sociales en Internet y al ejemplo de Egipto y Grecia. Independientemente de sus orígenes, ya sea de la clase trabajadora o clase media,  han llegado a la misma coyuntura en este tercer año de la mayor crisis económica del sistema capitalista desde la Gran Depresión. En su mayoría son desempleados o subempleados, y no ven un futuro para sí mismos en una sociedad que los ha bombardeado desde el nacimiento con imágenes de una utopía de los consumidores de Iphones y centros de entretenimiento en el hogar. El sueño americano se ha convertido para ellos en una pesadilla.

Ellos han resucitado muchos de los símbolos y las imágenes de la contracultura de 1960 y movimiento de protesta. Esto es evidente para cualquier visitante a Zuccotti Park, que tiene la edad suficiente para recordar la estética de los hippies y las consignas de los radicales de la década de 1960. Este endeudamiento con las imágenes de otra época era prácticamente inevitable, dado que la década de 1960 representó el último período de gran agitación política en este país. Sin embargo, este es un movimiento muy diferente a la contracultura de 1960. No está tanto para protestar por la injusticia  que nuestro país inflige a los demás en el extranjero - aunque esto tampoco no está ausente, - pero su objetivo principal es la injusticia infligida a ellos y a sus amigos y familiares. No son los hijos e hijas de la clase media acomodada enajenados por la cultura de la banalidad burguesa. Son personas que no ven un futuro para sí mismos sin un cambio fundamental en la sociedad y que están dispuestos a poner sus vidas para que esto suceda.

El sábado pasado 700 de ellos fueron detenidos en el Puente de Brooklyn después de entrar en una trampa tendida por la policía de Nueva York. (En realidad, la policía los llevó en su marcha sobre el puente, no les dijo que estaban entrando en una zona de tráfico limitado, y luego cuando estaban a un  1 / 3 de camino sobre el puente vieron que estaban rodeados, atrapados por las redes y detenidos. ) Las detenciones masivas han hecho poco para amortiguar sus espíritus.

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Actualización:
Yo escribí las impresiones  un par de días atrás, pero como la situación en Wall Street es muy dinámica y cambia todos los días ,quería añadir algunas reflexiones sobre los hechos hasta el día de hoy (06 de octubre).

La marcha de Foley Square en Miércoles, 05 de octubre, era enorme y llevó a  gran número de trabajadores y estudiantes en apoyo de los manifestantes. Según algunas estimaciones, había una multitud de 20.000 o más. Como se predijo, la burocracia sindical salió y se quedó con los políticos del Partido Demócrata en un patético intento de canalizar la furia de los manifestantes de nuevo con el apoyo a Obama y el Partido Demócrata. Por lo que pude observar más tarde, esa noche una gran mayoría de los manifestantes no quiere saber nada de ella. Su actitud podría resumirse en una de las pancartas que vi en Zuccotti Park esa noche: "La guerra de clase por delante".

La debilidad de los manifestantes estuvo también en evidencia por la noche. Un grupo de anarquistas pronto anunciaron que iban a marchar a la famosa estatua del toro de Wall Street y  paró el tráfico en el proceso. Varios cientos de jóvenes fueron por las estrechas calles del distrito financiero  buscando el toro. Al menos  muchos policías les siguieron. Cuando por fin llegamos al toro, que fue cerrada por barricadas de la policía por todos lados y varios agentes de policía fueron asignados a pie dentro de las barricadas y proteger el toro a toda costa, como si el destino de la civilización occidental dependía de ellos y su capacidad para proteger el toro de cualquier daño. Este fue sin duda uno de los episodios más divertidos del día. Después un par de los miembros más francos de la marcha del grupo fueron hacia el toro, se detuvo a los mismos, las medidas se agotaron y todo el mundo se dirigió a Zuccotti Park.

Sin embargo, esa misma tarde otro grupo de manifestantes demostró más notable ingenuidad que ha caracterizado a esta ocupación desde el principio. Un proyector situado en algún lugar en el Zuccotti Park (no pude encontrar la ubicación exacta) fue transmitido en la calle diagonal frente a un edificio alto que carecía de ventanas, una característica común a muchos edificios comerciales construidos durante los años 1960 y 1970 en Manhattan. Este artefacto convirtió la pared de este edificio en una pantalla perfecta para un anuncio gigante. ¿Cuáles fueron las palabras que brillaban en este improvisado cartel?

Romper la ley del valor
Abolir el capitalismo



Así que parece que el hombre más odiado y temido por la clase capitalista, cuyas teorías se pensaba que eran obsoletas y que nunca podría hacerse un lugar en el suelo anti-filosófico de América - Karl Marx - ha vuelto y tiene algo que decir a los jóvenes y los trabajadores de este país. No quiero hacer más de este incidente que se justifica. Todavía hay un largo camino por recorrer en el camino de repetir algunas palabras de Marx en la asimilación de todas las implicaciones de su trabajo. Pero sí existe una indicación de que hay talvez ahora una receptividad a las ideas de este hombre, más que en cualquier momento de nuestra historia reciente. La calidad irónica de este desarrollo sólo puede ser apreciada si se considera la reacción a los acontecimientos de Wall Street de algunos de nuestros blogeros radicales, un tema que va a llegar a la brevedad.


Estamos en solidaridad con los manifestantes Ocupar Wall Street. Su espíritu y la creatividad es digna de admiración y compartan sus objetivos. Pero nosotros no nuestra responsabilidad como revolucionarios marxistas y si no les advierte de los peligros de ignorar la lucha política y la historia y la herencia teórica de quienes los precedieron en la lucha por el socialismo. Tomo nota de que una serie de bloggers radicales han tomado exactamente el camino opuesto. Ellos están cayendo sobre sí mismos con las palabras de adulación a los manifestantes y condenar a cualquiera que introduce aún más suave, con buenas intenciones críticas. Por ejemplo, un blogger radical lanzó una fuerte crítica de la ISO para la simple mención de que los manifestantes tienen algunas lecciones que aprender. Él escribió:

"... Hay una desconexión real entre los jóvenes activistas que buscan el cambio social fundamental, y grupos como el ISO que se consideran de alguna manera mejor calificado para dirigir esas luchas, ya que han logrado algún tipo de conocimiento superior del marxismo, o porque son conscientemente siguiendo el ejemplo de Lenin o Trotsky en lugar de los experimentos de tropiezo y tentativas de los jóvenes en el parque de la libertad. "

Aunque no creo que la ISO será capaz de educar a este movimiento, sin duda piensan que pueden utilizar la educación y el análisis de Marx sobre la crisis del capitalismo y la asimilación de la obra de Lenin y Trotsky, es por lo menos un comienzo. La demagogia en el comentario de este blogero consiste en la contraposición de una educación en la historia y la teoría del marxismo a la creatividad natural y la espontaneidad del movimiento de masas. Pero esto es un razonamiento falaz. Esperamos que, incluso con una educación en el marxismo, la revolución tendrá que enfrentarse a tropiezos y errores y de sus participantes a aprender de sus experiencias. Pero no todos los errores son necesarios y no todos los tropiezos tienen un efecto saludable en sus participantes. A veces, errores tienen consecuencias desastrosas. Los que van en una situación de ciegos y privados de la teoría o la historia inevitablemente se quedan en el camino a pesar de su valor y la inventiva. Esta ha sido la experiencia de todas las revoluciones anteriores y no esperamos que sea diferente en el siglo 21.

La cuestión clave es cómo llegar a estas personas. No va a ser realizada por aquellos que dicen ser marxistas, conferencias por personas que les dicen que "debe" unirse o leer este sitio web. Tales esfuerzos causan risa teniendo en cuenta el reproche que merecen correctamente.

Aquí están algunas ideas para los manifestantes a considerar:

1. "Socialismo para los ricos, capitalismo para los pobres" -  es una forma muy popular de caracterizar el rescate de Wall Street por BushObama mientras que a decenas de millones de trabajadores y la clase media se han ejecutado la hipotec,por pérdida de empleos o no pueden encontrar trabajo. Sin embargo, hace que te preguntes: si el socialismo es bueno para los ricos, ¿por qué no se da para todo el mundo?

2.Ustedes necesitan saber a dónde van, si alguna vez va a llegar. Movimientos sin una meta no tienen una dirección, y se convierten en fácil presa para desviar o cooptar.

3."No creer en alguien que te dice que el sistema puede ser fijo y los políticos pueden ser presionados para hacer lo correcto. Nada es más peligroso que una crisis de ilusión. Lea lo que dice Wall Street y usted pronto verá que en  el mejor de los casos es de  hay un escenario para una década de depresión económica y  austeridad, asumiendo que no hay un crack en toda regla. ¡Una década! Para los jóvenes esto significa ser condenados a una vida arruinada - para no tener la oportunidad de una carrera, un trabajo estable, un lugar decente para vivir. No tenemos ningún interés en este sistema. No tenemos nada que perder - y todo para ganar - por deshacernos de él.

4.No crean en los que tienen interés en el sistema, especialmente los políticos demócratas y líderes empresariales de los sindicatos. Las únicas personas en las que podemos confiar son los que se encuentran en el mismo lado de la brecha económica como  nosotros mismos - la clase obrera.

5. Tenemos que estar organizados. Nuestros enemigos lo están. La Organización no es  enemiga de la democracia. Por el contrario, la democracia sin organización significa que la energía del movimiento se disipa, reducida a un mínimo común denominador. Esto significa que el movimiento nunca se plantea un serio desafío para el sistema, nunca van a más allá de ser un espectáculo político.


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Impressions from Occupy Wall Street

By Alex Steiner
Oct 6, 2011


Wall Street in downtown Manhattan is pregnant with the history of the United States.  Although today Wall St. is known as the financial heart of American capitalism, it began as a fortified wall, the Northern boundary of the original Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam.  The young protesters who are now in the third week of their occupation of  Zuccotti Park chose their encampment well.  Barely three blocks from their tent city stands the grounds of that symbol of American capitalism, the New York Stock Exchange.  Diagonally across the street from the marble columns of the Stock Exchange is a giant statue of the founder of the American Republic, George Washington.  He is standing on the steps of Federal Hall,  the site where he was sworn in as the first President of this Republic. Another founding father lies buried even closer to the site of the protesters camp -  Alexander Hamilton, architect of the United States first National Bank, is resting in the churchyard of Trinity Church. Another block or so down the street and around the corner from the Stock Exchange stands the massive fortified walls of the New York Federal Reserve, home of what is perhaps the largest hoard of gold bullion in the world,  approximately 7000 tons worth. More to the point, this is where much of the economic policy of the United States is implemented,  from the setting of exchange rates with foreign currencies to the transfer of trillions of dollars between banks on a daily basis. The building also hosted, along with the Treasury Department in Washington, some of the meetings that brought together the heads of the Fed and the Treasury with the CEO's of the largest banks in the country to work out the terms of what eventually became the TARP bailout of the banks following the crisis precipitated by the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008.

This takes us back to a consideration of what is going on at Zuccotti Park.  Several thousand protesters are saying that they have had enough.  They are tired of seeing trillions of dollars being used to bail out the banks whose fraudulent practices in the preceding years left them holding massive assets whose value suddenly went to zero.  The other side of the bank bailout by both the Bush and Obama Administrations has been the impoverishment of tens of millions of people, particularly young people.  My impression as a result of talking with some of the protesters and hearing them interviewed is that the vast majority of those occupying Wall Street do not see any future for themselves under this economic system known as capitalism.

I was also struck by the inventiveness and fighting spirit of these young people.  They have, against great odds, been able to maintain a tent city in the middle of Manhattan, in an inhospitable "park" that is actually a concrete plaza with little in the way of amenities such as grass and trees and no public bathrooms or water fountains. What it does have are some tables and chairs that are normally occupied by office workers sipping their morning coffee or chess players taking on Wall Street tycoons for quarters. Somehow this group has managed to feed itself, with the help of neighbors donating food.  They managed to keep dry in the face of New York's relentless autumn rains thanks to some tarps (no pun intended) they sequestered from somewhere.  Without electricity they have managed to create a communications center, powered by a portable generator, where several people are busy on lap tops round the clock, rain or shine, spreading their message to social network sites all over the globe.  They have created committees in charge of making posters, printing a satirical version of the Wall Street Journal, and organizing their marches and acts of civil disobedience.  There is a constant thump of drums and other instruments in one corner where you can find revelers transfixed by the rhythmic sounds.  There is even a free library stocked with donated books, available for anyone who wants to read them. The highlight of each evening is what they call a "General Assembly" an experiment in participatory democracy wherein everyone who wishes to can speak and contribute to the discussion.  Decisions are arrived at through a torturous consensus process. 


The police have banned the use of megaphones or other audio equipment making it extremely difficult to hold meetings in the open air. But the protesters have once again found an ingenious way to get around this legal obstacle to participatory democracy.  One person speaks who is in turn closely surrounded by hundreds of facilitators.  The facilitators then echo back in one voice the words of the speaker so that the huge crowd surrounding them can hear the proceedings.  The proceedings reminded me of the brilliant movie by Truffaut, Fahrenheit 451, (based on an equally brilliant story by Ray Bradbury) where in a future when the reading or printing of books are banned,  a core group of people dedicate themselves to preserving literature by memorizing entire books that can no longer be printed or accessed physically. They have become living books just as the facilitators at Occupy Wall Street have become living megaphones.

The politics of the protesters, insofar as they articulate one,  is certainly naive and contradictory. I saw signs that at once sounded very radical, calling for an end to the plutocracy that runs this country, along with other signs ("Pass the F____ Jobs Bill Already") indicating that the honeymoon with Obama that many young people had in 2008, although badly bruised, may not be entirely over for some.  The OWS protesters have emphasized that they are contemptuous of the political process and have deliberately avoided putting forward a set of demands. They have clearly been inspired by the example of the massive demonstrations in Tahrir Square in Cairo earlier this year and Syntagma Square in Athens.  They see their action as the spark of the American Revolution.  

This is not a revolution at this point but it is impossible to predict how this movement will play itself out. There are signs that the protesters have tapped into a vein of anger against the inequities of life in 21st century America that has been simmering for years. Their actions have already inspired other protests in other cities.  We saw a preview of this action in the sit-ins in Madison, Wisconsin earlier this year. Unfortunately that movement was sidetracked by the labor bureaucracy and the Democratic Party into abandoning their protests and putting their energy into a worthless recall campaign. The OWS protesters will not be so easily sidetracked. But their rejection of political action is both their strength and their weakness.

What is considered normal politics in this country, support for one or the other of the two bourgeois parties, certainly deserves a heady dose of contempt.  But that by itself does little to bring about the kind of just society the protesters envision.  It can in fact serve as an invitation for demagogues and opportunists of various stripes to come in and fill the vacuum.  And though I saw little evidence of the usual confluence of left groups at the encampment, their presence swells each time there is a protest march or some other action.  The neo-Stalinist Workers World Party has been in evidence as has the International Socialist Organization (ISO).  There was much excitement today at the anticipation of representatives from the unions coming tomorrow to show their support.  Of course, the flacks from the trade union bureaucracy who will join the march tomorrow will be there to try to channel this movement back into the safety of harmless protests and support for the Democratic Party. The naiveté evidenced by the protesters, that they would expect anything else from the trade union bureaucracy, is hardly surprising. They come from a generation almost completely devoid of any political culture or historical education. What politics they have come into contact with has been largely the protest movements of the last decade, the anti-war movement, the global justice movement, etc. They have picked up an education largely on their own, thanks to the social networking sites on the Internet and the example of Egypt and Greece.  Whatever their background, be it working class or middle class, they have now come to the same juncture in this third year of the greatest economic crisis of the capitalist system since the Great Depression.  They are largely unemployed or underemployed and see no future for themselves in a society that has bombarded them from birth with images of a consumer utopia of iPhones and home entertainment centers. The American dream has for them become a nightmare.

They have resurrected many of the symbols and images of the 1960s counter culture and protest movement. This is obvious to any visitor to Zuccotti Park who is old enough to remember the aesthetics of the hippies and the slogans of the 1960s radicals. This borrowing of the imagery of another era was practically inevitable given that the 1960s represented the last great period of political turmoil in this country.  Nevertheless, this is a very a different movement than the 1960s counter culture.  They are not so much protesting the injustice that our country inflicts on others in foreign lands - although that is not absent either - but their primary target is the injustice inflicted on them and their friends and family.  They are not the sons and daughters of the affluent middle class alienated from the culture of bourgeois banality.  They are people who see no future for themselves without a fundamental change in society and they are willing to put their lives on the line to make that happen.  

This past Saturday 700 of them were arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge after walking into a trap set by the New York City Police. (The police actually led them on their march on the bridge, did not tell them they were walking into a restricted traffic area, and then when they were 1/3 of the way over the bridge they were surrounded,  trapped by nets and arrested.)  The mass arrests have done little to dampen their spirits.  

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Update:
I wrote the above impressions a couple of days ago but as the situation on Wall Street is extremely dynamic and changes daily I wanted to add a few thoughts on the events up to today (Oct. 6).

The march to Foley Square on Wednesday, Oct 5, was massive and brought out large number of workers and students in support of the protesters.  Some estimates had the crowd at 20,000 or more. As predicted, the trade union bureaucracy came out and stood with Democratic Party politicians in a pathetic attempt to channel the fury of the marchers back to support for Obama and the Democratic Party.  From what I could observe later that evening, a large majority of the protesters will have none of it.  Their attitude could be summed up by one of the placards I saw in Zuccotti Park that evening: "Class War Ahead".   

The weakness of the protesters was also in evidence that evening.  A group of anarchists suddenly announced that they were going to march to the famous statue of the Wall Street bull and stop traffic in the process.  Several hundred young people took off through the narrow streets of the financial district looking for the bull.  At least as many police followed them.  When we finally got to the bull, it was closed off by police barricades on all sides and several police officers were assigned to stand inside the barricades and protect the bull at all costs as if the fate of Western Civilization depended on them and their ability to guard the bull from harm.  This was certainly one of the more amusing episodes of the day. After a couple of the more outspoken members of the group marching toward the bull got themselves arrested the action such as it was ran out of steam and everyone headed back to Zuccotti Park.  

However that same evening another group of protesters demonstrated more of the remarkable ingenuity that has marked this occupation from the beginning.  A projector located somewhere in Zuccotti Park (I could not find the exact location) was beamed diagonally against a tall building across the street that was devoid of windows, a feature common to many commercial buildings built during the 1960s and 1970s in Manhattan. This attribute turned the wall of this building into a perfect screen for a giant advertisement.  What were the words flashed on this improvised billboard? 

BREAK THE LAW OF VALUE

ABOLISH CAPITALISM

So it seems that the man most reviled and feared by the capitalist class, whose theories were thought to be obsolete and could never gain a foothold on the un-philosophical soil of America  - Karl Marx - has returned and has something to say to the youth and workers of this country. I do not want to make more of this one incident than is warranted. There is still a long way to go on the road from repeating a few words of Marx to assimilating the full implications of his work. But it does indicate that there is perhaps now a receptivity to the ideas of this man, more so than at any time in our recent history.  The ironic quality of this development can only be appreciated if we consider the reaction to the Wall Street events of some of our radical bloggers, a subject I will get to shortly.

We are in solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street protesters.  Their spirit and creativity is to be admired and we share their aims. But we would fail our responsibility as Marxists and revolutionaries if we did not warn them of the dangers of ignoring the political struggle and the history and theoretical heritage of those who preceded them in the struggle for socialism. I note that a number of radical bloggers have taken exactly the opposite tack. They are falling over themselves with words of adulation for the protesters and damning anyone who introduces even the mildest, well-intentioned criticism. For instance, one radical blogger launched into a sharp criticism of the ISO for merely mentioning that the protesters have some lessons to learn. He wrote,

"...there is a real disconnect between young activists who are seeking fundamental social change and groups like the ISO that see themselves as somehow better qualified to lead such struggles because they have achieved some kind of superior understanding of Marxism or because they are consciously following the example of Lenin or Trotsky rather than the stumbling and tentative experiments of the young people in Liberty Park."

While we do not think the ISO will be able to educate this movement, we certainly think that they can use an education and Marx's analysis of the crisis of capitalism and an assimilation of the work of Lenin and Trotsky is at least a beginning. The demagogy in this blogger's comment consists in his counterpoising an education in the history and theory of Marxism to the natural creativity and spontaneity of the mass movement. But this is fallacious reasoning. We expect that even with an education in Marxism, the revolution will still face stumbles and missteps and its participants will learn from their experiences. But not all missteps are necessary and not all stumbles have a salutary effect on their participants. Sometimes such missteps have disastrous consequences. Those who go into a situation blind and bereft of theory or history will inevitably fall by the wayside despite their courage and inventiveness. This has been the experience of every previous revolution and we do not expect it to be any different in the 21st century.

The critical question is how to reach these people. It will not be done by those claiming to be Marxists lecturing at people or telling them that they "must" join this party or read this web site. Such efforts will be laughed off and given the rebuke they properly deserve.

Here are some ideas for the protestors to consider:

1. “Socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor” – that's a widely popular way of characterizing the Wall Street bailout by BushObama while tens of millions of workers and middle class people have been foreclosed on, lost jobs or can't find work. But it makes you wonder: if socialism is good for the rich, why not have it for everyone?

2.You need to know where you're going if you're ever going to get there. Movements without a goal have no direction, and become easy to sidetrack or coopt.

3.Don't believe anyone who tells you the system can be fixed and the politicians can be pressured to do the right thing. Nothing is more dangerous in a crisis than wishful thinking. Read what Wall Street reads and you'll quickly see that the best case scenario is for a decade of economic slump and austerity, assuming there isn't an all-out crash. A decade! For young people this means being condemned to blighted lives – to never having a chance at a career, a steady job, a decent place to live. We have no stake in this system. We have nothing to lose – and everything to gain – by getting rid of it.

4.Don't believe those who have stakes in the system, especially Democratic politicians and business union leaders. The only people we can trust are those on the same side of the economic divide as ourselves – the working class.

5. We need to be organized. Our enemies are. Organization is not the enemy of democracy. On the contrary, democracy without organization means that the energy of the movement gets dissipated, reduced to a lowest common denominator. It means the movement will never pose a serious challenge to the system, will never get beyond being a political sideshow.

Police officers guarding the Wall Street bull

   

Some common posters

 

The media center



A view of the encampment



Table on Broadway

Meeting during a downpour

Symbolic flag

The New York Stock Exchange building two blocks away



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On the 71st Anniversary of the Assassination of Trotsky

Front page of Aug. 24, 1940 edition of Socialist Appeal.

On August 20, 1940, Leon Trotsky was attacked by GPU assassin Ramon Mercader.  The murder was ordered by Stalin and represented the culmination of the Stalinist bureaucracy's destruction of the leadership of the October Revolution. The great revolutionary died from his wounds the next day, exactly 71 years ago.  The images above are of the front page of the August 24, 1940 edition of Socialist Appeal, the newspaper of the Socialist Workers Party.  This original edition of Socialist Appeal belonged to the late Larry Trainor, a veteran of the Socialist Workers Party who worked on the party press for many years.  

Below we are reprinting the speech James Cannon gave at the memorial meeting held in Trotsky's honor on August 28 in New York and attended by a crowd of 1,500.  It was first published in the Sept. 7, 1940 edition of Socialist Appeal. 

To the Memory of the Old Man

Comrade Trotsky's entire conscious life, from the time he entered the workers' movement in the provincial Russian town of Nikolayev at the age of eighteen up till the moment of his death in Mexico City forty-two years later, was completely dedicated to work and struggle for one central idea. He stood for the emancipation of the workers and all the oppressed people of the world, and the transformation of society from capitalism to socialism by means of a social revolution. In his conception, this liberating social revolution requires for success the leadership of a revolutionary political party of the workers' vanguard.

In his entire conscious life Comrade Trotsky never once diverged from that idea. He never doubted it, and never ceased to struggle for its realization. On his deathbed, in his last message to us, his disciples-his last testament-he proclaimed his confidence in his life-idea: "Tell our friends I am sure of the victory of the Fourth International - go forward!"
The whole world knows about his work and his testament. The cables of the press of the world have carried his last testament and made it known to the world's millions. And in the minds and hearts of all those throughout the world who grieve with us tonight one thought-one question-is uppermost: Will the movement which he created and inspired survive his death? Will his disciples be able to hold their ranks together, will they be able to carry out his testament and realize the emancipation of the oppressed through the victory of the Fourth International?

Without the slightest hesitation we give an affirmative answer to this question. Those enemies who predict a collapse of Trotsky's movement without Trotsky, and those weak-willed friends who fear it, only show that they do not understand Trotsky, what he was, what he signified, and what he left behind. Never has a bereaved family been left such a rich heritage as that which Comrade Trotsky, like a provident father, has left to the family of the Fourth International as trustees for all progressive humanity. A great heritage of ideas he has left to us; ideas which shall chart the struggle toward the great free future of all mankind. The mighty ideas of Trotsky are our program and our banner. They are a clear guide to action in all the complexities of our epoch, and a constant reassurance that we are right and that our victory is inevitable.

Trotsky himself believed that ideas are the greatest power in the world. Their authors may be killed, but ideas, once promulgated, live their own life. If they are correct ideas, they make their way through all obstacles. This was the central, dominating concept of Comrade Trotsky's philosophy. He explained it to us many, many times. He once wrote: "It is not the party that makes the program [the idea]; it is the program that makes the party." In a personal letter to me, he once wrote: "We work with the most correct and powerful ideas in the world, with inadequate numerical forces and material means. But correct ideas, in the long run, always conquer and make available for themselves the necessary material means and forces."

Trotsky, a disciple of Marx, believed with Marx that "an idea, when it permeates the mass, becomes a material force." Believing that, Comrade Trotsky never doubted that his work would live after him. Believing that, he could proclaim on his deathbed his confidence in the future victory of the Fourth International which embodies his ideas. Those who doubt it do not know Trotsky.

Trotsky himself believed that his greatest significance, his greatest value, consisted not in his physical life, not in his epic deeds, which overshadow those of all heroic figures in history in their sweep and their grandeur-but in what he would leave behind him after the assassins had done their work. He knew that his doom was sealed, and he worked against time in order to leave everything possible to us, and through us to mankind. Throughout the eleven years of his last exile he chained himself to his desk like a galley slave and labored, as none of us knows how to labor, with such energy, such persistence and self-discipline, as only men of genius can labor. He worked against time to pour out through his pen the whole rich content of his mighty brain and preserve it in permanent written form for us, and for those who will come after us.

The whole Trotsky, like the whole Marx, is preserved in his books, his articles, and his letters. His voluminous correspondence, which contains some of his brightest thoughts and his most intimate personal feelings and sentiments, must now be collected and published. When that is done, when his letters are published alongside his books, his pamphlets, and his articles, we, and all those who join us in the liberation struggle of humanity, will still have our Old Man to help us.

He knew that the super-Borgia in the Kremlin, Cain-Stalin, who has destroyed the whole generation of the October Revolution, had marked him for assassination and would succeed sooner or later. That is why he worked so urgently. That is why he hastened to write out everything that was in his mind and get it down on paper in permanent form where nobody could destroy it.

Just the other night, I talked at the dinner table with one of the Old Man's faithful secretaries - a young comrade who had served him a long time and knew his personal life, as he lived it in his last years of exile, most intimately. I urged him to write his reminiscences without delay. I said: "We must all write everything we know about Trotsky. Everyone must record his recollections and his impressions. We must not forget that we moved in the orbit of the greatest figure of our time. Millions of people, generations yet to come, will be hungry for every scrap of information, every word, every impression that throws light on him, his ideas, his aims, and his personal life."

He answered: "I can write only about his personal qualities as I observed them; his methods of work, his humaneness, his generosity. But I can't write anything new about his ideas. They are already written. Everything he had to say, everything he had in his brain, is down on paper. He seemed to be determined to scoop down to the bottom of his mind, and take out everything and give it to the world in his writings. Very often, I remember, casual conversation on some subject would come up at the dinner table; an informal discussion would take place, and the Old Man would express some opinions new and fresh. Almost invariably the contributions of the dinner-table conversation would find expression a little later in a book, an article, or a letter."

They killed Trotsky not by one blow; not when this murderer, the agent of Stalin, drove the pickax through the back of his skull. That was only the final blow. They killed him by inches. They killed him many times. They killed him seven times when they killed his seven secretaries. They killed him four times when they killed his four children. They killed him when his old coworkers of the Russian Revolution were killed.

Yet he stood up to his tasks in spite of all that. Growing old and sick, he staggered through all these moral, emotional, and physical blows to complete his testament to humanity while he still had time. He gathered it all together-every thought, every idea, every lesson from his past experience-to lay up a literary treasure for us, a treasure that the moths and the rust cannot eat.

There was a profound difference between Trotsky and other great men of action and transitory political leaders who influenced great masses in their lifetime. The power of such people, almost all of them, was something personal, something incommunicable to others. Their influence did not survive their deaths. Just recall for a moment the great men of our generation or the generation just passed: Clemenceau, Hindenburg, Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, Bryan. They had great masses following them and leaning upon them. But now they are dead; and all their influence died with them. Nothing remains but monuments and funeral eulogies. Nothing was distinctive about them but their personalities. They were opportunists, leaders for a day. They left no ideas to guide and inspire men when their bodies became dust, and their personalities became a memory.

Not so with Trotsky. Not so with him. He was different. He was also a great man of action, to be sure. His deeds are incorporated in the greatest revolution in the history of mankind. But, unlike the opportunists and leaders of a day, his deeds were inspired by great ideas, and these ideas still live. He not only made a revolution; he wrote its history and explained the basic laws which govern all revolutions. In his History of the Russian Revolution, which he considered his masterpiece, he gave us a guide for the making of new revolutions, or rather, for extending throughout the world the revolution that began in October 1917.

Trotsky, the great man of ideas, was himself the disciple of a still greater one-Marx. Trotsky did not originate or claim to originate the most fundamental ideas which he expounded. He built on the foundations laid by the great masons of the nineteenth century-Marx and Engels. In addition, he went through the great school of Lenin and learned from him. Trotsky's genius consisted in his complete assimilation of the ideas bequeathed by Marx, Engels, and Lenin. He mastered their method. He developed their ideas in modern conditions, and applied them in masterful fashion in the contemporary struggle of the proletariat. If you would understand Trotsky, you must know that he was a disciple of Marx, an orthodox Marxist. He fought under the banner of Marxism for forty-two years! During the last year of his life he laid everything else aside to fight a great political and theoretical battle in defence of Marxism in the ranks of the Fourth International! His very last article, which was left on his desk in unpolished form, the last article with which he occupied himself, was a defence of Marxism against contemporary revisionists and sceptics. The power of Trotsky, first of all and above all, was the power of Marxism.

Do you want a concrete illustration of the power of Marxist ideas? Just consider this: when Marx died in 1883, Trotsky was but four years old. Lenin was only fourteen. Neither could have known Marx, or anything about him. Yet both became great historical figures because of Marx, because Marx had circulated ideas in the world before they were born. Those ideas were living their own life. They shaped the lives of Lenin and Trotsky. Marx's ideas were with them and guided their every step when they made the greatest revolution in history.

So will the ideas of Trotsky, which are a development of the ideas of Marx, influence us, his disciples, who survive him today. They will shape the lives of far greater disciples who are yet to come, who do not yet know Trotsky's name. Some who are destined to be the greatest Trotskyists are playing in the schoolyards today. They will be nourished on Trotsky's ideas, as he and Lenin were nourished on the ideas of Marx and Engels.

Indeed, our movement in the United States took shape and grew up on his ideas without his physical presence, without even any communication in the first period. Trotsky was exiled and isolated in Alma Ata when we began our struggle for Trotskyism in this country in 1928. We had no contact with him, and for a long time did not know whether he was dead or alive. We didn't even have a collection of his writings. All we had was one single current document - his "Criticism of the Draft Program of the Comintern." That was enough. By the light of that single document we saw our way, began our struggle with supreme confidence, went through the split without faltering, built the framework of a national organization and established our weekly Trotskyist press. Our movement was built firmly from the very beginning and has remained firm because it was built on Trotsky's ideas. It was nearly a year before we were able to establish direct communication with the Old Man.

So with the sections of the Fourth International throughout the world. Only a very few individual comrades have ever met Trotsky face to face. Yet everywhere they knew him. In China, and across the broad oceans to Chile, Argentina, Brazil. In Australia, in practically every country of Europe. In the United States, Canada, Indochina, South Africa. They never saw him, but the ideas of Trotsky welded them all together in one uniform and firm world movement. So it will continue after his physical death. There is no room for doubt.

Trotsky's place in history is already established. He will stand forever on a historical eminence beside the other three great giants of the proletariat: Marx, Engels, and Lenin. It is possible, indeed it is quite probable, that in the historic memory of mankind, his name will evoke the warmest affection, the most heartfelt gratitude of all. Because he fought so long, against such a world of enemies, so honestly, so heroically, and with such selfless devotion!

Future generations of free humanity will look back with insatiable interest on this mad epoch of reaction and bloody violence and social change-this epoch of the death agony of one social system and the birth pangs of another. When they see through the historian's lens how the oppressed masses of the people everywhere were groping, blinded and confused, they will mention with unbounded love the name of the genius who gave us light, the great heart that gave us courage.

Of all the great men of our time, of all the public figures to whom the masses turned for guidance in these troubled terrible times, Trotsky alone explained things to us, he alone gave us light in the darkness. His brain alone unravelled the mysteries and complexities of our epoch. The great brain of Trotsky was what was feared by all his enemies. They couldn't cope with it. They couldn't answer it. In the incredibly horrible method by which they destroyed him there was hidden a deep symbol. They struck at his brain! But the richest products of that brain are still alive. They had already escaped and can never be recaptured and destroyed.

We do not minimize the blow that has been dealt to us, to our movement, and to the world. It is the worst calamity. We have lost something of immeasurable value that can never be regained. We have lost the inspiration of his physical presence, his wise counsel. All that is lost forever. The Russian people have suffered the most terrible blow of all. But by the very fact that the Stalinist camarilla had to kill Trotsky after eleven years, that they had to reach out from Moscow, exert all their energies and plans to destroy the life of Trotsky-that is the greatest testimony that Trotsky still lived in the hearts of the Russian people. They didn't believe the lies. They waited and hoped for his return. His words are still there. His memory is alive in their hearts.

Just a few days before the death of Comrade Trotsky the editors of the Russian Bulletin received a letter from Riga. It had been mailed before the incorporation of Latvia into the Soviet Union. It stated in simple words that Trotsky's "Open Letter to the Workers of the USSR"14 had reached them, and had lifted up their hearts with courage and shown them the way. The letter stated that the message of Trotsky had been memorized, word by word, and would be passed along by word of mouth no matter what might happen. We verily believe that the words of Trotsky will live longer in the Soviet Union than the bloody regime of Stalin. In the coming great day of liberation the message of Trotsky will be the banner of the Russian people.

The whole world knows who killed Comrade Trotsky. The world knows that on his deathbed he accused Stalin and his GPU of the murder. The assassin's statement, prepared in advance of the crime, is the final proof, if more proof is needed, that the murder was a GPU job. It is a mere reiteration of the lies of the Moscow trials; a stupid police-minded attempt, at this late day, to rehabilitate the frame-ups which have been discredited in the eyes of the whole world. The motives for the assassination arose from the world reaction, the fear of revolution, and the traitors' sentiments of hatred and revenge. The English historian Macaulay remarked that apostates in all ages have manifested an exceptional malignity toward those whom they have betrayed. Stalin and his traitor gang were consumed by a mad hatred of the man who reminded them of their yesterday. Trotsky, the symbol of the great revolution, reminded them constantly of the cause they had deserted and betrayed, and they hated him for that. They hated him for all the great and good human qualities which he personified and to which they were completely alien. They were determined, at all cost, to do away with him.

Now I come to a part that is very painful, a thought which, I am sure, is in the minds of all of us. The moment we read of the success of the attack I am sure everyone among us asked: couldn't we have saved him a while longer? If we had tried harder, if we had done more for him - couldn't we have saved him? Dear comrades, let us not reproach ourselves. Comrade Trotsky was doomed and sentenced to death years ago. The betrayers of the revolution knew that the revolution lived in him, the tradition, the hope. All the resources of a powerful state, set in motion by the hatred and revenge of Stalin, were directed to the assassination of a single man without resources and with only a handful of close followers. All of his coworkers were killed; seven of his faithful secretaries; his four children. Yet, in spite of the fact that they marked him for death after his exile from Russia, we saved him for eleven years! Those were the most fruitful years of his whole life. Those were the years when he sat down in full maturity to devote himself to the task of summing up and casting in permanent literary form the results of his experiences and his thoughts.

Their dull police minds cannot know that Trotsky left the best of himself behind. Even in death he frustrated them. Because the thing they wanted most of all to kill-the memory and the hope of revolution-that Trotsky left behind him.

If you reproach yourself or us because this murder machine finally reached Trotsky and struck him down, you must remember that it is very hard to protect anyone from assassins. The assassin who stalks his victim night and day very often breaks through the greatest protections. Even Russian tsars and other rulers, surrounded by all the police powers of great states, could not always escape assassination by small bands of determined terrorists equipped with the most meager resources. This was the case more than once in Russia in the prerevolutionary days. And here, in the case of Trotsky, you had all that in reverse. All the resources were on the side of the assassins. A great state apparatus, converted into a murder machine, against one man and a few devoted disciples. So if they finally broke through, we have only to ask ourselves, did we do all we could to prevent it or postpone it? Yes, we did our best. In all conscience, we must say we did our best.

In the last weeks after the assault of May 24, we once again put on the agenda of our leading committee the question of the protection of Comrade Trotsky. Every comrade agreed that this is our most important task, most important for the masses of the whole world and for the future generations, that above all we do everything in our power to protect the life of our genius, our comrade, who helped and guided us so well. A delegation of party leaders made a visit to Mexico. It turned out to be our last visit. There, on that occasion, in consultation with him, we agreed upon a new campaign to strengthen the guard. We collected money in this country to fortify the house at the cost of thousands of dollars; all our members and sympathizers responded with great sacrifices and generosity.

And still the murder machine broke through. But those who helped even in the smallest degree, either financially or with their physical efforts, like our brave young comrades of the guard, will never be sorry for what they did to protect and help the Old Man.

At the hour Comrade Trotsky was finally struck down, I was returning by train from a special journey to Minneapolis. I had gone there for the purpose of arranging for new and especially qualified comrades to go down and strengthen the guard in Coyoacan. On the way home I sat in the railroad train with a feeling of satisfaction that the task of the trip had been accomplished, reinforcements of the guard had been provided for.

Then, as the train passed through Pennsylvania, about four o'clock in the morning, they brought the early papers with the news that the assassin had broken through the defences and driven a pickax into the brain of Comrade Trotsky. That was the beginning of a terrible day, the saddest day of our lives, when we waited, hour by hour, while the Old Man fought his last fight and struggled vainly with death. But even then, in that hour of terrible grief, when we received the fatal message over the long-distance telephone: "The Old Man is dead"-even then, we didn't permit ourselves to stop for weeping. We plunged immediately into the work to defend his memory and carry out his testament. And we worked harder than ever before, because for the first time we realized with full consciousness that we have to do it all now. We can't lean on the Old Man anymore. What is done now, we must do. That is the spirit in which we have got to work from now on.

The capitalist masters of the world instinctively understood the meaning of the name of Trotsky. The friend of the oppressed, the maker of revolutions, was the incarnation of all that they hated and feared! Even in death they revile him. Their newspapers splash their filth over his name. He was the world's exile in the time of reaction. No door was open to him anywhere except that of the Republic of Mexico. The fact that Trotsky was barred from all capitalist countries is in itself the clearest refutation of all the slanders of the Stalinists, of all their foul accusations that he betrayed the revolution, that he had turned against the workers. They never convinced the capitalist world of that. Not for a moment.

The capitalists - all kinds - fear and hate even his dead body! The doors of our great democracy are open to many political refugees, of course. All sorts of reactionaries; democratic scoundrels who betrayed and deserted their people; monarchists, and even fascists - they have all been welcomed in New York harbor. But not even the dead body of the friend of the oppressed could find asylum here! We shall not forget that! We shall nourish that grievance close to our hearts and in good time we shall take our revenge.

The great and powerful democracy of Roosevelt and Hull wouldn't let us bring his body here for the funeral. But he is here just the same. All of us feel that he is here in this hall tonight - not only in his great ideas, but also, especially tonight, in our memory of him as a man. We have a right to be proud that the best man of our time belonged to us, the greatest brain and strongest and most loyal heart. The class society we live in exalts the rascals, cheats, self-seekers, liars, and oppressors of the people. You can hardly name an intellectual representative of the decaying class society, of high or low degree, who is not a miserable hypocrite and contemptible coward, concerned first of all with his own inconsequential personal affairs and saving his own worthless skin. What a wretched tribe they are. There is no honesty, no inspiration, nothing in the whole of them. They have not a single man that can strike a spark in the heart of youth. Our Old Man was made of better stuff. Our Old Man was made of entirely different stuff. He towered above these pygmies in his moral grandeur.

Comrade Trotsky not only struggled for a new social order based on human solidarity as a future goal; he lived every day of his life according to its higher and nobler standards. They wouldn't let him be a citizen of any country. But, in truth, he was much more than that. He was already, in his mind and in his conduct, a citizen of the communist future of humanity. That memory of him as a man, as a comrade, is more precious than gold and rubies. We can hardly understand a man of that type living among us. We are all caught in the steel net of the class society with its inequalities, its contradictions, its conventionalities, its false values, its lies. The class society poisons and corrupts everything. We are all dwarfed and twisted and blinded by it. We can hardly visualize what human relations will be, we can hardly comprehend what the personality of man will be, in a free society.

Comrade Trotsky gave us an anticipatory picture. In him, in his personality as a man, as a human being, we caught a glimpse of the communist man that is to be. This memory of him as a man, as a comrade, is our greatest assurance that the spirit of man, striving for human solidarity, is unconquerable. In our terrible epoch many things will pass away. Capitalism and all its heroes will pass away. Stalin and Hitler and Roosevelt and Churchill, and all the lies and injustices and hypocrisy they signify, will pass away in blood and fire. But the spirit of the communist man which Comrade Trotsky represented will not pass away.

Destiny has made us, men of common clay, the most immediate disciples of Comrade Trotsky. We now become his heirs, and we are charged with the mission to carry out his testament. He had confidence in us. He assured us with his last words that we are right and that we will prevail. We need only have confidence in ourselves and in the ideas, the tradition, and the memory which he left us as our heritage.

We owe everything to him. We owe to him our political existence, our understanding, our faith in the future. We are not alone. There are others like us in all parts of the world. Always remember that. We are not alone. Trotsky has educated cadres of disciples in more than thirty countries. They are convinced to the marrow of their bones of their right to victory. They will not falter. Neither shall we falter. "I am sure of the victory of the Fourth International!" So said Comrade Trotsky in the last moment of his life. So are we sure.

Trotsky never doubted and we shall never doubt that, armed with his weapons, with his ideas, we shall lead the oppressed masses of the world out of the bloody welter of the war into a new socialist society. That is our testimony here tonight at the grave of Comrade Trotsky.

And here at his grave we testify also that we shall never forget his parting injunction - that we shield and cherish his warrior-wife, the faithful companion of all his struggles and wanderings. "Take care of her," he said, "she has been with me many years. Yes, we shall take care of her. Before everything else, we shall take care of Natalia.

We come now to the last word of farewell to our greatest comrade and teacher, who has now become our most glorious martyr. We do not deny the grief that constricts all our hearts. But ours is not the grief of prostration, the grief that saps the will. It is tempered by rage and hatred and determination. We shall transmute it into fighting energy to carry on the Old Man's fight. Let us say farewell to him in a manner worthy of his disciples, like good soldiers of Trotsky's army. Not crouching in weakness and despair, but standing upright with dry eyes and clenched fists. With the song of struggle and victory on our lips. With the song of confidence in Trotsky's Fourth International, the International Party that shall be the human race!

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Important new article on the crisis of contemporary psychiatry

by Frank Brenner

The last three issues of The New York Review of Books has carried an important article (in two parts) by Marcia Angell about the abysmal state of contemporary psychiatry and an exchange between Angell and some of her critics. Thankfully all these articles are available on line and I cannot recommend them highly enough. Angell is a Senior Lecturer in Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School and former editor-in-chief of The New England Journal of Medicine. The links to the two parts of her article and the exchange are as follows:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/jun/23/epidemic-mental-illness-why/

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/jul/14/illusions-of-psychiatry/

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2011/aug/18/illusions-psychiatry-exchange/

Angell's article is in the form of a review of a number of new books highly critical of the current state of psychiatry. As someone who addressed some of the same issues over a decade ago in an article originally posted on the World Socialist Web Site (See "Mental Illness and the American Dream" Part One: http://www.permanent-revolution.org/essays/mental_illness_one.htm ,
Part Two: http://www.permanent-revolution.org/essays/mental_illness_two.htm), I was familiar with many of the issues that Angell raises, but even so I was taken aback by some of the revelations she discusses. For instance, in the first installment of her article, she cites convincing evidence, in a book by British psychologist Irving Kirsch, that antidepressants (the most widely prescribed drugs in America) are no more effective than placebos. She also cites journalist Robert Whitaker, who argues that many psychiatric drugs not only have negligible effect in terms of curing patients but actually intensify and prolong mental illness. In the second part of her article, Angell shows how infested the psychiatric profession in America is with drug company money, to a greater extent than any other medical profession, and how diagnoses are often tailored to promote drug sales. Worse still is the way that psychiatry and the drug companies have preyed on children, subjecting hundreds of thousands of them - particularly in poor working class families - to harmful and even potentially lethal drug 'therapies'. These articles add to the vast evidence that psychiatry is far less a science than a means for social control. The inconvenient truth is that mental illnesses are really social diseases, outgrowths of the increasingly pathological state of capitalist society.

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A Comment on David Bruce's 'A Charlatan Exposed'

by James Bradley

Your introduction to David Bruce's piece, A Charlatan Exposed,  provided an excellent backdrop for the ideas raised by Bruce and provokes further interest. You make several points in your bullet summary with which I heartily agree and your reference to "Left Keynesians claiming to be Marxists" and the "honorific . . . Science of Perspectives" is an apt comment with respect to the WSWS commentary on world events.

Yes, David Bruce's work is much more focused on philosophical issues than North's and his remark labelling Healy's philosophy as "misunderstood empiricism without the clarity of the empirical philosophers" is particularly succinct and memorable.

Clearly, Bruce put a great deal of effort into exposing what he calls the “fraudulent nature of the ‘philosophy’ which has passed for Marxism in our movement for years ”.

Today, the philosophy of the ICFI has again been challenged in the series of documents produced by yourself and Frank Brenner. I urge all casual readers of this site to take the time to read all of the relevant documents.

I was particularly interested in Bruce's reference to One Step Forward. With respect to Plekhanov's opportunism at the conclusion of the Congress, Bruce makes the point:

“As a matter of fact, neither Lenin nor Trotsky tried to explain Plekhanov’s opportunism primarily by looking for ‘philosophical’ flaws in his writings although they did criticise them. They looked rather at the evolution of his social being: long years of exile, isolation from the movement, the undeveloped state of the class struggle during his formative years, etc etc. ”

Of course this discussion is reminiscent of your discussion with David North.

Ironically, whilst Bruce may not have been aware of Lenin's remarks concerning Plekhanov in Volume 38, Lenin made some very explicit comments (One Step Forward: Section P) with respect to Plekhanov's failure to have a dialectical understanding of the fruits of his (Plekhanov's) own publication What Should Not Be Done. When Plekhanov is taken aback by the reaction to his overtures to the Martovites, Lenin points out:

“This misfortune befell Comrade Plekhanov because he violated a basic principle of that dialectics to which he so unluckily referred, namely, that there is no abstract truth, that truth is always concrete. That is why it was out of place to lend an abstract form to the perfectly concrete idea of yielding to the Martovites after the League Congress.”

When writing about “ 'the continuity of Trotskyism' “, Bruce says:

“I would argue that it is not established simply by showing (perhaps we would end by showing the opposite – consider where that would leave us) a thread of integrity through different sections of the International vis- a-vis the Permanent Revolution, dialectical method, etc. Rather, the continuity of Trotskyism is based upon the economic and cultural conquests of October and the gains of the working class that have followed. The betrayals of Stalinism and social-democracy have not led to the overthrow of the property relations established in 1917. [This written in 1985] Millions of Russians did not die in vain in the struggle against fascism. That is the primary determinant of the continuity of Trotskyism. It is the movement of social forces (the major conquests of masses of people) that determines our ideas, not the other way round. ”

Bruce seems to suggest that the continuity of Trotskyism is diminished by the betrayals of Stalinism. Isn't this defeat of the working class an affirmation of the correct analysis and warnings made by Trotsky of the policies of Stalinism? The continuity of Trotskyism is not diminished by these defeats, but by new interpretations of Trotskyism which ignore what Trotsky had to say.

The ICFI today bases its abandonment of work in the trade unions on the defeats of the working class caused by the class collaborationist policies of the trade union leadership. Amongst Trotsky's last articles, Trade Unions in the Epoch of Imperialist Decay, he warned:

“From what has been said it follows quite clearly that, in spite of the progressive degeneration of trade unions and their growing together with the imperialist state, the work within the trade unions not only does not lose any of its importance but remains as before and becomes in a certain sense even more important work than ever for every revolutionary party. The matter at issue is essentially the struggle for influence over the working class. Every organization, every party, every faction which permits itself an ultimatistic position in relation to the trade union, i.e., in essence turns its back upon the working class, merely because of displeasure with its organizations, every such organization is destined to perish. And it must be said it deserves to perish.”

Thanks David Bruce for making this work available and thanks Alex for the very informative introduction.

Comradely,
James Bradley

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Eye witness to the events at Syntagma Square, Athens

By Stephen Politis

Many people were there [at Syntagma square], and they were not leaving. The police made excessive use of gas to evacuate the place, especially given that the great majority were not offering any resistance.

People were walking some distance from the square so that they could breath and staying there or trying to return back to the square from other small streets.

There was no resistance from the people. The incidents of physical violence were unprovoked. When video cameras were present (mostly in the main square) police were more careful. They were much more violent in the surrounding small streets.

Most of the protestors were wearing medical masks and taking Maalox, an antacid medication, in order to alleviate the effects of the chemicals being used by the police, chemicals that induce severe burning of the stomach.

I saw policemen pulling these masks from ladies (50-60 years old) and gas them in the face.

They sprayed the medical room inside the metro-station with gas.

They were using three types of delivery methods: hand-held gas-grenades for short distances inside an enclosed area like the metro-station, gas-grenades fired from guns for long distances inside the crowd and gas-guns spraying directly at people at a distance of 1 to 3 meters or less. The latter was the method used in those cases where people’s masks were removed that I mentioned previously.

After many hours of continuous use, the police must have exhausted the supplies they had with them and at that point they started to throw large stones into the midst of the unprotected crowd. It was really a miracle that none of these stones landed on anyone’s head with lethal consequences, but many were hurt by stones landing elsewhere on their body.

Those victims who were sent to the hospital cannot prove that the stones were thrown by policemen - even in those cases where there were videos catching them in the act.

The official police line is that the stones were thrown by other protestors. It's true that there were some stones thrown at the police as eventually the crowd reacted in anger to the unprovoked attacks. Participants included a wide range of people (not just "anarchists" and not only youth but even older people and entire families). As the police were wearing protective armor the stone throwing presented little danger to them. The protestors however, on the other side, were completely unprotected.

Video of police brutality at Syntagma Square and surroundings [1]

The police used a new method for reigning in the protests that I had never seen before. They unleashed "attack forces" from around 50 police-motorbikes (with two persons in each one) running wild around the center of the city to a distance of 2-3 kilometers away from the main square and shooting gas grenades whenever they saw more than few people together. Many tourist-groups had the pleasure of being subject to this gassing as well because many of the protestors, myself included, ran to the nearby tourist areas of Plaka and Monastiraki for safety. We were hoping the police would "respect" the foreign tourists. However that was not to be. Whenever they could enclose groups they would fire at them with their gas guns, even inside restaurants, cafeterias, grocery shops or the entrances of apartment buildings.

In some cases they also hit the occupants of these building when the latter had the temerity to tell the police that they are not allowed to go inside a house without a warrant or a public attorney order.

The first attack started around 13:30. By the time I left, exhausted, at around 21:30, the square and surroundings were covered by a fog many meters above the buildings, like the aftermath of the bombardment of a town seen on television. I saw this type of image many times but I never imagined I could see a real "war image" during "peace time".

The subject of police-state and police brutality is well known and wide spread (in the USA especially, as I saw many times on YouTube) and I can write more and more, but I don’t know if it really helps! So I will try to give you the whole picture in a few words.

What we have here is a government following an austerity policy, which doesn’t solve the problem but boosts the debt to such heights that it will never be possible to repay it. And this policy is being pursued solely to protect the banking system, both local and international.

These were mostly European banks that were borrowing money from the European Central Bank at 1-2% interest and lending to us at 4-5% or more. These businesses made profits of several billion per year and the bonuses offered to their “golden boys” were many millions. Now they try to persuade the people of Europe that they will give money to Greece [if the austerity measures are adopted] to cover up their thievery, but all this money will go directly to the banks.

The austerity measures are also imposing on Greece the privatization of every public company or asset (roads, harbors, airports, electricity, water supplies), to be sold at prices less than the profits of one, two or three years of operation. The money that can be raised in this fire-sale is nothing compared to the mountain of debt and the only sure thing is that the state will lose its last few profit making assets. As for the non-profit making assets, no one wants to buy them.

The only source of revenue for the state is heavy taxation (mostly indirect taxes and a capitation tax [2] ) of people who in the past year saw a significant decrease of their wages or incomes. For example: I have to pay every year about €4500 for social security and now I have to pay €500 for capitation tax in a total income last year of around €7000 and this year around €5000!!!!. In the “good years” I was earning €12000-€14000 per year. If I manage to earn more than €8000 this year I will have to pay even more taxes.

As the citizens movement keeps growing (we are already 35 days into the Syntagma Square protests) the police are attacking whenever the crowd in the square starts to amass more than two or three thousand. The black propaganda against this movement from the main/official mass media is enormous and insidious. Their aim is to keep people frightened in their homes but they don’t care to report that the polls show that 80% of the people are against this policy. Even if their policy was "right" and the people are "wrong", how is it possible for an elected government to use chemical warfare against the majority of its people to pass their policy??? And "punish" every representative who is voting against this policy, respecting the will of the people who vote them, by ostracism!! [3]

[1] Video by Dimitris Meletis,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=U_r5bt8QitI#at=21
[2] A capitation tax, sometimes known as a “head tax” is a tax of a portioned, fixed amount per individual in accordance with the census (as opposed to a percentage of income.) The U.S. Constitution forbids a capitation tax though the infamous “poll tax” that was used to disenfranchise African American voters in many Southern States was a form of a capitation tax.

[3] In Ancient Athens, where the institution of ostracism was invented, a politician who was deemed to be troublesome was often banished from the city for ten years.  It is ironic that this tradition is being resurrected by a party claiming adherence to the ideals of contemporary democracy, progress and even socialism.

[Note: The publication of this moving eye witness account of the mass protests at Syntagma Square in Athens and the horrible orgy of police brutality that has erupted there requires no explanation. The PASOK government of George Papandreou forced through a vote in the Greek Parliament last week that will impose draconian austerity measures previously unknown in any advanced industrial country. And it is a government that claims to be “socialist” and “democratic” that is carrying out this policy on behalf of the European banks. The fact that only one PASOK deputy had the courage to vote against the austerity package is a measure of how far Social Democracy has travelled from its post-war role of support for a mild welfare-state. Given the enormity of the betrayals of the traditional working class organizations in Greece, the trade unions, PASOK and their parliamentary representatives, it is natural for a tendency to arise among the protestors to reject all forms of political action in favor of mass protests, strikes and a search for “direct democracy”. We are in complete solidarity with the protestors in Syntagma Square, but their rejection of the political struggle is a serious mistake. History teaches us that the question of political power cannot be avoided. Such were the lessons of the Paris Commune and many other struggles. A. S.]

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