Suzanne Weiss at McGill, February 17, 2020
‘Resistance to Hitler Has Lessons for Today’
By John Riddell: The dangers posed by the Covid-19 virus forced suspenion on March 19 of Suzanne Weiss’s tour introducing her memoir, Holocaust to Resistance: My Journey. But the tour’s results so far indicate encouraging interest in her story and its message of global solidarity.
Suzanne’s seventeen meetings in Toronto, Montreal, Kingston, Hamilton, Winnipeg, and Pittsburgh were attended by 1,000 participants. Many more saw or heard her four interviews in print and online. (See Interview by Radio Western.)
All Suzanne’s city and university presentations highlighted Palestinian human rights, a topic that today often triggers false accusations of anti-Semitism. (For a recent overview of this controversy, see IJV Statement.) Yet Suzanne’s meetings aroused no such criticisms. When her views were questioned, the exchange was respectful and constructive.
The meetings thus confirmed just how far removed the thinking of people in Canada is from that of its federal parliament, which has endorsed a “redefinition” of anti-Semitism aimed at stifling advocacy of human rights. Read more…
Undemocratic IHRA Redefinition Has Unexpected Result
By John Riddell: York University’s Centre for Jewish Studies has cancelled a proposed pro-Israel meeting “after the organizers learned of plans to disrupt the event,” reports the January 9, 2020, edition of Canadian Jewish News (CJN).
The disruption threat came from an extremist pro-Israel group, Jewish Defense League, with a long record of violence and disruption. (See note below)
The stated purpose of the gathering was to discuss “the current climate faced by Jewish students on campus” – a formula routinely used to introduce condemnation of students advocating human rights for Palestinians. Yet the meeting was challenged not by friends of Palestine, who scrupulously respect the rights of pro-Israel students and activists, but by a Zionist group notorious for expressing its hostility to Palestinian rights through extremism and violence. Read more…
Notes on the Actuality of Revolution
Paul Le Blanc
By Paul Le Blanc: It is possible and necessary to build a powerful mass socialist movement in the United States by 2030 that could be in a position to provide an effective challenge to capitalism and transition to a socialist democracy. Both the objective possibility and the objective need exist. Revolutionary socialists have an opportunity to make it so – if we are willing to be serious, not just analytically and rhetorically, but in practice.
We must move beyond commentary and aspirations to actualities. We have limited time. At present we are woefully unprepared – we must change that. The growth of socialist consciousness in the political mainstream of our country, and the conception of the Green New Deal as a response to the socio-economic and environmental crises of our time, provide the basis for changing what must be changed.
1. Converging Necessities and Possibilities
The economic, social and political situation in the United States is incredibly fluid. A mass radicalization within our complex and multifaceted working class – generated by deepening crises – has created the possibility of a strong socialist movement within the next five years. A revolutionary Marxist pole can become an effective influence within that movement. It is a necessary precondition for the development of a revolutionary socialist party that would be capable of posing an effective challenge to capitalism by mid-century.
We need to develop an overall perspective measured in years and decades, with such future possibilities dictating what we do in the coming months. We should not try to do in months what will take years, but we should be putting into place now the practice and the structures that will enable us to bring things to the next level as the time comes.
‘Out of this overall dynamic, some variant of socialist consciousness has become a factor in the thinking and discussions of millions of people, and tens of thousands of people are drawn to socialist organizations.’
Introductory Note by John Riddell: The unexpected dissolution of the U.S. International Socialist Organization in April 2019 has provoked wide concern and debate among socialists. The ISO had long been the largest and most effective revolutionary socialist group in the U.S. Until the last few months before its demise, it was at its peak in size and effectiveness.
This collapse was all the more surprising given the context: an encouraging revival of labour struggles and interest in socialism after decades of retreat.
On May 26, 2019, former ISO member Paul Le Blanc published a searching study of the ISO dissolution on this website: “What Happened to the International Socialist Organization?”
Lance Selfa and Paul D’Amato, long prominent figures in ISO leadership, have submitted to this website a response to Paul Le Blanc’s article, “What Happened to the ISO: A Political Assessment” (see below). The article first appeared on “International Socialism Project” [ISP], a new website seeking to continue the heritage of the former ISO. Read more…
Evo Morales
On November 10, 2019, Bolivia’s military threw its support behind an uprising of rightist pro-Imperialist forces, forcing the resignation of the elected government led by President Evo Morales and driving him into exile in Mexico. Rightist gangs unleashed a wave of murderous violence across Bolivia against all suspected of sympathy with Morales.
Canada’s government was shamefully quick in endorsing the coup. (See Yves Engler, “Canada Backs Coup Against Bolivia’s President”.)
Posted below are comments by Bolivian President Evo Morales and Vice-President Álvaro García Linera from their Mexican exile.–JR
Evo Morales: ‘We will return to join the people now resisting the coup’
The following excerpts have been transcribed from an Al Jazeera video interview with Evo Morales in his Mexican exile. To locate the statements quoted below, start at 7:00 minutes. During this interview, Evo said in part: Read more…
A brief excerpt from ‘Holocaust to Resistance’, by Suzanne Berliner Weiss
Introduction by John Riddell: The experience of my partner Suzanne Weiss with the U.S. Communist Party in the early 1950s forms an interesting complement to my own account, in “My Search for Socialism,” of my experiences with the CP a couple of years later. We were both teenagers. Suzanne assessed the pro-Moscow Communist movement from within; I did the same from without.
The text that follows is a short excerpt from Suzanne’s memoir, Holocaust to Resistance: My Journey, available for $22 from Fernwood Publishers. For more excerpts and other information, see suzanneberlinerweiss.com.
The Toronto book launch of Holocaust to Resistance takes place on Friday, October 18, 7:00 p.m., at 60 Lowther Avenue, Toronto (St. George subway).
Suzanne is receiving many requests for speaking engagements, and I am assisting her in organizing these events. For this reason, my activity on this blog will be much reduced through the end of the year.
‘Holocaust to Resistance’ tells of solidarity ‘then and now’
By John Riddell: Long a familiar figure in Toronto left rallies and action coalitions, Suzanne Weiss has now published a life story arching from her first years in France occupied by Hitler’s troops to present-day tasks of liberation and eco-revolution.
Suzanne’s publisher, Fernwood, has organized a book launch on October 18, 7 p.m. at Toronto’s Friends House, 60 Lowther Avenue. She is also responding to many invitations to speak in Canada and beyond. To discuss an event, contact suzanneweiss63 [at] gmail [dot] com.
Suzanne Berliner Weiss, Holocaust to Resistance: My Journey, Fernwood Publishing, 2019, 311 pp.
A new website at suzanneberlinerweiss.com presents Suzanne’s eloquent introductory video along with a wealth of resources on the book: historic photos, readers’ comments, the table of contents, a list of coming events, and more. Read more…
A Memoir (Part One)
By John Riddell: I hear many negative comments from socialist friends these days about “Stalinism” or “Trotskyism.” The terms are not easy to evaluate. They relate to history, to the Russian revolution and its contradictory legacy, to events now almost a century in the past.
John Riddell, 1958
Well, I come from those long-ago times. My engagement with socialism 60 years ago hinged on evaluating the rival claims of Stalinist and Trotskyist movements. So let me recount how the world looked to me back in 1958, the year that I became a socialist activist. I invite readers to form their own opinion on the present-date relevance or non-relevance of this long-ago debate.
My story begins in Toronto, two months after my sixteenth birthday. Read more…
Part Two of a Reminiscence, ‘1958: My Search for Socialists’
By John Riddell: Hearing of my misadventure with the LPP (Communist Party) bookstore, Richard Fidler tipped me off to the existence of an alternative Marxist outlet, the Toronto Labor Bookstore, at 81 Queen St. W., opposite what is now Toronto’s City Hall Square. As I entered, I recognized the person at the desk – Ross Dowson, whose photo had appeared in the daily press. He had run several times as a Trotskyist mayoralty candidate and had recently picked up a few percentage points of the vote in each of two federal by-elections.
See also Part 1 — 1958: My Search for Socialism
Ross Dowson (1917-2002)
Neatly dressed and slightly balding although still in his early forties, Dowson greeted me with enthusiasm, as if he’d been waiting years for this encounter. We started chatting. Soon the conversation turned to the 1939 Stalin-Hitler pact that ushered in World War 2. I gave the standard defense: the Soviet Union was forced to accept the treaty in order to win time and gain a geographical buffer to fend off a likely German attack.
Dowson countered by informing me that, after the pact, the official Communist movement abruptly cancelled their campaign in Canada and globally to unite progressive forces against fascism. Then he voiced an idea that was totally new to me and that I immediately found convincing. What the Soviet Union may have gained militarily through the pact, Dowson said, counted for little compared to the impact of alienation and disorientation caused among its millions of supporters worldwide. Read more…
By John Riddell: On August 5, India’s Hindu nationalist government unilaterally revoked the autonomy of the state of Jammu and Kashmir, while flooding the region with troops, imposing a curfew, and shutting down all communications.
The state is to be broken in two, with the eastern portion (Ladakh) under direct rule by New Delhi.
The government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi shut down Internet connections, mobile phone services, and land-line phones in the besieged region. The fragmentary news that has trickled out speaks of arrests of leading politicians and widespread fear among the region’s 12 million inhabitants. Read more…
It’s Time for a Closer Look
Karl Kautsky (1854-1938)
By Lars T. Lih, Summer 2019: After 1914, Lenin and Karl Kautsky became bitter political enemies. No person was denounced by Lenin with so much obsessive fervor as was Kautsky—a reflection of the central role Kautsky had formerly played in the outlook of the Russian Bolsheviks. Nevertheless, despite his monumental anger at the person, Lenin never renounced his admiration for the views set forth by Kautsky in his earlier writings. On the contrary, he explicitly and enthusiastically continued to endorse “Kautsky when he was a Marxist.” Without appreciating this crucial fact, we will never succeed in understanding Lenin’s views in their historical context.[1]
One of the most instructive illustrations of Lenin’s conflicted attitude toward his former mentor is the section in State and Revolution devoted to Kautsky-when-he-was-a-Marxist. For Lenin, the cut-off point for Kautsky’s Marxist period was 1909, as we shall see below. He therefore divides his discussion in State and Revolution into two sections, one for material up to and including 1909, and another devoted to an article published by Kautsky published in 1912. Here we are interested only in the first section that is devoted to Kautsky’s earlier writings.
See also Lars Lih’s “Lenin-Kautsky Post-1914 Database”
What follows is the first online publication of a research tool created by Lars Lih in February 2008 and updated February 2011. — JR
By Lars T. Lih: The Kautsky-as-Marxist database is a collection that I have compiled of all comments by Lenin in his final decade, 1914-1924, that bear on the issue on his attitude during those years toward Kautsky’s prewar writings—or rather, his writings up to and including 1909. The original aim of the database was to provide empirical material on a dispute about Lenin’s attitude toward Kautsky after 1914.
Both sides acknowledge that Lenin admired Kautsky strongly before 1914 and that he reacted in strongly negative terms to everything that Kautsky wrote starting in 1914. The question is: did Lenin’s post-1914 negative attitude spill over into a reevaluation of writings by Kautsky earlier endorsed by Lenin? Read more…
Introductory Note by John Riddell:
My article, “On The Democratic Character of Socialist Revolution” contested the view that revolutionary Marxists (“Leninists”) favour a strategy for insurrection against parliamentary institutions, quoting from court testimony given in 1942 by James P. Cannon, a founding leader of the U.S. Communist Party and later of the Socialist Workers Party.
Cannon’s testimony, available on Marxists Internet Archive, stands as an authoritative exposition of how Revolutionary Marxists explain the road to workers’ power.
Some revolutionary socialists objected to Cannon’s presentation of socialist revolution as a democratic process employing, to the extent possible, peaceful means. One critic, Grandizo Munis, argued that Cannon should have displayed “proud valor” in boldly declaring his party’s insurrectional intentions.
In reply, Cannon explained that his courtroom conduct was an application of a principle generally understood among working people, that it is best to frame demands for social change as an exercise of democratic and human rights, while laying the blame for illegality and violence where it belongs – on the capitalist ruling class. Read more…
Related Articles on the Road to Socialism
- Why Kautsky Was Right and Why You Should Care, by Eric Blanc, April 2, 1919
- Kautsky, Lenin, and the Transition to Socialism: A Reply to Eric Blanc by Mike Taber, April 6, 2019
- The Democratic Road to Socialism: A Reply to Mike Taber, by Eric Blanc, April 11, 2019
- Revolutionary Strategy and the Electoral Road, by Mike Taber, April 13, 2019
- Karl Kautsky as Architect of the October Revolution, by Lars Lih, July 4, 2019
- Defensive Formulations and the Organization of Action, by James P. Cannon, July 8, 2019
By John Riddell: Under the headline “Why Kautsky was right,” Eric Blanc wrote on the blog on April 5:
“Leninists for decades have hinged their strategy on the need for an insurrection to overthrow the entire parliamentary state and to place all power into the hands of workers’ councils.“[1]
When I read these words, my mind went back to a day 40 years earlier when this formulation was hurled at me by members of Canada’s security police. They used it as justification for their illegal disruption and harassment directed against me and fellow members of the Revolutionary Workers League (RWL). Read more…
1917: The Bolsheviks Apply Kautsky’s Tactics
Lenin remained true to the tactical ideas of Karl Kautsky after the latter had abandoned them.
By Lars T. Lih
Lars T. Lih
As we have seen, the Bolsheviks came into 1917 with two pieces of Kautsky advice firmly under their belts: enlist the peasantry as a revolutionary ally, and do not deviate from militant anti-agreementism. In order to see how this advice played out in 1917, we need first to dispense with a couple of will-o’-the-wisps about the October revolution.
What the 1917 Revolution Was Not
In his Jacobin article [republished on this blog], Eric Blanc states the following: “Following Lenin’s arguments in his 1917 pamphlet State and Revolution, Leninists for decades have hinged their strategy on the need for an insurrection to overthrow the entire parliamentary state and to place all power into the hands of workers’ councils.”
This remark brings together not one, but two, deep-rooted misconceptions about 1917: first, that a clash between two types of democracy—parliamentary vs soviet—as found in the pages of State and Revolution, had anything to do with the October victory or the politics of the revolutionary year. (State and Revolution was drafted in 1917 but only published in 1918 and it is irrelevant to the events of the previous year.) Second, that the Bolsheviks took power by means of an “insurrection,” “armed uprising,” or whatever. Let us consider.
- This two-part article was first published as an undivided text in Jacobin.
- For Part 1, see “Before the War: The Bolsheviks Applaud Kautsky’s Tactics.”
- See also other articles by Lars Lih on this website.